Cryptoasset Management in Switzerland - Lidia Bolla, Vision&

Transcript

[Music] hello and welcome to the blockchain and us we're pioneers and thought leaders talked about their journey in blockchain technology crypto assets and the token economy and I'm your host manuel staggers if you enjoyed this podcast please give it a top rating and review on iTunes and feel free to follow me on twitter at Manuel's daggers this episode is brought to you by christos storage crypto storage offers a proprietary solution to enable professional storage of crypto assets the gorge is secured both physically and digitally on the highest grade hardware security modules with detailed configuration possibilities for individual based

access control to learn more visit [Music] www.meliar.com/mpanel.htm ishida and before that she was managing partner of a swiss advisory boutique specialized in quantitative finance earlier in her career lydia worked for major investment firms like JPMorgan Swiss tree and Mann investments in Zurich London and Hong Kong she has a PhD in finance from the University of San Tong and advises several blockchain startups and now to

the interview hi Lydia and thanks a lot for making time today hi Manolo thanks for having me it's a pleasure to be here so Lydia you have quite a long career in Asset Management and now you work full-time in the crypto space when did you make that transition actually quite journey to like both here where I'm now and it all started I'd say really early before even going for my studies because I've always been at the intersection ability of finance business and technology so even before starting my studies I wasn't really sure whether I should do computer science or business or even law so I was even at ETH

and all the computer science classes it's a week especially for women in computer science there because they tried to get some more women in that space I always loved technology I'll always stop computer science and I somehow made the decision in the end to go for business so I ended up in some colon and made my business studies there it was a really great time but I always had this this affinity this law for the technology part so I tried to do with the whole coding myself I developed my skills in some basic coding language is really early on and continued improving on them during my business studies so I

always had this this combination of business in my studies and later on in my career with my love for technology and coding more of the personal side yeah I did that through my whole studies and ended up after my studies going to switch 3 asset management and had a really classical asset management role there I tried to to put in my coding skills wherever I could but it was quite under on the low end so you didn't have to do a lot of coding there and that's also why I made the decision to do a PhD in JD fast management so that's mainly mathematics combined with asset management topics in area you actually

needed to do a lot of coding and I could combine it with job in the private sector where we were advising corporates on financial models have helped them implement financial modeling tools within their companies so for me that was the first job where I could really combine when I asked management business skills with my law for coding and really great time and yeah we did that for a couple of years it was really small company and I was leading in today there is a partner and we were able to build up quite a nice business there and but I was at this low for pushing forward

businesses and growing businesses having this small company for the first time made me realize how great it is to have an own company and be able to to really decide by yourself which are the things you really like to do and which are the things you really think that they make sense to do was there some kind of specific event that that triggered you to start your own company so when when I was at the the previous company which is I didn't add in found but that I was cloning it we were always looking at those different tech projects and I was involved I really early on in blockchain

topics as well we never implemented it them in our business we had but I read a lot about the whole topic radio early on and not so much about crypto though really more in the blockchain technology topic and when we decided to start our own company outside this company I was working in we we really looked at different business ideas actually we had a long list of business ideas and made that quite systematically which business idea we want to start what was on that list exactly started with more financial market places for our banking products for example so the whole API and payment

service directly to ideas where it could really access banks and their banking data and built technology to access this banking data and give users the possibilities to leverage their own banking data so started there went over a media idea so I for example I cannot believe how the media industry is currently operating that he do not have like more of a Spotify like approach to media that you still have your ancestor development and all those single subscription for all those different newspapers so we're looking at the ideas like that and then it's really full range had we made them lists we made pros and cons and actually there we had

some blockchain projects on there as well for example one was the hole so the whole question when you da I and you have all your financial assets and if you could put that into smart contracts and let it distribute among your children and though they were that that was one an idea as well and put that on a blockchain so things like that quite a long list and the crypto project the blockchain project you're doing now wasn't actually on that list at all mmm okay when when did you make when did you start thinking about this well that was in beginning of 2017 I'd say when I left the previous company and I had to

get there with my now co-founder and that we knew we're gonna go found a company and we just had to decide which one I think it's like the idea it's one a really important part in in founding a company and but having the team is even the bigger part I'd say so for us it was always clear we are a team and you're gonna go from the company and so the next big topic was which idea and we had a couple but it was important to decide which one it's gonna be yeah but you said the one that you actually went with wasn't even yes on this on this while figuring out which idea to to execute so we were testing different ideas and we

still figuring out which idea to execute and then because people knew we have some know-how in the blockchain and crypto space on the private on our personal side they started approaching us in 2017 because it started being a hype bit and people when it came to us and asked us okay we know you are in that property in crypto space can you tell us how to invest and we would usually tell them how they can invest in crypto specifically and we told them how they can open exchange accounts wallets how they have to handle private keys and so on but your experience in that field that was from your own you were managing your own portfolio right exactly and

then you you decided to make a business out of that yeah because a lot of those people that asked us how they could invest in it they came back and said okay I somehow see how I could do it but I'm either it's too time-consuming or I don't really know how to do it or I don't dare to do it and I don't really know what to invest anyway so we saw a lot of it said quite a need for having someone professionally managing those crypto assets for others because we had he had those investors traditional investors that really wanted to access this blockchain space but they were just not able to do it and that's what you're offering now with your current projects so as we saw that that was actually the

need we got rid of our list of business ideas and implemented that the idea originally was to give traditional investors really easy access to the crypto and blockchain space and we always wanted to give them an access that is really traditional so it should be an access that are used to beads with an investment product or with a managed account setting so tools from the financial world that are really well known to the traditional investors but instead of investing their assets in equity or bonds of traditional companies we would invest those assets and blockchain companies and to give them access to the technology that was the

original idea and just to go back a little bit um you said you got into touch with cryptocurrencies Bitcoin I assume very early was the during Europe your PhD in finance or when was that yes so I got interested the whole blockchain topic during my PhD yes I got in touch with the whole crypto investing later on but it was just like a normal extension because I was in in investing asset management space on the professional side and looking at the technology at the blocks at the technology on my personal side so it it somehow combined it to crypto investing as well at some point but I came over on the chain space

yeah mm-hmm what did someone at the University as you know a person who studied with you or a professor tell you about the paper that just came out and that would should be something that you should look at or how did that happen no it's actually it wasn't it wasn't the university itself it was just during that time but I was reading a lot about things tech projects I was reading a lot about startups in the FinTech space and at some kind blockchain popped up I said topic and I didn't really know what it is so I started reading about it and I I had to I'd say I had a long time really getting it so in the beginning I read and I read and I always felt I'm at the

point where I I don't really get it it's um I see it could be a big big it has big potential and could be a big future ahead of us we start technology but I didn't really get it so I had to read the law that say like over a year I read everything I could and also more on the tech side because I didn't understand the tech fully so I really had to read a lot to really get it hmm you mean you mean Bitcoin or the blockchain concept just the technology how it really works I think um and I'm still at that point you know where because blocks in technology is such a it's such a beautiful technology because it combines

different industries different sectors and different know-how and you usually you're not knowledgeable in all those sectors so you might know something about the economic parts of it or you might know something about cryptography but usually people do not know about everything and that's also for media - cryptography for example I never had any education in it so for me that's really the part where I struggle most with understanding and so still now I'm reading a lot to get to the technology until its core I understand how it works and everything but really understanding every technical detail who requires a lot of time how do you stay current on on all these developments it's difficult I try to read as much as I can currently

is building up the business that's the thing that I miss most is some lack the time to read all those things and you feel that right away then during during when building up the business or when discussing certain concepts with other people because it's evolving so quickly you really have to stay you really have to keep reading everything you can and I usually use medium articles so I believe if you follow really interesting people there and there you have a lot of interesting articles and really new ideas which are shared they're also open source kind of platform and I really like diving in

there mmm and you also write on medium we are riding quite a bit research content but we currently focusing on publishing it on our own website it's one of our main focus points because we believe if you really want to invest in the blockchain space you have to understand it you have to understand the companies you have to understand the technology and we are heavily focused and invested in our research so I'm writing myself my co-founders are writing research reports and talk reports also writing at weekly newsletters summarizing the markets which I get every week are you getting

that's really do you often speak with maybe your old colleagues from the traditional asset management sector about crypto assets yeah all the time and I'm I'm getting some strange looks quite a bit I was recently asked whether I'm not afraid of of killing my reputation by being involved in the crypto space and sometimes you just get the looks and then you know okay they are not really convinced about the crypto blockchain space and and think you're on the wrong track yeah it's a lot of fun talking with people and really showing them some other sides because that people especially in the

traditional financial industry are reading and our reading about blocked encrypted space in more traditional media and there it's it often doesn't go deep enough in terms of no home so it's a lot of educational conversations we have also its traditional finance people and it's always great to see when they when they change opinion but happens not always but it happens quite a bit and that they're really skeptical and change opinion once you really show them what you're doing why you're doing it what are usually those those winning arguments that you've seen you know

we're very successful in maybe convincing people that this this thing has legs one is around the topic of cryptocurrencies and stressing the currency part whether we always hear is I will even blockchain but I do not believe in cryptocurrencies and I totally get the argument that I think it's it's it's a wrong argument because people only hear cryptocurrencies and they only hear Bitcoin and what I usually mean when we talk with them is that they do not believe in the currency use case of blockchain so they do not believe that something like Bitcoin could replace a US dollar or Swiss francs I do not believe that either I do

not believe that it's going to replace the Swiss franc or the US dollar and then we usually show people that on one side the currency application has certain use cases they didn't think of so for example if you are thinking in not Western world standards but more third world country standards that there might be a reason to have an alternative currency system or that Millennials for example probably not gonna hold step five percent gold allocation but something else then they start a bit believing in the currency use case as well but the much bigger part is even to show them all those blockchain use cases which are not currencies but are still

called crypto currency and once they see that once they see all applications all those startups and projects that issue crypto assets and we always call it crypto assets just to stress the fact that not all those are not currencies all the time if they see all those blocked in projects and and see they are not currencies they start getting that the whole thing is much bigger than just the currency use case it's it's one saying how they are structured and how they are classified legally and it's and it's another thing and what what the use case of the project is so as an example we usually take a serial month and modem so

Assyrian for example classical crypto currency in that sense but the use case of theorem is not building an alternative currency system as it is for Bitcoin the use case of a serum is having a blockchain platform and giving that platform to developer to build applications on top of it and obviously a serum is your easier is used as a currency to pay to use this platform and but when you're holding a serum then you're gonna profit the more people have demand for this property and platform so basically what you're holding is not just an alternative Swiss franc or US dollar but what you're holding is an

asset that grows in value of the demand of your underlying blockchain platform grows in value so it's something totally different than a currency it's the whole point of owning the network yeah exactly yeah but maybe other on the on the illegal structuring side the other example usually brings is the modem example which structured the crypto asset as basically as an equity and so if you're holding the crypto acid off of this startup and the startup is issuing dividends no dividends are not issued to the shareholders equity share holder to the token holders so when you're holding this crypto and said you're basically invested as really similar to if you would hold equity so that's all

something totally different than a currency so how do you go about developing investment ideas for us that's actually not really really fancy or or modern or anything that's really traditional actually because we believe in the fundamental value of certain blockchain project and that's why we are investing in those projects so we are not doing some fancy cons arbitrage high frequency trading strategies what we are doing is we really look at a different project out there at companies at the foundations and those projects that we really believe in we are investing in those and we hold them long term and that's that's really tradition so we look at the teams

we look at the ecosystems around those projects we look at the technology you also look at things like regulatory risk which is a really important part in in the investing world or we look at which is really specific to now the crypto blockchain space is at the monetary design of those assets what's the inflation tokens that are issued and stone so it's really traditional in the sense that it's it's it's venture capital like we look at businesses look whether they make sense fundamentally and invest in the end long term I mean you have you have the traditional background you have this finance PhD you have a CFA as well which skills do you

think are very different it to be successful in managing crypto assets then in traditional finance because all those companies are somehow tech based or at least once we are investing in and you really need to have the understanding on one side how the tech works and on the other side whether there is a business case for that technology so it's take understanding and applying take understanding to the business world and then something you might have it ended you have it in traditional finance world as well especially if you if you are involved with tech stocks and things like that

but actually people in the asset management industry for example are not coding or they are not really don't really have to be that tech savvy to invest and that's mainly French 82 to what we are doing but still the traditional sector the traditional finance sector is quite interested in crypto assets and they do want to invest right I mean it's do you see there is kind of a gap that they have difficulty bridging I think they're starting to bridge it but they're better over time and not everyone needs to have to take understanding so you can have partner that have that understanding that and

consult that can advise you but yeah you're right we see we see the interest of the traditional financial industry to get access to the space it's some some especially the bigger institutions are more reluctant towards that the whole crypto topic and really just look at the blockchain technology and how can can they use it internally and some institutions really see the connection of the two that he talked chaney relates to crypto and how those topics go together and and the real evil most involve dispose post those topics yeah mm-hm

how much of it how much of this fascination do you think has to do with this huge run-up in 2017 how much of it has to do with that versus more of the understanding what it can actually do for us in the long run I think 2017 was really important for the space in the sense that it got a really busy bility so before before that even before 2016 it was purchased I'd say a couple of nerds and I mean that in the positive sense that were looking at technology and and really loft what it was able to do and they just because they lost

technology they contributed to it and that brought a huge effort to bringing the technology forward and then a couple of new players entered them ten the last in the last to two years once I different corporates which looked at the technology and made research on it but there were like see there still are quite a bit focused on how they can keep their current situations and how can they keep their current processes that may make it a bit more efficient so we often see the corporates do not yet see the really big picture of the technology and how it can disrupt everything and then you had startups entering the space which I believe is

really important and I think that's the big thing that changed in 2017 that now we have really a lot of startups a lot of cool startups trying to build all the technology and bring it further and really look for business cases and try to apply the technology in the business sense as well and I think that's really important for bringing the whole block chain space to the next step take a lot of the startups will fail definitely I asked any other startups in any other space but it's really important having those those experiments and those those projects happening all around the world because they're building on the existing technology and are bringing it further and are improvements in your in your

viewer in your experience has this interest right from let's say the traditional financial sector or traditional funds in this space and and of course they have deep pockets right they're looking at investing billions in this space not just you know ten thousand Swiss francs so has this somehow changed maybe the approach that startups take to conducting their business yeah how much how much money flows into those startups by I SEOs and those are not really sometimes our institution in message but is also a lot of retail investors and those startups are really able to raise a lot of funds which in my opinion opinion honestly is

most often too much so as a start-up in my experience it's not good to have too many funds if you have a couple of mediums and you do not have more than an idea you're gonna spend those millions they're all it's really important that your scars on money when they start up because then it's really I'd really prepares you to to focus on what you're doing and that brings you've heard her so premier um I'm a bit um there are two sides to the story so on one side I really love seeing how much money flows into the space and how much it's going to be how much as companies are being able to do with those funds

but on the other side I'm quite critical whether those startups will be able to execute if they have too much money on their hands and we do not know that yet because um I believe we haven't seen something like that before and those startups which raised quite a lot of money they now have I'll take a couple of years till they run out of cash so you're not going to see the consequences this year or even next year you're gonna see them more down the road but I'd assume that quite a few of those startups raising a lot of money now won't be able to deliver later so we we prefer those projects which try to keep it a bit small and try to really raise

only those funds which they know they need then incremental theft what do you think are some of these consequences that you did you mentioned before off of all this institutional money flowing into the space so when institutional money flows into space that's generally a good sale because it brings in some professionalism it brings in more regulatory oversight in tendencies and it also brings it lowers volatilities so you see that with tech stock as well as soon as you have institutional investors entering the tech stock space volatility

at the risk of those assets usually drops so that would be one of the of my my wishes for the future is that that when we see those institutional investors entering they have that they are helping further develop the space and making a more professional I also believe that they're gonna have more stringent view on which startups are really going to get some money now it's it's possible to have a wide use paper and nothing behind it and raise a couple of million I cannot believe that when institutional investors are really in the space and in Europe they aren't really yet they're

just entering now and when they're really entering the space that there will be more focus on that that only projects which really have some business foundations behind it that may be already started the project can show some technology that those projects are going to be the ones receiving the funds and not those just having an idea the white paper let's take a quick break for a message from our sponsors crypto storage is part of the crypto finance group providing services for professional financial intermediaries and therefore bridging the gap between traditional markets and blockchain technology the storage solution offered by crypto storage raises market standards by introducing a new security

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an institutional investor or another professional big investor what do you think should they do they should really start small and start executing on the idea so instead of spending too much time and stare at eclis thinking about the concept that the business idea and writing white paper they should in my opinion should start executing on it that start testing it start talking with people potential users and really see whether it's thing they want to do what did I really make sense and once they they know okay their idea makes sense they should start building it it should start implementing the technology they should call their a team

which is really diverse and have really tanked know-how in the team as well and once they are able to have like some tests to show something like like a Minimum Viable Product and show ok what we are doing and really make sense and it works then they should go out and raise some funds really focus on on the team bring a team together that that's good bring the technology to a level that that makes sense also it will involved at the ecosystem review early on I think especially for this blockchain projects because it's all about collaboration and communities it's really important to build up this community really early on

and of the companies you look at I mean how many are doing this and then how many others are still in that other you know IC o---- paradigm yeah it's it's relative minority that's doing it how we would like to have it done and but in Switzerland we see a couple of really nice projects which which are doing it like that actually focus on the community on building something that has value and I think we're going in the right direction because those are the projects that are really the the ones that are seen as successful in the industry so you're in

Switzerland and did you did you look at other places to to start your own company as well no actually actually not because I am really based in Switzerland I have my family friends and everything is here I have lived abroad for some time before and I really liked being back and starting something here and it was quite a lot to have a financial industry which is big in such a small country and at the same time having this blockchain community in a small country like Switzerland which is really big also in an international point of view so for me it's actually perfect being

able to be based in Switzerland but still work in a market which is internationally quite absurd rooms I mean you already mentioned that many things align in Switzerland I feel very similar right I mean I've been away from Switzerland for more than 15 years and just in the recent years whenever I came back I was very much surprised by the level of of start-up energy and now this whole crypto and blockchain movement that started here and I thought it was really the ideal place actually to start projects like these in this space how do you feel about it exactly the same it's um it combines different things with

some combines different things which are really valuable for starting a company in the blockchain space so you have a lot of know-how here because of the universities you have quite a lot of financial capacities in the sense of you have to top the banks you have a large financial industry but you also have acquired some fan funding capacity capacity to really start those companies and another thing which is often forgotten is and the I believe is really important in a start-up space is the willingness to collaborate with these partners so when we want to talk

with someone in a bank for example or at some investment advisor or in another startup we just write them and usually you get an answer I heard different things of different countries very secular much more difficult to really get to that to the decision makers within large companies but in Switzerland those large companies really want to be involved with startups as well so if you have a nice idea and if you ask nicely you usually get to the person you want to get to and you can pitch your idea and they should do that good you get some nice collaboration opportunities

out of it and that's Switzerland I'd say it's it's really great to have that cool have you seen any downsides to those are the costs it's really expensive to to live in Switzerland and then so if you do not pay salaries in a startup face early on and you somehow have to manage your and your own assets so either you need to have some savings or you have someone supporting you in order that you are able to redo it because you have to pay your rent and so on but I think because if you have if you had a job previously and you had

high you have a high salary level it Switzerland it's also really outside it's easy to some degree to say something if you really want to start something on your own so if you have nice salary and everything then I think it's the most important thing to is to save as much as you can then you really get freedom to quit your job and start your own business and then it's also possible to Google in Switzerland I mean it really looks like Switzerland has become some ideal startup country right I mean who would have thought yeah yeah but I think it's also all the partners that work together so I have been involved in the kickstart accelerator and before and there you really saw it you have

governments you have corporates and you have startups all really willing to collaborate and work together and you're also seeing it now in the financial industry you have large banks that want to collaborate with startups but you for example also have in ma which really has an open mind towards new ideas so it now in the crypto blockchain space they could have come and say ok I see Oh mmm we don't know that yet we're just gonna gonna stop the party but they really see the potential behind it and they they said ok and let's see how we can allow that potential to grow but still have certain boundaries and they did that

really nicely and that's that's a really nice example how also the government helps support those startup industries cool there are several professional crypto asset management companies coming up now in Switzerland I mean globally of course but also here there's several is their intense competition in this space or or how do you interact yeah we do not really see the competition yet if you compare it to the traditional asset management industry so you have around two and a half thousand asset managers in Switzerland alone competing in the equity space so apparently there is room for a lot of as managers even within a small countries now in the crypto space in you have a couple of players in the

in the States but in Europe there are just the first few coming up and in Switzerland mmm there's say a handful of players like we are and which is compared to the two and a half thousand it's tiny and we know all of them they're actually quite good friends some of them and then we really collaborate because we are facing the same problems usually and currently and I'd say that's going to stay for quite a couple of years like that as well it's more collaboration than competition and everyone has built their own strategy in the sense of so some are more on the passive side so saying ok we just want to give access to Krypto space someone more on the trading

side saying okay you wanted to work arbitrage trading strategies and really look for those inefficiencies within the market and then our companies like like we are which are more like really research-based more looking for long term company investments and so having those handful players in Switzerland with those different strategies it's really not that big of a competition it's more really I'm some friendly phrases you see and we try to to tackle all the problems together also that's quite a difference right from the traditional financial sector you know it's it's less competition yeah I'm just now you have a lot of demand for what we

are doing and not a lot of a lot of offers whereas in the traditional secretary have a lot of offerings we have a lot of as managers a lot of banks and the demand is decreasing and for us it's just the opposite and we really trying to push it forward as long as you can that's going to change at some point that I'd assume that you start more towards and competition but now it's really nice to have it like that and hopefully it's going to stay like that for some more years it's also more in the sense of this whole blockchain topic anyway that you have more of a collaboration decentralized approach and where people need to work together to really achieve

something do you get much interest from people who used to be in the traditional financial sector and just recently said you know this really fascinates me this whole crypto asset space I want to get a job there do you get people to get applications from from them we see a lot of interest so my co-founded the company five of us and my four co-founders I have all banking backgrounds as opposed to me and they they see they have a lot of friends in the banking in the banking world and so many people really do not see a perspective within their jobs in the back

and they would like to do something outside the banking sector and the blockchain secretary is obviously something that really sparks their interest so for us it's really great seeing because once you're gonna scale once we start hiring people we have this pool of really great people which are currently working for banks would really want to get out and build something on their own because in their jobs even though those those companies are great most of the times and they really try to push their employees forward they are really in a in a streamlined approach in terms of what they're able to do it's it's difficult to have innovation within

those large corporates it's difficult to bring new things on the table because you have a lot of ones technology side for example if a lot of legacy system that you have to consider you cannot just start on the greenfield and build something new and that's what a lot of those people working in the banks now really would like to do so for us it's a great thing and we believe it's it's going to be quite quite okay to find people working that would like to work in this sector what I mean you mentioned before that one big new skill that people need is the technical understanding of how blockchain works how cryptocurrencies work what else do you think are skills that people should

develop who want to leave the traditional financial sector and enter the crypto sector well definitely don't know how on the space so that implies would our - our players and how can I trade those assets and that usually starts with buying their own assets themselves because then you learn it right away and and really get an understanding of how those markets work because some things might be different or might be similar to the traditional financial markets but a lot of things are different as well and you really have to realize and how how those those things work differently and that's best by trying it out yourself and then the

other thing that's but that's far away from encrypter blockchain but it's if you want to go to something smaller just start up or start your own business it's a totally different business mindset instead of having a task that you that you have to do you suddenly have an empty sheet then you have to start writing down your own task you have to start being able to figure out what to do next and that's totally different to being in a big corporate it's a great thing but that's something that has to be learned but it's it's usually you learn it by you learn it by doing it or there may be cultural things you already said that people need to be more maybe

self starters and they need to understand that they're working in a start-up in a small company and they don't have an HR doing everything for them but what are maybe cultural things that people just need to where they need to learn more than just about technology one thing I often see and that's maybe also my background from some Colin and my friends having their backgrounds sometimes there as well but this needs to always do what's best for your CV so whenever you start a job or go to your next job or during your studies to an internship you always have this mindset of what do I have to do that is good on my CV and I was doing that as well I did

a lot of internships during my studies and then had a good job after after University and then when when for the first time going from a big corporate was to a small company a lot of people are asking me why do you do that that's really bad for your CV I was just doing it because I liked to do it and I didn't really think about that too much and then just after I say after a couple of years I was thinking about it why I didn't and I it was good that I did it because was for the first time I stopped doing it for the CV and it was it's really because I was I was realizing and when do you end working for your CV so it might be when you're 60 for example

then you might stop working for your CV so if people stopped having this this idea that they need to have something that looks good on the resume then they really start doing what they really love to do and I believe that's when you do what you're really good at and it's a mindset but yeah and I'm not sure if it's just because this is universities you get that picture that you have to do all those things that are good for your resume but once you realize that and you stop doing it then it gets really fun cool what what are some some interesting projects you've seen lately I mean not not by name necessarily but by an innovative approach to to using this

technology I think one really important area where I believe the technology is going to play an important part is in the whole identity management space so we are not really but a lot of us are not really aware how to use their data reasonably we share our data quite quite a bit and I include myself I'm using quite a lot of tools which I actually know I shouldn't use but still use because it's just more convenient and you mean these tools you mean Google and LinkedIn and those things for example yeah so you have a gmail address you give a lot of data to Google there you

have Facebook and so on the idea of LinkedIn but it also starts with having your coolest cardema grow so you give a lot of state away all the time and during every step in your life and I think Daksha technology allows us to to get back ownership over this data and I'll oh I'd love to see some projects and you see starting you see just certain projects we'd start in that space and that really help you manage this data and be owner of that data again and if you want to give that data way that's ok but then at least you can sell it at get some money for it um I think we gotta see hacks we gotta see

even more hacks in that data space and so now also is Facebook very very very data is misused and that's going to bring back this awareness about your own data and hopefully locked in space is going to have some tools for it how you can manage your data more more reasonably than we did that you know what our things were you thought this is maybe a little bit too much of of a moonshot we hear a lot of things that okay it's going you're going to get rid of bags for example I believe banks are going to stay for example that the technology itself will be able to get rid of banks

but they have other important roles than just being at the middleman and so I believe banks are going to stay in different functions but we are not getting rid of them I mean there was this famous paper right the banks as keepers of Secrets yeah that's actually good a good example because in in our in our business for example we looked for a banking partner for storing the assets because we ourselves we haven't been in the business of storing valuable codes we do not how and we didn't know how to do that we don't have experience in that

we didn't want to set up the processes for that but banks they knew but they know how to store valuable things since decades and they say it can take over that that role will also encrypt the space and they're gonna do that at some point you could do not have you don't know need someone storing those asset anyway because you could do that decentralized as well but for some like middle term perspective definitely banks could also play an important role in that space the crypto world but also think banks are always going to be a important player as as party that you can consult when you make decisions so for example if you want to have a

mortgage and it's your first mortgage then you still want to talk with someone you might not need the bank for the mortgage itself because you could that peer-to-peer but you still want to have someone that advises you because you are not knowledgeable in that field so if banks managed to keep this client relationship and advise them and be their their trusted party in that sense they could still be a valuable player interesting before you you also said that you don't necessarily believe that Bitcoin will replace traditional fiat money where do you see the Bitcoin use case I see the two regions or say in two use cases one

use case is just an alternative currency system which is especially on on more third world country regions where you want to have an alternative currency and and that's a bigger part I see that's a store of value at some point and they're outside it's more most likely if it replaces something it's most likely to replace to a certain degree something like gold I could never imagine holding gold in my portfolio I do not see the reason for it and I believe that a lot of people think similarly then I do especially younger people and people that never knew a

decade without them without digital tools so all those generations coming up they might hold something like Bitcoin for having a store of value in the long term in that just to have a security in the case something terrible happens as a lot of people are holding a wall now my dear EVP I really was more likelihood that something happens to your government but still people want to have this this kind of pockets that cable to in case something happens and I believe Bitcoin can be an important player there what do you think should professional investors in this space what what should

they understand about crypto assets that they currently don't that we are really in the early stage right now and we saw it in in December when a lot of people wanting to buy a Bitcoin and we saw that it's not yet scalable that transaction fees are really high and a lot of people are saying then okay we told you it's not going to work bitcoin is useless but it's the wrong approach I believe because we are in such an early stage that it is not yet meant to be used by so many people you could compare it with for example Napster in the early days of the internet when you downloaded a song by a

Napster that took one night one song one night that's not even usable that's not user friendly and but still we did it because we just wanted to have that song now we have Spotify which you can't just stream every song you want but it took 10 years to get here and I believe bitcoin is in that stage right now you have a really great technology and it's going to be amazing once it's fully developed and fully scalable but it needs some time and we need to get it get and the industry that time to go there and be technology really secure and that just needs some time and a lot of investors do not understand that that just see ok it's not as scalable as visas so it

cannot be as good as visa but this they forgot the big picture date they forget that the potential technology is much bigger than traditional systems mm-hmm so that's more the currency aspect right the bitcoin aspect but what else maybe beyond that you know where you before you said the valuable thing will be these new networks what about them or maybe misconceptions that are quite common still I think it's really difficult core for all of us to really grasp the potential of technology we include it I cannot imagine any application that's possible I just know it they're going to be much more

applications than we can think of now it's going to replace entire industries for example audit firms and now having like specific order to do on companies and look at individual records see you're not gonna need to do anymore you're gonna have like entire systems which are screened in one go we do not need to look at only certain aspects of accounting system for example and so we have entire industries that are going to be replaced but they're still going to be a lot of people needed to look at those system to implement those system to look for the interfaces

between the different tools and then sometimes I believe it's underestimated what the technology is going to to disrupt just because we are not able to believe or not able to imagine what everybody's possible as as an investment advisor or also as an entrepreneur who are your role models I'd start with my parents and they both have companies themselves and so I always grew up in in a really entrepreneurial family and for me it was great to see the passion they had for their companies and at the same time most of the flexibility so they they inversely I always saw it was hard

to build up a company but at the same time and they never complained because that they did what they loved to do and so I say they're my biggest role models in in building up companies then you have those founders all throughout the space especially in the blockchain space and now in the Swiss blocks in space you get to know a lot of them which are really passionate about what they are doing that inspires you every day to work on your projects because you're gonna have like bad days every now and then when nothing works and you then you tell yourself okay what you're doing here and doesn't make any sense but then

again you see your own passion you see the passions of the people you work together and you know okay it's the right thing to do yeah cool I mean let's let's say let's imagine Satoshi had never written that white paper in there there was no blockchain and no cryptocurrencies what else do you think would you be doing I believe I would still have my own company and I believe there would be something similar like a blockchain might not be a bit contrite blockchain but I think that all those smart

people's people involved in bringing further any technology they have come up it would have come up with with something in that direction because this whole idea of decentralization is something that's really in the community and I believe that's not Satoshi only or the grouper out Satoshi which point out but that's the whole tech industry and the whole people passionate about about bringing technology forward and you should see that who is having an open source topic so a lot of things that are open source in the tech space because you in you know that only when you collaborate on

it and then you bring it further and that's why I believe something like the blockchain technology would have come up eventually and believing that I would have been in the entrepreneurial stage by that time anyhow and being involved with something with tech I might not be that different to what we are doing now for us it's always really important when we are talking with people about the whole blockchain investing part is that they realize it's it's investing in really early-stage companies in a really specific sector but it's a sector that can disrupt every industry so it's it's

on one side it's high-risk investing on the other side you're involved with the technology which is going to change the world and we are totally sure about that be we do not have a doubt about that at the a need a and it's going to change the world and if you want to be involved in space you should start now and the add your your your seeing to it that space can go forward yeah that was very inspirational thanks so much Lydia I really enjoyed talking to you and thanks a lot for taking time today thanks so much for joining us today more info on our guests than our sponsors is in the show notes of this episode and on the podcast

website the blockchain and us comm to help people find this podcast it's important that you download subscribe and give it a top rating and review on iTunes or on the podcast platform of your choice I'm Manuel stackers and I thank you very much for listening [Music]