Revolutionizing Finance: Ritesh Kakkad on the Future of XDC Network and Blockchain Technology

Welcome back.

My guest today is Ritesh Kaka, who's the co-founder of XDC Network.

Ritesh is a seasoned technology entrepreneur, investor, co-founder of the XTC Network, and XVC Tech.

Under his leadership, XTC Network has achieved enterprise traction in trade finance, payments, deepen, and real world asset tokenization.

Ritesh, so good to have you here at the iconic New York Stock Exchange.

It's a real pleasure to welcome you today.

Thank you, Vincent, for having me here at the New York Stock Exchange.

I'm very excited to be here.

Well, excited to have you here.

Excited to hear this story.

For our viewers who may not be familiar with XDC Network, maybe just tell us a little bit.

About the story and how you got here today, you know, 7 or 8 years later is the overnight sensation.

Yeah, so we started almost 8 years back and we realized that underlying techniques, technology is going to be very much wishful for the not only for the business but also for the larger institutions and government.

But we saw some of the problems from a tax site where the transaction time was very high, fees was very high during those sites, and the smart contract technology was prominent.

So we created a network.

We changed the consensus to two form stakes from proof of work, and we made EBM compliant blockchain networks trusted, which is like.

You know, anyone can hold RWA whether it's a stock or like bond or like tokenize assets or trade documents.

So we tried, tried and created like a trusted network for a cross border settlements and payments.

You say it so humbly, and I had the pleasure of having a conversation with you earlier.

When you talk about proof of stake, you know, you were doing this what, 7 years ago?

Yeah, 2018.

So we started during 2018 on a testament, and we are alive since 2019.

So it's one of the longest change when it comes to proof of state.

Well, congratulations.

That's, you know, having that.

You and kind of innovation so early on that that was as I say, the earliest I ever heard of.

Yeah, thank you so much.

So basically, you know, I myself and my co-founder Run, he's from a tech background.

I'm from from finance and economic background.

So we try to work out like what might be the future, the future of the technology, a future of money.

So during the.

When we gather all these thought process, we came out with uh existing network as a future of technology which is useful for the future of money and future of settlement.

Well, I want to take a, you know, that step back to the early days, leap forward, new administration here in the United States, executive orders, a whole different regulatory framework.

Maybe you can share from not only your lens at XTC, but a global lens of what you're seeing and what that may mean for us.

Yeah, so right now if you look at the last few months, it's very exciting for a blocks of technology.

If you look at A genius stimulant Act, or if you look at the anti-surveillance of CBC tax or you look at clearing Act or you look at ISO 20022 mandate around a payments company.

This all came together, so we are sitting in a way where government started supporting underlying technology.

They already realized this is the future of technology.

So this brings lots of trust from the traditional institutions, and traditional institutions, when they come into the, like, you know, started using technology, they bring with trillions of dollars of traditional money.

So it's a very exciting time for the United States, and I like to say it's the United States can be the crypto hope of the world.

Well, I think our current administration loves to hear you say that for sure.

I, you know, Ritesh, we hear a lot about tradI meeting, Defi.

Is this the moment because of regulation, because of exchange traded funds, and I'd like to get your view on exchange traded products or ETPs more broadly.

Is this the point in time where we start to see that adoption?

If you look at ETP and ETF, it started just a few months back, and after the government approval of various Bitcoin ETFs, you will see like more than 40 to $50 billion worth of traditional funds came into this digital assets.

And now I see this is just the beginning because they are sitting on like trillions of dollars of fiat money and they are looking for the new asset.

Class and during this last 6 months, you will find like, you know, people started accepting issues like that they are having reserved for Bitcoin even like United States or like UK government they started keeping Bitcoin as a reserve currency.

So we are sitting on a very interesting time and this all regulation create will bring like, you know, larger frontload in digital assets.

So fair to say, not putting words in your mouth, we may still be in the early days, very early like I give you an example.

Like if you look at the cross border settlements, banks, they settle almost like between $5 trillion to $50 trillion worth of transactions in a day.

Well if you look at a digital asset, it's not even a $1 trillion for an entire year.

So there's a huge potential for the next 5 to 10 years of time where, you know, people started realizing about the technology and they started getting more adoption around digital assets and the stable coins, especially.

Well, it makes so many of us excited to hear that and hear it coming from a pioneer like yourself who've been so influential and early in this space, you know, I'd love to get your view when we talk about RWAs or real world assets, you know, that we've heard so much about this new term in the last, you know, 12 months perhaps.

Tell me your thoughts and is XD.

Doing anything meaningful in the space.

Yeah, so, like, you know, if you look at some of the old videos 9 years back, we always focused around RWA.

In fact, RWA came very later on.

So whether it's a tokenization of gold or a tokenize of US Treasuries or tokenizer of real estates, a tokenizer of equities, all of our partners, they are doing.

So, uh, we are already doing that part on existing networks.

People started trusting and people call like, you know, enterprise and compliance friendly network as existing networks.

And in trade and finance we also, if you look at like, you know, when the ship is moving from one country to another company, uh very less financial issue like to, you know, fund those transactions.

So here we can use online technology and uh uh they can create like one example like you can create bill of lading, electric version of bill of lading and uh goods is moving from Indonesia to New York and person from some other country they can fund that transactions.

So this open up a large, large market, uh, like, you know, uh for trade finance, payments, settlements, stablecoins, RWAs.

And You know, when we talk about, I'd say there's some traditional assets going to be to some degree as gold as your reference, moving that into a blockchain smart contract format as an RWA, is that, does that increase the engagement, the new use cases, or is it frankly the fact that we can transact and move gold or its underlying asset much more easily?

So it's basically complimentary to all the traditional assets.

So gold is already like assets since hundreds of years, but now using this underlying technology we can make it more fractionalized.

We can like, you know, move gold very fastly.

We can trade fastly, we'll like, you know, efficiently when you can buy gold worth like 0.1 g as well.

So this technology isn't complimentary, like same like internet we used to do where internet like you used to do communication via postcards now through email.

It's the same thing, but like, you know, complimentary technology makes things much faster.

So that that term of it being a true evolution, not being led by technology for sure, and I don't know if it's a fair question or that we can talk about it, but I was so impressed and some of our earlier conversation about some of your approach to partnership and collaboration and some great partners that you have around the world.

Can you share any of those with us?

Yeah, so we have great partners all over the world.

So as a network, it's a global network, but we require compliant regulated partners locally.

So we have partnerships like in Japan.

We are a partner with SBI Holding, one of the biggest financial firms in.

I mean the reason we are working closely with DMCCs and EDGM UK we are working with ACA.

They are also regulated in UK.

In the US we are working closely with Securitize.

So if you look at money market funds and other like, you know, the Sea is the main platform in US right now.

So we have large, uh, even in Laam, we have like prominent partners in Brazil and other countries.

So.

It's a great partnership and we try to make it like, you know, a global network and every, even a local institutions, a regulated institute can be able to work with existing networks.

That is our main motto.

Well, amazing testimony to the approach of XTC and certainly the company that you're keeping.

So no wonder you're having such fine success, you know, Ritesh.

And without giving away any secret sauce, can you share with us a bit about what's next?

What's the roadmap looking like?

See, first of all, we are like sitting on a very interesting time, and we are also excited about tech side, you know, we did XEC 2.0 and like it's become very stable.

It's a very secure network.

Now just recently we launched ETF ETP for ACC in Europe region with Euronext 21 shares issuers for ATP.

And now the best part is we are going to apply for ETF for.

Oh wow, I hear that.

I don't know if you're hearing it first, but hearing it early.

That's exciting.

Yeah, it's a very exclusive one that we are going to launch ETF, so we are applying with SEC within like a couple of weeks.

Wow, congratulations.

I think, you know, seeing what's happened with so much of the inflows, as you referenced earlier today along the ETFs and here at the New York Stock Exchange, certainly 60% out of the of all the ETFs trade here.

So it's really wonderful to hear you talking about that, and it really becomes a testimony, I think, again, to where the market is moving around the.

Acceptance and the engagement of crypto and digital assets.

Yeah, you must be knowing about last IP of a circle in Tibet like crazy like they issued at $31 and within no time price went to $300 like 10x within like a couple of days, within a week or two, and this, like, you know, it's a total validation that institutions, they are ready.

A larger governments, they're ready.

Business is also ready to start a new technology revolution.

Well, you know, I guess that is great closing words when we think about what's really becoming this global adoption of crypto leaders like yourself getting their due and the recognition and the use cases that you're solving for.

A really a delight to have you on air today with us and share some of the insight.

Have to have you back soon and give us an update.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me here.

With pleasure to meet you.

It was a pleasure.

Thank you.