In my previous column, I wrote about LIDAC26, the Luno Institutional Digital Asset Conference hosted by cryptocurrency exchange Luno in Kuala Lumpur on Sept 24, and confessed that my favourite session had nothing to do with regulators or stablecoins.

It was a breakout on Malaysian builders shaping the global digital asset landscape, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since.

Here's why. Talking to participants and reading reports, I found that if you have ever checked the price of a coin, traced a transaction on Ethereum or swapped one token for another on Solana (two of the world's busiest blockchains), there is a decent chance you used something that started in Malaysia, whether you knew it or not.