Asia's Next Export: Its Capital Markets

Transcript

Hello. I'm Saeed. I'm the CEO of SunRise. And uh I want to get started by talking about Asia's next big export. Um it's capital markets. Traditionally, Asia has, for the last 20 years, dominated uh exporting goods. Uh its manufacturing sector has uh gone from a less than a trillion dollars in exported goods to over 9 point trillion in the last 30 years.

Um we've seen this uh kind of uh focused approach to uh building valuable companies that can export and dominate different sectors around the world. And now we come to Asia, we come to Singapore, and we talk with the companies here, and we ask, "What is what's next? What's next for the East Asian economies, the Southeast Asian economies? What are the what you know, where is the growth going to come from?" So, when you look at that that timeline, you kind of look at some of the countries that have made major players and have really changed the not only the the way global markets trade, but also the way finance trades, the way that capital moves. If we look at Japan, obviously Toyota and their car

companies, they rose in the '80s to number one. They've maintained a dominant position in those markets. Uh that moment fundamentally changed how global trade happened. Um Korea with memory. not just then, but now, still at the forefront of how capital markets are working and uh core component to all of the products that we use today. Um again, this is to illustrate that in Asia, over the last 30 years, we have built phenomenally valuable companies. and they've been category leaders and kind of leading the future right now.

Taiwan, another another great example, right? TM TSMC is the backbone of all of the technological advancement that we've enjoyed over the last 30 years. It's also a core component to what we expect where value will be accruing in the future with AI. And then China, a very unique case, but a very very dominant case over the last 30 years. One in four manufacturing dollars were produced in China. Uh today over 30% of AI tokens are produced in China. So, this region has had explosive growth over the last 30 30 years. What does the next 30 years look like? What do the next 5 years look like?

and that's where tokenization comes to play and that's where and I'll I'll get to that in a little bit. Um another illustration here to kind of show the gap, right? Um if you compare the the East Asian economies against the United States from a GDP perspective, they're pretty much neck to neck. Um if you compare their stock market values, their capital market values, uh you have this huge huge discrepancy, this huge gap. Um it really doesn't make any sense uh for for you to be producing some of the world's most valuable companies, not only in the past, but also what the general consensus these companies will also be very very important to the future and where everyone expects the global market to go.

Um this gap between the 35 trillion capital market for East Asia and 69 trillion for just the US, if we added Europe into that, the discrepancy would be much larger, is really the gap that tokenization and bringing on-chain equities is trying to exploit. It's trying to show that this is a a market inefficiency. It doesn't make sense. Uh there are a lot of reasons for it, but there is technology today, there are companies today that have solved this problem.

Um Sonrai is one of those, uh as well as a bunch of other companies that are working in this space that many of you guys have have probably met uh during this event. as Asia has boomed, uh the global investing uh public hasn't been able to invest in it. Um if you look at Taiwan, only 0.04% of foreign individuals trade T- TSMC. Um that's a pretty low number. It doesn't really make sense for one of the companies that's underpinning the backbone of technological innovation and AI advancement and uh you know, one-of-a-kind chip development.

Um seven of the of the 10 largest companies in East Asia are not listed uh in any US market. Uh so, that market is completely off-limits to them. and I guess like I I I would say to fully understand the story, we want to look at the progression of stable coins. A lot of people didn't really understand uh why stable coins would do well, and it was based on this fundamental principle that you really don't know what demand is out there unless you actually open up the markets, right? No one could predict that a crypto company like Tether would shoot up to the top 10 in uh US debt buyers in the world, beating out countries, major European

countries, major major economies around the world. Um all of that was on this lack of understanding of where demand is for your financial products or your currency or any of these things. So, once technology came, right? Once the stable coin technology came out and basically allowed for anyone in the world to have access to a digital dollar, you could really test what is demand for this market actually look like. What is demand for this asset actually look like? And then if you look at the trajectory, only 6 years ago, you know, we have 27 billion of stable coins. It's been absolutely accelerating to 308 billion today.

a lot of that activity happens in Asia. Uh uh around 2/3 people estimate. So, again, it's further taking you uh to understand why Why has this progression happened with stable coins? And why wouldn't it happen with capital markets, right? As you kind of see this tokenization meta play out, companies are getting involved, governments are getting involved, institutions are getting involved. They're getting involved mainly because they watched the progression of stable coins, and at the time, they really didn't understand it. They didn't understand why people would want it. They really believed that the infrastructure in the financial system that was in place at the time sufficiently served all or most of the demand cases out there.

The market and this industry has proved that that was categorically false. This same story is playing out in and and tokenization and equities um and commodities and other financial assets. It's starting slowly in the US. US is is is is a little bit ahead, but there's tremendous amount of uh of demand for it in Asia and specifically for these Asian companies that are being that are that are here and and and and made available. This is where Sunrise comes in. Our main focus is to help companies, asset issuers, uh bring their assets on chain. We work with companies like Backpack uh to issue tokenized equities, commodities, and other financial products. We work directly with the CEOs and boards of these publicly traded companies to bring

their stocks on chain and make them available on Solana. Sunrise over the last less than a year in in just less than a year has already seen 14 billion in volume for its assets. Um it's it's taken uh it's it's holder account. So, the amount of individuals that are holding these assets from zero to 650 in a very short amount of time. Um and the listings are continuing to grow. Uh, one example I think is very relevant to the uh, Southeast Asian uh, audience is SK Hynix. Uh, for you know, we want to showcase that there is demand globally for some of the companies that are being built here

um, in Singapore, in Korea, in Japan, in China, in Vietnam. Uh, SK Hynix listed uh, on Nasdaq uh, same day it was also listed on Solana uh, distributed to the entire uh, Solana ecosystem and we saw so far we've already seen half a billion of volume traded. Um, the holder counts are above 10,000. Uh, there is a global audience for for assets in this region. Uh, the question is can you bring them on chain? Uh, can you do it with uh, regulatory clarity and compliance?

yes you can. It is being done. It's being done by many companies and we see this trend continuing to accelerate and we hope to be continue to play a big role in this trend. You know, the last thing I I I would say is that tokenized uh, stocks and tokenized equities is a big buzzword. Everyone's talking about it, but there is data to back up why there is a lot of narrative around this. Um, you know, if you just look at the beginning of 2000 uh, 2025, not too long ago, you were sitting at 32 million in tokenized equities on chain. over less than you know, a year and a half, that's ballooned to 3.2 billion.

The acceleration is is is picking up. and regulations are becoming more clear. Governments want to attract foreign direct investment. This is something that we're seeing in China, we're seeing in Japan, we're seeing in Korea with new regulations coming online in February in 2027. They would like to attract foreign direct investment into their capital markets because just like I showed you that chart in the beginning, there is a massive 50% gap between the US capital markets and the East Asian capital markets. It's not because of a lack of companies. It's not because there's a lack of innovation or value.

It's simply because the the rails and bridges and barriers to access those capital markets haven't transformed and haven't been molded to fit the age of the internet. I think the US has done a little bit of a better job at that and that's where you see the the premium on their capital markets. So, as far as we are at Sunrise concerned, this is uh this is our big theme for for for what's going to happen with tokenization. We think Asia's going to play a big role and I think Asian economies are going to start exporting their capital markets to the world and it's going to be a massive massive driver for value over the next

10, 20, and 30 years. Um all of the fundamentals are there. It's just up to people in this room and and and some of the companies that you guys are meeting with today to really make it happen. We're one of those companies and we're we're excited to work with a bunch of others. Thank you very much.