Viktor Ihnatiuk is the co-founder and CEO of UTEXO, a Tether-backed world settlement community for native USDT and Bitcoin funds, powered by the Lightning Community and the RGB protocol. Viktor joins Andy Pickering to stroll via a decade-long journey from Ukrainian fintech to the frontline of Bitcoin infrastructure — and to elucidate why the world’s largest stablecoin is lastly coming again to the chain the place it was born.
Why you need to pay attention
Viktor traces his path from launching Ukraine’s first peer-to-peer lending platform and first fintech convention — the place he found Bitcoin in 2015 — via to constructing Boosty Labs, a 150-person dev store that served Coinbase, Bitfinex, Ledger, MetaMask, and WalletConnect. That operation developed right into a enterprise studio, and an opportunity assembly with Tether at Bitcoin Prague in 2023 set the stage for what grew to become UTEXO. Viktor explains how he helped push RGB to mainnet, and the way a three way partnership with Tether was rebranded into UTEXO, which has simply closed a $7.5 million seed spherical co-led by Tether, Huge Mind Holdings, and Plan B Ventures.
The dialog digs into what UTEXO truly delivers: on the spot USDT and Bitcoin settlement at zero transaction value, with client-side validation privateness baked in via RGB. Viktor breaks down why this isn’t USDT arriving on Bitcoin for the primary time — it initially launched on OmniLayer again in 2014 — however reasonably coming dwelling, rebuilt on infrastructure that lastly works. He makes the case that Lightning’s scalability leaves each different chain behind, and walks via the important thing use circumstances UTEXO is concentrating on: native BTC-to-USDT swaps, new income fashions for wallets via transaction payment monetization, and cross-exchange high-frequency arbitrage.
Viktor additionally lays out UTEXO’s broader thesis on stablecoin adoption and funds. He argues that the most important development alternative for stablecoins isn’t in DeFi yield — it’s in rising markets the place USDT already capabilities as on a regular basis cash for financial savings, remittances, and more and more, point-of-sale funds. UTEXO is positioning itself because the infrastructure layer for that shift, working alongside companions like WalletConnect and aligning carefully with Tether’s distribution technique. The episode closes with Viktor’s tackle what blockchain is definitely good for — funds, buying and selling, and playing — and why ten years within the trenches taught him to disregard every little thing else.
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