Institutionalization of Crypto & Digital Assets

[Music] welcome to our opening panel of the sixth european blockchain convention we have here five experts to talk about crypto assets very very exciting welcome to the fifa view i'm not gonna give the word to gotti and he's gonna present panel thanks to everyone bye bye good morning everyone thanks for attending the european blockchain convention i'm cote de monteverde i'm head of crypto and blockchain at santander and vice chairwoman of alaska it is a pleasure for me to open up this edition moderating the first panel about the institutionalization of crypto assets and the interest in decentralized financial markets and crypto assets is growing rapidly with assets under management equivalent of several billion dollars most of us would agree that crypto assets have potential that is why we are all here today right but in order to create trust and scale institute institutionalization is needed and we are talking here today about all type of crypto assets cryptocurrencies security tokens utility tokens tokenized securities and and we are fortunate to have four distinguished speakers with extensive experience in the crypto market each of them focus on different aspects that are key for for for this topic right as security regulation compliance etc so let me introduce you our amazing speakers starting with patrick hoyser he's head of trading at crypto finance ig prior to joining the firm patrick worked as an interest rates trader at ubs and he held various positions in the interest rate commodity and currency trading division in london new york singapore and zurich patrick is an expert in trading and risk management and has experience in leading startup projects he holds a business school degree in banking and he has completed various courses in technical chart analysis welcome patrick how are you hello everybody it's a pleasure to be on this panel and i'm very much looking forward to a lively discussion thanks patrick we also have today carl griddle carl is an associate partner at bain and companies theory coffees and drives spain's crypto and digital asset related activities in emea he's part of the global financial markets infrastructure leadership team as well as emia banking leadership team his clients are financial institutions fintechs venture capital private equity firms and in the last three years his work is entirely focused on cryptocurrencies and digital assets specifically a strategy commercial due diligence m and ecosystem build up carl acts as an advisor to a number of startups in the fintech blockchain spain's space and prior to his current role at payne he was um director at ubs in a group-wide strategy role hi carl great to have you here today hi everyone great to be with you and looking forward to an exciting panel great then we have jian baptist graphic graphql sorry for my pronunciation before joining peacetime again in 2021 as ceo for europe he had been the executive and chief compliant officer at the company in the years from 2014 to 2016. jb is back at bitstem with even more fintech and payment experience to support the company's vision in the in his beats time of time he was a managing director at ebay europe where he led the regulatory business operations for payments in europe and spent five years on the board of directors of several ebay entities prior to his leadership role at ebay jb worked at paypal as executive anemia chief compliance officer and in his first two years at pittstown he was responsible for obtaining regulatory licenses for the eu-based business and operations jb is now responsible for managing bitstam's regulatory relationships and leading compliance and legal teams as well as growth and business development in the region welcome jb wow you have a huge responsibility right how is it going hey everyone and thank you very much for having with stan today very happy to be here and looking forward to the panel today thank you jb and our last but not least speaker is roberto matzado he's a serial entrepreneur with extensive experience in the financial technology and digital payments industry he graduated in telecommunications engineering from the polytechnic university of catalonia and worked there in a eu-funded network virtualization project roberto has spent more than a decade in asia where he has been involved in the fintech and cyber security industries in companies like toro dedicated to mobile payments technology for 360 one of the largest cyber security firms in asia and in close contact with the startup ecosystem in taiwan and singapore in 2018 he joined the cryptocustody firm cybabo and he has recently returned to europe to lead the global expansion of the company from its office in luxembourg hi roberto your participation in this panel is timely as security is front and center for crypto assets right yes yeah it's my pleasure and i really look forward to this discussion cool so so let's start with it and we see that crypto assets pose both opportunities and challenges so patrick you have an extensive experience in the financial industry can you tell us where do you see the greatest opportunities of digital assets uh sure um i i see it as as two main things or shifts in in the market what crypto assets are doing right now first i would like to elaborate a bit on the cultural shift i believe that my generation was was not really taking responsibility for their financial actions or let's put it differently the banks or asset management companies sort of took that responsibility of me and basically told me with my risk profile and with all the compliance issues what i can do and what i cannot do cryptocurrency and the ecosystem is basically now opening the field for the younger generation but it's not only just more opportunities it also means take responsibilities for your actions for your investments you want to do so do your own due diligence you need to check in what you go um and you need to be aware of the risks that you gonna take but for this generation i really look forward to it that they can do their own their own decisions and be responsible for it on the second part i see a lot of new fields that opening up not only just financial products or or newly engineered products that are already available in the traditional finance but i also see massive potential in the gaming industry with the blockchain technology as as the base layer of um of a new ecosystem that can grow on that part thanks patrick and carl as you are working with all types of clients you have a great understanding from all points of view er what would you add yeah first of all i can fully echo what patrick said um i would maybe try to try to even generalize because the the technology that really helps to address any potential risks or shortcomings that come with centralization so that that could be the risk to of uh of having monopolistic structures uh the risk of having anti-competitive behavior or maybe even rent extraction and with the decentralization you have the opportunity to move towards a setup that is much more transparent interoperable in terms of the financial world um we can talk about financial inclusion um patrick already mentioned the access to a full new range of investment products and um ultimately it's really about giving back uh control to to the users of any sort of network or service that's kind of the the really the general opportunities that we have at hand i also fully agree with patrick's statement on gaming and the shift from uh focus on financial and maybe a little bit of pharma to really retail and gaming that's something that we see across our client base especially in the last 12 months i would say the requests from from retail gaming media entertainment have increased significantly and uh in that areas and we have done a partnership for example in the luxury goods industry with the our blockchain consortium and there it's really about authenticity about um tracking provenance of goods and also about enhancing customer journeys and enhancing user experiences so very exciting opportunities ahead of us thanks carl and there are also many challenges right it's clear that it's necessary to establish a regulatory framework that guarantees the the adequate institutionalization of this market and europe's uh mica crypto rules are coming soon and jb jv do you think that this proposed framework would simplify the expansion of crypto businesses would it facilitate a development adoption it's very interesting because you know the first bitcoin was created back in 2009 so only 12 years ago basically and since that time the the regulation was not necessarily you know helping the ecosystem but we see a shift we are in the middle of a regulatory transitional period if i can say in europe specifically where if you want to operate a crypto business uh you will need to apply for in some countries some you know licensing or registration but in some other countries um there are there are different paths there so um it's quite complex at the moment to navigate around the regulatory requirements and it will be extremely helpful and bitstamp is absolutely welcoming the new micro regulation which might come into force at some point in 2023 probably 2024 so that you know it will give an easier access to the market not only to institutional clients but to embrace also retail clients where very similar to payment institution today banks and electronic money institutions with one license one michael license the company could basically passport its products and services uh across europe uh to facilitate you know the access uh to institutional clients and and also retail population so um definitely my car will change uh it will increase level playing fields uh and absolutely increase you know crypto access to uh any one companies and uh and retail and we are definitely embracing uh mike as we speak with a bitstamp good anyone else wants to add anything regarding regulation it's a hot topic maybe i can i can add some from the business side regulation is for the institutional client very important if there is no clear regulatory framework it's going to be very difficult for money managers to put capital or risk in into an ecosystem if it's not clear how it's going to be regulated on the other hand regulation is also i wouldn't say hindering but it's slowing down innovation and the way uh crypt the crypto ecosystem is is innovating is super super fast and regulators are having um quite an issue to to follow that pace which is absolutely okay with me um i just hope they they don't give up if they see the train leaving the station too quick that they just say well we missed that one it's over now and we we just shut the doors so um i just hope they they try to keep on um to keep in the game and um make it accessible for everybody totally and they they need to move fast as the crypto space is moving super fast right so we see in that sense that switzerland has become one of the most friendly places for crypto businesses um carl uh you as an associate partner at brainstorming office what can we learn from switzerland and from other countries yeah there are definitely some factors that uh favor switzerland as a as a good place not only for crypto you see the nice weather coming in here but on a more serious note there are actually a number of factors that um that you can look at and uh some of them can directly replicated in other locations probably others are more specific to switzerland itself um i would start with the ecosystem switzerland has established with the crypto valley a unparalleled ecosystem very early that has been a very good breeding ground for crypto innovation and startups and right now there are probably 1 000 dish startups in the crypto valley and the surrounding areas and very well-known or prominent organizations and foundations are headquartered there so that's i would say reason number one or factor number one and if you want to replicate that in other locations it's really about making this positioning or making this statement very explicit and attracting these types of talents and topics the other factor and we mentioned it already is regulation um switzerland has been very early in the attempt to provide regulatory clarity um swiss government and swiss financial market authorities have generally been open to cryptocurrencies and digital assets and the innovation around it and i'm not a lawyer so probably not the best one to argue whether it's the best regulation that you can have or the others that are superior but what the the important factor is the clarity early on and there are many questions also in switzerland that are unanswered um but rather than trying to have a holistic framework answering all the topics or addressing all the topics moving in a pragmatic way into certain aspects that that is probably what uh what helped and could be a blueprint to other regulatory frameworks as well the other one i would say is capital there is availability of capital in switzerland for startup activities for even um very early stage funding which relies a lot on informal networks and you have great alumni networks for example at swiss schools so many people in the startup space that i uh talked to have actually found the first set of investment investors in these networks so i think that's that's an important factor and it definitely helps to uh as a as a factor to um to uh have such venturing activities and the last point i would like to mention is really talent you know switzerland with the background or the history and financial services there is a great talent pool that has know-how on how financial markets work and uh i think patrick you are a good example you just mentioned you were at uh at ubs a trader at ubs before and you see that many times that either founders or members of the management of these startups have a history in the traditional banking world in switzerland or the the board members of startups and ventures somehow have either a network or an own exposure in the in the banking or asset management or trading world in switzerland so i think that's really a number of factors some easy to replicate others more difficult to replicate and uh yeah curious to hear cody what uh what do you think about spain you know that you need to move uh madrid and barcelona as traditional finance world and startup world closer together maybe that's not the right way to look at it i'm going to i'm going to move to switzerland no i mean seriously i mean well we have the same problem as many other european countries that there's a lack of regulation but well that's coming at least but it's it slows down a crypto adoption and as an example a specific example of santander in 2019 we launched the first end-to-end blockchain bond on the public ethereum blockchain and we did it under the uk law not under the spanish law because the fca recognized a public permission is less blockchain as an independent third party so we could register the bond in the blockchain under the uk law um however lately the regulation in spain is advancing gradually and for example banks and exchanges that operate with cryptocurrencies now mass register with bank of spain this is something new and and also we have a regulatory sandbox that was set up this year where a big number of the projects that have applied to the sandbox are related to blockchain and crypto so i would say that we go slowly but we are progressing right on on the on the right direction and regarding you mentioned madrid barcelona i mean obviously madrid barcelona are the big cities and there's a lot of talent big companies there but but we see that malaga for example that has a great uh weather by the way um is popping up as a blockchain hub they have a big number of top-tier professionals the university of malaga the andalusian tech center and the malaga blockchain cluster are promoting a training and education on blockchain and there's a big companies that are setting up their blockchain labs there in malaga also um i see that aragon is also a a great place and has a great ecosystem for for products and startups and projects anyway with the pandemia as we can work remotely everywhere right so it's quite scattered but i would say madrid barcelona malaga and aragon as top places for blockchain development so another challenge apart from regulation is guaranteeing a high level of security and roberto you're an expert in this you represent cyber a leading key custody provider so um what can you tell us about the security requirements that are needed to protect crypto assets well um i think uh security has been one of i would say one of has been proven a challenge right for me i would say institutional adoption of digital assets in general there is always a risk um i would say institutions that the the most challenging risk or the most challenging value that they they are afraid to lose is the reputation that thanks is one of the examples right so not being able to have visibility or what's happening with their assets and different levels it's been undermining that adoption from the end so um we always think about security um i would say from from the cyber security point of view i like okay can i get hacked can my bitcoin get stolen but there are actually i would say different focuses that the institution should or are need to pay attention right they have four different type of challenges of risk so starting from cyber security of course um they will also change depending on the use case itself is not the same um having your crypto assets stored under a shelter in a in a mountain in switzerland and some call storage providers are delivered right this could be like perfect solution for security long-term storage um but how do you integrate that with a demanding business operation needs right you need something like 1000 transactions per day how do you access those assets if they are under a month right so there are different i would say parameters that need to be taken into account right so we've i would say there are four important challenges or risks there um the most obvious one as we were saying is cyber security right how do you save keep the private keys the representation of the digital asset are the private keys right how do you save keep them how do you avoid them being vulnerable because of software vulnerability system security right their vulnerabilities then um how do you integrate any any this operation of the assets into your business logic right in the end when you are developing a company you will develop your exchange your bank your your trading platform on top of those right on the blockchain so how do you make that integration also safe right how do you avoid the risk there how do you avoid them we've seen this in the past from different uh different providers they have been their employees have been targeted on phishing attacks right the solution was right the technology was safe but the employees the human factor was somehow the goal of the attacker so how do we avoid phishing attacks this type of user authentication problems there are vector attacks that we don't even think like blockchain nodes like the blockchain nodes could be the target of hacker as well once you have signed the block once you have made sure the transaction all the approval team has succeeded that at the last minute the hacking cost exploits vulnerability on the blockchain node and then they switch the destination address for example right that has happened in the past um problems with infrastructure is the infrastructure resilient or not and now we are moving to nfts we are moving to d5 um these in the end are pieces of software right and software what we know about software is that can be exploited right so i would say cyber security risk is with plenty of ramifications the first of the largest i would say branches of risk then there is also another i would say another big and another big column another big group which is which are the operational risk right um i mentioned the human factor before this is once you have a system and you have different crypto assets who has access to those assets right what does the approval change looks like uh how many people are involved in the in the whole approval of a transaction right how do you enforce that approval um who can make transactions who can how much they can translate per day um how do you separate those permissions right how do you enforce the user authentication so those are i would say um very uh related to the nature of the business itself is not the same having internal treasury with crypto that having d5 the operational risk will change depending on on each one of the business cases but at least i would say uh there are some common points there right then um the third i would say the third point would be the asset loss risk okay if all of these two points i mentioned earlier cyber security risk operational risk fail is there any protection any additional protection we can have um in case of disaster right um protections especially in case of the users right and what happened to the funds of the user are they covered by any type of insurance so this asset loss which is another challenge for i would say for institutional adoption and then lastly and i think uh jb and patrick mentioned this earlier is the compliance risk right in the end we are moving towards a more increasingly regulated environment that will drive the adoption um how the service provider can reduce somehow the regulatory risk right um how can make sure that they are not receiving when they have fully automated operations how can they make sure that they are not receiving uh funds related to money laundering or to ransomware or terrorism right so this i would say the fourth pilot of the risk um so essentially once they we are able to solve this for these four risks um i think it's safe to move forward right to the adoption it will help to the adoption from institutional players yeah totally roberto and now that you mentioned a compliance following compliance rules is also key so custom companies like us like banks and we have to guarantee you know your car you know your client iml etc tracking the arena of assets being able to detect uh illicit activities and provide also the regulators with the appropriate information so jb you are an expert in this topic you have an impressive track record in the compliance field so um can you tell us how to tackle these challenges and what are the best practices tools yeah absolutely absolutely we with pressure um and if we take the example of bitstamp you know we have been on the market for a decade now we have 10 years of experience um with with crypto and early days um you know back in 2014-15 we were applying at the time for payments institution license license which has been granted in 2016. and that that license was very helpful for us to build trust you know with the ecosystem especially with institutional clients and by being regulated uh you know early days also we applied um all the regulation around amen and counter terrorist financing and basically you know to develop policies package of controls uh in order for us to fight uh crimes and and terrorist financing and it is very important for for us as an exchange we serve today five million uh retail clients and also five thousand uh institutional clients and i think this program that we have built and developed and that we are enhancing you know on an ongoing basis gives the trust to our clients and partners and as robert so you mentioned earlier you know this is basically helping the entire ecosystem in a sense that we play the same rules as a bank as a payment institution or as an investment fund and playing the the same rule basically is helping the entire ecosystem to understand each other and to minimize potentially the overall compliance risk uh so that's the direction we have uh taken so far with the exchange being regulated in the us in europe uh as well uh and also you know as mentioned earlier contemplating for my car uh to to get uh full licenses across europe and the same level playing field uh with the coming regulation um so that that's in uh how we are developing uh you know our compliance program just to give maybe a couple of numbers to give you the the sense of uh how we manage and we take compliance very seriously um we have 120 people at the company uh out of 500 working in compliance so this is quite significant and we are hiring and enhancing our program on an ongoing basis um basically leveraging and implementing the same tools as any other regulated institution but on top of it as you know we need to have some specific blockchain monitoring tools uh to monitor the transactions so that that's in a nutshell how we are approaching you know aml and cancer services financing uh at pizza thanks jv i mean that's a topic that for um traditional institutions is super super important so thanks for your for your views and and patrick you're an expert in in risk management so what would be the main differences in risk assessment of crypto products compared to traditional ones if there's any um well there are quite a few um but first of all i would like to make a bit of a comparison um that people can sort of um put them at the right place um cryptocurrencies and their volatility is pretty much comparable to um emerging market um currencies or equities they're very volatile and they have always a regulatory underlying risk that overnight the country decides to be a non-deliverable currency and capital control strike and you cannot move money in or out anymore similar things can happen to a um cryptocurrency when a dow decision happens on on on something and for whatever reason you're not um able to move or do what you what you would like to do with that currency so there is always these snap risks you um which is very hard to to prevent they just happen that digital um additionally to just have an idea of the market or the financial implication on price you also need to have a sense of um [Music] software development and code so each each token you buy there is always a risk that this spark contract or the code of the token behind has a flaw or um has a backdoor or um is not the way you would would like to invest in something and i'm not a coder so i i really rely on social and social media consensus when when i read about the project and then and i i check up the team which is a real due diligence process then it's it's basically what you also should do if you invest into a hedge fund strategy or if you invest into an etf that is um investing in different kind of equities you should look up who's running that etf who's making investment decisions what kind of um um what kind of power do they have about the investment and strategies and this is for for a lot of people something new because the banker says let's just put some into this etf it's all good it's all fine ubs runs it and you say okay let's go but you actually should do that due diligence and this is this is something that is now different on on the crypto side and this belongs to risk management or it it's a big word risk management but it's actually something you should do always if you put your money um at the line totally patrick um as you said before there's a cultural shift right and and we have to do our own due diligence and be responsible for for those risks good so um well we've talked about tons of challenges right um but well financial companies tech companies and even governments we have to make decisions soon on how to participate in this new ecosystem and postponing these type of decisions may imply the risk of losing a strategic market position so carl i can imagine that your clients are asking your firm for advice regarding how to position themselves and what are the key messages that that you give to them i mean main business models what do they need and etc yeah yeah so indeed there's a lot of interest um and activity of our clients in that field and first of all i would say the the level of activity really depends on the on the sector that you that you are at and let's stay in the financial services world for a second and generally speaking you can say that those are those who have the biggest risk or at most at risk are the most active ones yeah and this applies to business models that heavily rely on infrastructure like the big uh global payments providers or stock exchanges and the like so they are very active in this and also very educated in this and the other sectors that that follow now are for example asset management where it's more a product angle so they try to provide access to this new asset class if we stay in crypto for example through traditional means which has also seen a lot of traction and then if you move further and maybe in traditional banks like small business lending and stuff there the activity is a little bit lower because there are also other factors that uh that are important so it's not only about the infrastructure it's about the relationship the uh the risk management capabilities the models the underwriting and so on and so forth but and maybe we come to that also later also these companies [Music] have you know certain risks uh when you look at the d5 space and and the protocols and the applications that come up there so different different uh let's say positions and then obviously also different uh messaging depending on how impacted you are some i think you still can send some general messages and i would say the first one is really crypto digital assets blockchain it's here to stay it's it will shape the financial services industry it's not something that for falls in their basements anymore yeah if you if you want to say like this it really needs and it's uh step by step gets up to the board rooms of the of the banks and the financial institutions so when you think about the the business models that was also a part of your question so the first or the the biggest traction we really see in everything that relates to trading cryptocurrencies we've done an analysis that is uh that showed that last year so in 2020 in 2020 the global revenue pools for crypto trading were 13 billion and we expected to cross the 20 billion mark this year so there is money to be made already now then from this from the institutionalization of the space there arise many other attractive opportunities and they relate to aggregation of liquidity they relate to these assets to be custodied they relate to uh also indexation for example as basis for further product development and they also relate to to risk management or to valuation of what what patrick said earlier you know it's uh rarely anyone can say why has the price of this or that asset moved better this or that way in the in the last day or in the last week in equities you can track that down and and build models around it and make forecasts in crypto is very difficult so that's uh definitely something and the data around it that is uh that is attractive then i think another area is really the infrastructure so payments making payments instant and almost free is very interesting and then not only in the um consumer or see peer-to-peer space but also in the business to business space very interesting and for payments providers also fiat on off-ramp you know you almost have a parallel world that is that has emerged there and being able to to bridge that and put the gateway and the customer experience on top of it is also very interesting area to look at especially when you when you think about defy again then tokenization here we see as we mentioned earlier in the intro access to new investment classes new investment opportunities there is one let's say caveat to make that this area has been a little bit behind the expectations that uh that you know were generally in the industry maybe two three uh four years ago but still interesting opportunities especially in private markets that we see because it's really an interlock with the with a more broader trend you know companies uh seeking funding in different ways than the traditional then ipos many companies reaching unicorn valuations without ever being uh public so interesting opportunities there because this is really kind of where two trends come together if you so will yeah and ultimately um anything that is beyond finance so if you think about game five they think about the need to have marketplaces for in-game assets and the infrastructure around it also there we see very interesting opportunities however those being maybe again a different horizon than the ones that i mentioned earlier yeah and uh last one what does it need sorry and you cut me off yeah cozy but just what does it need speed is definitely one yeah and it has been mentioned many times then partnerships ecosystem partnerships these uh the successful players many times uh managed to to collaborate rather than being siloed yeah and um also important when you do these partnerships it's important to understand the new power play you know the traditional fintechs as i would call it they have still pretty much relied on traditional infrastructure you know the fintechs that we had maybe in in banking and and payments for the new ones they could completely exist independently so there is a shift in power play when incumbent institutions engage with these new players i think that's super important to to understand and the last factor that i wanted to mention that is needed because i i like how patrick i think he was said it you need to have people that understand the the fundamentals of it the technology the coding the the this is something if you think of a research department in a bank you know historically those were financially educated people now you need to be able to form an understanding in a position also on the underlying technology the underlying software the underlying code and these people are in high demand so uh yeah not not easy to get them i can tell you it's not easy the market is hot and you mention speed so we are um reading news related to surprising events and some some some countries are faster than others and we see great contrast for example in the evolutionary and adoption of digital assets um since el salvador in september accepting bitcoin as a legal tender and that was the first country in the world to do so but on the contrary china has banned cryptocurrencies so roberto your company was funded in taiwan now you're expanding in europe and do you think that all geographies are looking at the same use cases or on the contrary each one is betting for something different are requirements the same for all um i think there are different two different factors to have into account i wouldn't say that they are each each area is looking for some specific things but there are two factors that really influence how the different adoption or applications go right geographically the first one is um it is a uh i would say a word that keeps coming back is regulation right what is the regulation the regulatory approach or clarity on each one of the regions right this might be related to different factors how developed the country is what like for example in europe are you part of a framework uh like european union right um so that'll be the first factor the second factor of course here are the the different applications are related somehow to the social realities of the different countries of the social needs i would say right so we have heard about banking the unbanked uh in developed countries like we have heard about improving accessibility to a more complex i would say financial services uh in to retail investors for example right as car was mentioned earlier like uh tokenizing assets or real estate um providing access to retail investors to this type of of applications right so these are very different realities that are really tied to the appetite and to the reality of the country social values of the country um so um what what looks like um is that even if they're gonna spread at a club globally looks like the different challenges have some i would say different common grounds right and it looks like uh this is one of the beautiful things about blockchain is like globally the community is trying to address those challenges right and try to provide solutions to those different uh problems right our applications so for example we are saying we were mentioning a game file i think we've seen l5 as an application which is booming in two different regulations as south korea or the philippines right because they have a huge gaming community something common they have involved in both areas right what we have seen also is this kind of application is driving innovation as well um one thing that happened you mentioned earlier that el salvador uh suddenly out of the blue salvador adopts um bitcoin as a legal center and then for example in our case with our company we a lot with companies who were saying okay so how we can implement this to our reality right our reality is we have uh little stores which in the best of the cases are in a in a physical building sometimes there are stores on the street street vendors how do we accept one dollar payments um having to wait for 30 minutes 60 minutes settlement and having to pay a transaction fees double triple 100 times higher than the price that the product right so this kind of technical uh disadoption is driving this technical i would say innovation as well solving those problems right and the magic of blockchain is that this is being driven somehow globally regardless of the geographical dispersion of challenges hey roberto and um do you think you guys that um there's any political aspects behind this anyone wants to answer um i would like to circle back quickly to what carl um has said that the speed of development in different economic sectors or being a company or being a country is driven by how much they are affected by this new technology and by what it can do for you um so i'm a bit surprised by banks because they're affected quite a bit and there haven't really moved that fast but i see their issue on the regulatory side that they're getting um blocked a little bit by that but um on the countryside for example you see these different developments but roberto now also mentioned that you have el salvador who is um who's really looking for an alternative of their current monetary situation they are in to have a better um solution for their citizens where china um has a completely different goal how they can use the blockchain technology and they're coming from a different background their currency is not um transferable so they have capital controls and they they have very tight controls that's the way they run their country and they because their country is also so big it would make a lot of added value for the central party to know exactly what is happening with the money where is it spent how quick is it spent how does it flow to maximize as well for their citizens i mean i i would give them the benefit of doubt that they are actually looking for their citizens in certain ways to make it more efficient and make it better but you just see how everybody is just looking from their perspective and how they can benefit the most out of the new out of that new technology not new but out of that technology and development we see at the moment yep totally agree patrick patrick um in the coming days you are participating in another panel uh regarding defy and and device well exchanging crypto investing by offering yield and and the required defined infrastructure needs to be built for regulated financial institutions to adopt it a regulated institution like like a bank or or like a regulated exchange right jb and so we see that uh devising nova 18 to provide access to them like with permission lending pools that ensure only a kyc participants to on chain asset management and decentralized identity right but um how do you see the institutional adoption of defy is any additional requirement challenge to to the ones that we already mentioned i actually see an issue here that institutionalized defy is not defy by definition right because it's permissions the pools are permissioned because you need those kyc and aml um regulations being done and you have um policies you need to show policies every regulator around the globe now has pretty much set the bar to to actually have d5 not as really d5 anymore but the the technology and what they the in the invention they built on the d5 side can still be helpful and and be [Music] an efficiency driver in the current traditional markets and i really hope we see some adaption of for example liquidity pools or for example an automated boring and landing facility where the banks can use the technology to make it a lot cheaper for their clients so borrowing rates are coming down businesses are profiting from efficient processes of their um requirements to get for example credit but i'm and this is a bit of my my worry five years down the road if the regulatory um landscape is shifting further this way like also mika is um is pointing to d5 will have it very very hard to get enabled or get um get into the institutional space we need another name for this instead of defy right yeah we have to invent it so for a question for all of you um how can your companies help other traditional companies in in this journey um jb yes so um we have 10 years of experience in crypto as as we speak so a lot of experience a lot of knowledge uh we have very good solutions for retail clients um having access to 45 digital assets and also nasdaq technology for our trading engine at the same time we have very well designed solutions for institutional clients whether you know banks or brokers or payment institutions are looking for solutions in the field of liquidity or brokerage using you know crypto as a service uh powered by bitstamp to offer crypto to uh their end clients uh that's basically how we can uh you know give access to crypto not only to retail but also to uh institutional clients based on our you know 10 years of experience and expertise uh in this area being fully regulated as well giving full trust you know to other regulated institutional clients um that's definitely how we can help you know boosting the ecosystem uh with the solutions that we have in place today thanks av and carl yeah so how can we help um first of all it depends a little bit on the clients that we serve on the investor side so vc funds pe funds its market scans its commercial due diligences to basically be able to get exposure to the space with the most let's say attractive almost promising assets in the market and the other one is when we talk about the incumbent players and what we see is that in many of our clients there are still very different opinions um what the right approach to crypto and blockchain is across the organization so i can imagine got you in santander probably on the enthusiast side there might also be more critical voices and so what what we can do there is really help form a consistent strategy to form also a consistent risk appetite you know i do not want to suggest that everyone needs to move in uh double down full speed but it needs to that there needs to be a position and there needs to be an understanding about the opportunities and even if you as an organization don't move ahead you should at least understand the cost of the opportunity and the other one is for the incumbent ones is much more not so much about crypto and digital assets specifically but more about how to deal with innovation more generally and how to balance resources funding people between the existing businesses and the next-gen businesses and how to do that in a balanced way to allow flexibility but at the same time synergetic relationships between the two as much as possible and that yeah i was going to say that i agree totally yeah and the last one is the the let's say digital attackers that have now also to some extent become incumbents or at least sizable organizations and typically topics there are also strategic choices which client segments which geographies then also the the topics that jb mentioned earlier you know the maturing of these organizations of the operating models of these organizations in terms of procedures policies structures that's uh definitely something that yeah we are very happy to do our contribution to um have that space uh develop and rise well all of that is needed traditional financial institutions i mean it all of this is new right so so they indeed need this help and and roberto this is super obvious uh from your side the security piece right yeah absolutely so well in the end um as i mentioned by the security from a 360 approach right from all of those different risk approaches as um you mentioned about traditional companies but also we see a lot of crypto native companies are building they're building their own crypto uh services or services related to digital assets so essentially we have uh thousands of years of cyber security expertise essentially what we will do is to help them build their cost of infrastructure to safekeep and offer those digital assets um in a secure way and also in a i would say usable way right um for different use cases so this could be uh treasury management transaction automatization we are also um compatible or let's say integrating new services as d5 we were mentioning nft and so on right so what we are helping our customers to do what we are trying our goal is to um this all these operations what we call the wallet operations uh wallet ops for sure essentially what we are doing is we are bringing to web3 what amazon web services brought to webtoon right that's essentially cool thanks hey roberto uh um and patrick i i i should mention that deutsche borse group at choir majority is taking crypto finance uh this year so this is a step forward in in helping a traditional institutions right absolutely and um i just wanted to say that i would like to see our company to be one of the bridge builders for institutionals that that feel the need and feel the pressure of their clients to get access to this um this new asset class and sometimes it's very hard for these companies to either have the knowledge or the technology or the certainties that it actually is is going to here to stay as carl said and we can basically bridge it for them we have the knowledge in-house we have um the technology that's needed from the trading side and from the custody side and we even have i would say a very good knowledge of the um ecosystem the different coins the different projects and we do really feel it that our clients when they talk to us they appreciate that they can they can actually offload some of their the questions their clients shooting at them which just is almost impossible for them to answer and i hope with the bridge is getting now bigger and bigger with deutsche bursa also being on board so we can actually fish for the real big guys compared to the the companies we were serving at the moment and you all are going to be super busy in the following months [Laughter] okay so um we are almost there uh four minutes um to end our panel so i i don't know if victoria wants um to to uh to tell us some of the questions in the q a victoria is there any question that you would like to to ask us hello hello you have plenty of questions i don't even know where to start i saw one that i'm interested yeah then go for that one i i read here what top five cryptos would you invest in right now that's a good one no financial advice right no no no only personal opinion oh difficult that's i knew there was going to be silence here yeah i mean it's obviously hard to name to name one and i'm not going to do that just to but i think i like what patrick said at the beginning you know and the question should rather be which one should i invest in should be where should i look for information and for insights that enables me to take my own decision you know and i think that's really the thing and if i if if i had to the way i think about it is you know the space is so broad so try to start uh segmenting the space you know you have bitcoin and the likes which you know you can believe in in the in the value or not there's no intrinsic value as such then you have all the layer one uh solution scaling solution so they all have different characteristics so you can look at this and think in which one you believe most you have to defy space with very interesting projects there should be definitely something of that also in the portfolio so i think that's and then why not some meme coins you know and i'm not saying that's a bad thing unless you understand what you put at risk you know so uh yeah i think it that the answer is have a good mix of these things in your crypto portfolio and so i have nfts as well [Laughter] i knew no one is going it was going to answer this question that's why i raise it so victoria any other question that um that you think it's interesting i see a lot of questions i mean we don't have time for all of them no there's only one minute left yeah i don't know i mean the rest of you if you want to say anything about financial recommendations well one question was directed at me um it's about um regulated markets uh make for punishment with bad management but with crypto there is no punishment because it's not regulated what's your response well first my response is on the regulated ones so are the bad management decisions actually being punished and i just want to mention wire card that's one and did the investor get reimbursed probably not the second part of that question if i see an exploit or we have seen many exploit in the past some of these exploits have been reimbursed by the treasury of the project cream was for example the last one that got exploited on a front-end bug of different wallet providers and they actually tried to reimburse out of their treasury the the money that that has been lost or stolen yes obviously with with that the token um loses in value but there is a mechanism where people can vote for if this should be the solution or that should be the solution i'm i'm a clear defender of highly regulated markets everybody gets punished and everybody's safe versus crypto which is not regulated and nobody is safe and nobody gets punished that's just not true okay thanks patrick i think that we run out of time that was super interesting uh thank you a lot to our great speakers to victoria daniel and their team for making this possible and also thanks to the audience i hope that you have enjoyed our discussion as much as as we have thank you so much thank you and have a great convention yeah i mean we have we have a lot of questions in the chat that were not answered so guys please reach out to the speakers either directly to the networking tool at brella or some of their team members so i mean we want you to get your answers i'm sorry we're running out of time but again thank you cody thank you carl thank you patrick thank you baby thank you roberto see you around bye thank you bye guys