Open Interest

Arthur Firstov, Chief Business Officer at Mercuryo, joins Kinsa Durst for Open Interest.

Arthur left investment banking in 2019 to help build what Mercuryo's founders pitched as Stripe for crypto. Mercuryo started with on- and off-ramps for exchanges and wallets and now works with payment companies and fintechs on stablecoin and self-custodial payment infrastructure. We get into why the best infrastructure is invisible, wallets turning into neobanks, Western Union and PayPal moving into stablecoin cards, Samsung putting stablecoins on the phone, the plumbing still missing behind the headlines, and why agentic payments should eventually settle on crypto rails.

Recorded in Singapore during TOKEN2049, October 2026. Figures and announcements are as stated at the time of recording. Nothing in this episode is financial advice.

Open Interest: conversations with the people taking the risk and the people pricing it.

https://openinteresthq.com/episodes/arthur-mercuryo/

Open Interest Season 1 · Singapore — co-sponsored by Kraken and Codex.

Kraken: https://www.kraken.com/

Codex: https://www.codex.io/

Mercuryo: https://mercuryo.io/

Full conversation:

00:00 Intro: Arthur, Mercuryo

00:27 From investment banking to "Stripe for crypto"

01:31 What Mercuryo does

01:57 On- and off-ramps for crypto natives

03:13 Partnering with Visa, Mastercard and Revolut

04:33 Infrastructure you never see

06:16 From speculation to payments

07:07 Wallets turning into neobanks

08:12 PayPal, Western Union and stablecoin cards

10:01 Samsung, Solana and stablecoins on your phone

11:01 The plumbing behind the headlines

13:08 Agentic payments: cards first, crypto next

16:29 How agents make money: payments

16:55 Microtransactions and streaming payments

19:37 How Arthur pays: travel and a hectic life

22:34 Apple Pay, QR codes and Singapore

24:38 Where to find Mercuryo

Shiyu Zhang, co-founder of Surf AI, joins Kinsa Durst for Open Interest.

Shiyu has been building in crypto since 2017, from the decentralized live-streaming platform DLive to CyberConnect, before co-founding Surf, a crypto-native AI company. Surf runs Ask Surf for traders and researchers, and powers the AI inside Bithumb's app, with over a million users at the time of recording. We get into post-training a model under a regulated exchange's rules, why a trained model beats a wrapper on cost and accuracy, where AI belongs in a trade (the decision, not the execution), and what's next for Surf.

Recorded in Singapore during TOKEN2049, October 2026. Figures are as stated at the time of recording. Nothing in this episode is financial advice.

Open Interest: conversations with the people taking the risk and the people pricing it.
https://openinteresthq.com/episodes/shiyu-zhang-surf-ai/

Open Interest Season 1 · Singapore — co-sponsored by Kraken and Codex.
Kraken: https://www.kraken.com/
Codex: https://www.codex.io/

Surf: https://asksurf.ai/

Full conversation:
00:00 Intro: Shiyu Zhang, Surf AI
00:18 From DLive and CyberConnect to Surf
01:13 Two products: Ask Surf and enterprise AI
01:51 The Bithumb partnership
02:36 Proprietary data and post-training
03:52 Regulation, localization and cost
04:38 Bithumb, Surf's first centralized exchange
05:08 Enterprise demand in Korea
06:06 Execution vs decisions: where AI belongs
07:43 AI and crypto in five to ten years
09:20 What's next: campaigns and NFTs
10:27 Where to find Surf

Matthew Dawson, co-founder of Ethereum Institutional, joins Kinsa Durst for Open Interest.

We discuss what institutions need from a chain—security, uptime and liquidity—the move from private chains to public Ethereum, compliant privacy, permissioned assets in DeFi, Ethereum’s ZK scaling roadmap, agentic payments, and whether institutions should build on L2s.

Recorded in Singapore during TOKEN2049.

Open Interest: https://openinteresthq.com

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/9FGPqwQUBJk

Ethereum Institutional: https://www.ethereuminstitutional.org/

Open Interest Season 1 · Singapore — co-sponsored by Kraken and Codex.

Kraken: https://www.kraken.com/

Codex: https://www.codex.io/

Full conversation:

00:00 Intro: Matthew Dawson, Ethereum Institutional

00:34 From finance consulting to the Ethereum Foundation

02:23 Spinning out Ethereum Institutional

03:26 What institutions need: security, uptime, liquidity

04:39 From private chains to public Ethereum

06:47 Privacy that stays compliant

07:23 Permissioned assets meet DeFi

08:10 ZK-EVM and Ethereum’s scaling roadmap

09:53 Why institutions choose Ethereum

10:46 AI and agentic finance

14:24 TOKEN2049 and a global industry

15:24 Announcements since the spin-out

16:40 L1 or L2 for institutions?

18:10 Why the largest institutions lead

19:06 How to reach Ethereum Institutional

Lito Coen, GTM lead at Ethena Pay, joins Josh Han for Open Interest to discuss building a crypto neobank: saving, spending and sending from one account, KYC across 50 countries, localisation, and what Ethena Pay means for USDe and ENA.

Recorded in Singapore during TOKEN2049. Figures and plans are as stated at the time of recording.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lED8yTSeqqM

Open Interest: https://openinteresthq.com/

Open Interest Season 1 · Singapore — co-sponsored by Kraken and Codex.

Kraken: https://www.kraken.com/

Codex: https://www.codex.io/

Ethena Pay: https://pay.ethena.fi/

Lito Coen: https://x.com/litocoen

Full conversation:

00:00 Intro: Lito Coen, Ethena Pay

00:14 From PayPal and the ICO era to crypto onboarding

01:22 Why a crypto neobank

04:02 What makes it a neobank

05:54 One month live: 1,000 users and a 12,000 waitlist

06:46 Saving, spending and sending

08:57 What surprised him: KYC across 50 countries

11:03 Why localisation matters

11:45 Where the growth is

12:52 VIP perks versus real utility

15:37 What Ethena Pay means for USDe and ENA

17:28 Distributing new products to users

18:52 Ethena and the equity basis trade

21:30 What's next and where to follow

Michael Egorov, founder of Curve and co-founder of YieldBasis, joins Kinsa Durst for Open Interest.

A physics PhD, a stake token at NuCypher, and a problem swapping DAI without selling ETH led to the StableSwap algorithm and Curve. Now YieldBasis takes the same idea to Bitcoin: liquidity that earns from volatility while staying delta-neutral in the asset itself. We cover why Bitcoin before Ethereum, what "capacity" means when liquidity starts suppressing volatility, why real yield is seasonal, the MS-DOS UI and the five-minute Klein-bottle logo, Hyperliquid versus GMX, and whether AI or quantum computers threaten the keys.

Open Interest: conversations with the people taking the risk and the people pricing it. https://openinteresthq.com

Open Interest Season 1 · Singapore — co-sponsored by Kraken and Codex.
Kraken: https://www.kraken.com/
Codex: https://www.codex.io/

YieldBasis: https://yieldbasis.com/

Watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/X0g0eL74rc4

Chapters:
00:00 Intro: Michael Egorov, Curve and YieldBasis
00:36 Physics PhD, NuCypher and the liquid-staking problem
02:11 Why Curve started with stablecoin swaps
03:37 The idea for YieldBasis, on a flight to Token2049
05:41 The MS-DOS UI and a logo made in five minutes
09:16 What YieldBasis is for: real yield on Bitcoin
11:22 Capacity, liquidity and suppressing volatility
12:36 Why Bitcoin is less volatile than stocks
14:25 Bitcoin L2s and the branded-L2 question
15:57 Stocks, gold and where the yield comes from
17:54 Valueless governance tokens
18:47 The next holy grail: Hyperliquid, GMX and why DeFi at all
21:04 AI, quantum computers and whether keys are safe
26:37 How to reach YieldBasis

Mike Rowe, CEO and co-founder of Codex and Defined, joins Josh Han for the first full episode of Open Interest.

They discuss the trading tools that became a data business, the B2B pivot that helped the company survive, and building with a team of longtime friends. Also: token discovery, Defined’s research tools and how its consumer product connects to the Codex API.

Open Interest: conversations with the people taking the risk and the people pricing it.

https://openinteresthq.com

Open Interest Season 1 · Singapore — co-sponsored by Kraken and Codex.

Kraken: https://www.kraken.com/

Codex: https://www.codex.io/

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/_BiwNgSp5uU

Defined: https://www.defined.fi/

Every story in this industry gets told twice. Open Interest is the first telling.

Our first season was recorded in Singapore during TOKEN2049: conversations with founders, builders and allocators, before the outcome was known.

Full conversations and short clips over the coming weeks. Follow the show and get the next conversation by email at https://openinteresthq.com/

Recorded in the Panoramic Content Suite, Singapore. Co-sponsored by Kraken and Codex.

Trailer narration generated with AI.