The University of Tulsa’s Collins College of Business welcomed financial technology entrepreneur and investor Greg Kidd to the monthly Friends of Finance Executive Speaker Series on Wednesday, drawing over 300 attendees from across the community. Kidd, the majority shareholder of Tulsa-based Vast Holdings, Inc. and CEO of USBC, Inc., centered his talk on tokenization and why he believes Tulsa is positioned to participate in the next wave of fintech.
Kidd’s background spans consulting at Booz Allen Hamilton, taking a company public on NASDAQ and serving in the Federal Reserve’s payments division. He later worked as chief risk officer at Ripple, where he explored early applications of blockchain technology. As an investor, he provided first money for companies such as Twitter, Square, Coinbase, Robinhood and Solana.
Kidd framed his remarks around a distinction he considers essential to understanding innovation. “Ideas are important,” he said, “but insights are what change the world.” He highlighted how innovators such as Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey built transformative companies by identifying simple shifts in how people behave.
He returned to this point while discussing Twitter’s early days. “Freedom of speech is not about the freedom to speak,” Kidd said. “It’s about the freedom to listen to who you want to listen to.”
Understanding tokenization
Kidd connected these observations to tokenization, describing it as placing ownership of assets – money, property or digital goods – onto a shared digital ledger. He traced the idea to Bitcoin’s decentralized record-keeping system and noted how Ripple expanded that model so many forms of value could move across a single network.
Tokenization, he said, could enable versions of the U.S. dollar to move globally with greater transparency and speed when paired with traditional banking safeguards.
Kidd emphasized that Tulsa’s long-standing ties to energy, banking and risk-driven innovation make it a meaningful location for digital asset discussions. With Vast Bank and other local institutions experimenting with new financial technologies, he noted that Tulsa may play a role in how tokenized financial systems develop in the years ahead.
Kidd was the latest presenter in UTulsa’s popular Friends of Finance Executive Speaker Series, which features leaders from a variety of industries and organizations. The program gives local businesspeople access to international changemakers and introduces them to undergraduate and graduate students. Friends of Finance memberships provide support for the student-managed investment fund, which uses its earnings to pay for scholarships in the Collins College of Business. Learn more at utulsa.edu/FoF.