IBS Intelligence Global FinTech Interviews
00:00:57 · Saumya Saxena
[00:00:57] S1: Stablecoins have had incredible product market fit, right? Which is uh it's just so much cheaper, faster, more efficient to use stable coins uh as payment rates. And the way we have been focused on payments. And I think like the conversations we've been having with Fintex and different organizations that leverage uh stable coins is that they they see the efficiency now. So that has initially, I think a couple of years ago, if we went to a stable coin, I mean, if we went to a payment company or we went to any company that was involved in payments, there uh we had to explain to them what the blockchain is, we had to explain what stable coins are, we had to explain the value prop of using stable coins. I think we've moved past that stage now. Now it's more of, okay, they already know that this is useful, this is more efficient, this unlocks uh faster timelines, faster settlement, uh, which means that especially when it comes to credit operations and right to the bottom of the value chain, it is really uh the more the faster you can move money around, the more value you can create in an economy, right? So I feel like just like how UPI unlocked so much uh in terms of transactions and value and businesses created and the things that they brought uh to consumers, it is very similar, but now it is happening at a global level. Uh so think the easiest way to think of it is uh from an Indian context is this is UPI for the world, where settlement happens on a global ledger.
00:02:31 · Puja Sharma, Saumya Saxena
[00:02:31] S0: Interesting, you mentioned it as a UPI for the world, but uh according to uh market volatility, do you see that as a hindrance or the challenge? [00:02:41] S1: Stable coins are like are not affected by by volatility, right? Like they're called stable coins for a reason because they're like stable in their peg to the price of that particular currency in which they're denominated. So for example, USDC uh is pegged to the dollar value and uh therefore it's will not be volatile, which is why they found so much PMF, I think, because it's it's not volatile. And then that means that now companies and enterprises uh do not need to worry about the price movement of an asset uh and can just use the ledger for the efficiency that blockchains enable, which is transparency, which is uh faster settlement, uh, and so on. [00:03:25] S0: From tokenized stocks to real-world assets, how could on-chain market enable 24-7 trading, faster settlement, and broader investor access?
00:03:34 · Saumya Saxena
[00:03:34] S1: If you're very focused on tokenized uh equities at the moment, and because just very similar to stable coins, I think where stable coins were two, three years ago, uh tokenized equities are now where they're in that new uh era where we've brought this asset class on chain, which means that any stock anywhere in the world somebody can invest in and trading 24-7, right? So, for example, if a US company stock, like say Apple, somebody wanted to invest in earlier from India, it's possible now, but there are lots of brokerages. And the more brokerages that are involved in such a setup, the higher the cost uh for you to get that asset, right? When every single asset is being brought on chain in a tokenized capacity, it means that you can A trade in a free market uh 24-7, which again, like it's it doesn't depend on the stock exchange of a particular asset where it is listed, but uh it has just like it means like fairer trades, it means more transparency, it means like better uh liquidity and so on. So I think uh very, very useful as to as an asset class to be you know brought on-chain. And uh it in increases investor access in a very deep way. Uh I'm very excited about this because I think people don't realize how creating economic value for everyone uh starts from these small things that can you enable access to an asset class? And uh I'm glad that we are able to, you know, like we're pushing the frontier in making that happen. So you've got lots of tokenized stocks on base. Uh in fact, we I think we launched those I think six weeks ago. And since then, we've now like 40. I think now we're touching 100 uh stock tokenized equities on base. And uh and we're gonna continue pushing that barrier, right? So by the end of this quarter, we're gonna be at some 500 odd uh tokenized equities on chain. And uh and that means like equities across the world, so US markets, uh, Korean markets, Japanese markets, Hong Kong markets. And suddenly now a consumer in the Philippines can access all of those assets and uh can hedge against different things. And that is not uh it's not just that, right? Uh enabling firstly, just that is a very big piece that you can enable such a broad uh access and like uh fair trade for 24-7 timelines.
00:06:02 · Saumya Saxena, Puja Sharma
But beyond that, once an asset class is on chain, uh you can be creative with it because it is now permissionless and somebody could deploy liquidity pools and create uh like a lending borrowing system. So you could potentially lend your Apple stock and borrow against it, which again is not uh as freely possible uh in the current world. And that is again just one component of lending and borrowing, but you can be way, way, way more creative uh with these asset classes, and you can put that as collateral for something else. So the more asset classes that come on-chain, think of tokenized equities as a primitive that is now on chain, which enables more and more things to you know flush up and flourish. [00:06:48] S0: Now, speaking of elephant in the room, and elephant in the room is always AI. So, what role will AI agents play in the future of financial services? And how will on-chain infrastructure enable autonomous payments and transactions?
00:07:03 · Saumya Saxena
[00:07:03] S1: On AI, I think the way we've been talking about AI finance uh for a while. And uh we started treating AI agents almost as customers, and we're now very confident that we're starting to see that, right? Like we've built out the x402 Protocol uh alongside other uh major industry players. And uh I I feel we're at that juncture where it's started to happen that AI agents are now transacting for you know digital commerce, uh for across supply chain to buy different things, retail, uh, and even like fund managers are using agents to scout uh for assets to invest in. And and they're moving from the research layer to the execution layer, where they can now go from hey, I spotted an asset that you should invest in, for example, to making that that transaction, right? And that means it's it's almost going into this like autonomous trajectory where we've started treating them as a real customer segment that we want to build for. So, and that is just online trading, right? So there's obviously a large element of financing, there's an element of payments uh with people using more and more AI uh in their daily lives. Like, for example, even I, when I'm looking at booking my trip uh for New Year's, I'm looking, I'm just asking Claude, hey, dude, like where should I be going? And then Claude will point me, okay, these are the few countries in Europe that you could look at. You can have a great Christmas here. Then the next question I'm gonna ask Instinct, uh, which is another like a model that I use, is I'll ping Instinct and say, hey, now this is where I want to go, find me places, right? And then it's gonna go to those places and make bookings for me, right? So it's gone from recommendation to bookings, all it needs is a wallet. And uh, in fact, we just signed a deal with Cloudflare where all of Cloudflare's wallets are now on base and uh settling x402 transactions on base. The way to think of it, and I'm going on on like a monologue here, but the way to think of it is that every like these LLM labs scraped all your data. That was because there was no way for you to pay for your data, right? If they could. So now Cloudflare has this wallet, uh, which is a base wallet and it settles in USDC. Essentially, you can now charge a fee for someone to scrape your data.
00:09:30 · Saumya Saxena, Puja Sharma
It's almost like every single page on the internet will have its own uh way to monetize, and it's all gonna happen on online. Stablecoin infrastructure and the work that we've been doing and building. [00:09:43] S0: As blockchain evolves beyond crypto, what foundational infrastructure is needed to support the next generation of payments, trading, and digital financial services?