Is Crypto Still Attracting Institutional Money? | European Blockchain Convention

foreign [Music] please raise your hand if you think that crypto is still attracting institutional money okay I see that we will still need to convince some of them okay Daniel please introduce yourself hi everybody my name is Daniel Vega I I'm a partner at block Asset Management aak ban is a boutique Asset Management base in Luxembourg and we started almost 2017 and we have been investing in digital assets and blockchains since 2017 we try to attract institutional Pleasures to invest in all of you guys so we try to translate what you do into the language of institutional Pleasures Financial managers asset managers and alike in order to breathe and Translate the communication to to bring Capital to your ideas cool thanks Maurice good afternoon my name is Maurice mural I'm the CEO of hoddle and hotel is a dutch-based cryptocurrency firm offering investors private as well as institutional access to the cryptocurrency market via funds we did that with a long-owning strategy and we started in the Netherlands now expanding through Europe we've spent the time of the bear Market building and we're now launching in Spain Luxembourg Swiss and Gibraltar hello all a pleasure to be here my name is Leo Zacks from Israel I'm the legal council of state capital and many years in crypto actually since 2010 so been through everything learned from everything Dreamed a lot and also building things cool thanks very strong panel Daniel the first question goes to you the crypto space has one trillion as a capital Market total capital Capital Market said 330 Millions if we add private debt private Equity private asset we go to 575 trillions um this will move legislation protocol cbdc's what's your take about that these meeting is that we are a one trillion dollar market cap more or less and we need to attract people from the financial markets that they cover 330 trillions and that's very important to put it in context but that they are very interested they are very interested in the other assets that they don't have what other assets they don't have private debt private equity and real assets and this in total is 575 trillion dollars and that's very important for all of us to say look what can we bring and and many of you are doing this the infrastructure the layers the ecosystem for these investors to go be a digital assets tokenization layer one layer two protocols into these private markets and this will Avalanche many of the changes that we are facing legislation is important infrastructure and and I know you are in many spaces in many circumstances looking into this small ecosystems but the real assets and the pride markets these 500 trillion is what is going to be moving the needle of institutional clients and they understand these markets so whatever we build web 3 real assets infrastructure they will make the capital that we need and the legislation for us to invest this is very important I'm sorry that I take the institutional part but it's 330 trillion and we are only 1 trillion so we have to move these guys convince these guys that they put money you know into our ideas because if we are only moving around 1 trillion this is not enough and this is what I hear I was this morning in a meeting with a family office here in Barcelona few billions more than 10 billions under management ask me how much they have in digital assets so we need to convey the message convey the infrastructure that this is the place that they have to be and it has not been easy but okay this is part of my job thank you thank you Maurice um in article in an article from consensus we were given five main points to have institutions going on in access custody monitoring reporting and compliance I know that it's a lot to analyze indeed but what's your take about that well we only have 20 minutes yes I think the most important part is the regulatory part which we can sort of shift all the other things on there sure um in Europe we got migar coming um voting for the European Parliament end of this month hopefully it will come true we're actually a bit Advanced on the on the U.S side when regulatory guidelines are there it gets more easy we've all seen Kraken and the staking thing last week and why is this a kraken were thinking they were doing stuff by the books but the SSC didn't clearly May point out what was allowed or wasn't allowed and how transparent you should be so I think guidelines and rules should be in place um and then the first access point viscosity all the financial institutions want the custody in place and you've seen in the bear Market in 2022 all major firms that have assets under custody or shm Administration offering cryptocurrency custody so I'm talking State Street Bank of New York melon City but also in Europe we got social stations so lots of the the big firms that already are offering custody in traditional assets have the digital Assets Now in place and once the regulation is there more complete I think there will be a very good driver for the institutions to get their money in um and then if you look at accessibility I think that was the first point very short it needs to be improved the technology uh is is driving very quick if we see the shift of the amount of developers last year that came into the blockchain space it's been the best year ever it's get parallels with the internet times when all the smart human capital was shifting to the Amazons the apples and the Facebooks and they're now all going into blockchain so I think the accessibility in the user friendliness of crypto will be definitely will be be on the good side if you look at monitoring risk monitoring and obviously reporting I think that should be in line with all the other assets they have and that it should be it should be easy to integrate that into their systems they already have there's work to be done there but it's uh it's definitely uh coming so yes all five points I think very valid um it's not a matter of uh when but a matter of how soon everything is in place thanks yeah so we're regarding regulation I think regulation you know you should think where is regulation coming from regulation is always coming bottom up so there is no person that sits up high and thinks this should this should be the regulation of this shouldn't be regulation always coming from from the surface from the bottom and uh maybe institutions are waiting for regulation but regulations are coming from you from us so if we are building things that are challenging regulation at some point or are Innovative then The Regulators are looking on it maybe you need to be big like Kraken or whatever and then there are good items are looking at it on it and then they change the regulation also also you as a small Enterprise can work and discuss with regulators and bring the regulation pre-regulation maybe but you can do it and if we look if we look about this financial crisis that we had like a like FTX and all this stuff when you look on those uh on those cases it's not it's not the a new things you know it's not an innovation innovation in every crimes it's a it's an old things that people did and Regulators are looking on it and dealing with it but there is nothing new there uh same when uh Institute financial institutions for them Innovation is is good they look on Innovation they want to innovate they look on the crypto industry they want it but they need the bridge and the bridge is regulation whenever it will it will come from it's good if it will come from a scammy people then we're in a problem if it will come from good projects that from people that will push the borders help to build the regulation it will come and that's how it's it's happening um yeah I guess so every regulation is is blessed because it's it's it's a bridge to the to the real world um yeah I can think a lot about it for institution we have upside like Tech defy smart contract and downside like the price volatility security do you think that downside there's something easy to fix that it will be just fixed and they will go all in or how do you think it's gonna continue yeah I think we are in uh always in a revolutionary process I think we're always going up no matter if it's if it looks like we're standing it's always the on the way up it's always a development process so that I cannot see the downside always uh look on the value try to locate the value go with the value go with the good things and you know we are always on the way up since 2010 believe me yeah and if I could add um if you see that we're in a macroeconomic cycle where there's lots of inflation we actually have I mean if you've been in a few of these sessions uh ethereum with the deflation deflationary system and an uh and staking reward which creates yields yeah that's gonna attract institutional monies especially where you get money in the bank and seeing with a seven and a half percent inflation uh that being halved in real terms in five years I mean we are very positive although we talk with institutional clients we are very positive and from Once yeah here in Europe we have Micah the the new regulatory environment that is coming and this is very powerful from Once Europe is more advanced than the US and this is very important we are going to have custody regulation we are going to have Marketplace regulation we have going to have infrastructure regulation this is huge and we should take advantage we should not avoid going to the regulator and say look I'm building this what do you think we we know already what they are thinking so let's go there and try to build things that are compliance and we can tap into these 330 trillion dollars last year was consolidation we did many good things but we didn't attract a lot of capital and deploy so Europe for once is more advanced of course in Israel we have also legislation in few countries we have legislation but Europe is going to lead the legal framework of the world and this is very powerful let's continue and let's try to build these things you know I'm based in Switzerland and in Switzerland also we have a lot of infrastructure building you know for wealth managers for banks for to be able to read the protocols to be able to have the pricing this is very important and if infrastructure is instrumental work that we are building here you have a lot of ideas but let's try to to to to Oracle those into the system but do you think it's gonna be soon the time when defy and traditional Finance stratify if you want to call it like that is going to be just Finance meaning we want to call it decentralized Finance traditional Finance it will be just Finance it will be the same thing it is the same thing they might just call it still call it traditional finance and and decentralized finance I mean if you look at retail they're still talking about online sales which which actually is all retail but nevertheless I think um yeah it will flow into each other it's impossible if if it doesn't I mean everything that's now in traditional finance will be there in decentralized finance and improved um so it's not a again not a question if it's a it's a question when and we'll we'll go quicker than a lot of people think yeah I do agree it's it's like happened in the past in many other Financial periods that we had Innovation and at the end it was part of the evolution that's the same with the with the defy same with the Bitcoin same same with everything yeah I mean yes is I mean if the vision is very clear I mean everybody question internet and now everybody's in Internet everybody question the digital space everybody is going to be in a digital space everybody questions the web three everybody is going to be in the web 3 is up to us how we do it so it's huge opportunities but we cannot jump steps and we have to work again with this 330 trillions because they are the ones that dictate how we are going to do it we can tell it we can educate them so so it's not a matter of how but it's going to be when when is going to happen it it happened anyway I think also that today nowadays we also speak about Bitcoin for example as a financial asset so this is completely uh a normal View and also tokenizing assets tokenizing Commodities tokenizing really World assets tokenizing the horses maybe I don't know so we are already there imagine 10 years ago Bitcoin was not nobody Black Rock Fidelity nobody will consider Bitcoin an asset class now it's an asset class it's not questionable okay this is huge this is very important let's try to do everything let's try to do this with all the other things that we are presenting here to be normalized is not Financial losses or not this is going to be the norm let's try to to do it and to follow hopefully in the next 10 years everything is is going to be the norm now yeah and especially if you look at a Fidelity digital assets published a report last year 2022 in the bear Market I think it was 58 of the institutions already had access to digital assets which was six percent off of 2021 so even in a bear Market it's still um it still um going growing larger and I I think 2023 will be a whole different Market than uh yeah that will definitely lead to a lot of more adoption thanks we have two minutes left we get a question maybe from the audience if you're fine okay is there any any questions shy group today okay there are no questions I guess we can wrap up a minute early yeah maybe you should ask the first question again and how many people believe that the institutional money is coming exactly indeed that's a good point and after having listened to the panel how many people now think that crypto is still attractive for institutional investors okay that's cool looks better but we haven't gone also we need to study for another 20 minutes you did well indeed indeed thanks again thanks for the to the panelists thanks to the audience and please enjoy the rest of the convention thanks foreign