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The Stable Pulse
Brought to you by Stablecon, The Stable Pulse is where the architects of programmable money, the regulators writing tomorrow’s rulebook, and the institutions bridging TradFi and DeFi converge.
Our expert hosts with deep payments and policy experience, go beyond the surface, bringing the people and ideas driving the tectonic shifts in money and payments.
Bam Azizi, CEO and Founder, Mesh, hosts CEO Beat.
Dante Reminick, hosts the What's Next Beat, about the latest news in the ecosystem.
Justin Friedman, Head of Policy at Stablecon, hosts Policy Beat.
Join them to keep your finger on the pulse of all things stablecoin.
The Stable Pulse
Why Stablecoins Could Transform Global Payments
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Money still moves like paperwork, even when everything else moves like software. In this episode, Bam Azizi sits down with Sandeep Nailwal, CEO and founder of Polygon, to explore why stablecoins may be crypto’s clearest product-market fit—and how they could transform payments.
They discuss the shared-ledger advantage of stablecoins, faster cross-border payments, B2B settlement, and the potential for smart contracts to automate financial flows. Sandeep also shares his journey from early skepticism of Bitcoin to his “lightbulb moment” with Ethereum and explains how stablecoins fit into the broader tokenization of real-world assets.
The conversation also dives into Polygon’s evolution into a Web3-enabled fintech, its strategy around stablecoin infrastructure, acquisitions like CoinMe and Sequence, and the path toward building sustainable financial infrastructure for enterprises.
If you enjoyed this conversation, subscribe for more discussions with the founders and operators building the future of finance.
Connect with the Hosts & Guest
Bam Azizi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bam-azizi-54117310a/
Sandeep Nailwal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandeep-nailwal-60709a33/
About Stable Pulse
Stable Pulse is a fast-paced, news-driven podcast covering the most important developments shaping the stablecoin and digital asset ecosystem. Each episode dives into timely conversations with industry leaders, operators, and policymakers, offering sharp insights and real-world perspectives on where the market is heading. With a focus on clarity and relevance, Stable Pulse breaks down complex topics into accessible, actionable takeaways for anyone building in or exploring the future of finance.
Intro
Bam AziziPassage of the stable coin legislation directed by the Senate can be done in the BD Senate. Because analysts say a wave of competition can complicate things. Stable coin issue of debut right here at the DVD Connected AV. Okay, we are here with another episode of COB. Today we have Sandy, CEO and founder of Polygon, one of the most famous networks on the planet. Sandy, welcome to the show.
Sandeep NailwalThanks. Thanks, Bam. Thanks for such a nice introduction also for Polygon.
Bam AziziYeah, I'm super excited for this uh interview, and uh we have known each other for a while. I would love to um tell our audience more about you. So, but now we have you here.
Growing Up In The Himalayas
Bam AziziWhy don't you tell us a little bit more about your background? Uh, where did you grow up? Um, where do you live now? Where are you calling from right now? Tell us more about yourself.
Sandeep NailwalYeah, uh so I was born uh in a kind of a hilly village uh of India, uh in somewhere in Himalayas. And I was born at home. Uh, you know, some uh uh because you know, like where my family was from, like, you know, there's not many hospitals and all that. So uh, you know, many times at that time, like the kids will get born at the home itself. And uh I was a breach baby, so very interesting stats. Like I breach baby is like the baby comes reverse, and sometimes like the baby gets choked. So I was actually unconscious, like you know, for for quite some time. Like uh my mom says, like maybe for for five, four or five minutes, but she never realized that you know, this is like a I might have been uh unconscious, all that. So anyway, so I was born there, and then uh, you know, like where I was born, like a lot of people migrate to the cities like Delhi and Mumbai in India to in search of jobs and all that. So my father also uh migrated. So when I was like four or five years old, uh they migrated to Delhi. So I uh grew up in the you know suburbs of East Delhi. Um and uh yeah, like grew up like normal like Indian uh you know childhood, uh, you know, uh lower middle class uh childhood kind of, and then you you kind of uh you know go do your engineering and then you figure out what you want to do in life in India. Like first you do engineering, everybody does engineering. So uh I also did my engineering and realized that you know I'm actually I like the functional side more than the the programming side uh itself. And that time programming was not as fun after that that it is like now with AI because that time you had to change, if you want to change the color or shape of a button, you have to so I did uh that's uh you know, the software engineering did software engineering job in some time for like 22 months or something. Then I did my MBA from uh like the in India, India has this Indian Institutes of Management. That time it was called Niti Mumbai, but it's now I'm Mumbai. So I did uh my MBA from there, and then uh and during my college days itself, like I had uh in my third year of engineering as we call like I think in the US it's called sophomore year, like uh you know, out of the four years, the third year. So I started like a tech uh like a software company uh in India, had like some very big clients. Now the ruling party uh in government, like that time, they were my clients. So I, you know, kind of luckily made a lot of good connections at that time. The some of them are have become like really big uh politicians now in India, like you know, which I who I met in 2009 uh while doing that project. And then yeah, I did I kept doing a lot of like part-time uh startups also in the middle and all that, but like my family condition uh did not allow me because uh you know, since 2010, like I was literally the one putting the food on the table uh for the family and paying the rent because the house, like you, you know, you have to pay the rent of the house also. We couldn't unfortunately did not have a house in Delhi. All that so uh kept on happening, and then uh I did my MBA and then MBA I found my uh you know, now my wife, but my uh you know, that time my girlfriend, and you know, like uh after the MBA, I did job like eight months in Deloitte and then 12 months in another e-commerce company, and then then also I was doing a lot of part-time startups, and my wife was like, you know, dude, like you know, you work like hard uh in the job, and uh then you come back and do this part-time startup, like literally you don't have any time, and this is what you want to do. Go and do it. And my like in India, basically, like living in a rented house is like a is like a curse, right? Like you you have to have hours, otherwise you won't get you won't even get married, right? So I was like, you know, how will he get married uh if if this happened? And she was like, she's like, you know, I don't care. Like, you know, I will fight with my parents, don't worry. You go and do this thing because uh, you know, this is what you uh, you know, I think you are made for. And you know, once she said that, I think it took me two weeks to resign from my job, started my one venture, uh, you know, scaled it a little bit, uh, but then in India scale scaled it to a decent bit, but then I realized that this is not scaling as much. I want to do like big scale, and that time, like uh, you know, the the the the Bitcoin was getting into another cycle.
Bitcoin Doubts To Ethereum Conviction
Sandeep NailwalI had known about Bitcoin since 2010, but I thought it was like some sort of a scam, like some sort of MLM scheme. Uh, because a lot of MLM schemes used to come in India and the initially.
Bam AziziAll of us had that at the scam.
Sandeep NailwalYeah, and the people kind of like who will be the Bitcoin stalwarts will also be you know look very fuzzy and all that. You're like, you know, this is at least like those MLM schemes, like they look very suave and these people look like it. But then by the time 2016 it came back uh in my radar again. I I had done my MBA, so I understood geopolitics, economics a little bit more. And I then I you know went into the Bitcoin white paper, read it, and I thought that oh shit, like this is this is really good. But even then, my like the the the engineer, computer engineer in me thought that you know, computer science engineer that this is this is basically good, but they made payments, but this is in this structure, it will never scale to be a payments network, right? And at that time, like the Bitcoin's positioning was it's a it's a internet native payments. And I'm like seven ppm.
Bam AziziIt's a peer-to-peer payment, right? That was the white paper of Bitcoin, yeah.
Sandeep NailwalExactly, exactly. And that did not sit well with me. I was like, this is not going to, you know, that that cannot become that scaled. And then uh, you know, probably like three, four weeks later, like I I stumbled onto Ethereum. And Ethereum had, I think that just time it uh that time uh the Dow hack had not happened, and Ethereum had gone to like nine dollars from 50 cents in no time, right? And uh like it had gone like 20x in no time, and then it came into my radar in some news and all that. And I was like, Because at that time when I had looked at Bitcoin, I had thought that this simple payment at this scale won't work because what they have created is like they have created a very slow computer, but this computer is run by everybody and not run by anybody, right? So it's like collectively, humanity runs it. And uh, but I thought that you know, for business transactions, like business contracts, if somebody does like this, that'll be very interesting. Writing custom contracts, business contracts on this, you do this, A, B, C, and then I will pay you this. So that then I landed on Ethereum, which had this promise of Turing complete programming language on the blockchain. That time I said that oh, that that was the bulb moment for me, that this is the thing, like you know. So then after that, again, it it was like a week or you know, story of two weeks. I shut down my previous business, mailed all my previous clients that you know I will not continue this, and then I'm going all into this. And yeah, this was like what year did you start Polygon? The Polygon started in 2017, December-ish. And then, you know, actually we formalized the company much later, I think in May of 2018, but that was the time that we we started. So this is 2000 mid-16 to 17. I was doing like a bunch of like hands-on stuff I did. Then I started like consulting a few, you know, exchanges and all that. I built a lot of like exchange-related code also that gave me good hands-on insight into the network level things and all that, and then I started writing smart contracts, which actually like that time 2017, March was I think the Bancor uh, you know, kind of the the IC ICO $30 million one, and then it kind of exploded absolutely from there. And uh uh, you know, from there onwards, like I got a lot of smart contract, like you know, got like a lot of income coming in from my scale to like suddenly making like $20,000, $30,000 a month is like insane in India, right? It's it's a pretty huge amount of money. Even in the US, it's it's good money, but in India it's like uh insane money, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly. I was like, uh, you know, so uh that happened and uh then you know I did this for some time, and then eventually you you know you go back to soul sessing, soul searching, and I listened to Naval a lot, right? So he I was listening to his Farnam Street podcast and you know about the leverage and all that, and I, you know, kind of connected back to my this thing that why did I come here for? Like, you know, I did not come to build like some business and make money, right? I wanted to play at the global scale. That has been my you know kind of goal. Uh, even when then we did Polygon and Polygon eventually, like it looks like it looks to people that Polygon happened in 2017, 18, and then Polygon got a lot of success. Polygon got any amount of success in 2021 only, like it was four years of hard hard grind and people ignoring you because they thought that you are like some sort of like some Indian project or some Binance scam, like you know, something people like a lot of like the mainstream crypto people thought like that. And uh, and then you know, it took us like three, four years to really, you know, kind of take Polygon onto the center stage, and then it became very big and all that, but then again, like for me has been like I always knew that this is like very fickle valuations, right? And the real, you know, this thing, there is no real fundamental to it. Eventually the markets are going to catch up to this, right? These multiples on these valuations and all that don't make sense. So eventually the markets are going to catch up to it. And uh question was that what would you do? And then that's why you saw like Polygon doing a lot of like these institutional stuff all the while, right? Whether it was uh, you know, the that Reddit and Instagram and uh you know their NFTs launching or Starbucks launching their wallet and all that with the with Polygon and all that, uh, and and a lot of these, like literally, like literally half of Fortune 500 was working with us because we thought that somewhere the real stuff will come out.
The Long Grind Behind Polygon
Sandeep NailwalAnd uh and then you know, like all of that turned out also to be fickle, and finally, I think you know, now the markets have realized or like we have finally found a real product market fit for crypto, and that is stable coins.
Bam AziziYeah, we'll get to stable coins, but before that, on your journey to entrepreneurship, was there a character you mentioned, Naval, or a movie that like impacted to kind of build that character? Like, who was your role model to just be an entrepreneur? And the other question I have for you, why you didn't come to US? Why you stayed in India or other places in Middle East or Asia?
Sandeep NailwalYou know, I I would I would I would say like first of all, like my entrepreneurship instinct, like I really cannot say that when it started, because as far as I go back, like you know, fifth when I was five years old or whatever, like you know, but uh basically like the from where I come from, a very successful life for me would be to have a mobile repair shop, right? Like, you know, from the area I come, like with literally all my cousins, they are either into the hard labor jobs, like, or they are like the you know, the in India, like you know, the petrol pump, like, you know, servers or like you know, the small um, you know, what do you call like the workers in in the shops and whatnot, right? And so, but I I I really don't know, but then from where you know this thing came, like, no, I want to do bigger, you know, bigger at a global scale and all that. And I remember that I actually got a, you know, in the IITs, like India has this, like, you know, the premier engineering institutions. I got like a lower rank, so I was getting uh uh Navy, uh merchant navy from them, right? Like, which is a very lucrative career. You make a lot of money in that, you don't even get taxed because you are on the ship, uh, you know, and and and this and that. So a lot of people said that no, this is the thing, like just go, this is governmenting and all that. And I was this is like 2005, 6, and I was watching like in Indian TV, somewhere Mark Zuckerberg's interview was coming, right? And then he was saying this. And that time, very stupidly, I thought, no, I will build my own Facebook, right? Something like that. And then I went to my engineering college. I said, No, I want to buy it.
Bam AziziOkay, I can do that too.
Sandeep NailwalYeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. You can also relate. So that that happened, and uh generally uh that was one instance that I remember. Then obviously, that there have been some local, like there is a television series uh called Pictures in India, right? Like which is basically about uh entrepreneurship journey or something. That actually uh was was very uh kind of like uh influential. Social network is actually a very uh nice movie, which was uh influential, but in terms of like any particular character, uh you know, this thing, I think yeah, Nawal is probably the the you know biggest guy I have uh you know followed and uh you know listened to.
Bam AziziAnd then you never thought like maybe I'm in the wrong place. Like, that was a very good question.
Sandeep NailwalLike actually, you know what I would say? My answer is that you know I had a very small vision because you know, coming, like I never see first time I took a flight in my life is 2010 when I was already 23, 24 year old, right? This is the first time I take like a domestic flight. And uh so for me, the vision, like you know, like people a lot of people around me, like you know, they would have money, they will go and study abroad and all that. For me, that was not the thought process because you still have to spend, like, even if you get all the this thing, you still have to spend like $10,000, $20,000, right? Like through pay for the ticket to to do this, even if you get 0-100% scholarship and whatnot. So somehow it was not in my mind, and actually I regret that. Like, I should have opened, I should have invested more in my in myself. Like we see a lot of uh, you know, like the legends in entrepreneurship, they would tell you that uh, you know, they invested in themselves. I was not that smart at that time, I would say. I should have invested in myself a little bit more, I should have traveled a little bit outside and you know met more people. So to your answer, that's why I did not shift because I had never seen the world. Like I thought like this India entrepreneurship that this is good enough for me.
Bam AziziYeah, so and at some point you went to Dubai, is that correct? Are you in India or in Dubai?
Sandeep NailwalThat is in Dubai, that is uh even right now. I'm in Dubai 2021, 2022. That also, like, you know, I would have like 2020 is basically before COVID. Like I would have stayed in India only, but the regulations in around crypto was not like very clear and all that, and that was like I was forced to go out. And when I came out, yeah, I always used to say that no, I will go back to India, I'll go back to India and all that. And so uh so yeah, so and only when I came out, and because of crypto, I you know traveled a lot and all that, and I see the horizons expanding and you know, see the opportunity space available. Let's say like so.
Chasing Product Market Fit Cycles
Bam AziziTell us like in your vision when you started Polygon, like like did you go through a bunch of pivots? Were you thinking about stable coin day zero, or like you went through like the journey and then i ICO trading, and now lots and lots of pivots?
Sandeep NailwalLots and lots of pivots, like pivots as in like change, change of like okay, this is the because nobody knew any any any like kind of real you know business use cases that is that are going to survive, right? And so DeFi became big. So 2020, everything was like, let's get more DeFi. 2019 was the gaming, like let's get more gaming, gaming, gaming, gaming, game. We became known to be a gaming chain. Then 2020 DeFi came and we went into DeFi, DeFi, then suddenly we in 21 became like a DeFi chain and so much of capital came in. But then from 2020 to 2024, 25, literally, till the time Trump government came back, DeFi was in a kind of long winter. Like DeFi was considered to be dead, right? And you know, people would do standard like leverage trading and all that. Like even now, like a large amount of use case of DeFi is people having, you know, depositing their assets, borrowing more money, and doing more trading stuff on that, right? Like people, very few people are actually taking it like literally loan for their real stuff for that. Like people take it for trading itself. So that was uh this thing, then again, like gaming came back in 2022, 2023, then NFTs came back and all that. And this is like the fifth or sixth, then social media, like crypto native social media came, like you would have seen the friends.com or whatnot, right? And then uh meme coins 2024, then again they were meme coins were all the rage, everybody was like trying to catch it, but that at that time we were like, you know, this is not our DNA, we cannot do it. And stablecoin was slowly picking up. I think 2025 onwards, when the you know Trump government came and the you know the administration decided to do this, uh, you know, the uh the the Genius Act, uh, and then you know subsequently now Clarity Act is being discussed. Then uh, you know, we 2025, you know, is where the V said like we let's go all in. Before that, payments was a big segment, and you know, like some of those, you know, uh, you know, big big guys from our side also, like who are really good at like their their craft and in getting the clients on board and all that. But uh the only 2025, you know, kind of quarter two, I you know, kind of also kind of thought that okay, this is this is the thing, this is where we should be going full on. So then we started cutting out like all these other, you know, kind of distractions and you know, clearly fully go payment, payment, payment. And then end of 2025 is when we started thinking of you know uh converting it into a fintech itself. Like we could also see Stripe if you see like Polygon is literally right now like a reverse stripe kind of approach, right? So post-stripe is like Stripe, and then you have bridge, you have Previe, and you have the tempo blockchain, right? We are on the reverse, like this is the blockchain. We have sequence uh as the wallet and all that, and then we have the coin me with the licensed uh money movements and all that, and then we are building like trying off this like money movement business on top of it, right?
Bam AziziSo, what what is what is Polygon now? What is Polygon today? Is it a payment company? Is it a web three? Is it DeFi? Is it gaming what or is a general blockchain or all the above?
Sandeep NailwalI I would say that this is a web 3 enabled fintech. You know, Polygon Labs is a web 3 enabled fintech business. See, Polygon Network is a network, it is heavily used. I think you would have seen the tweet a few days back that we have literally rank one in the stablecoin-based payments, literally double of the last, you know, the previous one and all that. So there's a lot of stablecoin transactions happen on Polygon. Um but the the that is the Polygon network, and Polygon Labs is a fintech that is being built, which is like a stablecoin enabled payments, and it uses Polygon network heavily, but it also is like you know, it it meet tries to meet the client uh, you know, uh where they are, right? Yeah, and and then you know, provide like we have the interoperability we built for quite some time. So we are using that interoperability to uh you know to provide the Do you think neutrality matters?
Bam AziziLike, can you like if your client prefers another network, would you do that for him? Like if they want to move a stable coin over Arbitrum?
Sandeep Nailwal100%, 100%. Like, you know, for if a if a client is there who is already moving money on uh Arbitrum and they have some deal with Arbitrum or Arbitrum has a particular coin, stable coin which has more liquidity, obviously we would want to provide them the better service. But eventually, like let's say that we have hundred clients and we see this particular to you know stable coin has a lot of liquidity on it and all that, we would try to incubate that you know liquidity on polygon chain. Second thing is like experience, I believe, would be slightly better on Polygon because we are channeling the polygons like network, which will be available for others also, but we are building polygons network also in a way which is actually very conducive for the for the stablecoin money movers because we are offering like fixed cost you know block space, right? So you pay fixed fees, but then X amount of block space can be reserved for you. Or you have like fixed fees, gas, and we are giving you a relayer, you just pay a dollar amount, and then we pay the gas on your behalf and all that, right? And that goes all to the poll holders and all that, and Polygon Labs uses uh that network. So we believe like right now, if you see like, for example, Binance or Coinbase or Circle, they are also trying to do the same thing, right? Uh so Binance has like their exchange and they have the chain and they bring a lot of proprietary flow to the chain. Similarly, uh, Coinbase will bring their uh proprietary flow and liquidity on base chain, right? Circle would also attempt to do that, right, with the ARC and all that. And Stripe would do that with the tempo. I think that is going to be uh uh you know bigger and bigger norm in the coming days.
Why Stablecoins Beat Legacy Payments
Bam AziziMakes sense. So let's zoom in on a stable coin. Why you think a stable coin is the winner, why you think that's the killer app for crypto, and what would be the role of polygon in that in that war?
Sandeep NailwalYeah, so the one is the stable the stable coin part, like you know the the biggest benefit of the stable coin, like the the first of all, like in terms of its speed and uh you know, removing and why is that speed? Like actually, I'm trying to think that for a non-crypto person, like how do you explain like what is the advantageous part over here? Like one I feel that if you are a technical person, like having a shared database, right? Today, how's the how does it happen? Like today, if you are moving money from let's say US to uh UAE, right? So you know your bank is actually transferring money, and then there is a network of correspondent banks in between. Or they are sending their money via Swift messages and all that. These messages are going from one system to another and then eventually landing at some other place. But why is this happening? Because the global digital payment systems, you know, or the financial networks are built via banking networks, right? Each bank is the custodian of the money. And each bank has its own separate kind of uh system, right? Somebody has like one particular technology, somebody has other technology, their API structures are different, and everybody has integrated in a mesh form with each other with no standardization or very less standardization. And then that's why you receive, you kind of like you know reach a place where you have this complex web of thousands and thousands of banks and trillions of dollars of liquidity, eight trillion dollars literally is stuck in these correspondent banking systems. Now compare that with a shared, you know, kind of database, which is the blockchain, shared ledger. Why? Because now the custody can be on the bank, on the on the ledger itself. Like the custody of those assets are, you know, with the banking, the custody is with the bank, right? But here the custody is with is on the chain. And like I'm not going to the deeper sense, like somebody would say that, no, no, no, actually it's the custody is with tether, they are issuing. But I'm saying for a for an actual use case, that you know, if you have USDT, you have USDT. It's not like unless you do something wrong and tether doesn't freeze you, you have that in your in your account. So uh so you have the custody. So, you know, you use this shared database, and every bank is connected to one single shared database. And everybody knows that this smart contract is the stable coin. And now when I as a bank one send to send you to or financial institution send to bank two, they are also reading from the same database and it is you know straightforward connected, right? So it's instead of it's a hub and instead of a you know kind of a mesh system, you have like a hub and spoke model where the hub is the blockchain and everybody's reading from it. And that actually is the fundamental benefit. And after that, you have programmability, which I was just talking about, like Ethereum S Turing programmability. So you can do a bunch of programmable uh stuff on top of it. So then suddenly it starts opening up your avenues for cross-border payments, right? And and and you know, like a bunch of other things like building smart contracts on top of it, uh, your remittances businesses and and and whatnot, right? And B2B payments. So, you know, I I I don't know about you, Bam, but I think you must be doing that. But like, you know, recently I was uh interacting with a legal team of ours, which works with us, and they were like, oh, this payment has not arrived, and all that. I'm like, guys, please onboard to the stablecoin Polygon OMS, please onboard, you will receive your payments instantly because these bank payments, because one time we made the payment and something happened and the payment got reversed. For three days, we didn't know that the payment is being revered, you know, is reversed. We don't need the expectation, we don't know where the money is, and then three days later, like you know, we are telling, yeah, yeah, it's coming, coming, coming, and then you see, like, oh, this is failed because this this detail was not there. That doesn't happen with the with the with the stable coin.
Bam AziziSo it's almost insane. But out of but out of all the token, like out of all the crypto use cases, out of all the crypto assets, why stable coin is winning. Do you think RWA is going to be bigger than a stablecoin, or you think a stablecoin is going to be the biggest or the giant?
Sandeep NailwalIf you see from my lens, like stable coins are basically a form of RWA, right? Stablecoin is the first form of RWA, right? Where the money is like is an actual dollar and then it's being issued, and then now the RW is like you are saying that I will issue the funds also here, I will issue this, that. Like there are multiple benefits of that. Like, so RWA, for example, you are saying, like, I definitely believe that RWA as a whole, including stable coins, will become like a multi-trillion, probably quadrillion, you know, dollar asset class. Why? And we don't we won't even call them RWA, right? Like eventually we are not going to call them RWA, they will be just assets, right? Because because let's say you are you you own like a you know money market fund where you have invested for 8, 9, 10% yield with the, I don't know, like Apollo or Hamilton Lane or any of the large like Fidelity, Franklin Templeton. And you know, you very simple example, like you wanted to take a loan on that, right? Right now, you would have to take your paperwork, right? Go to the bank. Hopefully, they the parent bank itself is able to give you some loan if they have a scheme. I don't think like you know, many times it doesn't happen. Let's say you're going to the bank too, you have to take all the paperwork to that bank, say that, see, I have this position of $10 million here, I need a loan of $3 million, $5 million. Can you give it to me? They will do their check, this, that, it will take two months. But if the same thing you had on-chain and you had that money market fund of $10 million on-chain, now suddenly you might have a you know a pool on Morpho, right? And Morpho has a pool where you can actually simply deposit and take this loan. It takes you two seconds to take that loan, three million dollars, whatever that rate is market is offering. That is like a fundamental change. And I again say why this is there is because the custody is was originally with banks. And the biggest innovation of blockchain, which started with Bitcoin, is the custody of money came on-chain. Let me take this example of some people who would, you know, here who would be non-crypto people. Let's say, so you know, imagine you held you hold $2 million of Apple shares, right? And now you want to take a loan on that, right? How do you do that? You take your broker's bank account, blah, blah, blah, go to the bank manager. The bank manager needs to build a trust on you, check whether your account has this, get a lock on that, then give you a loan. If at all, like all I'm telling you is this if at all the bank close to you or near to you is actually offering something like this. But here, if your assets were tokenized and your Apple shares were in your in your Apple account, and now you can go and uh you know, use that account and you can just deposit it into a D5 pool. And uh your dog agrees with me, by the way, in the background, right? So uh, you know, you can go and again take a loan on that or do a bunch of stuff like you know, you have 24 cross-7 markets now, you don't have to be dependent on the nine to five exchanges and whatnot. So the benefits are insane, those same benefits are there for stable coins also.
Building A Web3 Fintech Stack
Bam AziziThat's right. And so you saw this, and then you said like you can basically you have this network, you said you went the exact opposite of Stripe.
Sandeep NailwalBy the way, you hired John Egan, who was at the Stripe, now he's your C Yeah, he was leading, he was leading the Stripe crypto and he was like one of the leadership teams.
Bam AziziDo you think Polygon will be the like newest Stripe or like which is like the Web3 native version of Stripe?
Sandeep NailwalI mean, see, we would wish to be uh you know Stripe, but I would right now say that you know we would Stripe is a pioneer and stalwart in their own space. Like, you know, we would love to replicate 10% of that success. That will be like a huge success, but definitely that's the goal that based on stable coins, we see. I think what where we see as an entrepreneur, and this is like you have to give a huge credit to uh the the the uh you know the Collison brothers also, that they see this, they are young, they see it on the ground, they can feel the the the crypto, right? And that they see the truth on the ground like much earlier than uh many other companies which are being run by, let's say, professionals and all that, like corporations and all that who don't see it. They see the truth on the ground, which you and me see, which is like you know, is is a you know is a huge part of their success. Uh, but I do believe that in Web3, because one of the reasons for which where blockchains have an advantage uh is that blockchains fundamentally are global in nature, especially because by force we were not even allowed to enter crypto in you know in the US in 2025. We had to diversify Southeast Asia, Latam, and all that to get any traction. And you know, whereas like the top companies like Stripe, they have like generally large markets to defend in one single place. Like they would have their 80% of their revenue concentration will be in one country and all that. So they generally be one geography heavy, and you know, obviously a lot of rub off effect comes there, but the blockchain companies are generally uh you know global in nature. So we believe that that's where we will have more advantage. Uh so we would want to be like a global stripe uh stable coin.
Bam AziziAnd then you decided to go and acquire companies like CoinMe and others. Walk us through that, like what was going on in your mind? What did you want to achieve with with those acquisitions? And Coinme, I think, is mostly in US, right?
Sandeep NailwalYes. CoinMe is is US, and that's first of our uh you know licensed acquisitions because we wanted to be at the at the source where we can actually in a licensed way uh you know provide uh the money movement services. And uh and generally, like, you know, most of the times when we were meeting the clients, like especially large corporations, they they want this uh you know licensed uh uh you know services and all. And what was happening is why we did that is that we when we were like we have been in payments for last like 18, 20 months all in, right? Like before payment, we have been in payments for uh you know for forever, but last 18 months all in on payments. And you know, the first one year we would have all of these deals, multiple of these like deals with these institutions closed that okay, they are launching on Polygon, blah, blah, blah. But then after selecting the blockchain, they will say, Can you help me, you know, find a wallet provider? Like, can you connect me with three wallet providers? I will, you know, do RFP and choose them. Can you help me connect with payment uh, you know, orchestration uh guys like on-ramp, off-ramp providers, so that I can do this, that, right? So we'll we realize that they have to go to at least seven to eight vendors: blockchain, gas fees, relayer, RPC, this, that, like so much of the peripheral infra for these large institutions that it ends up you know taking them 12 to 18 months to go live with this. So, what we decided is that we want to provide one stack service, like again, like Stripe, like playbook, one single API, fixed fees in that, and then you know, you you you do what you want to do, you move the money from point A to point B, uh, especially on the B2B flows. And that was the codinal intent where we started from. And then for that, like licenses were important, wallet as a service was important, blockchain piece we already had. So that's where uh you know these.
Bam AziziWhat was the other company that you I call it on top of sequence? Sequence as the wallet.
Sandeep NailwalThat's the wallet as a service plus interoperability. They have the product called Trails, which has interoperability also. So that's where we, you know, and their their wallets is also uh, you know, I what I call this third generation wallets because you see all of these MPC providers and all that, because previously there was no way to split a blockchain key, right? Like so what you do is you will split a key itself in three forms, but now because of these like 7702 and multiple upgrades that have come to Ethereum and EVM enabled chains, now every address you can convert into a start smart contract and all that. So you basically add smart wallets. So that's a generation three, you can convert it into a custodial, non-custodial wallets and all that, and it removes a lot of MPC uh kind of requirements. So uh, you know, we thought that you know, next this time when we want to build the business, we want to be as close as possible to the customers.
Profitability IPO Talk And Advice
Bam AziziAnd now that you have all these stacks, you have all the ingredients, you want to cook it, like where Polygon is in next five years. Are you going to do another ITO or IPOs? You're going to be an equity company.
Sandeep NailwalUh see, yeah, that's why Lekie, the network is already there. Goal is that we keep bringing more and more transactions. Network generates a lot of gas fees, which goes to the poll stakers. And this company actually builds like a proper revenue business. Like with the example I give is coin, you know, is consensus and Ethereum. Right? You use primarily people use MetaMask to uh use Polygon, right? Or use uh use uh Ethereum. But people pay a lot of like you know, this on-ramp, off-ramp, swapping and all that in in in MetaMask, right? That fees goes to MetaMask, but the gas fees always go to Ethereum. And those business models are completely separate, right? Yeah, but in five years, the goal would be that that you know, we like be a successful company, high, like we have a huge amount of revenue and everything. And uh, you know, after that, like whether it's a public company, private company, and all that, that only market forces will determine. Uh, but yeah, definitely, you know, have a profitable, and that I think like is very important for the Polygon protocol also. Because previously, the only way for blockchains to sustain, the blockchain protocol to sustain is that they have a fixed treasury and they keep selling the treasury to fund their teams and keep growing the blockchain, and that that has an end to it, right? Even Ethereum right now doesn't have like that much of a Ethereum Foundation doesn't have a lot that much of a treasury to do a lot of stuff, right? So their aim is to just you know survive and you know keep uh uh growing the protocol into uh into its future, right? Uh so I think like if we are able to successfully build a sustainable business on top of it, you know, good part would be that all this, you know, the pressure of like the token treasury to fund the protocol will not be there on top of protocol. And I think the protocol will flourish more if we are one of the biggest providers who bring in a lot of liquidity and transactions onto the chain, that will attract you know treasury uh you know kind of uh usage also on the chain and the token will also grow and the IP, you know, the the the IPO or the private this company the hopefully this also grows in value.
Bam AziziMakes sense. Um so if you have like looking backward, if you want to say something, maybe if you s if you have an advice for the next generation of Sandeeps in India, like a young, like six-year-old kid in India in your hometown, what would you tell that person?
Sandeep NailwalI think like the only thing I can tell the tell them in India, specifically the provided the growth India is going through and all that, like the dream big, like dream global, that uh you know it is possible to build large companies. I I hope in next 20 years, by the time the six-year-old Sandeep is going to be 26-year-old, India would be a 10, 10 trillion dollar, $20 trillion company or country, and there will be huge, there will be huge opportunities. Like right now in India, for example, I sometimes get FOMO that there is so much to do on the consumer side. You can build like multi-billion dollar businesses on the consumer side in India, and so the people's like uh average uh dispensable income is uh disposable income is also growing constantly. That's why all the e-commerce company, quick delivery companies, they have all become profitable because their ticket size went up in the last five to ten years. So huge amount of opportunities, dream big to be big. Yeah.
Closing
Bam AziziThat's great. This this was a very, very fascinating conversation, Sandeep. I really appreciate you coming. And I know you're busy, you're running this uh multi-billion dollar chain, and thanks for giving us your time. My last question for you, which is becoming a tradition of this podcast, is what is one restaurant that our audience should go and test? And for me, I'm vegetarian, so I want to know if you have any vegetarian option in your in mind, in Delhi or in Dubai. But I survived, I survived for the last five years.
Sandeep NailwalSo the the the vegetarian place, uh, I can tell in uh in in India I would I would say there's this uh place called Carnatic Cafe, which serves like uh South Indian food, really, really amazing food.
Bam AziziSouth India means like Chennai, that part.
Sandeep NailwalChennai, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the dosas, you would have dosas and idlis and all that you would have seen. It's not like the the the the standard like buttered chicken, and that's more North Indian uh, you know, stuff. The South Indian stuff, try that if you are anytime anywhere in India. And if you are in Dubai, try Trisind, which is like a you know kind of a fusion food of India and uh this thing you can you have a lot of vegetarian options, you'll be blown away with that.
Bam AziziLike next time you are in Dubai, 2049 in Dubai.
Sandeep NailwalI will I will I will take you to Trisind. Uh you know, don't worry about it. Sounds good. Yeah, with you.
Bam AziziI I really appreciate Sanjeep. Thanks for coming to the show and I really enjoyed our conversation and good luck.
Sandeep NailwalThank you, thank you, Bam. Thank you, and and you also, like all the congratulations to you, and uh, you know, we really love you uh as a as a person, also as an entrepreneur, and uh we genuinely feel very happy on seeing your success, also. So, all the best uh and all the best wishes to mesh and you also keep growing and keep creating it. Thank you, thank you, Sanjay.