Crypto Meets Payments Constructing Rails for a Decentralized Economy | EBC11

Great. Well, thank you very much and thank you all for being here. Um, as uh you just heard, this is a panel on crypto and payments. I think there was one yesterday as well which had a bit more of an incumbent flavor. It was sort of the the major uh payments um infrastructure providers talking about how they're going to innovate.

I think today we have a bit more the challenges, the innovators, people uh who are going to talk about it from their point of view. Uh I'm Andrew Witworth. I'm an executive in residence at GDF, Global Digital Finance, which is the global trade association for digital assets um and and policy. Uh I'm also a consultant academic in crypto and blockchain policy around the world. Uh I think should do a round of introductions and then get started.

Hi, I'm Jess Wholegrave. I'm the CEO at Wallet Connect. Uh this is a topic close to my heart before because before this role I was at checkout.com, so I've seen both sides of the of the table when it comes to payments. Um, Wallet Connect is a protocol that's been around since 2018.

It connects apps and wallets. So, you can think of it like a two-sided network. We have about 70 700 different wallets and about 70,000 different apps that are on the network. Um, everything from DeFi all the way through to to payments companies. We process about $400 billion a year through through the network.

Um, and payments is probably our fastest growing segment. Um, so excited to chat.

Great. Thanks. Uh hi. So I'm Maxel, the CEO and founder of Kipa. Kulipa is a uh cryptocard issuer.

So at the heart of payments, uh our goal is to enable wallets and probably stablecoin stablecoin fintex to uh issue their own cards with their own brands so that they can enable uh day-to-day payment with stable coins and and and crypto uh for their users.

Hello, my name is Juan Himenez or JJ. Um, I work for uh for digital policy at Santandere. Certainly not the chairman as they state there. I've been promoted guys. No, come on.

Uh, I'm the chairman actually of the of the advisory board for Alastia which is a nonfor-profit blockchain organization in Spain. Uh, but I'm here acting in the Santander capacity. And thank you for having me.

Yeah. Hi, I'm I'm Andrew. I'm the chief revenue officer at 1.io. Uh we're a global fintech with with two main propositions.

We have 1.io Fusion which is our digital asset OTC desk. So a full institutional crypto offering there and then we have 1. Connect which is our global payments and banking network. So yeah very excited for this chat because we really do sit at the precipice of of both crypto and payments.

Great. Well, thank you very much. Um so to kick things off, Jess, could you maybe tell us what you're seeing in the market, how you're seeing it develop both in terms of products, volumes, uh and kind of what it looks like to world wallet connect right now.

So I think payments is an interesting one because ever since the Bitcoin white paper, we've been talking about blockchains as a way of taking over payments, right? The Bitcoin white paper was a peer-to-peer cash settlement. Uh that was the title. And so for everybody for a really long time everyone's been saying crypto is going to have product market fit in payments. But I think a lot of the misconception comes when you realize that payments isn't just about the settlement of value which a blockchain is really great for transmitting value but a payment has all sorts of other things that go with it.

Um it's got a load of regulatory things. It's got travel rule compliance for some payments. It has um uh restrictions. has different kinds of information being transmitted between the recipient and the um and and the the sender of of that payment. And so it's taken us a while as an industry to realize what we need and the infrastructure that we've got to build around it to make crypto payments actually a thing.

Um and I think we've started really in the last few years to see that come to to fruition. Um there are also all sorts of different types of payments. Obviously, we think initially when we think of a payment, we think of either an instore payment at point of sale um or an e-commerce payment, but actually there's also all sorts of other things in terms of recurring payments, which are probably one of the biggest segments uh for for online companies especially um so your subscriptions, buying your Netflix uh every month. Um and also payouts I think is one of the fastest growing spaces as well. So being able to if you're a creator on a creator marketplace being able to get paid for that and I think we're starting to see crypto actually tap into all of these segments at at different rates.

Um and I you know even just yesterday uh we had several of our customers launching new payments products. Moonay launched Moonay Commerce um which allows uh people to pay with crypto merchants using Moonay. Um, Coinbase launched their new business product um, which has both payouts and pay by link with crypto. Um, we saw Square launch uh, Bitcoin payments at point of sale. Um, so even just in the last 24 hours, we've seen really big news in terms of of crypto payments.

Um, and at Wallet Connect, you know, over the last 6 months, those payments specific volumes have been growing more than 100% month- on month. So really really fast growth. I think there's still a lot of issues and things to fix but um it's definitely feels real rather than proof of concept now.

Yeah. Good. And uh very good timing for the launches of these products and services right at UBC. Um Axel could like could we maybe unpack a bit what we mean by crypto payments? Are we talking about a crypto leg on a traditional journey?

Is it just an infrastructure upgrade? Um are you seeing end to-end payments and value being held also in crypto?

I guess it it depends on the use case. uh you have a lot of use cases where the stablecoin sandwich is still the the norm and people just use stablecoin in the middle to just accelerate and and avoid all of the um the traditional swift uh correspondent banking hoops. uh but uh but we more and more see people holding I think it's also a geographical uh element uh in emerging markets for example we are very uh very active in Argentina in Nigeria where people do hold stable coin as a store of value because that's they are almost only way to hold dollars or like more stable uh stable um uh currencies that they own. So we see a lot of that for through remittance um people receiving stable coin and keeping it and that's what also makes the the the the car payments very much useful in a sense that people hold it and want to be able to use it for their daily spend. Um and so indeed we are moving from a very very on and off ramp world uh to a world where people realize that keeping stable coin is potentially also a way to keep that value and and and we there are even merchants that are receiving payment in stable coins and that will you instead of of ramping to their own bank account will pay their own suppliers in uh in um in stable coins.

So more and more the the eos because all of the the elements of the chain of value in in payments are suddenly are slowly become coming into place. it is now possible to really do uh fully onchain payments and that's what's what's enabling the real value of the blockchain and and and these payments making it end to end efficient and uh and and user friendly also because there's there's just a level of uh it has to it has to be as simple as as making a a normal transfer.

Yeah. And I'm picking up on that point around onoff ramping or on off boarding. Andrew, I mean, I understand that's at least one of your original products. Is that still one of the major roles at least your company plays in the uh crypto payment space? And also, when we're talking about crypto payments, are we really just talking about stable coins or is there a role for other forms of cryptocurrency um or or crypto, you know, technology underlying it?

Yeah, it's a it's an interesting question. So certainly when when we started out back in 2017 uh originally was the OTC desk and we had a lot of clients that either held cryptocurrency and needed to get into fiat or had fear and needed to get it into crypto. Now one of the biggest challenges with being able to do that was that the banking system at the time uh was was sort of loathed to deal with businesses that were dealing in crypto assets or dealing with crypto transactions. Um so sort of recognizing that that was the catalyst for us as a business to pivot and actually generate our own proprietary payments network really with crypto crypto use case in mind providing an ecosystem providing accounts to businesses or individuals that wanted to interact with digital assets uh in the course of running their business. Um certainly for us the original use case that we see as a B2B is merchants that ultimately deal in crossber payments.

uh and the the crypto use case in that context has been very strong and and probably much stronger than it has been in the consumer use case which I think we're really starting to see traction on uh in in the the past sort of 12 months. Now these are businesses take an i gaming operator for example licensed uh operates out of Europe but has clients located all over the world. Now for for a number of years now the easiest way for them to be able to transact and actually run their business which ultimately ends up with them dealing in euros is actually to receive payments in stable coins cross borders uh because the costs and the speed of doing so is significantly better than dealing in in local currencies. So that use case has been very strong. Uh ultimately as it stands today, having a fiat infrastructure that is supportive of businesses that deal in digital assets is still of vital importance.

At the end of the day, most of our clients payments still end up in fiat. You're still paying your staff in fiat. You're still paying your regulators in fiat. You're still paying your dividends in fiat. So it's really important to have that bridge and that seamless conversion of crypto into fiat or fi into crypto for that use case specifically.

Um but what has been really interesting to see over the past sort of 3 to four years is is flows going the other way. So typically we saw a lot of crypto offramps into fiat for for the use cases I've talked about, but increasingly now we're seeing the other way. So clients wanting to take take fiat converted into crypto to then make a payment out in crypto. So you're seeing the flow go the other way. And then you're also seeing stable coins being used to actually affect what is ultimately a a a fiat transaction.

I I've got a client right now, an ultra high net worth individual who has funds, US dollars in a US bank account, needs to make a large property purchase in Europe. We're affecting that transaction for this individual by taking his US dollars, converting into into crypto into USDT, offramping it into euros, crediting the payment account we've given him for him to make the last mile payment from there. Now, that's a fiat transaction, but is enabled by blockchain technology. So it's it's quite an interesting question in terms of when you ask what is really a crypto payment.

Yeah, this is I like this. We got the full sweep of the entire payment chain here from sort of point of sale in the shop all the way to on ramping from your original fiat and crypto. Uh Juan, could you maybe give us an institutional perspective on this? Obviously Santandere has a very well not unique but for this panel unique role in this and you within Santandere have a very specific role in innovation digital money.

Yeah, very quickly and thank you for the question. um this payments thing in on a blockchain and uh you know having an onchain mechanism to settle money it's been a long bet we started like in 2014 or something like that it's been 11 years looking for the holy grail of payments I think we started earlier than expected as an industry not specifically at at Santand there so we were not mature and every single actor that provides some value in the payments value chain when you look at it we're not realizing that uh this was the technology of choice. I think that that now fast forward to 2025 the market is mature. We're witnessing what is happening and from a Santander perspective what we witness and where we believe what we believe is a multi-money uh future like there's no only one one one alternative or one option that is going to you know rule them all or or you know winner takes it all. is not the case and actually we're exploring different different opportunities.

Our favorite one from a commercial bank perspective is of course tokenizing deposits uh is for us is the way to go. We're actually uh implementing one of these solutions in the UK. It's called RLN, the regulated liability network where you have a wholesale token where you can exchange money from bank to bank. In the upper, you know, upstairs, if you look at it from a house perspective, upstairs you have the banks working and and swapping the money through a wholesale CBDC. And in the downstairs where you have to touch on the client whether is a retail client or or a business or or or you know a bigger customer tokenized deposits could be could be the way to go because they're funible and they're interoperable because at the end of the day is real real money.

It's a claim against the deposit base. So these type of solutions UK is quite advanced and uh but this this solution is also present in other in other in other projects that we're running. Uh Agora maybe you're familiar with this is this BIS the the the Basel uh Basel um is promoting this one and Santander is part of the banks. it deals with seven different geographies is quite of a challenge. Uh but it's operating and it it would be working in um in six months time or something like that.

Now and coming back to this multimoney of opportunity, we're also of course exploring the stable coin world where regulation is key and there's been lots of advances. We look at the US market and we see Genius Act being passed. still not the final touch on Genius, but uh it's there and when you look at it super favorable to the stable coin world and uh in order to to bring a global monetary asset to the ecosystem that is onchain and it interoperates from one jurisdiction to the other what we need now is equivalence with Mika which is actually not the case we don't have it uh and as a global bank we need equivalence and proportionality when you look at Mika totally different approach. There are limits. There's no like no clear licensing.

You have some um there's no payment stable coin in itself. You know, Mika is more focused in taxonomies this EMT, ART and the rest. And uh and the last point would be the multiissuer which is being a a hurdle right now. uh but hopefully we can get equivalence and really play on a global asset and seek for global liquidity because we know for the tra from the traditional finance that the global assets they look for liquidity they find their way and if you put barriers makes no sense

that's great and thank you for opening up many different angles of the conversation um I think we'll come on to the regulation in a second um when thinking about sort of future mix of money I mean I agree there's going to be public money private money digital and physical or onchain offchain however you want to phrase it the important thing there is interoperability now one part of that is technological which perhaps we talk about later but I think where you discuss the jurisdictional questions around well genius maker is one obvious thing but also the developed economies versus developing economies or global south I think it's very um well obviously they need to have interoperable regulatory frameworks um Ax I don't know whether you I mean you mentioned this yourself I don't know if anything you want to sort of deepen on that

yeah we do we do um I mean We even we if we based in Europe, we quickly realized that there was a a huge opportunity and I mean generally people uh needing these stable coins to for their day daily life because they uh get paid in in stable coin as freelancers working for US companies in in Argentina. Uh they receive money from their family in stablecoin. Um and it has become I mean to give an um a number uh Nigeria is a very very spec specific market but 80% of the people that could get a bank account so 15 years and older even even if 15 is probably young to get a bank account but uh for people 15 years and older 80% of people have touch crypto hold crypto and and that's part of their day-to-day life. If you have WhatsApp uh WhatsApp boats that are just enabling you to you want to convert um 100 USDT into Naira, it gives you a rate and you just approve and you get an address where you can uh you can you can send your USDT for conversion and in it's instantly available in your in your bank account. So it it is a reality and people are really uh using it and the talking about regulation there is no regulation on stable coin in Nigeria.

It was banned and two years ago the SEC started regulating in um more like investment focused crypto. Uh the central bank of Nigeria still officially says SEC is the regula regulator for investment products. So I don't I don't I don't know about crypto but what it means is that none of the banks in Nigeria have done anything. They're too scared. Uh we are reliably informed that regulation is coming is going to be published in Q4 and applicable as of Q1.

So all of the banks who are also informed have uh started working on it and it it's going to unlock a lot of uh a lot of potential and also giving them the the the right tools to be able to fight against all of these uh Chinese or or or fintex that have started um developing their own product here even if it was not really uh not really legal. Uh I mean Morocco is coming with a regulation stoken regulation. Argentina has done it already. I mean MLE was quite clear about the fact that he didn't really care about the peso and a dollar a dollar dollar country was not an issue for him. uh Nigeria is probably a bit more scared of getting dollarized because of the even if there's a Nigerian stable coin people don't don't really want to hold that's one of the big challenge in this market is that it is removing the capacity of the central bank to manage the the their own currency and so it it gives a bit too much potentially a bit too much power to the people to decide what they want to hold uh because they can now hold very easily dollars rather than their own currency and it it will probably have an impact on their own economy but short term it's a it's a it's a d need for them.

Yeah. Spoken like a true democrat. Um it's it's interesting right because I mean there's it's not just question monary sovereignty it's also questions of exchange controls and sort of domestic industrial policy or economic policy. Um and then we have the question of multi issuance which quen raised earlier in terms of well that is a well part of that is a fear of dollarization of the European economy but also then of capital flight. So these I mean these are not just questions of regulation in terms of what kind of market do we want or what rules we want to put on stable coin issuers.

These are fundamental questions of state power capacity relationship between the individual and the state. Um with that said Jess uh is there any hope for regulation to support the industry and maybe even globally? Um, yeah. I mean, I think it's a it's a very on the same line of thought that I read something that the UK is proposing that only that individuals can hold only between 10 and 20,000 pounds worth of of stable coins. And when you say things like that, anybody who knows anything about this stuff tends to laugh because how on earth do you in practice enforce that and and and make that happen?

And I think that is the the key here, which is that I don't think regulators have a choice right now. Um I think if a regulator is not doing something to at least understand and figure out how to make this work, they're burying their heads in in the sand and they're going to have a very rude awakening when they realize that the the horses kind of left the stable. Um so are regulators doing that? I think it really varies, but I I really think that we'll see over the next couple of years regulators realizing that they that they absolutely need to do something because as you say, this isn't just about regulation or consumer protection. It's really about like sovereignty of your currency.

Um and and how you think about your economy. Um I do think that there's a lot of a lot of difference globally from a regulatory perspective. I think that's actually really positive because um whilst I think we're we're seeing all of these different kinds of experiments, we've been seeing that for a really long time in crypto even you know five six years ago. Singapore was talking about how we think about stable coins. So I think all of that is going to hopefully lead to some convergence.

Um and the most important thing I think certainly as somebody who's building products in this industry is clarity. Um and we can as an industry we can work with regulation. most people are very prepared to do that and willing to do that. Um it's really hard to do if the regulation isn't clear. So I think the most positive thing that we've been seeing recently is that at least we're starting to get a little bit more clarity.

Um it might not be the the regulation that we necessarily want to see. Um but at least there's more active engagement from regulators rather than this idea of you know it doesn't it doesn't exist and we're going to shut it down.

Yeah. When I worked in house I used to get in trouble because I'd say that what we need is regulation. and it almost doesn't matter what the regulation is and I got told no it doesn't matter what the regulation is like it can come out wrong uh so yeah I take your caveat but then um okay so that that's sort of the role of regulation I mean in general domestically how it develops markets can you talk a little bit about um you know well whether there'll be any convergence or sort of perhaps standard setting at the international level how this could be managed at the international level between different regions um on the sort of market structural side but also perhaps on the AML travel rules sort of the thing which actually can enable the crossber payments that we're talking about Yeah, I think it's it's interesting. I mean, we obviously sit on both sides of the fence. We have regulated payments firms by payment services and we have regulated VASPs that on board clients for crypto trading uh services.

Uh and these days, to be honest, with a lot of the new regimes on the VAS side, from a K AL KYB perspective, the on boarding standards look quite similar. Whether you're on boarding the client for payment services or you're abboarding the client as a client of your VASP in terms of due diligence that you're doing or enhanced due diligence you're doing it looks quite similar between the two and I think that's a good thing uh in terms of building trust in the digital asset system and convergence between tradi and and uh digital asset economy in terms of the travel rule I mean we could have a whole session in terms of the the difficulties around the travel rule uh in terms of uh adoptability uh implementation of the travel rule and then enforcability as well but by and large I Think you know from an ambitious perspective it it aims to achieve what we all want in terms of better clarity across jurisdictions and building trust again in the digital asset ecosystem so that TRDFI and tier one institutions have more confidence in vast and digital asset businesses which then enhances their ability to actually want to engage with these businesses bank these businesses and facilitate transactions that have a digital asset nexus. So I think directionally it's heading in the right right direction. I think in terms of travel rule adoption, we are getting to a point where there is a critical mass of jurisdictions that are adopting the travel rule in some way, shape or form. I think enforcement will remain a challenge on that.

But I think we are getting to a world now where there is more clarity and there is starting to be more convergence between trady and digital assets.

Yeah. Thank you. And then so I mean we've had a bunch of well you you've all said where you see the world today how you think it's going to develop and thrown out a bunch of challenges are there any in particular I mean this is maybe a bit of a chicken egg question but do we need to solve the regulation before we can get the global markets is it possible for uh either tradine institutions or new players in the space to develop their products and kind of around the regulation as exists today because if we have to wait either for domestic regulation or for global coordination regulation it's going to be a long time and incumbents do very well out of that but maybe we don't get all the innovation we could get.

Yeah. Well, as a global as a global institution uh we've been always pursuing for multilateralism that is totally over in these days uh in a fragmented world that we live in. So if it's not multilateralism should be bilateralism at least. Uh there are certain bodies that look for harmonization as the FSB but they have a very very hard work to do these days. um and we understand totally.

So at least if we get some equivalence and proportionality from a bilateral perspective with the US that is leading the market of course in terms of monetary supply and when you look at certain instruments like a stable coins they're purely mostly denominated in US dollars like 99% of the market um we need some harmonization there as I said before this is these are global assets but in terms of challenges I would say fungeibility is one if If if as me as I come from a capital markets career and I've been in the trading floor most of my of my of my life uh you look at instruments from a seniority perspective but when you look at money these days I tend to think of different rappers different risk different seniority and uh when you look at the tokenized deposit tokenized deposits go with the rating label of the institution that tokenized. So this is one when you look at the stable coins you look at them and it depend on the type of reserve and the composition of reserve they have when you look up at another instrument as a CBDC well this comes with the with the with the seal of the central bank but depending on which central bank is there's no such an risk-free asset anymore. So there are different risks and what we don't want no one here in this community of course but neither in the traditional finance is people trading money depending on the risk. So fungeibility and interoperability is the name of a game and there are certain ideas out there. I recommend to the audience to look at the Ubix paper.

This Ubix company is amazing because what they want to do is to orchestrate all all this mess and all this fragmentation. again our our friend Tony Mclofflin is doing an amazing job uh in in his ex city uh days now. Uh but yeah, he's nailing it like look there's an opportunity there to stitch it all together. Um and uh and and and I think this one is going to bring the real onchain mechanism that all the tokenization world is expecting is awaiting for. Uh when you look at the at the at the tokenized securities would love to do to do more would love to really industrialize this practice.

But the reality is that we did several issuances. you know, we started in like 2018, 2019. We discovered that there was a nice opportunity to tackle the market there, but this there hasn't been any industrialization because there's no onchain instrument. So, this is a chicken and egg thing. Um, would love to have something, you know, to start settling the money in a proper and efficient way, managing our liquidity in a better way, and of course providing a better service to clients, which at the end of the day is our mandate.

Yeah. I I don't know you may I want to ask a question about stable coins but the world has had enough stable coin panels and this is about crypto and payments so we'll stick with it. Um as as we're sort of coming towards the end uh I've got a question for all of you or open to whoever wants to answer. What's the end goal here? What is the end goal of crypto and payments?

Are we talking about mainstreaming it so that in the end we just talk about payments and they have a new technological rail and it's all sort of abstracted away or do you see that as going to maintain from parallel payment systems onchain offchain with some interconnections between them or or some other hybrid like how how do you what do you think the end goal is or should be um Andrew do you want to start?

Yeah I think um certainly in in the short term I I see parallel streams as being sort of the end state. So uh you know interoper interoperability is very key there that seamless fear to crypto and also cryptoto crypto between various chains but I see a world where crypto just becomes an alternate payment method for the specific use cases where making that payment in crypto makes more sense than doing it in fiat. And in the same way that when you look at the fiat system, you've got card payments, you've got bank transfers, you've got cash and each of those uh payment mechanisms can coexist and coexist in harmony. And depending on the specific use case, that will dictate which method you choose to make that payment. Um I see crypto as feeding directly into that.

And certainly in certain contexts like B2B crossber payments or when you're talking about developing markets um perhaps you see crypto adoption being much higher than you would in a developed market where you've got a robust fiat system and you've got real-time payment networks where you can basically facilitate and do everything you need to without the need to make that transaction in digital assets. So that's what I see over the the the short term and I see the percentage of crypto in terms of the overall share of payment flow increasing quite significantly and increasing rapidly over the next sort of 5 to 10 years. I think longer term it's it's it's anyone's game. I think will blockchain become a key part of the ultimate financial infrastructure that governs us all. I think yes.

But I think how we actually get there is uh is is unclear at this point. Whether it is central bank digital currencies, whether it is consortiums of tier one institutions that have their own tokens, whether we continue to have the stable coin issuers that operate in the private markets with the public blockchains continuing to dominate. I think that's where I I don't have the answer, but I think certainly what we're working towards in the next 5 years is this sort of harmonized coexistence between fiat and digital assets.

Punishment.

Yeah, I think I think it's going to happen in uh and resonates totally with what Andrew mentioned about the different avenues. Um if you break down the market a bit it's totally different when you look at the wholesale space than rather when you look at the retail space. I know this congress is more about B2C's or retail but in the institutional world is really happening because it's about gaining efficiencies everywhere and uh the way we settle money amongst banks is quite primitive when you look at it and it's pretty dominated or biased by the presence of certain bodies that now they're embracing this technology but swift for example has been years and years and years like kind of a denial mode now in the past Cyos they they they they announced that they're going to do something but they've been doing something already from the last five years. I think that uh there is going to happen and is is actually happening because the efficiency is amazing. What what you get in terms of liquidity management when when you break it down again and you see corporate clients like large corporates that that that that manage liquidity around the world in different currencies again amazing opportunity.

We we we have our clients yelling for that and um and uh and uh you know there are certain investment banks that are already doing that like JP Morgan with Kexis and stuff like that and this is really happening this is actually happening when you go down the line to the lower on onto smaller clients h is totally different there's more opportunities more alternatives and I see more fragmentation and of course if you cut it geographically in the retail side I see more and more adoption in emerging countries countries emerging markets where you have you know a lower quality way of of of settling fiat money whereas in the developed world there's not that much incentive when you look at the crossber payments for example in Europe is not that high so the necessity for a stable coin a stable European based stable coin to be settling money is not that high as you when you compare to a to connecting the world Latin America Africa altogether and and Asia through a US dollar denominated in instrument. So it varies but netn net net I see it happening 5 years time for sure even even shorter

yeah I think we still have a few I fully agree with with with all that what Juan and andrew said I think there are a couple for some of these use cases a couple of challenges that will probably slow down mass marketization like for example privacy I do believe that like treasury management for a company or invoice payments. I don't I I I think that a company will be very careful at having their own treasury on a public chain fully transparent because then suddenly their competitors will be able to know oh why why did they send $2 million to their Brazilian entity or why did they pay $2 million invoice to that to that supplier and how many of these product did they so they probably pay so there's a lot lot lot of information and and uh that could be could be gathered from this from this row of funds And uh uh same for like when at one point we hope we'll be able to uh settle the car transaction directly from the buyer to the seller. Uh but the merchant are the merchant really interested in having someone being able to witness how much how much money they earn that day. So there there are a few things where uh privacy might might be a challenge. Fungeibility is another one.

Even as a consumer, you probably don't want to have uh 10 types of different dollars or 10 types of different euros in your in your in your pocket. Um but I do believe that we see more and more use cases, more and more fintexs using stable coin just as a as a hidden layer for more efficiency and people just have dollars in their in their fintech application. Even if it's stable coin behind the scenes, that's definitely happening. But there are a few like technical challenges that we will we'll need to to fix before it really embra. But I I completely see a world where a lot of this um the these movements and payments are just using the the the most efficient and the fastest way of uh of paying internationally.

Uh that that that's for sure is happening.

So adding friction back in uh to yeah for various reasons. Jess, final word.

Yeah, I mean I think most things have been said but not by me. Um the uh I think efficiency is is key here, right? So um what users, whether they're business users or consumers, care about is like the form factor. How like what do I what am I using? How easy is it for me to use?

And what things does it give me? Um I choose to buy my travel usually on a credit card because I get my chargeback protections and I know that I can call somebody. Um, I'm very happy to make a crypto payment for something that I receive in real time because I'm probably not going to need to do a chargeback. Um, I like using crypto for doing expensive crossber transactions because it's really fast, but actually just paying on my regular Visa, you know, for for something small um, locally makes sense. So, even I as a as a single user use different form factors of money every single day.

And do you know what I don't care about is what technology is underneath most of them. I really don't care that my card payments go through ISO8503 messaging. Um, nor do I care that my bank payments go through Swift. And I think that's the reality here is we have to think about what the end user wants and what we're providing them as a product and how they can use money as a product. Um, and underneath the efficiency game will be will be what will win.

Um, notwithstanding that we need to solve a lot of these interoperability and and privacy I think you're 100% right is is the big barrier. Um but ultimately I think that the end state will be that almost all money will move on these rails. We might be 50 years out from it happening but I think that will happen. Um but as end users probably most of us won't and don't need to know what the rails are.

Yeah. I mean I agree but just when you're saying that I was thinking I completely agree except when I send money to myself from one bank account in one country to bank account in another country um it gets blocked but via a stable co it gets blocked or it's in an evening or a weekend and suddenly the banking system can't accept it the next day then you really do notice a different technology right

you get I get

but I again I I I would argue that what you're noticing is the form factor of how that works rather than the technology itself banks if they wanted to could run 247 they just don't want to Yeah, it's a it's a question of level of service. If you provide better service, people don't care if it's what technology is underneath. They just they just see the value and the service you're providing and and there is a lot of value provided by faster 24/7 uh instance settlement.

Yeah, I was about to get anti-bank, but then I realized we have one on our panel and I don't want to be rude, but um look, we've come to the end of our time.

Longer than a minute to do the response.

You can do it in 8 seconds. Uh I realize we haven't really well actually we just touched on the decentralized economy bit of the title which we otherwise ignored but I think that's okay because actually well at least for me the interesting bit right now is the building what's happening the products the services the adoption uh rather than what all that means maybe that's something for the future but um thank you very much to everyone on the panel please thank everyone on the panel uh and pass back to thanks