Takatoshi Shibayama: 0:08

Hey, hey, hey, welcome to this week's episode of Blockheads Blockcast. I'm your host, Takatoshi Shibayama. I'm also the head of APAC for Ledger. I aim to uncover the creative, intelligent, and radical minds who are shaping the crypto industry today. I'm as crypto curious as anybody that's tuning into this show. We're doing this together, guys. Let's go. Hi guys. Welcome back to another episode of Blockhead's Blockcast. Today we have two gentlemen on as our guest. First, we have Dr. Sangmin, or Sam, Seo, Chairman of Kaia DLT Foundation. Welcome to the show.

Dr Sangmin "Sam" Seo: 0:44

Hello, everyone. This is Sam from Kaia Foundation. Yeah, honored to be here. Yeah, looking forward to uh you know talking about Kaia and our stablecoin uh initiatives. Thank you for having us.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 0:55

Thank you for joining us. And we also have Mr. John Cho, VP of Partnerships. Welcome to the show.

John Cho: 1:00

Yeah, thank you for uh having us, Tucker. Looking forward to our conversation today.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 1:04

Yeah, likewise. So before we get into Kaia, which obviously is a very exciting project, and I want to get into how the super apps are happening. Obviously, for a lot of people in Asia, people know Line, people know who Kakao Talk is. But just for the people who are uh living outside of Asia, uh, these are the dominant messaging apps of uh at least North Asia and uh partially Southeast Asia as well. But uh today what we what we want to talk about is how they're incorporating crypto blockchain into their messaging app, uh connecting them to mini apps and stablecoins, DeFi, DEXs, all that kind of stuff, which is really, really exciting. But before we get into that, uh I just to want to have the audience understand who uh you guys are. So, Sam, um I would love to understand your background and what got you into crypto.

Dr Sangmin "Sam" Seo: 1:57

Okay, so again, uh this is Sam, uh chairman of Kaia Foundation. So my background is actually technology. So I used to be leading the tech team at the previous chain, Klaytn. So because I did uh I did uh study computer science for my BS degree and also PhD degree. So it was yeah, a long time ago, but I was uh you know the majoring high performance computing. After getting my PhD degree, I was purely doing on the academic research. And so I was writing papers and presenting those research uh results to uh to the academic uh conferences and so on. So that was the early the early times of my career. But after that, actually, while I was working at Samsung Research as a research engineer, I found that the blockchain was quite interesting tech topic, and then uh I learned about Bitcoin and other blockchain technologies. And then I joined uh you know the one of the uh cacao's subsidiary uh called GroundX, which is uh the blockchain company or the Klaytn's development company. So I joined GroundX as a core protocol engineer, and so yeah, I started uh developing the Klaytn blockchain and as a you know tech member. And after some time, yeah, I became the leader position of tech. And since 2023, uh I have been leading the entire team as the CEO or chairman of the foundation. But last year there was uh you know huge change uh for Klaytn and also for other chain, Finschia that was started by Line. So yeah, we started Kaia by merging two previous chains, Klaytn and Finschia. And then uh yeah, since then I uh I'm also leading the team as the chairman. So this is short history of my yeah, uh my journey. But uh my you know the first moment that I uh that I got into the blockchain was the the Bitcoin. Yeah, and uh it was in the my university's uh time, but also uh the you know the during the ICO, the the early bull market time of blockchain or cryptos, I started the blockchain as my career area.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 4:13

Yeah, thank you. So for me, like coming from Japan, Line messaging app is pretty predominant. Uh and then having the Finschia blockchain actually merge with Klaytn was a pretty exciting news for me. So I'd love to get into more of that stuff. But before that, uh, you know, Mr. John, you know, we also love to understand like, you know, where what what your background is and also why you got into crypto.

John Cho: 4:37

Yeah. Um so out of the gate, I've actually been working with Sam for about seven years now, since the old Kakao subsidiary days. So I my uh I joined the current organization back in 2019. Back then, we were known as a fully owned subsidiary of Kakao, um Ground X. That was the original TM response before launching the Klaytn blockchain. So yeah, I've been working with the current organization for about seven years now, largely in public-facing roles. At the moment, I am the VP of partnership, but over the last six or seven months, the majority of my focus has very much been on um our stablecoin initiatives because a lot of it just made sense, especially in light of the distribution channels that we have in Kakao Talk and Line Messenger. Personally, I mean, it's a similar story to everybody else in the industry. So I got wind of Bitcoin a little early compared to everybody else. I was working in New York back in 2013, read a Wired magazine article talking about how Bitcoin went from $1,000 to $13. And I didn't really think too much into it. I was like, all right, eventually we'll probably go back up to $1,000. So I just bought my first Bitcoin then and have been interested in uh crypto ever since. Prior to working uh in the industry, in the blockchain industry, I was kind of like your typical like corporate war warrior kind of thing. So I work for LG Electronics, the global data platform division. And before that, I've also had stints in the investment banking and energy sectors. But I have to say, out of the uh decade plus years of uh professional experience, blockchain and crypto definitely has been the most dynamic.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 6:14

Absolutely dynamic and lots of up and ups and downs. It's a never boring time living in crypto. Never boring.

John Cho: 6:21

Yeah.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 6:22

Uh so Kaia was launched in February 2025, and it was obviously as we mentioned, it's a merger between the super app, the Japanese super app and Korean super app like Line and Kakao. Um, what is the aim for launching this Kaia chain, Dr. Sam?

Dr Sangmin "Sam" Seo: 6:42

So the main motivation or the background of this this chain merger was because uh two chains were basically aiming the same goal. So because the the history or the initiators of the projects were very similar because Kakao Talk started Klaytn as their the Web3 business, and also Line started Finschia as their web 3 business. They wanted you know to leverage their messenger to make the adoption of this blockchain technology for their users or for upcoming services. So although two teams had operated separately, but they had the same goal, uh, again, the mass adoption of this blockchain technology. So historically, and in terms of the goal and in terms of you know the DNA, two teams had the very similarities. So it was quite natural to make the decision of the uh the chain merge.

Dr Sangmin "Sam" Seo: 7:33

And so yeah, that was kind of big motivation. So instead of competing each other, we merged together with push the same goal and by combining two teams and by you know putting the efforts together. So yeah, that was the motivation, and also because of that, uh, Kaya chain, our Kaya team is able to uh work boost uh work with line and take out teams. So that's a really good advantage for the chain and the product team. But uh but in but in parallel, we are also trying to bring the users from the line uh ecosystem or the cacao ecosystem because they are not really overlapping each other because the Kakao talk is popular and dominant in South Korea, while Line is heavily used in Japan, Taiwan, and Thailand. So we can cover these countries and also we can reach out to the users in those countries.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 8:28

When Telegram uh launched Ton, and there was a lot of excitement around that as well, because chain is a chain, but it's not it's not going to be widely used if there's no distribution. And, you know, and I'll go into this on the stablecoin part as well, because distribution has always been key for any type of products to be widely used. And uh, how do you see the difference between the Telegram and Ton ecosystem and then your Kaia and the Line slash Kakao ecosystem?

Dr Sangmin "Sam" Seo: 9:00

Um so the approaches that two uh you know two chains or two ecosystems are doing are quite similar because it boosts chains, it boosts Kaia and Ton are trying to leverage their different channels, Line, Kakao, and Telegram respectively, but the the entire, I mean the egg strategy and also the way that we are executing the these strategies are different. Telegram and Ton are basically targeting the countries where the Telegram is uh mostly used, and also they are targeting the users in uh kind of the underdeveloped countries. While the Line and Kakao Talk are used in Asia and especially the kind of the developed countries, and so if we compare these user bases from two ecosystems, actually their behaviors are quite different. For example, the users in those countries are spending more money on digital items, for example, game items. They spend more money to buy the game item and also uh they even spend money for buying stickers, but it became quite common for other ecosystems as well, but it was not that common apart from the Line or Kakao talk ecosystem.

Dr Sangmin "Sam" Seo: 10:11

So uh the first difference is user base, because yeah, again, our users are mostly in Asia, but uh in relatively the developed countries. Telegram users uh I think the number of users is bigger than our number, but uh their users' behaviors are less spending, but they are trying to uh get more incentives from the you know the the blockchain and world adapt side. So this is the difference. Also the other difference is the the technology. So our chain is EVM comparable chains. That means uh we are uh you know uh kind of uh trying to onboard the developers who are familiar with fluidity or the EVM technologies, which is actually very common and and has more developed community than other technologies' community. On the other hand, Ton has their own technology, although I mean the technology has some differences and uh strengths compared to EVM technologies, but I would say their developer community is relatively smaller than the Ethereum's or EVM's developer community. So we provide a familiar technology, but we optimize the performance and also developer experience as someone. So we provide, I would say, when familiar, but we have the more familiar environment for EVM or the existing developers.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 11:33

Yeah, that totally makes sense. Uh and you know, having a wide developer ecosystem is definitely much powerful than the smaller one for sure. And as you mentioned, um Telegram is widely used in developing countries, and also, as we all know, in the crypto native community. So I guess um there's no single, how would I say, like culture to go after? It's it's a very wide culture with people from very different backgrounds, where as you say, you know, Kaia is based on uh you know, focusing on a more Asia-centric uh community, which might have a lot more similarities in terms of culture and spending havocs and et cetera. I mean, how does that um work for you, John? I mean, are you trying to build out the partnerships? Um, I see that there's uh 97 mini dApps uh built on Kaia and growing. Um, how are you looking at uh growing that mini-dApp ecosystem?

John Cho: 12:24

Yeah, um, so first and foremost, you know, everything that we do is very much revolved on whether or not, A, if it's going to be sustainable, b, if there is going to be a demand for that. And from that demand perspective, we're always trying to, you know, our core mission right now, especially since the launch of Kaia, has been to leverage the distributions channels that we have in Line Messenger. So in terms of demand, we're always looking at what you know, quote unquote web 2 users would be willing to engage with and will also benefit them. Uh the the largely in the past, the approach to like you know onboarding mainstream users to Web3 has been largely around like incentives, or like hype marketing and so on and so forth. But for us, the approach is has always been A, is this something that you know you that Web2 users online already have an affinity for? So as an example, when we launched our dApp portal and mini dApp infrastructure, we were very much focused on launching with games because it's a vertical and category that mainstream users already have an affinity for. So there's less of a learning curve. They can jump right in.

John Cho: 13:38

Now, from that perspective, Sam talked about this. The users that we have in our distribution channels, their consumption behavior and user behavior is inherently, I think, different to the behaviors you see on Ton because they are literally consumers. They are trained to pay for things, they are trained for pay for, uh they're trained to pay for experiences and content. So the focus was definitely on not quantity, but the quality of the games that we launched. Uh, so that approach was very successful. So A, launch with a vertical that the uh built-in audience already has an affinity for, and B, make sure those experiences are of high quality, you know, gameplay, fidelity, and stuff like that. So these users will be willing to actually consume this content and pay for that. So we've been able to secure a massive user base thanks to the success of the launch of the mini dApp infrastructure. And the mission right now is to basically maintain this momentum that we have and also grow it further while locking in the users that we have at the moment. And we figured, you know, just what are the kind of benefits that you know crypto natives see that mainstream users may not necessarily uh, you know, um experience? And we thought on-chain finance, DeFi. There are a lot of opportunities within our space right now, especially within the DeFi sector, where you can earn interest off your assets much higher than the interest that you would get, for example, at a legacy you know, bank. So the mission right now is to be able to bring those on-chain financial opportunities to line, um, but in a way that is familiar, easy to understand, and makes sense.

John Cho: 15:18

So a lot of the DeFi protocols that that are coming out now are, you know, um, I think it's intended. Perhaps, you know, there's a bit of a learning curve involved, and a lot of these like, you know, onchain financial products do have a lev complications to them. So there are like multiple loops that you need to uh you know take into consideration. So we we wanted to keep those products simple as well. So we wouldn't, for example, necessarily like be introducing like rebasing, no, like, you know, like looping kind of experiences, but rather things like earn. So where you just deposit some stable coins and you earn interest. And that interest just happens to be much higher than the interest you earn from your typical like savings account. That is the approach that we are taking at the moment to maintain the moment that we have, to lock in the users by providing those on-chain financial opportunities in a way that is very familiar, easy to understand, and just makes sense. Yeah.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 16:14

Yeah, I think that that totally makes sense. And I might be sidetracking a little bit, but uh, in order to grow this mini-app uh ecosystem, you mentioned, you know, the fastest way to get Web 2 users into Web 3 are through games. And are there particular types of games that actually work in this uh Web3 space? So, you know, several years ago we had Axie Infinity and pay-to-earn, say play-to-earn types of games. I mean, what has evolved since then so that even Web 2 users would uh come into this space that it's not just a system where you play and then you earn tokens and then you dump in the market for you know your local currency.

John Cho: 16:52

By the way, that pay to earn slip is not too far off. It's that's a fairly accurate description, I would say pay to enties. Um so the approach that we took the uh to gaming was very simple. So, one thing, when we launched it initially, it was a white label process. So we filtered, we reviewed, we handpicked all the games that were launched uh during that initial launch phase. So that was number one. And the reason why we did that was we kind of took a step back and just kind of like you know looked at the kind of games that you know line messenger users were already playing because mobile gaming is obviously massive in Asia, and a big chunk of the gaming um, you know, revenues come from mobile gaming.

John Cho: 17:33

So we looked at the kind of games that in the Web 2 space, you know, had already a lot of traction, the kind of gameplay, the fidelity. And we found that, you know, basically at the uh end of the day, you want a game that's fun to play. So none of more repetitive, tap-to-earn things that you saw like on ton, but games with actual levels of progression, depths of gameplay, where you can come back, level up your character. So, you know, things like you know, um, like we found that more so than like, you know, hyper casual games that you would normally find in the Web 3 space, but mid-core to hardcore games were the games that actually we saw a lot of users like you know stick with because it was those kind of games and that depth of gameplay that users were very used to in the web 2 space. So for them, to be honest, a lot of people may not even know that this was potentially a web 3 game, or there was like there was like a tokenomics aspect to it because these games are just fun to play and there were you know depths of progression, levels of progression that they would kind of like you know aim for. So that was kind of like the uh baseline approach.

John Cho: 18:34

Another approach that we took was to work with existing IPs. So in Asia, IP is big, right? Especially in Japan, Taiwan, and these countries. But a lot of these IP owners were very hesitant to you know jump into the Web3 space for various reasons, reasons. But one of the reasons, like for example, we heard directly from one of our partners was like they were hesitant to launch on because of the public image those platforms had in certain instances. There were like instances where like Telegram or Ton was perhaps used for nefarious purposes, for lack of a better term. So, but with Line Messenger, because it has such a strong awareness, brand affinity, and established presence in especially Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, also now Indonesia as well. I think these IP owners were comfortable exploring Web3 technologies in their games on the line platform because of that level of trust we had. So the TLDR is launched with games that had gameplay aspects that were already gained traction on the Web 2 side, and also leverage existing IP to convert more users.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 19:44

Yeah. And getting those Web 2 gaming people who really got attracted to these games and started earning through those games. Now, it's a it's a different story to kind of like pitch them financial products, right? So even with if it's Earn or whatever uh you know DeFi activity it is, you know, it's it's a little bit a different crowd, I would say. And then in in Japan, for example, I mean, the people who actually game are not really the very financially literate types either. So um, Dr. Sam, how would you envision like moving these web to people who are really into gaming and then educating them to even simple products like uh you know, just you know, lending pro uh like earning yield through lending protocols. It's a little bit a little bit of a jump, but I'll be very curious to understand like how you would bridge those two worlds.

Dr Sangmin "Sam" Seo: 20:38

Yeah, yeah, this is uh great question. Actually, that's what uh we uh have been trying to you know the achieve through this journey of the you know, journey of converting you know the gamers to the DeFi or financial uh you know the service users. Uh actually we intentionally, as Joe mentioned, we intentionally started the games because the games are easy to understand and easy to start with uh for the users. So uh but you know the Web3 games are different from Web 2 games because in Web3 games, users are uh you know ultimately exposed to the assets. Either tokens or NFTs. So while they are playing, uh at some point they might get some tokens or NFTs. And basically these are you know the the financial you know the assets. So but once getting the uh tokens, if uh if they can uh what they can do is only uh selling tokens, uh serving tokens, then uh there is no intention or there is no you know the further uh growth on the echo on the ecosystem on the platform. So you know, you just started playing games or web three games and these kind of opportunities, and then they get the token and that they are exposed to the uh web 3 or the cryptos, and then we thought that okay, after having new new web 2 users or line users educated on this crypto, and then if we introduce DeFi or the consumer DeFi, we we are calling them like this, then they can easily start uh the DeFi or the Web3 product. So that was our kind of the intention or that was our uh the direction. So uh now we have you know hundreds of games and uh millions or tens of millions of users, and then they got some tokens. Also, we also you know the introduced stable coins to the users so they can use stable coins for the payment, or sometimes they get stable coins as a reward. So they now uh got familiar with some tokens. And now it's time, we think, it's time to introduce uh DeFi, but not in a web 3, because the Web3 DeFi is still difficult and sometimes still people might feel that it's risky, but our users are not pure Web3 users, or rather they are kind of Web 2 or Web 2.5 users. So our strategy is to introduce DeFi but with a very uh simple intuitive UI and UX. So that's why we'll start with the you know the yield products. So it's easy to understand. They just uh deposit tokens, uh especially uh especially stable stable coins, and then they will just get yield or interest. This is more or less similar to the bank bank account. And so it's easy to understand, but uh with the you know very intuitive UI, they just feel uh that okay, I'm using uh one of the digital banks. So that's our you know ultimate goal. Uh but the benefit for the users is they could get higher yield or higher, higher profit by uh depositing their uh stable coins or other tokens. So that would be the difference. But uh by introducing this kind of you know intuitive DeFi protocols, then they can be converting the users slowly introducing different types of DeFi uh protocols uh to the users, but in a very intuitive and user-friendly forms.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 23:59

Yes. I I can imagine like you get you're on all these kind of game tokens. Obviously, you don't want to hold them unless you're not actually going back to those games. Maybe you want to convert them back into like a stable coin, maybe perhaps local or maybe USC. And then what are you gonna do with those stable coins you might want to put it into a savings account for the time being, right? And I think line pay, cacao pay is used widely across um you know all all the users. So I think you know it's kind of natural to think, okay, well, I want to use these um, you know, local currencies to pay for things. Um and but um you are kind of like launching this uh stablecoin project as well. And I think in terms of like the stickiness of users, uh obviously a savings account is great, but like if you want network effect, obviously it needs to be transacted quite a lot. So John, what what are you thinking in terms of you know stable coin usage outside of the uh um the savings account or earn products that uh you're looking to to launch as well?

John Cho: 25:00

Yeah, sure. Um so to take a step back, uh, you know, as you're very much well aware, there's been a lot of discussions just in the Asian region overall, regulators, builders, institutions, so on around stable coins. And um I think initially and and a lot of these conversations, by the way, was kind of like, you know, very forced upon everyone when the uh Trump administration passed the Genius Act. I think that was like the catalyst for everyone to get really serious about um stable coins in Asia. And initially, I think a lot of the um uh conversations were around like, you know, issuance and regulations around issuance. And there was some initial conversations around like potential use cases, some were talking about like, you know, payments and so on. But I think the more like you know, the deeper everyone can like dove into like you know what we can do with stable coins, everyone realized a lot of these use cases won't actually be domestic.

John Cho: 25:52

A lot of these stablecoin use cases will be cross-border. So some of the um specific, you know, potential use cases that we're looking at right now, number one is cross-border remittance. That's number one. I mean, obviously in Asia, um, over the last uh you know decade or so, um cross-border remittance and cross-border transactions within Asia has just grown exponentially. And that's largely due to kind of like the migration trends that we're seeing. We're seeing a lot of like Southeast Asian um migrants, you know, moving to East Asian countries and working from there, Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. This is a whole other conversation, but you know, Japan and Korea, for example, has currently issues with population stability and so on. So we're expecting a massive influx of migrant workers uh in these countries. So cross-border remittance is going to be a use case that's just a no-brainer and kind of will continue to grow, and there are very tangible bottlenecks that stablecoin infrastructure will uh resolve. So one interesting fact that Sam actually discovered was that the UN, and I didn't know this before as well, but the UN actually has a recommended transaction fee. So for all remittance fees, the UN recommendation rate off the top of my head was I think maybe 2% to 3%, Sam. 3%, right? 3%.

John Cho: 27:14

But with the current way that remittances are executed, they're executed against legacy corridors. So facilitated by Swift, and then the liquidity is provided by, you know, the banks, the FX traders, and so on. And what this affects is depending on how much demand there is for your local currency, even though you're only making $300 a month, if there isn't much corridor or liquidity demand for your local currency, the fees that you would have to pay will be very high because you're gonna have to go through multiple corridors to actually arrive at your local currency. So, for example, the Indonesian rupiah. There are a lot of Indonesian migrant workers in Japan, in Taiwan, and also in uh in Korea as well. And in Taiwan, for example, a lot of these migrant workers, it's very difficult for them to get a bank account, to make a bank account. Not necessarily because they're there illegally, but in Taiwan, the regulatory uh kind of like you know, landscape does not allow them to create a bank account. But what's funny is they can actually create an account with a crypto exchange.

John Cho: 28:13

So the opportunities are there, are very obvious. A lot of these migrant workers get paid in cash. And at the moment, what they're doing is they're taking that cash, depositing that into an ATM and then sending it into the e-wallet accounts. So they use their e-wallet to remit, but that's very, very expensive. It's like, you know, six to seven dollars, like a big chunk of their uh um um, you know, the pay. But if you're from, you know, if you're gonna be using stablecoin rails or stablecoin infrastructure, we can reduce that cost by multiple iconode times, right? So that's kind of the number one use case that we've been exploring and having active discussions around. And I think as Asia grows as a region and as we see this kind of like migration trend happen, the demand for stablecoin infrastructure-based remittance will just get bigger and bigger. Extending off that, ideally, you want these front ends for these remittance products and services to be in an application or to be in an environment where you use it every day. So it's just kind of makes sense to have those kind of services and products embedded into Line Messenger, for example, where people everybody use everybody every day. The other uh, you know, more kind of like, you know, um, I guess interesting uh use case that we're also exploring is on-chain effects. So FX trading in Asia is massive. Not just institutionals, institutions, but retail FX trading volumes are one of the in the region make up a big chunk of the global retail uh in FX trading volumes. But FX trading right now is there are also a lot of inefficiencies there as well. Market times, liquidity issues, cost, and so on. So bringing a lot of that trading on chain just makes sense. It's cheaper, it's faster. You know, often in most cases, it's safer as well. So So we are what we're building is we're actually building what we call the FX engine, which is a ground up, custom built DEX, basically.

John Cho: 30:09

Don't want to refer to a DEX, but you know, uh just to just uh give a frame of reference, it is a DEX. But again, completely customized, built ground up, not a fork of an existing DEX, specifically designed for on-chain FX trading. So we have done a lot of research over the last few months. I have been able to learn a lot of new things and realize that current DEX structures, AMMs, don't aren't really efficient for FX trading. Um, when you're taking the characteristics. So, for example, a lot of the liquidity pools right now on DEXs are in pairs, but that really isn't an efficient model for FX or local regional stable coins. So we found that, you know, when you're taking two of the characteristics of FX trading into consideration, it's more efficient to have single-sided pools. But then there are whole other issues that you need to kind of like, you know, uh um, you know, figure out if you're gonna have like a single-sided oriented deck. So long story short, I think remittance will be probably the number one use case that a lot of stablecoin uh you know infrastructure providers will be looking into. And second, a really up-and-coming growing area, I think will be on-chain effects.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 31:15

Super thought for broken, actually. So if I think about like the user flow, right? So let's say I'm an Indonesian person, as I take your example, I'm working in Taiwan, I get paid in cash, and I'll go to an ATM, and then I'll how would I high convert that cash or Taiwan dollars into um a digital form? And then how how would I onramp that onto let's say line messenger app and then use that FX engine to like convert that into Indonesian rupee and then send it back? Could you take us through that whole user journey?

John Cho: 31:49

Absolutely. Um, so one thing that a lot of people don't realize, and even you know, like us who live in East Asia, don't realize is that Southeast Asia is largely already a cashless society. They already use digital infrastructure for their payments. So in Southeast Asia, one of the most popular methods of payment are QR codes. And that means a lot of these um, you know, uh people uh in Southeast Asia are using e-wallets. So the way that e-wallets work is you deposit cash through an ATM or a bank or wire transfer into an e-wallet account. And that e-wallet provider will basically convert that fiat into a digital form of cash, which then they can use. That's actually the fairly like it's already become the norm in a lot of Southeast Asian countries, especially like the Philippines and uh in Indonesia, where it's very difficult for a lot of people to get bank accounts. So they rely on e-wallets. The problem with e-wallets is number one, they're very expensive. The fees are very expensive. Number two, there are daily limits to how much you can spend, how much you can receive and send, and so on. And uh number three, also very importantly, there is no interest that is being earned off these off the uh money in these e-wallets. The e-wallet providers may be earning interest off the fiat deposits that they have, but the users themselves, not they don't receive that interest to them directly. In most cases, some e-wallet providers do uh provide like the interest. So there are multiple, these three kind of like core issues are the things that we can really resolve. So the if you were to integrate stablecoin infrastructure or Kaiser's orchestration layer into the user scene, what would happen is the initial engagement would be the same, initial interaction. You go to an ATM and you deposit that fiat into this time though, potentially an exchange account, or directly from the ATM, convert that fiat into either a the local stablecoin or a US denominated stablecoin. So, as an example, in Taiwan, we are speaking with potential on-ramp partners, both CEX and on-ramp specific payment infrastructure providers, to make that user scene very seamless as possible. So using existing touch points to on-ramp from fiat to stablecoin. And once they do that, because what we're building is infrastructure, foundational infrastructure, anyone can actually build a product and service on top of what we're doing. So one team is looking to use our infrastructure to build a remittance product and service. So what that product and service will do is once the user has deposited fiat and converted that into stablecoin, that stable coin will be deposited into their remittance app wallet. And from that remittance app wallet, you have, you will potentially have various choices. I want to send my mother Indonesian rupiah in cash into her bank account. Or I want to send my Indonesian mother USDT stable coins. Or I want to send my Indonesian mother Indonesian rupiah stable coins. So you have all these options that you can select. In traditional legacy infrastructure, to have those various options, it was a bit of a headache. You have to like talk with the banks and so on.

John Cho: 35:01

But here, it's basically click of a button and all that swap and conversion will happen on the back end in the background using our FX swap infrastructure. And the way that we're building our FX engine is we want to be able to say that our FX engine is the most efficient and cheapest way of swapping between different currencies. That's the goal. And so hopefully, once this is all like done and built out, those kind of like, you know, uh swaps will be much cheaper, much easier. And again, just being able to do like one click to choose how you want the um, you know, uh um receiving you know asset to be, either fiat or stablecoin. I think that in itself is like a massive kind of like change. So yeah, that's uh uh a quick uh summary, I guess.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 35:47

Yeah, I mean that that was pretty much my main pillar of uh coming into crypto because we can enable these cross-border payments much easily compared to you know traditional Rails. Even since I got into crypto, which is probably like eight, nine years ago. I mean, we haven't really seen like a perfect product, but from what I'm hearing, this is like the most as perfect as I I actually can get. So um, you know, I'm very excited to see all this coming to fruition. I wish I had a proper line messaging app, but uh here in Singapore, I can only get the kind of dumbed-down version so I can't I can't see it. But uh yeah, we're we're coming close to the end of our recording. But uh, are there any parting messages or anything left to say? Um, you know, whoever whoever wants to say something first.

Dr Sangmin "Sam" Seo: 36:32

So Taka, but actually I'm also using the global version of Line Messenger. But so uh actually the stablecoin super app, we call it Unify, and then this Unify will be available uh in the old version of Line Messengers. Although, I mean we don't have line pay in the global version, but the stablecoin itself can be used through this unify app inside the line. It is kind of the universal application, but it will be just called as a you know stablecoin support app. And that this unify will be definitely integrated inside the line messenger, but it will be also available as a standalone app, iOS app or Android app, also the web applications. We try to increase the you know the accessibility of this unify, but ultimately we'll have the older platforms and all the you know, we'll yeah, we'll increase the you know the accessibility and the usabilities.

John Cho: 37:26

I mean, just to kind of like add to Taka your last comment um about why you got into the industry and so on. I think like for me, like the the tech has been around to make this happen for a very long time. The tech has always been there. But it was, it's the regulatory landscape couldn't keep up with the tech. The reason why we're so excited and the reason why we feel like Cairo is so well positioned to really dominate the uh step coin infrastructure uh landscape in Asia is because the regulatory landscape is now finally catching up to the tech. And so we've been speaking with regulators in South Korea and Japan and so on. And now it's kind of like, you know, possible because we now have the support from the lawmakers for it to, like, you know, for the startups to be launched their own regional stable coins, you know. Um uh so yeah, again, I mean the tech has been there, but I think in terms of like, you know, just to kind of like share why there is so much momentum now is that the regulatory landscape is now finally catching up. So I think everyone can really expect a lot of like, you know, really paradigm shifting, like, you know, like landscape shifting catalysts over the next couple of months, years. I think uh the way that we transact like you know, internationally, cross-border commerce, finance, I think could fundamentally change, especially of over the next two, three years, I believe.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 38:47

Yeah, I'm super looking forward to that. So as we end our uh uh session, I'm where can people follow you guys? Where can they follow the progress that your guys are making?

Dr Sangmin "Sam" Seo: 38:56

So basically uh we have X account, Kaia Chain, and also uh my account and John account, you guys that the audience can find it easily from X. So just look for Kaia Chain on X, then you guys can find the recent updates and uh the further announcements.

Takatoshi Shibayama: 39:12

Okay, great. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you for having me. Thanks for listening. If you like what you hear, give Blockcast a like and subscribe on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. And for all your juicy web theory news, keep updated on blockhead.co. Catch you in the next episode.