Well, the stablecoin industry has been a big winner this year.
We've seen the passage of the Genius Act, and back on Wall Street, we saw Circle rip after its NYSE IPO.
Now stablecoins are a key reason why investors are bullish on Eth as well as Solana, because they could be the future of digital payments.
Now stablecoin saw a 69% year over year surge in the AIPAC region between June 2024 and 2025, and this is according to research from Circle.
Well this It is because of regulatory favorability, which is present in global governments as well as central banks and institutions that are eyeing staplecoin's rapidly expanding market.
Well, joining me live from Las Vegas, Nevada is Qiao Wu Liu, who is co-founder and deputy CEO of Straights S.
Great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you for having me, Manny.
Well, first and foremost, let's start out by talking about what it will actually take for staple coins to become everyday money.
Sure, I, I think you need probably 3 things.
First is regulatory clarity that you just mentioned earlier on.
So on that part, um, you know, after the passing of Genius Act, everyone is actually looking at this and more, you know, focused right now, but we've been very fortunate to come in a region in Singapore where the mask, which is local regulators, have been very forward looking.
So since 2020, they have already published a framework fort fund regulation.
And as of last year, we've been very fortunate to be um you know, recognized by them to be in early compliance uh for the upcoming stablecoin regime, which we have issued to stablecoin off first the single dollar back stablecoin XSGD.
And also the US dollar back.
XSD itself.
So, but besides regulatory clarity, um, institutional adoption is actually the next big thing that should be pushed before everyday retailers will have to trust as needed.
And again, we've been very fortunate to be working with some of the really big household brands, like, uh, just a month ago, Excess cheating went live on Coinbase, a household brand in here in this part of the world, it was more than 100 million Americans and every everyday life can actually use Exce GD and get access to this token.
And then on our US dollars front, XUST I also went live since April with Binance, which gave us access to almost 280 million users globally.
So with these two factors is what we think is the basic foundation that you actually need.
But beyond that, I think the real question that I want to be asking is, where are the use cases, where's the real world use cases here, right?
So, um, at Straight X, we have been a payment infrastructure players for the last 10 years in Asia itself, uh, focusing on just uh cross-border payment itself.
And uh we have been one of the pioneers in trying to pilot what we call stablecoin real world uh usage.
So, as of last year, we launched a partnership with Alipay Plus and Grab, that allows uh Alipay plus users globally when they visit Singapore.
So if you could come to Singapore today, you can use The Alipay plus to simply buy a coffee at any of this Grab, uh Grabpay merchants offline, more than 40,000 of them across Singapore itself.
And Grab being a major ride-hailing giant in Southeast Asia, has more than 200,000 merchants across the entire region itself.
And now today, um, in Singapore itself, all the users can simply scan, and to them, this will be, uh, you know, your local wallet, which you are used to, which is the Alipay itself, and to the merchants, the user experience seems like they're actually paying with GrabPay.
So there's no need for retraining.
And to them, this is just seamless payment experience.
But behind the scenes, what's actually happened is every single transaction itself is actually settled with a single stable point in real time at a transactional level, which is a major breakthrough since November last year where our regulators have supported this initiative itself.
But beyond scanning and paying, I think What some of the new initiatives they are pushing, which is something we fundamentally believe in is that for payments to really ro scale, you really need this to be seamless.
And, um, stablecoin to us is really a backend innovation.
Like most people like yourself and myself actually don't really care about how it works.
We really just care that we can get our coffee and move on with our life, right?
So, um, we have also partnered with Visa.
I think earlier this year, to be able to become a visa principal license holder to issue a visa-backed debit card that is backed by stablecoin itself.
And we are seeing a large amount of institutional adoption in that sense where a lot of stablecoin, Neil bank and wallets out of Asia have been issuing a stablecoin back card where the users can just simply tap and pay without actually understanding how stablecoin actually works.
Yeah, this is day two of Money 2020 and you talked about the Regulatory framework and here in the US we are keeping an eye on the nation's capital.
So very quickly, tell us what's going on in Singapore.
Sure.
So like I said, after the Genius Act has been passed, regulators around the world such as Hong Kong has also followed up its own bill itself.
But Singapore has been a pioneer in this part of the world on stable coin regulations since 2020, there's already been a well established stablecoin regime and a framework that allows players like us to basically.
To, uh, PR, 1 to 1 stable point itself, and they have given the right classification that this will be cash on cash equivalent, allowing it to be used in everyday transaction itself.
And on that front, I think you will see a lot more adoption once this itself pushed to a better regulation bill, which will be passing sometime at the end of this year.
But with existing player like us and PEOs really live, uh, we're really seeing a lot of interest in real world adoption.
And we have about 60 seconds here.
So as institutional interest grows, what needs to happen, do you think, to build trust?
So like I said, this is a technology, a backend innovation, and I really feel that for this technology to be used in a wider scale, it needs to disappear magically behind the scenes.
Like I always joke about the fact that my mom would never want to know how people coin work, they would just want to be able to buy her coffee and move on with her life.
And that itself needs to be done through seamless user experience, pushed by large institutions, just like Coinbase, and just like OX which just recently launched OX Pay to allow the users to simply scan and pay at all these retail outlets powered by Grab.
And the whole time round, no one will be talking about silver coin, they will simply be just paying and move on their life.
That kind of success on the daily use cases itself will be the main reason why we'll see more institutions adopting this technology.
Well, very exciting time, especially as we head into the final days of Money 2020.
So thank you so much for joining us here, and I look forward to speaking with you again.
Thank you, Rami, and thank you for having me.
