60/40 Podcast9 Okt 2025

The Empire Strikes Back: Stablecoins vs. the Old Financial Order

Stablecoins are having a main-character moment.

In this episode, Maria, Peter, and Prashanth are joined by Milind Sanghavi, co-founder of XWeave.io, to decode the hype and the hard reality behind the $30 trillion cross-border payments market.

Together, they explore:

What stablecoins actually are (and why “stable” is a misleading word)
How the Genius Act cements U.S. dollar dominance in the digital age
Why Asia’s regulators (Singapore, Philippines, Japan) are seeking to lead the next wave
How “agentic commerce” and programmable money could change how we buy, sell, and move value
And whether the Empire (read: traditional finance) will strike back

It’s a crash course in the new galactic order of money — less lightsabers, more ledgers.

Timestamps

00:00 – Cold Open & Studio Intro02:00 – Headlines: OpenAI, Agentic E-Commerce & the Buy Button09:56 – Stablecoins 101: What They Are and Why They Matter13:06 – Programmability, Regulation & The “Clean Money” Future17:56 – Real-World Use Cases: Remittances, Trade & Local Stables21:31 – Who’s Who: Inside the Stablecoin Value Chain26:21 – The White Space: New Issuers, Local Currencies & Rules28:39 – XWeave.io: Building the Pipes for Digital Money33:17 – The Genius Act: America’s Digital Dollar Power Play40:00 – Asia’s Response: Singapore, Japan & the Philippines47:57 – Will the Empire Strike Back? Big Banks vs. Startups49:23 – Founder Reflections: The Lonely Road of Yeses and No’s51:06 – The Stablecoin Poem (Yes, Really)

Give us feedback or nominate topics & speakers at 6040podcast@techinasia.com.

60/40 is a bi-weekly podcast co-hosted by Prashanth Ranganathan, Peter Bithos, Aleksey Mironenko, and Maria Li. Special thanks to this week's guest, Milind Sanghavi from XWeave.io.

A podcast by Tech in Asia, a member of The Business Times.

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