IBS Intelligence Global FinTech Interviews
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?
00:09:52 · Saumya Saxena
[00:09:52] S1: Yeah, so here I think there are lots of pieces that we have focused on. And it's essentially you want to now level up the game on the infrastructure side that enables the innovation that we spoke about earlier. So on the base side, we recently we've been constantly upgrading uh the base chain. And uh, in fact, the recent recently we came up with our own token standard, the B20, which is very useful for you know tokenized stocks, uh for different types of asset uh classes, contains validity transactions. And it's for essentially like builders to use the infrastructure that we are uh creating, specifically tailored to the on-chain finance case. And uh and I think we're gonna continue to do that, right? So we're gonna like the the focus is how do we increase reliable liquidity and market access for different ecosystems and participants in those ecosystems. Uh, we're gonna see a lot of uh, in fact, we are working very closely with lots of uh stable coin providers across geographies because people want to transact in their currency and uh bringing those uh you know different stable points on chain and helping them get deeper liquidity, deeper access to markets, distribution, and so on. So yeah, I think we're gonna continue leveling up uh in a way, and blockchain is gonna fade into the background, right? It's uh it's gonna be an obvious backend uh for the software that we built. It's all gonna live on chain. And our focus is to make sure that we have we're there's this notion of you know crypto and blockchain being like perceived in terms of speculation and volatility versus the value that it brings around transparency, around privacy, around uh verification. So I think that is increasingly changing, and we found a lot of uh enterprises now going from hey, should we be you know uh tokenizing this to now, hey, we are going to tokenize this? How can we use this best? So the conversation with enterprises has changed. The conversation across the board uh has changed, and now people see blockchains as necessary infrastructure in helping them grow.
00:12:16 · Puja Sharma
[00:12:16] S0: How can India's developer talent, fintech ecosystem, and digital public infrastructure position the country as a global hub for on-chain innovation?
00:12:25 · Saumya Saxena
[00:12:25] S1: I think we've done a lot of work uh on the India side. In fact, when I first joined BASE, uh, I used to lead India for them. My sense on the India market is that there's an absurd amount of talent here. There's just really optimistic people, crack founders, especially technical talent, immense technical talent in this space. Uh, what I think is that right now it is a very small minority that is interested in this space just by virtue of there's so much social stigma around it. But I think it's gonna start it to change because we've seen a lot of like folks from smaller universities and uh students start tinkering and like lots of hackathons and that sort of early stage stuff. Uh, we have we are yet to see deep uh capital deployment on the Indian market side coming from venture capitalists in the space. And uh base and Coinbase side, we have been doing our job. And uh I think we've been investing heavily in Indian founders and Indian teams that are building. In fact, just uh if we run something called as Base Batches, which is uh like an accelerator program that we run. And even in that program, there's an Indian team uh that is building uh Bitcoin backed loans. So I feel like there are lots of Indian founders that are brilliant. They just don't know that there's that the world's stock market is being built on chain on base, and and there's an opportunity to come build here. And so I think our job is to make sure that we can create awareness about hey, here's a very large opportunity uh to build a real business. Uh, because you've got new primitives, you've got the opportunity is just insane, right? On on the kind of products and creativity and innovation that you could bring. So my I think big focus is to make sure that we can create that awareness and distribution. No, but overall, just like very enthusiastic about the Indian market.
00:14:23 · Puja Sharma, Saumya Saxena
[00:14:23] S0: You know, you just mentioned about venture capitalisting. I want to understand what's the investor's confidence in this market right now. [00:14:30] S1: I think like this is about actions. It doesn't matter what people say, are they deploying? Like are they deploying capital? And uh, I don't think Indian funds have been as actively deploying capital uh in the crypto blockchain space because a lot of that uh capital has been going into AI uh over the past, I think, two years. And I think it's just like a sense of the market everywhere where a lot of the capital is going in AI. And I see AI not as a you know competing sector, but a sector that's just gonna create like more and more value for blockchain, right? Like if if everyone can create a fake image, who verifies that? So you you really need uh crypto and blockchain ledger technology to be able to say with confidence that, hey, okay, this is real versus this is not. And and so like they're just where are these AI agents transacting? They are all transacting on the blockchain, right? So it's uh I think a lot of lots of use cases. In fact, just earlier today, there's uh this team uh that raised a $5.5 million round uh with Coinbase ventures invested in them. And uh and I think they are also building like for uh from the India market, right? So I think there are lots of uh there's vice in that. I think there are lots of opportunities for Indian founders to just go deeper in the space and uh take it seriously. Uh, the venture capital uh flow will follow, is my sense.
00:14:30 · Saumya Saxena, Puja Sharma
[00:14:30] S1: I think like this is about actions. It doesn't matter what people say, are they deploying? Like are they deploying capital? And uh, I don't think Indian funds have been as actively deploying capital uh in the crypto blockchain space because a lot of that uh capital has been going into AI uh over the past, I think, two years. And I think it's just like a sense of the market everywhere where a lot of the capital is going in AI. And I see AI not as a you know competing sector, but a sector that's just gonna create like more and more value for blockchain, right? Like if if everyone can create a fake image, who verifies that? So you you really need uh crypto and blockchain ledger technology to be able to say with confidence that, hey, okay, this is real versus this is not. And and so like they're just where are these AI agents transacting? They are all transacting on the blockchain, right? So it's uh I think a lot of lots of use cases. In fact, just earlier today, there's uh this team uh that raised a $5.5 million round uh with Coinbase ventures invested in them. And uh and I think they are also building like for uh from the India market, right? So I think there are lots of uh there's vice in that. I think there are lots of opportunities for Indian founders to just go deeper in the space and uh take it seriously. Uh, the venture capital uh flow will follow, is my sense. [00:15:51] S0: Saumya Saxena, global builder lead at base, Coinbase.