Episode Details
Back to Episodes
🎙️ The Global Economy on Chain — Xen Baynham-Herd (Base)
Description
From trading desks at UBS to leading global growth at one of the fastest-growing blockchains in the world — Xen Baynham-Herd's journey through crypto is as wild as the industry itself.
In this episode, Alex sits down with Xen, Head of Marketing & Global Growth at Base, to unpack what it really takes to bring the world on-chain. If you're building in Web3 or just trying to understand where this is all going, this one's for you.
Topics covered:
🏦 How Xen went from UBS fixed income trader to crypto OG — and why he's been in the space for 10+ years and can't look away
🔵 What Base actually is — and how it's positioning itself as the go-to blockchain for global finance (not just another Solana competitor)
📈 Base's focus areas: trading, payments & AI agents — including Base NPC, X402 agentic commerce, and what millions in on-chain volume actually looks like
🤖 Will AI agents cross the chasm into mainstream? — why being able to transact directly inside ChatGPT or Claude could be the unlock crypto has been waiting for
🥃 Real-world asset tokenization done right — the whiskey barrel lending story that perfectly explains DeFi's killer advantage over TradFi
🌍 Emerging markets as crypto's first movers — Latin America, Africa, India, and Asia are already running on stablecoins, and Base is doubling down on that
🚀 The Base Ecosystem Fund & Base Batches accelerator — what kinds of teams they're backing and what founders should be building right now
💡 When does crypto stop being crypto? — Xen and Alex agree: the real win is when nobody's talking about blockchain anymore because they're just using it
🔗 Connect with Xen Baynham-Herd: https://www.linkedin.com/in/xen-baynham-herd-01685775/
🌐 Explore Base: https://www.linkedin.com/company/coinbase/