Presented by Stablecon; Powered by BVNK.

In this episode of Money Code, host Chuk Okpalugo sits down with Irina Chuchkina, Chief Growth Officer at Wallet in Telegram, the only wallet natively integrated into a billion-user messenger, and a 20-year payments veteran who launched GrabPay across eight countries in Southeast Asia.

They unpack why "distribution is an outcome, not a strategy" when scaling crypto products globally, how running custodial and self-custodial wallets simultaneously works as a coverage strategy for 150 million users, and why the winner of the stablecoin race won't be the next issuer but the infrastructure that makes hundreds of national stablecoins interoperable.

Subscribe and listen to the Money Code podcast here:

https://lnk.to/MoneyCodeSN

Chapters

00:00 Why distribution is an outcome, not a strategy

03:44 Connecting the dots: a user in Thailand and a user in Mexico

05:30 Telegram isn't a messenger, it's an economy

10:31 "People wake up with it and go to bed with it"

13:54 From simple bot to financial platform: tokenized stocks from $1

21:38 Maslow's hierarchy of financial needs

24:35 Two wallets, one app: custodial vs. self-custodial as a go-to-market decision

30:10 The Gift Fest playbook: 2M daily players, 1M new wallet users

33:38 Tether partnerships and watching what Binance does

38:44 Non-USD stablecoins: "every country will have a national stablecoin"

41:24 The real winner won't be an issuer

43:38 Where to find Irina and Wallet in Telegram

Connect with the Hosts & Guest

Chuk Okpalugo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuk-okpalugo/ | https://x.com/chukxyz/ | http://stablecoinblueprint.com

Raj Parekh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajparekh7/ | https://x.com/rajparekh | http://monad.xyz

Irina Chuchkina: https://www.linkedin.com/in/irinachuchkina/ | https://x.com/pogodasuper | https://x.com/wallettg

About Stablecon

Stablecon (https://stablecon.com/) is the premier gathering for those at the intersection of DeFi, economic policy, financial infrastructure, and institutional integration, and those reinventing global commerce. By convening the brightest minds in fintech and crypto, Stablecon provides attendees with world class thought leadership and fosters unparalleled networking and strategic collaboration across the digital payments industry. Whether you're building, advising, or navigating this new frontier, this is the room where it happens.

About BVNK

BVNK is the leading provider of stablecoin payments infrastructure, helping businesses move money faster, settle globally, and even launch their own stablecoin products. Head to https://bvnk.com/ to learn more.

Presented by Stablecon; Powered by BVNK.

In this episode of Money Code, host Chuk Okpalugo sits down with Kirill Gertman, co-founder and CEO of Conduit, the cross-border payments orchestrator building stablecoin infrastructure across Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

They unpack why the stablecoin sandwich is actually a "spaghetti-filled taco" — where chain selection, local rail access, and geography-specific liquidity make cross-border payments far messier than the narrative suggests — how non-USD stablecoins only work when "designed to move, not to hold," and why the winners won't be banks or crypto companies alone, but the T-shaped players who specialize deeply and stay open to everyone else.

Subscribe and listen to the Money Code podcast here:

https://lnk.to/MoneyCodeSN

Chapters

00:00 The stablecoin sandwich is actually a spaghetti-filled taco

03:21 "Within 10 years, vast majority of cross-border will be blockchain-based"

08:58 What Conduit actually does: orchestration across LatAm, Africa, and SE Asia

12:05 Bottom-up adoption: individuals hedging, then SMEs, then enterprise

18:52 The K-shaped market: enterprise buyers on one end, vibe coders on the other

20:26 "The UI is super nice… but the money doesn't move": compliance as the real bottleneck

27:28 Three unsolved problems: trade finance, identity, and AI deepfake fraud

37:20 Why a stablecoin skeptic changed his mind on non-USD stablecoins

42:00 The BBRL walkthrough: fiat → mint → on-chain swap → off-ramp in seconds

49:12 Don't build your own chain: why banks should be T-shaped, not vertically integrated

Connect with the Hosts & Guest

Chuk Okpalugo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuk-okpalugo/ | https://x.com/chukxyz/ | http://stablecoinblueprint.com

Raj Parekh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajparekh7/ | https://x.com/rajparekh | http://monad.xyz

Kirill Gertman: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kirillgertman/ | https://x.com/kirillgertman | https://conduitpay.com

About Stablecon

Stablecon (https://stablecon.com/) is the premier gathering for those at the intersection of DeFi, economic policy, financial infrastructure, and institutional integration, and those reinventing global commerce. By convening the brightest minds in fintech and crypto, Stablecon provides attendees with world class thought leadership and fosters unparalleled networking and strategic collaboration across the digital payments industry. Whether you're building, advising, or navigating this new frontier, this is the room where it happens.

About BVNK

BVNK is the leading provider of stablecoin payments infrastructure, helping businesses move money faster, settle globally, and even launch their own stablecoin products. Head to https://bvnk.com/ to learn more.

Presented by Stablecon; Powered by BVNK.

In this episode of Money Code, hosts Chuk Okpalugo and Raj Parekh sit down with Davi Strazza, Chief Business Officer at Lightspark, an 11-year Adyen veteran who helped grow the company from $30B to over $1.3T in payments volume before joining a 50-person startup building on Bitcoin rails.

They unpack why Davi believes the moment to rebuild payments infrastructure from first principles is now, how Lightspark uses Bitcoin as an invisible transport layer to move money across 65 countries, and why crypto will never reach the scale it deserves unless it becomes as easy as tapping a card.

Subscribe and listen to the Money Code podcast here:

https://lnk.to/MoneyCodeSN

Chapters

00:00 Why leave $1.3T in payments for a 50-person startup?

02:44 Three problem spaces, one infrastructure play

05:55 The Bitcoin sandwich: fiat in, crypto transport, fiat out

09:41 "Bitcoin is volatile" — why sub-second settlement changes the math

12:39 The import-exporter who flies cash on planes

17:02 B2B is the bigger prize: treasury, payroll, creator payouts

21:39 "The plumbing is necessary — it's just not sufficient"

26:47 Are we innovating in the right place?

30:38 Adyen lessons: education is the go-to-market bottleneck

34:35 The Frankenstein problem: why global expansion is cultural

38:37 Agentic payments: infrastructure is ahead of product

44:40 Fintech is 1% built — where does all the money go?

Connect with the Hosts & Guest

Chuk Okpalugo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuk-okpalugo/ | https://x.com/chuk_xyz/ | http://stablecoinblueprint.com

Raj Parekh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajparekh7/ | https://x.com/rajparekh | http://monad.xyz

Davi Strazza: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davistrazza/ | https://x.com/davistrazza

About Stablecon

Stablecon (https://stablecon.com/) is the premier gathering for those at the intersection of DeFi, economic policy, financial infrastructure, and institutional integration, and those reinventing global commerce. By convening the brightest minds in fintech and crypto, Stablecon provides attendees with world class thought leadership and fosters unparalleled networking and strategic collaboration across the digital payments industry. Whether you're building, advising, or navigating this new frontier, this is the room where it happens.

About BVNK

BVNK is the leading provider of stablecoin payments infrastructure, helping businesses move money faster, settle globally, and even launch their own stablecoin products. Head to https://bvnk.com/ to learn more.

Presented by Stablecon; Powered by BVNK.

In this episode of Money Code, hosts Chuk Okpalugo and Raj Parekh sit down with Erik Reppel, Head of Engineering for Coinbase's Developer Platform and the creator of x402 — the open payment protocol that just joined the Linux Foundation with Google, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, AWS, and Cloudflare as founding members.

They unpack why Erik designed x402 to capture zero value, how "the wallet is a universal API key" that eliminates sign-up friction for a new class of non-technical builders, and what the "agentic premium" means for companies leaving money on the table with free tiers.

Subscribe and listen to the Money Code podcast here:

https://lnk.to/MoneyCodeSN

Chapters

00:00 The Foundation: "phase two of three of our secret master plan"

02:03 What x402 actually does: "a standard way of telling a computer how to pay you"

03:36 The mechanism: how declaration is decoupled from the rail

06:03 Inside the stack: facilitators, SDKs, and 13 live implementations

09:09 Why agents can't be on both sides of every payment integration

16:50 The ad model is breaking — how publishers monetize agent traffic

20:38 The Claude cowork class: "the people who find x402 most valuable are not developers"

24:51 "The wallet is a universal API key"

30:44 The agentic premium: charging more per request than subscriptions

32:54 Where to build: Solana at 65% of volume and why it's hard to measure

39:59 Value creation, not value capture: why one open standard is the goal

44:41 VHS vs Betamax: simplicity as the path to critical mass

48:17 Where to find Erik and x402

Connect with the Hosts & Guest

Chuk Okpalugo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuk-okpalugo/ | https://x.com/chuk_xyz/ | http://stablecoinblueprint.com

Raj Parekh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajparekh7/ | https://x.com/rajparekh | http://monad.xyz

Erik Reppel: https://x.com/programmer | https://x402.org | https://cdp.coinbase.com

About Stablecon

Stablecon (https://stablecon.com/) is the premier gathering for those at the intersection of DeFi, economic policy, financial infrastructure, and institutional integration, and those reinventing global commerce. By convening the brightest minds in fintech and crypto, Stablecon provides attendees with world class thought leadership and fosters unparalleled networking and strategic collaboration across the digital payments industry. Whether you're building, advising, or navigating this new frontier, this is the room where it happens.

About BVNK

BVNK is the leading provider of stablecoin payments infrastructure, helping businesses move money faster, settle globally, and even launch their own stablecoin products. Head to https://bvnk.com/ to learn more.

Presented by Stablecon; Powered by BVNK.

In this episode of Money Code, hosts Chuk Okpalugo and Raj Parekh sit down with Sam Broner, co-founder and CEO of the Better Money Company and former investment partner at a16z crypto.

They unpack why swapping one stablecoin for another today is like "selling Wells Fargo dollars to buy Bank of America dollars," why fungibility is the missing layer that turns stablecoins into real money, and what changes when AI agents show up needing to pay without a credit history.

Subscribe and listen to the Money Code podcast here:

https://lnk.to/MoneyCodeSN

Chapters

00:00 The stablecoin clearinghouse: BMC's 30-second pitch

01:24 "Selling Wells Fargo dollars to buy Bank of America dollars"

04:41 M&A merry-go-round: who builds vs. who buys

07:24 "We sell trust" — what payments companies actually need

10:05 Tourists in the Bazaar: why agents can't use credit rails

14:07 From ChatGPT to Cisco: how agent payment terms evolve

16:03 Protocol wars and intelligence at the edge

18:30 The incentive puzzle: why interchange fees exist

22:10 Emerging vs. developed markets: two different products

24:32 The innovator's dilemma: incumbents won't cannibalize

26:53 Five Bells Tavern: 200 years of clearing history in 5 minutes

29:15 Custom stablecoins, treasury management, and the partner list

35:49 No slippage vs. no fee: how BMC makes money

40:59 The endgame: "just see your dollar balance"

Connect with the Hosts & Guest

Chuk Okpalugo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuk-okpalugo/ | https://x.com/chuk_xyz/ | http://stablecoinblueprint.com

Raj Parekh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajparekh7/ | https://x.com/rajparekh | http://monad.xyz

Sam Broner: https://x.com/SamBroner | https://www.linkedin.com/in/sambroner/ | https://bettermoney.com

About Stablecon

Stablecon (https://stablecon.com/) is the premier gathering for those at the intersection of DeFi, economic policy, financial infrastructure, and institutional integration, and those reinventing global commerce. By convening the brightest minds in fintech and crypto, Stablecon provides attendees with world class thought leadership and fosters unparalleled networking and strategic collaboration across the digital payments industry. Whether you're building, advising, or navigating this new frontier, this is the room where it happens.

About BVNK

BVNK is the leading provider of stablecoin payments infrastructure, helping businesses move money faster, settle globally, and even launch their own stablecoin products. Head to https://bvnk.com/ to learn more.

Presented by Stablecon; Powered by BVNK.

In episode 27 of Money Code, hosts Chuk Okpalugo and Raj Parekh sit down with Rowland Berry, VP of Strategic Partnerships at Payoneer, a cross-border payments platform that moves $90B annually for nearly 2 million small businesses across 190+ countries.

They unpack what 18 months of evaluating the stablecoin space revealed: where stablecoins genuinely upgrade cross-border infrastructure, why off-ramps remain the hardest unsolved problem, and how Payoneer's closed-loop token PAYO-USD will work inside the wallet flows their customers already use.

Subscribe and listen to the Money Code podcast here:

https://lnk.to/MoneyCodeSN

Chapters

00:00 Two big moves: Bridge partnership and an OCC trust charter

02:05 How Payoneer actually works: $90B, 2M SMBs, 20 years of rails

06:13 Separating signal from noise: where stablecoins deliver real value

08:49 "Will it get cheaper?" — what the waitlist customers actually asked

10:16 Off-ramps aren't solved: last-mile delivery as the real unlock

14:28 Not a new business model — an infrastructure evolution

16:34 Why Bridge was a speed-to-market play

19:25 "They want trust, not keys" — what SMBs actually need

24:34 The OCC trust charter and what PAYO-USD unlocks

30:44 "Yield is not the north star" — reserve management philosophy

36:10 Stripe, PayPal, SoFi: how the market is evolving

43:26 Builder advice: unhappy flows and building with ambiguity

Connect with the Hosts & Guest

Chuk Okpalugo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuk-okpalugo/ | https://x.com/chuk_xyz/ | http://stablecoinblueprint.com

Raj Parekh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajparekh7/ | https://x.com/rajparekh | http://monad.xyz

Rowland Berry: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rowlandberry/

About Stablecon

Stablecon (https://stablecon.com/) is the premier gathering for those at the intersection of DeFi, economic policy, financial infrastructure, and institutional integration, and those reinventing global commerce. By convening the brightest minds in fintech and crypto, Stablecon provides attendees with world class thought leadership and fosters unparalleled networking and strategic collaboration across the digital payments industry. Whether you're building, advising, or navigating this new frontier, this is the room where it happens.

About BVNK

BVNK is the leading provider of stablecoin payments infrastructure, helping businesses move money faster, settle globally, and even launch their own stablecoin products. Head to https://bvnk.com/ to learn more.

Presented by Stablecon; Powered by BVNK.

In this episode of Money Code, hosts Chuk Okpalugo and Raj Parekh sit down with Itai Turbahn, founder and CEO of Dynamic (now part of Fireblocks), where his team builds the embedded wallet infrastructure that lets developers spin up global money movement in hours instead of years.

They unpack why the world's largest companies are building their own payment networks (YouTube alone has paid out billions to creators), what happens when the tech cost approaches zero but cryptography, security, and compliance stay hard, and why the M&A frenzy from Mastercard-BVNK to Fireblocks-Dynamic has every player attacking global finance from a different angle.

Subscribe and listen to the Money Code podcast here:

https://lnk.to/MoneyCodeSN

Chapters

00:00 What is Dynamic? Embedded wallets as the Twilio of money movement

02:15 From crypto-native UX fix to global financial primitive

07:37 The full stack: wallets, on/off ramps, liquidity, licensing - and why enterprises don't want Lego blocks

10:52 "Build a global Venmo in an hour": remittance, payroll, B2B, and the CeFi-DeFi bridge

14:23 Earn yield, issue a card, off-ramp to local currency - the embedded wallet bundle

17:55 "Don't roll your own cryptography": what AI and cloud code can't solve

22:36 "Our industry should be boring" - trust at scale and the fintech reframe

25:35 YouTube's $100B payout problem: payments as innovation, not risk management

29:42 No winner-take-all: why M&A is chaotic and that's the point

36:22 "More opportunities to build now, not less"

Connect with the Hosts & Guest

Chuk Okpalugo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuk-okpalugo/ | https://x.com/chuk_xyz/ | http://stablecoinblueprint.com

Raj Parekh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajparekh7/ | https://x.com/rajparekh | http://monad.xyz

Itai Turbahn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turbahn/ | https://x.com/turbahn | https://dynamic.xyz | https://fireblocks.com

About Stablecon

Stablecon (https://stablecon.com/) is the premier gathering for those at the intersection of DeFi, economic policy, financial infrastructure, and institutional integration, and those reinventing global commerce. By convening the brightest minds in fintech and crypto, Stablecon provides attendees with world class thought leadership and fosters unparalleled networking and strategic collaboration across the digital payments industry. Whether you're building, advising, or navigating this new frontier, this is the room where it happens.

About BVNK

BVNK is the leading provider of stablecoin payments infrastructure, helping businesses move money faster, settle globally, and even launch their own stablecoin products. Head to https://bvnk.com/ to learn more.

Presented by Stablecon; Powered by BVNK.

In episode 25 of Money Code, hosts Chuk Okpalugo and Raj Parekh are joined by Chris Dean, CEO and co-founder at Treasury Prime. They unpack why bank “slowness” is mostly a risk and proof problem, how fintechs actually use banks for deposits/credit/payments, and how stablecoins and newer, tech-first banks will reshape the US banking landscape.

Subscribe and listen to the Money Code podcast here:

https://lnk.to/MoneyCodeSN

Chapters

00:00 Banks are slow because change equals risk

02:26 Which banks move fast and why leadership matters

05:33 Treasury Prime’s role between banks and fintechs

09:16 The 3 fintech JTBD buckets: deposits, credit, payments

12:09 How fintech partnerships defend community banks from big-bank pressure

15:01 Stablecoins as deposit threat vs “just another rail”

17:43 The banker pitch: stablecoins are already in your flows

24:22 Where US banking goes next: de novos, charters, consolidation

27:21 Why running a bank stays expensive even with AI

32:25 What a “core” actually is and why regulators resist replacement

35:23 Are blockchains the answer, or do they create new reconciliation failure modes?

44:17 The practical playbook: start with stablecoin pay-in/pay-out

Connect with the Hosts & Guest

Chuk Okpalugo: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chuk-okpalugo/ | https://x.com/chuk_xyz/ | http://stablecoinblueprint.com

Raj Parekh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rajparekh7/ | https://x.com/rajparekh | http://monad.xyz

Chris Dean: https://www.treasuryprime.com/

About Stablecon

Stablecon (https://stablecon.com/) is the premier gathering for those at the intersection of DeFi, economic policy, financial infrastructure, and institutional integration, and those reinventing global commerce. By convening the brightest minds in fintech and crypto, Stablecon provides attendees with world class thought leadership and fosters unparalleled networking and strategic collaboration across the digital payments industry. Whether you’re building, advising, or navigating this new frontier, this is the room where it happens.

About BVNK

BVNK is the leading provider of stablecoin payments infrastructure, helping businesses move money faster, settle globally, and even launch their own stablecoin products. Head to https://bvnk.com/ to learn more.