25-03 ikigii Stage 16:40-17:10 Stablecoins, CBDCs & Tokenized Cash Implicaciones en Latam

Hello everybody. Um, right now I can hardly see anyone but it is a pleasure to be here and thank you for the invitation. My name is Okinington. I'm the CMO Saitel and I'm also working very closely with a project in the US which is called Project Liberty where we did a beat to buy Tik Tok. We shall see.

Um, without further ado, I know that it's it's getting later this afternoon and we've been enjoying this event, which is fantastic. And I wanted to start for something different because we've been like stable coins, stable coins, CBDC, CBDC's, and digital money. We're gonna talk about that, but we wanted to talk about something very concrete. Eight years ago when I came here to Buenosides and I I was attending an event at the NGO Bitcoin Argentina, I used to go to the Qua to exchange money and it was very weird to see that you will have to carry a lot of cash. That's the way that you have to survive around this city.

Um, it was very difficult for me to understand the dollar blue, the dollar official. It was like you have to be Argentinian in order to understand the local economy. But I went to the street Florida. I don't know if you have ever been there. People exchange money on the streets.

And that was the first time that I was buying Bitcoin on the street. I went back to Madrid and I was telling my friends, "Yes, I bought a Bitcoin on the street. And people couldn't believe that. And so that time it was a moment that I thought Latin America is not seeing the future. They're already living the future on digital assets.

So we're going to talk about all of this in this panel with a fantastic panelist that I will give you the mic to introduce yourself because you will do a lot of justice. um your own um profiles. Perfect. So nice to be here with you today. I'm Juliana.

I led the operation at Paxos for one year and a half uh in Latin America and now I'm leading um as a chief revenue officer Transfer which is a Brazilian company blockchain focused on financial services end to end and we issues stable coins in Brazil, Argentina, uh Chile, etc. And it's really really good to get in the market that it's turning point to be in mainstream to build a lot of use cases focused on financial inclusion, social inclusion and I'm sure that all we're building now will influence the regulation will influence the new financial service and of course we really solve a lot of pains that we have as a population that needs to be uh more technological and more instant and safe. Uh hi everyone, my name is Magda. Sorry, a little bit my voice is kind of I'm getting sick. So, uh, but I'm sure you can hear me.

I'm the global director for partnerships at NAB and I've been in the industry for like almost eight years now. So, I've been seeing the evolution of the industry. before I was at Pax School which is a peer-to-peer marketplace that we enable like just what you said Ursula like people in the street or like with any payment methods to buy and sell crypto and then I moved to chalysis and now I'm at Naben on the more like compliance and regulatory side because um after being at pactful I saw a lot of scams and a lot of people like losing money. So like I believe like regulation and compliance was really needed in the space. So I made that move and at noon what we do is that we have a platform that helps you derisk your your transactions before going into the blockchain and we do it with a tool for you to comply with travel rule which I can discuss a little bit more what is what is travel rule but um we can leave it for later in the panel.

Hello. Hello. My name is Martin Coxel. I am the director of growth at BSV Association. Um the three letters BSV stand for Bitcoin Satoshi Vision.

There's a Q end there. I'm sure you'll find it. Um I my to to Ursula's point my my own um experience or I guess uh life in in the world of crypto and blockchain started about seven years ago now. Also professionally speaking but my first encounter was also at the grassroots. Um I heard about Bitcoin from I want to say the streets or the community.

This is back in 2010. the whole Occupy Wall Street movement was happening in the US right after 2008 crisis. Uh there were meet I I didn't live there in the US but I was living in Europe and Paris at the time but there were meetups anybody in working in tech was hearing about this and it was interesting to see the emergence of this technology that had a very much anchored in a a need from the people from um who might actually benefit from it. Obviously, here we are almost 15 years down the line. Things have changed a bit.

Um, but I do think that need still exists. So, I'm I'm really happy to be on this panel to to chat a bit about about that aspect. So, let's start. So, Juliana is here and obviously the vision of Satoshi right now is becoming a reality and since I bought my Bitcoin on the street here in Buenosides, we have seen a lot of evolution in the last eight years. Stable coins is something that is growing.

It's big and people are adopting this. So Juliana, we'll start with you because you're working, you're leading uh stable coins in Latin America. So what's your experience and how has been your strategy to grow stable coins in Latin America which is not always easy? Yes, I know. So to get to the mainstream I feel regulation is the most important one to have the population trust and confidence that really this is something important to solve problems.

Uh we see a lot of utility being built but not in place yet. So today it's clear that all the markets work with everything instant right they have small kids they have everything and a click why money cannot be like that and assets as well. So today we have a lot of FX problems as you heard a lot of times today in other sessions. Uh and we need to solve this with a better technology with most of the governments especially in Brazil understood that blockchain is really the one to make the new financial service as modern and efficient as it should be. Uh and I see that we will be successful when all the use cases that we're testing and trying to build and building a lot of legal page memos to understand how to build flow that it's uh align with the current regulatory oversight and influencing the future one especially in Brazil we're really evolving but so many other jurisdictions to enable a global money movement needs to be in the same pace and direction to make sure that it's a global and unique one and I feel like at the end of the day the utility will be like I'll give you an example on the open finance in Brazil the project that are in moving because the goal is really to have collateral for everything you include assets, loans, everything you have to make it easier to manage all the trades and the financial services and services as well in our dayby day.

So for example, Transfer closed a current business with a supermarket in Brazil where we enable people like foreign people in Brazil to pay with stable coin and crypto in a supermarket. This is utility. You get your asset, your digital one and you pay. You don't have to think about effectivo or cash or anything else. It's just simple.

you have your wallet, you have our digital dollar or digital rays and you just pay things around with it in a simple and fast way. So I feel like this is something that needs to be solved and it's been built and to be well done for sure. It needs time to make sure that we have the aso central in Brazil talks a lot about compulsibility but still the privacy which is super important for the users to have the trust and don't have schemes or frauds in any capacity. But in order to become a reality to make that a reality you need to have the legal framework. without a legal framework it is a little bit difficult to evolve and and not you guys are working on the compliance between I mean the intersection between compliance and blockchain I know that that was the vision of the founders um and might be somewhere here is there okay and and and right now we have seen in Europe like Mika it's live uh we see we have a new administration in in the US that they're doing a lot of changes as well.

I mean loosening up a lot of the h struggling that the crypto industry is been actually Andreas had a big issue some years ago entering into the US because we were like acting like criminals for some people in the broader industry. Um so on that regards Latin America is a little bit behind or following what is happening either in the US or in Europe with Mika right now. What is your experience? What have you seen through not? Yeah, I think you're you're right in the sense that regulation is still not as mature as in other regions like Europe or even like some countries in Asia or the US.

Now I do think that though Latin America is as you said at the beginning a step ahead in in use case adoption like I think like right now the other geographies in developed countries they're just like finding out like oh we can use crypto for payments and blockchain technology for payments and we've been doing that all the time for Latin America because our financial system doesn't work well right so we needed an an option to be uh not only protecting ourselves from inflation but also um sending money um and we have those use cases but I still like I think even though there's like this adoption now that the overall geog other geographies are like using a stable coins to to do cross payments regulation is really important. We see as you mentioned in Europe we have Mika and TFR that just was enforced by the end of the year the the end of last year and Latin America is a bit behind um because we are still like kind of yeah learning from other okay like how are we going to follow these other geographies uh but we need to start regulating and the industry needs to start like really thinking ahead and be like, okay, if I'm going to be building these solutions to solve these problems that we have in Latin America, I need to build products with the infrastructure u that's needed to be safe and to be compliant otherwise like it it's not going to last. It's going to fail in the future. So uh for example uh with Mika now and TFR what Mika is asking um BASP or exchanges to do is to start complying with travel rule which is what we specialize at Navven which is basically swift for crypto is exchanging the information of the people that's involved in the transaction along with the funds to make sure that there's no like any illicit activity happen happening or that you also know the counterparty which is really important for crossber payments that everybody has been talking about during this day at the conference right you need to know who you are interacting with to derisk that transaction in order to have like broader adoption like until we don't have as an industry a way to like globally uh kind of derisk um and mitigate trans transaction actions um then I don't think the adoption will happen but um then now with Mika you have to ask your counterparties to comply with travel rule and Latin America is not really advanced in travel rule adoption so there's like a risk there of like companies in Latin in Latin America fall like being behind or like your counterparties in Europe will start asking you like hey uh where is the travel rule information and uh if you don't send it to me then I have to stop engaging with you which is a risk uh for the industry like if we start want to stay connected globally you have to start thinking about complying with these global regulations that is very interesting so that means that right now some companies in Latin America they have to be compliance with Mika for example in order to work and operate in Europe in that so the pressure is not coming from the regulator only which is what I hear a lot here like oh I'm not going to comply until I have the regulator like forcing me to do it it's now not only the regulator that's will that will be forcing you to do it is your counterparties and if you want to stay connected with your counterparties and crypto is global um you will have to start it's fascinating because we have two different paths the US is going to deregulation and Europe is going to regulate is regulating everything right now. So, and Latin America is in the middle.

It's like this sandwich that is between both jurisdictions. We shall see. Anyway, and regulating Latin America is quite difficult except for Brazil, which is a subcontinent inside of the continent. It's very difficult to put in place, right? Um common regulation.

Maybe it will have to come from Merosu or who knows something like this. But anyway, let's move to Martin because um I mean, you're French, but you have the Latin America experience as well. Right now, you're building an scalable blockchain. Um, Bitcoin, if I'm not mistaken, is a layer two of Bitcoin. Um, and we have seen some of the ex I mean some of similar projects as well here in Argentina with the smart contracts on on Bitcoin with um RSK and what specific use case do you have this specifically on digital money?

Um, yeah, great question. Thanks for that. Um, so so BSV is actually not a layer two but a layer one protocol which bypasses the need for layer 2 completely. Just a slight technicality, but back back to the point, the question was really good. Um, we we've actually just launched a few months ago the first stable coin on our protocol.

Uh, the first US backed stable on our protocol. It's called money m and it actually aligns with everything that's just been said by Mike and and Juliana. Um, the the travel rule compliance side is overly wildly under undervalued I think in terms of uh in terms of the future of any of any stable coin. We started working on this years ago before we even had a stable coin. So obviously by ensuring our protocol is completely compliant with travel, we know that every stable coin issued in the future will be compliant as such.

Um and and to go back to the example of money which I mentioned, it's a US backed uh currency at the moment. It don't have a Euro counterpart precisely for what you said about Mika because Mika has a lot of lot of requirements. You have to have a white paper. You have to I mean it's just a whole different uh can of worms so to speak. Um which brings me back to the the idea of of launching a stable in the first place and why you do it.

Uh from my standpoint as as a nonprofit, I don't really stand to benefit from any stable coin itself. Um I'm just here to to offer the platform for it to be done. you know very much like trans transfer I guess offers a platform for other issuers to to issue their own. The importance is again that the stable coin be able to address the needs of its audience. So in our case, we wanted to be cheap, fast, secure, and and ultimately abide by the the principles of uh of of our white paper.

And to that intent, uh I think we're going to see kind of a duality of yeah, both abiding by NATO on one side, the European Union, but also trying to follow in the footsteps of what's happening in the US. That's clearly what's happening in Argentina right now with the the current government and navigating borders is going to be slightly it's going to be a balancing act. It's not going to be easy but um I'm sure it can be done because ultimately the the end user who are the people who will benefit from this technology make it uh worthwhile because it is a completely untapped market at this point. I'm gonna I mean we don't have much time left so I'm gonna open a question to all of you and since we are in Latin America speaking about specific example of Latin America um as you guys know Latin America it's a continent very diverse um we have some countries that they have you they're using the US dollar already um countries like uh Salvador, Ecuador maybe some others uh as well and having a stable coins peg to dollars. How do you see this um an opportunity a threat is going to challenge um the local sovereign of those countries?

This is an open question that I was thinking the other day which is quite unique and interesting in Latin America. Well, thinking about the transfer perspective, today we have three stable coin issued in paired with Brazilian rise, Argentinian pesos and Chileian pesos. And we partner a lot with circle with other players to make sure that we can dollarize when it's needed. But still, if we think about fiat, if we think about fiduciary money, dollar is the one that it's more present everywhere and it's easier like it's a intermediary money that anyone can can swap. But I feel like um when the econom is global the strongest one is dollars.

So that's why people kind of use it as this way but we will we need to understand how the regulation was put in place how will be the effects and all the rules to trade one against the other and doing ramps everywhere and how it will be like from a travel perspective and from an effects perspective and fees and taxes perspective. How will be the flow that the regulators will choose and the ones that we will need to adjust to be 100% compliant? Yeah. Um I think like there's I see it as an opportunity to answer your question. I don't think it's a threat but it comes like okay how is governments are going to regulate?

What are the use cases that are going to be enabled with these stable coin that are backed to dollars or euros or um other currencies that are not the Latin American ones? what's going to be the use case there and like how that's the flows and how we're going to to move it. But I think it's an opportunity that we as a region need to stay connected with the rest of the world and uh move money that we historically haven't had um in our countries. So yeah, same. I'm sorry I can't offer much of an opposing view.

I concur with you guys. I have a hard time imagining a world where uh any where there's not a coexistence of of both uh US dollar peg or euro peg stable coins and at the same time uh stable coins and local currencies I mean they are a staple of state sovereignty. Uh I have a hard time imagining any government giving up that kind of power leverage. So definitely coexistence. Um I'm gonna leave to you and to be very creative and think about the future.

Um having the experience of being working and work already in Latin America, how do you think that Latin Latin American take a bold um move in order to embrace to adopt uh digital money? Um I just started with my example when I bought Bitcoin on the streets. Um, and I was shocked because I have never seen that in any any other place in the world except here, Monosites, in Argentina. So, as I said at the very beginning, Latin America is not thinking about the future. They already living the future.

So, how do you see this bold evolution of digital money in this region? You want me to looking at me? So, I guess you want me to start. Um, okay. Creative take on the future.

Um, I'll take it from a part of my past. My first I'm I'm an outsider here, right? I'm a foreigner. I don't actually live here. U, but my first trip to Latin America was to Colombia 2010.

I landed there. I had the iPhone 3, I think, in my pocket. Everybody else was still using Blackberries. I came back two years later. Everybody had a better iPhone than I had.

Right. So that shows you the the the adoption curve jumping immediately and I think we can just expect the same thing with anything related to crypto and blockchain whether stable coins or CBDC's Latin America will adopt faster because the need exists which doesn't probably exist in in Europe or the US despite the current situation in both of those those regions I think. What about youth? I would say that when you have a real problem, you need to find real solutions. So you're early adopter in Lats and especially Brazilians are really early adopter in technology and all the innovation that it's bring.

But at the end of the day, I feel that it it's it needs to solve a real problem. It needs to have regulation. So otherwise the population will not embrace it. It needs to be efficient and efficient and safe which is trying to be built by the government and by the regulators which still not yet. But I'm sure that we'll be really proud of everything that we're testing and influencing to make sure we have this new era in financial services.

Yeah, I mean I agree with what they say. I think again like Latin America is leading the the path on like real use cases for crypto that now other geographies are starting to realize. But I would like to see, for example, we have in Latin America a lot of really smart people that um could be working for international companies or that are already working for international companies and it's been really hard to get access to this talent or work before, right, for to get paid uh from these companies. So I think like probably I would like to see like more innovation in like okay how are we going to move money from like the business side to um higher contractors in other geographies have a more global like um world and Latin America being more connected to like other geographies not only from like the money movement and remittance but also like I'm working for like these international companies and also companies moving their treasuries and managing their treasuries in other geographies and I think um there's there's a lot of talent here and like I would like to see that happen and yeah uh we're always looking for new opportunities uh in Latin America so I'm sure we we can lead the way in that sense too. Fantastic.

So we do have the knowhow we do have the talent what we need it's um reinforced all of this mix of of ingredients and more use cases for Latin America because we already have seen it. Anyway, we are running out of time. So, thank you very much and thank you to the panelists here. Thank you.