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This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/coinsph-ceo-wei-zhou-on-corporate-chains-ai-agents-and-asias-stablecoin-rails-inside-coinfest-2026.
From the Coinfest Asia stablecoin panel to coins.ph CEO Wei Zhou on corporate chains, the $5m token exemption and why cards win the first AI agent wave.
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At Coinfest Asia in Bali on 20 August 2026, a panel titled "Stablecoins Are Becoming the New Financial Rails" brought together Adriel Wong of TRM Labs as moderator with Jeannie Lim of xweave, Wei Zhou of coins.ph, Tianwei Liu of StraitsX and Patrick Ngan of Alchemy Pay. Three of the four operators reported that consumer stablecoin volume alone does not sustain a business, with xweave pivoting from business-to-consumer remittance to corporate treasury flows and Alchemy Pay finding its weight in business-to-business settlement, while StraitsX runs retail at scale in Singapore underneath Grab and Alipay QR payments where the user cannot tell stablecoins are involved. The panel agreed that fragmentation is the sector's biggest risk. In the interview that followed, coins.ph chief executive Wei Zhou argued that recent SEC guidance exempting token issuance below five million dollars will lead Google and Facebook to launch their own blockchains attached to existing distribution, that Visa and Mastercard rather than stablecoins will capture the first wave of AI agent payments, and that his ambition is to give banks stablecoin addresses they can hand to their own customers. Who was on the Coinfest Asia stablecoin panel? Adriel Wong of TRM Labs moderated, with Jeannie Lim of xweave, Wei Zhou of coins.ph, Tianwei Liu of StraitsX and Patrick Ngan of Alchemy Pay. Why does Wei Zhou think Google and Facebook will build blockchains? Because SEC guidance now exempts token issuance below five million dollars, removing the legal tail risk, and because companies spending hundreds of billions a year on AI infrastructure want liquidity inside their own ecosystems and already own the distribution to attach it to. Does he think AI agents will use stablecoins? Not first. He argues Visa and Mastercard capture the opening wave because handing an agent a card avoids the chain-selection and merchant-acceptance problems, with stablecoins arriving underneath as a settlement layer. Where do stablecoins already work in consumer payments? In Singapore, where StraitsX settles Grab and Alipay QR transactions on chain, giving merchants T+0 settlement at the same merchant discount rate while users see only the app they already use. What does coins.ph want to build next? Wei Zhou says the ambition is to give banks