Mo Sheikh, a young immigrant in Brooklyn, often pondered his father’s taxi cab income. His father would say he made $100, but Sheikh couldn’t understand why only $60 came home (the rest, he learned, went to middlemen). This early experience sparked his curiosity about financial systems, but also their shortcomings and the need for change.
Sheikh went on to study finance, economics, and psychology at Hunter College, then earned an MBA at the University of Rochester. After graduating, he began honing his skills in the corporate world at places like BlackRock and Boston Consulting Group. But it was his move first to blockchain startup Consensys and then to Meta on its cryptocurrency efforts that made him realize this was the answer to the inefficiency he’d been witnessing since he was a kid.
“I knew this was where I wanted to be,” he said.
In collaboration with Avery Cheng, he co-founded Aptos In 2021.
It’s been a wild ride for Sheikh and Aptos. Within three months of leaving Meta in December 2021 and founding the startup, it had raised $200 million at a valuation of over $1 billion, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Just three months after that, it had raised Another $150 millionBut the road trip had some bumps: Among its investors was the ill-fated FTX.
Meanwhile, the company has continued to grow while overcoming many of the same issues that other crypto companies have faced. In April, Aptos Ascend LaunchedFull suite of financial features.
Now Aptos and Shaikh are aiming to expand into Asia.
Aptos is already working with local partners. On Friday, it announced a partnership with freean investment infrastructure startup focused on tokenizing financial assets. Libre is a joint venture launched by the digital assets unit of Japanese bank Nomura digital laser Brevan Howard’s FinTech and Web3 Incubation Center Webin Group.
Libre has launched a web3 protocol to access hedge funds and private credit funds on the Aptos network. The partnership will give eligible Aptos users access to a range of funds on the chain, including the Brevan Howard Master Fund, Hamilton Lane Senior Credit Opportunities, and BlackRock ICS Money Market Fund.
TechCrunch sat down with Shaikh this week on Blockchain Week Korea 2024 Aptos held a conference in Seoul to talk about its expansion into Asia, particularly in countries like South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and the Middle East; its partnerships with major Asian web2 companies; and how Aptos is using blockchain technology to make financial transactions seamless and cost-effective.
“Asia is probably one of the biggest regions that needs Web 3. There are so many different and disparate payment systems. There are so many financial institutions that have a lot of legacy infrastructure. I lived in Dubai when I worked at Boston Consulting Group, so I’m familiar with all of that,” Sheikh said. [East Asia, Southeast Asia and Middle East countries.] But when building the balance [at Meta]“One of the main use cases was how to move money easily, seamlessly, globally. … You want to be as transparent as possible. Financial institutions want that, regulators want that, users want that.”
“Instead of paying 15%, you pay 0%” [via a blockchain payment system]This means that I will get all the money you sent me, instead of losing it due to all these 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, Sheikh said. Businesses can cut costs by reallocating funds, and people can save money by sending it around the world without fees. For example, Korean telecom company SKT Group sees the importance of building a crypto wallet for users to have better, more efficient forms of money, Sheikh told TechCrunch.
Aptos has established strategic partnerships with tech giants like Microsoft and Googleas well as media conglomerates such as NBC Universal In the West. In Asia, Aptos has partnered with leading companies such as SKTa major telecommunications company of SK Group, the Korean retail giant. Lottieand web3, a subsidiary of Japanese bank Nomura.
“I think all of these things that have come together in Asia have been great. But one secret, I would say, is that Asians have a continental sensibility, and they are very passionate about adopting new technology. They are very mobile friendly; they are always entrepreneurial. They are looking to the future, which is amazing. When it comes to web3, they are willing to try things in a very experimental way, but they know there is an opportunity there. So all of these problems that we are solving, combined with the user appetite, makes it a perfect place for Aptos.”
Recently, Aptos has invested in a group of Hong Kong-based companies.
The sheikh also praises the performance of blockchain technology in terms of costs and speed. “A lot of people talk about the muddy movement. A lot of people claim they can do these amazing things, but I don’t think anyone is showing the power of blockchain technology,” he says.
“So there’s a gaming company. A gaming company launched a game on our blockchain. They’re producing every transaction in that game on our blockchain on Aptos. You might imagine that that transaction, for example, if you were transacting on the blockchain, it would cost you money on Solana. There’s a cost associated with Ethereum. Our blockchain is built incredibly efficiently. So the cost of that transaction is 1,000ths of a penny, so it’s pretty much free, and that makes that game work really well,” the CEO said. “If you’re a web2 game developer, you can launch on our blockchain and take advantage of that cheap transaction. But it also gives you speed and throughput. If you’re setting a transaction to a game, let’s say every click of that game happens on the chain. If there’s a two-second delay, or even a one-second delay, your game is going to be slower. “We had a sub-one-second endpoint so that transactions would be done in sub-one second, so the game wasn’t interrupted, and the transactions that happened in a 24-hour period were 500 million transactions.”
He said that 500 million transactions in 24 hours is the best version of the Solana blockchain. Solana is a previous generation blockchain at this point; the most it has ever been able to do is 50 million transactions, Sheikh said. “We’ve done 10 times that, which is crazy. What happens with protocols like Solana is that these networks crash,” he said.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has named Sheikh In June, Aptos gave a presentation to its Digital Assets Subcommittee. When asked if Aptos was working with local governments in Asia, Sheikh said the company would love to talk to local governments in Asia and educate them on what it does.
“We’re actually doing things not just by talking to governments, but by doing things with governments,” Sheikh said. “Governments want to feel safe; they want a blockchain that protects their citizens. And we’re very fortunate to be able to have these conversations with governments.” [local governments in Asia] “Then we also help them scale up the model. Governments are getting smarter. They’re excited about this technology. It’s not just Bitcoin, it’s the real technology underneath that’s powering the future economy. We love working with regulators and governments and really bringing solutions to life.”
“Japan has done a tremendous job of letting the industry know that this is what you can do,” he said. “Japan is also paying attention to the work we’re doing here in Korea. I think the Korean regulators are very excited about what can happen in real-world asset tokenization. RWAs are something that I’m very, very optimistic about. In the Middle East, for example, in Abu Dhabi, you have the Abu Dhabi Global Markets and Dubai as well. Different parts of Asia are moving very quickly, and that’s a good thing because now this technology can grow in these regions, and in these countries, cities like Seoul are ahead of the curve. That’s great for Korea, and it’s great for Japan, Abu Dhabi, and even other places like Singapore.”