Decaf and Etherfuse discuss their partnership building real-world financial services on Stellar in Latin America, focusing on sovereign debt tokenization and cross-border payments while emphasizing open ecosystem collaboration.
In this inaugural Off-Chain Hours episode, Rick Martin (Decaf CEO) and Dave Taylor (Etherfuse CEO) discuss their four-year journey building financial infrastructure on Stellar in Mexico and Latin America. Decaf operates a self-custody wallet enabling payments and financial access, while Etherfuse tokenizes sovereign debt as yield-bearing stablecoins. Both founders emphasize the importance of embedded community engagement, regulatory navigation, and solving real problems over speculation. Their partnership evolved from early hackathons and hacker houses, with Decaf providing distribution for Etherfuse assets and user feedback shaping product design. They highlight ecosystem collaboration through open APIs and permissionless assets, contrasting Web3's open nature with Web2 closed systems. Upcoming launches include Etherfuse's on-chain FX trading APIs and Decaf's 150-country Visa card, both enabling practical crypto utility.
