Keynote by Todd Ault: Debanking, DeFi & Tokenizing the World | unDavos 2026

Todd Ault had $200 million in the bank and couldn’t make payroll. During COVID, with bank branches physically closed, his company was debanked for the seventh time — including his wife’s Girl Scout Cookie account. The founder of Hyperscale Data (NYSE: GPUS) and the 34th largest public Bitcoin holder in the world delivers a raw keynote on how systemic debanking drove him to DeFi, politics, and building his own Layer 1 blockchain.

WHAT THIS PANEL COVERS

• How a publicly traded company with $200 million in the bank was debanked during COVID with no appeals process, no explanation, and 30 days to move 57 accounts
• Why 1.7 billion people worldwide are excluded from the banking system, and how DeFi wallets offer the only reliable path to financial self-custody
• How Todd’s journey from debanking to political engagement led him to work directly with US policymakers on crypto regulation and the Genius Act
• Why Switzerland is emerging as the global hub for tokenization, with progressive laws that didn’t exist a few years ago enabling new payment tokens and real-world asset structures
• Why anyone looking to tokenize should start with assets they already own rather than trying to raise new capital in a market that lacks liquidity for real-world assets

SPEAKER

• Milton “Todd” Ault III — Founder & Executive Chairman, Hyperscale Data (NYSE: GPUS); Founder, Ault Capital Group

unDavos is a community-driven summit running during WEF week in Davos, democratizing the conversation around global challenges.

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Tags: debanking, DeFi, decentralized finance, Bitcoin, tokenization, real-world assets, RWA, Hyperscale Data, GPUS, cryptocurrency regulation, Genius Act, Switzerland crypto, blockchain, financial inclusion, KYC, self-custody, Todd Ault, New York Stock Exchange, unDavos, Davos 2026, WEF

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Well, hey Marshall, how are you? Um Todd Alt. I uh run a public company um on the New York Stock Exchange. Uh this is not a solicitation for that, by the way, so don't buy the stock. Because later on you're gonna say, what happened? I've had this happens all the time. So but we're publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol GPUS. We run a business called Hyperscale Data. And the story of hyperscale is really one of uh survival, right? Because in the small cap world in the in the United States, um if you're a small cap company, um you don't have a lot of coverage. I have managed to raise for the the company um probably around 600 million dollars. We're the 34th largest um owner of Bitcoin as a public company in the world, and we operate with a premise of Bitcoin First, we operate a data center business um in Michigan. We're presently running 30 megawatts. We also operate out of Montana. And many, many years ago when I started the company, I wanted to run a holding company. I kind of had I grew up, I met Buffett when I was 11 years old, not personally, but I met him as an introduction and reached out to him when I was a kid and never thought I would experience what I'm about to tell you about. Can we who's changing the slides? Perfect. Um I'm gonna talk to you about a story about being de-banked and how I discovered crypto. So in 2000 and um technical difficulty, in uh in 2000 um and eleven I started uh my journey in understanding Bitcoin and did not really understand the idea of how punitive um your own government could be dealing with, right? And for us over a period of time, really starting in 2017, we um we effectively started being debaned. And I didn't really understand it. At first it was the banks were saying, Hey, listen, you uh we can't tell you why, but we're kicking you out. And uh so they give you some time to kick you out, but then you had to go to another bank and you had to convince them, well, the other bank that kicked me out, well, why'd you leave there? Well, in the beginning you don't really tell them why you left, you just say, Well, the bank uh you know had a change in policy or et cetera. But by the time you read the sixth or seventh or eighth bank, um you eventually are effectively debanked. And the uh the concept here of being cut off um was there's no appeals process, there's uh no one to talk to, and it's a really sort of a nameless, faceless process of being debanked. Has anybody here been debanked at all? Anybody? You big are you a bit coiner? Fund manager, crypto fund manager? There you go. So this process of of being debaned came to a head for me during the middle of COVID, and I was super proud of where we were. Um we had raised a lot of money, we had raised about um 200 million and we had it in the bank, and we um were basically told you know we had 30 days to get out, and during COVID you couldn't go into a bank, so we you know you they weren't open. It was like a it was like a the biblical nightmare for me. And effectively we couldn't even make payroll with 200 million dollars in the bank. Why? Because we custodian our money at Gemini, and um Gemini, because it's a custodian for a public company, would only wire same name to same name. And then to make matters worse about being debaned, we got PPP money uh because we, of course, had to shut down nine of our 11 operations in the United States uh that couldn't operate. And it wasn't a lot of money for PP, but even I couldn't even cash that check or get that wire because there was no bank account. And through this process, I've spent a lot of time sort of studying the system. I'm gonna be clear, I I I didn't make a lot of headway. Um in fact, the only headway I felt like I could make was a decision um a couple years ago to do something I don't really like to do, which is to get involved in politics. So in the United States, I took um I own a Gulfstream 550 uh through the company, and I took my plane and I took my resources and I got involved in politics, which is not a fun thing. I'm not a big fan of the idea of all the tribalism and stuff that happens in the U.S. And we can't even agree in the United States who can have a baby. So we're still trying to figure it out over there. Um at least you guys know who can have a baby here. Um so in my process of investigation, I realized there's so many people left out of the banking system that we don't really understand that, right? There's about 1.7 billion people that don't even have any kind of banking system. And in my conversations and travel in Dubai and my friends in Pakistan, my friends effectively all over the world tell me about effectively how this isn't the case. And when I discovered DeFi, I really um got vertical on the idea of that everyone everyone needs a DeFi wallet, everyone needs to be able to self-custodian some money. And I'm not here to talk about the politics of KYC, although I would say to you that a person who worked in the building, uh, I worked uh in the World Trade Center when I was younger. I worked for Dean Whitter on the 60th floor of World Trade. The first time it was bombed. And the second time, which was tragic, we as uh a country decided to turn KYC into a weapon. Um, and everything became money laundering, and every person. And I'm gonna give you an example of this. Of those of you who uh spend time in America, we sell something called Girl Scout Cookies. And Girl Scout Cookies is is something my wife did for my daughter. And when I was debanked out of U.S. Bank, and I'm gonna say the name out loud, U.S. Bank, because you know it's you. When I was debaned, I had 57 accounts at U.S. Bank through all my companies, and they gave us 30 days and they closed any bank that was associated with me because I was a mean, terrible Bitcoin miner that was doing really bad stuff, you know, fraudulently mining Bitcoin or whatever they would accuse you of, but they won't tell you the process. But it came to a head for me on the day that my wife told me all of her accounts were closed, including her Girl Scout cookie account. This is an account where you go and you sell Girl Scout cookies to help the troop raise money. This is not something that makes any sense. And um the process for me, in terms of understanding this, has led me to create my own sovereign layer one blockchain. My lawyers in the office that helped me do it. It launches in a couple weeks, and I'm not soliciting you to be part of it because I'm uh that's not the issue here. The issue here is that I I I'm on a mission basically to make sure people understand globally that DeFi makes sense. Now, I'm not a policymaker, so I don't know how um to really implement it across all sectors, but I I really have become a believer that having a DeFi wallet and controlling your your destiny around DeFi is really the only thing you can do to avoid this system. But now I find myself going sort of backwards in the sense that, well, you can have a DeFi wallet, but if you don't have on on ramp and off-ramp, you sort of have a problem there. And then through the um the grace of God, and I say that, uh, our country decided to elect Donald Trump. I was part of that system, and what we've implemented there um for those of you who don't spend any time in the United States, it it it it is uh it is a really weird experience to wake up after being debanked so many times and waking up to the Trump coin. Like what? Or World Liberty Financial. Now, uh more power to him. I think it's incredible what he's doing and what his kids are doing, Eric and and Don Jr. Um, that are making it possible. But one of the most unique things happened after what was, for me, about 11 years of misery, because you would you would open a bank account and wonder at any second where you're gonna get the letter, you know, hey, we don't want you to be here, we're not gonna tell you why. Um and this process went on and on for a long time. This probably the number one topic I talk to my lawyers about is KYC. Are we gonna there must be so many terrorists and and money launderers out there that we all got a KYC like crazy? I mean, we there's an entire industry built around the idea that everyone's a fraudster, everyone is money laundering, but what we're really talking about is taxation. And I I think that the the political establishment will figure out a way, the crypto establishment will figure out a way, there'll be a happy medium between the idea of how we um allow ourselves to tax um real world assets, allow everything to trade. But my mission has become the idea of tokenizing the world, and I really am a believer, I find it interesting, both my companies trade on the New York Stock Exchange. The New York Stock Exchange announced that they're going to have a tokenized exchange. My only hope for the New York Stock Exchange is they don't put it in the hands of hedge funds, whereas the New York Stock Exchange has a policy that if you go below a certain price, they make you reverse. There's like an open standard policy for how we operate. The thing I love about DeFi and the way crypto trades is you can trade at any price, you can trade out nine decimals, sometimes even more than that. And we allow ourselves to create an environment where we can trade 24-7, 365. This is this isn't a new idea, but I'm super excited to see people talking about it now that we're gonna offer the idea of tokenizing real world assets, allowing them to trade 24-7. I would encourage all of you, if you are gonna run a token, a program, or if you have something you want to tokenize, you should look into what's happening in Dubai and the DMCC. Um the Dubai government is trying to get ahead of the idea of having a pathway to tokenize real world assets. Part of the process I did was to develop the process uh the the applications, the applications that we're gonna use that are overlay crypto and overlay AI is to um really network with people about this topic. And so I spent time with Christy Nome and Tulsi Gabbard uh and and uh and really focusing on uh I've known Pam for many years. I spent the time to talk to policyholders to figure out, policymakers to figure out how this was gonna get done. And they have a real plan there in the United States. The United States has a real plan. They're behind still, they're significantly behind, unfortunately. I I see it, two minutes. What's not behind is Switzerland. Um in my travels to Dubai and in spending a lot of time there with government officials, I realize that Switzerland um as as of right now is a hub for creation of tokenization, and and the their laws are progressive in the sense that they are embracing it, which is I would encourage all of you to to look into the laws of Switzerland if you haven't spent any time here. Um we're creating something in Switzerland that we're really excited about, a payment token. And and these laws didn't exist a few years ago. So the evolution is happening sort of faster than the speed of light. Um yeah, Tucker, there you go. Um I I uh I I say uh a few things about what the shift is now on compliance scale, is in that I've completely embraced the idea of compliance. I completely embraced the idea of whether we're going to um um have sort of on-chain KYC and all those pop those those uh new policies that are developing around how this is gonna get done. But I sat in a tokenization roundtable yesterday and I realized how far we have to go. So I what I would encourage you guys all to look about is some of the new products that are coming that are they're gonna be real world assets that we're gonna try to tokenize. One of our missions here at Alp Capital Group, which we trade um uh you know on the New York Stock Exchange, as I said earlier, one of our missions is to tokenize everything we can. And the the one thing I would say to you guys out there, if you have a plan to tokenize something and you want to trade on a particular chain, an EVM chain, our mission is to effectively help build um market making and capital markets around the asset. Because my biggest fear is that we're gonna go out there, we're gonna tokenize real estate, it's not gonna trade. You're gonna tokenize a horse farm, it's not gonna trade. You're gonna tokenize some concept out there, and there's no market for it. And what I would really encourage you to do is think about this part about how you would tokenize something, and that is most people come to me and say they want to raise money, that's why they're tokenizing. Tokenize something you own first. If you own it already, it's a little easier to do. Don't go to the marketplace initially because there's not a lot of liquidity now in real world assets. Go to the market with something that you already own, that you want to sell to the public, or you want to tokenize, you want to openly monetize your position, but you're not trying to raise new capital from the beginning. And this is the shortest speech I've ever given 10 minutes. Um, but I'd love to talk to you guys about what we're doing with real world assets, what we're doing on the alt blockchain, and I'm really happy to be here in Switzerland. I appreciate everyone. Thank you so much.