Stablecoins for the AI Supply Chain: Taiwan, Chips and Digital Dollars

Serve. But we have Justin. Justin, great to see you today. How's it going?

Good. Yourself?

Very good. We're both Zachs. You can call me Zach. He's z. But, yeah, we're excited to dive into it today. You are in you are in new are you in Washington right now for StableCon?

Yeah. I'm on DC right now.

Fantastic. I'm glad we got you on a gentler time zone. I know the last time there was some potential East Coast or West Coast to Tokyo craziness,

so this is much better. A reasonable hour today. Yeah. I would see some alarms in at 2AM in the morning, and I just, like, couldn't pull it off. Don't worry.

I apologize. You're even no. Don't apologize. Even the dedication to have the alarm is is very impressive, so we're happy to have you on at at a reasonable hour. And, honestly, we were just jamming on this before we hopped on. We're really excited to hear more. I feel like Capital Layer is positioned at a really interesting place in the world of AI banking, cross border payment. There's all these different kind of angles going on, and we're excited to dive in with you.

Yeah. I'm excited to share what is what is what will be developed by a couple layers, especially, you know, our team is based in Taipei, Taiwan in the hearts of AI supply chain. Yeah. If there is only one place for adoption for USD stablecoins, I think Taiwan will be the ideal place.

Cool. So, yeah, break that down here.

Was that always the thesis? Like, did you start capital a and it was like, hey. We're gonna be based in Taiwan. We see this immense pain point, Or was this a, hey. We're gonna be playing in The US denominated stablecoin space. We know it's a superior payment technology, and then you started to see that use case develop.

For sure. I mean, we started Capitalera last year. I know we we started due to several reasons where a lot of, semiconductor companies or air supply chain companies in Taiwan are start getting requests by clients or distributor that they wanna settle in Stablecoins. And they came to us saying that we know you're building the infrastructure for Stablecoins in Taiwan.

We wanna make sure we're we we can receive the goods and services, right, in front of from our clients and distributors in Brazil, Latin America, Singapore, Hong Kongs. But I have to be very frank. Sorry. A lot of these suppliers that are paying stablecoin right now, especially to AI supply chain, are people that are with sanctioned countries. They're from Russia, they're from China, they're from places that they are forbidden to to purchase NVIDIA chips or all these AI servers there you can think of.

But like I said, it's you know, Foxconn, one of the largest manufacturer in the wars. And they said, oh, a couple of protections where we send a charter at HSBC last year, I think it's almost, $30. I think that was the strokes where the Chinese government started realizing, you know, we're not a anti dollar nations, and then in fact, we're the sixth largest US holders in the world. If this if US or is going to legalize stablecoins in the futures, we have to do something about it.

So I think it it is we are at the interesting period right now where we 're starting seeing a lot of APAC nations embrace the USCC McCoy adoptions. And like I said, Taiwan just surpassed on $320,000,000,000 trading trading trading with The US. We have officially became the third largest trading partner or surpassing Hong Kong and China. And then I think the numbers will only go up from here.

So you gave us a little bit of some of the thesis there. Like, what's the origin story of Capital Layer? Like, what was your journey to this point? What made you say we've gotta do this as you headed into that thesis and that realization, it sounds like they're very much intersects with, like, the realization of the whole nation of Taiwan?

Well, we we used to build DeFi protocols on Solana, and then we we we kind of got tired of it in a way that there there is there were no real adoptions and application that can really drive the real economy to move forward with the stablecoin adoptions. But, you know, in in a place in Taiwan, Taipei, our teams, we realized our advantage is where we can enable these AI supply chain to receive stablecoins and then and then redistribute their equipments back to US. I mean, we have to be honest. Right?

Out of $10 for spending right now in US, $7 goes to AI infrastructures. So 70% of money that you're spending in US right now goes to AI infrastructures. Is that right? Yeah. And it's and then 6.5 6.5 of that goes to Taiwan, and then you have, like, a dollar or 2 goes to Korea and Japan and so on and so forth.

So if if there is one emerging place or countries that, all these, stablecoin, issuers are wanting to get adoptions for, I think APEX, it is definitely one of the corridors they have to seriously consider or look into.

So a few That is a

yeah. I think we're both going down that. That's a that's a really like, I think most people would overlook that fact. What do you think people most misunderstand about the AI supply chain? Like, really going down and, like, the the the money that's actually moving through this that's underpinned solely by AI.

I mean, again, going from the I think the, you know, the software that your that the restaurant's using to reconcile their books, you know, all all the way down to, you know, their suppliers, the AI they're using. You know, help help us break this down and understand, like, why making money moving move efficiently through the AI supply chain is so important.

Well, money has always been a medium exchange for goods and goods and services. You know? If if the cost of the remittance between Taiwan and US improves, just even by a couple percents, and a couple percent on top of a $300,000,000,000 trading volumes between these two countries, you'll you're you're seriously thinking roughly of a couple couple $100,000,000 of improvements for the money movements. Right?

And we all know TSMC, a lot of no quite no one, ASR production companies in Taiwan right now are opening up factories in US. Out of ten ten new data centers in US right now, seven of them are actually built by Taiwanese people. So I think we're seeing a surging of immigration from Taiwan to US, mainly due to AI infrastructures and building more data centers for US as a national sovereignty purpose. Really?

If more people if more Chinese people are relocating to US, there there could be interesting way for them to wire money back to Taiwan. And then like I said, you know, we have always been diving with a lot of the AS supply chain enterprises in Taiwan that why stablecoins are the futures. I have to be very honest as well.

I don't think stablecoins are gonna overtake the b to b structures and apex because we're just so so developed in a way that a lot of these companies, they don't care if it's t plus zero or t plus 30 because they have credit lines before manufacturing. So if you're a customer with TSMC, you have to pay money three years ahead of time. So they don't care if it's T plus zero or T plus 30. So but what's more interesting is that, you know, capital there, we have built infrastructure for the banks in Taiwan already.

So I think by q one next year, a lot of banks in Taiwan can now receive stablecoins on behalf of enterprises. And one more announcement that I know we we are likely gonna announce is that, all of 10 AIPC device devices in Europe and US in the futures besides Mac Mini and Mac Studios, a seven or or six or seven of them are gonna be manufacturing Taiwan, because on US and Europe, they're gonna ban the Chinese devices. That's just how how the way it works.

And a lot of these AI devices that we're currently, working with, they wanna enable stablecoin wallets. So imagine this. You have all these AI devices, AI PC that you're selling to the global scales, and everyone could literally just top out their acquitted lines by inference, by computers using stablecoins. And essentially, all these Taiwanese, AI supply chain companies, they're saving roughly about three to 6% of RTP local rails We're even hired, 10% in Latin America.

So if you're if you're doing like a couple $100,000,000 of volumes and then you're using Stablecoin as a new rails as a foreigner new payment methods to buy compute, to buy inference, Why why can we make compute and inference cheaper?

Yeah. So there's a few angles here you were saying. Like, some of these companies, they don't care. T plus zero, t plus 30. They're they're talking three years. But it does feel like that last point you're making. There's some painful problem expensive problems there. And so is one of the bigger opportunities in this the non US, non, maybe, like, westernized countries who some of those will not be buying these Chinese devices. It's like Latin American purchase of Chinese devices.

Like, where's the real play where it's like, oh, this is a massive market that we're really gonna tap into, or is it a few?

Well, we're currently discussing with a few of our investors. There are no one asset purchasing companies. They're looking to implement Stablecoin wallet right next to the credit card because they know that a lot of these Eastern Europe's or lots of other countries like Brazil's or Argentina's, they have been widely used in Stablecoin to settle a lot of things in in daily. Right? So, but if you ask me, are are are people in Hong Kong or in Singapore gonna settle in Stablecoin? I think that leaves the questions.

But like I said, if you can recycle the money from the global scales and with improvements just by a couple percents and then the volume that we're doing, we're talking about billion billions of dollar volumes for the future of a computer markets or inference models. Just by a couple of percent improvements, you're essentially selling cup saving couple $100,000,000 of the money movements. So

I feel like there's I this is fun, Justin, because I feel like you've you've opened up so many different threads. We're talking about Yeah. All the dollars that are spent on infrastructure. We're talking about the movement, sort of, like, the interactions between US and Taiwan and more immigration and more data centers, sovereignty, international sovereignty, sort of China, Taiwan collaboration, but also tension, and and all these global payments.

For you guys, like, I'm imagining there's so much opportunity for for capital layer here.

What are you focused on, though? What is it like, hey. I we could capture a bunch of things, but in the next six months, we're laser focused on this. Yeah. Great questions. So, I mean, for since last year, we started Capital Learner. We have pivot quite a few times. We will we we realized a lot of these companies or banks, they don't care about b two b payments. Instead, they're trying to find an innovative way innovative way to leverage the power of stablecoins. So I think our goal is very simple.

For the next six months to years, we're we wanna tackle more AI devices, PCs that's being manufactured in Taiwan, sell to a global scales. And then we wanna become the golden wallets, especially stablecoin and credit cards. Obviously, stablecoin is not a must, but we wanna enable this, speeds and low cost, and then making sure that we have we will have the most AI infra payment distribution in the world, especially with the stablecoins.

So I think looking looking from now, six months later, I think Capitalair will have the most of its distribution channels, especially with AI infra payments and then stablecoins and combines.

What what when we say wallets here, and, like, especially wallets, I think, embedded datively devices, how might this feel different than than the way we think about wallets today? Cause I think we really start to think about them in two categories. We have to think about the neobank wallet that has the card and it's a spend account, and then we might think about, you know, the MetaMask Phantom wallet wallet browser. It sounds like this is a much more like embedded native experience within the devices.

How would you see those those wallets taking shape?

Well, we are currently work, building operating system, Symbicort operating system for banks in town already. And then like I said, all all of these AI devices, manufacturers, or companies, they don't wanna hold custodians for these stablecoins. I think it's pretty pretty pretty in a nutshells. The moment 8% in Brazil or in The States are paying USDC, USDT to the devices with the credit lines to buy all these AI in cross payment services, the stablecoin will relocate and then directly into the banks in Taiwan.

So when enterprises see their balance next days, they will they will only see USD. So it become obstructed in a way that they notice low cost and the high speeds of rails, especially with stablecoins, could save them tons of money. I don't think stablecoins here here do overtakes fias or credit cards, but it does open another corridors for these devices manufacturers to think like, hey, you know, if somebody wants to pay stablecoin, we should take it because, you know, Taiwan, that's exporting nations.

You know, if you wanna pay a, b, c, d services, or if anything else, we should we should be able to take it.

Is that thinking about the note you said on sovereignty and on some of this stuff shifting some of the concerns, do you think the manufacturing hub I mean, Taiwan, despite being a small nation, is obviously a freaking powerhouse in manufacturing for AI infrastructure. Do you think that's going to shift? Do you think, like, US, Canada, etcetera are gonna start building their own GPUs, etcetera? And or and or is it like, no. You're so far behind. That's not really gonna happen.

I'm just thinking about sort of like the global geopolitics

here. Yeah. And interestingly you know, I think a lot of people ask us about these questions. Why would there be any nation or or replacing Taiwan in the near futures? I think people have overly underestimate the fact that it is hard to find a company like TSMC. It is hard to find a country or nation that if you wanna build actual data center, then 90% of the equipments or services actually come from Taiwan as a small countries. So to replace 90% of, within that, data center spectrums, it is hard.

And then there's a reason why TSMC has opened up, four factories in the last two years in across Arizonas. And then there's actually more companies, from Taiwan open up opening up more data centers in Wisconsin, Philadelphia. And I think from today, we're referring from from the call right now, I think the the relationship between US and Taiwan will only get closer.

And then if Genius has Genius has it's gonna get passed in the near terms, I think there's something we should be doing with Taiwanese air supply chain manufacturers. Justin,

I want to shift this. So I was reading this article on your website, your work with, the Japan Security Token Association. I think in some degrees, you know, we've seen Japan and parts of Asia Asia kind of lacking in the stablecoin, and now it feels like it's accelerating. Sometimes faster than we're seeing in the Western or maybe in Europe, and it looks like some of your your key work there was on remittance flows, you and j using JPYSC, a JPY denominated stablecoin.

What's your outlook right now on maybe the US dollar denominated stablecoins, on chain FX flows, and really any any of these key learnings from this this pilot?

I think a lot of nations, especially the nations in APEX, where there are sales exploring non USD stablecoins adoptions or u use cases. You know, like I said, APEX is very it's it's it's it's a very mature, structures for for financial, infrastructures. And then I I don't think people will actually feel the difference using stablecoins or not on daily life.

But, you know, the reason why we brought JPYC by SVI to Taiwan is that, you know, out of 10 data centers that has been built right now in Japan, six or seven of them are actually from Taiwan as well again. So a lot a lot of these data centers provider actually came to us saying that, oh, okay. Now we're building all these data centers in Japan. Is is there a way that we can recycle the money faster instead of relying on all these traditional methods?

So I think it's gonna be very interesting in the for in the next six months. The way the way we'd be overly put more emphasis on the b two b payments, it could be a to b payment, AI in front payment to enterprises business. So if there is fast money money movements that Stablecoins is providing right now, I think we should leverage. And then there's another exciting news that we haven't really announced here.

We're also gonna be working on quite a few Stablecoin issuers in Japan and then making sure the corridor between Taiwan and Japan will only get closer using Stablecoins.

It sounds like, Justin, if you aren't doing this already, I'm sure you're running a a lean team, but I think we need to report solely on stablecoins and cross border payments as it as it pertains to data centers and the AI supply chain. Because obviously we track a lot of the conversation around AgenTik payments and kind of that world, that side of AI. This is a completely completely different game that honestly the volume is probably tenfold of anything AgenTik payments is today.

Outside of you mentioned Japan, you've mentioned US. Any other markets that people should be paying special attention to when it comes to AI supply chain?

Well, I I guess we have to look into the aspect of where the data center is being built the most. You know, US, Europe is not there yet, but US, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, all these APAC nation with US right now are seriously building all these there are all these national sovereignty purpose on their own data centers. And Southeast Asia, I think Southeast Asia will catch up in the near terms. And then, I mean, again, China is it is in a completely different games. Right?

They're doing their own stuff, navigating their own data data infrastructures. But I just think that, once all these, genius ass or stablecoins or regulations are gonna get bypassed in the next year or two, a lot of these manufacturer or or data centers, owners seriously consider stablecoin as a payment methods or or even for the internal users usage. Right? So, we are now looking at that, like, $40,000,000 or $60,000,000 of transaction volume per one transaction.

We're looking at at at least couple $100,000,000,000 on an annual base on a computer markets. And, you know, a computer market is on the path to a trillion dollar markets in the next two, three years. If if just a couple percent of that from a computer market settled on standpoints, I think this is where where we're heading towards to, especially when we have the layers. With that, knowing that these are huge volumes and there's a level

there's a chasm to cross in terms of user adoption, right, in terms of saying, we trust this enough. The advantages are strong enough. We're doing this. Obviously, there's financial and time incentives to do that. What do you think is kind of in the gap in that chasm that needs to be crossed for, say, 3% of that payment volume to switch to be stablecoin? Like, what really will drive that?

Well, I didn't put just by putting this way, if you're a user that let's say you you guys buy an AIPC device from Taiwan. Mhmm. And then once you install the devices to your to your to your home mean, to your desk and there's payment methods shows stablecoins, credit card, fiat transfer so that you can use a Compuse or inference models or these skill set marketplaces. But what if stablecoin provides a cheaper compute just by 3% of that?

I think that that's gonna change a lot of people's, assumptions of using stablecoins. It it is no longer just an alternative payments. It becomes a much cheaper for payment methods for a lot of these middlewares or service providers. Imagine this. Right? If I if I run a data centers across the world, different in different continents, now I start using stablecoin to recycle all these, monies back to my own company. I can reinvest much faster instead of waiting for fourteen days.

I can reinvest for more chips, more GPUs, etcetera. You can name it. So we're very looking at a billion dollars incremental, productivities across all these AI and fraud payments.

And it seems like you think and speak about compute just like electricity. It's it's a fundamental thing to keep the lights on, if you will, and companies more and more are going to see this as it's it's not anything that is nice to have. It's absolutely fundamental to operations.

Yeah. Well, I mean, even just at DC, we're met with a lot of partners. People are looking at into RWA tokenization. Right? But a lot of them are actually looking to tokenize compute markets. So imagine imagine all these residual, compute that are gonna be left over across all these data center in the features besides, you know, hyperscaler or neo clouds. They could potentially create a a open open compute markets through blockchain levels, and people can sit on stablecoins.

So I think the way we look at the the usage of of electricity or power or or all these all of that are gonna be changing the by just by the foreigner using stablecoins. When we no longer just have to rely on all these credit cards, we can use, stablecoin to buy Compute, and it offers cheaper price. So I think these are the scenarios that we are constantly asking ourselves, also working with a lot of our our partners in Taiwan as well.

Where does this compute go now? I think this is this is the question that we're that we're thinking about. Right? We kinda mentioned this other side of, like, Agensix payments. Where do we see the majority of this, like I said, this this capacity, this volume through flow through. You know, I think we think a lot of times, like, the consumer facing apps or, you know, it's the metas of the of the world.

Like, how then then this is getting a little macro maybe in the viewpoint here, but, like, what is your vision of how AI, how compute is getting utilized in the world maybe in the next five, ten, fifteen years?

I mean, right now, we are still on on the beginning of beginning of first innings of using Compute. You know, obviously, people go hyper hyperscalers or Neo Cloud to subscribe all these Compute users usage and applications on top of their on the daily life. But what if we're we're gonna start using Compute, tokenizing wrap wrapper and adding wrapper on top of it and selling selling in the public markets?

And then, I think the efficiency of using an electricity or or or power Sears will drastically increase and improve as well. So, I mean, we have lack of electricity. I think that's something that we have to face right now. By improving it, we're 're not gonna build more nuclear energies, power plants. But by the money infrastructures using all these services, you could see a drastic increase on, on improvements, especially with the especially with with the future of the p markets.

Justin, you're in Washington right now. You made a long trip. What's your hope for your time in The US and in Washington DC specifically?

Well, I still have a couple more meetings coming up. I think everyone's interested about Taiwan and then how can they work with Taiwan, especially I mean, Taiwan is still considered considered very exclusive markets. I mean, it it is a restricted currency nations, so every dollar flows to Taiwan. There'll be monetization by the central bank of Taiwan's.

So I've been telling everyone that the usage the usage of stablecoin in Taiwan would be a lot different than what we're seeing right now, especially with Latin America to US. But I think that's I think that's a good thing. We're trying to combine some of, intangible assets from the from the past to enable them with the part usage of stablecoins, and then there could be an interesting innovation coming up as well.

Justin, if you haven't, if he's not on your list yet, definitely say hi to Jarrod from Defense there. Great partners of the show, but also I think, lots of overlap with the work and where where your focus is. You're also correct me if I'm wrong, are you doing a panel discussion or an on stage discussion with Dante?

I believe so. Yes. Yeah. Dante, we did we did a show. Yeah.

Awesome. What was that conversation around? Was it similar to this? Did you go down a different rabbit hole? How was that? Yeah. I think Dante was in shock that there's actually

nations like Taiwan are exploring stablecoin in different ways. I mean I mean, if you go to DC right now, especially in stablecoin, everyone's talking about b two b payments. But we're talk essentially talk about a to b. A to b is, in air and drop payments to enterprises, businesses. But, yeah, everyone's in shock. So we pull up more meetings at conference, and then people just they just wanna learn more about Taiwan.

Yeah. I I don't know if I'm totally shocked, but I'm definitely interested. It I think it's awesome. If you could leave behind a billboard, maybe you put it in Washington, New York, San Francisco. Pick wherever you wanna put it. Like, what would you what message would you put on the billboard that you'd leave behind in The US that that people would need to remember?

I'm in San Francisco.

Yeah. Okay. Put in San Francisco. Yeah.

Well, we're flying to San Francisco around to the DC. Right? We're meeting we're actually meeting out more data centers over there. San Jose is over there. I mean, there's two more data centers in San Jose that are actually being built up. I mean, they're considered smaller ones, smaller scales, but they're actually operated by Chinese Chinese people. So Mhmm.

We are looking to, obviously, having more conversations about how these money movement, especially on stablecoins, can empower data centers with their, efficiency. And then, obviously, with the CapEx that is going through the sky right now, there has to be a way to save the money, right, in the future. So

Yeah. I know that the the pain of extreme and growing CapEx is going to drive plenty of opportunity for you guys and plenty of volume and ways to say, how can we innovate this? So if you did get a San Francisco billboard, I think it would work. But sounds like you might need to put it in San Jose or Arizona or Texas or something like that. You might even need to put it. I'm like an hour and a half out of San Francisco.

And I'll tell you, I think there's a town hall meeting like this week about a a data center that's being planned

out. You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of ag ag land out here. It's actually if you've ever seen it, it's, California forever. It was a huge thing by a bunch of venture I'm literally, like, in that town where that's going on. Huge master plan community by the the Zuckerbergs and VC VC venture capital, but, it's just it's such an interesting world. How long are you gonna be out here, Justin? I'll be here for another week. You guys wanna come over in SF or San Jose, come and say hi.

Love to talk to you guys in person. Chubborsa. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. We'll have to, we might have to line up to other trips in the future to see if we can do a stable minded interview or something to go go go deep into the work with Taiwan. Honestly Yeah. We're we're

actually announcing a big announcement on Computex next year. So we're hopefully, we can make it up some type of a stablecoin conference at Computex. I mean, Computex is one of the the biggest AI conferences in the world right now, Jason Huang. Every person, like, from US come to Taiwan for the conference. We're looking to host a stablecoin conference a site conference within that period of time. So I think that's gonna be very interesting.

A lot of AI manufacturers or supply chain owners, they they wanna learn more. Yeah.

Well, we're excited to keep following the journey because it seems like there is massive opportunity. Seems like you're the right person or one of the right people to see some of it, and we'll look forward to hearing there's we were joking about it with time zone thing, how it's tough. Yeah. But it's a shame because there's so much amazing stuff happening in the Asian markets, and thanks for catching us up to speed when you're on the stateside.

Well, thank you guys for for having me on the show. Yeah. Appreciate it, Justin. Thank you. See you.