Welcome to FinTech TV live from Consensus Miami.
Now Moon is moving beyond just being a crypto on wrap and a massive push to dominate market infrastructure on two strategic acquisitions.
Now the flow to power salon and trading and Israeli security startups so that to secure institutional assets.
We're here to discuss this expansion is Caroline Pen, who is chief legal officer and chief admin officer at Moon.
Caroline, great to have you here.
Thank you so much for.
Joining me, thank you so much for having me on the show.
It's exciting to be here, and I've now added another title, which is head of Moon Pay Institutional.
Yes, so I do want to ask you about that.
You are wearing three executive hats here and you're on the ground in Miami.
We're here the final day of consensus 2026.
So tell us about your experience now that you have assumed all of these roles.
Thank you so much.
Well, it's been so exciting to join Moon Pay.
I mean, really what drew me to Moon Pay was the vision of our founder and CEO.
Ivan Soto Wright and Keith Grossman, our president, but really looking at how Moon Pay should be the operating system for value.
And when you think about the operating system for value, it's really about how do you interact with your money.
Your money should work for you.
Your money should be available for you when you want it, how you want it, and you should be able to talk to it.
You should be able to converse with it.
You should be able to use a chat box just like you can use with a Google search, with your AI chatbot, with your.
AI and so with Moon Pay agents when we've really unleashed agentic payments, really opening the door for agentic commerce, it's just the first building block and having an operating system for value where you can type in what it is that you want to do in natural language and have your agents handle that for you.
So if you want to set up a recurring bill pay, if you want to plan a kid's birthday party, set a budget, set limits, if you want to do your own agentic trading bot, all of these things are.
Really possible with the approach that Moon Pay takes to an operating system for value.
And when I saw this amazing technology that Moon Pay has and how it's scaled and it's been proven to operate at scale, so if you think about Moon Pay, it's 30 million users, 180 countries being able to settle in 120 fiat currencies.
To me, I thought institutions would love to be able to have this capability.
You get blockchain in a box with white label.
Technology infrastructure and so it's been proven at scale.
It's secure.
It's resilient.
You mentioned our acquisitions 100 million all stock deal for SoDOT, which is an Israeli defense technology firm that does secure wallet infrastructure founded by Edo Sofer, and then Deflow founded by Nitesh and Deflow is the execution layer for Solana.
I think it powers maybe over 65% of Coinbase's volume on Solana.
So this is really about owning the entire tech stack end to.
And at scale and most importantly, and this is something I say in Washington all the time, you can have KYC AML with Defi.
A lot of people say that's against the ethos of DeFi.
They say that that's not what Defi is about, but that just doesn't make sense.
Defi is about having access to markets.
It's about making any chain, any token, any wallet available to anyone.
That's what our technology enables, and we do it with KYC AML.
And you've given us such a great overview of.
What's happening over at Moon Pay, and I'm so glad to have you on the show now that you are at the organization and here we are at consensus and not only our traditional finance as well as builders, innovators, policymakers are here, but you have a unique perspective because not only do you have experience being on the nation's capital at Capitol Hill, but also working in traditional finance.
And now that you are at Moon Pay, tell us what you think needs to happen as.
We head into the rest of 2026, especially when it comes to regulation.
Sure, so I think that right now we have sort of two more macro trends that are colliding for lack of a better word.
And so first of all, you do see that I've always had this thesis that we were going to see a move towards a more open architecture for payments and financial market infrastructure that's very consistent with the trend towards open banking which started with the fintech revolution in the 90s.
So with a move towards more open payments and market financial infrastructure, that means that you're going to see a convergence between Tratfi and DeFi, which is all about what we're trying to enable blockchain in a box for anybody who's facing that question of do you need to build or do you buy?
Building takes years.
People have been building on blockchain.
Institutions have been building on blockchain since 2018.
You know, we're looking at almost 10 years, but now boards and investors are saying, what's your digital asset strategy?
And you don't have.
10 years to develop this in-house capability.
So I think that's really key.
So that's one sort of macro trend that and then that convergence of TRDF to DFI.
So what is the role of regulation in all of that?
So part of what I had announced last year with my crypto sprint at the CFTC, you know, obviously we launched for the first ever spot crypto trading on financial exchanges that are registered with the CFTC.
Also had the tokenized collateral and stablecoins guidance, but and the digital asset markets pilot, which was really important to have like Bitcoin being used for collateral.
The part that we didn't get a chance to finish though, and which I really think needs to be focused on now, is we need to make sure that blockchain can be used as financial market infrastructure.
So that means amending CFTC rules, SEC rules, making it clear that these regulations should be technology neutral and that it should be fine to use.
Blockchain in order to power your trade matching engines to be able to use them for your books and records, to be able to do your collateral operations using blockchain technology.
It's not scary.
It's not this, you know, kind of, you know, crazy revolution disruption, because if you think about it, it's not any different from when we went from paper to computers and now to blockchain, which is really just a centralized computing.
So I think that's one thing that regulations need to focus on.
Yeah, and Caroline, it's so great to have your perspective on this, especially now that you are at Moon Pay.
And when we're talking about some of these technologies, there's been a lot of focus on artificial intelligence.
So what do you think the rules should be, especially when it comes to AI?
What should the guardrails be?
So the thing is, and again this is about technology, right?
We have always used technology in our financial markets and in our financial system, and we've been able to use technology while controlling for risks.
So we have a, you know, tried and true method.
We have a proven method for how we deal with risk in financial services.
You have a risk management framework.
You have risk governance frameworks.
And so I think generally for AI, as with any other technology.
AI is really a fancy model.
Well, we have model risk management, right?
So generally speaking, from a principles-based flexible framework, we should just use existing risk stripes.
So whether it is operational risk management, technology risk management, model risk management, um, you know, financial risk management, other non-financial risks, all of that exists, you know, banks have to comply with that, you know, SEC and CFTC regulated firms have to comply with that, and this is universal.
This is globally, so the Basel framework has risk management in it.
That's where you start from with AI, but then where I think maybe it's appropriate to have more prescriptive rules is when we start thinking about market conduct risk, market integrity, disclosures.
Those are the kinds of things where we want to make sure that maybe there's a little bit more prescription, a little bit more, you know, how do you do it right, to make sure that the AI models are explainable, to make sure that it's transparent, to make sure that people understand when they're interacting with an AI instead of a human.
Those are.
Things that are important.
And finally, Caroline, before I let you go, you are wearing these three executive hats, so I'm sure you're not only talking with executives within Moon Pay, but also stakeholders across the globe and across the ecosystem here.
So what is next for Moon Pay?
What is the vision as we move forward, not just into the rest of 2026, but also beyond?
So 2026 is definitely the year of institutional adoption.
We've seen that.
You've seen some.
Exciting announcements coming from DTCC, coming from Securitize.
Franklin Templeton has launched Franklin Templeton Crypto.
So I think you're really seeing the institutional adoption.
And so for Moon Pay again, when we're focused on the operating system for value, we're focused on our agentic capabilities, I think that's what you're going to continue to see more autonomy, right?
More enabling people with the tools to set up the way that they interact and interface with money the way that they want.
OK, Caroline, well, great having you join us here at Consensus 2026 in Miami.
I appreciate your time and your perspective.
Thank you.
Thanks so much for having me.
Thank you.
