Inside the Future of Web3 Infrastructure, DePIN & Finance with Aptos, Helium, Gemini & Ammalgam

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In this special live edition of The Edge of Show (formerly Edge of NFT), co-host Josh Kriger broadcasts from Token 2049 Singapore, where the global Web3 crowd has compressed into a few electric city blocks. This episode dives deep into how leading builders are turning narrative into execution across the Token 2049 Singapore ecosystem.

Josh sits down with Avery Ching, Co-Founder & CEO of Aptos Labs, to explore how the Aptos Layer 1 evolved from Meta’s DM blockchain and Move language into a high-assurance, low-fee global settlement layer. From there, we shift to Frank Mong, COO of Helium at Nova Labs, who shares how Helium’s decentralized network is powering free mobile plans, offloading traffic for major telcos, and scaling beyond the original IoT experiment.

Next, Saad Ahmed, Head of APAC at Gemini, breaks down why Token 2049 Singapore sits at the crossroads of fragmented regulation, institutional adoption, and real crypto users across Asia. Finally, Will Fey, founder of Amalgam, explains how a decentralized lending exchange with “dual-purpose pools” and “impermanent gain” could redefine risk, revenue, and sustainability in DeFi.

If you want a grounded snapshot of where Web3, DeFi, and decentralized infra are really heading post–Token 2049 Singapore, this episode is a must-listen.

Key Topics Covered

• Aptos Blockchain Origins and Institutional Trust at Token 2049 Singapore
  How Aptos Blockchain emerged from Meta’s DM experiment and Move language, why security and formal verification matter, and how that foundation convinced institutions like BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Apollo to build on Aptos after Token 2049 Singapore.
• Stablecoins, RWAs, and Programmable Money on Aptos
  Why stablecoins are the first real breakout RWA on-chain, how Aptos supports major stables like USDT, USDC, PYUSD, USDE, and USD1, and how Token 2049 Singapore conversations are shifting toward programmable FX, automated conversions, and near-frictionless cross-currency settlement.
• AI Agents, Automation, and Next-Gen DeFi Strategies
  Avery Ching details a future where AI agents rebalance portfolios on Aptos every few minutes, leveraging ultra-low transaction costs, diversified DeFi rails, and personalized risk profiles—an idea that dominated side conversations all over Token 2049 Singapore.
• Helium, Nova Labs, and Decentralized Mobile at Token 2049 Singapore
  Frank Mong walks through Helium’s journey from a million IoT hotspots to Zero Plan free mobile service, why telcos like T-Mobile, AT&T and Telefónica are integrating Helium, and how pilots in Mexico and beyond reflect the global momentum visible at Token 2049 Singapore.
• Deep Dive into Amalgam’s Decentralized Lending Exchange
  Token 2049 Singapore is a proving ground for new DeFi primitives; Will Fey explains Amalgam’s “dual-purpose pools,” how lending and DEX liquidity live in one structure, why impermanent gain flips the usual LP narrative, and how multiple audits underpin protocol safety.
• Gemini’s View on Asia, Regulation, and Builders
  From the Token 2049 Singapore main stage to private meetups, Saad Ahmed outlines how Asia’s fragmented regulation still breeds concentrated builder communities, how MEV of talent is shifting from Web2 to Web3, and why spot Bitcoin ETFs and clearer U.S. policy changed institutional behavior globally.

Episode Highlights

1. “We used the DM blockchain and Move to design infrastructure that could support billions of people — Aptos is that evolution into a public, high-assurance global trading engine.” – Avery Ching
2. “Our free Helium mobile plan isn’t about crypto bros; it’s about everyday people getting connectivity and freedom through a decentralized network they help power.” – Frank Mong
3. “Spot Bitcoin ETFs made it drastically easier for institutions to allocate. After that, the ‘institutions are coming’ narrative at Token 2049 Singapore finally matched reality.” – Saad Ahmed
4. “I came up with dual-purpose pools so assets could behave like Uniswap LPs and like Aave collateral at the same time — one pool, two revenue engines.” – Will Fey
5. “The teams that last in this industry are the ones who are honest about their failures and iterate quickly. We’ve failed a lot on the way to disrupting a multi-trillion-dollar telco sector.” – Frank Mong

People and Resources Mentioned

• Aptos Labs
• Helium Network
• Nova Labs
• Gemini
• Amalgam
• Token 2049 Singapore
• Meta (Facebook)
• BlackRock
• Franklin Templeton
• Apollo Global Management
• Tether – USDT
• Circle – USDC
• PayPal USD (PYUSD)
• T-Mobile
• AT&T
• Telefónica
• Movistar
• Uniswap
• Aave
• Gemini APAC Telegram – Gemini_APAC

About Our Guests

Avery Ching – CEO & Co-Founder, Aptos Labs

Avery Ching is the Co-Founder and CEO of Aptos Labs, the team behind the Aptos Layer 1 blockchain. Before Aptos, Avery spent a decade at Meta, where he led large-scale data infrastructure and later became the overall tech lead for Meta’s Web3 infrastructure, including the DM blockchain and the Move smart contract language. His experience designing systems that process exabytes of data per day directly informs Aptos’ focus on safety, scalability, and reliability. At Token 2049 Singapore, Avery highlights how Aptos is becoming a trusted settlement layer for major institutions, stablecoins, and AI-powered DeFi strategies.

Frank Mong – COO, Helium (Nova Labs)

Frank Mong is the Chief Operating Officer at Nova Labs, the founding team behind Helium. With a background in cybersecurity and go-to-market leadership, Frank has helped grow Helium from an ambitious IoT experiment into a global decentralized network with around a million hotspots at peak. Under his leadership, Helium expanded into consumer connectivity with Helium Mobile and the Zero Plan — a free U.S. mobile phone plan powered by both the Helium network and partner carriers. At Token 2049 Singapore, Frank shares lessons from scaling decentralized infrastructure, partnering with giants like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Telefónica, and driving real-world adoption across borders.

Saad Ahmed – Head of Asia Pacific, Gemini

Saad Ahmed is the Head of Asia Pacific at Gemini, where he leads the exchange’s regional strategy across regulatory engagement, institutional relationships, and product localization. Saad’s background spans consumer tech and scaling operations at companies like Uber and Grab across India and Southeast Asia. His transition into crypto started as a personal journey from gold to Bitcoin, deepened through obsessive learning during COVID, and evolved into an executive role at Gemini. At Token 2049 Singapore, Saad explains how Asia’s fragmented regulation still supports dense clusters of builders, how spot Bitcoin ETFs unlocked institutional flows, and why education and local rails remain core to Gemini’s APAC playbook.

Will Fey – Founder, Amalgam

Will Fey is the founder of Amalgam, a decentralized lending exchange designed to merge DEX-style liquidity with lending protocol mechanics. By introducing concepts like “dual-purpose pools” and “impermanent gain,” Will and his team aim to expand lending markets to assets that can’t easily list on legacy protocols while keeping risk managed through design and audits. Amalgam is launching on Sonic, with support for Ethereum mainnet planned, and has undergone multiple security audits to prepare for production. At Token 2049 Singapore, Will breaks down how Amalgam’s revenue model, risk engine, and pool design could offer more sustainable token economics for DeFi participants.

Guest Contact Details

Avery Ching – Aptos Labs

• LinkedIn Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/averyching/
• Website Link: https://www.aptoslabs.com/

Frank Mong – Helium / Nova Labs

• LinkedIn Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/frankmong/
• Website Link: https://www.helium.com/
• Twitter Link: https://x.com/fmong

Saad Ahmed – Gemini

• LinkedIn Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saad-ahmed-6007001/
• Website Link: https://www.gemini.com/

Will Fey – Amalgam

• LinkedIn Link: Not publicly listed
• Website Link: https://amalgam.xyz/

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Transcript:

Avery Ching: We can really connect to customers and solve real user problems and I think with the technology we build and so I think that's what drew me into the project. I started off as the consensus lead for the project, grew to become the overall tech lead for the Web3 infrastructure at Meta and we kind of built this amazing new technology which was the DM blockchain and the move language and a new way to think about how you program smart contracts.
Saad Ahmed: And I think you're seeing really incredible talent coming into this industry from across the spectrum. Traditional finance, fintech, consumer tech, and I think all of that talent coming in is just amazing for the industry because people are building great use cases. That for me is a great sign of, you know, continuing progress for us, the ones who are in this industry.
Frank Mong: What we did was we decided, okay, let's figure out how to make this type of network work for everyday people. And so what we did was we really focused in on how do you get value to the average consumer, not a techno, forget the crypto bros, but how do we benefit everyday users, right?
Will Fey: I came up with dual-purpose pools because I wanted to say, like, hey, these assets could be used like Uniswap would use them, but also the way that Aave uses them, right? And so these pools of assets are used in a dual-purpose way.
Intro/Outro: Welcome to The Edge of Show, your gateway to the Web3 revolution. We explore the cutting edge of blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFTs, ordinals, DeFi, gaming and entertainment, plus how AI is reshaping our digital future. Join us as we bring you visionaries and disruptors pushing boundaries in this digital renaissance. This show is for the dreamers, disruptors and doers that are pumped about where innovation meets culture. This is where the future begins.
Josh Kriger: Hi, everyone, welcome back to the Edge of show live at Token 2049 in Singapore. I am so honored to be here today with Avery Ching, the CEO and co-founder of Aptos Labs. Great to have you on the show to be here. So you guys kind of came out of nowhere and caught sort of global attention for what you're doing. And I want to sort of break down where you're at now in the sort of evolution of Aptos. It started more focused on analytics for meta and then to building this L1 with some pretty novel use cases. Can you tell us a little bit about that journey that got you here?
Avery Ching: Yeah, it's been a long journey, actually. So some backstory. I used to work at Meta. I was there for 10 years prior to this. And my first seven years, I worked in data infrastructure. So when you go to the Facebook web page, you click a like button or hit a comment. The first thing that happens is a server records that and kind of sends it to some internal databases and then that data is then processed and used for insights to record things like daily active users or monthly active users or like, you know, other things like about how product development is protected through systems. That is like actually going through exabytes of data per day, which is crazy. And that's the systems I used to work on, which are great. Sometime in 2018, though, there was a kind of call for like, we want to do something interesting in blockchain space. We don't know exactly what. And, you know, first, I wasn't actually that interested. But after meeting some of the people on the team, I felt like this is a really nice way to think about, you know, instead of just scaling systems and making them really performant and helping products. We can really connect to customers and solve real user problems, and I think with the technology we build. And so I think that's what drew me into the project. I started off as the consensus lead for the project, grew to become the overall tech lead for the Web3 infrastructure at Meta. And we kind of built this amazing new technology, which was the DM blockchain, and the move language, and a new way to think about how you program smart contracts. The design point was, you know, Facebook's got a billion people by itself coming to their products every day, but what about Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, Uber, Lyft, and others? If you add up some of those customers in the consortium of what the Libra Association was supposed to be, it was going to be basically the world.
Josh Kriger: And on that point, obviously Matter has been a driving force in sort of augmented reality, XR technology. Is that sort of something you think about too in terms of the future of commerce and fintech and sort of, or is that just sort of something you're watching and observing and sort of thinking about like there might be an opportunity to integrate later?
Avery Ching: I think the goal of Facebook, or Meta now, is very simple, which is how do you connect people around the world? And Facebook was kind of the first product to do it. You have Instagram, you have others, WhatsApp, Messenger, all those good products and groups. And so there's a natural expansion of now virtual reality kind of being another way to connect people in a virtual universe. I think about crypto and blockchain technology as something very similar. We're really connecting each other through the asset transfers, through the ability to kind of interact without, you know, permissionlessly, but trustlessly as well, and then really be able to transact on a more like a financial or value-based use case. So do you need virtual reality in a crypto world? I think virtual reality is just like a, it's a form factor, right? Like it's, there's no doubt that any kind of way that humans communicate, we transact with each other. We've been bartering since the beginning of time. Trading systems are not new, right? They, you know, the first humans socially interacted and start to barter and then trade, you know, whatever it was. We're a mercantile civilization. We are. Right. And so this is like the kind of core fundamental thing that blockchain really is built and meant for and that's what Optus is built for, which is to be the global trading engine.
Josh Kriger: And on that point, you've onboarded BlackRock and Franklin Templeton and Apollo. What do you think it is about Optus that they feel more confident, comfortable sort of, you know, getting on a new train?
Avery Ching: I think the first thing you think about blockchain infrastructure is the security of the code, and also the security of the network, and also the people you're working with, fundamentally. Because this infrastructure is securing billions and billions of dollars, and ideally trillions in the future. you know, one mistake actually can cause, you know, the entire system to fall apart. And so that's, well, these institutions have to take a look, hard look at the way that security is thought about, the way that processes are put in place to prevent hacks and, you know, other kinds of attacks. And I think this is where the BlackRocks and Finite Attempts have seen what we've built, the structure that we think about, and also just our background working in high assurance kind of industries to give them a lot of confidence that Aptos is the place for them to build on.
Josh Kriger: So there's a lot of different use cases for blockchain that are emerging from RWAs to all sorts of deep end projects to tokenization of actually even equity. Is there one particular lane that you think has the best fighting chance of getting us to the masses or is it just a conglomeration of all the above?
Avery Ching: The first one of these RWAs that is starting to really pick up adoption has been Stablecoin. We've seen what USDT and others have done in this space to prove that a business model can be built there and also that a use case is prevalent with all the utility that's been brought to customers around the world. But it's just a start, right? There are many new stables coming out. Yesterday we just announced that USD1 from World Liberty 5 is coming to Aptos, but Aptos has got five of the largest stables there. USDT, USDC, USDE, PYUSD, and now USD1, right? And I think that asset issuance, going back to your previous question, it shows like the confidence that these asset issuers have putting billions of dollars onto a network and having that be the point of transaction and settlement.
Josh Kriger: Are you comfortable with there being a thousand different stable coins on your chain at some point? Or are you more into a refined sort of focus on the tier ones with the most liquidity?
Avery Ching: I think that, you know, it's a permission network, first of all, so anyone can add whatever staples they want. We can't stop them, right? That's true, yeah. That's the beauty of it, right? The other thing is, I think what we're going to see is rails that allow people to kind of not to think about it too much. So the benefit of putting staples on chain is it's now programmable money.
Josh Kriger: Could you theoretically, yeah, I mean, I haven't thought about that yet, but is there a world where you're converting from, you know, ease to stable and AI or automation chooses the best rate stable in that moment across the whole spectrum?
Avery Ching: That's exactly the world we're thinking about. Like, imagine today your wallet, right? Like you have maybe a couple of US dollars in it, right? you know, automatically every time you open it, it's got something that you need, right? So you're in Europe, you need a Euro, it just pops out. If you are, you know, here in Singapore, Singapore dollar pops out. Like that's the advantage of programming.
Josh Kriger: That'd be great. Cause like, you know, we have clients that want to start transacting USDT and our bank currently accepts USDC. And it's like, I don't want to go through the hassle of swapping. And you know, if it's a high gas day paying three to $20 of extra fees,
Avery Ching: You hit on the point perfectly, right? This is why the cost of the network is really, really important, right? So today in Aptos, we're the cheapest by far, hundredth of a cent to transact. So that change of like currency that happens in your wallet is almost free. The minimus. And now you can like money is almost fungible between all these different types of fiat, which is amazing.
Josh Kriger: So you've said in the past that automation is one of the missing pieces of DeFi. Can you unpack that for us a little bit more?
Avery Ching: So I think a lot of times people think about crypto and purse markets and spot markets as like this almost a casino gambling type approach. But we see the future of this as also like more of an investment platform, the way you think about traditional equities and traditional markets. I think the next step we had, we had robo advisors back, I think a couple of years ago, they were really hot, right? Betterment and others that would invest your money for you. But the future to me is like AI agents that are now using these kind of crypto native products, the next generation perpdexes and spotdexes between both lines, things like Aptos, to then manage your money in a way that just can be matched in traditional equities markets. Instead of having a QQQ, you can actually create your own portfolio with an agent that rebalances it. on a hourly basis, on a five minute basis, depends on the cost, of course, because these have transaction fees, but in a very low cost network, you can do it so fast and so quick.
Josh Kriger: There's, at this point, close to unlimited possibilities for what to do from a DeFi perspective, from a staking perspective. Of course, it comes with different bridges, different risk levels. Do you think AI can sort through all of that moment to moment? And if you say, I want a high but tolerable risk, agile approach to managing my finances, and this is a minimum yield, this is a maximum yield, go to town, that it'll be able to do that?
Avery Ching: Oh, absolutely. I think as long as you can get the parameters to AI and the assets are available on chain to go trade against, we can construct portfolios that are really tailored to the individual as opposed to these more like mutual funds or things that are kind of a broader based front.
Josh Kriger: So obviously, you know, like I think of some of the Fidelity Mutual funds, it's all so big, they became unwieldy. Or an episode of that show, The Jetsons, where everyone gets real time data that one Skylane is busy and they go to the other and then that one becomes busy. Is there a risk? of in this competitive world of basically causing a run on every underperforming asset where there's this tier of sort of top 0.1% that everyone starts piling their money and everyone else sort of gets like left in the dust. I'm just thinking about this extreme use case when you share that.
Avery Ching: Yeah, I mean, there definitely are going to be some kind of interesting scenarios that are possible. Like, you know, I know a very common strategy in crypto is to like loop, right? You kind of deposit these LPs, you then kind of use the LP tokens to then kind of deposit again and kind of play these back, which definitely add a lot of risk to the system. But I think that's kind of the interesting points of crypto, which are like a bit more freedom in terms of the way people think about what's possible. There definitely be safeguards put in place. I think those safeguards actually are best implemented by those agents, actually, as well as institutions to kind of say, like, look, you can do this. And either we won't offer that to you, you can do it some other way, or you can do this, but you should understand the risk associated with it. No different than, say, like a margining product when you think about like using Fidelity or Swap or something like that.
Josh Kriger: Makes sense. Let's shift gears for a moment to the consumer side of Aptos. Sorry. Aptos. Aptos. Aptos. I've said it the other way so many times in my life that I have to get comfortable with Aptos.
Avery Ching: So it's actually based on a small town. The name is Aptos, about an hour south of the Bay Area. And that's the way they pronounce it. Aptos. So I think that's what we go with.
Josh Kriger: Right on. So there's cultural implications to gaming and NFTs and sort of how that interacts with society from a collectible perspective, also from a commerce perspective. You know, I've been having some engaging conversations with Yat, who's also going to be on the show in an hour. I don't know if we'll air before or after this, but like around sort of this look nfts are still 600 million dollar a year business um so i don't know how i don't know what industry is worth that much is is dead but but what are the sort of implications for you think in a consumer hybrid economy at this point forward like where does blockchain fit in and do you envision the brands that sort of dip their toe in the water and said No, this is too cold or, you know, I can't see the bottom. I'm out. Are they going to come back now in a similar fashion as the church, the institutes that are joining the party?
Avery Ching: This is a really good question. I think my view for NFTs is that they're based on these kind of speculative cycles early on. And I think that that's faded to some degree. I still think, though, that the idea of tokenized yield and incentives is actually a really powerful one. And it's actually in the similar vein. But the future is going to be like people going to construct portfolios. For example, the things we talked about, having the investment. You can imagine now being able to just kind of invest into a liquidity pool where the asset manager is actually implementing these strategies on chain and then passing the yields back to customers, which then you might have a way to represent that as an NFT, like a certain fractional ownership of that vault, for example.
Josh Kriger: It also it also seems like it would shift the sort of tradability of NFTs where it's, you know, going to the grocery store and having to pick out every banana, every apple that you want is is is time consuming. I'd rather just have a cart and hit go and have someone else do the shopping for me. It sounds like that's going to be possible as well.
Avery Ching: Yes. So you're talking like much more fungible kind of entities in some sense. Right. And so I think that is definitely easier for customers to get on board with. To your point on institutions and enterprises, I think we're absolutely seeing them come back into the space. Some of them have been burned before are going to be maybe a slower. But that's OK, because there are many others that are that haven't been burned in the past that are kind of very excited about the use cases of crypto, especially for the finance use cases.
Josh Kriger: Right on. We've covered a lot, and I really appreciate all your insights. Any closing thoughts or hot takes on things that you've been thinking about a lot lately, personally?
Avery Ching: One thing we haven't talked about much, but I think is interesting, is the cloud infrastructure space. It's a $300 billion a year industry. It's growing 30% year over year. It's definitely ripe for disruption with decentralization technology. It's something we're working on to solving. Given my background, I used to work on supercomputers in my PhD. Quantum? No, not quantum, but like large scale, like Sandia, Los Alamos, and Argonne. Things like, for instance, how we do safe nuclear simulation of the stockpile. Things like that. So I think that the cloud space, you know, we want to build storage systems and compute systems and even kind of service infrastructure on top of it that can support use cases that just aren't possible in today's industry. And it's a tremendous opportunity. We're working on a project called Shelby alongside Jump Crypto, our partners in this project, to kind of build out the world's first hot storage system. that can be like the first to tensorize TikTok, YouTube, support AI models and data sharing, and also support enterprise use cases for cloud. So that's an area I think that's ripe for disruption and we're very excited about it.
Josh Kriger: Very cool. Avery, obviously people can go to Aptos on just Google and find your shortening and what's your exit account? It's Avery Ching. All right. Thank you so much for your time today. I hope your week at Token is fruitful and we've fallen along on some of these exciting initiatives.
Avery Ching: Really enjoyed this. Thank you so much.
Josh Kriger: Hi everyone, this is Josh Trigger, co-host of The Edge of Show, live at Token 2049. We are in Singapore, it's day one. Josh, thanks for having me.
Frank Mong: Pleasure to meet you.
Josh Kriger: I am so excited to be here with one of the sort of true leading edge companies in the space, Helium. I have Frank Mong, who is the Chief Operating Officer at Nova Labs, which is the sort of growth incubator accelerator sort of association. I'm probably probably you'll explain it more, but they're sort of powering the helium network, which is obviously decentralized. And it's so great to have you on the show.
Frank Mong: Josh, thanks for having me. Pleasure to meet you.
Josh Kriger: So I probably didn't do justice to what exactly Nova Labs is. So I'll let you take over the mic.
Frank Mong: Yeah, the best way to think about Nova Labs is it's a holding company, essentially, that the original founding team of Helium started to continue to accelerate usage of the Helium network. So we don't actually expose the name Nova Labs all that often. I just say I'm the COO of Helium. And everything we do is really meant to drive growth in the Helium ecosystem.
Josh Kriger: Yeah. So when Helium came out, it was a truly novel concept around sort of this idea of mixing sort of physical infrastructure to create a node network essentially for a task. How is the original Genesis concept of Helium evolved? And what are some of the biggest lessons you learned along that journey?
Frank Mong: Yeah, no, Helium started actually quite a while ago. It's a pre-crypto company in 2013. And the actual purpose of starting the company, which is still the vision today, is really to just connect everything and give access to everyone. and access to what? To the internet, to freedom, to freedom of expression. And so that continues to be sort of our ethos and what drives us as an ecosystem is to find ways to incentivize everyone else to share, share access. In this case, share access to the internet. And so in the early days, for those that watch the show and remember Helium from 2019, we started with something called IoT, Internet of Things, network. And the way that worked was everyone, anyone, you and your neighbors, your friends and family, can buy this little thing called Helium Hotspot. put it by the window in their home, and that would then plug and play share internet to internet of things devices out in the wild, like fire sensors, scooter trackers, dog and pet trackers, to government usage for like streetlights, smart meters, smart city applications. And so that was in 2019. That network grew massively. during the COVID times of 2020, 2021?
Josh Kriger: Actually, it may or may not. I don't know. But what it did do is it grew globally to about a million hotspots around the world and across
Frank Mong: I don't know, 200 something countries and 80,000 cities. And that was at the peak and the height of the network itself. And because the network was so pervasive and it was owned by individuals sharing and they're earning the crypto token HNT while doing so, it really created this idea that a two-sided marketplace of supply and demand could actually come together and work. And then of course, yeah.
Josh Kriger: I mean, it worked, but there were some challenges. I mean, you were breaking new ground in a huge way. So what were some of the lessons learned around how to make the mechanics work even better?
Frank Mong: Yeah, I think scale was a big problem. We launched a network with bare minimum MVP, minimum viable product, and we basically launched and learned as we launched. With the whole world watching. With the whole world watching, but also with our own L1, with a Helium blockchain that we thought, oh gosh, if this got to 10,000 nodes, It would be amazing. And we ran the actual blockchain on these little hotspots, which were essentially Raspberry Pis. I mean, it's not a whole lot of compute. It has wireless connectivity. It has its own purpose of discovering coverage and making sure that you do checks and balances across that network coverage. But it wasn't really meant to do that in, we called it swarm at the time, talk across the network at a scale beyond like 10,000. And we hit 100,000 hotspots globally so quickly, we were just hair on fire. And when we hit a million, we were barely surviving.
Josh Kriger: I remember waiting for my minor. It was like a couple month delay. Like there was so much to me.
Frank Mong: And I was so excited to get it. You know, it's a it's kind of interesting because that that kind of delay, which was caused by outside forces of us, it was COVID times.
Josh Kriger: I did some manufacturing right before COVID.
Frank Mong: And yeah, I mean, it's but that that FOMO created more demand, oddly. And what happened was, and I don't think people understand understood this. Well, we open sourced everything. So we were not making hotspots. It was made by third parties who took our open source designs, built a product, and sold it to consumers. But everyone thought it was us. It wasn't. And we didn't make any of that money either. So that was like a lot of millions of dollars going to a lot of other companies and not us. Those are some of the details I think people don't understand when you open source.
Josh Kriger: When you look back, would you have also had your own device?
Frank Mong: We did have it in the very beginning because no one believed us. So we built, call it like... But it was too complicated to go it.
Josh Kriger: I mean, to be a blockchain company and a manufacturing company at the same time, it's complicated.
Frank Mong: It's too hard to do it all. And it's hard to do it all well. And so certainly those were some of the challenges we had to grow into and grow out of.
Josh Kriger: So fast forward, this year you launched the Zero Plan, which is the first free U.S. mobile phone. How does that sort of extend sort of the original vision and what was sort of the thinking behind that? What's been the results so far?
Frank Mong: Yeah, so from the success of the IoT network of 2019-2020, what we did was we decided, okay, let's figure out how to make this type of network work for everyday people in their phones. And so what we did was we really focused in on how do you get a get value to the average consumer, not a techno, forget the crypto bros, but how do we benefit everyday users, right? And so what we thought was, look, let's get into a system where phone plans could be free. And so we launched a free phone plan. You get three gigs of data. You get talk and text that works all across the United States. No strings attached, no credit card needed. And that plan runs both on T-Mobile, our partner, as well as the Helium network. So it really straddles both networks. And it switches independently and freely, and you as a user don't see any change. And so that Helium mobile phone plan, I think, really helped us get into the consumer world. And it's like three, 400,000 subscribers now, both free, paid, $15, $30 plans. And it's operating across the United States, running on both the Healing Network and the T-Mobile network. How is it free? Where is that? So now we get into the crypto economics underneath that. How can it be free? How do we afford that? There's a underlining smart contract beneath the plan that says that if you're a free user, you're sharing your location with the chain, and for doing so, you're earning crypto HNT. So we don't expose that to the user. We keep the HNT, they get a free phone plan, but they get something else. We give them something called points, like cloud points, where they can redeem that for like a $5, $10 gift card at Starbucks.
Josh Kriger: But, you know, I did some work with disadvantaged individuals in the D.C. area and homeless, and having a free phone plan, it's life-changing. I mean, it's almost, I mean, on Maslow's hierarchy of needs for humanity at this point, a mobile phone's pretty, pretty essential. Next to food and water. Yeah. And it is probably internet. And housing, but I think some people would trade shelter for a phone. I believe you.
Frank Mong: Yes.
Josh Kriger: So so it's what's what was the response from from the consumers and the demand so far?
Frank Mong: Yeah. So right now, demand is off the charts. So we probably get about fifteen hundred two thousand net new subscribers every day. This is daily. So it's the only limitation for us is just a matter of awareness, really getting the brand out there, making sure people know about it.
Josh Kriger: And from a scaling perspective, is there a ceiling here in terms of how many folks? What if the whole world wants to use this?
Frank Mong: Yeah, I mean, really, I would say the only limiting factor is probably cost, their operating costs from our perspective. But as long as the crypto token HNT goes up, I think we can cover it.
Josh Kriger: And so next you're spending to Mexico. What made you choose Mexico?
Frank Mong: Yeah. Well, one of our investors is Telefonica. It's a telco based out of Spain and they operate globally. They have a cell phone company called Movistar in Mexico. And for them, what they wanted was a cheaper alternative to cell towers. And so our network model is perfect for this. The cost of network building is defrayed across hundreds of thousands of people instead of one entity. And the sharing of the Internet, as long as it's good enough quality, works well for everyone. And so Telefonica came to us to say, look, we need to like find an alternative to our current network. And we think this helium model might work. So we tested that in a walk in Mexico. So it worked well. They came to you. They came to us. Yeah. And we got things going. And now the deal is we signed a deal with them where they're going to migrate about two million subscribers to the healing network in Mexico. But they are a telco. And it takes a long time. So we're just in the process of working through all the details with them to get that to happen.
Josh Kriger: Do you have aspirations of sort of reaching third world developing countries, getting into Africa and other places that, you know, truly need this service?
Frank Mong: Yeah, and as you noted earlier, everyone needs it. Internet is like probably top three things you want as a human being. And so it's important everywhere. And we'll go wherever the demand is. And so we're finding that as we continue to expand and as AT&T now uses our network, T-Mobile uses our network, Google Fi uses the healing network in the United States as well. As you get more and more of those types of large entities driving a lot of traffic into the network, we start to get inbound demands from everywhere in the world. And so now we're actively doing pilots across the globe to start to get this really going.
Josh Kriger: Cool. It's got to be satisfying to know that you all pioneered a new industry, and the term D-PEN, Decentralized Physical Infrastructure, came up along the way. I guess it was an alternative to people saying the helium of X or Y or Z, and everyone was using your brand for a while, because it was the easiest analogy, right? What was it, I guess, what's been the experience been like of having that sort of on your shoulders, that you guys essentially progressing an entire new industry? How's that feel?
Frank Mong: Yeah, it's interesting you asked it that way, because I don't think I ever thought of it that way, as an industry or about us. It's always been about the mission at hand, which is creating access for everybody in the world. How do you do that? What is the best way to approach that? And we think creating the last mile, which is how people connect to the internet and making sure that's available for all at the lowest possible cost, near free, if not free. That's probably the biggest thing we can do for the world. So I think from our point of view, we measure ourselves at that level of what are we doing to add value to the person that needs access to the phone? Are we able to provide that? What are we doing to incentivize everyone else to share their internet with others? Like if we can balance that correctly and we get that to work well, then an ecosystem can thrive and everyone can make something via the cryptocurrency HNT. And so that's always been like, Our ethos is to push that way, whatever you want to call it. Is that the helium kind of system or is that a deep end system? Or is that a deep end industry? I don't really think that's like what's going to make us survive or what's going to make us win or lose. I think it's how well we add value to both sides of that ecosystem. And if we continue to drive a ton of value, we'll win as a whole.
Josh Kriger: And obviously there are some folks in the industry that are doing some really exciting things with drones and with other use cases for a physical node network. um do you do you see all these potential projects being interoperable at some point in the future i mean this idea of like blockchain agnostic uh this is sort of coming about where uh the next there is no layer ones there is no layer twos um and like i guess what what do you think might be possible when you think about the realm of robotics and quantum and in AI with sort of this movement.
Frank Mong: Yeah, I think my point of view here is really more about where do all these technologies you talked about, where does it meet when it comes to value? realization for individual. We're very much like direct-to-consumer focus, both on, I would say, the usage side as well as the network side and the connectivity side. And from my perspective, it's really, as an individual, if you think about yourself or you think about others, what is the creative value to them? Like, if today, you're the one that's able to provide the best connectivity at the lowest cost, And it's like one of the basic needs of, you know, that person. What else can you add on to that? What makes sense? So I think less about applications, like there are great other deep end applications like HiveMapper or Demo, right?
Josh Kriger: What's that one, dude?
Frank Mong: DEMO. DEMO? DEMO is like car statistics. OK. And how it integrates with smart cities. And so interesting concepts. But again, at the end of the day, how does all of that help the individual? And what do they get out of it as a whole? So from my perspective, I think less about the tech and I think more about the lifestyle aspiration that they might have. And how do we help them reach that aspiration? And so that's sort of how I see the world. And that's how I treat everything from phone plans to whatever critical application that that person might need.
Josh Kriger: Are you guys integrating like AI software into the plan? I know like Apple's been having trouble taking Siri to the next level. Are you thinking about when you're talking about making being human easier, AI certainly qualifies for that job.
Frank Mong: Yeah, we haven't done anything specific on the consumer side directly to the consumer, but we do a ton on the network side and how we unload or offload network loads. Our work with AT&T heavily leans on AI in all the stuff we do, because AT&T users offload onto Helium. They use Helium network when available. Is T-Mobile and AT&T connected? T-Mobile and AT&T are not, but AT&T and T-Mobile are connected to us.
Josh Kriger: Okay, so you work with them.
Frank Mong: Oh yeah, yeah. And so I think the value prop of our network and how it can be a great trusted Wi-Fi network for a large company like AT&T, that's achievable only because we use a ton of AI in there.
Josh Kriger: So moving forward five years into the future, obviously we talked about this idea of giving these phones to everywhere where there's demand. What's sort of your broader vision for where things go from here? I mean, I think you guys have been around for how long?
Frank Mong: Well, the company's been around for 12 years. 12 years. We've been crypto native for eight.
Josh Kriger: So yeah, so five to eight years from now, where do you see helium?
Frank Mong: Yeah, I think Helium would be operating in multiple countries. It may not be us specifically operating. Ideally, it's the Helium community is operating some version of what we package. That means there's great networking offload. You don't have to have Spectrum to operate a service in that region. And everyone's able to get very affordable internet access. I think you'll start to see that come to fruition. And the other thing I think you'll see is Helium is able to add, like I said, value to an individual beyond just internet connectivity. There's a ton of services that we can offer. I think you'll start to see that delivered.
Josh Kriger: Nice. Yeah, I mean, I think about companies like STC, Telcom, and Riyadh in Saudi. I mean, they provide so many different services. It's basically one of the universal touch points to humans is their connectivity, right? Right. Yeah, I think it's, you have a fun job, ambitious roadmap ahead. Any closing thoughts you want to share with our community about helium? Things that they may not know?
Frank Mong: Yeah, I think. It's probably important for folks to know as your viewers start to evaluate different companies and projects. The mission and vision is important, but I think maybe what's more important is to look at the team and how many failures they've had. The ones with tons of failures means that they've tried various ways and approaches, failed, learned from that, and they've become better over time. now that I've been at this for eight years, believe that companies or projects in this space or outside of this space, they're really trying to figure this out. The ones I think that are real are the ones that are actually very open about the failures and how quickly they can integrate, like iterate through those failures are probably the ones really trying to build something real. That's really difficult to do. upending a telco industry that's worth like three to seven trillion dollars globally, that's hard. I'm eight years into my journey, failed tons of times trying different things, and we're now seeing a lot of progress. That's real.
Josh Kriger: I really appreciate your perspective there. How do you sort of stay motivated, stay energized through these failures and darker days on the journey?
Frank Mong: For me, it's really the team at Helium. I'm at a point in my career, in my life, where my goal is to help the team and our company grow and be better and improve as individuals. Brian, it was really an honor to have you on the show. So watching everyone grow and learn and make mistakes and get better from those, that's probably going to get the reward for me. And that's probably why I'm still doing it. Thank you, Josh.
Josh Kriger: Right on. If folks want to learn more about this phone and Helium, where should they go?
Frank Mong: Yeah, check out the Twitter page at Helium on Twitter or on X, sorry, or check out X at Helium Mobile. And are you on X? I'm on X. It's at F M O N G at F month.
Josh Kriger: Frank, it was really an honor to have you on the show. I can say it was one of the early projects that inspired me to get excited about this industry. So thank you.
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Josh Kriger: Hi, everyone. This is Josh Krieger, co-host of The Edge of Show. I'm live at Hack Season in Singapore, and it's really exciting today. And I'm honored to be back with a past guest and partner of ours, Wolfie, who's responsible for Amalgam, which is really redefining the lending and trading in one platform. So you seem calm and relaxed. How's this week been for you?
Will Fey: It's good. I took a lot of things going on, running around, meeting with people, but it's a really exciting event, I think, in general, because I think everyone in the industry is in a few square miles right now.
Josh Kriger: Yeah. And like you guys, you have a racing event again, which is so fun. Go-karts are awesome. And, you know, we're sort of on the cusp of F1, which is a big race. And you guys are racing ahead with sort of redefining the DeFi landscape as well with this new concept of decentralized lending exchange. Can you tell us more about that?
Will Fey: Yeah, I mean, the DeFi space is super innovative and we want to be a part of that. The main thing that I think we're adding to is that, you know, DEXs and lending protocols are already in existence, but we really want to push lending forward into markets that currently aren't supported by current lending protocols because Either they can't get listed on something like Aave or there's not good data feeds for the tokens because they're too new.
Josh Kriger: And why would that listing challenge be there?
Will Fey: The listing challenges on Aave have to do with their security model is that one token can be volatile enough to create risk that destroys the entire protocol. And so they're very cautious about what they list and add to the basket of assets that are supported.
Josh Kriger: So if someone wants a riskier or newer asset, they have the flexibility to choose that with you all as an independent variable.
Will Fey: Exactly. We can create that support for lending from day one of when that asset launches. And we want to be on the cutting edge of, you know, new token launches and be able to support them out of the gate.
Josh Kriger: Cool. And speaking of racing ahead, you also got your upcoming launch on Sonic in November. Why Sonic? And what are you hoping sort of this new innovation unravels for you guys?
Will Fey: Yeah, well, I mean, Sonic has proven, you know, with Andre's leadership to be at the cutting edge of a lot of different things. DeFi, you're in finance, now Sonic being one of the fastest EVM blockchains in the space. And really, we were looking for a partnership, the value that our innovation and wanted that was also willing to meet us halfway as far as supporting us the same way we want to support them. And Sonic was the the perfect blockchain for that. And they've been super supportive of the ecosystem.
Josh Kriger: Cool. So obviously there's so many different aspects of risk when you're dealing with digital assets and trading and lending. So you chose to get two security audits with Cantina and Chain Security. How did that go?
Will Fey: It's great. We're just going through some feedback now. And there was actually one other one with OX Macro. I don't want to leave them out. But the two big names were Cantina and Chain Security. So we just recently did the Cantina audit and got some feedback from them. And so that's the biggest blocker right now is fixing those issues so that we can safely deploy and have a bang of a launch.
Josh Kriger: Cool, so do you know yet when in November, is that still TBD?
Will Fey: Yeah, it's somewhat dependent on engineering, right? We have everything lined up and it's just a matter of how quickly we can get through the fixes.
Josh Kriger: Cool. And by the way, congrats on the investment grant from Sonic. Is that where you're going to focus your energy for a while, or do you see other layer ones in your near future?
Will Fey: It's hard to deploy everywhere at once. Yeah.
Josh Kriger: I mean, that movie gets everywhere all at once. It still gives me a hangover when I think about it.
Will Fey: Yeah, so I think that, you know, long term, there's no reason why we can support any EVM chain without any sort of weird gotchas in the chain itself. But, you know, Sonic's attention to us, we're, you know, mirroring back to them and we're encouraging LPs that are interested in using our protocol to deploy on Sonic, but we will also support Ethereum mainnet.
Josh Kriger: Right on. And there's some like DeFi terms. I feel like there's a new acronym in our industry every day. There's some terminology that is used frequently in DeFi. Maybe we should do like an educational moment in this conversation. We've got dual purpose pools, recipes, and permanent gain. These aren't even words I'm familiar with. And I've been in this for a while. So maybe you can kind of break down some of this language and why it was conceived. Because usually, this doesn't come out of nowhere. There's a need to describe aspects of this technology that make it easy for people to understand, right? Sure.
Will Fey: Yeah, it's always a balancing act of trying to explain things in a way that makes sense without creating jargon that overwhelms people.
Josh Kriger: Like using real layman terms, but they sort of define it, but it's not new jargon that makes it more complicated.
Will Fey: I came up with dual-purpose pools because I wanted to say, like, hey, these assets could be used like Uniswap would use them, but also the way that Aave uses them, right? And so these pools of assets are used in a dual-purpose way. So that's the simplest way for that. Makes sense. Impermanent gain is just trying to take something that people know, impermanent loss, and then say, well, what if you flip that upside down, right? Isn't all gains impermanent? Like, unless you sell? That's true. I think impermanent loss is called impermanent because if the price reverts to the mean, you are where you started and there's no loss at all. And so that's just kind of the same exact definition that I would describe as impermanent gain. If the price keeps diverting, then you keep gaining. But as soon as the price reverts to the mean or where you started, then your gain is vanished.
Josh Kriger: One other aspect of risk is the volatility and clawbacks of principal based on LTV ratios. Of course, this is compounded when we have big surges of decrease in the core assets and then of course the alts follow in a more intense way. Typically, if ETH and Bitcoin are going down 20-30%, alts are going down 90%, right? So I'm sure you're thinking about this roller coaster that is our industry and you know folks like to talk about how volatility is our friend but it seems like it's our friend and it would keep me up at night if I was you as you're thinking about sort of sustainable DeFi protocol and BulletBear. So what's your perspective on all that?
Will Fey: I mean, there's a lot there that I can go into for sure. I think the market is what it is. It's still maturing, right? And I think that I always look at the drawdowns as usually returning to reality, but coming from sort of like Icarus flying too close to the sun. And so the lower market cap something is, the more it can be explosive, but is it sustainable, right? That's the way I look at these things. I don't think they're dropping 90% in value because they were worth that in the start. They're probably just returning to the mean. But a lot of that is just making good decisions as an investor of what's going to be valuable in six months, nine months, a year forward from there, not what's going to be valuable in six hours.
Josh Kriger: make sense.
Will Fey: stress to people is that we as a protocol have a very unique aspect is that we have revenue as a DEX which isn't very common. Uniswap takes some percentage of the front end but they're still struggling with the fee switch. And our protocol, because it also supports lending, will have revenue from that borrow from day one, which is, I think, a really unique aspect and leads to sustainable token valuations, right? All of it is based on revenue. You can dress up some tokenomics any way you want, but without revenue, it's not sustainable.
Josh Kriger: Makes sense. Will, always great to have you on the show. Always appreciate your insights. Good luck with your upcoming launch. If folks want to get involved in what you're up to, where should they go?
Will Fey: Yeah, our website, amalgam.xyz, and that's A-M-N, Al-Gam. And you can follow me on Twitter at Dueling Gal-Wa. And yeah, those would be the two places I'd start at. All right. Great to have you on the show. Thank you.
Josh Kriger: I don't think we'll pick up any of that. It would be fine. It's fun. Let's take a pause to shout out one of our favorite partners. VR, AR, quantum computing, and more, ZuberLawler offers expert guidance in capital raising, IP transactions, M&A, litigation, and compliance. Visit ZuberLawler.com, that's Z-U-B-E-R-L-A-W-L-E-R.com for cutting edge legal solutions. Hi everyone, Josh Trigger here. It is day two at Token 2049 in Singapore, and I'm delighted to be here with my guest today, Saad Amin, who's the head of Asia Pacific at Gemini. Great to have you on the show. Thanks for having me. So you've been with Gemini for two years. I'm just curious about when you got into crypto and what gets you excited about this region and led to you playing this role?
Saad Ahmed: Sure. Yeah. So my crypto journey actually started in about 2019. And, you know, I was I used to be a gold bug and I was buying gold. And I have a very dear friend of mine who's also well known in the crypto space. And he told me to sell 10% of my gold and buy Bitcoin with it. And I said, if I'm going to do that, I'm going to go read up and more on it. And I listened to like 40 hours of podcasts a week for I don't know how many weeks during COVID. I highly recommend, if you want to wear and they listen to podcasts, The Edge Of Show is one of those. One of those, exactly. And so, you know, just got smart about it and then basically just went down the rabbit hole, read whatever I could lay my hands on. So, that's how I got into crypto myself and then... From a career standpoint, as you mentioned, I joined Gemini about two years ago. But before that, my background was actually more consumer tech. So I've been in Asia building consumer tech companies, particularly in the ride-hailing and delivery space. So I was one of the earliest employees for Uber in Asia. I launched Uber in a couple of markets in India, Southeast Asia, had a few different leadership roles. And then I moved to this company called Grab, which I would imagine you probably used while you've been here. Yeah, we just used it today.
Josh Kriger: So yeah, in a former life, I was one of the co-founders of, and still am, one of the fastest, sort of earliest prepared meal delivery companies in the US. So we're using Ghost Kitchens 10 years before they were called Ghost Kitchens. Ghost Kitchens, right, right. So yeah, we have some similar backgrounds. And there's a lot of opportunity for decentralization in that world, which gets you thinking about the implications for society. And that sort of leads me to my next question. I mean, this is not the first cycle where we've talked about the institutions are coming, right? That was the theme of the last cycle. That's right. What is different in terms of the maturation of the industry that makes this sort of thesis more accurate. If it is, or we have to wait to the next cycle.
Saad Ahmed: Yeah, I mean, we've been, you know, the institutions are coming. I mean, and even to that extent, even nation states are coming. If you remember the last cycle, there was one nation state, El Salvador, that everyone's talking about, everyone's getting excited about. And then in this cycle, what you see is that you know, the sovereign wealth fund of Abu Dhabi puts like half a billion dollars in Bitcoin and it barely makes the news. So it's a known fact that nation states are adopting, nation states are buying. And similarly for institutions, I think what's happened with institutions in particular is that two years ago, or at the beginning of 2023, we had the SPOC Bitcoin ETF approvals. Prior to that happening, I think for many institutions that had to go through their investment committees and get all the approvals and then figure out how they would custody the underlying and get all of that process in place was just much more complicated. Whereas it's much simpler after you could just you already have the pikes, you already have the systems to go and allocate to Bitcoin through like an IBIT or any of the spot Bitcoin ETFs. And I think that's been a big shift where it's just much easier because that world of equities and ETFs is well known to many institutions. And I think that's led to a acceleration and adoption. I think the other big piece of this is you know, about about a year and a half ago, regulation, particularly in the United States, which is, you know, obviously the most liquid, the largest sort of capital market in the world. It wasn't clear and it wasn't it wasn't there was no sign of what might might be ahead. Whereas that changed with the change in administration.
Josh Kriger: Sure. And on that point, you know, there is. deeper tactical nuance to the regulatory differences in different regions right now. Could you sort of shine a light on where this region is ahead of the game and maybe where they're lagging?
Saad Ahmed: Yeah. So I think there's a, you make an interesting point, right? Like I think there's, there's differences. I mean, the United States is a huge market. And I think once you get a regular year, there's a huge population of crypto users that will then have regulatory clarity across whether it's spot futures, et cetera, all of the stuff that's happening in the United States. Europe has gone that way with MECA, where they have a consistent framework across a large number of countries. Asia, that's still not the case. Asia is decentralized. It's decentralized. There's inconsistent regulation across different markets. You've got pockets of city-states, you've got Dubai, you're Singapore, you're Hong Kong, where you see a lot of concentration of builders, companies, because there's regulatory clarity in those markets and a lot of other markets is still coming. And I think, you know, and it's not going to be consistent as a result of this decentralized kind of framework. Has there been any efforts to bring all these folks together in one room to talk it out? I wouldn't say so. I think like there's definitely, I mean, I'm sure the regulators talk to each other, but not in a more formal, you know, concerted way to bring about a consistent regulatory framework, which would make a lot of sense for firms like us, because then it would just make it easier for us to operate.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, I think there's an opportunity for someone to do some kind of association or alliance and try to get some representatives from different countries talking.
Saad Ahmed: And I feel like that's a major difference between what's happening. And that's why you see kind of the way Web3 is adopted in different markets is very different. I mean, you might have markets like Vietnam where Web3 gaming or Philippines, for example, where Web3 gaming is really popular and other markets like Korea, it's really about the trading side of things. So it's just different as a result of the evolution and how it's happened.
Josh Kriger: So I think there's a healthy competition between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. I don't know if Singapore is as excited to be in that competition right now as some of the other spots. What do you see as some of the interesting differentiators, incentive structures in certain regions of Asia? that sort of get you excited and you know when you're talking to companies looking at this region where you say hey take a look at this or this and any particular policies or incentive plans right now that you're excited about?
Saad Ahmed: Yeah, I would say, you know, the most exciting thing about being in Asia is there's a concentration of builders here across the region, right? You got places like Singapore, you got places like Dubai, you know, where you're seeing builders actually live, right? Because it's possible for you to live on kind of a Bitcoin standard almost, or kind of in a way which is friendly to crypto folks. And I think where the builders go, you have a proliferation of use cases because they're kind of building those out. With the use cases come the usage of those platforms and the monetization, and that brings in more builders. So you kind of have this like positive feedback loop of concentration of builders, more projects, more opportunities, more usage, you know, a blockchain activity effectively.
Josh Kriger: Are you looking at how Gemini can sort of catalyze the builder side of this sort of innovation?
Saad Ahmed: Look, I mean, the way we see it, our job is to kind of obviously support the ecosystem, but at the end of the day, we're not We're not biased to one ecosystem or the other. At the end of the day, we're an exchange. That's our primary business. And of course, we have other offerings. But at our core, we're an exchange. And so we are not the arbiters of value. And I think the devs choose to go with the direction in which they find the most usage of their talent and monetization and so on. What we're here to do is we try to support sort of the ecosystem as much as possible, but ultimately it's up to sort of the layer ones or whatever.
Josh Kriger: Are there any sort of innovative programs that you've recently implemented or you're planning to implement that you're excited about to achieve that objective?
Saad Ahmed: Yeah, I mean, look, Our focus really is, we've done some education programs, some trading education programs. We work with a few institutes to help young traders actually learn what are the tricks of the trade and work with educational institutions effectively to help build that skill set. And then we also have a great program around interns. So having interns come into Gemini, help build with us. We recently had a batch of about 150 interns at Gemini who are building different products across the spectrum. So those are some of the things we do. It's a great sort of thing to have on your resume.
Josh Kriger: It will help them get into the industry exactly even if they don't stay in the exchange world. It's it's a great first step so for in the door, so You talked about the fragmentation the complexity of the markets Does that make it harder for an exchange from a regulatory compliance perspective from a ML KYC perspective when you don't have standard universal policies in each in
Saad Ahmed: country or at this point you guys just used to it and your systems and software and sort of approach to developing is very customized for each country and it's all good yeah yeah look reality is that we would love to actually have a customized and localized experience for each market that we have that that local regulated business That's the reality, right? Because... You have to almost, right? Yeah, you have to almost. Because, you know, the kinds of identification that one person might have in one country would be very different from what people are used to using in another country. Some people have digital IDs, some countries don't. You know, and things like that, right? Which is more on the AML, KYC side. And then when you go into how people are able to fund their account, what are the funding rails that they're using? If you're asking customers to get funds in via Swift, it's just going to be a much more... you know, high friction experience. And so how can we localize the payment trails for people to get money on the exchange and things like that, right? So that's our objective, is to make that as frictionless as possible so more users can come in and actually use the platform. And to do that, you have to build a localized business. Now, that said, it's hard to localize a business in every market because there is a lot of complexity in doing so.
Josh Kriger: Yeah, development costs are higher and maintenance costs are higher because once you localize, you have to continue to keep that going, right?
Saad Ahmed: Exactly, exactly. And so, you know, what we try to do is have kind of a consistent standard for a lot of different markets, which are, you know, perhaps, you know, aligned with what we do in the U.S. so that it's easy for us to kind of manage that. And then there are specific markets that we choose to go in where we think there is opportunity and kind of localize the business, which is what we've done in Singapore, for example.
Josh Kriger: So, looking ahead, I assume this is an industry you plan to be in for many years. You know, looking at retail and institutional opportunities over time, do you have any hot takes on where things go from here in three to five years or sort of at least a dream or aspiration or where things will be over that time period?
Saad Ahmed: Yeah, I mean, you know, things have moved really quickly over the last 12 to 18 months. I think it's been incredible to see the growth. I mean, I was here at the same conference last year. I think there were 10,000 attendees this time. I think there was like, you know, 25,000. Really? That's a lot. Yeah, they have all five floors. All five floors this year. So I think, you know, you're seeing kind of the growth and And I think you're seeing really incredible talent coming into this industry from across the spectrum, right? So whether it's traditional finance, fintech, consumer tech, and I think all of that talent coming in is just amazing for the industry because people are building great use cases. And I would say that for me is a great sign of continuing progress for us, the ones who are in this industry. And to the extent that we can continue supporting that, I think we'll be successful.
Josh Kriger: Fantastic. If folks want to learn more about what you guys are doing in this region, where do they go? Is there like a specific handle for this region for Gemini?
Saad Ahmed: Yes. So we have a we have a telegram channel called Gemini APAC, Gemini underscore APAC. And, you know, we we post stuff that we're doing there. We also have our obviously global X handle for Gemini. You can follow me at Saad Ahmed. And yeah, I'm happy to happy to connect with anyone that wants to learn more about about Gemini in the region.
Josh Kriger: Saad, thanks for your perspective on what's going on with Gemini and this region. Really appreciate having you on the show. Thank you, Josh. All right. Cool.
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