Bits and Borders

Ezra Kebrab is co-founder of Caliza. He joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss cross-border stablecoin payments in Latin America. Recorded live at the Bitso Stablecoin Conference in Mexico City. Caliza handles cross-border supplier and treasury payments, with most volume flowing between Brazil, Mexico, China, Hong Kong, and the US. Kebrab traces his path from Visa, where he watched Pix transform real...

Robson Silva Junior is Co-Founder of Pods. He joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss how DeFi's mixed retail adoption led Pods to build modular yield infrastructure for Latin America's neobanks. Recorded live at the Token Nation event in São Paulo, the conversation traces Silva's path from naval engineering to early AMM research during Singapore's ICO era. Silva explains why Pods aban...

Jack Chong is co-founder and CEO of Checker, a stablecoin liquidity network connecting FX banks, payments companies, and neobanks across emerging markets. He joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss why cross-border stablecoin payments are still broken, and how Checker is building the infrastructure layer to fix it. Chong's path from Hong Kong to Oxford to a language school in Jordan to building st...

David Z. Morris is a financial journalist and author of S tealing the Future , a post-trial account of the FTX collapse and the effective altruism ideology behind it. He joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss what the criminal trial revealed that earlier books missed, why Michael Lewis's account functionally serves as a defense of the fraud, and how the ideology that shaped Sam Bankman-Fried cont...

Luiz Octavio Gonçalves Neto is the founder and CEO of DUX, a company building financial infrastructure for the creative economy in Brazil. He joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss how DUX uses invoice factoring and blockchain-based liquidity to serve a $2.5 trillion global sector that traditional banks have largely ignored. DUX buys receivables from creative economy companies, marketing agencies, ev...

Sthefano Batista is Head of Latam at Figment, the world's largest institutional provider of staking services with $18 billion in assets staked. Recorded live at Merge Sao Paulo, Sthefano joins host Aaron Stanley to break down how Figment is building the staking market across Latin America, why major institutions like BlackRock, Nubank, and Robinhood trust Figment with their crypto yield strate...

Rodrigo Coelho is CEO of Edge & Node. In this episode, recorded live at Merge Sao Paulo, joins host Aaron Stanley to explore the cutting edge of agentic commerce and blockchain data infrastructure. Rodrigo shares how Edge & Node, the original team behind The Graph protocol - built the indexing layer that quietly powers much of Web3 today, and how their new product, AMP, is modernizing that...

Owen Healy has spent five years matching blockchain talent with crypto projects around the world - and he's built a 50,000-follower LinkedIn following doing it. In this episode, Aaron sits down with the Ireland-based recruiter to explore how the blockchain talent market actually works: how recruiters get paid, how candidates can trust a headhunter is acting in their interest, and why referrals...

Rodrigo Trindade is an investor at Iporanga Ventures. He joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss his comprehensive research on local stablecoin adoption across Brazil and Latin America. Rodrigo built his own tracking dashboard monitoring on-chain metrics including supply, holders, transaction volumes, and DeFi activity for regional stablecoins. He argues that while USD-denominated stablecoins will rem...

John Delaney is CEO and co-founder of Crown. Crown recently raised a $13.5 million Series A round led by Paradigm and is the issuer of BRLV - Brazil's newest and stablecoin with over 360 million BRL subscribed. He joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss Crown's unique approach to capturing institutional flows in Brazil's high-yield environment - namely by letting BRLV holders earn native y...

Thiago Barbosa, partner at Salles Nogueira Advogados , joins host Aaron Stanley to break down the complex and rapidly evolving landscape of crypto asset taxation and regulation in Brazil. The discussion centers on the latest major developments from the Central Bank, which is introducing stricter requirements for Virtual Asset Service Providers, and the new Receita Federal reporting mechanism calle...

In this episode, host Aaron Stanley speaks with Justin Norman, founder of The Flip, a content creator and filmmaker who documents technology adoption in emerging markets. Justin shares insights from his recent Latin American research trip exploring stablecoin adoption, which resulted in a YouTube documentary series examining markets like Argentina and Bolivia. The conversation delves into the disc...

Thomaz Teixeira, CEO of BRL1, and Ben Reid, Head of Stablecoins at Bitso, join host Aaron Stanley to discuss the BRL1 stablecoin project. BRL1 is a one-to-one Brazilian real-pegged token developed by a unique consortium of major crypto exchanges including Mercado Bitcoin, Bitso, Foxbit, and Cainvest. We explore how competitors joined forces to build shared infrastructure that reduces friction for...

After three years of waiting, Brazil's central bank has finally released comprehensive VASP regulations. In this episode, Carlos Eduardo Russo (Bluegreen) and Cesar Carvalho (Baptista Luz Advogados) join host Aaron Stanley to break down the regulatory framework that will reshape Brazil's digital asset industry. We discuss the phased authorization process, capital requirements ranging from...

Paulo David is CEO of AmFi. He joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss how his platform is revolutionizing access to Brazilian private credit markets through asset tokenization. As a third-time entrepreneur who previously built and sold two major fintechs including Grafeno, Paulo brings deep expertise in Brazil's capital markets infrastructure. The conversation explores how Brazil's position a...

Gui Gomes, CEO of OranjeBTC, joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss his company's mission to become Latin America's leading Bitcoin adoption catalyst following their recent listing on Brazil's B3 exchange. Gomes brings a unique perspective shaped by his time at Bridgewater Associates, where working alongside Ray Dalio on global economic power shifts crystallized his conviction that Bitcoi...

David Taylor is the co-founder of Etherfuse. He joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss his mission to bring tokenized sovereign debt on-chain for emerging markets. Etherfuse is building infrastructure to issue interest-bearing stablecoins backed by short-term government treasuries, providing what Taylor calls the missing primitive in crypto: a true risk-free rate that traditional finance relies on as...

Qin en Looi is managing partner at Onigiri Capital and partner at Saison Capital. He joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss Onigiri's plans to deploy up to US$50 million of investment capital into Brazil and Latin America. Why is this Singapore-based VC taking such an interest in Brazil? Qin en explains his thesis that the market is ripe with potential for tokenization, stablecoin, payments and D...

This episode is a live panel from Stellar's Meridian 2025 conference at Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro. The panel, hosted by BCR founder Aaron Stanley, explores stablecoin adoption for local solutions in emerging markets. Joining him are: - Sebastian Siseles, CEO of Vesseo - Ibrahim Abdul Hussein, CEO, Digibank - Camila Rioja, Executive Director of Plexus Institute - Justin Norman, founde...

Raagulan Pathy is CEO of KAST. He joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss his stablecoin neobank that has achieved remarkable traction across emerging markets in a short period. KAST serves as a bank-like platform for crypto-native users and global remote workers, allowing them to deposit stablecoins and crypto, earn yield, and spend through cards worldwide. Pathy revealed that KAST has reached 500,00...

Nathan Sexer is the head of Devcon and Devconnect at Ethereum Foundation, and Romina Sejas runs ETH Kipu - host of the annual ETH Latam event In this conversation we discuss how Latin America will be the center of the crypto universe this November when Devconnect, the premier Ethereum developer gathering, comes to Buenos Aires and ETH Latam comes to Sao Paulo. These events will be a coming of age...

Thamilla Talarico is Head of On-Chain Finance Growth for Brasil at Polygon Labs. She joins host Aaron Stanley live at the Stablecoin Conference in Mexico City, hosted by Bitso Business. Thamilla discusses Polygon's strategic pivot to focus on RWAs and payments, and shares her firsthand perspective working on the Brazilian Central Bank's Drex project on behalf of Ernst & Young. We dive...

This episode was recorded onsite at the Stablecoin Conference 2025 in Mexico City hosted by Bitso Business. The panel discussion explores how stablecoins have evolved from crypto trading tools to essential infrastructure for global commerce. - Monica Ramirez (Anchorage Digital) - Nick Philpott (Zodiac Markets) - Peter Wexler (Visa) - Aaron Stanley (Brazil Crypto Report) ---------------------------...

Matheus Moura is CEO and co-founder of Avenia, a stablecoin-powered financial infrastructure platform that aims to reshape money movement across the Americas. We discuss the thesis that every company will eventually become a financial services company - and how Avenia is building the infrastructure to enable this with their "one API" approach. You can connect with Matheus on Linkedin ---...

Guilherme Bettanin is the Brazil country manager for Base, the Coinbase-incubated Ethereum Layer 2 network that has become the largest such protocol by transaction volume and total volume locked. He joins host Aaron Stanley to discuss adoption on Base, use cases such as AI, DeFi and creator economy, and Base's expansion and community building efforts in Brazil and Latin America. You can connec...