Jesse Lund (Head of Blockchain Development & Digital Currencies, IBM) has hinted at what he calls “a special announcement” of a partnership with the Stellar Development Foundation, the entity steering the growth of Stellar – a blockchain-powered network home to the Stellar Lumens (XLM) cryptocurrency.

Lund shared the exciting news during at last week’s IBM Think 2019 conference in an interview uploaded earlier today with Fred Schebesta (Co-Founder, Finder). Upon being asked by Schebesta about IBM’s roadmap for World Wire – a cross-border payment solution built on the Stellar network – Lund firstly pointed out that he’d “be keynoting a major event in Singapore with [his] friend Jed McCaleb.”

At this keynote, Lund shared that the Stellar Development Foundation co-founder will start off by “talking about digital assets in the future and what Stellar is all about.” Following this, Lund and McCaleb will outline the existing IBM-Stellar partnership – which revolves around the World Wide solution – before going on to make “a special announcement about the product and… what it includes.”

World Wire is differentiating itself from other solutions… in our approach to supporting a whole variety of digital assets which range from cryptocurrencies…[to] central bank-issued digital currencies.” – Lund

In an attempt to identify the Singapore-based event referenced to by Lund, CryptoCoinSpy did some digging. It appears Money20/20 Asia (19-21 March) will be where McCaleb and Lund make their joint announcement.

According to the schedule for Money20/20 Asia, McCaleb and Lund will be the very first guests keynoting at the three-day conference. This twenty-minute-long presentation on March 19 will be moderated by Henri Arslanian (FinTech & Crypto Leader, Asia, PwC).

For CryptoCoinSpy readers wanting to watch the full interview between Lund and Schebesta, we have embedded the video below. In it, the former Wells Fargo Innovation Labs lead talks about the XLM token’s functionality within the World Wire cross-border payment solution; the integrability of World Wire with other cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and central bank-issued digital currencies; why IBM selected Stellar’s public, permissioned blockchain over Hyperledger’s permissioned, private Hyperledger Fabric network; the future of Bitcoin (BTC); and more.