Many people who have bought crypto inside a wallet app have used Mercuryo without ever seeing its name. The "buy crypto" button looks like part of the wallet. Behind it, a separate company handles the identity checks, the fraud screening, the licences and the movement of money. That hidden layer is the business Mercuryo has built, and according to one of its senior executives, it is where much of the payments industry is heading as stablecoins move from trading into everyday use.On the sidelines of Token2049 in Singapore, Amreen of The Blockopedia sat down with Arthur Firstov, Chief Business Officer at Mercuryo, for the TBP Podcast. Amreen introduced Mercuryo as the company quietly powering the crypto button inside large wallets such as MetaMask, Tangem and the Bybit wallet. Over ten m...

Most blockchains change slowly. Upgrades can take years of debate, and the people who hold the tokens rarely get a direct say. Cardano has taken a different route. Its community now proposes and votes on changes on-chain, and one organisation sits in the middle of that process, helping ideas turn into decisions.On the sidelines of Token2049 in Singapore, Mohammad Ahmad Khan, co-founder of The Blockopedia, sat down with Jack Briggs, Executive Director of Intersect, for the TBP Podcast. Intersect is the member-based organisation that coordinates decision-making for the Cardano ecosystem. In a 10-minute conversation, Jack explained why he chose Cardano, how a proposal moves through Intersect, how builders can get funding, how he went from buying his first Bitcoin in 2012 to leading Inters...

Banks do not want to build a crypto desk from scratch. They want someone else to handle the wallets, the compliance and the settlement, to banking standards. That is the business Aquanow has built since 2018, and one of its co-founders says the biggest lesson was that good technology alone does not win the deal.On the sidelines of Token2049 in Singapore, Mohammad Ahmad Khan, co-founder of The Blockopedia, sat down with Andy Leung, CTO and co-founder of Aquanow, for the TBP Podcast. Over about 18 minutes, they covered Andy's move from bank capital markets into crypto, what Aquanow does for banks, its stablecoin partnership with Visa, its UAE licence, why crypto rules differ so much between countries and what keeps ordinary people from using crypto.Key TakeawaysAquanow started i...

In early 2014, David Wachsman thought Bitcoin was a scam. Two nights of arguing with the head of a New York Bitcoin exchange changed his mind. About a year later, he started what he describes as the first communications firm built for the Bitcoin industry. Twelve years on, his question is no longer whether crypto works. It is when crypto stops being a separate industry and becomes simply part of finance.On the sidelines of Token2049 in Singapore, Mohammad Ahmad Khan, co-founder of The Blockopedia, sat down with David Wachsman, Founder and CEO of Wachsman and President of Hawkeye Digital, Inc., for the TBP Podcast. In an episode of just over 19 minutes, they covered David's Bitcoin origin story, why facts matter so much in a volatile market, what Hawkeye Digital invests in, why founders...

Think about the last time you watched a big match, a concert or a DJ set on your phone. You probably scrolled through the comments and watched the stream. But did it feel like you were in the room with other people? For Christophe Dhaisne, Head of Product at Vibrez, the honest answer for most people is no. That gap, he argues, is what a new kind of social network should close.In Singapore during Token2049 week, which ran straight into the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix weekend, Amreen of The Blockopedia sat down with Christophe for the TBP Podcast at a Formula 1 event with big screens set up to watch the race. Introduced on camera simply as Chris, he used the short conversation to correct a common assumption about the company, explain what a "moment" means on Vibrez and walk through wh...

Stablecoins can move money around the world in seconds. Yet for most businesses, paying a supplier or contractor in another country is still slow, costly and hard to explain to an accountant. According to one founder, the problem is not the technology. It is the missing layer between blockchains and the way ordinary businesses work.On the sidelines of Token2049 in Singapore, Mohammad Ahmad Khan, co-founder of The Blockopedia, sat down with Lola Oyelayo-Pearson, Founder and CEO of Anyflo, for the TBP Podcast. Lola spent nearly four years at Mysten Labs, the original contributor to the Sui blockchain, after roles at Shopify and Capital One. Over 18 minutes, they covered the three problems Anyflo wants to solve, where it stands today, why Anyflo uses Sui but stays multi-chain, security, a...

For more than a decade, crypto exchanges have competed on the screen. Faster apps, cleaner charts, fewer taps to place a trade. According to one of OKX's longest-serving executives, that contest is about to change. The next big user of a crypto exchange may not be a person at all - it may be a fleet of AI agents acting on that person's behalf.On the sidelines of Token2049 in Singapore, Mohammad Ahmad Khan, co-founder of The Blockopedia, sat down with Lennix Lai of OKX for the TBP Podcast. Lennix joined OKX in 2017 after a career in traditional finance. Over 18 minutes, the conversation covered why he left Wall Street for a young exchange, why AI agents in crypto trading are now an infrastructure priority, how exchanges are turning into financial super apps, and why so many crypto excha...

In this episode of The Blockopedia podcast, LBank VP of Marketing and Partnerships Kaia Wong sat down with The Blockopedia co founder Mohammad Ahmad Khan to talk about scaling a global exchange to 55 million users across 210 countries, why LBank partnered with Pudgy Penguins and Nobody Sausage, and what actually separates an early listing from a reckless one.Kaia's path into crypto started during her studies in London, where an early curiosity about Bitcoin led her and a group of partners into global expansion, growth and fundraising work after graduation. That work put her in the room for one of crypto's largest raises, Telegram Open Network's roughly two billion dollar fundraising effort, which is where she first connected with LBank. Nearly five years later, she has helped grow the ...

In this episode of The Blockopedia podcast, TransFi VP of Risk and Compliance Payaswani Shukla sat down with The Blockopedia’s co-founder Mohammad Ahmad Khan to talk about building compliance infrastructure across 70 plus countries, why stablecoin payments raise the compliance bar rather than lower it, and what young professionals need to focus on to build a career in crypto compliance.Payaswani's entry into fintech compliance happened, in her own words, almost by accident. Starting out in KYC, KYB and light AML work, she moved through fintech, Web3 and payments companies before landing at TransFi, drawn in by the specific challenge stablecoin native payments create: transactions settle near instantly, which means compliance checks that used to happen after a transfer now have to happe...