Welcome to FinTech TV.
I'm Remy Blair.
We're live on the ground here in Miami at Consensus 2026, and I'm joined by Arthur Firstov, the Chief Business Officer at Mercuryo.
Great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me, Remy.
Well, 2026 has been quite the year across digital assets, and the theme of consensus this year is convergence.
So we have not just StradF, but also Dei and policymakers, innovators, as well as builders, and you've been attending conferences throughout the year across the globe.
So how does consensus actually feel this year?
Yeah, it's great.
It's been my 4th consensus so far, and I feel like every single year we have like more crowds coming in into the space, more.
Infrastructure crypto native companies, but also like emerging fintech, emergent payments company, which is a great narrative of this year.
And uh in comparison to other conferences, I think consensus is more institutional.
It's been always like that.
A lot of enterprises right now you see like S&P 500, like Galaxy, like a lot of people that never been like probably present in the crypto conferences before, they're all coming to consensus, which is great.
Yeah, so a lot of conversations that are happening on the ground, and I think if you think about previous years of consensus, they might have been talking about the divergence between institutional as well as the digital asset crowd.
But when it comes to some of the themes that you're focused on in terms of Mercuo, tell us what is important to you right now and why.
Yeah, for us it's been always about payments, but right now we're looking into everything like emerging tech, emerging fintech.
Stablecoins, obviously like neobanks, I think for us right now it's an interesting moment where we actually act as a sort of consultancy firm at the same time being like providing service and products to like hundreds of different partners, millions of users.
We feel like there's a great time of the market where all of the institutions, a lot of like compliance regulatory changes help us to talk to more people, talk to banks, talk to financial institutions, and Actually doing joint ventures with different other partners um on the crypto native side.
Digital asset firms, they're trying to expand into enterprises.
We are um trying to learn like what products to build, how can we be strategic partner?
Can we contribute to this product development and talk to enterprises that are trying to break into the space, um, you know, like acquire some companies, uh, do some strategic partnerships, investments as well.
So, um, this is a very interesting intersection and I think we've never been in such a great position as a company.
Yeah, and I'm glad you mentioned this because when we think about how the space is actually evolving, the digital asset space has come a long way when you look back even a couple of years ago, uh, compared to a decade.
So, given the fact that you said that you are consulting more, tell us about some of the pain points as well as the opportunities.
Yeah, this is a great question.
I think the main pinpoint right now is this kind of like a fear of a new thing.
And uh I mean it's been a great, I guess, development over the last two years from our peers, our partners in a space where they're also doing the same job as we do.
So I think one of the biggest narratives of this year is privacy and privacy in payments, privacy in the blockchain transactions, and also like privacy in the internal operations.
So a lot of companies um like our partners like your enterprise, they're doing a great job and like talking to the bank's financial.
And they're trying to learn how to integrate their software and um they kind of like uh doing this uh uh plumbing where those institutions are going to be ready to integrate even more crypto companies, even more digital asset products into their scope because they already solved this privacy layer.
And another big one I think is the um automation and um agents and there's a big narrative around like companies.
Working with each other without actually talking to people, going to the conferences, I mean, which can be like uh our future in the next couple of years.
Um, I think, yeah, there's two like super exciting, uh, uh, interesting new things we learned this year and we're trying to contribute to this.
Environment we're looking into the companies, startups as well that are trying to build these products, introducing them to more larger players like ledger and other guys, and you know, going all together and pitching enterprises and helping them to understand how to integrate digital assets.
Yeah, and finally, uh, Arthur, before I let you go, you highlighted key technologies here, as well as some of the risks as well as advantages.
So when we're talking about AI, what do you expect as we head into the future, especially when it comes to digital assets?
Where do you think we'll be safe from a year from now?
Oh, that's interesting, um.
A lot of things might change in like a couple of months, a year, you know, let me paint like imaginary future where um financial companies, um, there are like 1000 financial agents that help people to understand how to, um, I don't know, do investments, how to do um uh savings and how to operate in a new kind of like uh Uh, technological, um, um, you know, like, a breakthrough.
So I think, uh, in a year from now we can see like financial companies, um, operating in a SAS model like Stripe, and, uh, Stripe probably would be the benchmark for all of the SAS companies in the world, not only financial payments.
So those companies will be able to serve their clients, um, based on like kind of like just an agents, um.
Uh, that are, um, cooperating and collaborating with other companies that are trying to integrate those products so you don't need to talk to people.
You can just uh go and like uh purchase and make a payment with the agent and, uh, you know, from the company that's trying to purchase the service it can also an agent, so it's like the agents and um they're like doing financial operations and also like those agents will be all.
Brinded with the wallets and they sell custodial walls probably because they're programmable so we probably will see like um amazing growth in the programmable payments world where a lot of preparations will be automated and the same will be, you know, for businesses that are working with each other selling their products, selling their services it's going to be more composable it's going to be more interoperable in terms of like um.
The way how we, you know, like integrate those products as well as for users is going to be also way faster and way better, I guess, product than UX.
Well, Arthur, we don't have a crystal ball, so we'll have to wait and see.
But, well, um, before I let you go, I know that you're advising companies, not just in the US, although we're here in Miami.
So when it comes to this argument about innovation versus regulation, where do you stand?
Um, we always stand in the middle, so we always thought that we're like, uh, web 2.5, um, and we are like, we're bridging this, uh, financial, traditional finance world with a new digital asset world.
So I think, um, innovation and compliance.
It comes along together and innovators should innovate, disruptors should disrupt.
New technologies should like break into this space, and compliance usually, you know, it takes a time to build the proper framework, especially in the different countries like the US, Europe, but I think right now it's kind of like catching up and we have like a more friendly environment and more.
Interest from like larger giants and financial players in the world that are trying to catch up with this innovation as well.
So we have more support.
We have like more people willing to collaborate and work together.
So now I think it's again a great timing to be super excited.
Well, Arthur, great talking to you on the ground at Consensus Miami.
So thank you so much for your time and thank you so much for sharing all of your insight.
Thank you very much, Rey.
