Bits and Borders

Hosted by Aaron Stanley

Business NewsInterviews guests

Website RSS feed LinkedIn YouTube

Episodes

207

Latest episode

Sep 2026

Language

About the show

From digital assets to tokenization to artificial intelligence, Bits and Borders explores the growth of frontier technology in frontier markets

Listen to episodes

60 recent

September 23, 202640 min

#200: Kristin Smith on Why Boring Is Better For U.S. Crypto Policy

Kristin Smith is President of the Solana Policy Institute. She joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss why the Clarity Act stalled in the US Senate. Kristin explains how the politics around President Trump, opposition from the banking lobby and a shifting Democratic electorate derailed the bill, and why she believes the industry still came out ahead as the SEC and CFTC move to write rules on their own. They also discuss the risk of a political backlash and crypto's shift toward financial infrastructure. You can connect with Kristin Smith on LinkedIn For editorial and sponsorship enquiries: aaron@promenadeadvisory.comSubscribe to Bits and Borders : Bits and Borders is presented by Sumsub Sumsub recently released its fourth annual State of the Crypto Industry report. The new research reveals how digital asset companies are balancing fraud prevention, regulatory pressure, and user experience as they scale in 2026. This report draws on Sumsub's internal data from 2024–2025 and insights from 300 crypto companies surveyed outside Sumsub's customer base. Read the full report here :

September 16, 202657 min

#199: Digital ID for the Post-Quantum Age with Blerify's Marcos Allende

Marcos Allende is CEO and co-founder of Blerify. He joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss why AI is making passwords, selfie checks and passport scans obsolete as a way to prove identity online. Marcos explains how Blerify's identity wallets and blockchain-based trust registry allow digital IDs to be verified across borders, and why companies and governments need to adopt post-quantum cryptography now. The conversation also covers where quantum computing stands in 2026 and what it could unlock beyond breaking encryption.You can connect with Marcos on LinkedIn -------------------------------------------------------------- Bits and Borders is presented by SumsubSumsub recently released its fourth annual State of the Crypto Industry report. The new research reveals how digital asset companies are balancing fraud prevention, regulatory pressure, and user experience as they scale in 2026. This report draws on Sumsub's internal data from 2024–2025 and insights from 300 crypto companies surveyed outside Sumsub's customer base.Read the full report here : Connect with Aaron Stanley on LinkedIn : Follow Bits and Borders on LinkedIn : Follow Bits and Borders on X For editorial and sponsorship enquiries: aaron@promenadeadvisory.com

September 11, 202644 min

#198: Loonie On-Chain: Canada's Digital Dollar with Didier Lavallee

Didier Lavallée is the CEO of Tetra Digital Group, the Canadian trust company behind CAD Digital (CADD), a Canadian dollar stablecoin that launched in May. He joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss why Canada went so long without a usable domestic stablecoin, and how Tetra grew out of the QuadrigaCX collapse into the country's first qualified digital asset custodian. They get into the early demand for CADD in remittances, US trade flows and domestic settlement, and why the lack of real-time rails in Canada is pushing treasury desks toward programmatic payments. Didier also makes the case for non-USD stablecoins and for Canadian-owned financial infrastructure at a tense moment with Washington. Connect with Didier on LinkedIn Connect with Aaron on Linkedin -------------------------------------------------------- Bits and Borders is presented by Sumsub Sumsub recently released its fourth annual State of the Crypto Industry report. The new research reveals how digital asset companies are balancing fraud prevention, regulatory pressure, and user experience as they scale in 2026. This report draws on Sumsub's internal data from 2024–2025 and insights from 300 crypto companies surveyed outside Sumsub's customer base. Read the full report here

September 3, 202630 min

#197: From Crypto Wallet to Dollar Account with Bitget's Alvin Kan

Alvin Kan is the COO of Bitget Wallet. He joins host Aaron Stanley at Blockchain Rio to discuss the shift from crypto wallet to everyday finance app, where users save, spend and invest dollars in one place. In August, daily payment transactions on the wallet overtook daily trading transactions for the first time in its eight-year history. Kan explains why he expects payments and trading apps to converge, how demand differs across Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America, and why he thinks newcomers rather than incumbent institutions will win the stablecoin era. Connect with Alvin Kan on LinkedIn Connect with Aaron Stanley on Linkedin Subscribe to Bits and Borders newsletter ----------------------------------------------------------------- Bits and Borders is presented by Sumsub Sumsub recently released its fourth annual State of the Crypto Industry report. The new research reveals how digital asset companies are balancing fraud prevention, regulatory pressure, and user experience as they scale in 2026. This report draws on Sumsub's internal data from 2024–2025 and insights from 300 crypto companies surveyed outside Sumsub's customer base. Read the full report here: https://sumsub.com/crypto-industry-report-2026/?utm_source=promenade&utm_medium=media&utm_campaign=crypto-report_report_2026

August 28, 202648 min

#196: Quantum vs Bitcoin with Gean Chu of Honey Island Capital

Gean Chu is a partner at Honey Island Capital. He joins host Aaron Stanley for a deep dive on quantum computing, which has become one of the main factors weighing on crypto markets in 2026. Gean breaks down the March paper from Google Quantum AI that cut the estimated hardware requirement for breaking Bitcoin twentyfold, explains why roughly 6.9 million bitcoins already have their public keys exposed on chain, and argues the harder problem is the coins sitting in Satoshi-era wallets that nobody can move. He also lays out the mitigation plans under discussion, the realistic timelines, and why he thinks the risk is already priced in. You can connect with Gean Chu on LinkedIn Subscribe to Bits and Borders on Substack ------------------------------------------------------------------- Bits and Borders is presented by Sumsub Sumsub recently released its fourth annual State of the Crypto Industry report. The new research reveals how digital asset companies are balancing fraud prevention, regulatory pressure, and user experience as they scale in 2026. This report draws on Sumsub's internal data from 2024–2025 and insights from 300 crypto companies surveyed outside Sumsub's customer base. Read the full report here :

August 25, 202628 min

#195: "Scale to $100 Billion or Die:” KAST CEO Raagulan Pathy on the Stablecoin Neobank Race

Raagulan Pathy is the CEO of Kast. He joins host Aaron Stanley at Blockchain Rio 2026, a year after his first appearance and roughly $80 million in Series A funding later. Rags explains why he thinks the stablecoin neobank market is winner take most, why Kast scrapped its planned token airdrop in favor of equity, and what the company found when 20 to 30% of its users started running business spend through a consumer card. He also makes the case that Latin America has the strongest product-market fit for stablecoins anywhere in the world. You can connect with Rags on LinkedIn --------------------------------------------------------------------- Bits and Borders is presented by Sumsub Sumsub recently released its fourth annual State of the Crypto Industry report. The new research reveals how digital asset companies are balancing fraud prevention, regulatory pressure, and user experience as they scale in 2026. This report draws on Sumsub's internal data from 2024–2025 and insights from 300 crypto companies surveyed outside Sumsub's customer base. Read the full report here: https://sumsub.com/crypto-industry-report-2026/?utm_source=promenade&utm_medium=media&utm_campaign=crypto-report_report_2026

August 20, 202636 min

#194: The Fraudsters Have Agents Now with Sumsub's Ilya Brovin

Ilya Brovin is Chief Growth Officer of Sumsub. He joins host Aaron Stanley at Bitso Business' Stablecoin Conference in Mexico City to discuss how AI is changing identity fraud. Sumsub onboards 12 to 15 million people a month, and Brovin describes a clear shift over the past year: criminals have stopped faking documents by hand and started training agents to attempt verification programmatically, at machine speed and scale. The conversation covers why deepfake detection alone does not work, what reusable identity looks like in practice, and how verification changes when the customer is an agent rather than a person. You can connect with Ilya Brovin on LinkedIn -------------------------------------------------------------------- Bits and Borders is presented by Sumsub Sumsub recently released its fourth annual State of the Crypto Industry report. The new research reveals how digital asset companies are balancing fraud prevention, regulatory pressure, and user experience as they scale in 2026. This report draws on Sumsub's internal data from 2024–2025 and insights from 300 crypto companies surveyed outside Sumsub's customer base. Read the full report here :

August 14, 202635 min

#193: Live from Ai4: AI as Predictive Intelligence with Knowidea

Yatharth Sejpal and Brian Li are co-founder/CEO and co-founder/CTO of Knowidea. They join host Aaron Stanley at the Ai4 Conference in Las Vegas to discuss why they're betting on formally verified, deterministic AI instead of the 95 percent confidence models most companies accept. The two explain their neurosymbolic architecture, which forces AI agents to produce a mathematical proof for every output, and why that distinction matters for agentic payments and fraud prevention. They also share use cases spanning oil and gas, wealth management, and M&A. You can connect with Yatharth Sejpal and Brian Li on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/yatharth-sejpal/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/zhengyu-brian-li/ Subscribe to Bits and Borders on Substack

August 14, 202644 min

#192: The Modular Stablecoin Revolution with M0's Luca Prosperi

Luca Prosperi is CEO and co-founder of M0. He joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss the state of stablecoin infrastructure in 2026, two years after his first appearance on the show. They cover the wallet-centric shift in finance, the fight over stablecoin yield, and why Prosperi thinks local-currency stablecoins, not on-chain FX, will be the next big trend. Prosperi also breaks down what M0's partnerships with PayPal, MoneyGram, and MetaMask reveal about where stablecoin infrastructure is headed. You can connect with Luca on LinkedIn Subscribe to Bits and Borders on Substack ---------------------------------------------------------------- Bits and Borders is presented by Sumsub Sumsub recently released its fourth annual State of the Crypto Industry report. The new research reveals how digital asset companies are balancing fraud prevention, regulatory pressure, and user experience as they scale in 2026. This report draws on Sumsub's internal data from 2024–2025 and insights from 300 crypto companies surveyed outside Sumsub's customer base. Read the full report here:

August 1, 202632 min

#191: Crossing the Stablecoin Adoption Chasm - Live from Bitso Stablecoin Conference

Joao Reginatto of M0, Monica Ramirez of Anchorage Digital, Olivia Vande Woude of Ava Labs, and Sheraz Shere of Solana Foundation join host Aaron Stanley at the Bitso Business Stablecoin Conference in Mexico City to discuss stablecoin readiness and the gap between corporate intent and implementation. The tech and the regulatory picture have mostly caught up, but companies are still stuck on accounting treatment, internal buy-in, and a shortage of talent that understands both crypto and traditional finance. The panel covers real examples like MoneyGram's board approval process and OpenTrade's work winning over CFOs, then closes with a lightning round of bold predictions on where stablecoins go next. You can connect with Joao Reginatto , Monica Ramirez , Olivia Vande Woude , and Sheraz Shere on LinkedIn Subscribe to Bits and Borders on ⁠Substack⁠ ------------------------------------------------- Bits and Borders is presented by Sumsub Sumsub recently released its fourth annual State of the Crypto Industry report. The new research reveals how digital asset companies are balancing fraud prevention, regulatory pressure, and user experience as they scale in 2026. This report draws on Sumsub's internal data from 2024–2025 and insights from 300 crypto companies surveyed outside Sumsub's customer base. Read the full report ⁠here⁠ :