Aptos CEO Avery Ching: Open Intelligence, Data Ownership & Why AI Needs Crypto

Alex Kehaya sits down with Avery Ching, co-founder and CEO of Aptos Labs and former lead engineer on Meta's Libra project, for a wide-ranging conversation on what happens when AI absorbs all of our data, and who ends up owning the intelligence that comes out of it. From Shelby's plan to put your data on encrypted, decentralized rails to Decibel's on-chain trading engine, this episode digs into where crypto and AI actually intersect, and why Avery thinks we have less time than we realize to get it right.In this episode:🧠 Open Intelligence: Avery makes the case that access to AI should be a human right, and warns that a handful of gated, closed models could create a deeply unequal world within just a few years.🔐 Data Ownership: that concern leads straight into Shelby, Aptos Labs' answer to the problem: a decentralized, quantum-resistant storage layer built so your data can power training and inference without ever being exposed, giving individuals and enterprises real control over their own intelligence stack.🏢 Real-World Use Cases: Avery walks through who's actually testing Shelby today, from data-labeling companies like Scale AI to ad-transparency platforms and next-gen prediction markets built on richer, on-chain datasets.⚡ Enterprise-Grade Decentralization: the conversation turns to how Aptos hit sub-second P99 latency, and why that reliability is what lets Shelby promise hyperscaler-level performance without the egress fees.💱 Decibel & Agentic Trading: Avery breaks down Decibel, Aptos' fully on-chain exchange doing 25ms block times and $4B+ in volume, and why he thinks agentic trading (not just agentic payments) is the next frontier.📉 AI Bubble Talk: Alex and Avery get candid about whether crypto has decoupled from traditional markets, and whether AI is repeating the dot-com cycle at an even bigger scale.🔮 AI vs. Crypto: a frank take on which technology actually matters more right now, and why Avery believes the two need each other to keep intelligence open and ownership fair.🔗 Links 📺 More from The Index Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@theindexpodcast 👤 Avery Ching on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/averyching/ 🌐 Aptos Labs: https://aptoslabs.com/Show LinksThe Index X ChannelYouTube