Going Global Means Going Local w/ Irina Chuchkina (Wallet in Telegram)

About this episode

In this episode, Chuk Okpalugo interviews Irina Chuchkina about the challenges and strategies of scaling crypto products globally.

Presented by Stablecon; Powered by BVNK. In this episode of Money Code, host Chuk Okpalugo sits down with Irina Chuchkina, Chief Growth Officer at Wallet in Telegram, the only wallet natively integrated into a billion-user messenger, and a 20-year payments veteran who launched GrabPay across eight countries in Southeast Asia. They unpack why "distribution is an outcome, not a strategy" when scaling crypto products globally, how running custodial and self-custodial wallets simultaneously works as a coverage strategy for 150 million users, and why the winner of the stablecoin race won't be the next issuer but the infrastructure that makes hundreds of national stablecoins interoperable. Subscribe and listen to the Money Code podcast here: https://lnk.to/MoneyCodeSN Chapters 00:00 Why distribution is an outcome, not a strategy 03:44 Connecting the dots: a user in Thailand and a user in Mexico 05:30 Telegram isn't a messenger, it's an economy 10:31 "People wake up with it and go to bed with it" 13:54 From simple bot to financial platform: tokenized stocks from $1 21:38 Maslow's hierarchy of financial needs 24:35 Two wallets, one app: custodial vs. self-custodial as…

People in this episode

Host: Chuk Okpalugo

Guest: Irina Chuchkina

Topics covered

• global scaling of crypto products
• custodial vs self-custodial wallets
• stablecoins
• financial platforms
• user engagement in digital wallets

Keywords

• crypto products
• wallet integration
• stablecoin race
• financial needs
• digital economy

Sponsors

Stablecon, BVNK

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Wallet in Telegram, GrabPay

Places: Southeast Asia, Thailand, Mexico, USD, Binance

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