In the summer of 2020, as pandemic-induced volatility roiled markets, SoftBank Group stunned Wall Street with a series of massive options bets on U.S. technology stocks. Behind the deals was Akshay Naheta, an executive who earned SoftBank the nickname "Nasdaq Whale" and whose career has been marked by bold bets on disruption.

Now, after orchestrating billions of dollars in deals, including an attempt to merge Nvidia and ARM, Naheta is making perhaps his most ambitious bet yet: The world's payments infrastructure is ripe for reinvention.

His Zug, Switzerland-based startup Distributed Technology Research (DTR) is trying to bridge the gap between traditional banking and blockchain technology, joining the ranks of companies trying to modernize the global payments infrastructure.

The startup claims its technology can eliminate a variety of payment inefficiencies, from transfer costs and interchange fees to foreign exchange fees and settlement delays. “Current payment networks have inefficiencies — transfer costs, interchange fees, foreign exchange fees, settlement delays and other opaque fees,” Nahta told TechCrunch in an interview.

DTR’s core technology, AmalgamOS, essentially connects banks to blockchain networks. Through APIs, it allows businesses to integrate payment functionality while remaining compliant with local regulations. The system can handle everything from merchant payments to financial management, supporting traditional currencies and major stablecoins in 48 countries.

The startup builds what Naheta describes as an "international coordination network" that automatically routes transactions through traditional banks or blockchain rails, depending on which path offers the best combination of speed and cost. "We are connected to 12,000 banks in Europe," he said in an interview. Businesses integrating the DTR API can enable their customers to initiate transfers directly through their banking application.

DTR’s move into payments infrastructure seems to come at the perfect time. Visa and Mastercard both charge 2-3% swipe fees, typically the second-highest cost to merchants after payroll, but they are facing increasing scrutiny of their duopoly amid proposed credit card competition in the U.S. The law may require banks to offer merchants alternatives to dominant networks.

DTR’s early customers say its infrastructure fills a significant gap. Philip Lord of crypto wallet startup Oobit said the system allowed his company to transfer funds from his crypto wallet to a UK bank account in 30 seconds on Christmas Day, whereas the transfer would have taken days through traditional channels.

Naheta's interest in payments infrastructure stems from an unlikely source: SoftBank's 2017 acquisition of Fortress Investment Group. The deal puts about $20 million worth of Bitcoin on SoftBank’s balance sheet.

Naheta said that as he researched the underlying blockchain technology, he saw an opportunity to apply his background in wireless communications to payment networks. While still at SoftBank, Naheta began assembling what he hoped would become the founding team of DTR. He contacted his undergraduate thesis advisor Pramod Viswanath, an expert in wireless communications, and Sreeram Kannan , currently heads Princeton University’s Blockchain Center, while Sriram Kannan later founded Eigen Layer.

The team sees blockchain as a peer-to-peer communication network that can apply decades of research into wireless systems to revolutionize payments. Naheta said he almost resigned from SoftBank in the summer of 2018 to focus on DTR and cryptocurrency venture Bakkt, but was persuaded to stay by executives such as Rajeev Misra and Masayoshi Son.

Naheta's previous moves into payments also included SoftBank's investment in Wirecard, which later collapsed. SoftBank still makes money from its investment in Wirecard. "I made a lot of mistakes," he admits. "I look at it from one perspective, this is a company that has all these regulated licenses around the world and obviously has the payments technology."

These experiences appear to have influenced DTR's emphasis on compliance and institutional credibility. This measured approach extends to the company's growth strategy. "Even if I increase headcount to 60 people by the second quarter, our free cash flow will be positive," he said.

The startup faces competition on many fronts. Wise has built a successful business matching currency flows between countries, Ripple offers blockchain-based settlements despite legal issues, and traditional banks say they are upgrading their systems through initiatives such as SWIFT. Last but not least, Stripe's recent $1 billion acquisition of Bridge will help the world's most valuable fintech startup move deeper into payments.

However, Nahta sees an opportunity to serve businesses caught between these worlds—particularly digital nomads, creator economy platforms, and companies operating in emerging markets.

"Banks don't have the capacity to run KYC/AML at such a small level, paying $200 a month to 10,000 people," he argued. The fragmented nature of national payment systems poses special challenges for businesses operating globally, as each jurisdiction has its own rules and regulations.

The payments industry’s high margins and network effects make it difficult to disrupt. Even with its recent share price decline, PayPal still has a market capitalization of $70 billion, while Visa and Mastercard have a combined market capitalization of more than $1 billion.

"I really think retail customers are screwed when it comes to payments," he said. "It's not the banks' fault. They were plugged into legacy systems and it's hard to turn into a Titanic."

Lord Orbit said in an interview that the space remains open. He noted that until a year ago, the only option for businesses that needed to transfer between cryptocurrencies and the traditional banking system was to “go to an OTC store and pay a fee of maybe 1% to 3% to transfer.”

“It’s crazy how many startups we’ve had over the years, how many tokens have come out, and every time I wanted to make an entry or exit, there was no other formal legal system of thought around it,”​​​ he said. DTR’s solution is “one block faster” than other solutions.