I am Vince Molinari and welcome to FinTech TV.
We're broadcasting from the iconic New York Stock Exchange, and I'd like to welcome Atul Kekedi, who is the co-founder of the XTC Network.
Atul, great to have you here all the way from Dubai.
Last time we got to sit down in person in Dubai.
Here we are at the New York Stock Exchange in New York City.
Welcome, my friend.
Thank you so much for inviting me here.
I can't explain to you what I'm feeling right now.
The energy.
T here is amazing.
I think the poly market guy was here some time ago.
I see the trading floor full of people, energy, stocks going up and down, but it's something I imagine that I would be in one place.
Thank you for giving me that opportunity.
Well, delighted to have you, and we're gonna, we're gonna jump in and talk a little bit more later on about Trad F meeting Defi, and you're kind of the epitome of that sitting here with us today.
So we're gonna jump into that.
But you know, uh, we've had the great benefit of having Ritesh, your co-founder here with us.
Uh, but for some of our viewers who maybe didn't catch that episode, not familiar with XTC Networks as things.
Growing, you know, maybe kick us off and tell us, you know, the foundation of XDC and kind of the pain points that you were solving for when you launched.
Yeah, so I was in a largely banking technology, building it for the banks in the very early part of my career, and then while I was doing my entrepreneurship, I realized how slow the payments were cross border, how difficult It was to get some deals done cross border in terms of trade finance, how difficult it was to do very simple things when it comes to like the global connectedness.
The banking system was too low.
So when I actually discovered Bitcoin and then, you know, you could just send Bitcoin from one place to another and that would be it, that was something pretty amazing, right?
And we thought that.
The technology itself has so much promise.
We want to do something there, right?
Solve the problems that were not solved by the banking system.
They were not reaching the grassroots.
They were not really creating the value that should be there, where obviously they were not solving the problems that were existing.
So it was, it's funny that, you know, we thought a pretty long name for it, exchange infinite digital coin, right?
A, yeah, and then they were like, oh, that's amazing, and then call it Zinfin.
But then, you know, I think the community got together.
They met at XDC Network in the end, and that's, that's what everyone has kind of agreed.
It's become our global symbol, global ticker, and a name for our global community.
I love it, the wisdom of the crowd coming through and coming out with some terrific branding.
So as we kind of extend this, you know, A community that you built globally, you kind of started out talking about solving real world assets, particularly trade finance and tokenization of assets, you know, as things have been evolving, where do you see that? what stage are we at today?
Yes, so it's, it's even now that, you know, when, when you want to do an international transaction or you want to do a payment, even domestically or internationally, you feel like, why, why is it not there on the other side yet, and then you go and talk to the banks, you realize that it's simply because they're running. are very traditional and old systems, so their backbone is very traditional.
They're still signing a lot of papers.
Yes, they're exposed to compliances, KYCML norms.
That's OK, but they're not simply able to upgrade that using.
The very slow back end and infrastructure that they're sitting on, so trade finance payments tokenization naturally is the obvious use case for blockchain.
You, you have a single source of truth, ledger that records every transaction.
You have full transparency and visibility across the board.
You have Network that's run essentially by the network participants around the world and your transactions are final and considered truth when they occur on the network and everyone kind of agrees to that around the world.
It was initially related to individuals, but now it's the corporations, it's the financial institutions.
It's everyone out there who is using it.
I mean, imagine what kind of change it's about to bring forward to the way we do our transaction banking.
We do our digital life, you know, it's venture capital, capital markets, you know, if I have a piece of real estate sitting somewhere, it's illiquid.
Then bring the process of tokenization and you can use it for your own credit or, you know, more risk taking, setting up that infrastructure.
The possibilities are limitless, Vince, and we are just so amazed by what you can achieve with this.
I think this is where it really is an enabler.
Everyone's starting to now understand it what it would enable.
Well, it's a great segue when you're talking about people beginning to understand it, and I think what's so exciting for me and listening to you and your passion and the journey that you've been on, particularly starting from a Tradfi standpoint, most things in our world of Tradfi start institutionally.
And and migrate down to retail.
This has kind of been a flipped process where retail engagement around crypto was the starting point.
We're seeing some institutional engagement now.
Where do you see that in terms of adoption by institutions at this point?
Institutions are simply listening to the customer's voice.
So when It is said that institutions were the first originator of these kind of deals and then it passed on to retailers.
The actual workflows are different.
It's like some individual wants to, you know, buy, buy like a t-shirt shipment or get it manufactured somewhere and, you know, or a.
Or a laptop or a mobile or a car or automotive parts, right, and they are the ones like essentially a small business which used to go to the institution, go through the long process, and then be stuck with their processes, not being able to move forward, whether getting that line of credit, whether getting that.
Transaction center on the other side of the world, they are the real consumers.
So institutions are effectively voice of a larger amount of retail.
They're not institutions just by themselves.
So what crypto and blockchain has truly enabled is the voice has got the power.
The real user has got the power to transform the institutions.
So I think there is, it is unanimous in terms of.
Why the institutions will go and adopt the technology because the end users were choosing for it, this generation, the next generation, they are more comfortable using it, right?
So the institutions will have to transform with time and they have to, they have to go for it.
Well, I guess it's the epitome of the, the power of the consumer, the power of retail, the customer aggregating up to the institutions, so it makes tremendous sense, you know, one of the things I've been, I've been really anxious to ask you about.
You know, we hear the word interoperability so often and may be overused in many instances.
I think since the foundational premise of XDC, interoperability has always been a core component.
You know, how are you guys connecting the dots, you know, in this, this manifestation that we hear at Tradfi meeting Dei?
I'd I'd love to hear it firsthand.
Yeah, so it starts with getting your transactions compliant with the real world.
So today if you do a payment within the banking world, you have to go through the ISO 222 compliance process.
You have to have your compliance KYCAML.
How do you Encode that in your on a blockchain, the token movement, right?
That's one of the first ways we integrated in terms of the KYC.
That is a very critical piece in banking or corporate movements.
That is the first thing we implemented at the node level.
So all the nodes, if you want to set up a master node or be a validator on the existing network, you have to be uploading your KYC, get it authorized from third party, and get it implemented on the network to be a validator to process transactions if it is.
About getting, let's say, you know, your, your real estate or your shipment or your receivables which is sitting in literally in paper form, how do you get that data, get it tokenized, get it as a single on recorded as a single source of truth on the blockchain ledger.
So this is a lot of layers and layers of systems that were built so far in the corporate or the institutional world.
What we've done is simply.
Simplify it, you know, get it connected on the network so you don't feel like there is any difference except that it's digital.
It's, it's when I give a paper to you, say a contract to you, I have lost that paper and I've given it to you, right?
That's what a token does.
Token, it's not like sending an image to 100 people.
When I'm giving you the same contract digitally to you, I have lost ownership of it.
I'm actually handing it over to you.
So these are the things that digitally were.
Required to do a real transformation, but I think the technology that we've built is largely there in the space has enabled it.
We go in fact more last mile in enabling it and making sure that it works seamlessly across the board, whether you're doing payments or whether you are processing transactions.
It is very compliant and in line with how the traditional processes work.
Well, there's so much in that I want to pull on, but You said that so humbly and beautifully, you know, simply or simplified.
Certainly simple doesn't mean easy, right?
It's not so that last mile connectivity piece, and that really resonates with me, where you can have so much of the infrastructure built, but if you can't get that last mile connectivity, the rest of it doesn't matter.
So that that value creation and what you're doing, you call it interoperability.
Last mile connectivity really is a bit of the secret sauce, I gather.
Yeah, I mean, the, the, the last mile connectivity is where you know that it's like the winning point, you know, you have 16 to 20 cars in a Formula One race, but the fraction of a second is where the winner is decided, and this is where I think in terms of The actual traditional finance integrations that we're doing, we are, we are realizing that, OK, this is a world that, you know, was built on speculation for the technology initially, but as the times are progressing and the institutions are more receptive to working with the technology, us pushing that levels, pushing that extra fraction, pushing that limits forward and doing that last mile is a real game changer, absolutely. there's so much noise, and I like to think about it as noise doesn't make it necessarily good or bad in the entire crypto blockchain space.
We tend to look at the signal.
What's the signal that we can pull from that, you know, within that noise, what's a misconception about XTC that you would clear up if you could?
Yeah, so look, I mean, our story is very unique.
We may be.
Call one of the layer one infrastructure out there, but our story is unique in a way that Longevity wise, we are into 9th year now.
How many projects do you see?
Over 19 in 9 years.
Exactly.
So how many projects do you see?
Which have gone forward and pushed the community and pushed standards, improved themselves, have gone through experiences to reach there, enable individual use cases like payments, credit, or trade finance on real world tokenization.
We were one of the first projects which did tokenization for Air France receivables back in 2018, so one of the first real world asset enablers and execution wise doing it that early, right?
So it's about doing it.
Over and over again improving it over the period of time, I think longevity is our best answer forward as the place has gotten more mature.
Our standard of growing organically with the traditional industry is something that I think will come and play in our favor than someone who is just out there to, you know, quickly do something or create a fashion, it's not going to work.
You, you want to be part of day to day lives.
You want to be dependable, and this is how I think.
Growing organically over a period of time, pushing that last mile, delivering that value over and over again is really where EDC kind of differentiates compared to any other project out there.
Obviously you have Bitcoin, which is is like there longevity wise, you have Ethereum, but then if you look at other projects, eDC is, I mean, 9 years is a lot of time and will be there for decades to come.
It's certainly in this space, it's a lifetime. it's, you know, if we look ahead, there's so much going on that I see at XTC.
Congratulations on expansion here in the US You know, way more growth and kind of the headquarters in Dubai.
You know, is there anything that you could share with us about what's coming in 2026 partnerships initiatives that's not giving away any, any secrets yet that you can share with us?
Well, I, as much as I want to talk about it, I will have to dip my mouth a little bit till the time it's officially announced.
But look, I think all I can say is that.
When we started, it was with a lot of leap of faith, a lot of belief that this is going to work because we knew that the technology, whatever we are building, is going to be transformative truly in global finance.
Now the thing is, and we had to go and talk to a lot of these banks, corporate, ourselves, trying to hard sell them.
Now the entire picture is reversed, you know, people are coming to us.
Top 10 banks have come to us.
Top 10 corporate treasuries come to us.
Top 10 venture capital funds, top 10.
Hedge funds or private, all of them come to us to ask us how we can help them in that particular use case, and I think that is one of the biggest excitement that we have going forward and you will also see partnerships in that top 10 kind of category going with ecstasy going forward.
It's all coming together very nicely.
I think the current administration has been really pro uh technology, pro pro digital asset, pro crypto, pro blockchain.
That has helped a lot.
I think that has created a lot of it.
It was almost like a a barricade that was put together.
It wasn't like the, the financial institutions or bank didn't want to go for it.
It was just.
They were kind of put behind the barricade that don't, don't cross this line, but then on the other side you see that all the great things that you can remember, right, all the technology that you can upgrade make things easier for their customers.
So I think it's going to be the busiest time for us, really.
I mean, whatever we built with our faith and A trust, believing in ourselves for the last 89 years, and this goes to our entire community.
For the existing community.
They have been there waiting together for us, putting trust in us, so.
We are now in a phase where the corporates, banks are coming to us.
So there will be a lot of that top five integrations and partnerships that we'll start hearing about uh towards the end of this year and again next year, 2026 as well.
So everybody out there, you heard the tease here on FinTech TV.
What a cliffhanger.
We're going to have to have a tool come back as some of these announcements are being made, but some of these top 10 categories, really, really meaningful announcements coming up on XTC.
I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit, A tool, and it would be very hard for me because I like to talk.
But you know, if you can describe kind of the state of blockchain adoption going on globally right now in one word, what would it be?
I think it's like we call it a rocket launch or a takeoff that you are kind of taxiing around trying to navigate your way towards the runway, and that's that's taken all this time and then you just start to take off because you, you don't have to look back now.
So we're getting ready for liftoff.
Yes sir, I love it.
Well, Atul, such a pleasure, you know, so much insight and I truly appreciate from You know, one entrepreneur to the other, this, this long tail journey when people realize, oh my goodness, 9 years, and this is coming to be, and you're really going to the next level.
So congratulations to you, Ritesh, the entire team on the tenacity, the trust of your community, the continued growth, and really what feels like truly global liftoff for you at this point in time.
Yes, and we are, we are here in New York.
We are opening.
Up our office here, we've got a lot of interest and leads in the corporate world here as well in the financial space.
I can't tell you how excited I am, and thank you so much for inviting me here.
It's just amazing.
Our pleasure, my friend.
Thank you so much, and we'll have to have you back soon.
Great pleasure.
Thank you.
