Stephen: Around The Coin podcast gets you in for a treat. I'm your host Stephen Sargeant and today we talk to Rita Martins. She's the author of the book Web3 in Financial Services. We talk a lot about the use cases from, you know, using in the Brazilian automotive markets. To use cases in Africa, blockchain, cryptocurrency.

We touch on AI, but she also comes from a traditional lens. So she's talking about how these traditional institutions, how they are impacted or how they connect to some of these decentralized protocols and the part that compliance. Governance we get into DAOs. NFTs, the Metaverse. There's probably a subject that we didn't touch on in this episode.

Make sure you listen to, and if you love the book and love what she's talking about, reach out to your host at the end of this podcast and I'll let you know how you can definitely win a copy of her book Talk soon.

Stephen: This is your host Stephen Sargeant, another episode of Around The Coin, and we have what we love on this podcast, which is another author.

Rita Martins, I want to talk to you about your book, Web3 and Financial Services but give us a little bit about your background, how you got to this point in 2024, writing a book right out of, as we're coming out of what's probably been one of the biggest bear markets in crypto history.

Rita: It's even good to be here. So I'm Rita Martins, like you were saying, I have a background in banking.

So I started my career in consulting with NSDN Yank and Accenture, and I did big digital transformation projects, but also looking into technology and how technology can change financial services. I then moved into what we call the industry.

So I, I went to a bank, I went to HSBC. And when I left HSBC, I was leading Fintech Partnerships. So in the bank we called Fintech, but it was really any startup who was leveraging new technology into financial services.

Back when I was in Accenture in 2017, I was working with finance teams and Finance teams, as you probably know, as probably your audience know, they do a lot of different reconciliation processes.

And so at the time I heard of this blockchain technology and I found, wow, this is super interesting and definitely can be used for finance and to really eliminate or even automate some of the reconciliation processes. It was too early. It was too early for the technology. It was too early for the industry, but I kept looking into it.

And so fast forward to when I was at HSBC trying to bring some of the startups that were trying to really use some of this technology. To really disrupt financial services. And I really think like nowadays the industry has evolved so much more, but we still have a bit of lack of education because it's It's such a complex ecosystem.

And when you open the news, you only hear about like the bad guys, the, hacking, the FTX scandal, and of course it's part of the ecosystem, but I also wanted to make sure that I talked about really. you The, the good actors, some of the examples of the companies who are really doing it and are really driving the change.

And so that's when I left HSBC, I got this opportunity to write the book. And so, yes, I have been reading, writing the book for the last year and it's now out. And yeah, super excited to see my physical book now on the shelves.

Stephen: Yeah, behind me because you're based in London we couldn't get it.

We couldn't get it here in time by the time we set up this podcast But we're definitely gonna add it to the the wall of fame behind me Talk to me a little bit you mentioned disruption and that's kind of where it's funny I was just listening to the keynote speech that Michael Groninger from Chainalysis did at his conference in April at Lynx in New York City And he said like initially this is what crypto was, right?

Disrupting the financial services, but it's kind of evolved to more like crypto is actually looking more like traditional financial services before traditional financial services will look more like crypto. What are your thoughts? We've lost that word disruption, I think, in the last five years, but that's all we heard about when, you know, blockchain and cryptocurrency came to the market.

What are your thoughts? Are people changing the way they're approaching it? Are they realizing like, Hey, we still need traditional institutions to run our business. So we might not want to, you know, cast shame at the companies are going to, we're going to need for payroll and for, you know, processing some of these crypto transactions.

What are your thoughts on this?

Rita: it's interesting cause especially within financial services, it's a very complex industry. And the reality is that people, they still trust their bank. Most people, they don't change their bank. They just use the bank that their parents used. And so it's, it's a really complex industry.

There is regulation to make sure that people's money is protected really. And so I think when crypto or the ecosystem started, they started. With this really idea of revolution, they wanted to, it was after the financial crisis and like you're saying, they wanted to disrupt banks. They wanted to disrupt even central banks and saying, we don't need them.

I think since then, we have seen many of the projects that have tried and Probably realize it's slightly more complex than they initially thought. And now we're seeing some of those projects actually evolving and trying to use some of the things from traditional finance and even partnering up with traditional finance.

So you see this convergence of traditional finance companies looking into the ecosystem and saying, well, there's some really interesting technology and innovation in here. And trying to use that, and then the DeFi space, almost like trying to converge and saying, how can we partner up with traditional finance to have even distribution?

Because the reality is that traditional finance, they have distribution, they have clients that if you form a new disruptor and you can tap in, then it's a much easier conversation. And, you know, it's interesting because it's not unique from this ecosystem. I look into the fintech space quite a while when I was at the bank.

And they also started with, if you, I don't know if you remember, but when fintechs started, they said, we're going to disrupt financial services. We're going to disrupt the banks. And since then, many of them have evolved. And now you have much more B2B fintechs, which is business to business fintechs. And they're really tapping into the banks ecosystem, and they're really tapping into banking's distribution.

And so I think we need these types of disruptors. We need this type of innovators to bring new ideas and new innovation, but it's a very complex industry and maybe that's why we're seeing this change now with, with the crypto. Well, I would still say though, I think like people that started within the crypto, they should be proud of themselves because they have already disrupted some very interesting social norms that we had.

Until now, we thought of money as your cash, as the deposits you have within the bank. And it was always euros or pounds or dollars. And nowadays we're talking about things like CBDCs and stablecoins and tokenized deposits. And that's super interesting, but also super disruptive. So even if we are evolving a bit from the initial disruption, I think they should definitely be proud because they have accomplished some, some big things already.

Stephen: Yes, crypto made us question money in general, right? We never had a conversation of what is money. We always had a conversation of how much money do I have? But it was only recently, I'd say within the last six years, we started questioning what is money, who has control over it, how do I protect myself and why do I need it in my own, like, why do I need to own, you know, my assets?

It's funny because you talked about disruption. It's almost like going to Harvard and say, Hey, I'm going to disrupt you. But by the way, we need your classrooms and your desks and your chairs, right? Like it sounds like a great idea, but you can either be libertarian and believe in the disruption, or you can run a successful business to your point.

I don't think we've seen a company be able to do both, right? Stay decentralized and run a successful business or get that institutional adoption that they needed.

You're saying that you're working with startups, you know, at HSBC, and I don't wanna go into details of the specific startups, but what were some of the concepts and ideas that those startups are coming in?

What were some of the industries that maybe they were targeting, filling a gap, and you know, what were some of the challenges that they ran, they ran up to in those early days?

Rita: Yeah. I mean, so much to, to break in that. So let's start with the, the topics or the ideas that I had. And at the time, I guess the main ones were probably ESG. So there was some around carbon footprinting or sustainability. There was a lot around This was pre HHBT, but already just using data and how you can look into data and give insights into it. into your customers, for example, because in banking, you have a lot of data, for example.

And then there was some very interesting ones that were much more using or automating some of the processes internally. So much more being used in the back office of the bank. So, In banks, you have big teams that do the back office and you can use workflow tools. You can use automation tools to really automate some of this part.

And then again, like we can start looking into the forward looking, entity to data and what can we do with that data? So those were some of the topics. The challenges, you know, it's interesting because When I was speaking with some of these companies, one of the main things was like making sure that you bring the right people to the conversation.

Often you have companies that they are founded by technical founders or technical teams, and they are really good. They have created a really interesting project or product, but they, they, they speak tech. That's the honest. And so when you, when you go and try and partner up with the bank, you need to be able to sell to technology.

You need to be able to sell to the business. And even sometimes you need to be able to explain to compliance why we should use it. And that's one of the key challenges. I think sometimes you see is that. that You have to engage with so many different teams across the bank and you have to have the buying of all of them to really bring some of this technology.

And sometimes I, I saw myself into many of those conversations trying to be that translator, trying to really explain or simplify some of the technology sides. And I'm not a technologist at all. So trying and really bring that into the conversation, I think. The other one that we see many startups that sometimes they lose themselves within big organizations because they see the brand and they say, well, if we partner up with these big brands, then we are done and that's sometimes correct, but sometimes they might be too early and they might just get lost trying to connect with everyone, anyone that they can connect with at big organizations.

So. So often it's also. Are you ready? Are you big enough? Do you have capacity to go and have engagements and conversations with the big organizations? Because it takes a long time. These are not easy processes. They take a long time. They require many different conversations with many different people. So sometimes as well, tough conversation is like I was saying, looks super interesting, but you are probably too early for us.

So come and have a chat with us in a few years time, or you know, Try and target someone more medium size and that can also help you with conversations with big organizations as well.

Stephen: That's a great point. I think a lot of companies see those, you know, the big companies, the big organizations, but that comes with a lot of work. It doesn't just happen overnight. And it comes with a lot of restrictions. What they probably realize is like these big companies aren't as agile as these small startups. And to your point, a lot of things get lost in that.

Tell us, you know, you write this magical book, you leave HSBC, you write this book. What was kind of that inflection point for you where you were like, Hey, I have something to say. I know there's a lot of Web3 and blockchain books out there, but I don't feel that, you know, the coverage of how this is impacted within the financial services community is enough.

I need to put my thoughts out there. Was there anything, a conversation you were having during coffee, something that you thought about, you know, in the shower, or on the way to pick up groceries, where you're like, I'm going to do it. I'm going to go for it. Kind of tell us the impetus of the book.

Rita: Yeah, so, I mean, I think there was a few different conversations that I had that, drove me to decide there is a gap here. There was always definitely like interests and there was a lot of people within the industry that I would talk to that look, this is, this is not the day-to-day job, their day to day job. They have a A, B, A U, as we call it, process that they need to work on.

So, Getting up to date with a lot of different technologies is really hard and whenever I'll say, well, we're looking to blockchain, people would still think it was either Bitcoin, and Bitcoin is something that many companies do not touch on, or it was even DeFi. And like we were just chatting about, DeFi still is seen as some, some ecosystem that wants to break and disrupt the banks.

And I mean, if you're working in the financial industry, You don't want to collaborate or even learn more about a player who is coming to take your jobs or who's going to disrupt your business model. So I, I think like all those different conversations where I still felt that people didn't fully understand what does it mean and that you have so many other different use cases and why should we use it?

Why should we look at this technology really drove me to say, well, there is something here. And at the same time, I. I was contacted actually by the publisher and he was one of those that I did, I probably thought about writing a book, but not right now. And then they contacted me and I said, well, actually, this is the right time now to write this book because the ecosystem has grown enough and we have some real use cases that we can really showcase.

And so it was also a timing thing, I guess, as well.

Stephen: How did they contact you though? All the thought leaders on listen to this podcast, like, Hey, I never get contacted. Was it a series of articles you were writing? Was it LinkedIn or were they reaching out to a free, a few thought leaders and like, Hey, have you ever thought about writing a, a book on this topic?

Rita: Yeah. So I now know a few people that also write books. And I think like the main thing is you need to be out there. So I, I had written a number of articles myself, and also I was often in conferences speaking and so on.

And I think that's the type of people that you will see some of the publishers reaching out to It's someone who, Is actively trying to say something, who they're trying to put something out there into the world, their view, and that really says that you have something that you potentially want to put into a book.

So yeah, so I have, I have been written many, many articles before. It wasn't, it was a, this is probably a bigger, much bigger article than, the ones I have done, but I have done that for a while.

Stephen: Was it challenging? I always feel that if you were writing a book on technology, it's, you know, a lot of what is in that book is maybe out of date by the time it gets to publishing. You're writing about use cases, and we know a lot of these organizations scrap plans, especially during a down market. Did you find yourself going back and updating certain chapters before putting it through, or being like, Oh, this is a perfect example.

I want to use this one as well. Talk to me about that process, because I'm assuming it takes about six, maybe 12 months to write a book. It must be tough when things are happening every single day in Web 3.

Rita: Yeah, so that's one of the toughest parts of this writing about this ecosystem because it's evolving all the time. So how do you make sure that the book is still up to date with the latest news?

I can tell you that, so I finished writing in December. And in the book, one of the, the examples I've gave was the Bitcoin ETF. And at the time we were still waiting on the answer. And then this year, early this year, we got the answer and I, I emailed the publisher saying, can I still update this, this final piece? And thank God, because it was such a big thing, we were able to update it. So like, like you're saying, like I was always trying to update even chapters that I have written before to make sure Bringing new use cases, new examples, and that they were up to date. And I think for me also the other hard part is like, how do you simplify some of the concepts?

Because I'm not a technologist, I don't want this book to be for someone who is a technologist. But when you try to simplify it in explaining business terms, I'm sure that someone technical can come to me and say, well, actually, technically, that's not correct. Which is true, but you're trying to just, you know, give some examples, you're trying to use some methodology, some, some different examples to really explain what you're trying to do.

And I think that was the other one that I was always trying to ask people from the industry saying, if I explain it like this, is that correct? Would you accept it? Because it's such a hard it's some of the concepts are quite hard to explain, but I think they're also interesting to know.

Stephen: What were some of the use cases that you, you know, when you put down that pen or stop typing, you're like, oh, this is a good one. I'm glad I'm including this. In the book, what are some of those use cases that you believe in? Like, oh, like people need to know about it. Maybe people aren't talking about it enough.

It's not, you know, on the headlines because it's not glamorous or sexy. What were some of those use cases? You're like, hey, this is really important. We should be talking about this more.

Rita: Yeah, I think like the one that I always talk about is one in Brazil that I find super fascinating. So they, a few years back, and they're now updating it as well with new use cases, but the Central Bank of Brazil, they're really trying to say, okay, are we going to do a retail CBDC? And in order to do a retail CBDC, they did some pallets, some use cases with companies.

And one of them was, for example, tokenizing Real estate or tokenizing your car because secondhand cars, between the time that you will go and say, well, I want this car and you make the payments and you leave the, the office and the car License is actually sent to you, they could very easily send that car again to someone else who come into the office.

So I know that there might be something that you think it does not happen because of where we live, but that's something that it does happen in other countries. Fraud is a is a big problem, especially when you have a physical goods and then you have the license, which is a digital goods. And so for that one, for example, they created digital version of the car.

And the way it happens is that the, you receive the car in the moment that you make the payment. So there is no longer that gap between making the payment and then receiving the car. And that can really reduce a lot of frauds. And then if you start thinking about like, the bigger goods, like a house or even a really fancy watch and so on, then you start seeing some of the, the other use cases that you could have.

And for me, that one is like, it's so interesting because. First of all, it's something that you wouldn't think being based, I'm based in London, so you would never think that's a problem, but also it's such a simple use case. I mean, you're just buying a car, but instead of having that gap between buying the car and making the payments, everything is automated.

So that one was one of the examples that when I wrote it, I'm like, well, this is actually like super interesting. And it's one of those that it's easy for people to remember as well. They can go and they can tell their friends and family.

Stephen: And I'm in Canada. We have a huge issue with auto thefts, you know, cars going to Ghana and Dubai. And one of the issues was around, they were getting access to people that worked within the ministry, the government, that were re vining the cars. So changing the VIN on the cars so that they were able to like, go sell that car now to a dealership because it has a different VIN, you don't recognize that it's stolen.

So that's a really interesting thing. If a lot of this is captured on the blockchain or at least is, you know, an immutable record. Those things aren't going to happen, right? And you see that in the States where they're selling cars that have already been stolen, but they have changed VINs on it. So, you know, as much as people think like, Oh, Brazil, that's never going to happen, that is happening a lot right now where we could probably use similar a similar use case.

Rita: Yeah that's interesting, I did not know that about Canada. But I guess that's another.. Yeah. It's just another example of how you can use some of the blockchain tokenization concepts for something that people use every day.

And for them, it doesn't really matter if it's on blockchain or not. It just matters that they are safer and they really know that their car is safer.

Stephen: It's probably personal experience. So probably personal experience because when I was rolling out of my that the SUV wasn't there anymore, so it's probably a lot more dear to my heart than the average person.

Now you've seen, even working at HSBC, obviously writing this book, flipping through a lot of use cases.

Who do you think has been early? What's a traditional company that you think was early to embrace crypto, blockchain, and Web3, and they were able to gather you know, considerable market share because they took a leap into this or were an early adopter versus some of these companies that are coming off the sidelines now after things like the Bitcoin ETF and more regulations, do you notice any companies that were early and have been successful because of that?

Rita: Yeah so Fidelity definitely was a super early one. They have sponsorship from the top and they were looking into Bitcoin very early. So they have an investment team that I think is doing really well. You don't always often hear about them because they are very in their niche and in their market. The other one is JP Morgan. JP Morgan has been doing this for a while as well, and they have a few different use cases. So they have the payments use case, they have the repo tokenization use case.

And then they even have the, JP coin in which their clients are using it internally. So I think those were quite interesting from the more DeFi or CeFi space. I would say Circle with stablecoins is also a really interesting one they are definitely one of the bigger players, but you know, it's interesting because we also have seen companies who.

Probably joined the party slightly later, but they're doing really well. So one of them is BlackRock. BlackRock is only recently. They really and beliefs into this ecosystem and they actually now being one of the big driving forces of financial services. And they, they did come into a bit later into the conversation.

Stephen: What do you caution people? So they're going to be reading your book, they're going to be listening to you talk, they're going to be watching the news and seeing everyone making millions of dollars from being early in the system. What do you caution these companies that have always been traditional but now are looking to, you know, take advantage of this gold rush?

What are some of the things that they should be concerned about getting into Web3 or implementing Web3 technology now into their business?

Rita: Yeah, I would say like some of the concepts or some of the considerations they need to have are similar to engaging with any of the technology, just making sure that they understand who are they partnering up with, for example.

So some of the projects that will have a DAO governance, for example, Decentralized Autonomous Organization, that means that you as an institution need to go and partner pitch an idea to that DAO. So it's a very different concept and it's a very different engagement than if you have a company in which you have your CEO and you have the leadership team and you go and have conversations with them.

So for me, it will just be like, I understand, the, a bit more ecosystem, understand who are the different players look a bit into what technology are they using? Are they using public versus private blockchain? Are they regulated versus non regulated? And this is something that's institutions will do anyway with some of the other projects that they have.

And just, yeah, I mean, just have a conversation with other companies as well to see if they have partnered up or they have engaged with these companies as well before and if, what was their feedback? Was it good or was it bad? And that's something that happens all the time to be honest, like companies and leaders, they will speak with other leaders to just see what was the feedback, if there is something interesting that they should look into.

Stephen: What were some key takeaways? You talked a lot of things in the book, you know, you've already mentioned CBDCs and Bitcoin ETFs. What were some of the key takeaways that you noticed from the book that you want to make sure, especially we have a very large payment and tech crowd that are probably dabbling in crypto but not 100 percent focused on it.

What are some key concepts that you wanted them to take from the book?

Rita: So I guess one of the questions I'm usually asked is, okay, but what's the benefit of using blockchain? And there's two main areas that people or companies look into this. So one of them is really cost reduction or efficiency.

And the other one is new revenue streams or new products. And some of the use cases I talk about within the book, you can see examples of companies that they are doing it, but also you can see what are the benefits. So for example, with payments, one of the big ones, we'll just talk about Circle and Stablecoins.

Stablecoins are used. for remittances in the Philippines, for example. So in Philippines, often people will go and they will work abroad, but then they need to send money home to their families so that they are the main income source. And the reality is that if they use the legacy systems While we had quite a few different fintech companies that have helped, they have Streamline and they have Redis costs, it's still very expensive.

And for them to use stable coins is not only faster, but it's also cheaper because you don't need so many intermediaries going forward. And so from a company, for example, if you look into payments, Cross border payments is something that can make it much more efficient, can make it much more faster. But also if it's less expensive for you, it means you're going to get a bit more revenue.

So I think like those are the two main angles that companies are right now looking to this ecosystem. And the other key takeaway that I would like people to have is that This is here already. I mean, I think sometimes people don't realize, but companies are already using this. This is not something that is being thought about.

Companies, some of the big banks that have been testing this technology since 2014, and I have heard many leaders Last year and even this year saying that they have tested technology, they know the benefits and now they are ready to scale up. So you're going to hear much more about this. And so even if you decide that you don't want to play a leading role within it, try and understand what does it mean for your business?

What does it mean for you? Because you need to. To to know and to learn a bit more about it, otherwise you might be stuck. left behind without being able to do anything.

Stephen: You make a really great point. I was listening to a podcast two days ago and it was, you know, a person, a farmer, they're into agriculture, selling cows, the meat, and they were talking about blockchain as part of their supply chain, like, but they weren't saying it to brag or to say, they talked about it as if they were talking about how you grow corn.

Like it was It was just a concept that was very common to them by this point. And to me, I was like, Oh, they're using it in blockchain, but now it makes a lot of sense. People care about where the food, where the, you know, certain ingredients are coming from, how they're produced and how they're transported.

So I think more and more, we're going to see people want to see that kind of like, whether it's flow of funds or flow of value or who's touching, you know, certain products, we're going to see it more and more.

What are your thoughts on things that were probably, you know, just starting to cool off as you were writing the book?

So things like NFTs. The Metaverse, even DAOs, we don't hear DAOs that often anymore. What are your thoughts on these things that saw a huge spike during 2021 but have kind of cooled off and nobody's really talking about as much as more?

Rita: Yeah, I think some of these are just part of the journey. So some of it are just almost like short term. Ideas that really spike interest of the public, but they don't have long term goals or benefits. And maybe that's one of the other I guess, takeaways that people can take from it is, is this something which is just cool and nice and everyone is very excited, but it's just a short term thing, but in reality, it doesn't bring that long term view, then it's just part of innovation.

It's part of having something new in technology that people want to try and I think some of it you'll still have in different forms. I mean, NFTs, they are just tokens. ICOs, for example, that we also had quite a bit in the early days, it's something that we no longer use, but it was like the first journey or the first step into tokenization.

So they are just. tokens. That's, I guess a few things that we need to go through, but it doesn't mean that they will heal, like they will give us much benefit. It's similar to nowadays the Memcoins, which is big again. Will Memcoins be here in one or two years time? Probably not because they are just a short term, really cool thing that you can use.

Stephen: And it's interesting because you mentioned ICOs. ICOs and NFTs are very similar, right? A lot of people put a lot of money into it without knowing if the person could, you know, actually do this, say, These things that they were saying in their white paper or that they were saying on their road map. So very, you know, people very speculative.

Those are always two use cases I think that are troublesome. You mentioned, you know, tokenization, even things like fractional ownership of like, Real Estate. Do you think practically people are going to be using? I know, you know, the youngsters right now in Toronto and probably places in the UK can't afford, you know, to buy a new home or to buy even a pre owned home.

Do you think this fractional ownership is attractive to maybe the younger generation or is this just another financial product that some of the institutions can use to kind of move wealth around?

Rita: So, it's interesting because I personally think that real estate tokenization, real estate is really interesting from like you're saying, I mean, in the UK, it's really hard to buy a house nowadays for, people young. So it will be another investment class basically, or you can use, even use the tokenized of the house to use, for example, as a collateral for a loan. So I definitely see like different use cases that are very interesting, but the reality is that they have been taken off. Realsight hasn't really taken off from, from this side.

I don't know if it's because it's such a much more traditional industry, so it's, it's a really hard industry to disrupt and we'll see it in a few years time coming forward or it's just one that we're not going to see. But I still think like Realsight, it's, it's actually a very interesting one that we might see in the future.

Stephen: We hadquibeem Mohammed here who was talking about Islamic finance on the podcast. And he was saying real estate is really interesting to those with the Islamic face because they're so used to dealing with tangible assets like real estate.

And the whole idea of tokenization to them might be kind of their entry point into Web3 because they're so familiar with the real estate space.

So it's interesting how certain people might like, some people are onboarded during the NFT phase. Some people are onboarded, you know, what, you know, whether it was crypto. com or other exchanges giving them discounts or, you know, credits to kind of use their exchange. So it'll be interesting to see the onboarding process or how people jump into tokenized assets like real estate.

One thing you did mention is like traditional institutions using things like decentralized protocols or decentralized finance, what we call DeFi, do you think a lot of these actors are going to get into that space when they don't, they can't prove who the other, you know, whether it's a person providing liquidity, whether it's a person they're conducting transactions with, if that stays pseudonymous, do you see big institutions dabbling into DeFi or how do you think those DeFi protocols are going to attract institutional investors?

Rita: So I think they're going to, they're going to have to evolve. this reality. I think like most of the people within, This industry thinks that eventually you're going to actually see companies using public blockchains, so really using some of these DeFi services. Projects, but you're going to have to see some evolution.

First of all, regulators are not very keen at the moment for companies to use public blockchain because they lack some Some requirements or some, some features that will allow regulated institutions to, for example, do some compliance checks or even do the QIC, check the identity. So from a regulation perspective, you also going to have that requirement.

And then from, re I mean, financial institutions, they are regulated, right? So they're gonna have to perform these checks either way. And I don't think you're going to see them using it actively, unless you have some of those changes.

Some of the companies have actually done some pilots, they have actually tested some of it.

So, Societe Generale, for example, a few years back, they, did something with Mekedao, which is a very DeFi Protocol. It's, it's run via DAO and it was successful. I think it was also a learning for, for Societe Generale, but there was a one off almost. And then you also have seen regulators, for example, with Project Mariana trying to use AMA, AMM's Automated Market Makers, which is again, a new version of DeFi.

So you definitely see like, The regulatory institutions being interested within this space and doubling, doing some small pilots, testing some of the innovation, but you don't see at the moment full fledged innovation with, with those protocols or in public ecosystems. And I think unless you see some of the evolution, some of the changes within the public ecosystems, you will not see that.

Stephen: How do you view cbdc? You know, the biggest kick about CBCs is basically we don't need the government to do something or produce something that private companies, like the circles, like the tethers of the world have done such a great job at.

Where do you see C BDCs? We just saw a project Agora be launched by the Bank of International Settlements where they're trying to, you know, collaborate with central banks and other commercial banks to figure out how they can use some of this technology.

What are your thoughts around that?

Rita: So CBDCs is interesting and it probably depends as well, like which countries are we talking about? So in emerging markets, one of the main reasons why. Central banks look into CBDCs is, for example, financial inclusion, while in countries like, Canada and UK, it's much more around how do they innovate the payments.

And I don't know if you remember this, but the main catalyst for CBDCs was actually the Libra project from Facebook. And what happened there was that Facebook had this very innovative project called Libra. And some of the central banks realized that actually this is happening. And if they don't try and innovate themselves, like you're saying, then they might be disrupted and then you might have stable coins being actively used, for example.

And so I think from, from a central bank, it's. For me, I think it's interesting. I think it's, it's good that they are innovating as well. Some of the use cases are probably still not very well defined. I was just there, there's a recent news, I think it's from Bahamas. They did a retail CBDC there, and now they're talking about making that mandatory.

that commercial banks use it. And the reason for that is probably because the US case is not very well defined and you don't have mass adoption. And so they're trying to get the, the CBDCs to be mandatory for, for banks to use to increase that mass adoption. CBDCs are still Not very well seen by the public.

That's the reality. Many people still think that it could give too much power to Central Bank that they can't have surveillance and so on. I think it, it really depends on the project. So some of the projects they, the central bank is not even holding the wallets, they're using third party providers and they also looking into identity.

And so I think it's definitely an interesting. Projects, I'm not, I'm not so much like against, like I know some people they are very much against and they think that we don't need it. I think innovation is good and innovation will drive further innovation. But I think also because it's something that you need the public to use, you're either going to have to eradicate them.

Or you're going to make it, we're going to have to make it super simple and super convenient that people want to use it. And that's probably where we still have a bit of a gap between some of the the CBDCs projects that we have seen and the adoption.

Stephen: Now, speaking to somebody from the Digital Euro Association, I was talking exactly about your point about people see the surveillance. He's like, we already give too much trust to the banks anyway. They have full surveillance of what we're doing with our transactions right now. He's like, the fact that it's digital is not going to make much of a difference.

And I tend to agree, like, that is a great point. We've already relinquished a lot of our ownership. And a lot of our rights to our banks that we trust and to your point at the top of the conversation is like traditionally we do trust our banks.

I'm curious about things that, where has countries gone wrong?

We've seen El Salvador kind of rolled out, you know, with Bitcoin as legal tender. Have, to your point, we haven't seen too much adoption there. To your point of like we need to get more people using it. We haven't seen a ton of adoption after that kind of first wave. But we're also seeing places like Nigeria where, you know, people are fleeing the, the volatile Naira there, their, their local currency and going to cryptocurrency pretty much tanking their economy.

So why aren't these countries able to use some of the concepts that you have in your book to kind of create a stable ecosystem for themselves?

Rita: Yeah. And it's interesting because I don't know Nigeria, but Argentina is similar where they have this big inflation problem and they're using stable coins. And in that And that's a very specific problem, which they're trying to use stablecoins as a saving mechanism. In Nigeria, I heard someone saying that yes, adoption wasn't big, but what they were providing was that innovation within the payments.

And maybe that's also the other question is how do we measure success in some of these areas? Is it really adoption or is it some of the innovation that it's bringing within the ecosystem? And it's super complex because different countries. are trying to solve different problems, right? So, I mean, in Argentina, it's very specific.

It's inflation. They don't actually, you're not going to see big volume of payments, for example, because that's not the main goal. They actually just want as a saving mechanism. So you'll see a lot of people holding stable coins. So the volume and the KPIs in there, it's going to be volume. While in other countries, you might want to see actually payments going.

So maybe that's the question of what is adoption and how do we measure adoption within these different countries? I think the other thing is also like, this is super complex topic. So I wouldn't say that they haven't achieved everything that we thought within the book. I think they are, Learning to what it works for the country and what it doesn't work, and actually how people are using it.

So often some of the products that came into the, into this space, we don't even think about it. And you see the users actually bringing it. So for example, in Africa, I don't know if you know this one, but they, I think it was South Africa where some of the telephone companies start noticing that people were using mobile data.

as a money form. So they were sending mobile data into their family and their family was either using it or they were selling it for money. And nowadays you have this big feel fresh products in which is actually mobile data. So instead of having money, you have mobile data. And this is something that Really the users or the people in South Africa they're really just created because it was very convenient for them.

And so I think that's the, also the other thing is like enabling this innovation or enabling the users to tell you actually how do they want to use some of these new technologies and what is that real problem that we're trying to solve.

Stephen: One of the emerging concepts I see here is zero knowledge proofs. You know, it's been around for a decade, you know, but it's getting a lot of headlines recently. Everything is zero knowledge proof. We even had a couple of Layer 2 blockchain guests, Alex Pruden from Alio, come on and talk about this like privacy focused Layer 2 blockchain that involves ZK proofs.

What is this phenomenon? Like, why is this being brought to light so much more now? Is it another hype cycle? Are people really seeing the value of this use case?

Rita: I think you, there is definitely value to this, use case. We even look into it before at one of the companies I was working and it wasn't even related to blockchain, but it was just related with how do you share data between different countries and between different teams without sharing that confidential data?

Within blockchain you do need to have an identity layer and that's where ZK Proofs really bring that benefit because then you can still have the data and then you can still check if someone, for example, is above a certain age without actually seeing their data, without seeing confidential information.

So I think definitely like this, it's a very interesting technology that Even without blockchain, I may say, I think we're going to, we're going to see being used with it for data and for financial services, because within financial services, you have a lot of data, but also a big part of it is confidential data.

It's your client's name, it's your client age, where do they live? And you are not able, there's all the controls and checks, rightly so, that you cannot share that data widely. But then it does restrict you for providing some different products and doing some analysis. So using technologies like these is actually really helpful, even to innovate.

I mean, even another example is, for example, when I was doing the partnerships at the bank, we could not really share data with fintechs unless they were fully on board. It's, And that's just something from an innovation perspective. And so by using zero knowledge proofs or by using other models like synthetic data and so on, then you can start innovating much, much better and much faster with some of the different companies without having to share all their data.

And there are, like I said, like there is a few different, There are two, and there is even a few different companies that are using these. In the book I talk about Midnight, and I interview some of the, guys from Midnight that are part of Cardano. And I think it's, it's a super interesting yeah, technology or project that we'll, we'll definitely see more of.

Stephen: I love that team. We had Charles we had Charles on the Hoskinson on the podcast here. I see Maurizio and Anthony. They always have some fun antics on LinkedIn. So it's a great team. It looks like they're working on some pretty special things over there.

I would actually love like you, you write a blog and some of the topics that came up was this idea or something I read recently was a Solana ETF, right?

A Solana backed ETF. What do you think? We know the Ethereum ETF is kind of moving forward in the U. S. It seems like it's going to get there. Do you think more and more blockchains are going to kind of do these ETFs? Is this more of a marketing stunt? In your opinion, or is this kind of like the way in which we're going?

Once they say yes to one, there's very similar blockchains are going to also go after the similar approval by the SEC and other jurisdictions.

Rita: Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, right? How many ETFs do we need? That's probably the question here. I think with Solanit, It's a very specific one because they definitely, you know, it's an interesting project or protocol that I have been following on. They have done some very innovative things. NDTF, I think, just showcased that there is big potential there.

Is it going to be approved? There there's a lot of different, I guess, puzzles within this, this space that we'll, we'll need to see how they play out. One of them is the political framework environment in the U. S. and so that will probably tell us if if you're going to see approved or not next year. I think you'll definitely see the ATFs going to be submitted next year if Selena 1 is is approved. And yeah, I mean, some of it is testing a bit the market, saying how many can we get approved. Some of it is, is getting a bit of the hype and getting value from these new wave that we have. And yeah, we'll, we'll have to see. We'll have to see how many actually get approved and how many, how many go through.

Stephen: Even just applying against, but at least a new cycle, right? So for these companies like Bandai Guru. You're going to be talked about by just saying you're the first one, right? So I think it's definitely a great for both industry. As I said, people are investing in Bitcoin and Ethereum, you know, another top blockchain like Solana makes sense.

What are your thoughts around as we look through, you know, you say you finished writing the book in 2023.

2023 was a tough year, especially probably in your circle of financial institutions, crypto companies or crypto native companies. We took a lot of hits with FTX and Celsius. What was the temperature like when you were writing the book in 2023?

Did you see a lot of financial institutions kind of backing away from this or did they understand that this just, this comes with the evolution and the maturity of something like Bitcoin and the blockchain?

Rita: You definitely, I think you definitely see like, some companies not backing away, but more like holding off some of the initiatives or holding off from talking about it some, so much publicly.

Like anything, I mean, if, especially after like you're saying the Celsius, FTX. It was everywhere in the news, so you would have to be careful around what you talked about, especially because you don't want to see as part of the ecosystem. And I mean, we know that FTX, for example, it wasn't even a crypto problem.

It was just a crypto. Fraud, really, could have happened without even the crypto part of it. But you, from a messaging perspective, some of the companies, of course, were much more careful around what they were saying, but I think what was, or what is less discussed about is actually how many companies and even startups just went head down and built a lot.

And that's why we're now seeing in this cycle so many new. Innovation, so many new projects and projects coming to fruition because there were within that cycle, they were really building it. But we did see, I mean, even in the conference circle, you would see less people coming to conferences, less big conferences coming into play because you had a bit of that backlash from all the The bad actors that were playing within this space.

Stephen: With Web3 comes a lot of challenges and groin pains as well.

We saw, I think it was 2022, 3. 8 billion being hacked, especially from DeFi protocols. How do you explain that to, if you were still working at HSBC, how do you kind of explain that to the stakeholders? That this is an area where we should be investing or at least searching for more innovation or partnering with some of these protocols are definitely vulnerable.

How do you manage those conversations? Cause I'm assuming whether it's HSBC or anywhere else, it's going to be the naysayers like, Hey, look at this article. They lost 600 million and they didn't realize that until seven days later. That's probably not an arena we want to get into.

Rita: Yeah, exactly. And I mean, that's the, the toughest part, right? How do you explain this ecosystem if in the news, there's just all these different problems and they are happening. The reality is that. Some of the exchanges and some of the protocols were hacked. So I think it's just explaining that it's a much wider ecosystem and that when we, when we go and play with it, like we were discussing earlier in this conversation, you need to understand the ecosystem.

You need to understand who are you working with. And the other part that many companies can do as well is just trying and understand Why the hacks happened, why some of the frauds happened, and what are the criteria or what are the checks that they have to have in place? So if they were, for example, engaging with FTX, they wouldn't have actively invested because when they're doing the compliance checks or conversations, they had the right questions to be asked.

So I think there is also a big part of it, which is when. bad Things Happens, or When The Hacks happens, even. It's understanding from, even if it's not we do, is understanding what does it mean, what is the problem here, and how do we make sure it doesn't happen to us. The reality is that even, I mean, cyber security is a big problem, even within the traditional financial services.

And it's something that as we all move into much more of the digital world, it's It's going to be something that it's going to happen all the time. And so that's something that the institutions are already have big budgets and big teams working into that space as well. And so how do they have that conversation when there is a hack within traditional finance is, is the same type of conversation that you need to have.

But it's really around like explaining it is wider than just FTX or some of the hacks that happen.

Stephen: Where do you see AI impacting a lot of what you're talking about? Like, Web3 obviously encompasses a lot of AI and blockchain initiatives. What are your thoughts, maybe from the book, or some things that you've seen happen since the book? Or maybe even your time, you said you saw quite a few years ago on Accenture, AI was being brought up in the conversation, probably not to the same extent that we're seeing right now.

What are your thoughts on AI in general? That's

Rita: Yeah, it's interesting because I mean, when I was at Accenture many, many years ago, we didn't even have ChatGPT. And at the time when we were talking about AI, people would think that this big robot that it's going to come and disrupt the jobs and it's just sitting at the desk and operating the computer.

And that's of course not the reality of AI that we have nowadays. I think we. ChatGPT really helped the AI conversation where people understand that actually can be so much more useful to the conversation. I think AI will be another layer that we're going to be using within the financial ecosystem with the data sets. So AI can really give you a much more forward looking environment. So looking into, I mean, AI is not new, even if you think about Amazon, You are suggested, for example, if you buy a book, you are suggested a few different books that other people have been using. That's just AI. Now, if you can use that for some other financial service industries, I think what we're going to see in the future.

Stephen: Super, yeah, you're right.

We have been utilizing it on a smaller stage for a long time, and now we're seeing it get to the main stage and all the use cases that come with it.

Talk to us a little bit, you're working as a startup mentor and advisor for some VC companies and startup programs. We have a lot of tech founders and payment founders listening to this podcast.

What's some advice you can give them, especially now when maybe terms are not suitable, are not in the in the company's favor? Usually they're not anyway, but we're seeing it's a tough time to get good money right now. What would be your advice to some built, the people that have been building and now need that funding to kind of launch or scale their projects?

Rita: Yeah, it's interesting. I think it's, it's starting to change a bit from what I was hearing. So last year was a really tough one. I was advising a few startups and they were trying to rise and it was a really tough one. What some of them did, and it, again, like depends on what stage they're on. But if they are super early, like pre seed and seed, what they did was just going back to the angels and trying to get some of more funding from the angels.

Because it's, it's a hard, harder sell for VC, especially with the new AI wave where all the funding is going into AI and less into blockchain. But companies that were able, or they are able to show that they are growing, I have one company that I was talking to. They were able to raise much more than they needed to because they had a slide where they could show the massive growth.

So it's also like, how do you position yourself? How do you tell your story? It's one of the important things. And the other one is you need to have these conversations and build that relationship with VCs. Way before you want to raise, I mean, don't wait until you have to raise in three months time, start building those relationships now and start telling people about what you're building and get some feedback.

I have a lot of startups that they tell me, oh, we had a conversation and they told me, sounds great. Come back later. And I asked them, what does it mean? Come back later, come back later when what? When you have achieved something. 10, 000 consumers. When you have achieved, ask them for real feedback, what it is missing for them to invest.

And sometimes I think, especially if you, if you're a new founder, you feel afraid to ask some of those questions to the VC, but you are like, it's, it's a two way thing, right? So really try and get some of those answers. So you understand what is lacking for them to say yes, and to give you funding.

Stephen: We've seen Web3, you know, a lot of people complain about Web3

looking a lot like tech traditional tech you know, tech bros, and we're seeing less and less diversity even spring onto Web3. There's a lot of initiatives that we see here especially blockchain and Association for Women and Crypto and others trying to get more diversity into Web3.

What has been your experience as a woman, obviously in the UK, And especially when you're dealing still with traditional institutions what has been your experience when it comes to diversity? Do you see things improving? Do you see, is it like, maybe it doesn't affect you as much and maybe it affects another woman?

What are your thoughts?

Rita: I mean, technology is always a hard one, right? Cause most of the blockchain technology or even like any technology, it's, yes, it's mostly male developers, male engineers, male founders.

But I think we are seeing some of the changes, some of the, I know, I know quite a few different women who are driving some of, Some of the change within the industry and they might have just different, within different areas or within different departments. So for example, marketing is one where you see many more women.

Comms is another one. So I think this changing is, is a really hard problem to solve and we're probably going to take a few more years. It's really tough, you know, like technology and finance are still one that we need to solve for. I think we have been talking about this problem for a while now.

So now is how do we, how do we actually solve it? What are some of the actions that we as individuals or we as company can, can do to make the change?

Stephen: And how about yourself? What's now? you took time off to write this book. The book is finished. I don't know how much willpower you have to kind of step up and, you know, put a part two to this. Can you share maybe some of your thoughts? Does it kind of like take some time to enjoy? Tour the world for your book launch and your book tour.

What are your thoughts about what's next for Rita?

Rita: Yeah, so I have been doing a few, A few different book tours, or a few different places coming to some yeah, really cool podcasts like this one, doing some events in the UK, I might do a few in, in the US in September.

And yeah, I might start a new job as well soon. So going into the, ecosy going to the, really, the ecosystem and driving some of the change. It's. You know, it's hard to actually just take a step back and appreciate and really be happy for, for the, for what we have achieved. So I also try and do that as well. But you also just trying to look into what's next.

And there is definitely like some, so many more new things that I want to do and I'm going to be doing in the next few months.

Stephen: I love it. Was there anything that, you know, one of your readers or a friend that read the book said to you that you didn't see yourself? Like, I know sometimes you have a certain path, you're writing all these concepts. Yeah. Did someone say something to you like, Oh, I didn't even think about that. I'm glad they viewed the book in this way, but that was never my intention.

Rita: You know, one of the things I was really surprised is that everyone is curious about this space.

So I go to friends, I went to a friend's living drinks the other day, and these were not people that work in technology or finance. And someone mentioned that I wrote this book, and immediately I spent quite a big part of the night just explaining what is blockchain, what is Bitcoin, because everyone is so curious.

And that was something that I didn't realize that there was such of this big curiosity and that people, they are not even part of what you'll think traditionally as the technology or the financial services. They are so curious about reading this book or reading something around this space because they have heard about it.

They're not someone who made a lot Bitcoin or they even want to try it and they want to do it. So that's definitely like something that I found Super interesting that I didn't realize that there was so much curiosity, even in the wider ecosystem than just ours.

Stephen: I love it. I love it. And where can people talk to you? I know I reached out to you on LinkedIn, but I live and breathe linkedIn. Where can people talk to you? LinkedIn, Twitter? Is there any place that you'd love to chat with people?

Rita: I think LinkedIn is actually the best place. I'm also on Twitter, but to be honest, I don't use it as much. I think LinkedIn is, is a really good place.

So yeah, feel free to come and reach out to me. And yeah, have a look at the book. It's available on my website. everywhere. You can buy it online. Maybe Amazon is probably the easiest way to buy it or have a look into your local bookstores.

Stephen: I love it. I love it. Have you seen it out in the wild yet? Is it like one of those situations you're gonna walk, you know, go ahead and get on a flight in September and see it there in the bookstore front row center? I love it.

Rita: Yeah, for sure. I have seen it in a few different places and that has been Yeah, very interesting. And it's interesting, you know, even like when people tell me, like friends or people within the industry, they tell me, Oh, I, I bought your book. And I'm like, wow, that's, that's, great. that's impressive. I didn't realize that people actually can now go and, and buy the book, even people from the industry.

So that has been really good, really good to hear.

Stephen: Awesome. And if you've listened this far, if you're the first person to reach out to me at Around The Coin Podcast, we'll make sure we get a book to you right to your home. So we appreciate Rita taking the time out of her book tour, planning the next stage of her career, and hopefully maybe at some point a second book but I don't want to put too much pressure on you.

Thank you so much for coming here and educating us on a lot of these use cases that people may have forgotten about or just didn't know about.

Rita: Awesome. Thank you.

Stephen: Thank you.

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