Interview with Zoltan Vardai, Breaking News Reporter at Cointelegraph | EBC11

Hi everyone. We are here at the European Blockchain Convention number 11. I'm here with Zultan Valdi from Cointelegraph, an excellent reporter, one of the finest people we have in crypto reporting these days. How are you?

I I'm doing great. I'm I'm trying not to blush on the camera because nobody's ever this generous with me. I'm also usually on the other end of the interviews. I usually ask the question. So, it's it's really nice to sit on the other end of the chair.

How about you, Alona? How are you doing today?

I'm I'm doing well. Actually landed in Barcelona just a couple of hours ago, so kind of like, you know, uh getting through the day. Um but last year we sat together and our interview got so many views and so much interest, so we thought it would be a good idea to maybe talk again. Um what a wild year we've had in crypto, right?

It's it it's been really a wild year. And uh I I think uh I think one of the wildest things for me um obvious as as we're talking we just had one of the biggest No, it was actually the biggest liquidation events in crypto was a 20 billion liquidation. I'm adding at least 20 billion because Binance doesn't share um the whole data. There's a few exchanges which only share limited data. And uh one fascinating thing for me is that when Bitcoin dropped to 110K um investor sentiment entered into extreme fear.

Now imagine this Bitcoin 110K investors at extreme fear. I I've I have no idea how I should really rationalize this. It's been a crazy year.

Yeah, super crazy. Um, you know, the US administration has a lot to do with uh how things are shifting and how things are looking. Um, what do you think? I mean, looking at everything that the industry is pushing right now, what do you think in terms of, you know, stable coins and regulation and and states issuing their own tokens, where do you think like most of the attention, most of the eyes would go next year? That that that's a great question.

I feel like stable coins um for one is something that's always at the center of attention even if we enter a bare market or not, which it's not guaranteed that we'll have another bare market obviously. Um but I feel like stable coins um just because they're they're not only used for investment advice for investment purposes anymore. They're not just the dry powder used to enter into Bitcoin and Ether. Um we have some of the biggest firms doing remittances in stable coins. We have a lot of use cases coming around with stable coins and uh just because the genius hack has really legitimized them in the US.

I feel like stable coins right now are here to stay and they we will just see more kind of um progressive implementations. Um but what one thing I'm really curious about is to see it before um is what happens with the US clarity act. Actually I've I've just had the pleasure to to speak with Matt Hugan from Bitwise asset management. He's the chief of sorry he's anvi and one thing he told me is that he actually thinks that the clarity act and the approval of the clarity act could be a significant crypto market catalyst. So I'm really curious how that will play out because at the same time a lot of people are saying that interest rates one should be the next crypto market catalyst but as Matt Matt also said like interest rates are already predicted by the market.

We're currently pricing into interest rates um for the year. So if that happens that that shouldn't provide another crypto market catalyst on its own. Um and then thirdly what we really depend on next year um is whether Bitcoin can really break free of this fouryear cycle. Um that that's something that a lot of people have called for personally. This is my third Bitcoin bull cycle.

So I'm a little bit jittery when people are saying it's going to be different. We're going to 100K. Um I really remember when when last cycle we just crossed uh just crossed 69K which was um it was really uneventful in terms of macroeconomic events. We've obviously had a lot of quantitative easing before we had a lot of new money entering. Um we did have stimulus checks which we may have again right now which is which is funny.

But um other than that, Bitcoin has really uneventful uneventfully crossed 69K um and and it slowly trickled down. Um obviously this year is different. We do have the ETFs. Um they provide the billions of inflows. We do have corporations buying Bitcoin and uh it does it does seem like we do have better financial conditions.

Uh M2 M2 financial uh money supply is going up. So all the real macro macro indicators point to the fact that we could be resuming this upside. And uh I think if if this is proven and if Bitcoin doesn't crash until the end of the year um I think a lot of interest will just flow back to the key which is Bitcoin um because this would be unprecedent unprecedented in terms of in terms of uh Bitcoin's historic cycle and uh I don't know maybe the influent the institutional drivers may just overpower um this fouryear cycle

let's see I mean I also you know crypto and bitcoin is still like an industry conversation uh even with everything that's going on. There's a bit more awareness outside of our industry, but really not where you would expect it to be given everything that has happened. Um, and if we're considering the geopolitical movement and the Genius Act and Trump's other uh steps and PayPal issuing their coin and Bank of America saying they're going to do it and Walmart saying they're going to do it and the state in the US says it's going to do it, do you think we are on the verge of mass adoption or is it still us within the industry thinking that it's happening but it's not there yet?

Um, it's this this is a hard question. Um I um I guess I want to answer this by by prefacing that um I first first and most importantly think about Bitcoin as a network. Um so for me uh we uh currently I think uh I think we're still in the early adopter phase. I I don't have the chart in front of me I'm afraid. Um but for in in terms of Bitcoin on I I think it's just a just less than 10% globally who still own Bitcoin.

So that I wouldn't define that as mainstream auction by any means. However, if um if we look at stable coins, as you mentioned yourself, um we have some of these giant corporations coming out with their their own stable coins and at the same time the existing stable coins are already facilitating um billions even trillions uh in transactions for Visa, for Mastercard, for these payment giants. So, in in terms of blockchain technology, um we we we've definitely crossed mainstream adoption even if for Bitcoin particularly um mainstream adoption may still may still take a cycle. Although it depends if that would be a cycle but um just looking at stable coin usage and just looking at how sophisticated stable coin usage is because we see real implementations from tment giants um we also see it used for remittances. Um the the moderator previously on the stage after after the stable coin chat has just asked how many of the of the listeners there are getting paid in stable coins or are making uh making payroll in stable coins and I I think it was it was a good quarter of the room um who had their hands up and I assume that another quarter may not have heard the question.

Um it I I feel like blockchain is definitely entered mass uh mass consciousness in this case.

Cool. So let's go back to your writing and coverage and your day-to-day lives as a journalist. Um has there been like a point the past year of a story or um a role of events that happened that like really shocked you that you felt like you know this is an aha moment for you about the industry? My aha moment came came a while ago, but uh what what really shocked me recently um is that we've well I I have to speak about this uh this liquidation again from this weekend. I'm sorry it's just on everyone's mind.

Um I what really shocked me is that we've seen some of the largest exchanges face issues um face glitches. Uh Binance for instance has been very forthcoming about it and I applaud the fact that they've paid 190 no it was 283 million to users uh just because of these glitches and just because of what they lost in terms of positions. So I certainly applaud that. That was one big moment that stuck out for me. And another big moment at the same time is that OD5 protocols have have withered the storm.

Um I would say even better than the centralized protocols. I mean I've I've just started to Stanley Kulach Kulachov of A um a few hours ago and we were just discussing this that A has just completely processed through all the liquidations um without any issues without any ebaggings without any any glitches. So um as as as Tani was also saying, I feel like this once again um could be a moment where where where we kind of recognize that we need more decentralized infrastructure rather than just decentralized rails which which will eventually come into bottl at some point. So I think I think this is a huge aha moment and at the same time this whole year we've seen a lot of decentralized exchange momentum. We've seen Hyperliquid.

We're not now seeing the we're now seeing the BMBB chains a and uh they are starting to really eat away in the market share of centralized exchanges. So I feel like that in itself does prove that uh that the industry is floating back to this inherent decentralization.

Yes. And we haven't even spoken about the more like semi-traditional financial tools like ETFs and index and all of those that are coming in big and are allowing people to engage with a product that they are a bit more familiar with considered you know the decentralization and all of that. It will be an exciting year ahead of us. So for our viewers, you know, who are uh coming from founders of crypto companies and all of that, um when you get people to, you know, send you stories, offer you uh news, um do you want to give them some kind of like an overview of what is it you like to see, what you don't like to see, what you'd like to be fetched? Um I personally I love human interest stories from one perspective because because obviously um we we're we're very much focused on technology but I think just outing the technology and the TPS and the numbers that that uh um that these protocols give um makes us miss a large segment of the mainstream.

So I really like to see a story where for instance there's a human interest angle. We've recently ran a story on one of one BNB chain donation to uh I think it was the the Malta Cancer Foundation. They've donated 200,000 worth of BNB a few years ago. They didn't touch it and now it was worth like north of three million. Wow.

Which which really speaks to it. And the another thing for for any founder who wants to contact me and my email address, my alter pages is very public. Uh my ex profile as well. Um I if if you think that you're building something that will affect a lot of crypto holders will um it will be of interest to a lot of our readers or or it's something that could perhaps change something in industry. I want to hear from you.

Absolutely. Great. I think the last thing we haven't touched upon which is crazy is where AI has taken us in the past year. I mean a year ago it wasn't at all a part of the conversation. All of a sudden it runs our lives completely.

So also in crypto the embedment is quite spectacular. You've seen all kinds of like AI uh trends and uh usages that you found to be very exciting.

Um I'm I I've been a longtime fanboy. I'm going to fanboy out here, but I love Benver who who's the founder of the well now they're called the artificial super intelligence alliance or ACI for short. Um I I think they've merged um I believe it was next year with Fetcheri and uh what they're they're essentially building is that they're building a decentralized network um which can facilitate AI based uh AI based services and it can eventually lead to um the facilitation or I mean the development of of artificial general intelligence and u I I've been following Mr. Gzo's work for a long time. I actually haven't had the chance to speak with him in person.

I would really love to, but I think whatever he's building um will always be treated like a sort of uh industry standard for decentralized AI. And I think the issue here um I'm I'm a bit concerned about not not that much about crypto and AI together. I'm just concerned about the general development of AI and where that's heading. Um because we've seen uh we've seen uh we've seen the centralized model models emerge with social media and we've seen the billions of dollars uh worth of worth of marketing money and uh that that these giants have basically generated on our personal information and there's very little that came back to our users besides the fact that it's it's uh it it's really usable for us and it's a free public good. it I can see it as a free public good but if we are um we are pretending that AI is going to be this huge public good and it's going to bring us a bit forward I think the conversation needs to be around how um both people can become stakeholders in this and and not how two or three decentralized giants can uh can basically um pioneer and pioneer this and profit from all our data I think something need come back for us

for sure I mean there's this saying that if you're not paying for something you are the product right so I'm guessing that's also the case for AI. Uh, thank you so much for joining us. Anything else you'd like to add to our viewers or to

uh I I I I guess um I guess one thing I'm I'm really curious about and I've been following along with my reporting um is what will happen after this traditional fouryear cycle and the traditional fouryear cycle will end either um at at in the middle of October or in the middle of November. Now if we cross that I'm really curious as Kumap will have to come after that. A lot of people are saying we have the ETFs now. We have we have the corporations that are buying Bitcoin. Um, but one thing that's that's slightly concerning you here is that whenever we see a large draw down, we often see ETFs selling away.

And to me, this points to a bit of a GM behavior, it doesn't point to the behavior of institutions or pension funds who just want to stack this for long term. So, um, even though ETFs are buying a lot, um, that could easily flip. I'm I'm not saying it will. I'm not making any wild predictions here, but people much more smarter than me are saying that we will go on past the 4year cycle. Um, and I'm just curious how the ETF inflows will will really look and uh if so, I I think it's uh it's a brand new conversation on Bitcoin's uh uh Bitcoin's value as a store of value.

Yeah. And given that the four-year cycle is not taken into consideration uh you know wild cards like Trump administration and the changes that he's making. So like this interjunction I think would be very interesting to see how the next few months would look like. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks a lot.

Thank you.