How Crypto Is Reshaping the Global Payments Landscape | DAS London 2025 | Day 3 | Institutional
Summary
Crypto Payments Evolution: The discussion highlighted how stablecoins are increasingly being used for treasury services and cross-border payments, indicating a shift towards blockchain technology in traditional finance.
Stablecoin Adoption: There is a growing interest in stablecoins for payment solutions, with significant institutional adoption expected by 2026, although full consumer adoption for everyday transactions remains distant.
Global Stablecoin Landscape: While USD-backed stablecoins dominate, there is a trend towards regional stablecoins, such as Euro-based stablecoins, to facilitate local and international transactions, especially in regions with volatile currencies.
Blockchain in Emerging Markets: Blockchain-based payment systems are gaining traction in unbanked regions, providing financial services where traditional banking is inaccessible, as seen with projects like Hisape in Afghanistan.
Technological Innovations: The panel discussed the potential impacts of AI and quantum computing on the financial sector, with AI seen as a more immediate influence in optimizing payment processes and developing new financial products.
Privacy and Compliance: The conversation touched on the balance between privacy and compliance, with advancements in zero-knowledge proofs offering potential solutions for maintaining privacy while meeting regulatory requirements.
Future of Payments: The integration of blockchain with traditional finance is expected to lead to more efficient payment systems, reducing transaction times and costs, and potentially transforming the global financial infrastructure.
Consumer Education: There is a need for greater consumer understanding of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology to drive adoption, with education seen as crucial for demystifying these concepts.
Transcript
All right. Hello everyone. Uh thank you for joining us. I'm going to start with uh encouraging you all to ask questions as we get started. Um we would love to have this be a discussion. We already have a question, huh? That's just a joker. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. So, we're going to start with some introductions. Uh I'm Beth Hadock. I am a director and an advisor. I represent here today stablecoin standard but I'm also on the board of a yenbacked and a USbacked stablecoin as well as a founding adviser for defy protocol balancer uh as well as some other protocols and projects that you may have heard of. I'm going to have the panelists introduce themselves and then we'll get to it. Tim, why don't we start with you? >> Cool. Thank you very much. Um, this is probably the weirdest experience I've had on stage with everyone with headphones on and so, um, yeah, it's very weird. I've never been to a silent disco, but I think this is what it should feel like. So, I'm Tim. I'm deputy CEO of a company called BCB Group. We provide payment services to the crypto industry specifically. So, um, we've been in business since 2017. We power most of the exchanges, market makers, liquidity providers across the world. Um to give you a sense of scale in the last 12 months we've moved around well north of 200 billion in in payments um across the industry. Uh my background is I actually started in in SAS in in marketing and then got into fintech and open banking and then finally you know drank the Kool-Aid once I learned about Bitcoin and you know never looked back. Um Mark do you want to go? >> Yeah. Hi. Um I'm Mark Vanderlebrook. I'm chief strategy and marketing officer at the Algrand Foundation and most people probably know Algarand. Algarand is a layer 1 blockchain. and it's been around for a while, six years. Um, and is mainly known for its kind of elegant consensus mechanism that helps builders and startups build apps uh at scale. Uh, so that's that's Alant. >> Yeah, thank you. So for our first question just to give a little bit of my background I spent a couple of decades as the head of regulatory compliance and ethics in traditional finance and then I really wanted to be part of a different paradigm and uh I was lucky enough to be uh an adviser to a lot of the A16Z portfolio companies and then as we were talking about when we were preparing I was sort of hooked from there. so many innovators really wanting to improve uh traditional finance as well as just the way in which we interact with each other and we have commerce. So that's good the leadin to my first question and Tim maybe we can start with you when you what does that convergence now sort of almost at the end of the year of the killer app of stable coins and so much growth in um stable coins and payments. What does the convergence look like for you as you look ahead into 20 uh 26 or even as you reflect on uh as we're rounding out the fourth quarter? >> Yeah, I think it's um it's never a dull moment in crypto. I think you just see what happened on Friday just been to you know it keeps you on your toes. Um I think uh look so BCB specifically even though we many people don't know this but BCB has the most awesome name BCB group actually stands for Bitcoin bro so it's you know we're very much at the heart of crypto at the beginning of it but even though even though we were very much focused on the crypto industry we um we've always sat in the middle right because we actually provide fiat accounts to to the crypto industry um and so being in the middle where we've been you know tier one regulated uh we have tier one banking partners that we provide being in this middle ground. I think that's kind of what stable coins are also doing is is creating that middle ground between the TRD fire world and the and the DeFi world. And this year we've seen more and more of that. So just just in our business the level of institutional clients are now coming to us that want to leverage um stable coins for treasury services or um want to um use it for crossber payments, remittance businesses now using it. It's it's already far outweighing anything of the interest last year. So the the the acceleration is really there. the um I think what we're going to see as we move into the future is I don't think we're going to get to a point in 2026 where there's um whether you know you're paying for your coffee with crypto. I don't think we're at that. But it's I call it the kind of the invisible upgrade where I think your traditional your traditional finance you know is going to start leveraging blockchain technology and you're going to suddenly experience that instead of your bank transfers taking 3 days and it's shutting down at 5:00 on a Friday that suddenly you are able to move money globally within seconds and you know 24/7 all the things that stable coins are giving I think the traditional markets are going to start adopting because they they have to to to keep up with it and you saw that with people like Google launching their um universal ledger. So it kind of was a press release they did. I think a lot of people it went unnoticed. But you know Google had this thought of they could either they could either build a stable coin themselves or they could take what people want from a stable coin and they could offer it to the fiat world. So you know how do you sit on your money in JP Morgan and then be able to send it anywhere in the world you know 24/7 365 any amount. And that's what the Google you know Google vers Google cloud universal ledger is doing. You see swift did the announcement that they're moving trying to move onto a blockchain technology. So, I think that's what we're going to see more in in 2026 is um you know this this it's kind of in the background this this the the all the things of the positives of why people are doing it will start just happening and um and you'll just have better experiences in in the Trifi world. I mean there is a lot of stuff you could say about like real world assets moving on to it as well. But um but yeah I think I call it the invisible upgrade >> the infrastructure and the payment rails. Um Mark >> Yeah. So, so I I think when you when you think about payments and the payment infrastructure, it's, you know, lots of intermediaries, there's fees being added at every single point. Uh, it takes a long time, it's slow and everything. Um, but of course to expect that the whole value chain will kind of move over to crypto is just not going to happen. But I think what you'll see is you start pieces kind of move over. And so, um, give one example, um, you know, debit cards, crypto debit cards are now are now starting to happen. So for instance, in our in our most popular wallet, Par wallet, you have a debit card that's associated with your crypto account and actually you can pay for coffee using your your crypto balance right now and it's settled instantly on chain. So you start seeing that happen. We also start seeing happening where maybe pieces in the middle of the value chain will move over. So maybe you know a consumer will pay with a regular credit card and the merchant gets paid in fiat but the interaction in between the money transfer that happens like across borders maybe that is happening over stable coins but the end you know the beginning and the end is actually is actually settled in in fiat or for instance if you have a merchant that is doing a lot of payouts maybe that p mer merchant wants to be settled you know in stable coins so they can do the payout to their consumers in stable coins because they are in emerging countries where there's inflation and stuff like that. So you'll see I think you'll see pieces of this move over gradually. I don't think you'll see a whole cell move over of the whole thing, but pieces gradually will start to migrate towards towards blockchain. Yeah. And if you if you see things to that point, Mark, where you um you see all all the big players are trying to create their own stable coin networks like Circle with their Circle payments network having that ability. So you can move the money, you can settle in in countries where you historically can't. I think we're going to see a massive influx in that like Fireblocks are doing their own one. Circle is doing their one. V1 is kind of trying to create the new rails to to move that money. >> Yeah, it does seem as though the we're in raging agreement about the golden age of a convergence. It's just what does that convergence mean? And I I think of three things probably two opportunities and one risk. Um and the opportunity uh or I guess you could look at them either way, but it does seem like as you all were talking about increased competition. So the banks and the status quo are no longer comfortable because of all of these innovations on the blockchain. So the hyper competition and in certain jurisdictions, the US being one of them, we're seeing sort of misconceptions about um payment structure on the blockchain and how resilient it is and whether or not it should be um incentivized to grow as rapidly as it's growing. The a second insight for me would be that with all of this convergence and accelerated growth, there's an increased pressure for operational resiliency and we see that with the different requirements across uh Europe and Asia and the US and also in the exemptions and the exclusions for DeFi and as you had mentioned sort of the DEG and all the volatility that happened last week. So I do think with the convergence we want the growth to happen and hopefully everyone is focused on shoring up that operational resiliency so we can continue on that trajectory. And then the the final one before we sort of move on to the next unless you all have other things you want to add is that I I'll call it my fear or the on the risk side is that there's less disruption um of the status quo because of the convergence and because of the competition and sometimes consensus is good but sometimes the true innovation gets diluted enough that I am uh I do wonder whether the golden age of convergence also means that some of the ethos behind DeFi or some of the real innovations gets watered down with this convergence with traditional finance and you can see that with some of the payment leaders and their conferences being called you know Wall Street 2.0 or similar sort of themes that uh are here this year and I expect to continue in 2026. anything to add before we move on? >> Um, I I don't think that innovation will ever be slowed down as such because I think as a maybe this is well showing my age in a good way, hopefully I'm still young and hip, but um, anyone remember the mini player? People remember that? No. Yeah, miniis players. So, um, I always look at when we're building a business, when we're building a product roadmap, when we look at anything, I try and make sure I'm not building the mini player because everyone had CDs and Walkmans and there was this massive thing and then they created the mini disc player and they thought it was the future, right? Oh my god, you could have a thousand songs in your pocket and everyone was but, you know, two years later or a year later, I like the um the iPod was generated and MP3s came around and everyone's forgotten about mini players, right? And it's so it was a it was a step it wasn't the actual solution people wanted. it was the step forward and I worry about whether you know stable coins every other day there seems to be another stable coin provider coming up and it's like does the average consumer here want you know I'm sure people here love payments but do you sit at home at night googling on your phone I want to find a new way to pay no you don't you just want it to work right you want it to be the most effective way so you're not looking for a new stable coin you want what it gives you so you're not you want the fast you know instant 24/7 and so I think that is what keeps momentum when people are building and and developing, right? They they just so even as we tradfi gets more involved instead of scaling down the messages, you'll always find people that are going and building the next better things to to keep it moving. >> I love it. >> And I think and I think one of the challenges, of course, is that payments tend to work pretty well, specifically in Western countries, you know, the the the miracle of Visa and Mastercard where you pay, you know, for anything anywhere anywhere in the world, you know, it works pretty well, right? And so you kind of have to overcome that. And then on top of that, you have the friction which is that most traditional payment systems are over 50 years old, right? Like most of the payment systems run by banks run on IBM mainframe computers running cobalt that probably hasn't been touched for >> that the way money moves has changed and it's not just a systems upgrade where we've moved from the legacy systems you were talking about onto the blockchain. Yeah, I think um first I think we have to be realistic. If you look at um uh stable coin transfers, right, or stable coin movements, I think I don't know the exact number, but I think it's over 95% of all stable coin transfers are not payments, right? They're crypto traders. And actually most um of those trans most of those movements are actually at centralized exchanges. So if you look at the amount of like stable coin volume that is being you know uh transferred onchain in a decentralized matter it's a tiny tiny tiny fraction of all stable coin volume. So, so, so payments haven't really in any kind of scale moved over to crypto as of yet. And, and one of the reasons I think is that actually payments work pretty well in the western world. But I think that the world is bigger than just the western world. And so, we see examples emerging of like clear use cases where payments are really taking off in a big way. And I'll give you one example. Um, uh, one of the projects on on Algrand's called Hisape. And so they operate a blockchain based payment service in uh distressed countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and others. And so when you look at those countries, most of the people in those countries are unbanked. Like in in the world roughly 1.5 1.4 1.5 billion people are still unbanked. And so they don't have access to kind of banking services. They don't have access to payment services. And most of the um uh money is still kind of exchanged in cash, right? And so and so they started bu building and so what you see happening is like for instance a couple of years number of years ago actually Empisa took over as a mobile payment system in Kenya which was the same situation like most people in Kenya were unbanked and so Empisa became the leading payment system um in in Kenya. So we now starting to see that movement towards blockchain. So, so HISAP um is completely running on Algrand as a blockchain and so and it allows uh Afghani citizens to pay for rice and pays for bread and pay for anything that they want in a store with nothing more than just their cell phone um uh not even a smartphone can just be a regular cell phone um or even a plastic card that has a QR code on it and all the transactions are instantly settled instantly settled on chain and so over 20% of all electricity bills in Afghanistan currently are settled on chain um using HSA. So you could see this take off like in a really in a really big way. And so um u and it's also important of course that that for this to to really happen at scale you really need to be able um to settle you need to have a chain that can scale but you also need a chain that that has instant finality because if you're waiting in a checkout counter right and you and you're settling a transaction in 3 seconds versus settling it on 7 seconds and more. those four seconds take a very very long time, right? And so um but so Hesape is a good example of a payment system that is really taking off at scale and it has another another interesting benefit to it which is that is humanitarian aid like part of uh how do you how do you provide humanitarian aid like this humanitarian aid billions flowing into Afghanistan and and also in Syria. How do you make sure that you help the people there and you give them the right means uh to be able to survive and to be able to thrive? Traditionally, humanitarian aid was focused on like, okay, we'll give everybody like, you know, rice or bread or whatever it is. And then people realized that that's not a really effective way to do humanitarian aid because the people that receive the aid are best in the best position to be able to decide what they need. It may not be a rice. It may be a cooker or something like that. I don't know. And so, so humanitarian aid is now switching to cash. But cash is a big problem because like how do you transfer a billion dollars to Afghanistan? like how do you make sure there's no fraud? How do you make sure there's no abuse? How how do you how do you do this? Right? So, by making it blockchain based, which is what HSAP is doing, you give now an end toend transparency to how the money is being transferred and how it's actually being used. So, United Nations, UNHR, World Bank, World Food Program, they're all using his pay to transfer funds into Afghanistan and help the population there. And they're doing it in a completely transparent way. So we have this thing called an eight trust portal where you can actually see it's a very nice kind of web tool like website where you visually see actually the money starts there then it goes there then it splits into 10,000 pieces then it goes to this wallet and that wallet and you can follow all the transactions end to end so you can actually be sure that abuse is not happening and so you see there in those kinds of scenarios that's where I think you see payments take off on blockchain p pay payments take off at scale uh and you'll see that there first before I think you start seeing it in the western So you're basically preventing fraud and illicit finance, but you're tracking transactions and wallets instead of people in your humanitarian aid. Yeah, I love it. Tim, >> I think um I think that's a a fantastic use case. I really do. And I I I as I'm sure a lot of you here were at Singapore um at token Singapore recently as well. You'll find that there's there's a lot of these apps out there like Grab. In Singapore, you can't do anything seems without Grab. it it does your payments, it does your wallets, it does your transport, it does everything. But having that blockchain security and that ability to move fast is what I think is lacking. And I think uh I love again I'm sure a lot of you know about um Sam Alman, you know, OpenAI, he launched Worldcoin. Do people here know what Worldcoin is? The one thing I loved about that was this ability of the it's the it's the proof of ID, proof of your if you want to reduce fraud, you want to make sure that the people that need the aid are getting it. It's by having a way that you can have a universal ID. And so he had this idea of scanning in your eyeball so that it could prove you're human on an AI bot and then you have you've got your you've got your identity. So that way you can prove how you're you're pushing things. I think my my main um uh interest at the moment is I think I think we've kind of built we uh we've built like a rocket ship in blockchain but we haven't put a steering wheel and a user manual in it. So I think the thing that's that's that's infecting mass adoption is education. I've only really been in the crypto space for sort of um 18 months. like I've always been passionate about it, but actually working and building BCB has been it's been 18 months and um you know the the the knowledge I see of just people actually understanding truly what it is, how to use it. There's a lot of um misconceptions about what crypto is in in the in the real world. Um, and I think running a bit more um, education, whether it's a school, whether it's a people in business about what blockchain actually is, how it works, what Bitcoin is, what's the difference between a token, what's the difference between a layer 1, a layer two, there's there's if you stop people in the street, the majority of people still don't understand it, and that's going to massively impact actual adoption of the the technology. >> Yeah, I I agree that if you have consumers that still don't understand the value of a stable coin versus fiat or even the definition it's hard to go ahead and ring the bell and claim that it's all it's already happened. Um, so when I also think about payments and as we're looking ahead, I think about and Mark, you mentioned a little bit of this. So maybe maybe I'll start with you. Um, do we give up the dream of having financial privacy? uh because we are seeing more and more adoption through centralized finance CFI. Um you can probably guess that I hope what you're going to answer, but why don't I let you answer as to whether or not we have to give up that concept in order to have the growth. >> Yeah, I don't I actually don't think so. I think I think um at scale I don't think privacy and compliance are necessarily at odds with each other. Um, and I think it really depends on like having a smart overall architecture of how you set up the whole system. And so to me it starts at the base layer of like having having a network that is able to handle the volume of transactions instantly, instant finality in a decentralized manner, right? Then um you layer on top of that the compliance features and the compliance features you can be implemented at an asset level. So for instance, every single asset that you create on Algarand has built-in capabilities to freeze and clawback and all of these things to be able to actually meet all of the compliance requirements. Um, you know, and then on top of that, you can actually layer in the KYC features and all the things that you need from a from a regulatory perspective, but those KYC features are handled offchain, right? And you can use zk proofs to kind of build those facts into into a blockchain based environment without having to disclose any of your personalized kind of information. So if you have an architecture like this with like a fast chain with like the compliance built in at the asset level and that privacy through zk proofs I think you can build that infrastructure and and that has compliance has privacy and has scale as well. >> Yeah. So I I think I'll do my first call to action for everyone that's listening in because uh I love how you just described it and regulators across the globe more recently the US regulators and US Treasury. We just submitted our comment letter this week and there are additional requests for comment letters and the regulators are looking for examples like that because I do think there's an acknowledgment that we are overroad in collecting information. We are um having citizens and consumers really vulnerable to data breaches when they don't need to be because we do have all the new technologies. But you do need to have the right people in the room and the right um projects commenting. So I'll encourage everyone uh if you're in a position to either please reach out or to comment because the more regulators globally that hear that story about the architecture. I do think we're in a an optimistic moment where um they're they're listening. >> Anything to add, Tim? >> I' I'd agree. I think the development in in zero knowledge proofs is is a is a thing that is going to be massive where you can you can approve something is true without like showing the underlying data. That's uh that's that's definitely something. Um, but it is going to be a fact that to to get the the the institutional flow, to get the the size of the, you know, the rest of the world market outside of crypto, you're going to have to adopt a more open, you know, framework and actually and and kind of adopt some of like the for travel rules and things like that. Like there's things you're going to have to do. Um, but I also think that unless you are certain individuals like this level of security and data, there's a balance to it. So majority of people here, I'm going to guess, don't use tour to search the internet, right? So if you were really worried about privacy, you could go on tour and you could have but they're happy with the level of security that something like a Chrome would give you. And I think that's where the payments world is going to get is is what is the level? It's probably going to be the equivalent of sharing your bank level security that you you do now, right? So it's not going to be completely anonymous. They're going to have to open up a bit. But yeah, it's it's finding that balance, I think, of what people are happy with sharing while protecting people's data. >> Great. Thanks. So let's let's shift gears a little bit. Currently when you think of payments innovations and we've been talking a lot about stable coins um here to for it's been dominated by US dollars. Um so I'll ask you each do you think that's going to continue? Do you see global uh sort of regional fragmentation coming? What are some of the non USD um use cases uh for stable coins or payment innovations that you that you uh foresee coming? >> I I'll think the the main one for me is maybe to one of Mark's earlier points about the the unbanked globally. I think you'll find a lot of people um in certain countries, you know, they they are not happy with the fluctuations of their local currency and so they they're looking for more stable way to to hold their value and if they're unable to get banks like that and uh a USD stable coin is a good option, but it's not the only option. Maybe one that's more relevant. So even a Singapore for Southeast Asia having a Singapore dollar stable coin or you know within Africa whether it's you know there's there's plenty of other countries that actually are more suited to the corridors that they operate in but giving them that security that maybe their local currency won't give. So um I think you know the whole world ever since you know fiat currencies were created have been backed by USD right it was kind of like the US dollar kind of created it and so I I think there's going to be you you have tether and you have um circle and you know even though they have other currency coins it is definitely USD that is the majority of what they see I think it is going to be in those rest of the world use cases where yeah more local currency stable coins would be would be better fit So I think there's you're going to see a huge increase in in my view in non USUSD uh stable coins and I'll give you the example of one company uh on Algrand called Quantos and Quantos is a company based in the Netherlands not too far from here and they are uh they issue um um Europeanbased uh based stable coins and so they were the first I think it's a year and a half ago to issue um a fully regulated electronic um EMT electronic market token um uh the Euro D um and uh they actually issued it even before AMA was uh was in was in effect. So where they were the really first one to do it and so the three use cases that they see for this Euro stable coin are one is of course pure payments European-based payments and so transport is one that they see a lot of traction in. So if you, you know, um, pay for your bus ticket or like here in the subway, I pay two pound for a subway subway ticket if that has to be handled over over credit card. That's a pretty expensive that's a pretty expensive transaction for for a transport company. So why why can't that be handled on on on a European stable coin? So that's that's one area where they see a lot of traction. The second area where there's a lot of traction is in trade finance. So if you think about the money flows that happen between Europe for instance and China, these are massive money flows. Do you think you know they want to settle those in US dollars given the you know US trade policies you know these regions and these these these companies don't necessarily want to settle this in US dollars anymore. And so you're starting to see a shift towards using euro as a settlement, you know, mechanism for trade between between China and and Europe. And that is going to move into into stable coins. So that's you talk about massive volumes here. Um and then the third um area is FX. Um FX banks make a huge amount of money on FX. Like in Germany alone, I think the banks make something like $20 billion in fees on on FX. And you see a lot of like um effects pairs that are really not efficient that would benefit from from more competition and and would benefit from being brought on chain. And so this it's interesting we look at this like there's pairs of course euro versus US dollar that you know they're so massive that probably there's not much to be done but there's there's pairs that are quite interesting for in if you look at the Swedish crone versus the Swiss Frank those those are very inefficient FX pairs that would benefit from actually being brought on chain and so for instance is now creating all of these stable coins not just the euro but also the Swedish croner and the Swiss Franks and then working on bringing those on chain and having a more efficient effects mechanism beyond them And so, so yes, I think you'll see a lot of uh a lot of growth in non- US stable coins. >> Yeah, I agree. And I I may just add two more examples to the great ones that you all just covered. One would be like, as you were referring to, corporate treasury. So, if you're a global entertainment company and you have consumers across the world and you want to be able to be more seamless, I could see the fractionalization. you don't need to concentrate in US dollars if you're in Asia or if you're in Europe. Um, but also if you have a bunch of affiliates and you're moving money just internally, um, you could see how there would be growth there. And also like I think to your point Tim, if you're in Argentina and you have an a very volatile currency, it may still make sense to rely on a US dollarbacked stable coin. But then of course if if you're in Europe, why not have a euro based one? And and as I mentioned, I'm on the stable coin standard. We have lots of members that are non US dollar denominated stable coins. And that really seems as as we round out the year and look into the future what we may see accelerated growth. So talking a little bit broader about emerging technologies uh I know that we uh are really focused on payments but when you think of payments and you think beyond crypto whether quantum computing or AI maybe you all could give me insights and some trends that uh you think our audience would be interested in. Um, good question. I think um I think quantum computing gets a lot of airtime maybe unnecessarily at the moment. I think it's well it's needed because the way these sort of things happen is realistically to do quantum computing we need to have such a massive shift in technology and even things like solar radiation affects how the computers would work. And so all the noise you get now about quantum computing impacting Bitcoin and being able to solve the algorithms and everything, I think is I think it's the businesses that are trying to fund raise. You know, they're creating the hype around it so they could fund raise so they can build it. So it's needed because that's how we'll get to quantum computing. But I don't think it's and as as people develop quantum computing, I think uh you know the cryptography that we develop can actually we can we can basically develop our cryptography faster than crypto um quantum computing will happen. So I'm I'm not too I think AI is the most prevalent one. I mean in our business we see AI impacting every single aspect of it on how do you how do you improve things? How do you optimize um on the payment side of things? obviously um agenic AI and how how do you automate those pay flows? How do you get the agents to to sit on your wallet securely, make payments for you, bid? You know, I think that's going to be fascinating when you see how agent to agent where I don't know, a agent from the company wants to sell the highest price and your agent wants to get the best price and how they compete and then how they settle. I think that's a fascinating area and I think that's what we're going to see um a lot of. I I I mean I read something the other day about people already talking about the bubble of AI birthing and I think there are some crazy valuations out there and things, but it is exciting. I mean that I'm sure everyone here uses it daily and just the things that it was doing a year ago with crazy videos that look stupid to videos now it's yeah it's so I'd say um that that is amazing and generally just the adoption like my my last business I built was um in open banking and that was revolutionary at the time and it's kind of doing what now stable coins is pushing is how do you do instant move off the card rails cuz Visa Mastercard have done incredible job where they've had something stupid like 40 minutes of downtime in their entire life like you can go anywhere in the world and use it. But this this this advancement in being better is what actually inspires and keeps keeps me going because it's great to see just new developments constantly. >> So it sounds like you're you're not necessarily concerned about the security issue at this point and more excited about the AI innovations. I think look there's the more we come up with something the more bad actors learn how to hack it and the more we then have to come up with something else and so no matter what so there's always this two and fro between and so yes quantum computing will adapt and security but in the same way we will then learn how to defend against it and we'll use that and we can move faster adapting the cryptography that the Bitcoin uses or the the cryptocurrencies uses stablecoin uses than creating something that doesn't exist could could Anything to add, Mark? >> Yeah, sure. These are two very interesting topics. We probably spend an entire day um talking about them. Um I slightly disagree with you on the quantum side. I think it is a real threat. And so people talk about Qday. Uh Q day is a day when you know all traditional cryptography will just break uh when when quantum computers come online. And so um who knows when that's going to be? People say 2030, maybe sooner. uh whatever the date is I think it is important for for the industry to be ready uh for this and so we've been spending a lot of time as Algarand to think about how do we make um everything kind of quantum secure and so there's three components to this one you have to make sure your ledger is quantum secure secondly you have to make sure your accounts and your account signatures are quantum secure and then thirdly you have to make sure your consensus mechanism is quantum secure and can be hacked and so and so where we're at from from a uh from an algrand perspective is we've already made the the ledger completely quantum secure. So if you know in 2030 whenever a quantum computer arrives right they won't be able to break any of the past transactions that has happened on chain those will those are secured forever and that's important because if you're an institution you know you have different timelines than you and I have if you're a government and you're basically issuing treasuries and so you want to make sure that whatever is issued on chain stays on chain and can never be changed not now not in 5 years not in 10 years not in 20 years and so we can actually go out today and say well we can guarantee that this is going to happen because our ledger is completely quantum secure today. So that's one thing. So we recently made the upgrade I think a few weeks ago to make our accounts quantum secure as well. So we have two of the three done and so we're still working on the consensus part. So but we are probably one of the leading blockchains at this point in terms of uh making making everything quantum secure. So that's on the quantum security side. Then the AI side obviously that's a super interesting and and um exciting area. Um I really believe that the gente commerce will change everything. Um I think and it's going to happen faster than people think. Uh these shopping agents that will help you to kind of shop and buy things. Uh they are going to come very quickly. You see it all around you like um Open AI just announced a shopping integration with Etsy. So now you can you know search for plant hangers and Etsy will show up and you can buy right within the OpenAI chatbot. So, so it is is going to happen very quickly and so Google of course is at the forefront of this all with with their agent to agent protocol and AP2 which they launched a couple of weeks ago and and we're happy to be partners with Google um on this topic and so we uh we are heavily invested in this uh making sure the A2A protocol works seamlessly you know with with Algarand making sure agents can can transact on chain securely making sure agents have decentralized identifiers have verifiable credentials have a trust model associated with it that basically relates back to the human because of course the agent cannot be accountable for anything. There always has to be a human behind it and so working out that entire infrastructure of how agent commerce will happen and how crypto can be used as payment rail underneath it is something that we're heavily focused on. I would I'd add to that I think one of my latest hobbies is I I have to travel a lot and when I'm sitting on a long flight my new challenge is from when I board the plane to when I get off the plane can I launch a company in that time? So, and it's crazy how coming back from Singapore, a 12-hour flight, I I built I came up with an idea. I used the the thing called Blink.ai to create the software. It built the program, coded it for me. It integrated Stripe. I then had other um AI agents that could build marketing and LinkedIn messages and like X posts and everything like that. And you get off the plane and technically I've got a business that I could I could sell immediately, right? And if you could turn out those on a daily basis, it's crazy what you like. And so this time next year like the whole this is why I was saying excited about the development of the space is this time next year people like that people in this could launch a company while sitting here build it and they can have it activated while they go into something new and so the the speed of development is just going to get phenomenal. >> Yeah. And it's interesting so this a couple of months ago we partnered with uh bolt new which is one of these VIP coding tools and we did a hackathon with them and they called it like the world's largest hackathon. they got like 100,000 developers participate and so we did kind of the blockchain track and what was interesting to me was when you when you look at the results of this when we used to do hackathons in the past I mean the projects you know the UI of the projects that were submitted as part of past hackathons looked like a dog's breakfast you know the UIs were horrible and and they and they were done by engineers and the the the engineering behind it and the smart contracts and they were all great but then the user experience and we talked about that before was terri terrible. And now what we've seen with like Bolt new, now people can actually build pretty sophisticated apps with a beautiful UI, really well designed and a smart contract underneath it. And and that's the type of thing that we will need to actually get blockchain mass adopted, right? We need a much much much more streamlined, smoother, and better UI. And that's what these VIP coding tools hopefully will provide. >> All right. So more developments as it converges, not just um as we're talking about payments with traditional finance, but all the other amazing uh uh emerging technologies. So we're we're almost out of time, so I'm going to try and lighten it up and um we'll have a final question. I think to your point, Tim, about getting the message out, having accelerated adoption means that people really understand what we talk about when we talk about payments or stable coins or even crypto more broadly. So, for our audience, if they're, you know, the holidays are around the corner, what would be something if you were talking to someone that was totally new to crypto, maybe at your holiday um your holiday dinner table, that you would say that they should really sort of peique someone's interest in crypto by how could they just open up a conversation about crypto with someone that isn't native to crypto? and all of the vocabulary and all the excitement we just talked about for the last half hour or so. >> Um, you know what? I always start with like I always start with the quick history lesson of explaining what a fiat currency is. I don't think there is a I think there's a a big misunderstanding about what a fiat currency is and how you know original currencies were backed by gold then they moved to fiat currencies and there's nothing that really backs it and it's just a promise from the government there's nothing like and once you explain that to them it naturally leads into why cryptocurrencies were created and then you can explain what a blockchain is why and it just is a good way because I think we fundamentally don't understand the notes in our pocket and the cash system and what that actually is and so I I start with that and then everything else makes sense from there. >> Walking them through it. What about you, Mark? >> I think I would say something along the lines of like wouldn't it be like normal or preferred that your money always works for you 24 by7 your money never sleeps. And so why is it the case that in traditional banking that's not happening? Why do I have to have a checking account where I get nothing? Where do I have to kind of set up a separate savings account? like your money should always work for you. And that is the promise to me of crypto is that you get your wallet, you deposit your money, it starts generating yield. The moment you sell something, right, it stops generating yield. It starts generating yield for the other person. And so that to me is is is is the the promise that we should be working towards. >> Yeah. And if you have a Gen Z at the table, they know it intuitively because they're already frustrated that the control isn't within like it's their money. they should have more control because the way in which we sort of interact is like we don't just have centralized journalists anymore and you can go example after example. Well, thank you everyone uh for listening in. I I don't think we have time for questions but >> saying your time's up. Stop talking. So >> the three of us will be around if you have any questions please uh find us. Thanks again. Thank you.
How Crypto Is Reshaping the Global Payments Landscape | DAS London 2025 | Day 3 | Institutional
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Transcript
All right. Hello everyone. Uh thank you for joining us. I'm going to start with uh encouraging you all to ask questions as we get started. Um we would love to have this be a discussion. We already have a question, huh? That's just a joker. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. So, we're going to start with some introductions. Uh I'm Beth Hadock. I am a director and an advisor. I represent here today stablecoin standard but I'm also on the board of a yenbacked and a USbacked stablecoin as well as a founding adviser for defy protocol balancer uh as well as some other protocols and projects that you may have heard of. I'm going to have the panelists introduce themselves and then we'll get to it. Tim, why don't we start with you? >> Cool. Thank you very much. Um, this is probably the weirdest experience I've had on stage with everyone with headphones on and so, um, yeah, it's very weird. I've never been to a silent disco, but I think this is what it should feel like. So, I'm Tim. I'm deputy CEO of a company called BCB Group. We provide payment services to the crypto industry specifically. So, um, we've been in business since 2017. We power most of the exchanges, market makers, liquidity providers across the world. Um to give you a sense of scale in the last 12 months we've moved around well north of 200 billion in in payments um across the industry. Uh my background is I actually started in in SAS in in marketing and then got into fintech and open banking and then finally you know drank the Kool-Aid once I learned about Bitcoin and you know never looked back. Um Mark do you want to go? >> Yeah. Hi. Um I'm Mark Vanderlebrook. I'm chief strategy and marketing officer at the Algrand Foundation and most people probably know Algarand. Algarand is a layer 1 blockchain. and it's been around for a while, six years. Um, and is mainly known for its kind of elegant consensus mechanism that helps builders and startups build apps uh at scale. Uh, so that's that's Alant. >> Yeah, thank you. So for our first question just to give a little bit of my background I spent a couple of decades as the head of regulatory compliance and ethics in traditional finance and then I really wanted to be part of a different paradigm and uh I was lucky enough to be uh an adviser to a lot of the A16Z portfolio companies and then as we were talking about when we were preparing I was sort of hooked from there. so many innovators really wanting to improve uh traditional finance as well as just the way in which we interact with each other and we have commerce. So that's good the leadin to my first question and Tim maybe we can start with you when you what does that convergence now sort of almost at the end of the year of the killer app of stable coins and so much growth in um stable coins and payments. What does the convergence look like for you as you look ahead into 20 uh 26 or even as you reflect on uh as we're rounding out the fourth quarter? >> Yeah, I think it's um it's never a dull moment in crypto. I think you just see what happened on Friday just been to you know it keeps you on your toes. Um I think uh look so BCB specifically even though we many people don't know this but BCB has the most awesome name BCB group actually stands for Bitcoin bro so it's you know we're very much at the heart of crypto at the beginning of it but even though even though we were very much focused on the crypto industry we um we've always sat in the middle right because we actually provide fiat accounts to to the crypto industry um and so being in the middle where we've been you know tier one regulated uh we have tier one banking partners that we provide being in this middle ground. I think that's kind of what stable coins are also doing is is creating that middle ground between the TRD fire world and the and the DeFi world. And this year we've seen more and more of that. So just just in our business the level of institutional clients are now coming to us that want to leverage um stable coins for treasury services or um want to um use it for crossber payments, remittance businesses now using it. It's it's already far outweighing anything of the interest last year. So the the the acceleration is really there. the um I think what we're going to see as we move into the future is I don't think we're going to get to a point in 2026 where there's um whether you know you're paying for your coffee with crypto. I don't think we're at that. But it's I call it the kind of the invisible upgrade where I think your traditional your traditional finance you know is going to start leveraging blockchain technology and you're going to suddenly experience that instead of your bank transfers taking 3 days and it's shutting down at 5:00 on a Friday that suddenly you are able to move money globally within seconds and you know 24/7 all the things that stable coins are giving I think the traditional markets are going to start adopting because they they have to to to keep up with it and you saw that with people like Google launching their um universal ledger. So it kind of was a press release they did. I think a lot of people it went unnoticed. But you know Google had this thought of they could either they could either build a stable coin themselves or they could take what people want from a stable coin and they could offer it to the fiat world. So you know how do you sit on your money in JP Morgan and then be able to send it anywhere in the world you know 24/7 365 any amount. And that's what the Google you know Google vers Google cloud universal ledger is doing. You see swift did the announcement that they're moving trying to move onto a blockchain technology. So, I think that's what we're going to see more in in 2026 is um you know this this it's kind of in the background this this the the all the things of the positives of why people are doing it will start just happening and um and you'll just have better experiences in in the Trifi world. I mean there is a lot of stuff you could say about like real world assets moving on to it as well. But um but yeah I think I call it the invisible upgrade >> the infrastructure and the payment rails. Um Mark >> Yeah. So, so I I think when you when you think about payments and the payment infrastructure, it's, you know, lots of intermediaries, there's fees being added at every single point. Uh, it takes a long time, it's slow and everything. Um, but of course to expect that the whole value chain will kind of move over to crypto is just not going to happen. But I think what you'll see is you start pieces kind of move over. And so, um, give one example, um, you know, debit cards, crypto debit cards are now are now starting to happen. So for instance, in our in our most popular wallet, Par wallet, you have a debit card that's associated with your crypto account and actually you can pay for coffee using your your crypto balance right now and it's settled instantly on chain. So you start seeing that happen. We also start seeing happening where maybe pieces in the middle of the value chain will move over. So maybe you know a consumer will pay with a regular credit card and the merchant gets paid in fiat but the interaction in between the money transfer that happens like across borders maybe that is happening over stable coins but the end you know the beginning and the end is actually is actually settled in in fiat or for instance if you have a merchant that is doing a lot of payouts maybe that p mer merchant wants to be settled you know in stable coins so they can do the payout to their consumers in stable coins because they are in emerging countries where there's inflation and stuff like that. So you'll see I think you'll see pieces of this move over gradually. I don't think you'll see a whole cell move over of the whole thing, but pieces gradually will start to migrate towards towards blockchain. Yeah. And if you if you see things to that point, Mark, where you um you see all all the big players are trying to create their own stable coin networks like Circle with their Circle payments network having that ability. So you can move the money, you can settle in in countries where you historically can't. I think we're going to see a massive influx in that like Fireblocks are doing their own one. Circle is doing their one. V1 is kind of trying to create the new rails to to move that money. >> Yeah, it does seem as though the we're in raging agreement about the golden age of a convergence. It's just what does that convergence mean? And I I think of three things probably two opportunities and one risk. Um and the opportunity uh or I guess you could look at them either way, but it does seem like as you all were talking about increased competition. So the banks and the status quo are no longer comfortable because of all of these innovations on the blockchain. So the hyper competition and in certain jurisdictions, the US being one of them, we're seeing sort of misconceptions about um payment structure on the blockchain and how resilient it is and whether or not it should be um incentivized to grow as rapidly as it's growing. The a second insight for me would be that with all of this convergence and accelerated growth, there's an increased pressure for operational resiliency and we see that with the different requirements across uh Europe and Asia and the US and also in the exemptions and the exclusions for DeFi and as you had mentioned sort of the DEG and all the volatility that happened last week. So I do think with the convergence we want the growth to happen and hopefully everyone is focused on shoring up that operational resiliency so we can continue on that trajectory. And then the the final one before we sort of move on to the next unless you all have other things you want to add is that I I'll call it my fear or the on the risk side is that there's less disruption um of the status quo because of the convergence and because of the competition and sometimes consensus is good but sometimes the true innovation gets diluted enough that I am uh I do wonder whether the golden age of convergence also means that some of the ethos behind DeFi or some of the real innovations gets watered down with this convergence with traditional finance and you can see that with some of the payment leaders and their conferences being called you know Wall Street 2.0 or similar sort of themes that uh are here this year and I expect to continue in 2026. anything to add before we move on? >> Um, I I don't think that innovation will ever be slowed down as such because I think as a maybe this is well showing my age in a good way, hopefully I'm still young and hip, but um, anyone remember the mini player? People remember that? No. Yeah, miniis players. So, um, I always look at when we're building a business, when we're building a product roadmap, when we look at anything, I try and make sure I'm not building the mini player because everyone had CDs and Walkmans and there was this massive thing and then they created the mini disc player and they thought it was the future, right? Oh my god, you could have a thousand songs in your pocket and everyone was but, you know, two years later or a year later, I like the um the iPod was generated and MP3s came around and everyone's forgotten about mini players, right? And it's so it was a it was a step it wasn't the actual solution people wanted. it was the step forward and I worry about whether you know stable coins every other day there seems to be another stable coin provider coming up and it's like does the average consumer here want you know I'm sure people here love payments but do you sit at home at night googling on your phone I want to find a new way to pay no you don't you just want it to work right you want it to be the most effective way so you're not looking for a new stable coin you want what it gives you so you're not you want the fast you know instant 24/7 and so I think that is what keeps momentum when people are building and and developing, right? They they just so even as we tradfi gets more involved instead of scaling down the messages, you'll always find people that are going and building the next better things to to keep it moving. >> I love it. >> And I think and I think one of the challenges, of course, is that payments tend to work pretty well, specifically in Western countries, you know, the the the miracle of Visa and Mastercard where you pay, you know, for anything anywhere anywhere in the world, you know, it works pretty well, right? And so you kind of have to overcome that. And then on top of that, you have the friction which is that most traditional payment systems are over 50 years old, right? Like most of the payment systems run by banks run on IBM mainframe computers running cobalt that probably hasn't been touched for >> that the way money moves has changed and it's not just a systems upgrade where we've moved from the legacy systems you were talking about onto the blockchain. Yeah, I think um first I think we have to be realistic. If you look at um uh stable coin transfers, right, or stable coin movements, I think I don't know the exact number, but I think it's over 95% of all stable coin transfers are not payments, right? They're crypto traders. And actually most um of those trans most of those movements are actually at centralized exchanges. So if you look at the amount of like stable coin volume that is being you know uh transferred onchain in a decentralized matter it's a tiny tiny tiny fraction of all stable coin volume. So, so, so payments haven't really in any kind of scale moved over to crypto as of yet. And, and one of the reasons I think is that actually payments work pretty well in the western world. But I think that the world is bigger than just the western world. And so, we see examples emerging of like clear use cases where payments are really taking off in a big way. And I'll give you one example. Um, uh, one of the projects on on Algrand's called Hisape. And so they operate a blockchain based payment service in uh distressed countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and others. And so when you look at those countries, most of the people in those countries are unbanked. Like in in the world roughly 1.5 1.4 1.5 billion people are still unbanked. And so they don't have access to kind of banking services. They don't have access to payment services. And most of the um uh money is still kind of exchanged in cash, right? And so and so they started bu building and so what you see happening is like for instance a couple of years number of years ago actually Empisa took over as a mobile payment system in Kenya which was the same situation like most people in Kenya were unbanked and so Empisa became the leading payment system um in in Kenya. So we now starting to see that movement towards blockchain. So, so HISAP um is completely running on Algrand as a blockchain and so and it allows uh Afghani citizens to pay for rice and pays for bread and pay for anything that they want in a store with nothing more than just their cell phone um uh not even a smartphone can just be a regular cell phone um or even a plastic card that has a QR code on it and all the transactions are instantly settled instantly settled on chain and so over 20% of all electricity bills in Afghanistan currently are settled on chain um using HSA. So you could see this take off like in a really in a really big way. And so um u and it's also important of course that that for this to to really happen at scale you really need to be able um to settle you need to have a chain that can scale but you also need a chain that that has instant finality because if you're waiting in a checkout counter right and you and you're settling a transaction in 3 seconds versus settling it on 7 seconds and more. those four seconds take a very very long time, right? And so um but so Hesape is a good example of a payment system that is really taking off at scale and it has another another interesting benefit to it which is that is humanitarian aid like part of uh how do you how do you provide humanitarian aid like this humanitarian aid billions flowing into Afghanistan and and also in Syria. How do you make sure that you help the people there and you give them the right means uh to be able to survive and to be able to thrive? Traditionally, humanitarian aid was focused on like, okay, we'll give everybody like, you know, rice or bread or whatever it is. And then people realized that that's not a really effective way to do humanitarian aid because the people that receive the aid are best in the best position to be able to decide what they need. It may not be a rice. It may be a cooker or something like that. I don't know. And so, so humanitarian aid is now switching to cash. But cash is a big problem because like how do you transfer a billion dollars to Afghanistan? like how do you make sure there's no fraud? How do you make sure there's no abuse? How how do you how do you do this? Right? So, by making it blockchain based, which is what HSAP is doing, you give now an end toend transparency to how the money is being transferred and how it's actually being used. So, United Nations, UNHR, World Bank, World Food Program, they're all using his pay to transfer funds into Afghanistan and help the population there. And they're doing it in a completely transparent way. So we have this thing called an eight trust portal where you can actually see it's a very nice kind of web tool like website where you visually see actually the money starts there then it goes there then it splits into 10,000 pieces then it goes to this wallet and that wallet and you can follow all the transactions end to end so you can actually be sure that abuse is not happening and so you see there in those kinds of scenarios that's where I think you see payments take off on blockchain p pay payments take off at scale uh and you'll see that there first before I think you start seeing it in the western So you're basically preventing fraud and illicit finance, but you're tracking transactions and wallets instead of people in your humanitarian aid. Yeah, I love it. Tim, >> I think um I think that's a a fantastic use case. I really do. And I I I as I'm sure a lot of you here were at Singapore um at token Singapore recently as well. You'll find that there's there's a lot of these apps out there like Grab. In Singapore, you can't do anything seems without Grab. it it does your payments, it does your wallets, it does your transport, it does everything. But having that blockchain security and that ability to move fast is what I think is lacking. And I think uh I love again I'm sure a lot of you know about um Sam Alman, you know, OpenAI, he launched Worldcoin. Do people here know what Worldcoin is? The one thing I loved about that was this ability of the it's the it's the proof of ID, proof of your if you want to reduce fraud, you want to make sure that the people that need the aid are getting it. It's by having a way that you can have a universal ID. And so he had this idea of scanning in your eyeball so that it could prove you're human on an AI bot and then you have you've got your you've got your identity. So that way you can prove how you're you're pushing things. I think my my main um uh interest at the moment is I think I think we've kind of built we uh we've built like a rocket ship in blockchain but we haven't put a steering wheel and a user manual in it. So I think the thing that's that's that's infecting mass adoption is education. I've only really been in the crypto space for sort of um 18 months. like I've always been passionate about it, but actually working and building BCB has been it's been 18 months and um you know the the the knowledge I see of just people actually understanding truly what it is, how to use it. There's a lot of um misconceptions about what crypto is in in the in the real world. Um, and I think running a bit more um, education, whether it's a school, whether it's a people in business about what blockchain actually is, how it works, what Bitcoin is, what's the difference between a token, what's the difference between a layer 1, a layer two, there's there's if you stop people in the street, the majority of people still don't understand it, and that's going to massively impact actual adoption of the the technology. >> Yeah, I I agree that if you have consumers that still don't understand the value of a stable coin versus fiat or even the definition it's hard to go ahead and ring the bell and claim that it's all it's already happened. Um, so when I also think about payments and as we're looking ahead, I think about and Mark, you mentioned a little bit of this. So maybe maybe I'll start with you. Um, do we give up the dream of having financial privacy? uh because we are seeing more and more adoption through centralized finance CFI. Um you can probably guess that I hope what you're going to answer, but why don't I let you answer as to whether or not we have to give up that concept in order to have the growth. >> Yeah, I don't I actually don't think so. I think I think um at scale I don't think privacy and compliance are necessarily at odds with each other. Um, and I think it really depends on like having a smart overall architecture of how you set up the whole system. And so to me it starts at the base layer of like having having a network that is able to handle the volume of transactions instantly, instant finality in a decentralized manner, right? Then um you layer on top of that the compliance features and the compliance features you can be implemented at an asset level. So for instance, every single asset that you create on Algarand has built-in capabilities to freeze and clawback and all of these things to be able to actually meet all of the compliance requirements. Um, you know, and then on top of that, you can actually layer in the KYC features and all the things that you need from a from a regulatory perspective, but those KYC features are handled offchain, right? And you can use zk proofs to kind of build those facts into into a blockchain based environment without having to disclose any of your personalized kind of information. So if you have an architecture like this with like a fast chain with like the compliance built in at the asset level and that privacy through zk proofs I think you can build that infrastructure and and that has compliance has privacy and has scale as well. >> Yeah. So I I think I'll do my first call to action for everyone that's listening in because uh I love how you just described it and regulators across the globe more recently the US regulators and US Treasury. We just submitted our comment letter this week and there are additional requests for comment letters and the regulators are looking for examples like that because I do think there's an acknowledgment that we are overroad in collecting information. We are um having citizens and consumers really vulnerable to data breaches when they don't need to be because we do have all the new technologies. But you do need to have the right people in the room and the right um projects commenting. So I'll encourage everyone uh if you're in a position to either please reach out or to comment because the more regulators globally that hear that story about the architecture. I do think we're in a an optimistic moment where um they're they're listening. >> Anything to add, Tim? >> I' I'd agree. I think the development in in zero knowledge proofs is is a is a thing that is going to be massive where you can you can approve something is true without like showing the underlying data. That's uh that's that's definitely something. Um, but it is going to be a fact that to to get the the the institutional flow, to get the the size of the, you know, the rest of the world market outside of crypto, you're going to have to adopt a more open, you know, framework and actually and and kind of adopt some of like the for travel rules and things like that. Like there's things you're going to have to do. Um, but I also think that unless you are certain individuals like this level of security and data, there's a balance to it. So majority of people here, I'm going to guess, don't use tour to search the internet, right? So if you were really worried about privacy, you could go on tour and you could have but they're happy with the level of security that something like a Chrome would give you. And I think that's where the payments world is going to get is is what is the level? It's probably going to be the equivalent of sharing your bank level security that you you do now, right? So it's not going to be completely anonymous. They're going to have to open up a bit. But yeah, it's it's finding that balance, I think, of what people are happy with sharing while protecting people's data. >> Great. Thanks. So let's let's shift gears a little bit. Currently when you think of payments innovations and we've been talking a lot about stable coins um here to for it's been dominated by US dollars. Um so I'll ask you each do you think that's going to continue? Do you see global uh sort of regional fragmentation coming? What are some of the non USD um use cases uh for stable coins or payment innovations that you that you uh foresee coming? >> I I'll think the the main one for me is maybe to one of Mark's earlier points about the the unbanked globally. I think you'll find a lot of people um in certain countries, you know, they they are not happy with the fluctuations of their local currency and so they they're looking for more stable way to to hold their value and if they're unable to get banks like that and uh a USD stable coin is a good option, but it's not the only option. Maybe one that's more relevant. So even a Singapore for Southeast Asia having a Singapore dollar stable coin or you know within Africa whether it's you know there's there's plenty of other countries that actually are more suited to the corridors that they operate in but giving them that security that maybe their local currency won't give. So um I think you know the whole world ever since you know fiat currencies were created have been backed by USD right it was kind of like the US dollar kind of created it and so I I think there's going to be you you have tether and you have um circle and you know even though they have other currency coins it is definitely USD that is the majority of what they see I think it is going to be in those rest of the world use cases where yeah more local currency stable coins would be would be better fit So I think there's you're going to see a huge increase in in my view in non USUSD uh stable coins and I'll give you the example of one company uh on Algrand called Quantos and Quantos is a company based in the Netherlands not too far from here and they are uh they issue um um Europeanbased uh based stable coins and so they were the first I think it's a year and a half ago to issue um a fully regulated electronic um EMT electronic market token um uh the Euro D um and uh they actually issued it even before AMA was uh was in was in effect. So where they were the really first one to do it and so the three use cases that they see for this Euro stable coin are one is of course pure payments European-based payments and so transport is one that they see a lot of traction in. So if you, you know, um, pay for your bus ticket or like here in the subway, I pay two pound for a subway subway ticket if that has to be handled over over credit card. That's a pretty expensive that's a pretty expensive transaction for for a transport company. So why why can't that be handled on on on a European stable coin? So that's that's one area where they see a lot of traction. The second area where there's a lot of traction is in trade finance. So if you think about the money flows that happen between Europe for instance and China, these are massive money flows. Do you think you know they want to settle those in US dollars given the you know US trade policies you know these regions and these these these companies don't necessarily want to settle this in US dollars anymore. And so you're starting to see a shift towards using euro as a settlement, you know, mechanism for trade between between China and and Europe. And that is going to move into into stable coins. So that's you talk about massive volumes here. Um and then the third um area is FX. Um FX banks make a huge amount of money on FX. Like in Germany alone, I think the banks make something like $20 billion in fees on on FX. And you see a lot of like um effects pairs that are really not efficient that would benefit from from more competition and and would benefit from being brought on chain. And so this it's interesting we look at this like there's pairs of course euro versus US dollar that you know they're so massive that probably there's not much to be done but there's there's pairs that are quite interesting for in if you look at the Swedish crone versus the Swiss Frank those those are very inefficient FX pairs that would benefit from actually being brought on chain and so for instance is now creating all of these stable coins not just the euro but also the Swedish croner and the Swiss Franks and then working on bringing those on chain and having a more efficient effects mechanism beyond them And so, so yes, I think you'll see a lot of uh a lot of growth in non- US stable coins. >> Yeah, I agree. And I I may just add two more examples to the great ones that you all just covered. One would be like, as you were referring to, corporate treasury. So, if you're a global entertainment company and you have consumers across the world and you want to be able to be more seamless, I could see the fractionalization. you don't need to concentrate in US dollars if you're in Asia or if you're in Europe. Um, but also if you have a bunch of affiliates and you're moving money just internally, um, you could see how there would be growth there. And also like I think to your point Tim, if you're in Argentina and you have an a very volatile currency, it may still make sense to rely on a US dollarbacked stable coin. But then of course if if you're in Europe, why not have a euro based one? And and as I mentioned, I'm on the stable coin standard. We have lots of members that are non US dollar denominated stable coins. And that really seems as as we round out the year and look into the future what we may see accelerated growth. So talking a little bit broader about emerging technologies uh I know that we uh are really focused on payments but when you think of payments and you think beyond crypto whether quantum computing or AI maybe you all could give me insights and some trends that uh you think our audience would be interested in. Um, good question. I think um I think quantum computing gets a lot of airtime maybe unnecessarily at the moment. I think it's well it's needed because the way these sort of things happen is realistically to do quantum computing we need to have such a massive shift in technology and even things like solar radiation affects how the computers would work. And so all the noise you get now about quantum computing impacting Bitcoin and being able to solve the algorithms and everything, I think is I think it's the businesses that are trying to fund raise. You know, they're creating the hype around it so they could fund raise so they can build it. So it's needed because that's how we'll get to quantum computing. But I don't think it's and as as people develop quantum computing, I think uh you know the cryptography that we develop can actually we can we can basically develop our cryptography faster than crypto um quantum computing will happen. So I'm I'm not too I think AI is the most prevalent one. I mean in our business we see AI impacting every single aspect of it on how do you how do you improve things? How do you optimize um on the payment side of things? obviously um agenic AI and how how do you automate those pay flows? How do you get the agents to to sit on your wallet securely, make payments for you, bid? You know, I think that's going to be fascinating when you see how agent to agent where I don't know, a agent from the company wants to sell the highest price and your agent wants to get the best price and how they compete and then how they settle. I think that's a fascinating area and I think that's what we're going to see um a lot of. I I I mean I read something the other day about people already talking about the bubble of AI birthing and I think there are some crazy valuations out there and things, but it is exciting. I mean that I'm sure everyone here uses it daily and just the things that it was doing a year ago with crazy videos that look stupid to videos now it's yeah it's so I'd say um that that is amazing and generally just the adoption like my my last business I built was um in open banking and that was revolutionary at the time and it's kind of doing what now stable coins is pushing is how do you do instant move off the card rails cuz Visa Mastercard have done incredible job where they've had something stupid like 40 minutes of downtime in their entire life like you can go anywhere in the world and use it. But this this this advancement in being better is what actually inspires and keeps keeps me going because it's great to see just new developments constantly. >> So it sounds like you're you're not necessarily concerned about the security issue at this point and more excited about the AI innovations. I think look there's the more we come up with something the more bad actors learn how to hack it and the more we then have to come up with something else and so no matter what so there's always this two and fro between and so yes quantum computing will adapt and security but in the same way we will then learn how to defend against it and we'll use that and we can move faster adapting the cryptography that the Bitcoin uses or the the cryptocurrencies uses stablecoin uses than creating something that doesn't exist could could Anything to add, Mark? >> Yeah, sure. These are two very interesting topics. We probably spend an entire day um talking about them. Um I slightly disagree with you on the quantum side. I think it is a real threat. And so people talk about Qday. Uh Q day is a day when you know all traditional cryptography will just break uh when when quantum computers come online. And so um who knows when that's going to be? People say 2030, maybe sooner. uh whatever the date is I think it is important for for the industry to be ready uh for this and so we've been spending a lot of time as Algarand to think about how do we make um everything kind of quantum secure and so there's three components to this one you have to make sure your ledger is quantum secure secondly you have to make sure your accounts and your account signatures are quantum secure and then thirdly you have to make sure your consensus mechanism is quantum secure and can be hacked and so and so where we're at from from a uh from an algrand perspective is we've already made the the ledger completely quantum secure. So if you know in 2030 whenever a quantum computer arrives right they won't be able to break any of the past transactions that has happened on chain those will those are secured forever and that's important because if you're an institution you know you have different timelines than you and I have if you're a government and you're basically issuing treasuries and so you want to make sure that whatever is issued on chain stays on chain and can never be changed not now not in 5 years not in 10 years not in 20 years and so we can actually go out today and say well we can guarantee that this is going to happen because our ledger is completely quantum secure today. So that's one thing. So we recently made the upgrade I think a few weeks ago to make our accounts quantum secure as well. So we have two of the three done and so we're still working on the consensus part. So but we are probably one of the leading blockchains at this point in terms of uh making making everything quantum secure. So that's on the quantum security side. Then the AI side obviously that's a super interesting and and um exciting area. Um I really believe that the gente commerce will change everything. Um I think and it's going to happen faster than people think. Uh these shopping agents that will help you to kind of shop and buy things. Uh they are going to come very quickly. You see it all around you like um Open AI just announced a shopping integration with Etsy. So now you can you know search for plant hangers and Etsy will show up and you can buy right within the OpenAI chatbot. So, so it is is going to happen very quickly and so Google of course is at the forefront of this all with with their agent to agent protocol and AP2 which they launched a couple of weeks ago and and we're happy to be partners with Google um on this topic and so we uh we are heavily invested in this uh making sure the A2A protocol works seamlessly you know with with Algarand making sure agents can can transact on chain securely making sure agents have decentralized identifiers have verifiable credentials have a trust model associated with it that basically relates back to the human because of course the agent cannot be accountable for anything. There always has to be a human behind it and so working out that entire infrastructure of how agent commerce will happen and how crypto can be used as payment rail underneath it is something that we're heavily focused on. I would I'd add to that I think one of my latest hobbies is I I have to travel a lot and when I'm sitting on a long flight my new challenge is from when I board the plane to when I get off the plane can I launch a company in that time? So, and it's crazy how coming back from Singapore, a 12-hour flight, I I built I came up with an idea. I used the the thing called Blink.ai to create the software. It built the program, coded it for me. It integrated Stripe. I then had other um AI agents that could build marketing and LinkedIn messages and like X posts and everything like that. And you get off the plane and technically I've got a business that I could I could sell immediately, right? And if you could turn out those on a daily basis, it's crazy what you like. And so this time next year like the whole this is why I was saying excited about the development of the space is this time next year people like that people in this could launch a company while sitting here build it and they can have it activated while they go into something new and so the the speed of development is just going to get phenomenal. >> Yeah. And it's interesting so this a couple of months ago we partnered with uh bolt new which is one of these VIP coding tools and we did a hackathon with them and they called it like the world's largest hackathon. they got like 100,000 developers participate and so we did kind of the blockchain track and what was interesting to me was when you when you look at the results of this when we used to do hackathons in the past I mean the projects you know the UI of the projects that were submitted as part of past hackathons looked like a dog's breakfast you know the UIs were horrible and and they and they were done by engineers and the the the engineering behind it and the smart contracts and they were all great but then the user experience and we talked about that before was terri terrible. And now what we've seen with like Bolt new, now people can actually build pretty sophisticated apps with a beautiful UI, really well designed and a smart contract underneath it. And and that's the type of thing that we will need to actually get blockchain mass adopted, right? We need a much much much more streamlined, smoother, and better UI. And that's what these VIP coding tools hopefully will provide. >> All right. So more developments as it converges, not just um as we're talking about payments with traditional finance, but all the other amazing uh uh emerging technologies. So we're we're almost out of time, so I'm going to try and lighten it up and um we'll have a final question. I think to your point, Tim, about getting the message out, having accelerated adoption means that people really understand what we talk about when we talk about payments or stable coins or even crypto more broadly. So, for our audience, if they're, you know, the holidays are around the corner, what would be something if you were talking to someone that was totally new to crypto, maybe at your holiday um your holiday dinner table, that you would say that they should really sort of peique someone's interest in crypto by how could they just open up a conversation about crypto with someone that isn't native to crypto? and all of the vocabulary and all the excitement we just talked about for the last half hour or so. >> Um, you know what? I always start with like I always start with the quick history lesson of explaining what a fiat currency is. I don't think there is a I think there's a a big misunderstanding about what a fiat currency is and how you know original currencies were backed by gold then they moved to fiat currencies and there's nothing that really backs it and it's just a promise from the government there's nothing like and once you explain that to them it naturally leads into why cryptocurrencies were created and then you can explain what a blockchain is why and it just is a good way because I think we fundamentally don't understand the notes in our pocket and the cash system and what that actually is and so I I start with that and then everything else makes sense from there. >> Walking them through it. What about you, Mark? >> I think I would say something along the lines of like wouldn't it be like normal or preferred that your money always works for you 24 by7 your money never sleeps. And so why is it the case that in traditional banking that's not happening? Why do I have to have a checking account where I get nothing? Where do I have to kind of set up a separate savings account? like your money should always work for you. And that is the promise to me of crypto is that you get your wallet, you deposit your money, it starts generating yield. The moment you sell something, right, it stops generating yield. It starts generating yield for the other person. And so that to me is is is is the the promise that we should be working towards. >> Yeah. And if you have a Gen Z at the table, they know it intuitively because they're already frustrated that the control isn't within like it's their money. they should have more control because the way in which we sort of interact is like we don't just have centralized journalists anymore and you can go example after example. Well, thank you everyone uh for listening in. I I don't think we have time for questions but >> saying your time's up. Stop talking. So >> the three of us will be around if you have any questions please uh find us. Thanks again. Thank you.