Interview

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...

In this episode of The Blockopedia podcast, Spout co founder and CEO Marc sat down with The Blockopedia co founder Mohammad Ahmad Khan to talk about leaving investment banking for crypto, why tokenized stocks alone are not the real unlock, and how Spout is trying to give retail traders access to a borrowing structure once reserved for billionaires.Marc's path into crypto started the way it did for a lot of people in 2017, watching classmates trade during the ICO craze and deciding he had to get in himself. That curiosity carried through DeFi summer, a pile of now worthless NFTs, and eventually into a TMT investment banking career where he worked on deals like the ARM IPO while quietly funneling income into crypto side bets. After a few years, he left banking to build full time, meeting...

In this episode of The Blockopedia podcast, LuvKaizen founder and CEO Matt sat down with The Blockopedia’s co founder Mohammad Ahmad Khan to unpack nearly a decade of Web3 marketing experience, from the ICO era's advisory boom to today's KOL campaigns, and to explain why most crypto projects are still spending their marketing budgets on the wrong things entirely.Matt's road into Web3 marketing started almost nine years ago, during the first ICO boom of 2017. Back then, his first agency, KHQ, connected projects raising millions with advisors, a business that naturally evolved into KOL and influencer marketing as the industry's needs shifted. That agency eventually grew into LuvKaizen, a full circle marketing operation spanning strategy, KOL campaigns, PR and, increasingly, AI driven aut...

In this episode of The Blockopedia podcast, Venom Foundation CEO Christopher Lewis sat down with The Blockopedia’s co founder Mohammad Ahmad Khan to trace a career that runs from building Apple's earliest software duplication systems in the 1980s through chip design, medical devices, and now institutional blockchain infrastructure, and to explain why he thinks the biggest skill for the next five years is simply knowing how to use AI well.Lewis has spent, by his own reluctant admission, more than four decades in technology, starting at Apple Computer in the 1980s building the rack systems that duplicated floppy disks loaded with operating software. From there his path wound through Texas Instruments, where he helped design some of the earliest single chip mobile phones, a set top box st...

In this episode of The Blockopedia podcast, Palladium Labs founder and CEO Akash Gaurav sat down with The Blockopedia’s Co-founder Mohammad Ahmad Khan to talk about his path from IIT Bombay to Bitcoin arbitrage to building institutional grade financial infrastructure, and why he believes financing assets matters just as much as tokenizing them.Akash Gaurav's journey began far from crypto. Raised in a middle class family in Patna, he grew up around small scale entrepreneurship through his father's textile business, but technology and startups were not part of the world around him until he arrived at IIT Bombay. Joining the college's Innovation Cell in his first year, working on an autonomous car project, and watching peers build ambitious things reshaped what he expected of himself afte...

In this episode of The Blockopedia podcast, Atomiq Labs co founder and CEO Sylvie sat down with The Blockopedia’s co founder Mohammad Ahmad Khan to talk about leaving banking for crypto, building trustless infrastructure between Bitcoin and other chains, and what it actually takes to earn user trust in a space still fighting its reputation.Sylvie's entry into crypto did not follow the usual founder script. Before Atomiq Labs, she worked in banking, management consulting and fintech, often as the right hand to CEOs. That experience, she says, gave her a firsthand view of how complicated traditional finance really is, which made the pitch for decentralized systems land differently when it finally reached her.She bought her first Bitcoin in 2018 while working at a startup in Southern ...

There is a moment Justin, Head of Events at BTC Inc, keeps coming back to. In 2021, the Bitcoin conference audience watched a recorded message from Ross Ulbricht, still in prison at the time. People cried. Four years later, in 2025, Ulbricht walked onto that same stage in person, pardoned and free, to address 25,000 attendees. "That whole full circle moment," Justin said, "that's what it's all about."It is a fitting story to open with, because it captures something The Blockopedia's Co-founder Mohammad Ahmad Khan kept circling back to throughout their conversation: Bitcoin conferences are not really about Bitcoin the asset. They are about a community that shows up for each other in a way Ahmad says he has not seen replicated anywhere else on the conference circuit. From a 2,500 Person...

In this episode of The Blockopedia podcast, Pharos Network’s DevRel lead Janesh sat down with The Blockopedia’s C0-founder Mohammad Ahmad Khan to talk about what actually separates successful blockchain ecosystems from the ones quietly fading out, and why hackathons alone are not the developer growth strategy most chains think they are.Janesh's entry into Web3 traces back to a small 100 page book called Blockchain Blueprint of New Economy. Coming from a cybersecurity and infrastructure engineering background, with a long personal history exploring open networks and Tor, the idea of decentralized systems clicked almost instantly. His first real step in was the Solana India hackathon, where he did not win, but the experience pulled him into a string of hackathons across multiple ecosyste...

In this episode of The Blockopedia podcast, Pyra’s Co-founder and CEO Diogo sat down with The Blockopedia’s Co-founder Mohammad Ahmad Khan to talk about building a fintech app that lets users invest their entire paycheck into crypto and other assets, spend through credit instead of selling, and recover stronger after a major public setback with the Drift exploit.Diogo's path into crypto started early. He first heard about Bitcoin and Ethereum in high school through a friend, and instead of just trading, he went straight to reading white papers. That curiosity carried him through a computer science degree, where he experimented with DeFi spending tools, yield strategies and arbitrage trading before eventually landing in the Solana ecosystem, where he has built ever since.His first r...