Welcome back.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping how finance moves on chain from institutional trading to the rise of tokenized equities, and today we're diving into where that goes next.
So joining me now is the co-founder and general manager of the Mona Foundation, Eunice Garda.
Eunice, thank you so much for joining us and welcome to the show.
Thanks, Johnny.
It's great to be here.
I appreciate it.
Well, Eunice, let's start with the big picture.
How do you see AI shaping the future of global finance on chain?
Yeah, absolutely.
Um, I think it's probably beneficial to zoom out a little bit to think about how, uh, what AI enables itself.
So, AI currently is showing itself in how we can solve problems and how we're approaching what the solutions that are being built looks like as well.
There's two big frictions that existing financial systems impose on its participants right now.
One is access and the other is availability, where access is the constraint that limits who can get involved and how, and then availability that limits when those participants can actually get involved.
So, AI is making it easier than ever for everyday people and businesses to level up very quickly.
Access to knowledge, the ability to build in-house solutions, launch agents that aren't bound by the typical constraints that um humans are.
So, AI driven systems can always be on and always always be working.
And I believe that there's also a future of finance that can be similar.
It can benefit from changes that allow it to be always on, always working.
Um, in ways that we haven't been able to interact with it before, but it may look quite different.
So Eunice, I want to get some more insight from where you stand right now and for what you guys do.
Where are you seeing the most institutional interest right now and what's driving them on chain?
Yeah, absolutely.
Um, I think a lot of institutional interest comes from both the trading perspective as well as the payments perspective.
Um, if we think about how, um, and I'm coming from the lens of blockchain, given that Mone is a layer one blockchain, um, that can enable a lot of uh AI usage.
Um, what blockchains can do is enable an AI friendly layer of communication and that can also facilitate a Uh, fast finality, immediate transaction capability and fast settlement.
But AI needs an appropriate interface in order to do that.
Um, and so we've seen in the past where, um, When in the advent of the internet, for example, there were some challenges with humans.
We've got language that we use to communicate with each other and we've developed cultural norms over time and etiquette with interactions.
AI doesn't have that yet.
And uh when the internet was born, for example, we needed to create those protocols for communication.
There's now HTTP, there's SMTP.
For email.
Um, and so we're what we're seeing now is the introduction of some of those things.
Um, one example of that is a protocol called X 402, and it's an open source payments protocol that basically allows gente payments to happen via stablecoins and other tokenized assets.
And this unlocks instant payments, instant settlement on chains that support it.
Um, and what's exciting for Monet is one of those chains, um, and Monet Foundation is also one of the founding members of the X402 Foundation alongside other, um, other participants like Visa and Google, Coinbase, Stripe, AWS, and other blockchains.
So Eunice, let's talk now about tokenized equities.
What is the role that AI is playing in developing this asset class and where does it go from here?
Yeah, absolutely.
Um, so AI very much is the enabler for um using things like tokenized equities and other types of tokenized um assets.
So, the, the role is really about access.
Um, and actually one of the things that I would love to talk about is this future debate on what the future of finance looks like.
Um, so what's happening right now is going to set the stage for where we'll go in a couple of years.
This, uh, this debate on access and privacy and performance.
Um, I'll try to keep this specific to like a blockchain and AI and how finance loops into it.
But if we think about the concept of open versus closed in AI, there's two camps right now.
There's the frontier AI models that many of us are familiar with, Anthropic cloud with open AIs, chat GPT versus open weight models like Deepeek or Alibaba's Queen, Meta's Lama, the latter of which provides more accessibility, um.
Accessibility to performance by way of being more affordable, um, being able to run uh by self-hosted means and keeping data in-house.
Now, frontier models, on the other hand, they have an edge in its performance right now, uh, or its ability to provide solutions.
In large part because of all of the data that it's been given, albeit in a closed proprietary access situation.
We're feeding it inputs every day, but we also don't necessarily have a say in how that data is being used to train those frontier models.
Now in blockchain, there's also a similar case of open versus closed.
Um, and you know, if, I also see blockchain tech as being the backbone of the financial.
Internet.
Now, the future is, do we settle on open neutral, accessible block space or are we going to see a future where we see more privately controlled blockchains that are owned by corporations.
So for for blockchains um and how AI and finance all loop in there.
There's the technical piece of being able to use um AI to harness trading and usage of these like tokenized assets.
Um.
But what that requires is, is a is a blockchain that has the appropriate high throughput tech.
It offers the fast settlement.
It offers reliable ledgers.
And I believe that we should be working towards a future that provides the greatest access to everyone with the greatest uptime, um, and where artificial advantages aren't a threat.
So Eunice, I also wanna get a little bit more of your insight because there's been a lot of momentum around corporate chains and some could argue that that trend could ultimately fragment or harm the industry.
So what's your take from what you're also seeing from the point of view of the foundation?
Yeah.
And, uh, from the Mona Foundation side, we're very much committed towards the open access side of uh side of things.
Like we believe that there should be open access to markets, greater accessibility, and greater availability.
And we're seeing this in Some form with, let's say NASDAQ as an example of opening up markets at the start of next year to be more alive, greater business hours, and greater availability.
Access continues to be a problem, and that's where blockchain can come in and be a helping hand for businesses and, you know, everyday retail users alike by Breaking down some of the barriers that um traditional finance systems have um put in place and giving access to folks to uh asset classes that would otherwise be um unreachable.
So Eunice, I also want to get your point of view from the foundation metrics and milestones about what your audience overall, what do they want to know about when it comes to these milestones that you guys are accomplishing?
Yeah, absolutely.
Um, I'm going to have to pull up some, some metrics here, but the, the Mona Foundation is very much working towards the growth of the MAD blockchain, and that's um seeing a ton of growth right now in TVL with DeFi and that's basically decentralized finance.
So, access to financial capabilities like trading on platforms that are decentralized and distributed.
Um, the, the mono blockchain has seen a lot of growth in total value locked in DeFi over the past several months, and we're continuing to grow towards a greater and greater metrics.
If I recall correctly, we have the chain has just surpassed 800 million in DIVL um and uh there's also a significant growth within the stablecoin market cap as well as a tokenized, sorry, as well as other RWA um.
Uh, market cap as well.
And so these are all very much at the center, the cornerstone of what the Mona Foundation is working towards as we grow throughout the rest of 2026 and beyond.
And Eunice, just to wrap up now, um, as more of the activity moves to the on-chain aspect of things, so from trading to equities to corporate infrastructure, how does the industry build the trust and regulatory clarity needed for mainstream adoption?
Yeah, well, I think that's exactly it.
Like there needs to be clarity around what what regulations are required in different jurisdictions.
And there's a couple of leading regions that are providing this clarity, Mena included with the UAE, for example, giving very clear guidance on Um, how stablecoins should be treated.
But we're also seeing this across APEC as well, um, with Singapore and Hong Kong, um, amongst many others that are also trying to build out more clarity and specification.
So I welcome that future.
I think it would be extremely beneficial for the industry.
Awesome.
Well, Eunice, thank you so much for joining us this morning here on Capital Markets connecting Wall Street to Mina.
Thanks, Johnny.
It's great to be here.
