As a young immigrant in Brooklyn, Moe Shaikh often thought about his father's taxi income: His father would say he made $100, but Shaikh couldn't understand why only $60 went home (the rest, he learned, went to middlemen). This childhood experience piqued his curiosity about the financial system, but also made him aware of its shortcomings and the need for change.
Shaikh studied finance, economics and psychology at Hunter College before earning an MBA from the University of Rochester. After graduating, he began cutting his teeth in the professional world at companies like BlackRock and Boston Consulting Group. But when he moved to blockchain startup ConsenSys and then Meta to work on cryptocurrency, he realized this was a solution to the inefficiencies he'd seen since childhood.
“I knew this was where I wanted to be,” he said.
He co-founded Aptos in 2021 with Avery Chin.
It's been a bumpy ride for Shaikh and Aptos. Within three months of leaving Meta to found their startup in December 2021, the company raised $200 million at a valuation of more than $1 billion, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Just three months later, they raised another $150 million. But the bumpy ride hasn't come without some bumps, including investors like the ill-fated FTX.
In that time, the company has continued to grow while overcoming many of the same problems other crypto companies have faced, and in April it launched Aptos Ascend, a fully-featured financial service.
Now Aptos and Sheikh have their sights set on expanding into Asia.
Aptos is already working with a local partner: On Friday, the company announced a collaboration with Libre, an investment infrastructure startup focused on tokenizing financial assets. Libre is a joint venture launched by Japanese bank Nomura’s digital asset unit Laser Digital and hedge fund Brevan Howard’s fintech and Web3 incubation hub, WebN Group.
Libre has launched the Web3 protocol to access hedge funds and private credit funds on the Aptos network. The partnership will allow eligible Aptos users to access a number of on-chain funds, including Brevan Howard Master Fund, Hamilton Lane Senior Credit Opportunities, and BlackRock ICS Money Market Fund.
TechCrunch met with Shaikh at the Korea Blockchain Week 2024 conference in Seoul this week to talk about Aptos' expansion into Asia, specifically countries like South Korea, Japan, Singapore and the Middle East, its partnership with a leading Web2 company in Asia, and how Aptos is using blockchain to make financial transactions seamless and cost-effective.
“Asia is probably one of the places where the need for Web3 is the biggest, with so many different payment systems and so many financial institutions with a lot of legacy infrastructure,” Shaikh said. “I lived in Dubai when I worked at BCG, so I'm familiar with all of it. [East Asia, Southeast Asia and Middle East countries.] But when building Libra, [at Meta]One of the primary use cases was how people could move money easily, seamlessly, and globally. … We need to be as transparent as possible. Financial institutions want it, regulators want it, and users want it.”
“Instead of paying 15%, you'll pay 0%. [via a blockchain payment system]This means that any money you send me I will receive, rather than losing it in fees… [In Asia,] They're really excited to move forward.”
These factors contribute to economic growth in Asia, leading to greater efficiency and profitability for businesses and users, Shaikh said. Businesses can reduce costs to reallocate funds, and people can save money by sending money around the world without fees. For example, SK Group's South Korean telecommunications company SKT recognized the importance of building a cryptocurrency wallet so users could have a better, more efficient form of money, Shaikh told TechCrunch.
Aptos has established strategic partnerships with technology giants such as Microsoft and Google in the West, as well as media conglomerates such as NBC Universal, and in Asia with major companies such as SK Group's telecommunications giant SKT, South Korean retail giant Lotte, and web3, a subsidiary of Japan's Nomura Bank.
“I think it's amazing that all this has happened in Asia. But there's a secret ingredient: Asians, as a continent, are very open to adopting new technologies. They're mobile friendly and they've always been entrepreneurial. They're forward-thinking, which is great. When it comes to Web3, they're willing to try things in a very experimental way, but they know the opportunity is there. So all the problems we're solving, combined with the desires of users, make Asia the perfect place for Aptos.”
More recently, Aptos has invested in a number of Hong Kong-based companies.
Shaikh also praised the technology's capabilities in terms of cost and speed: “A lot of people are talking about the quagmire movement. A lot of people are claiming that they can do all this cool stuff, but I don't think anyone has shown the power of blockchain,” he said.
“A gaming company launches a game on our blockchain. They generate all of the transactions for that game on our blockchain on Aptos. That transaction, if you transact on a blockchain, would cost money on Solana. Ethereum has a cost. Our blockchain is built incredibly efficiently, so that transaction costs a thousandth of a penny, it's almost free. So that game runs incredibly smoothly,” the CEO said. “If you're a Web2 game developer, you can launch on our blockchain and take advantage of that cheap transaction. And you also get better speed and throughput. If you set up a transaction in your game, let's say every click of that game happens on chain. A two-second delay, even a one-second delay, slows down the game. We made the finale sub-second so that transactions happen in under a second, so the game didn't break, and we had 500 million transactions in 24 hours.”
Shaikh said 500 million transactions in 24 hours is the next best version of the blockchain Solana, which he said is currently the previous generation of blockchain and can only handle 50 million transactions at most. “We've achieved 10 times that amount of transactions, which is amazing, and with a protocol like Solana, the network goes down,” Shaikh said.
The CFTC appointed Shaikh to its Digital Assets Subcommittee in June. When asked if Aptos was working with local governments in Asia, Shaikh said the company looked forward to speaking with them and educating them on their efforts.
“We're not just talking to governments, we're doing things with them,” Shaikh said. “Governments want to feel safe. They want blockchain to protect their citizens. And we're very fortunate to be able to have those conversations with governments.” [local governments in Asia] And we're going to help improve the model. Governments are getting smarter. They're excited about the technology. It's not just bitcoin that's going to drive the economy of the future, it's the actual technology behind it. We want to work with regulators and governments to really bring solutions to light.”
He said Japan has done a great job of letting the industry know this can be done. “Japan is also looking at the work we're doing in Korea, and I think Korean regulators are very excited about what's going to happen with tokenization of real-world assets. RWA is something we're very optimistic about. In the Middle East, for example, Abu Dhabi has Abu Dhabi Global Market, they have Dubai. Different regions in Asia are moving very quickly, which is a good thing, because now this technology can grow in these regions, and in these countries, cities like Seoul can be ahead of the curve. This is great for Korea, and it's great for other places like Japan, Abu Dhabi, and even Singapore.”