#226 Marc Liew | Asia Is Quietly Winning Crypto

While U.S. headlines obsess over ETFs and enforcement, Asia is quietly building.In this episode, Rocco Strydom sits down with Marc Liew, Head of APAC at Jito, to unpack how stablecoins, staking, and Solana infrastructure are reshaping institutional crypto adoption across Asia.Marc’s background spans R3, Ripple, PayPal, and years inside cross-border payments. He has been in the room with regulators, central banks, and financial institutions as they experimented with CBDCs, stablecoins, and blockchain settlement rails.Now at Jito, he’s focused on institutional-grade staking infrastructure on Solana.What We Cover:Why stablecoins found product-market fit in Asia before the U.S.How remittances are accelerating real crypto adoptionWhy institutions are entering crypto through ETFs instead of direct on-chain tokenizationThe difference between traditional staking and Jito’s liquid staking modelMEV rewards and how they change staking economicsSolana’s infrastructure upgrades and block assembly marketplaceWhy decentralization matters for regulatorsThe growing convergence between AI agents and crypto paymentsWhy Asia leads in retail adoption, but the U.S. still leads institutionallyFrom Payments to Web3Marc shares his early “aha” moment when blockchain settlement clicked for him:If we can send a text in milliseconds, why can’t we move money the same way?That question led him from traditional payments into Web3 in 2016, deep into CBDCs, stablecoins, and now into building yield-generating infrastructure on Solana.The Big ThemeCrypto is maturing.Stablecoins are no longer theoretical. Institutions are no longer experimenting quietly. Liquid staking is evolving into a capital efficiency tool rather than just passive yield.And Asia isn’t debating whether crypto works. They’re deciding how to deploy it.