01Stablecoins
Money, settlement, and trust in digitally native financial systems.
About ThinkDeFi
ThinkDeFi is an independent research and convening institution advancing the future of financial infrastructure.
Through independent research, executive dialogue, and strategic collaboration, ThinkDeFi examines the technological, institutional, and human systems shaping the next generation of global finance.
Why We Exist
Financial infrastructure is undergoing one of the most significant transformations in modern history. Digital assets, programmable money, tokenized markets, and new institutional models are changing how value moves around the world. Yet technological innovation alone is not enough. Durable financial systems require trust, governance, coordination, and informed leadership.
ThinkDeFi exists to help institutions understand these changes and engage with them thoughtfully through rigorous research, executive dialogue, and strategic collaboration.
Mission
ThinkDeFi advances the future of financial infrastructure through independent research, executive dialogue, and strategic collaboration - so that technological progress strengthens human agency, institutional resilience, and the capacity of communities to flourish.
Our Independence
Independent
Research-driven
Nonpartisan
Not an investment advisor
Not a lobbying organization
Committed to evidence-based analysis
Institutional Model
01 → Research & Inquiry
02 → Executive Dialogue
03 → Published Intelligence
04 → Strategic Collaboration
We help leaders see beyond the technology—to the institutions, incentives, governance, and human judgment that determine whether new financial systems can earn trust and endure.
Our work connects rigorous research with carefully curated dialogue. The aim is not prediction for its own sake, but greater clarity for the people making consequential decisions across strategy, policy, infrastructure, and capital.
Technology creates possibility.
Institutions make it durable.
Institutions make it durable.
Our Point of View
Financial transformation requires more than technology.
Innovation can create extraordinary capability. Adoption depends on the social and institutional architecture around it: who participates, who decides, who benefits, and how accountability is sustained.
ThinkDeFi examines this human layer alongside the technology itself.
Research Agenda
What we examine
01
02Tokenization
How ownership, access, and value move across new market architectures.
03Market Structure
The rules, incentives, and intermediaries shaping participation.
04Regulatory Intelligence
Policy signals translated into institutional perspective.
05Digital Asset Infrastructure
The rails connecting assets, identity, liquidity, and governance.
06Future of Capital Markets
What durable, interoperable markets may require next.
Our Approach
Independent Research. Executive Dialogue. Strategic Collaboration.
Each dimension strengthens the others—creating a disciplined path from inquiry to institutional understanding.
Independent Research
We frame the consequential questions shaping financial transformation.
Executive Dialogue
We convene carefully selected leaders for candid, cross-sector exchange.
Strategic Collaboration
We turn complexity into clear, independent institutional intelligence.
The Human Layer
How do we enable trust within ourselves, between one another, and throughout the systems we design together?
This question sits at the center of ThinkDeFi’s research and Salon dialogue.
From Insight to Impact
A deliberate journey from question to application.
Research & Inquiry
Frame the question and establish the evidence.
Executive Dialogue
Test the tensions through candid institutional dialogue.
Published Intelligence
Synthesize perspective that leaders can use.
Strategic Collaboration
Inform strategy, policy, infrastructure, and action.
Leadership
Executive Office
ThinkDeFi is guided by an Executive Office responsible for institutional strategy, research quality, partnerships, and organizational stewardship.
Founder & Executive Director
Denise Shanklin
“The future of finance should be measured not only by what technology makes possible, but by what it enables humanity to become.”
Denise Shanklin founded ThinkDeFi on the belief that every significant financial transformation is ultimately a human transformation. After more than three decades leading complex enterprise technology initiatives across financial services, healthcare, life sciences, technology, and government, she came to a simple but profound realization: while technology transforms systems, people determine whether transformation succeeds.
As the global financial landscape began evolving through decentralized finance, digital assets, and emerging technologies, Denise saw a critical gap in the conversation. While much of the world’s attention was focused on innovation, infrastructure, and regulation, she believed an equally important question remained largely unexplored:
How do we ensure that the future of finance serves humanity, not just technology?
That question led her to establish ThinkDeFi as an independent research and convening institution dedicated to exploring the human dimension of financial innovation. Through independent research, executive dialogue, and strategic collaboration, ThinkDeFi brings together leaders from business, government, academia, and technology to examine how emerging financial systems can strengthen trust, expand opportunity, create lasting value, and enable human flourishing.
Denise’s vision is to build an enduring institution that helps leaders navigate financial transformation with wisdom, integrity, and purpose—ensuring that innovation strengthens society and that the future of finance serves humanity for generations to come.
Explore Research Paper No. 001 →Engage with ThinkDeFi
Join the conversation shaping the future of financial infrastructure.
ThinkDeFi invites financial institutions, policymakers, researchers, investors, entrepreneurs, academics, and corporate leaders to engage through independent research, executive dialogue, and strategic collaboration.