This week on Coffee with Calyptus, we sit down with Vibhavari Rao, Co-founder and CTO of CCX. From building one of Asia’s largest CBDC pilots at Oracle to now leading a startup bridging sovereign digital currencies, Vibhavari shares how her journey merged deep technical expertise with real-world impact. She breaks down how AI, blockchain, and compliance come together to make global payments faster, safer, and smarter.
You went from being part one of Asia's largest CBDC projects at Oracle, to co-founding CCX. What was the moment when you thought, "I need to build this myself"?
CCX is really the culmination of two defining experiences in my career. At Oracle, I was part of the founding team building a large-scale CBDC pilot for a major central bank in Asia using permissioned blockchain—a technically fascinating challenge that gave me deeper insight into how regulated digital currencies can reshape financial infrastructure.
At the same time, I personally experienced the inefficiencies of cross-border payments while studying at Cornell, USA. My family had to send money through traditional financial rails—it was slow, opaque, and burdened with unnecessary fees. That contrast between cutting-edge technology and outdated financial systems made me realize that the real opportunity wasn’t just in building CBDC technology, but in integrating it into the broader fintech ecosystem to remove the barriers to seamless, global value movement.
That was the moment I knew I needed to build CCX. At CCX, we’re building an interoperability layer that connects digital currencies across different countries, enabling fast, transparent, and low-cost cross-border transfers through digital currencies. By bridging these sovereign systems, we aim to make cross-border transactions as simple and instant as sending a message.
You've built GANs to identify fraud data for banks in the past. How are you using AI at CCX today?
At CCX, we’re using AI primarily for fraud detection since we’re talking about cross border payments at scale. We’ve built an in-house AI-driven fraud detection system that continuously monitors transactions to flag suspicious activity in real time. The goal is to proactively identify and prevent fraud before it happens.
What makes this even more powerful in the context of CBDCs and Stablecoins is that the entire system operates on a blockchain where data is immutable. Since every transaction is traceable and auditable, AI models can access richer, more reliable data—making fraud detection much stronger and more accurate compared to traditional systems. Having worked on fraud detection on bank transaction data before, I’ve seen how AI can uncover patterns that humans or legacy systems might miss, and we’re now bringing that capability into the digital currency ecosystem to build safer, smarter payment infrastructure. The larger goal is to have a compliant and regulated system.
CBDCs and stablecoins in emerging economies, that's your battleground at CCX. What's the biggest misconception people have about bringing these technologies to emerging markets?
I think the biggest misconception with CBDC’s and Stablecoins is around adoption and trust. Many people assume that adoption in emerging markets will be slow, but in reality, these regions often leapfrog technologies when the value is clear.
With CBDCs, one common concern is around traceability. People think it means losing privacy — but the truth is, even today the transactions made through the traditional banking system are already traceable. CBDCs don’t inherently remove privacy; it’s about how the system is designed and governed.
When it comes to stablecoins, the hesitation usually comes from associating them with cryptocurrencies, which have had a reputation for volatility and fraud. But today’s stablecoins, especially those properly backed 1:1 by fiat currencies, are a different story. They bring the stability of traditional money with the efficiency of blockchain rails.
Both CBDCs and stablecoins have the potential to completely transform emerging markets — improving financial inclusion, enabling instant cross-border payments, and creating a more transparent and accessible financial ecosystem.
You’ve spent time in research and academia at Cornell and IC3, and now you’re building real-world fintech infrastructure with CCX. How has your perspective changed moving from academic work to building a commercial product?
I think the biggest shift has been in mindset. In research, the focus is on exploring possibilities and theories — proving what can be done. In product building, it’s about what should be done, what actually solves a problem for users, and how quickly you can bring that to life without compromising reliability or compliance.
During my time in research, whether it was publishing with Elsevier or working on decentralized governance models at IC3, I was fascinated by the elegance of theoretical solutions. But once you start building in the real world — especially in something as complex as cross-border finance — you realize that technology alone isn’t enough. You have to balance innovation with regulation, scalability, and user trust.
At CCX, that’s been a major learning curve. We take the rigor and precision from research but apply it in a way that’s pragmatic and outcome-driven. Sometimes, the most “elegant” solution on paper isn’t the one that works best in production — and learning to bridge that gap between theory and impact has been one of the most valuable parts of the journey.
How you think about security and compliance at CCX, especially when you're dealing with cross-border finance?
Security and compliance sit at the very core of what we’re building at CCX. When you’re dealing with cross-border transactions and sovereign digital currencies, there’s zero margin for error — well because trust is everything.
From day one, we designed CCX with a “compliance-first” mindset. That means every component of our system is built to meet the highest global standards for KYC, AML, and data privacy catering to different jurisdictions. We don’t see compliance as a checkbox; we see it as the very foundation that enables scale. The more compliant and transparent you are, the easier it becomes to integrate with central banks, financial institutions, and regulators across jurisdictions.
On the security front, we combine the inherent transparency and immutability of blockchain with advanced AI-driven monitoring tools. Every transaction on our network is cryptographically secured and traceable, while still maintaining user privacy where required using ZK Proofs.
Cross-border finance adds another layer of complexity because you’re essentially operating across multiple regulatory frameworks. To address this, we’ve built a dynamic compliance engine that adapts to the regulatory requirements of each participating country. This ensures that when value moves across borders through CCX, it does so in a fully compliant, auditable, and secure manner.
Ultimately, our goal at CCX is to make trust programmable — to ensure that every transaction, regardless of where it originates, carries built-in compliance, transparency, and security. That’s how we believe the future of cross-border finance should operate.
We hope you enjoyed this edition of Coffee with Calyptus. Stay curious, stay inspired, and keep building what matters. Explore more editions and insightful articles at https://www.calyptus.co/blog.
