Asia Tech Podcast

The convergence of blockchain technology with real-world commodities is beginning to challenge long-held assumptions about who can access and trade strategically important assets. Uranium, once limited to large utilities and specialized traders because of regulatory and logistical barriers, is now being reimagined as a digitally native, globally accessible commodity.In this episode of ATP, Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos and the visionary behind Uranium.io, reveals how tokenizing uranium is less about crypto experimentation and more about solving a long-standing market inefficiency. Uranium, one of the world’s most strategically important commodities, has historically been inaccessible to all but large industrial players.Some of the topics that Arthur covered in detail include:Tokenizing uranium is not about crypto. It is a structural improvement to an inefficient market.Arthur believes that tokenizing uranium is about building a new, global market, with custody, global accessibility, interoperability, and 24/7 rails and that there is simply no better infrastructure layer than a public blockchain to accomplish this.When we spoke about blockchains in general, Arthur posited that transparency was never a feature; it was a constraint of early design.Most tokenized asset projects fail because they underestimate the legal fabric required to bind the digital and physical worlds.Interest in uranium is driven by three large macro factors, 1) an aging memory of past nuclear disasters, 2) climate pressures, 3) AI-driven energy demand.

Compliance is often viewed as a necessary burden, something designed to prevent mistakes rather than enable progress. Yet the ideas explored here challenge that assumption by reframing compliance as a potential catalyst for trust, speed, and intelligent growth.In this episode of ATP, Martin Markiewicz, CEO at Silent Eight and Boon-Hiong Chan, Industry Applied Innovation Lead at Deutsche Bank discuss the increasing complexity of today’s regulatory landscape. Diverging rules across markets, strict data-localization requirements, and growing expectations for explainability demand a more thoughtful approach to automation.Some of the topics that Martin and Boon-Hiong covered in detail included:High-velocity organizations treat compliance as part of product design and competitive strategy.Intelligent automation in compliance can flip unit economics, expanding total addressable market and funding growth.Treat compliance AI as an operational risk instrument you continuously tune against policy, appetite, and outcomes.Data localization is a constraint. Architect for local data, global signal: keep sensitive data in-place while exchanging derivatives of truth.Elevate talent from doing the work to governing the work, with tools that surface reasoning, variance, and drift.

Treasury is undergoing a fundamental shift as global businesses operate across more markets, more banks, and more currencies than ever before. The old model, built on spreadsheets, manual reconciliation, and after-the-fact reporting, cannot keep pace with real-time payments, 24/7 liquidity demands, and increasingly complex cross-border flows. In this episode of ATP recorded at SFF 2025, David Hanna (Finmo), Kriti Jain (Deutsche Bank), and Jessie Toh (Coda) paint a picture of Treasury as an ecosystem role, data-driven, modular, compliant, and deeply strategic, where Treasurers become designers of liquidity and key partners in how global businesses grow.Some of the topics that David, Kriti and Jessie covered in detail included:Treasury is moving from hindsight to foresight. The CFO, controller and treasurer are no longer just reporters of what happened; they are becoming strategic enablers.Fragmented data is the silent enemy of modern treasury. Centralizing data is the prerequisite for every other kind of sophistication.Connected financial intelligence is a better language than “treasury systems”, “Connected Financial Intelligence and Control” for the modern CFO.AI isn’t a buzzword for Finmo. It’s woven into how modern treasury actually gets done, designed to give finance leaders what David calls “financial second sight.”Cross-border liquidity is now a 24/7 discipline, not a monthly exercise.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping how information is created, processed, and acted upon, but it is also eroding the foundations of trust that business systems have relied on for decades. In the past, documents, signatures, and deterministic software offered predictable and auditable outputs.In this episode of ATP recorded at SFF 2025, Ben Stein, the CEO of Staple.ai, explains, this shift from predictable, rules-based systems to probabilistic, black-box models has created a widening “trust gap”, one that becomes especially dangerous in domains like finance, insurance, or government, where proof matters more than almost anything.Some of the topics that Ben discussed in detail:Artificial intelligence execution is abundant, but trust remains scarce. The isn’t about what AI can technically do, it’s about what we can confidently rely on when the stakes are high.In many cases, artificial intelligence is not merely hallucinating, it’s industrializing fraud.Systematic trust cannot be bolted on later. It has to start at the data layer.Meta-structured data, a cryptographic marker embedded directly into a file, is the source for embedded data trust.Trust will become a competitive advantage.

Cross-border commerce is entering its fastest, most chaotic growth phase in history. The world’s smallest sellers now have global reach, but they are trying to scale on top of payment infrastructure that was never designed for them.In this episode of ATP recorded at SFF 2025, Nicholas Liao, the Founder and CEO of Whalet explains that today’s MSME sellers are not just exporting products, they are building global brands across DTC sites, marketplaces, and social platforms. But while demand is global, payment systems remain deeply local.Some of the topics that Nicholas covered in detail included:MSMEs are not just exporting anymore; they are going global as brands and Whalet is helping facilitate this.Cross-border eCommerce is exploding, but the payment rails are still missing.One of the most powerful threads in the conversation: payment localization is not a “nice to have.” It’s existential.APAC is home to a staggering 71 million MSMEs, but persistent barriers keep them from selling cross-border.The Belt and Road is no longer just railways and ports. It’s increasingly about digital trade corridors.

The idea of programmable money represents a fundamental shift in how value moves through the digital economy. Instead of money acting only as a static store of value or medium of exchange, it becomes a dynamic instrument capable of carrying rules, conditions, and logic.In this episode of ATP recorded at SFF 2025, Effie Dimitropoulos, the CEO of AUDD Stablecoin, notes that programmable money is not a sudden disruption but the next step in a long evolution of how value moves in the digital world.Some of the topics that Effie covered in detail:Programmable money can attach rules and logic as to where, how and when money can be used.Our comfort with digital money did not just appear. It was earned over time, largely through the rise of the smartphone and everyday digital behaviors.Australia’s economic ties to Asia are deep and complex. Yet the money behind those flows is often routed through a slow, expensive, opaque infrastructure.Tokenization and stablecoins are two sides of the same digital coin.No conversation about stablecoins is complete without talking about regulation. Regulation is not a drag; it’s the precondition for trust at scale.

Artificial intelligence is reshaping the way money moves, turning payments from isolated actions into intelligent, context-aware interactions. Instead of searching, tapping, or navigating apps, users will increasingly rely on AI agents that understand their routines, anticipate their needs, and act proactively, often before they make a request.In this episode of ATP recorded at SFF 2025, Jiangming Yang, Chief Innovation Officer at Ant International, explains how AI-powered agents can understand a user’s context, anticipate needs, and act in advance.Some of the topics that Jiangming covered in detail included:Payments are becoming intelligent experiences, not transactions. Jiangming emphasized that AI changes the nature of interaction itself.Agentic AI Is redefining how consumers discover products, decide and make payments.A I will become the operating partner for global business expansion. Instead of consulting multiple advisors for growth, a business could ask a single AI agent for all of the help it needs.Collaboration among agents could fundamentally reshape global commerce.Every innovation pipeline should be gated and supported by security, permission controls and verification layers.

Payments are becoming both more complex and more interconnected, especially across a region as diverse and fast-moving as Asia. The landscape is defined by massive scale, deep fragmentation, and rapid innovation, all of which demand infrastructure that is global at the core but deeply local in execution.In this episode of ATP filmed at SFF 2025, Jeff Parker, CEO of Paymentology, explains how a single global platform can navigate successfully with different markets, cultures, and payment networks.Some of the topics that Jeff covered in detail included:Asia is huge but fragmented. This forces serious players to think beyond generic “global solutions” and build infrastructure that can flex, localize, and still stay coherent.Paymentology's deep configuration that lets each client shape products for their own needs and local nuances. Localization is a blend of platform design and human presence.Culture is not a side-issue, it drives how payment ecosystems actually work and thrive.One rovocative observation: the issuing market is about ten years behind the acquiring market.Embedded finance is really about orchestrating ecosystems.

Asia’s accelerating digital transformation has created an environment of unprecedented interconnection, and unprecedented vulnerability. Threats now move quickly across borders, clouds, and supply chains, exposing both large enterprises and SMEs to risks that often stem from the simplest gaps: weak authentication, exposed remote access, and misconfigured systems.In this episode of ATP, Paul Jackson, CEO of THEOS Cyber, argues defenders can keep pace when fundamentals are properly applied and Gene Yu, CEO of Blackpanda, frames resilience as the speed and effectiveness of ‘Readiness, Response, and Recovery’.Some of the topics that Paul and Gene covered in detail include:Resilience in the cyber space starts with “properly applied” basics, yet most organizations simply have not applied the fundamentals.Cyber insurance is essential, cyber preparedness should not be outsourced to a policy.Resilience is a rehearsed behavior...full stop.Business interconnectivity drives value, but third party risk is now first-order risk.Regulation matters, but enforcement of that regulation is the real lever.

Financial innovation in Asia is accelerating, but not in a uniform way. Markets across the region move at very different speeds, shaped by culture, regulation, and consumer behavior. At the same time, major technological shifts are underway.In this episode of ATP, Chee Beh, SVP & GM APAC at Yuno, explains how the center of gravity is shifting from Generative to Agentic AI, where autonomous agents do not just make recommendations but execute end-to-end actions.Some of the topics that Chee discussed in detail included:Last year’s frontier was GenAI. This year’s is agentic AI: autonomous, goal-oriented agents that don’t just suggest, but do. Autonomous commerce agents are only half the story. Payments agents will choose among your payment methods to optimize for your payment objectives.Payment or frankly any technological optimization is getting more and more personalized and multi-dimensional.For agentic commerce to complete the loop, merchant agents and consumer agents must communicate seamlessly, with payment orchestrators acting as the connective tissue.Southeast Asia markets behave like startups: price-sensitive, experiment-friendly, and hungry for growth. Japan behaves more like an enterprise: precision, trust in institutions, and measured adoption.