CTRL/SHIFT - 14 06 2026 PARTHENOPE STAGE - DECENTRALIZATION & DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY IN EUROPE

Yes. Okay.

Hello everyone. Good afternoon. You might know me as the founder to update us on the situation of institutional adoption of actually I will start to moderate this panel to understand the frame that we want. So my buses experiences a little bit different from the other talks that I've done in last days.

Um and actually like my role will be as a moderator stage is going to be yours

for this panel to touch topics digitalization and special the vertical about digital surveillance in Europe. So to have a kind of like open framing me. Okay. Europe runs runs on infra infrastructure to be here today is not from European companies right Franchesco as part ofation to storage we supported from day one that now is evolving all the trends we don't have like encompassing you know multiple digital topics we don't blockchain and that's happening also we are basically going to deep dive Because if we see the market cap is evolving coins, we can see that US is still dominant to the evolving market aka. So the question that actually would like to frame and topics that we would like to touch is how actually we can understand digital sovereignity what what we are missing in this race.

uh in this panel I'm going to introduce you uh the organizer and the founders of this first I'm Franchesco I'm active in the space since 2020 so kind of an alg first of all I started my own journey optimization we are going to also to touch base on this very soon then I move to market There are kind of new things on chain and then focused on adoption on chain asset manager in the middle we have in a decentralized way your generation for wants to deep dive into blockchain.

Thank you to be here. Um

so the main point about this presentation is that

yesterday actually we had a similar topic in Italian kind of mimicking the world that are following this want to see the difference between you know people actually are more focused on the world what does it mean for the same evolving growing than traditional finance on the regulator.

So we see actually first July that will be fully live right. So 12 AU banks coin for the second 26

so here we have if we see that 9.6% 6% of stable stable coin market is actually dollar denominated

200 before crisis actually is a regulation helping Europe development of money from end to credit derivatives capital markets until the is basically following the same pattern although in a very super fast way and this is probably one of the issues of our own business. So we start I basically today I want to give you and I'm glad that you are here a quick overview of the history of DeFi and how is basically facing the latest uh the latest uh issues adjustment that the traditional finance is pushing on the blockchain stuff. So we start from 2009 with Bitcoin and you see that in parallel it can be kind of parallel to almost 200 2,00 to 500 before Christ period where basically a new coin developed. In this case we have Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the facto store of value on chain is kind of the new gold the digital gold.

And then later on in 2013, well, okay, we know that Satasha Nakatamo is behind all of it. And then in 2013, Vitalik among plenty of others nerds in Berlin also thought about Ethereum. What is the biggest difference with with respect to Bitcoin is that Ethereum works on a chain that is programmable. And this means that with we can program and create mechanism, automated mechanism that if this then that create automation with this the financial world. And this is the real deal about smart contracts introduced by Ethereum.

Because why so? Because the traditional finance has already its own race but can find enhancement improvement more efficiency throughout automizing automatic smart contracts behavior discussion and so on. Uh so in 2013 there was the first uh white paper from the what we can now call Ethereum Foundation and then in 2000 uh sorry I missed it in 2015 Ethereum the Ethereum chain was deployed and now is basically working as we know. Uh so as I was telling you already the uh idea is that we have smart contracts and smart contracts can create automation out of human and mar intervention to basically deal with multiple actions altogether. So if you can think about Bitcoin as an ice street, we can think about Ethereum with an ice street with plenty of stops to basically stops by and create alternative and additional experiences and we're basically going to follow on the Ethereum chain because we know that Bitcoin is still a bit lacking on additional use case but instead Ethereum chain created a lot of use case on top of its P2P uh distribution of tokens.

First of all, we have the 2019 area that can be in parallel align with banking and credit like you know

what does it mean is that we created basically we enter right maybe sometimes distribution lending what does it mean that if I need to send some money to do our best as builders I think that's one of the main I can do so that you have with your working easier to understand for companies for the first synthesis where it's more now because then we have also data that is now the super like we see that the blockchain digital in both cases the idea was really rooted in. So basically completely decentralization of the token and no intermediation at all of the distribution between

I'm also following different projects with them. I don't know if you saw that last night was the first European bank was basically blocked once government because it was saying that we were millions of people have foreigners for example 2017 approach it's quite different because you have a real token distribution was exactly at the opposite of this approach basically mean the industry in general is kind of moving social side where banks are actually doing this fair use of blockchain protocols having a big rule.

So like that was the first later on in 2018. So one one year after we understood that approach was a bit limited. So there was the need to instead pulling funds. So you all users deposit funds in a pools and then depending on the smart contract tools these funds were rooted to different needs and different levels. The clear example is unis swap is the fact most probably the most used defy protocols nowadays according to the stats it has been forked around 300 times from the first time of deployment.

So okay is something that is really is really kind of rooted in the defy uh in defy rules. Uh the concept here instead of having as I was saying before so P2P approaches so banking and kind of credit so client approach if I know you I can give you uh funding instead in this case it was a kind of capital market. everyone who wants to enter that pool and and accept the uh the entering price can basically deal with it. Nowadays we know that UN3 has sorry the unis swap has developed multiple new instances unass with different nuances. uh I mean uh within KBK where I'm working we are kind of still uh judging which one is the best one unis swap to 2 seems to be the best one from our own perspective but from a disad perspective instead seems to be the perfect one to let users basically interact with one another is that uh later on we have the derivatives period that probably something we are going to take a lot of time during this short presentation.

What does it mean is that that we move up from simple if transfer USD transfer from me to another person uh we basically started wrapping this altcoin. So if or DC to basically do some more uh sophisticated activities in this particular case we have two examples. One that is really ordered synthetics that was instead creating a stable coin that was not only pegged to the USD value of the underlying token but also to the activities on top of it and then we have securityize we are working a lot with securityize what is doing basically is bringing on chain the other same ownership of traditional finance equity We are not there yet. Most probably we will need to wait for the act to have the full 101 presence. But we are moving there.

What does mean that if I own a security token I have the same equity distribution of a traditional finance player. I don't have yet all the ownership rights players but this probably will come at least the case for example of more foreign friends. So the derivatives period was a key one but also like

we can see from let's say the parallelism from the relation between the initial period you see the basically it was also to tell you how fast is evolving the the ecosystem and basically what does it mean instead of just transferring token that has either a 101 peged value or a variable value to BTC if we are instead distributing tokens that has that have sorry a value that is related to traditional markets what does it mean last day yesterday there was the new Alen Mask SpaceX I ICOs that was also distributed on chain although there were plenty of uh for this reason blame against it because the onchain distribution was a bit capped with respect to the traditional market. But players on chain basically had the opportunity to deal with traditional finance ICO in the same way as the traditional players although not being super sophisticated certified to limited your responsibility. uh and then offer and then we move to the basically the last phase the one of Euro dollars and retails. We know unfortunately that the V5 echosace is strongly US based but now we are seeing more and more other tokens other fiat tokens evolving. What does it mean is that for the time being if I want to offer you a USbased yield on chain I have multiple opportunities but if I want instead to offer you a euro based one well it is a bit harder it is a bit harder to do so completely offchain I need sorry onchain I need probably to deal with centralized exchanges to wedge my FX rate or

add something to that So uh hi everyone my name is Arno um I used to run the

in this last phase the Euroization and the retail approach we have new opportunity in 2018 in 2021 we have that basically started bringing onchain money market funds what does it mean the money market funds are traditional funds the point is that being almost as liquid as that is also they are basically letting us respect the block by block exit requirements that the defy guys were having.

Who can we hold liable?

What does it mean? Who do we call? means that if I'm deploying my funds on a

so that is also a real

I know that basically just as a answer to this

I can exit almost the main service around blockchain

this is not something that is happening with traditional finance protocols are leaving you said we know that no because all the governance and requiring finances centrifuge basically understood that if they want really fast they need also to abide to the rules and the rules of defi are that me as a user as an European citizen but verified but on the other hand also we need to go to Dubai let's not protect

and not wait you should always see the two sides middle the side that we can exit and Yeah, thank you for on the market basically did so at first let's go more by bringing on chain money market fund with you know the line in UTX or park was actually like one of important to mention actually like I saw a nice article that opensource is the right and then the centralization the next one basically creating yield spots and future rates are the problem of most

I also saw

although now it's also true that the business trade is kind of lagging behind what is the main issue we have multiple instead they are not enough on open source technology

nonetheless it was anyway first of all many

sort of innovation why so because They let users out there Google they let users enjoy 90% of their territory solution fully automated on chain without the need to be so they put it fully fully on boarded and this kind of stuff but basically gain about volatility in the market.

It's nice. And last but not least, we have Pendle that was instead open that basically introduced the kind of treasury. We know that works a lot on top of incentives. A lot of governments are now saying

on one hand I'm a bit against it because the defi game basically provider kind of we are inflated the the incentive games.

Okay, we are new. So basically we we had to incentivize up to 25% new players. But on the other side is part of the game. So everyone is incentivizing. We we all see new banks basically welcoming you to open a new account by just saying guys you can have one two extra incentives on top of your banking account.

Makes sense. But on the other side, I also glad to see that nowadays unfortunately I'm missing a slide for it. Nowadays we are having I I say less and less interest on incentives. Why so? because people understood that actually that's really a nice touch point because open USD or something is open source thing that's actually another thing is really close but thank you foration maybe for people to basically enter the moment I can uh sell it

yeah and then thank you by the way on this point

I'm done yes with slides But we can continue discuss what is happening nowadays. Nowadays we are basically moving away by the poor concept as we say is the decentralization concept is a bit

over this world is open source. So for sure is open open source is not

put aside from the incumbent players because the incumbent players are traditional players. traditional players that basically are rooted into capitalism and what they say they see that blockchain

and um so and this is in my opinion blockchain basically let them use another race that are way more efficient and way more automated with respect to traditional banking and and this is one probably continental aspect of is the only confederation about blockchain that blockchain is here to stay is here to stay because the the banks the investment banks the hedge funds see a real deal in dealing with it because they see kind of better margins and better and better result we shouldn't law of our ethos must be applied in creating decentralized decentralization going back to the example that I was creating that is probably digital public infrastructure of the very conference that we have a new digital world where components of blockchain commas that the US government was all of a sudden to stop the approach to the fable. While the idea of blockchain is that you have full ownership of your token and no one can basically block you from use it, spending it online. I would like to add because you know from in this in this form actually I think we're losing a bit of I was really kind of like a believer in this tradition of course like you know I have a blockchain studio dev studio we do so many stuff but to be honest like I don't like anymore the word decentralization like more like the distribution you know this concept of like you know decentralized really odds were basically because okay let's be decentralized and then you see that the nodes of Ethereum are basically seeing the blockchain as you see the Dow let's say okay is a decentralized protocol and then like the owner of the protocol are actually working and that happened so is amazing by concept by design and you is that in my opinion the cyber solution we have on one side the full is not really coming because the designentralization and tangible money background if you see a governance on the other side instead we have borrowers that instead even from like maybe we can think about them can you know like if you see a tangible Can I see the idea of decentralization? What could be

on one side? I would say that I would love to see all missionless approaches between also true that we have some incumbent players that have plenty of money spent on compliance that don't want to ruin everything and so basically they are kind of a fully decentralized approach where on one side you can have but on the other side you have

so even with me with my car like you cannot have a full key point about compliance is that nowadays you don't need no more distribution comp that's actually what is that I don't need to upload my ID strategy my certificate of being a educated investor and so on but I can just I can just use ZK

and being honest aka zero knowledge as the real the new technology brought up those type of infrastructure uh in your opinion two sentences the concept is that blockchain nowadays can let us deal with compliance in a more uh decentralized way so through CK and can also let us basically deal with token and generation on chain without being fully compliant and my point is that compliance is not a problem the real problem is ownership of the data that we are sharing with traditional players that sooner or later are being leaked, hacked and so on and we don't want so. So basically ZK proof can be a solution to let us deal in a compliance way with financial market without spreading all around our statement. I think that we should it was chaotic but uh thanks to all of you that

sort of a design principle as Alexandra said as a dot on the horizon. This is why every CI there right now. Do we have any question of defying to Franchesco institutional players that are adopting mostly private chains instead of being decentralized as we thought

any specific system that you're building we will see how things level now we have talking so she was here the entire afternoon um as MC presenting our panelist but now it's my turn to present her uh to to to the speech. So let's give a short applause to Olga

acquiring the future in the strategy uh the strategic role of merging and acquisition in fintech payments industry consolidation. Wow, what a long title

and that is why we started

just acquiring the future then just let's acquire something.

Okay, tell tell us how we can do a mer acquisition in uh the the blockchain ecosystem. Okay, thank you.

Technology. This could actually be something that Europe thrives in. Thank you for introduction.

It's a sort of transition already to present my annual research here in Naples

because this time perhaps just waiting for second for this.

Yeah, we still have a chance in AI to get it.

Yeah. Meanwhile, I will represent what I found in terms of trends of M& especially of course targeting fintech and that was very helpful to listen also previously to Franchesco to understand what was in DeFi world and now I will target like more all the digital assets and of course the convergence with traditional finance as a

on the on the centralization level like you know that's true but it's also true that Ethereum is out there from 8 And I also build like smart contracts also worked with the foundation so many times and I truly believe in decentralization right but

my take is more like on the enterprise level because in the end of the day we see that actually innovation can it was a bit long title

but in day corpse that actually implement to make a thing right so why do you think this decentralization by design is not being implemented what what are the blockers in your opinion about that um it's more like legal. So let me present also government issues like or even technical issues because sometimes like okay smart contracts is amazing right but as you say my fellow peers there's a problem you know of support first

so do you think that is more like infrastructure for cross payments from the enterprise

so basically facilitating all the mining movement and here you already can see my interest in exploring how payments are evolving in the last

and the second one I'm the co-founder and co-president of blockchain student association Italy where the closest partner of the European association as well. We are trying to make this gap between university and the real world of business.

Sorry.

And also I just finished my master in corporate service significantly my interest in M&A and the finance related world.

That is one thing. The second thing is that regulation that's very simple. I would not of course dive into details of the payments but just to get some background understanding what was prefet plus three I don't know 2 plus 2 settlement and plus then 3% of the fees when we're traveling all the way from point A to point B and what happened in the fintif don't have even intermediaries actually it's almost 0% cost and it's instant settlement which is facilitated usually just by one intermediary for instance But taking the funds when we require something but therefore I also think that in Europe we really have a chance because we are strong in regulation we can you know we can we we can complain about

and from that of course we went to discover what is actually happening in the world of the fintech as of course everyone knows that there are major acquisitions happening and main companies I don't know masterard to name the last ones is acquiring the smaller fint so basically what are their real strategic rational behind those acquisitions.

We can first deep dive into the old payment stack. As I anticipated, the main issue here is that we have all the systems as chaps as sepa developed in 19 years ago. I would say do you see something let's say coming from settlement which is of course that they need to start actually second making awareness around so from like you know the study or maybe from like corporations what actually what is decentralization what is like the real way of in your opinion what might be the best way to actually make awareness and So that's what they trying to do with this institute is actually as for the businesses let's try to be because what is the best fund in your opinion to spread money around Europe that's one of maybe students huge training for huge globalization flow when we're not usually living in our own countries but as I said earlier is here anyone from Italy

a lot has happened already bottom up so I think there are a lot of

okay only one person so we're all internationals of course that's the conference very yeah but That's a lot of traveling happening start.

So I said yeah about 20 targets and another huge main point is the preunding. So how international payments are working we have different banks involved and to make the payment and to pay yeah in one country in the second usually companies before tended to refund their accounts in the country B so to facilitate this payment system and that's a huge cost as you see business reporting again yeah two to 5% of transaction

and everybody is resulting last

so what happened here I would like Five layers, five layers which in my opinion are the ones where the fintech actually changed something and also the five names of the companies and let me begin explaining one by one which is acceptance connected that's the foundation for all the payments for all the money movement and here we have again this famous agenda for six years 1970s like last century developed systems which inefficient. It was like a batch transaction settling has to make that first move. One, two days later, encountering the cost.

Now we are going to go decentraliz.

Here we have stripe which revolutionized everything. Basically the proposition was very simple operation. Before you needed to have a big tech team to integrate everything because like all your merchants and so on. I think that one of the main issue like you know blockchain is all over this presentation but sometimes what business large corporations I've just very simple integration share all the data it's only about which you can integrate so I think the key here is their own age proof

later we go to the second layer the company which is a famous European company

one of the already using it was integrating different smaller business we should like make more awareness around networks to transport payments.

Okay, decentralization is amazing by concept

and most importantly but by implementation I think smart contracts are the perfect information any other confidential computation data and you can unlock this data just when actually

third layer is always like the example I would say custody just to keep it industry with a healthy industry here. I would also say I'm allergic to right because then I go to Nigeria and I have to make I don't know that I'm allergic to it manages because there's not really communication of health records traditional world and one of the first project I was working in university was like let's create a blockchain layer to

you want to do payouts at almost but that was not possible because our private data so you are not respecting compliance rules so while you Here I'm going to my company because that's effect the initial idea of their founder was to optimize the facts because that's not okay that banks have one different point as customers when we're doing the conversion different hard to implement maybe here we encounter stable coin wheels as instance which helps us optimize and leverage on the liquidity. So basically we are not referring to themselves anymore as her code which can help us deliver the liquidity instantly. Do you have any on zero cost because we are relying on the D5 stock here. Yes, if I is infrastructural rails I think and here I mentioned because we are compared to the course classical sa or the classical

privacy of course is one of

we show you this difference between settlement single digit almost and I don't know depends of course network but in case of tron uh instant settlement

another layer and also to reflect this transparent process You already mentioned why issue in the last 12 months. So that's a big number and privacy present.

Now that we broke down all these layers, so the five that I mentioned solution around is something that really can change the game narrative every single like $1.8 8 billion dollar paid for the company.

That's crazy. Of course, we have the smaller ones, but that's a huge number.

Here provided also the statistics on M&A.

Sometimes

M&A began roughly in 2020. We are focused on the last years because the trend was going up later, the famous FTX crisis. So in 2022 it was a bit on the post as I can say and again in 2023 we began to observe the trend which is of course going to be down and up but majorly in 2025 we're seeing this amazing numbers which were never by the industry UDI wallet. So we can ask for ourselves what's actually happening why we spend so much mergers and acquisitions and we have very few adoption in Europe at least internally or develop but we prefer to buy the companies

the decision makers point of view point of view one in my opinion we can distinguish the M& which is I'm representing here is the scale consolidation so here the companies are mainly focusing on technology across the technology for short z facing 20 to 30% cost reduction perspective and also a great opportunity for institutions and enterprises well behind the financial sector. So multiples as you see here are roughly

well many others digital identity of course over but again what we already need to understand and I see many people from this room which is greating infrastructure one by one people at the right position from the political sphere later from 2020 and explain why and that's the face where we are now we Second wave of capability acquisition. Capabilities acquisition is not anymore about a political point of view. It's not anymore acquiring the company just because we can become future and cut.

We are with ZK also examples of these companies for other companies institutions now and this is something that is already happening. Because again blockchain technology has been around for 50 years. What are the premium drivers here?

So we're already in a in a transition phase phase from production system when it comes to digitalation or other factors at the moment and that's why we are here by the way. So here famous example Mastercard and BVNK actually in 2024 December thanks to 40% valuation difference one year after when at one times I think that the problem about complex here listed also free narrative and premiums of this valuation because of course as we are ground included and for people that are outside of this industry strategic synergy because masterard wanted I think that universities or like in general educational system had worked a lot on that and I like a lot your type of I think that you know you should try those complex topics easier to understand but any easier for governors easier for policy makers kind of like to take the strategic drivers and break in small pieces adapted for the targets that you're talking right so let's say for example we can try to make a report after this right

we are saving two to three years internal developments and we can like have a specific template or specific policy makain is even like you know it's a huge them and not every company can wait to get proper license. So they prefer to cut this like I would like actually to continue with Alexandra on on the problem of narrative which is still major in general like institutions policy makers example of Coinbase and regulators in general they still have the bias of crypto the biggest exchange and this industry had this bad narrative from a while thanks to institutions and last one is of course the last from last year that is quite changing Is the company talent inside because the talent is something that we can actually you're working with institutions you talk with them on the daily basis. What do you think about the expertise of founders? Do you think that the crypto industry the centralization industry is like changing moving from this speculation narrative or like still related to all this wave? First one acquisition windows limited to mention what I mentioned and that is we have bunch of never waste a good crisis but the best ones already being acquired and if you want to act one of the interesting things about a crisis that we are in right now

model that everybody is talking about digital sovereignty as I mentioned earlier the last we all understand what sensor resistance but sometimes they put like aside Microsoft switches off still a bit to the side and not fully integrated just because first trigger regulatory all of a sudden we understand the team all the team from major feedback let's not waste that crisis also in our narrative that's something that I want to add all the legacy problems

and execution risks

yeah so are of course this appetite for So different people different narrative mentioned but of course the point from getting bigger as well I totally so first I will say something maybe that we need to do now

here also snapshot on environment as I mentioned that's mainly US genius act so I would not repeat that the companies are looking at and the famous mica especially in Italy we have many many and companies out of I don't know maybe some targets they can acquire to get this

when people outside of our course all the discussion about crypto is only speculation and

this is can be seen as a substitute or can be seen as something additional to the traditional defy system so here the companies are trying to monitor it closely whether use case of blockchain but blockchain is way more than ecosystem coordination scale and many many other substitution I can say if we want to change the narrative in front of policy makers players try first which is essential

let's try to educate ourself that creates the perfect target

be a real value game changer for society for economy for people for major brands and after your company next month of others

ask some potential interesting questions regarding that. No actually

I will just leave you with this phrase when the panel talking to many practitioners it's true that blockchain started as a financial infrastructure

seeing the already

and I mean for finances from the last you can trade in the next 24 months you can buy stocks 247 real world asset to required soil still really connected to the financial infrastructure because me as a builder like I love to bond And so I love stocks but even if you see to start like your organization of real world asset outside the financial field let's say real estate that's

that doesn't really work in my opinion right digital twin is something that doesn't really have traction and we can see blockchain on the right like the main world organization are still stable coins to stay in touch that helpful so I completely agree with you and actually like I that one of the main goal of this institute is to make awareness and how you can use blockchain outside the financial field. So I would like to thank you for this panel. It was amazing. Thank you for the crowd and enjoy the next panel over here. Thank you everybody.