Luke: [00:00:00] You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist, and this one features Navin, who is the chief brain of IQ and the co-founder of KRWQ. IQ is building a more intelligent financial system from a leading stable coin infrastructure with an autonomous AI agents to the world’s largest blockchain encyclopedia.

IQ recently launched KRWQ, the first Korean won stable coin, and previously launched IQ Wiki, the world’s largest blockchain encyclopedia. In this episode, we discussed what’s standing in the way of AI agents becoming real economic actors that can transact on their own, how IQ’s Wiki AI editor, Sophia, and the AI agent Aiden, turn a knowledge base into a living infrastructure, and why the stable woods theory that says non-US stable coins like KRWQ end up reinforcing dollar dominance instead of challenging it, and what the global financial map could look like in ten years if that theory holds true.

And now for this week’s episode of The Brave Technologist.

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Luke: Navin, man, welcome to Brave Technologist. How are you doing? Good, good. [00:01:00] Great to be here. Yeah, yeah. I’m excited to have this conversation. So we’re here at Rare Evo today. We’re actually doing a panel together, about agentic payments. from your perspective, what’s standing in the way of AI agents becoming real economic actors that can transact on their own?

there’s definitely a couple things. I think one of them is you gotta be pretty much 99.99% accurate for payments to, you know, to people to trust it to make an agentic payment. Even like, you know, to get to the level of, like, autopay, right? Like you- Oh, yeah … the reason why people use autopay is they know 100% of the time the payment’s gonna go through.

Like,you don’t wanna miss your mortgage payment by accident. No, you don’t. You don’t. So yeah, so that’s number one. Number one concern is definitely the accuracy. Yeah. And then I think globally the big concern is, like, I think a lot of people in the US don’t quite grasp it, is for global adoption is I think you’re gonna, what you’re gonna need is regional stablecoins to be part of these agentic payment networks.

Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. I mean,we’ll get into stablecoin [00:02:00] part in a minute too, but let, let’s unpack, like, y- you have a really interesting title, the Chief Brain at IQ. What does that actually mean, like, day to day, and why not just go with CEO or founder? So the whole idea came up with was because of our whole theme, like IQ Token- Yeah.

Yeah … the brain logo, because our whole company is about, financial intelligence, building a more intelligent financial system. So it was kind of a funny play and, like, people loved our merch, like the IQ pins and the hats- Yeah, it’s great … and the brains, so it kind of just became a huge thing and we were like, “Guys, we should just call it Chief Brain.”

Just go with the Chief Brain. I love it, man. I love it. and you guys just, uh, you know, come, we’re, we’re talking about agentic payments and stuff, but you guys have, been in the AI space for a while too. I remember last year you were talking about there was a AI editor named Sophia the IQWiki’s managed by, and that it trains on an AI agent.

most people kind of think of encyclopedia as a static archives. Like, how did you come to see knowledge base as more of a living infrastructure, uh, for AI agents in [00:03:00] crypto communities? It’s funny ‘cause, for us, it was, like we saw the vision way before the tech was in place. Okay. ‘Cause ‘cause IQ da- IQ Token itself launched in 2018, and IQ.Wiki has been around, you know, since even before then.

And people would always tell us, like, “I wish I could just get, my quick answer.” Yeah. Yeah. Like, “I don’t wanna read 5,000 words. Like, no offense, these are really great articles.” Nobody- “They’re really in-depth, but, like- Yeah. I know … I don’t wanna read 5,000 words.” So we’d always say, like, “I wish we had, like, a chatbot, an AI agent, something to just explain stuff to people.”

Yeah. Yeah. And personally, like, it also resonated because how I learned about crypto was through conversations, right? Yeah. Like, with our co-founders and everyone on our team. But most people, they don’t live with, like, you know, top crypto founders, so- … it’s not, not a scalable way to learn about crypto, but- Or, or keep your sanity, like.

Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. But, so a better way is to have, uh, like, an agent, so that’s trained on all of the crypto content. So that’s kind of how we had this idea for both [00:04:00] Sophia as the editor creating the content, and then Aiden as an agent that can explain the content to people. Nice. Nice. Yeah, I love it, especially ‘cause, like, crypto content, like, the, the sector’s so fast-moving and changing all the time, , and kinda having that living space makes a lot of sense.

what is a hybrid, like, AI human oversight kinda look like day to day? I would say there’s a lot of like, you know, in terms of our content creation, it’s mainly managed by the AI agents in terms of creating the content. For us, it’s a little simpler than most because we gave the, like the information is, like very focused on crypto and then some of the adjacent areas like AI and such.

Yeah. So it’s not like you’re dealing with a huge vast, like data that’s kind of polluted with other stuff. Yeah. So it is a lot cleaner data that we’re using. - And before we built these agents, we had built this up over like six, seven years, right? Yeah. So- Yes, a good amount of time … we had a huge amount of content to base it off of so that we have quality content, and then we do have editors who like fine-tune, like on the team level [00:05:00] and, you know, who test things and kind of adjust.

Awesome. Yeah, it’s great. so, uh, autonomous AI agents are making financial decision. It’s something that sounds pretty exciting and there’s lots of hype around it, but like we’re also seeing kind of things happening in practice that are a little scary, right? Where do you draw the line on what Aiden should and shouldn’t be able to do autonomously?

And maybe we can talk about Aiden a little bit too. Yeah. Yeah. So for Aiden, for now, it’s mainly focused on the informational side. So like- Okay … explanations. One of the fun examples I give people is like another reason why we came up with Aiden is we always got the same questions in our company, like, uh, like our IQ Telegram, like with like, you know, thousands of members.

Everyone jumps in, “What’s the token? What’s the contract address?” Yeah. Uh, “When token?” You know- When, when, when … yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s like now we just have the agent answer all of those questions. Oh, that’s awesome. So that’s, that’s been pretty cool. But yeah, I mean, in terms of the agentic finance and payments, like it’s been an exciting space.

I think like one of the interesting things that [00:06:00] we were working on another, with another team we’re at is we invest in this company called Proton Terminal, a couple guys out of Berkeley, and they’re building some really interesting tech. One of the things they’re exploring is, uh, the triggers that are based off of like agents having triggered trades, right?

, Let’s say you’re betting on the World Cup, right? Yeah. Like you’re betting on a specific game. You, you don’t wanna have to like, as you’re watching the game, constantly shift your position. So- Yeah … but one of the cool things you can do with agents is you can set triggers, right?

So like the agent will react and it can monitor the data and see like, okay, uh, Argentina just scored and I’m gonna sell. Oh, interesting. Right? Or I’m gonna add to the position. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that’s- So it’s kind of like a more like a, a active position strategy or something. Exactly. And then right now I would say it’s more like agentic payments and stuff.

It’s kind of more experimental. I mean, I think this is like maybe like one or two steps above the meme coins, like the original- Yeah … you know, stuff like that. But this is still kind of stuff where people are, you know, willing to experiment. I think that’s what stage we’re at. [00:07:00] But we are seeing, like, some pretty interesting stuff on the B2B side.

, I think in terms of people are talking about– I was listening to, uh, Guy Sheffield from Visa. . He was talking a little bit about that, and I thought it was really interesting in terms of, like, having image generation and then having agents. Like, even for Visa, it doesn’t make sense, you know, to pay 15 cents or 5 cents for every single B2B transaction.

Right. So I think there is a great use case for agentic finance, where you’re having agents interact with each other and they’re producing payments to others. Nice. Yeah. Kai’s great. yeah, it, it, it seems definitely kind of early, but, but exciting too at the same time. Now, like, you touched on stablecoins a little bit.

you have a theory called stablewoods about, you know, how non-S- USD stablecoins can actually reinforce dollar dominance, instead of, competing or threatening with it. Can you break that down with us? ‘Cause I- For sure. For sure, yeah. I think it’s just something I observed because, like, a lot of people, when I would talk about non-USD stablecoins, they would immediately say either, like, “This [00:08:00] is never gonna take off because we have the dollar,” or , “These are gonna replace the dollar,” which is- Right

both, both things are incorrect. Where I- Yeah, yeah … where I see things going is that, you know, let’s look at the history of the dollar, right? So there was something called the Bretton Woods consensus. So that’s where the dollar was backed by gold, and then other countries were backed by the dollar, right?

So it would all eventually convert to gold, but it was through the dollar. Yeah. Yeah. Then the next stage, you know, Nixon makes the US dollar floating. So then at that point, the US dollar is floating, and then people are referencing this. And basically that’s the, you know, that’s the stage we’re at in the world, right?

So very similarly, I think the same thing is gonna develop in stablecoins, because the US dollar is so dominant in stablecoin, much more than actually in real finance and real world currently. Yeah, it’s just massive. But we’re gonna see a similar trend develop, where the US dollar is actually gonna get reinforced.

Because as, like, China, Japan, all these countries grew, the dollar grew in importance, because they’re buying US dollar bonds, [00:09:00] they’re, you know, making sure there’s liquidity, for their currencies. I almost said stablecoin. It’s so similar, but… Uh, like even though other currencies rise, the dollar was greatly strengthened by the economic development of a lot of countries, like, you know, first with the Europe, the Marshall Plan, then in Asia globally. It’s actually really enforced the dollar.

I think the same thing’s gonna happen with stablecoins. Because what’s gonna happen is for non-US dollar stablecoins to rise, what’s gonna happen is that the governments in all these countries, like in Korea or China or Japan or wherever, they don’t necessarily want everyone to transact in, US dollar stablecoins, right?

Right. I think that’s part of the barrier, uh, for them to adopt crypto in general, or even if they’ve adopted crypto, to really get into payments and such. They’re gonna wanna have their own regional stablecoins. Well, this is gonna benefit the US and US dollar stablecoins, because as you have, commerce accelerate, you have agentic commerce come with the rise of stablecoins, you’re gonna see much more higher volumes- Yeah

much more [00:10:00] trading internationally. But ultimately, I think a lot of this will run through the dollar, because the dollar has the most liquidity, it has huge first mover advantage. I don’t think- Yeah, huge … there’s, like, a similar technology. It’s almost, it’s almost surprising it hasn’t happened yet, but I think part of the reason is because of, you know, the regulators are very cautious because- Yes

people are concerned about - capital flight, right? Because- Totally … capital flight is already happening Where people are moving their, you know, their currencies in Asia or in, you know, Africa or South America or wherever. There’s a lot of people are moving into dollars. Yeah. And then the same challenge.

And people see stablecoins and they see, “Wait, I’m just gonna enable people to outflow.” Flow. But I don’t think that’s the case. Part of the reason why people are outflowing is because they wanna be able to earn yield. They wanna- Yeah … earn interest, right? Like for example, if I’m looking at, like I have a business checking account in Canada or Europe or Asia or wherever, and I’m only earning, like, [00:11:00] 0.1%, it’s very tempting to just move it into dollars and earn- Right

a stablecoin yield of, you know, 3, 4, 5%. But I think what the problem is is that none of the other countries have a solution. Like, even if I am, like, a guy in Canada or Korea or wherever and I’m just running my business there, all my expenses are in the Korean won, for example There’s no way for me to earn, like, substantial yield.

Right. But if you do have a Korean won stablecoin like Care WQ, then what we can enable is people to earn yield and stay in the won. Nice. So people save in won, and they can stay in the won, and there’s more transactions, there’s more payments. And it’s really important also for Korea as an exporting nation.

Right. Korea’s one of the top exporters in the world. So, the other advantage of having a local stablecoin is you’re able to get other countries to tap into your ecosystem. Yeah. So, for example, if you’re exporting to, for example, like South Africa, or Nigeria, or another country, it might take quite a bit of time, ‘cause right now things are [00:12:00] running, you’re running through, like, you know, different conversions.

There’s a lot of time in terms of delays, in terms of payments. So, you’re losing money on the fees, plus you’re losing money on the time. Well, yeah. I mean, I, I think that’s something people don’t really understand or have a great grasp of, is like, if you go and use one of these cards and make a stablecoin purchase at a POS system in another country, they’re effectively making an FX transaction- Big

on the back end that’s gonna have fees, and it’s gonna take, you know, lengthy, pr- prone for errors. If you had a, a stablecoin in the local currency that was on the other side, it would just be a seamless kind of transaction. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So that, that’s one of the areas. I’d imagine too that, like, with the dollar d- denominated stablecoins, like, having such a strong liquidity position in the market now, that there’s probably ways too where people could leverage that liquidity, you know, as helping to back, like, some of these other native currencies as they become, you know, stablecoins too, or, or have some kind of smart contract method for doing that.

I don’t know. Yeah, absolutely. [00:13:00] It seems like a great DeFi opportunity. So, like, I think that eventually where we’re gonna get to is, like, where we’ll, like, stablewoods truly become massive is at, at a level where governments are saying, “Hey, we need to defend our stablecoin.” Right. Where we need to, like, ensure that our stablecoin is actually keeping peg with, with the US dollar, and keeping close.

So, I think we’re gonna see, like… That’s why I– it was funny, like, as soon as I saw Bessant- Yeah, and they- … when they put that $20 million credit line to Argentina to ensure that the Argentinian currency was able to, you know, not collapse against the dollar. Right. And it was paid back and everything. So it was part of kind of the US strategy, was to keep these countries using the dollar, is to make- Yes

sure that everyone have, has access to dollar liquidity. I think the same thing could happen with stablecoins, because at the end of the day- It’s a huge win to have people using your stablecoin. It’s massive. It’s huge because it doesn’t just help businesses, it helps everyone, right? Yeah. Because Tether, for example, is the number one holder [00:14:00] of treasuries, like, you know, outside of governments, and even bigger than many governments.

Like, Tether holds more treasuries than Mexico, for example. It’s massive. Like, like, it, it’s huge. I mean, like, and it’s one of those things where everybody’s stoking these fears of, uh, BRICS and stuff. At the same time, like, stablecoins are coming in and, starting to hold, bring significant new, like, uh, treasury holdings to the market.

mentioned, Korean, won stablecoins. KRWQ is what you guys launched, right? Like, um, the first Korean won stablecoin. Like, can you walk us through why Korea specifically was chosen and what does a won-backed stablecoin unlock for Korean users or institutions that a dollar-denominated…

I know you touched on this a little bit, but, like, specifically, like, let’s kinda get into why Korea and what were some of the challenges you had to deal with, like getting that off the ground? Yeah. So Korea’s a really interesting market. It was– It made perfect sense for us because of a couple things.

‘Cause IQ itself, our token, we actually launched it back in 2018 in Korea. Oh, okay. So there was a big stadium in [00:15:00] Seoul. Block.one, we raised from them, um, and they hosted this huge event. So we were at the stadium there, and we announced the launch of IQ, so we were able to build a community there. And then also, we’ve had people on the ground there since about 2018.

Plus, then what happened next was, yeah, the community got behind us. We were very quickly listed on Upbit, Bithumb, which are the two major exchanges in Korea, dominate probably 90% of the volume there. Plus, uh, Korea’s a really interesting market in terms of crypto. it’s a huge market, there’s huge volumes, but part of that is because , the Korean government has been very crypto forward in many ways.

One of them is that there’s been no tax on crypto gains So that’s why there’s been like… That’s why, part of why, you know, it’s been huge in Korea is that there’s no tax on crypto gains. I think maybe very soon it’s gonna come into place, but it’s been allowed the industry to really grow there.

Plus, you know, the interesting thing about Korea is that there’s a lot of massive conglomerates, so things can get done very quickly once, [00:16:00] you know, the big players are up it and stuff, really went forward with crypto, it’s gotten like mass adoption like crazy.

Like one in two people in Korea has a crypto account. That’s, that’s wild. I mean, I remember too, like when we launched BAT, the Korea market was really hot and like, it was interesting because a lot of like the Western users knew about Brave but didn’t know about BAT, but the Korean folks all knew about BAT before they knew about Brave.

it’s such a diehard crypto community out there, like really, really solid group. What’s the regulatory regime like there? Like, ‘cause I know some of these Southeast Asian markets like, like Japan’s like highly regulated, right? Like, is it a similar, regime in Korea or how is it, on that side of things?

Yeah, I would say it is similar. Like it is restricted the market itself. So there’s two elements that are challenged here. So one element is that there’s not yet a regulatory framework, and then the second element is the currency in itself. So the difference between the Korean won and the Japanese yen, one of the big differences, and like also Korean won between like the US dollar or Canadian dollar, is the Korean won is not a [00:17:00] fully, uh, is not an unrestricted currency.

Oh, okay. So it is a restricted currency. So there is a lot of ch- challenges around getting the Korean won to trade outside of Korea or for FX. So that’s why like a huge amount of the FX market goes through these financial products called NDF. Okay. A huge NDF market, it’s about $60 billion a day. Wow. And the crazy part is like 80 to 90% of that market is not in Korean.

Really? Yeah, yeah. So it’s all London, Hong Kong, and there’s a lot of issues with the market. You know, the market is only traded during business hours. Oh, okay. And there’s pretty high fees as well, especially when you have this mismatch, right? Because you’ll have mismatches where the Korean markets are closed, but the London markets are open-

and vice versa. So it’s a pretty inefficient market, and that’s like the first market that we saw as a huge opportunity. Yeah. And one of our hires, like our COO of KRWQ, Dave Shin, he’s worked in, uh, East Asia for like, you know, [00:18:00] 15 years in finance and- Oh, wow … Standard Charter, a lot of Barclay, a lot of major companies there.

So he kinda was known to the market and he was tapped in there. And that’s how we kind of saw this huge opportunity really- Yeah … in the FX market because it was something that… It’s also something where there wasn’t regulatory issues because it’s already offshore anyways. Right, right, right. So there’s not really a worry, yeah, like- I mean, do you think that there’s, like, a lot of, uh, kinda conditional opportunities like that that are out there that we’ll start to see unlocked with the stablecoin space?

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. I mean, FX is one that is really You know, it’s not there yet, it’s really small, but it’s gonna be a huge market for sure. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things people say is, like, there’s very few green fields in crypto. Yeah. Like, most things people have built, there’s a lot of layer ones, there’s a lot of, you know, different products, there’s a lot of US dollars in coins.

But- … there’s not a lot of FX, there’s not, not a lot of non-USD. It’s about 3%. Yeah. Of… I think it’s less than that, I think it was, it was, like, 2 or 3% max of the market [00:19:00] is non-USD. So there’s, there’s really a huge room for growth. And then for us, looking at the FX market has been interesting. We’ve seen a lot of demand.

Uh, we… You know, a couple months back, we integrated– we were listed on EDX, which is a Citadel-backed exchange designed for institutions. So we were the first non-USD stablecoin there, GearWQ. Wow. And we listed both on the spot and Curt. Wow, okay. Was it, was there, like… Was it having somebody that was on the ground there, kind of giving you that first mover advantage?

Or, what made you guys, like, the first, to do that? Yeah. So a couple things. Like, one of the things is, yeah, definitely having people on the ground was huge. Because, like, you know, even though in the Korean market we’re perceived as, like, you know, a foreign company- Yeah … we’ve had deep ties to Korea since, like, 2018, so we’ve been building there for a long time.

And then the other big thing is the fact that we are partners with Frax was huge. Yeah. ‘Cause it allows us to leapfrog on the [00:20:00] technology side, because, a lot of people don’t necessarily know this, but IQ and Frax share the same founding team. Oh, okay. Cool. so Sam from Frax, you know, we’re very close, we work closely together.

we’ve utilized them as the stable coin infrastructure partner. So they’ve done billions of dollars in volumes and across all our DeFi products, so we were able to use that entire tech stack. So that builds a lot of trust- Yeah. Yeah, I bet … at an institutional level. Because one of the things that EDX and some of these major players noticed was that, you know, we’re using the Frax infrastructure, they were familiar with that.

there’s a lot of, those players that, you know, was, like, very interesting to, to them because of both our stablecoin involvement through Frax, and then also our, expertise and depth in the crypto market in general. Are you guys seeing, like, a lot of, like, everyday use with the stablecoin? I mean, ‘cause Korea, it seems like a lot of these Southeast Asian markets, the percentage of digital wallets, among the population are a lot higher than in even Western markets.

are you seeing this, like, translate to actual, like, real [00:21:00] world use yet, or is it still kind of working its way there? I would say so. currently it’s mainly at the institutional level- Yeah … the usage of GearWQ. And then also there’s a lot of people testing. Yeah. There’s people playing around with it, I talk to people, like, people testing it.

‘Cause people, people are interested, but the challenge is until there’s a regulatory framework, it’s very challenging to get to the full retail distribution. I see. So I think that will happen very soon there. Yeah, so is the Korean government kind of working on that? Yeah. Are they kind of seeing what we did with the Genius Act in, in trying to kind of mirror that in some way?

Yeah, definitely. A lot of the Korean lawmakers, some of them have actually even mentioned CareWQ. Oh, wow. Because, you know, ‘cause we’re first to market, they said like, “Hey, we actually need a framework so more people can build stuff like this.” Stuff like… Yeah. “And more people can get involved in the market.

this is interesting, but we do need, safeguards and stuff.” And that will actually benefit us as well. Like, there’s two ways that it benefits us. Like, the fact that we’ve launched early allows us to have the first mover advantage. Yeah. But also, once the regulations are in place, [00:22:00] our conversations with the conglomerates in Korea become much easier.

We’ve seen a lot of interest, but there’s a lot of challenges there at the conglomerate level to work with us at this moment, because there’s not yet a regulatory framework. But the cool thing about Korea is they definitely understand that. The lawmakers there, they’re definitely looking at Genius Act.

They’re working on their own bills. Nice. So probably, I think, early 2027 we could see, but as you know, these things are not very simple. Like, no. Even with Genius, Clarity, I mean- Yeah. I mean, Clarity, it’s like- These things- … gosh, you know? … yeah, could take a very long time, even in the US. Yeah. So Korea, with kind of the unique restricted nature of the won, I think it will take some time, but I think as…

The cool thing about Korea, though, as, as soon as the framework comes into place, it’ll be like a switch is flipped. Yeah, yeah. The teams there are– There’s, you know, there’s a ton of talent there, and there’s a lot of people who are already anticipating the advantages for Korea. Even at the lawmaker level, there’s a lot of lawmakers who see stablecoins

as being very beneficial. [00:23:00] Yeah, totally. Totally. It just seems like there’s this, this massive unlock that’s just waiting to happen with regional stablecoins and, and all that liquidity that could be flowing through there, and with the upgrades that technology brings. Like, speaking of technology too, like, I know one of those kind of core pillars of Web3 is around decentralization, but, you’ve got, like, fiat-backed stablecoins are, are pretty centralized, by design.

Like, how do you think about that tension inside IQ stack? it is a good question because I think that is a, that is a big question that people… Some people feel that, you know, maybe crypto is moving away from the ethos of decentralization because of stable coins. Whereas I would see it as that the financial system will become more decentralized.

So yes, there is maybe crypto is becoming more centralized in the sense of… But I wouldn’t say crypto, like- Yeah … this is the funny part. I think that’s a weird way of framing it is because it’s not like Bitcoin is becoming more centralized. Right. What’s happening is the [00:24:00] traditional markets are becoming more decentralized.

Right. That’s, that’s a good way of framing it. Yeah, which is much better, right? So- Yeah … like we’re seeing with Robinhood. Of course, Robinhood is not Bitcoin, right? Right. So, but Robinhood of today, with Robinhood Chain, for example, is much more decentralized than Robinhood of, you know, five years ago, or really one year ago, right?

So, and the cool thing is what a lot of this knowledge enables is global access. Yeah, global access. Right? So a lot of people, they wanna invest, for example, in Tesla, SpaceX, you know, all the innovative companies in the US, but there’s a lot of barriers to do that. Yeah. And then within the US there’s a lot of barriers, for example, with pre-IPO stocks- Yeah, yeah

where a lot of people are being excluded. So I think it will both include… It’ll increase the financial access for people within the US, but then also outside the US. And one thing I’m really excited about is, bringing these Korean companies and Korean equity market to the world. That’d be awesome.

Because yeah, I mean, there’s so many innovative companies. Right now, a bit of a challenging time, like a [00:25:00] big, you know, some big drops in the market. Yeah. But there’s no doubt that the companies in Korea are very innovative. SK Hynix, Samsung, tons of great companies. And then there’s a lot of smaller ones that people, maybe not heard about, but there’s a ton of innovation going on.

But the challenge is, in a lot of these countries is the- it’s tricky to tap into the global financial markets, or if you are, it’s through ETFs and you’re layering on fees- Yeah … and that’s not a great experience. So, you know, in sum, basically, I think the great thing about crypto and finance kind of merging, even, you know, decentralized- yeah, currencies getting involved in crypto and equities and such is that you’re decentralizing still, creating global access.

Yeah, no, and it’s also just, like, seems like huge potential for opportunities for creative people to get together and, and make some new offerings and open up the world, you know? So it makes a lot of sense. what’s your take on regulation in the space in general? I know you mentioned Korea is, probably gonna bring some [00:26:00] framework around it.

do you think that there’s too much, not enough, more needed? what’s your take on it? That’s a great question. There’s two types of regulations- Yeah … I would say. Right? There’s certain things like bans, which are obviously not productive. Yeah. I think, like, you know, for, you know, depending on the types of bans, like, there’s a lot of countries where there’s been bans on leverage.

Yeah. And then what happens is the money just moves offshore. Yeah. So then you’re like, you’re just losing on both ends because then it’s fully unregulated, and you’re not getting any tax revenues. So the best thing is you can do is create regulations that create a market. Yeah. And there’s regulations like Genius, where there’s both happening, right?

Because the stable coins are becoming safer- Yeah … because they can interact with the banks, they can interact with the financial system, they can easily hold treasuries. And then for the banks, it’s low risk for them to work with the stable coin issuers. Right. Similarly, Clarity is doing some similar stuff on, like, the token side, but I think Genius is really huge in terms of, like, a positive regulation.

And I think- Yeah … that’s what’s gonna happen with [00:27:00] Korea- Yeah … because then you can really, really see the benefits because, you know, it becomes both good for the industry, but it also makes the industry better. Yeah, it’s like a legitimization, like, like factor and, yeah. It’s so– We, we’ve come a long way from 2018, 2017, um, you know.

if you’re right about Stablewoods, uh, that non-USD stable coins, like, end up strengthening the dollar dominance, what does the global financial map look like in 10 years? And where does that leave countries trying to build genuine monetary independence? It’s a great question. I think there’s, I think there’s a couple things that are interesting.

So I think one of the things is, yes, it will strengthen the US dollar, but it will also strengthen those economies because you’re gonna be able to interact with the largest consumer- Yeah … market in the world. Plus, you’re gonna have faster payments. Like, if you’re an exporter… And actually, this is where we’re gonna see a bit of a division, right?

Is that some countries that are gonna be fast movers and adopters, their companies, their economies are gonna see those [00:28:00] benefits. So similarly like to the internet, the countries that most heavily adopted the internet are today the richest societies, right? Yeah. In general technology terms, I think the same thing is gonna happen in stable coins because, you know, even though these are, may seem small, they add up.

Like- Yeah, yeah … every FX transaction, every export, every money flow. If you can make that 1%, 2%, 3% more efficient, you can start winning business from other countries. Yeah. So for example, like, I mean, a lot of these export industries are very low-margin businesses, right? You know, sometimes you’re only exporting it at a 5% margin.

If you can get an additional 1% of margin, that’s a 20% increase in the- Massive … profitability of your business. Yeah. Right? So, and at the scales of countries, I mean, it, it will be huge. So I think the economies that adopt stable coins and tap into the US dollar stable coin liquidity are gonna vastly benefit.

Where it becomes interesting, and I think where, you know, monetary sovereignty comes into play, is I think the only country [00:29:00] that maybe could compete with the dollar would be, like, a country… Well, China. Yeah. Where there is a huge, uh, like, a huge ecosystem- Yeah, population … of manufacturing suppliers. Um, yeah, exactly.

So, like, China, I think could be interesting, like, if they go the stable coin route. But I don’t think they are gonna go right away into stable coins. They’ve been a lot more cautious- Yeah … in terms of stable coins. I think there’s a lot more complexity, capital outflows, such. Well, they want the transparency.

Uh And then like the other thing is like, I think just the, the structure of the economy is, is very different. Very different, yeah. Right? So I think the US is gonna be the leader because of the way that the dollar is structured is it’s already built for international payments, it was designed for that.

The US is not very worried about capital outflows like a lot of countries. No. Yeah. And then I think for countries that are tapped into the US networks, it’s gonna be a big unlock. So I think this is gonna be a huge thing for the West, a huge thing for the US and like allies. Like Korea, for example, is a [00:30:00] huge ally of the US, right?

It has some of the top bases and such, so similar to Japan. So I think that network, I think this is almost gonna become… You know, I don’t want people to, you know, think I’m going over the top, but I do think on this scale- Hey, go over the top. I think o- like what’s gonna happen is that, uh, at a geopolitical level, this is gonna become like a geopolitical strategy.

Yeah. Is to boost the US dollar stablecoin, to boost allies, to get them to work together in terms of liquidity, and to accelerate payments, to accelerate speed, ‘cause it will strengthen both the big companies, the US, and the big companies in Korea, in Japan, for example. And it also blunts other countries that are trying to, you know, maybe compete In terms of like, uh, reducing dollar dominance and reducing the impact of the West, and trying to replace, you know, the West in terms of like Japan, Korea, the US as exports.

I mean, it’s, it’s almost like a, like a better wrench of Swift, right? Like you see how Swift kind of has become this like thing and, and the stable coins bring a lot of other advantages that, that Swift doesn’t have, and you know, i- if [00:31:00] you have the networks there, like it could be huge. Exactly, yeah. Because I think like people, a lot of people are saying, “Oh, you know, the Chinese currencies, BRICS and stuff, they’re kind of creating their own at a fiat level of transactions between their own fiat network to compete with Swift.”

But I think we’re already hopefully onto the next level with stable coins- Right. Right … where we’re gonna develop, you know, an entire payment ecosystem across the West, across democracies, where the world can kind of trade together and, you know, boost up each other’s economies. Awesome. Well, um, is there anything, uh, we didn’t cover today that you’d like people to know about, about, either IQ or KRWQ?

Yeah, I guess some final thoughts would be like in terms of why people should look at both IQ and KRWQ as an exciting. one of the paradigms, you know, that people don’t really, get is that why KRWQ is very unique as well versus some of the other stable coin players, is that we have the value approval token is the IQ token, so anyone can com- be, be part of that.

So the plan there [00:32:00] is that we’re planning to use the yield that’s generated, a portion of that yield to either buy back IQ or, you know, to distribute to IQ stakers and such like that. So it’s kinda unique in that this is one of the few stable coins where you can get in with the ground floor. Nice.

Because the challenge with Tether, for example, is private company. Oh, yeah. Like and they’re massive. And they’re doing, they’re doing things on their, their, their, their, uh, to their drum, you know? Exactly. And right, it’s a 500– Even if it went public today, you know, it’s a $500 billion comp- Massive … uh, you know, at the minimum, right?

So you’ve kind of, you know, a lot of people kinda missed out on that. And then similar with Circle, Circle is a public company. I think there’s a lot of potential there for it to really scale, but you’ve missed that zero to 30 billion. Yeah. So with the cool thing is like we’re a crypto company, you know, from the beginning, like in terms of having the IQ token itself, so that’s kind of one of the, the unique opportunities that we bring.

Awesome, man. Well, Navin, I really appreciate you, uh, making the time today to join us here for the conversation. Congrats to you on, on the f- bringing that first, uh, [00:33:00] first, uh, stable coin to, to Korea. It’s awesome to hear and, uh, really enjoyed the conversation. Where can people find you feel free to check me out.

So my name’s Navin. Um, you know, I’m on Twitter, um, on X, uh, you know, LinkedIn, um, or Telegram. And then, you know, our Twitter is IQ Official. Nice. And then our krwq.cash is our site, and then we’re also, you know, KRWQ is our Twitter and all the platforms for the follows. Awesome, man. Well, yeah, thanks again for making the time.

Love to have you come back and, uh, and check back in on things and, uh, yeah, well, looking forward to this panel. Yeah, absolutely. All right, man. Thanks.

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