Bridging TradFi and DeFi: Integration of Financial Services and Tools into DeFi | ETHSofia 2025

[Music] Hello everyone. Uh after this fast check of the microphone, I want to thank uh Ethereum organization and Ethereum Sophia especially for making this collaboration with Capital newspaper uh so we can make this uh panel happen. Uh thank you as well. Uh if you have any questions during the panel, please uh check the QR code and ask them. We will have five or 10 minutes to ask question there directly.

So guys, 2025 was the year where Trapfi really shined and uh we saw almost seamless integration with a lot of applications. Can you uh maybe Vular you firstly uh say what is the most important the most important thing that happened this year? I think when we look at like what's happened like a politically I believe everyone knows what's happened this year and I think it's not like a need a much of an introduction what's happening in US with an industry same in Europe but I believe one key point that we need to focus what's happening this year is actually more traditional financial institutions like banks adopting the crypto but on the other end crypto is becoming less of a investment or trading tool but becoming more of an truly infrastructure first time we start seeing more and more institutions adopting technology the way it should work we saw JP Morgans and large banks adopting onchain transactions for whether it's private or public for their transfers every day but also we see that more and more institutions like bitket uh we are using the technology to power payments and uh transactions every day rather than just focusing on the trading end. Therefore, I believe this year was a truly remarkable in terms of how we can build systems endto-end solutions on chain rather than looking at fragmented ways whether how defi works whether

can you please comment on something more specific like uh let's say world liberty financial

oh I don't want to name the names of the projects uh and I don't think Trump token or world liberty was a remarkable act Yes, some people definitely made some money but in my opinion the more fundamental changes like Genius Act could be a good example how it reshapes the future or the way the bit I don't know by bit hack happened which definitely reshaped how industry works and comes to overcome problems while credit Swiss went down and nothing big happened in there.

Yeah, I wanted to give the word to Ivan as well. What's your opinion? So I think like uh we already said this year has been really transformational in terms of the genius act and how the world has started looking at stable coins. Um from from our extensive uh experience at Payafe with consumers. However, there are still things that need to happen in the entire ecosystem in order for it to be really fully functional and reusable from uh and and customers with regards to day-to-day payments.

And so um uh the the few things that I'd like to to point out uh that still are needed in order to move the needle there is uh first and more foremost ease of integration. So just on the technology side, choosing the right protocol and uh the right integration uh to to implement and making sure there is interoperability between the different uh integrations and protocols is really really important and and still not not really uh an easy task to solve depending on where your business operates. Um obviously merchants need to be fully clear on their liabilities. They need to understand uh how they're they're able to best make sure that travel rules uh are actually in place that they have the identities of their customers. Um and uh purely from from a risk standpoint um they need to be they need to be clear uh on what the risks are that uh they need to mitigate.

Like we all know crypto is uh push versus pull but essentially uh this dynamic creates a lot of opportunities for for scam and other risks for customers. So managing those is uh is is really really essential. Um and even for stable coins themselves, right? We've seen stable coins deping um sometimes. Um then um I think you know purely from a from a merchant standpoint, we we still we still see merchants in the e-commerce and retail space that do prefer crypto payments because of the lack of chargebacks.

But also the flip side of that is that there is no consumer protection. And so consumer protection is a big piece that is is really needed in order to to to solve consumer trust. Um and also speaking about trust, uh all of the trust cues that consumers recognize when they go through for through a payment flow are really important, right? Uh uh day-to-day customers would much prefer to go through payment flows like Google Pay or Apple Pay compared to going through something like MetaMask which has a lot more friction in it. So, so on the UX side that that also needs to develop as well too.

I get it. Can I cut you here and uh give the microphone to Petco who could uh again share his opinion but also add layer to to your opinion as well.

Thank you. First of all, thanks for the kind invitation. Thanks for the organizers including uh capital for uh inviting me on this panel. Now very interesting things are happening. Let me just make a step back into where I'm coming from because most of you are into crypto heavily.

I'm coming from the traditional finance. So I am the kind of representing the um uh establishment in this in this area. So what we what we saw in uh 2024, 2023 and 2025 of course is a phenomenal growth into uh real world assets coming to the uh coming to the blockchain. This is this was uh quite phenomenal. So we are first of all we see a lot of democratization of uh of finance and a convergence of uh of existing technologies like the ones that we had for many many years and and uh and new technologies.

2020 uh uh uh 224% is the is the is the growth of the real world assets on uh uh on on on public chains which is which is great. So the it's no longer a side experiment. A couple of years ago quite a lot of experts in the area coming from my side were saying still crypto is perhaps a scam or it will pass or blah blah blah. Now they're they're turning their eyes towards the crypto community in a couple of different ways. One of them is they seek liquidity.

So obviously they're coming for for the liquidity. Second they're coming for the uh for the market adoption. They see that on the EUX side a lot of things were happening and uh people would like to see their assets and including stuff which is which is like gold on their uh wallets. they would like to see uh obviously all their payments on their mobile phone and including um things like driving license. So a lot of uh a lot of things are coming on the UX side but I would u um I I made a cheat sheet prior to this uh to this uh uh panel.

I I would raise um number one is the first the tokenization of real world assets. It's no longer news. That's to me it's a number one thing. So uh uh what black rockck did what Franklin Templeton did is uh was phenomenal. So uh institutional loans is the second thing which is coming uh on the on the on the real world as it's uh as onchain instrument.

Uh and we are looking forward towards 2026 into tokenizing equities. This to me would be the next phenomenal which will bring if not a couple of trillions but a a few few more billions on uh on on the market. So this is a serious bridge between uh the uh existing trade and the and the defy market. Also um uh the uh some of the some of the experts see a lot of usability on the tree fight side they would like to bring to the uh existing um uh existing finance. So this is also I think um so integration is happening uh real world assets uh coming on the on the public blockchains.

This is a fantastic news.

Vulgar wanted to ask you would I be able to buy say uh Nvidia on bitgget soon or

you can already buy it and that's the thing like I think what Robin Hood did in the beginning of the year is tokenizing. Uh today we are trying to tokenize everything. I am totally against the idea that you know everything should be tokenized but uh definitely there's a huge benefit of tokenizing real world assets or stock market because this way we are able to trade things not only on our platform but we can also trade things on the times that they're not tradable right because stock markets close down but through tokenization I believe soon we'll be able to have true 24/7 markets even if they don't operate in uh real world or in the in its traditional form and I think that's that's incredible how far crypto markets came and now we are pushing NASDAQs and New York Stock Exchange or whether the other stock exchanges in the world to actually kind of come and compete for the customers that is already investing within the crypto ecosystem. A really short story from today. Uh it happened today at like 2 or 3:00 a.

m. I saw that uh Teta raised 20 billion at uh 500 billion uh valuation. Can you comment that because uh it will be interesting.

I don't have much knowledge on that. Therefore like I I I I won't be able to comment or maybe you can tell us more.

Yeah. Uh it will be just realizing what is happening with uh a stable coin provider this big is uh something really interesting to comment on your side

because like when we look at the stable tokens because I I work a lot with the European lawmakers uh when we talk about stable tokens or stable cryptocurrencies we usually think about crossber transaction on a retail end right if you are having USDT backed bank cards or what retail does. But actually the biggest implementation of the stable coins that also European lawmakers are kind of a backing is about the global settlements by the large companies because usually global settlements let's say big providers whether it is crossber transaction by the petroleum giants like British Petroleum or whether it's the city bank that not only banks corporation but banks the government when we look at the money movement in that kind of a scale We see there's a huge delay on through settlements or through US dollar clearing and eventually stable tokens make that payments instantaneous. This way we will be seeing more and more global adoption of the currencies cryptocurrencies and on the other end if you look at the tokenization like Dubai ports are tokenizing almost entire fleet and entire the merch or goods movement. Same goes for Panama Canal and Swiss Canal and many other large ports in the world like Rotterdam. This way we'll be seeing that more and more this big kind of transaction will happen through the stable tokens and tokenization making all that settlements safer, secure and faster which will increase the velocity of the money.

This way we will be seeing that a true competition and I think that was one of the smart moves of the current US administration. They are not just wanting to bring the crypto to dominate the world because the entire crypto market is around 3.5 trillion or something like that. It is almost as big as Nvidia just one company. But eventually by pushing so much on a stable token uh legislative front and eventually building through the tetar city banks and many other large players we will be seeing the US or US dollars domination coming back because the same way runs on dollar all big clearances happen in dollar with the stable tokens we'll be seeing that big corporations still will be relying on dollar for all cost for the transaction and that's why whatever happening with stutter and all these big institutions Even you mentioned world liberty eventually they are trying to do US dollar one kind of their own stable tokens and this is the biggest testament how the US trying to bring that dollar's dominance back in an international trade and lastly I want to mention one thing look from a bigger picture perspective the institutions like one guards black rocks the temple foundation they manage tens of trillions dollar in the world and just By tokenizing their own assets internally, but also having their own internal stable token, they can transact within their ecosystem and not rely on city bank on HSBC on millions of dollars every day that they pay for transaction eventually just to move their own money between their own sister companies or internal bodies.

And we will be seeing more kind of a global uh perspective of stable token adoption that is very far from the retail and it's more of an institutional adoption that will cut cost and make things much faster and better.

On that point, I wanted to ask Ivan uh if you can pass the mic. Yeah. Uh from a payment provider perspective uh what's need what needs to improve right now in these market conditions? Yeah, I mean I think we already covered I think the consumer perspective. Um now from a from a stable coin perspective I think the situation is uh similar but also slightly different.

Um just because um um you know uh the the the times to finalize a transaction don't matter that much if you just suppose that to like your normal bank settlement with correspondent banks and and we know the the the times for for those services are really really bad and so I think um you know um like like we already uh covered you know investing in that space and expanding that market is actually um a really strong case for crypto and it it it really is uh the way to uh put crypto in in more hands in in more treasury management systems across those large businesses. And um uh to your point, helping those large businesses uh actually uh use uh you know a closed loop ecosystem powered by those stable coins to very effectively and uh cheaply you almost in real time move money. Um so um but but I think the fundamental uh really broad use case as far as businesses is concerned uh around payments really is settlements. And so settlements are going to be um really the powerhouse uh and in the the real indication of of of large scale adoption across businesses. Um and so we as a company really um believe um that that that is a space that is going to grow and we want to grow in the space.

Um and uh so choosing the right partner there however the right protocol and the right integration is uh is still going to be essential and crucial uh just based on the geography and where you want to operate right as we know um basically uh Tron and BNB are really really strong in Latin America and Asia. Um but really to enable other corridors for example US to Europe, Europe to US um we we need we need um you know better better interoperability.

Can we pack the mic to Petco because I want to check his site as well as uh uh builder and as well entrepreneur site. uh what is the again most valuable integration right now for you?

Yeah. Uh it's a very interesting question that you've raised regarding Teter and I believe we u kind of learned that with the new was it 8 months with the new administration now or nine months that uh everything seems to be around deals. So perhaps it's a deal that it's happening and it's uh a deal regarding um a more compliance and a more compliant integration uh of of the stable coins. I think this is really happening. So uh obviously uh at one side we see the permissionless nature of the public blockchains and the public uh and the and the anonymity which is a a kind of a um in in I wouldn't say a conflict but needs to comply with the expectations of the regulatory authority uh internationally um in Europe this might be Mika in the states it might be it might be whatever is happening with the with the genius act and it will be enacted a little bit later uh this next year.

But anyway um I see a couple of things happening identity and compliance integration. So uh turning uh turning parties into more visible, more trustable uh parties. Um we now have the technology so no longer the milliseconds are uh uh a problem. So the infrastructure could handle um a gazillions of transactions per second uh 150 milliseconds and less than a sent transaction on a on the Solano network is technically peanuts. So we need more confidence that asset onchain might uh and should meet the same standard as the assets offchain.

This is really a a hurdle. uh it comes through perhaps a configurable uh uh permissioning which is coming from uh uh from the from the permission blockchains privacy u uh uh preserving uh compliance encrypted balances whitelisted validation I wouldn't go into many technical details a lot of collateral integration and obviously this will uh uh this will make the liquidity coming from the public chains into more uh a kind of a visible uh still transparent but uh uh uh u a configurable permissioned um uh asset on the on the on a combination of a public and private blockchains. This will technically enable the re real world assets to uh uh come from even billions to to trillions in the next few years. Then again uh for you what is uh the biggest unwalked for mainstream adoption coming let's say in year or maximum two

um to me uh I would I would read your question is uh what might be the bottleneck for the trade fight great defi integrations uh this would be building a compliance tooling uh regarding interoperability uh Ivan mentioned this identity. We would like to see more identity integrated and embedded within uh within um uh um various chains. Um and of course building an infrastructure for compliant scale. Obviously we need uh uh what from the uh from the um institutional investment side I see and also coming from the regulatory side is trust uh trust at scale. This is uh this is um this might wrap up my uh my statement regarding where where where are the integrations coming?

I wanted uh to ask Vugar the same question. What depending on you is the biggest?

I'm happy that you did because I was about to jump because uh honestly from our end like for like bitkit was around for seven years and all this time we were thinking how to build a better product whether faster, simpler, easy to on board. But then we realized that yes it makes adoption easy. It is not scalable. it doesn't bring suddenly another 100 million user because now your speed is faster. What we realized because we are a trading platform and it's kind of a built to trade and that was the initial mindset from the beginning that we need to on board traders.

Today we are the number one copy trading platform with 200,000 traders professionally posting their trades. Another 120 million people kind of trading one way or another. But we came to one key realization that we won't be able to on board next billion investors, next billion traders, but we can on board next billion coffee drinkers. We can on board next billion people who take a taxi every day to work. We'll be on boarding next billion people who buy something online.

And payments and actually is the next big thing in my opinion that will bring a true adoption, a mainstream adoption. Crypto as a true mean of a payment. Whenever you go buy your coffee, you should be able to pay in crypto. As a merchant, you should be able to accept crypto as a payment. This way, crypto first time is truly becoming a currency because look from the perspective, the idea of Bitcoin was a peer-to-peer transaction.

Today, we are very happy that institutions are coming in and almost all the Bitcoin is now held by large institutions where and people around there. or think of any token in your portfolio like probably you guys have XRPs other cardosanos uh I don't know suis how many of these tokens you actually use for the reason it's minted most of them you don't you just hold the assets in hopes that price will go up or price will go down and you will make some money it is a good investment tool but actually the power lies on every time you transact if you were able to pay in bitcoins. If you are able to pay in ethereums or we transact in such a huge scale that will be when the truly crypto will become a currency unless then it is just an investment vehicle and in my opinion the mass adoption we are finally there where we are able not only just buy and keep and hope the price goes up. We are able actually to transact in between each other whether sending money from one country to another or buying a coffee using your crypto and that's where adoption happens and that's why the stable tokens is also important because that is how the corporations will talk to corporations governments will talk to governments and we will be seeing more and more money or crypto money used as an actual money rather than just buying something and hoping that the price will go up and it's very important because yes bitcoin is scarce price always goes up and we are greedy to go trade with it but because stable tokens by nature they're pegged to US dollars or British pounds we are more tend to easily part with them and able to spend them and that's how I believe we are on the way to on board next billion users

on that point how are you or maybe are you uh preparing for the next presidential election and what do you expect

it depends which country is president we are talking about

if it is if it is US president I am not a US citizen therefore I have no plans and my company doesn't operate in US therefore we have no other plans

and I believe because as a technology developer we shouldn't be much influenced by the political weather rather focus on a political climate and because

you are focusing on adoption basically

yeah because we are focusing on more a long-term solution as I mentioned we invested in the middle of pair market $30 million to decentralized wallet where no one was talking about decentralization because we wanted to build the next big thing that is coming after 5 years and today we don't want to think about what is next president doing because then it will make us very shortsighted and for anyone in this room I'm sure a lot of you made some money through the Trump tokens but when you look at the vesting schedule of Trump token it's only three years because he wants to collect as much money as possible before he departs the office while the person himself is banking on a short-term gains why we should care.

Uh Petco, do you have something to add because uh Yeah.

Yeah. Um first of all, I was very um surprised positively by the new administration because only a couple of years ago um um probably parts of this administration was saying um Bitcoin is a scam. If you remember this,

yeah, they were saying the same, right? But now they just cashed more money. Well, I I'll put this aside. I would kindly slightly tend to disagree with you on the on the on on the crypto being used as payments. Um, if we are talking about real like international worldwide adoption, I would be betting more on the stable coin side.

uh less on the CBDC although I was a big CBDC um supporter in the past but we will see even in Europe um a very strong uh resistant towards CBDC I don't think that the digital euro will will be that successful as many people predict and we already see some signs coming from the European Parliament but this will be revealed in the next um a couple of weeks to me uh I will bet on uh stronger adoption of stable coins if they come with a a a crypto token which is used as a utility token and it goes up down whatever that's fine completely based on the number of the transaction and the adoption of the particular blockchain why not this is exactly why the um crypto tokens were invented on first stage but I will bet on uh uh massively on u on um um um uh um kind of a

stable tokens but anyway just let me Sorry. Uh I would I would like and I think that if we use the TPS who's by the way first of all not a strongest supporter of Bitcoin uh in the first place but if we use his um uh uh uh term for uh anti uh uh uh um antifragile uh asset I believe the more antifragility will come if we move from treasuries towards uh uh public credit private credit being tokenized, private equities and uh not why not alternative assets. This to me would be the um what will make the whole industry uh work in that

I would agree but also stable tokens they're not as stable right if you live in Europe dollar lost its value and if you are an American and trade with Europe dollar like the euro is around 1.17 cents it means even the stable tokens we see them they're not stable as it is they're just pegged to particular token we see what's happening with Japanese yen and Chinese yuan And in my opinion, just because there are 220 governments issuing money out there, we think that what is pegged to their currency is stable. But when you look at a global perspective, actually dollar is losing its value and it means it's not as stable as we assume. Maybe we pegged something to the gold but then is the gold and that's why I believe why Bitcoin is becoming a gold standard because this is the way that we see the value continuously growing rather than dropping. Ivan, I'm sure you have a lot to add to this conversation and again after that the real question is what is the biggest catalyst for mainstream adoption in the coming year?

Yeah. So I I think one very interesting experiment that the people are are are already seeing being rolled out and and that actually comes from the likes of Visa and Mastercard already is stable coin backed uh prepaid card and and I think that's a really good experiment that uh is going to show um you know um how how likely people are actually going to use uh crypto as as as a means to payment because uh you know fundamentally um I think just from an investor standpoint people don't necessarily associate assets with with something that you have to pay with right this is why we have money is medium um and so I think uh there is also an interesting space where we have to see how visa and mastercard also respond because uh they still have by far the largest payment network and and they own and they operate this network. Uh and that network still has you know a place and utility fundamentally to customers that any alternative way of payments have to basically match to right or surpass. So that that that's a way standard. Um so I think um like I said uh before uh and and we discussed broadly here identities uh being able to tokenize identities and being able to to comply with um um regulations around uh source of wealth um around identity is going to be really really key.

uh and being able to to tokenize this again gives gives uh you know an industry-wide um way to to to effectively recognize and to do KYC. Um, one one very big problem in in in today's ecosystem is that you have a number of different services applications that that all have to KYCU, right? And and fundamentally solving that problem is is a place where where crypto can definitely make a significant difference. Um, not only as an investment means of investing, not not not only as means of paying, but also just as means of pure utility. And I think that's that's great.

Um so yeah uh I think uh a lot of different avenues to pursue here.

Yeah. Uh Petco, can we discuss with you? Uh I will add a new topic to our discussion. It's basically the uh stability of the US dollar and how stable coins could uh maybe disrupt it. Could you give your opinion on the topic

uh in in the short term or in the long term? There are many uh uh there are many um

in the medium term or

in the medium term. Okay, cool. Um in in the short term, I think um the stable coins will have um zero impact on on the on the debt. So I I think we will all agree that the EOS depth is out of any control and uh neither stable coins will uh help or uh uh u kind of a um disrupt this when it comes to when it comes to the stable coins uh itself. This will u embedding them with uh with obviously with treasures uh it's it's uh it's it's um it will it will drive adoption.

Now when it comes to the dollar, I think it's primarily a source of their external geopolitical factors rather than rather than crypto or anything we're doing which is lies down with the with the uh the conflict in in far far east uh Asia which is um uh which is might be one of the um uh key disrupting factors. Obviously the different wars that are held uh near us also inflict obviously the protectionist policy of the America. Will it continue or we will see more deals happening? Uh we now see uh President Trump and President CP been kind of a talking continuously on on on new deals. So I to me uh honestly speaking I believe that uh the dollar is safe as a as a uh as a as a as a global uh value but we will see more and more various CBDC's various uh tokenize uh uh currencies uh uh to try to uh not destabilize but to challenge this uh this global um uh leadership of the of the dollar.

as as wooer said uh I think it's safe at this stage because we see more and more in instruments embedded within the dollar and this will continue with swift on top of it or uh uh or or kind of seeing more stable coins or global stable coins being enacted something to add

honestly I was like we usually look into crypto and kind of try to learn what's happening in global markets I want to do like a reverse psychology you can think of like a US dollar as a project token of US economy and more transactions there's more gas fees right and that's why US doesn't want US dollar to go out of power that's why they so much invest in stable tokens because swift runs on US dollars and if today we will have a system that uses the US dollar as a stable token will generate more virtual gas fees for US economy and that's how the world works because it's not only for us it's not only about the uh just like a game who's transacting how it's also like a power game because whether they print the dollars or whether they mint it still it's the US dollars and still the global economy runs on it and that's why they are so keen to invest and look also into the President Trump's uh the policy and the current administration's aspect uh from the reserve announcement to any other big project it is about the deals it's about the technology they use it's about who they invest and it's only about the American companies. It's not about another Chinese company that would get a license to mint US tokens. It is always the American corporation that is able to do things for American economy. And let's not forget that they just see an opportunity and make sure that they take the best out of it but still keep it within the US economy or within that ecosystem of US economy rather than thinking anything else. That's why we see even like a price action of Cardano.

We saw what's happening with XRP. We see how much there's a favor about for sui because all of them are American companies. Like every other discussion I organize, I want uh the last five minutes to be about an essence you want to give to the audience. Something we missed in our discussion, something you cannot. So we can start uh with uh Petco basically you have no question but you have to give material.

Yeah. Um okay. So um um a couple of thoughts I really want to ask you. What wouldn't you tokenize? This is something that uh that you've mentioned briefly.

So, um obviously uh all of us are pro-tokenization of various assets. We're now working uh at industry and uh at archery as well as partners towards tokenization a lot of real world assets and bridging them to the um uh to the crypto world. This is something we're going to see at the later stage a convergence. Uh we are no longer going to talk perhaps in next two three years about crypto and non-crypto. We are going just to talk about finance.

So we we will see much more tokenization or just putting things on chain rather than tokenization and not tokenization. Most of the new uh assets will be designed with tokenization in mind. I believe um I would like perhaps someone else perhaps probably Facebook at that time later on meta wasn't probably the right partner to create a basket of currencies perhaps someone will come with something smart as Libra because Libra was designed to be super smart so when we're talking stability this might be uh also um uh uh one of the uh one of the one of the stable

but let's just hear again what he wouldn't tokenize Yeah, but let's let's hear what sorry. Yeah, please.

I believe that when we talk about tokenizing, tokenization is a broad aspect, right? Because most of the things that we say they are tokenized, they're not actually a fully tokenized. They have a token twin that represent them. Today, when we talk about tokenized US stocks, stock is not tokenized. There is a custodian.

For example, I hold one share of Tesla and now I give you a digital twin of it or token twin of it telling that this represent it but it's not actually a stock you can have the token but it doesn't mean you have a dividend yield coming from that token because I am the actually the shared holder first we need to kind of understand what is a token what is a digital twin and what is token twin or token representation of something that's very important Second, I saw that people now try to tokenize things that carry a physical value but also things that doesn't carry. For example, you can tokenize a gold, a bar of a gold, you can tokenize non-refined gold, but can you also tokenize a gold mine? That's a very important uh question that goes on a policy end because then how much things are prone to be manipulated also when you look into the uh asset uh list especially for the accounting people there for example you can lease a car right this way you own physically a car you drive it but the company that leases the car to you has that lease in your asset list this way we kind of double the value because then there is a citor and debittor And that way we have to understand whenever we tokenize something how much actually we create an synthetic value and if we tokenize an asset who is the custodian the one that actually holds it or you have all the rights to it and eventually I don't think that we have to tokenize everything for that particular sake. In my opinion tokenization should serve a purpose either make something faster, speedier or cheaper. If tokenizing an asset doesn't make it more liberal, it doesn't make uh it faster or cheaper, it has no value in my opinion.

And I can give you one idea. For example, we all use PDF, right? Previously, you had A4 paper. Today, almost all PDF protocols scans you that A4 paper is an A4 printed or PDF document is an actually digital contract. It is not.

Then we have machine readable contracts. Then we have smart contract that's selfdue and we if we just kept printing that A4 format we are not modernizing it the same way if today we take the title deed of an apartment in London that was a printed paper now we just scan it and then we tokenize it on a chain but still to access it you go back to that PDF document then it is not a true tokenization and I think that's the one of a big issues that just for the sake of something we don't tokenize thing in a form of a tokenization And lesson we learned was NFDs, right? We had pictures that became JPEGs that became NFDs that were not actual NFDs and we saw how

speculation happened.

Yeah.

And died

either uh you were already talking uh you get the last panel as well. So your essence again just in three or four sentences

the essence you want to give to the audience from today. One advice I would give to the audience is that uh whenever especially from the investment perspective I think we are in a very interesting period where you can get an exposure through the tokenized assets whether it is the stocks or the real world assets it is the best time for you to kind of diversify your portfolio even though I'm most of the time I'm not a big fan of diversification I believe you have to kind of go all in but for people who are not here like a kind of a dayto-day day traders. I would definitely advise everyone or give an piece of an advice that if you are building for future definitely go and kind of a get an exposure to everything out there especially if you're dollar cost averaging because this is a very exciting time uh especially what's happening for example in bitcoin market we saw so many bitcoin alltimes high and I always say if you haven't don't have a bitcoin probably it is the cheapest price point you will be able to get it and lastly The one key advice I got from my mentor and it worked for me probably it will work for you is that the one of the best strategies is dollar cost averaging when acquiring assets whether Bitcoin, real estate or anything else. But I'll give you an advice. If you decide at any point to sell something, selling in the same way you bought by dollar cost averaging the sales is a great strategy to not maximize the gains but minimize the losses.

And this could be my kind of a two cents dollar cost average while buying and selling and have as many as exposure point as possible especially now that you can get tokenized assets whether it is space X that doesn't even you know went to public IPO or whether it's the Tesla stocks this is a very exciting times to be at last but not least I want to ask the same question Ivan uh so your essence something you can give to to the public. Let's say time to think about it. I think if I'm personally as as as somebody that deals with with customers actually trying to solve day-to-day problems trying to pay um you know consumer trust is a real real uh important aspect and I think um we all need to figure out as an industry how to best guarantee that and and make sure that all of our customers uh uh feel safe. if you um that there is as little friction as possible and that they're able to to effectively pay. Uh but you know um it it really doesn't start with with with with the customers uh like we spoke it start like we spoke with it starts with merchants um it starts with uh stable coin adoption it starts with closed loop uh ecosystem place and so um I feel like um it's it's it's very important to realize where we are in in that trajectory of of the industry evolving right now.

Um, and really the time to to go and do those things and uh really be crypto ready is is right now.

Thank you.

That's the big take away.

I have a helper in the audience who is telling me we have a little bit of time for questions. So please let's bring them up if someone has questions.

Yeah. So there were a couple of questions that actually Thank you very much gentlemen. First of all, that came in through the very nice tool that we have. However, I would perhaps consider asking you because I did see a lot of you leaving and these questions came in quite a long time ago. Who has a burning question for the audience and I will come right with you to to you with the mic?

Feel free to shoot. I know it's the end of the day, but yes. Excellent. You're still awake. Wonderful.

So, hi. I don't know how relevant this question is but given that we are late stage boo already. Uh what do you think will be the catalyst for the bare market I guess we have to start throwing ideas because yeah according to the fourear cycle we probably have how much three four months left. Do you think like maybe it will be like some kind of against stable coin scandal better ter or like the last time was FTX and Luna who kind of escalate accelerated the downfall a little bit because BTC wasn't supposed to go to 16. I think there was some kind of

I don't think in today's ecosystem we will be we will need that big event to have a bull market or bare market because we saw what happened to Bbit in the beginning of the year and luckily there wasn't a domino effect that's a very good sign but because this is the only cycle we see that Bitcoin's price action doesn't have a full kind of a cycle effect on altcoins and anything else therefore I believe we are moving being less cyclic public in terms of the eco entire ecosystem. uh in my opinion we'll be seeing more of like a bull and be bare cycle of a bitcoin alone and then we will be seeing the entire market moving in a different direction and probably we will be seeing a shorter more frequent cycles rather than having these one big two three year bull cycles and bare cycles that will be more of a coherent and I think that is one thing we need to prepare as an industry especially if you are trading or investing in the long term and in my opinion there's a very positive action of it because today when we See institutional or individual investors that invest in new project, we see that they still think of in a cyclic way and they want to a project produce results within a year and a half or two years maximum. But if we are able to achieve that kind of a less volatile but also more frequent cycle, we will be seeing more a long-term investment in my opinion. to like kind of a shortly answer your question. I don't believe we will need a big event happening to see a full cycle.

Secondly, we will not be seeing a cycle the way we used to it where Bitcoin price crash crashes like a four times and then everything else crashes. And if you go see what is happening recently, we've been seeing Bitcoin alltime high every two months and then we'll be seeing the what kind of a market action happens. And we've seen so many days where entire market was in red and Bitcoin was in green which kind of confirms a theory.

After all, he's describing a black swan effect and it's just that unpredictable. Do we have any other questions?

What is your favorite use case for DeFi apart from stable coins and what are you excited about and uh something big that it maybe is coming? Can you pick a speaker?

Sorry.

Who to speak up?

No. No. Who do you want to answer?

No. No. Uh, everyone that is willing.

Okay. So, it's up to you guys.

You want to pick up?

I think what I can answer from BitK's perspective. We recently introduced something called onchain where we want to compete as a centralized exchange compete with a decentralized world where we are not focusing because in decentralized world you can put any token right to be traded and then you don't have this arbitrary body who decides while you look at Binance by bit ox and all of our centralized exchange partners where we kind of become this judge who decides what to list. With Bitket onchain, we actually give people a chance to trade on any token on chain while still being within our ecosystem. And in the beginning of my talk, I already mentioned this for us like more and more products become a feature. And one of the biggest feature is when you have an onchain uh a product that can be traded within our ecosystem as long as user is already there and money is or liquidity is there.

why we limit them to I don't know 600 tokens that we listed while people want to trade more and I think what DY is bringing is that liberal opportunity definitely it comes on a cost but uh one thing we need to learn from D5 is to give opportunity for everyone to participate but still need to understand how we do it and I think what we are looking now is the hyper regulation in US they're trying to also regulate the DeFi which will be a very interesting thing to see because Today DeFi is where everyone else who doesn't like regulation kind of goes and I think that's one thing that you know serving to the industry in a different angle. uh the same way you had traditional banks, digital banks and neo banks and I think that is kind of a centralized exchanges, wallets and defy and this is kind of all coming together slowly centralized exchanges are pushing to offer more DeFi like a services but then also DeFi kind of adopting all the opportunities from the centralized exchange whether it is yield farming or whether it's just like the way they talk to the customers. I think though we have to we have to admit that regulations bring clarity and clarity is required for mass adoption. So I think we don't have to shy away from the fact

with that I have to thank you for sharing the stage with me today. Uh I think we made something good. Thank for the audience as well. And again we can wrap it up. Heat.

Heat. [Applause] [Music]