Welcome to FinTech TV.
I'm Remy Blair.
We're here at Money 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada, and I'm joined by Amira Valani, who works on payments and stablecoins at the Sallana Foundation.
Amira, great to be with you here in Las Vegas.
Thanks so much for having me, Remi.
This is fun.
It is.
And last time we were together it was in New York at the Salana gathering, the event of 2025.
So tell me, what's changed since then?
So much has changed.
I think one of the biggest factors is that the Genius Act was signed on a bipartisan basis in July, so it's been 3 months since then, and we've just seen explosive growth in interest in blockchain more broadly and I think specifically on payments and stablecoin.
So if you look at sort of the growth in stables on Solana, the institutions that are interested, um, the new announcements that have made, these are all exploding like crazy, and I think you. it at a place like Money 2020 where I think 5 years ago you might not have seen that much talk about crypto.
If you did, it was probably about Bitcoin.
Now it's everywhere.
Everyone's talking about blockchain and people are really trying to figure out what it means for their business.
Yeah, and speaking of which, tell me about some of the conversations that you're having here at Money 2020, especially because so many organizations from established financial institutions to startups are represented here.
I think companies for years now have sort of been having loose conversations about how they might use blockchain.
Maybe it sits in like the experimental division.
Now they're really serious.
So when we're chatting with companies about how they're thinking about the use of stablecoins for their business, they're they're asking us like, can you explore all the options for us?
What does this mean in terms of pay-ins and payouts and treasuries?
How can we use this for our business?
Because one, the technology is here, 2, the regulatory perimeter is here, and 3, the infrastructure is here and we have this sort of perfect storm of all these different components coming together and actually leading to what I think will be rampant adoption in the next year.
And I'm sure this is a question you get asked a lot, but what is Solana and what are the use cases?
It's a great question.
Solana is a general purpose blockchain, and Sallana is really built to be the neutral infrastructure for all internet capital markets.
So just as the internet was a place where you can have some open access information, Salla is the place where we have one giant capital market where you can trade everything from stable coins to T-bills to tokenized real estate to stocks.
Those All in one place, a neutral global infrastructure, and that is having an effect where you have some of the most liquid capital markets and tradable assets in the world coming onto Solana and being accessible to anyone on a 24/7 basis.
Yeah, and Amira, since you focused on Deepin before and now you're focusing on payments as well as stablecoins, when it comes to internet capital markets, what is your vision?
It's a great question.
I think.
One of the things that brought me to crypto was this idea of making a more accessible financial ecosystem.
We've talked to the game as an industry for a long time about access to um financial products, about making markets more open.
These are Principles that should be able to help create more opportunity for people around the world.
Um, and while deep in, which is like, you know, how do we think about think about sort of physical assets and the uh data that they might collect or things they give us access to and put those on chain compared to something like a stable coin, um, what that means is you actually have.
Really open, transparent, neutral, really like good markets for the first time exists and and the idea that they can all exist um on the same plane, everything from basically like data that telecoms work for run on to T-bills, um, is mind blowing, right?
And I think it means that we are not working towards but well on our way of creating.
Accessible capital markets that will really make a difference in people's lives.
And Amira, we're here at Money 2020 USA and over 80 countries are represented when it comes to the attendees.
So when it comes to payments as well as stable coins, what are you most excited about when it comes to innovation and the future?
Yeah, you and I were talking a bit about this, yeah, we both have.
Um, lots of experience, uh, working in non-US markets.
I spent the start of my career in foreign policy, um, the daughter of immigrants, and I think, you know, something that we often take for granted living in the United States, um, is the accessibility of things like financial products around the world, the idea of having a currency that is stable that you can count on.
That you know, tomorrow when you wake up will be usable and I think that's why you're seeing so much adoption of things like stablecoins in non-US markets is because these things that we often take for granted in the US are vital for the betterment of, you know, people's livelihoods in places like Latin America, um, parts of Africa, parts of Southeast Asia, and so forth.
And so I think the reason that people from so many Countries are here learning about access to new products and the reason they're so excited about blockchain is, uh, it's a technology that inevitably moves towards this more accessible open playing field.
And I think you're seeing that in the conversations that play out here.
Well, Amira, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule here at Money 2020 to share your insights and tell us more about your work at the Solana Foundation.
Thank you so much, Remy.
It's a pleas to be here.
