Welcome to FinTech TV.
I'm Remy Blair.
Well, Codex is a global blockchain startup building a network just for stablecoins.
While most blockchains try to do it all, Codex hopes that focusing solely on stablecoins will make cross-border payments faster and easier.
The startup emerged from stealth in April 2025 with backers including Dragonfly, Capital, Coinbase, and Circle.
Now the company is expanding in Europe as well as North America and looking to Africa to solve some of the toughest cross-border payment challenges.
Joining me here at the New York Stock Exchange is Codex co-founder Haunan Lee.
Hanan, welcome back.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you for having me again.
Good to see you.
Good to see you.
So first, for our viewers out there, tell us why you're focusing just on stablecoins.
Yeah, I think stablecoins are an inflection point for multiple reasons.
They're certainly the technical and engineering reasons and the product reasons, but I think most important is also the regulatory reasons. sable coins have been legitimized by the highest reaches of the US government in a way that is really accelerating the adoption of these instruments globally.
Yeah, in 2025 has been quite the year when it comes to regulation here in the US and if we think back to earlier this summer, we saw a circle go public here at the New York Stock Exchange.
So for US markets, there has been a lot more focus on staple coins, but I understand that you're also focusing on Africa.
So tell us why.
I think the bulk of the product market fit in stable points today is sort of frontier countries where the local financial infrastructure is not very good, and so we want to balance our approach with a mix of addressing the demand that is currently there as well as expanding the appeal of these systems so that they can address even larger market.
And so we think the product market fit here starts in these frontier countries, but it certainly doesn't end.
And I understand that you believe the real challenge is the fiat to crypto boundaries.
So what are you doing at Codex to address this?
Yeah, we're very much focused on this boundary like we've talked about in the past, and we think one key problem here is how FX is done.
The long story short, without getting too technical, the FX is done in a very inefficient and expensive way today, even for stablecoin transactions.
And so we want to focus down ruthlessly on this problem.
And create the most liquid on chain effects stablecoin facilities on codec, and we think if we do that, then you know the rest are details.
Yeah, and now while I have you here, I do want to ask you about how you're addressing privacy as well as compliance.
So what are you doing at Codex?
Yeah, I think privacy is an important feature that users will demand.
I think candidly today it's probably not in the top 5 list of things that people want.
It's something that's talked about a lot among VCs and heads of engineering and folks who are maybe a little detached from the market.
I think if you speak to folks on the market on the ground, it's very clear that privacy is a nice to have at this point.
There are bigger problems to solve.
Yeah, so tell me about those bigger problems to solve and what your focus is, especially heading into a new year.
I think we're in a very interesting moment.
So you're in this moment where these traditional tech companies think of Facebook, Amazon, Google, traditionally were these very low cost businesses that have no marginal costs certainly and no capex, and they transform me under the hood into these capital intensive, yes marginal cost businesses.
At the same time you have the emergence of these stablecoin businesses that are kind of what the old tech businesses were like, which is no capital expenditures whatsoever.
They can grow to the moon and there's no marginal cost, so I think it's a very interesting moment.
The sort of question of like what is the most important thing to be working on now?
It's to make sure that these stablecoin systems can be more useful to a larger set of people, and that means compressing the time and costs frictions.
Time and costs are somewhat interchangeable, right?
You could always prefund to mix between the two. by the end of the day, the stablecoin system today is still too hard to use for too many people, and it still only really makes sense in these extreme frontier cases.
And so things that we're working on like FX and other ways to compress costs down will make it so these systems are broadly more useful to more people.
While we are on the topic of stablecoins, we're here at the New York Stock Exchange, and it's not just financial institutions, but consumer facing conglomerates that are thinking about launching stablecoins.
So how do you think all of this will shake out eventually, especially when it comes to utility?
Yeah, I think There are sort of two prizes here, right?
The first prize is the dominant stablehin chain that will be worth trillions.
The second is the dominant stablecoin, which will be worth trillions as well.
And so I think you're seeing multiple aspirants attempt to claim both of those.
I think on the stablecoin side, there'll be many, many people who try for the bulk of them, it will not make sense.
The kind of infrastructure stacked to launch a stablecoin is becoming commoditized.
And so multiple folks will be able to launch and it will come down to a distribution game and whether or not it actually makes economic sense for that party.
So finally for viewers out there who are watching right now, why the focus on USDC?
Yeah, so we're Circle is an important partner.
We're focused on getting all the stablecoins that people want to use on a codec.
We work with non-US dollar stablecoins as well.
In fact, I think a lot of our focus in the next 6 months needs to be on enabling these non-US dollar stablecoins to become more widely used.
That we feel like is the frontier here.
The dollar stablecoin stuff, I think, is generally figured out.
So one more question before I let you go.
So when it comes to the non-dollar stablecoins, what do you think will happen not just in the new year but also beyond?
Yeah, I think one of the great mysteries of the stablecoin space is how come there are no non-dollar stablecoins.
They're issuers, right, but there's no usage of them.
And there's multiple reasons why that's the case.
I think one main reason is that there's a cold start problem.
There's not enough liquidity in these stablecoins, which means that not enough customers can use them.
And so we need to solve this cold star problem, and we have some exciting ideas of how to do so.
Yeah.
And do you think the dominant players will change or what do you expect to see?
Yeah, I think I expect to see more and more non-dollar stablecoins, and I expect to see more and more commerce happen without the dollar.
We're starting to see this in edge cases where folks in Country A will just want to convert to a Country B currency without the dollar, which I know doesn't sound like much, but is a dramatic reordering of how global commerce works.
OK, Hanna, well, I appreciate your time.
Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us here on FinTech TV.
Thanks for having me.
My pleasure.
