Payments, Digital Banking and Public-Sector Adoption (Combined Recording)

Transcript

Welcome back. Welcome back everyone. Our next speaker is going to talk to us about some the way that he has make banking painless. His goal is to make banking and transferring fiat and crypto seamless across border. It's a new economy. He has tapped into what are the biggest challenges and he has solved those challenges through redi. His name is Soren Azorian. He's an investor. He's a venture capitalist. is a supporter of

the community. It's uh more than that is a great human being that believed in human potential. So let's welcome him to the stage with a big round of applause. A lot of energy. Come on people. Yes. One more time. Hello. Yes. Oh. All right. Again, um I want to start with God first. Thank you. I'm here and thanks Stephen, my buddy, my pal and uh the entire it canal

um organization. You guys are doing a thing which nobody would dare to do and I applause for that. I appreciate you. Um, as you guys know me, Serena Soran, CEO of founder of the Red Fire and Red Line Lab and part of this great economy and ecosystem of Panama. Um, when I started here was different. It was like four or five years ago and many uh many conversation was just a conversation.

Nobody was there to do it because they were waiting for somebody else to come and do it. And I said, "My hand is up. Can I start trying to do these things?" And then we came to Panama uh to not only create a company, we came to Panama to create a movement. Um many of you guys know me um and know my story of the red line but we trying to literally cross the red line for many things not just for your personal opportunities also for you to just uh flourish the ideas and make sure whatever you have in your heart just be able to monetize it on a different kind of fashions depends of what you're trying to do. Um with

that said when we started the biggest and still it is the biggest issue was everything was separated banking crypto exchange custodial and uh you have to be able to do one thing or crossber payments you have to use four five six seven companies all in all and hopefully uh you know you will get your money or funds if the company is uh correctly set up. But with us um as you can see it on a on a screen Redfi is a seamless US banking plus crypto crypto uh all in one place. We are a fintech company. So what does mean is like u uh

as far as the technology we are building with the latest and greatest ones. We're integrating with most of the layers. We're building the entire thing through the machine learning, AI, predictive market analysis. So our company is growing based on the technology growth. So if we are we are focused on multi-chain aspect of the thing not just per say just one chain but under redfi you can find Solana of course the OG bitcoin ethereum uh polygon um and and many other uh market markets of the layer ones and layer two to be able to trade. Um what we solve is like literally fast compliance borderless finance and payment in one place and why

it matters because when 16 years ago Satoshi started with Bitcoin everything was about the peer-to-peer transactions but we saw in the last 16 years after the smart contract introduction with Ethereum and many more after that everything from from the like convergence that you see on the screen started from be able to offer CFI or D5 or Trafi and now it's a real world assets and deepening service and product all into this glamorous conversion of the financial shift and for us finance is just not anymore banking beside crypto. It is all in one place and make we want to make sure

everybody has the uh way to be able to engage with this entire ecosystem. We know and we've been all challenged. Many of you guys on this stage or on this um space right now had a problem with the bank, had a problem with the coin exchanges, had a problem with u dexes uh or CFI platforms or any sort of trading bots and you know how crazy and expensive and challenging is to be able to cross border your transactions and your payments especially when it comes to fiat. Many of the crypto companies or many of the companies which they are in this region or elsewhere when they're touching crypto most of the time their bank accounts were closed. They were not

they were unbanked or with the choke point 2.0 we had in the US nobody really was like banking big companies were out of business just because nobody was banking them. And if you don't have a banking system integrated to the financial ecosystem automatically your on ramp which is the most important part to bring the old money to the new money wasn't working. So that restriction on crypto business is the challenge which is still going on because not many people are able to still use services like ours because of the limitation they have as institutional family offices.

They have to report some ways and shape or form which is not allowing them as a regulated company to still use our our service or such services. But the other side opportunity is let's say two to3 trillion dollars of digital asset industry literally need a trusted accountable solution which we're trying to provide with the redfi and the other companies which we have on the red line lab um ecosystem when we talking about the businesses require alternative financial systems all financial system doesn't work um it doesn't produce enough yield for people to be able to offset the inflation and all Another challenging uh thing which is old traditional or trfy

money is building but the combination of the tradefi and defy is the way we're trying to pursue and go forward. How are we solving it? Literally seamless banking and crypto integration. You can manage your fiat and crypto in just one platform. So when you are starting with a a red fi the first step is click open your user individual account or your business account go through the very simple KYC AML as soon as you got your open account you when you log in after of course authentication the security and etc etc you'll be able to log into your account when you're in your account you will see your US dollar account and all your crypto accounts at same place think of it as let's say if you're in the US and

you log in and you're online banking with the Chase or Mercury or whoever you guys are doing banking with and next to you see all the cryptos and you'll be able to easily move the money and crypto backtoback with each other. Right now you have a US dollar account with us but you will within the next few weeks we have a Mexican peso uh Colombian peso euro uh dirham for Dubai all of them will be tied over there so you can use a multicurrency multicross border at the same time very easily managing fiat and crypto in one place and then custodial service I was um speaking with uh our bitcoin gentlemen over here they're using fire blocks we also use fireblocks anchorage uh bitco all of them to make sure custodial services are regulated and be

able to help the people to secure their assets. Payment solution and treasury managements are also built through the names I just mentioned. So if you are using the treasury management through redfi, you'll be able to make sure everything is set up correctly. You can be in and out of the positions anytime you wanted to. If you're adding to your treasury, let's say P&Ls every month, Bitcoin or Ethereum, you will be able to just send in the fiat and just connect to your treasury uh account and be able to manage that. Uh other thing which we done uh for our clients, you can send and receive invoices through our platform which is makes it easier for accounting accountability of your financial reporting. So let's say if end of the month you have done 100

transactions and your accountant want to report you can easily export that report and give it to your accountant connect to the quickbook or any other taxing services which you are using and they will be able to report your tax your income your exchanges etc etc. So you don't have to be liable not your personally not your business-wise we still and these are all for free by the way and you know if you want to um integrate we are also working uh soon to be able to give you more details on the taxation and regulation so you'll be able to have one place for everything included here and whatever I'm showing here I will share later on uh so if you want to have copy of it or forward to your companies or your individual you want to have an um and use for it or

read it you can use that you can also go to do the QR code and go to the platform immediately. Competitive edge is again we designed this to be in one one thing and one place for entire thing from treasury to onramp off ramping to buy and sell of the crypto and securities are always top of the mind and we want to make sure your assets are not only faster stealth ste with the settlements and we be able to borderlessly send this payment and securely anytime traction and growth here is The part which is it's ongoing uh effort from all of our uh vendors and us from our side which is we are integrating and

expanding to lots of partnership with the banks just just for the last 48 hours. We have extended our partnership with three more major companies from brokerages to custodial services in LATAM to be able to work with them in the near future and expanding our uh our footprint right now as we are mainly focused in Central America meaning from Mexico Colombia Guatemala Panama Costa Rica. We want to just see how we can integrate this one with a similar positioning on other places outside of the LATAM. um upcoming features as you know right now many people are giving the yield of 4% 2% 3% 7% defies or trady services some of the banks are offering

or Robin Hood is offering 4% 4 to 5% we'll be able to have that fund very soon so if you are keeping your treasuries on the US dollar with us or with a crypto you'll be able to securely have that yield come to you and we're just going to probably charge very very little points to be able to uh navigate that entire exchanges And we're talking about the euro as I mentioned cope Mexican peso and then also we have a dham for Dubai is coming soon UAE and tokenization tokenization of real world assets tokenization of the fund it will be something which we will be offered through redfi by integrating to theorus and all other platform which we are partnered with already as a thank you as always we want

you to come in and easily use our services if you're individual open your account get your credit your business, open your account, get your credit, try us, give us a feedback. If you see there is a feature you want to add because your company needs it. If you're a brokerage and you need a certain kind of omnibus account to be able to just manage their entire ecosystem through that one account, you will be able to have that. So the feedback is the most thing we're driving on and if you give us a feedback and I know Stephen here give us lots of feedback. We're trying to just keep building it and keep building it and want to make sure know that feedback's going to extend. So my goal is not only to have your business, we want to have make sure we have you active as a part of our ecosystem we are

building. Um is there any question I can answer? Yes sir. Microphone. And by the way when you sign up make sure before April 30th to do the verification and send your KYC's and just email the helpfi.io. uh PBW so you'll get your credit done and then automatically when you're sending it it goes through to our AI machine and then sends it to database so we have a keep track of every single one who's registering yes sir yeah uh how do you handle the users the the users how do you handle the the individual accounts and the private keys are do you

own the private do you control the private keys inside Redfi or does the user control the private keys or do you have something some account abstraction Um well this is centralized finance. This is completely centralized. So basically when you're opening an account we give you the pair of keys and you know mainly comes in again with let's say bitcoin integration or fire blocks or whatever the provider we're using. Those are the one they're doing it is segregated separated from the US. We don't touch anybody's money. We don't use anybody's account. So we don't lend the money. Your money is your money and your control anytime you want it. When you have a open let's say when you open a redfi account first of all you will have a US dollar account. What does that mean? It's not like look like the ones which you guys seen over here. Uh let's

say I don't want to name the names but because we are all working in the same um companies but if you're opening US dollar account in Panama, you're opening actual Balo account. So that doesn't have the FDIC insurance that doesn't have many other things which we are providing through a redi to you. So that part let's say for example you open an account from Panama and then we assign um Cross River Bank to your local banking. So cross river bank going to give you actual account under your own name first name and last name or the other accounts let's say SSB bank and many others we have portage and whoever we're working with them which is like over 10 to 12 banks in the US and Canada so you have your own account name what does it mean is let's say something happen red doesn't product doesn't work

anymore you can easily claim your money with a portish bank or any other bank which is your bank account with them through us just like what many people know mercury and mercury does the same way like a fintech bundled on the packages which they're providing through their uh banking licenses of the other vendors they're using. But again, you're answered correctly. We are giving you our own wallet address to be able to use it, but you can just in and out of it anytime you want by using a country party and send it out of the platform. Yes. Yes. Same same thing with your business. Yeah. And the account but the centralized cryp the blockchain account

uh is central is uh you control the centralized account. I'm talking more of a FDX situ situation similar to FTX where if I don't want I I don't want to catastrophize but something bad happens uh in in that case uh the can I exit can I exit without your approval? 100%. So basically when you build when we build it that's the was talking about the fire blocks and bitco and anchorage you guys already have the account directly there. So using this one as a main place to just get the job done instead of having the six seven eight accounts for different kind of companies all is in one place and you'll be able to do that easily.

Yes. Yeah. So if any other question if not I'm here always or back to the panel blockchain week. Um Stephen is part of our um you know entire ecosystem of the Redline lab. So if there's no question you guys can just do the QR code, open an account, try the services and if you want to have further question you can go to our website, click on a chatbot um the AI chatbot which we are the one designed and build it. You can ask all the question in English or Spanish you'll be able to find the answer and if not all redfight.io can be accessed 247. Our team will be answering any question you have and hopefully we'll see you on the platform and then appreciate your business. I want to close uh with a red

line lab and many people know us as a red line lab. The red line lab we start this movement of crossing the red line because we want to make sure we go back to the community and build it all together. Uh we have lots of community members uh here in Panama and in Latam generally to helping us to achieve that goal. uh what we have done the last 12 months by investing into ecosystem from Panama and Costa Rica mainly right now we have 10 companies and I'm proud to say 10 companies right now are powered by Redline lab and many more are coming soon into the platform we are here to build a community and help each other so anyone who is builder anyone who wants to have an investment and to be able to

bring their u initiative life they'll be able to use our services with that said Thank you so much again. I appreciate this. Thank you, Saurin. Uh we're going to take a brief 8 minute intermission and next we'll have Gabriel Compa from Tower Bank with us. Uh be patient in 12:00 noon. We're just waiting for for Telly Map to join us. Hey guys, welcome

back. We are going to have a very interesting conversation with Gabriel Campa from Tower Bank, head of digital assets. Tower Bank, please. Well, he it's been pioneering uh hybrid financial crypto friendly um and I think it's made to make this transition as familiar as possible. So first we're going to start with tell us a little bit about yourself within the ecosystem and how you got to this point

right to have this start with something about you. Well, um, well, I'm the head of digital assets for Tower Bank. Uh, I'm the I'm the one that's designing and and connecting both worlds, the traditional space and and the crypto space. I got into crypto, it was the beginning of the pandemic. I was stuck in my house and I started mining Ethereum. Um, and it was with some friends. We started mining Ethereum and it wasn't easy, right? because you had to configure the GPUs and and and and the clocks and I started talking to the community worldwide and I I found a very open community help

willing to help when it go when you go somewhere else normally they don't want you to participate because they don't want competition and here's the contrary I didn't view it as a competition they view that the more the marrier um so I started understanding the crypto space how it worked um and When the bank was doing their their their 20 their 10-year plan, they discovered that there was clients using our credit cards um to buy crypto. And we saw that we were receiving funds from exchanges. And for a bank, not knowing where the funds are coming from is a problem, of course, right? So, at first, we saw it as a risk because we didn't know where the money

was. And we started talking to the community and and it was amazing because many people came to us. I was like and they came with presentations like this is what I do. This is how I do it. This is what you need to do. This is how this works. And fortunately I've been I had been working this for a couple of months. So I wasn't it wasn't new for me. So I and they were they were surprised that because if you you've seen this you go to a bank, you talk to them about crypto and they're like uh what the heck what the heck is that? We had an idea of what it was and how it worked, but we understand we started to understand their needs and we saw there was it was not a risk but a huge business opportunity. Um, can we backtrack a

little bit? How do you because you just mentioned that banks are it's a risk not knowing where the money is coming from but also banks tend to be very traditional in the way they do business and innovating it's it's a big step because you risk uh you risk uh uh not having a good experience for the customer I mean and that's some other things so how was that well I mean at the end of the day fortunately the idea to go crypto came from the Right. So, it was a mandate from the CEO, from the president of the bank, from the board of directors. Was that surprising? Uh, no. I mean, I've been very close to the bank for many, many years. Um, the president of the bank is

one of my best friends. Uh, he was mining with me Ethereum. Um, so at the end of the day, the mandate came from up up there. So, at the end of the day, being a very extreme, it was not it was not a democracy, right? It was a mandate to execute and figure out any way to do it. Right? So we had to look at regulation. We had to talk to corresponding banks. We had to talk to the regulator. We had to bring chain analysis on board, find our own solution. I mean, at the end of the day, we didn't have to convince anybody in the bank to do this. Fortunately, we're we're a medium-sized bank, so it's we're a bit more agile. It's easier to So immediately they gave me a team. I have my own technological team. I have my my

my own business team, my own marketing team. And so this digital asset head of digital asset was created pretty much to launch into creating this crypto familiar with tradition. Exactly. It was it was created from the ground up. What we did was we created a fintech inside the bank and the way I operated was as a fintech. How does that go with regulations with the superintendent? No, at the end of the day it was still the bank but my way of operating was as a fintech. So I I had my own teams uh we and we were building agile and we I brought in and say at the end of the day normally you have to all right let's see what technology we're going to do how much we're going to spend on this and this

was more like all right let's design it find the best technology for it and let's bring it in let's go to the best player in in in crypto analytics let's go to the best player in technology let's talk to AWS let's talk to and and bring them in normally projects and banks budget is very important because banks In contrary to a fintech, a bank can never report loss, right? If a bank reports a loss, they can get intervened by the regulator. So that was not an option. So we had to separate funds and you had to prepare the world first.

Exactly. Before you start. So we went little by little. By the time that we get we got involved in this, this was, if I'm not mistaken May 2022, the president announced that they were vetoing the the law. Mhm. Um the regulator was saying that no crypto, that they were against the law, right? And the day before we had planned to have a a small meet and greet with people of the community to to to get some insight on what they want, what they need, how we can build this better for them. And and and the night before the CEO and the president of the bank tells me, you know what, once you get up there, tell everybody that we're crypto

friendly. Let's let's go again let's go against the the system. Um how did that feel? because I mean you be doing all this work and then um I was like are you sure you want me to say that because are we ready there? Not really that because there was people there was people from the regulator at the event, right? So I was like because we we've never the reason we've been able to do what we do today and the reason why we've been able to bring this to the community is if you look our name in the bank, Tower Bank, you're not going to find one negative news, right?

We're very careful how we do business and who we do business with. We're very conservative. I can't say that anymore. Now we're we've gone to the other side, but we're we're still very very conservative. For example, if you saw when I launched the app, it's only Bitcoin, Ethereum, USDT, USDC. Can I offer more things? Yes. Little by little, let's grow little by little. Let's make sure it all works. Once I I'm confident that the system is stable, that there's no bugs, then I can start. So you say it's like it's in a beta stage right now.

It's it's in a beta. It's it's ready. It's ready. It's ready. It's in a better state. There's some bugs. Well, yesterday we had three or four bugs. They were fixed immediately. So, today a new update came out for the app. Um, fixing many of the bugs and and that's that's the world of of developing uh software, right? At the end of the day, you're never done. You're always have to be fixing stuff. But at the end of the day, it's been a slow process, but internally moving fast, like designing fast. Um, for example, something that we're offering today is Bitcoin back loans, right? You give me your Bitcoin. Tell us about that. How does that work? All right. Um, it's a you give me your Bitcoin. We do a 50% loan to value uh margin call at

65%. Um, and you get cash immediately. No credit score, none of that stuff at the end. So, as a collateral or Bitcoin as a collateral, correct? 50% loan to value. And we also do Bitcoin back credit cards. How similless is that that request for the loan? And I guess it works with the app as well. No, it's not it's not in the app yet. We're doing it manual. Um to be able to take it mainstream, it has to be fully automated, right? Okay. Not only to protect the bank, but also to protect the client, right? I have to give you a a method where you can fund the account quickly if the market crashes, right?

That there's that's always a possibility. So, we're doing a a a small scale um testing it out, seeing how it works, how the market is behaving. You have a cap right now on that. Um I have a cap. It's a flexible cap. All right. It depends how the market is. Um we explain people the risk, right? at the end at the end of the day the cryp the crypto community especially those Bitcoin holders um they know the risk right um but we're going little by little we don't our success has been not going crazy right did we have the opportunity to go crazy yes did we no it was it was

a very bad idea what what would be that metric you said it's it's been a success but of course we're not playing a game it's ongoing So what is your metric for success? Well, first of all, tell us what's what are the biggest challenges to implement this and then what's your metric for success? To be very honest, the biggest challenges have been developing the technology inhouse. That's one thing that we did. We did it all in house. Okay. So you have to pull a team. Are they all local? Uh no, there's people from from outside of Panama inside Panama. But it's all been designed in house. Okay. Um I designed it from from the ground up. Um and

that's been the most difficult part to build it. Um the talks with the the corresponding banks or the regulator has been many many talks but they they've always been very very open to allow us and and and help us build this. Um transforming the mentality inside the bank has been a process. um some people were faster than others. Some people were more let's say challenging the change a little bit but one of the beauties of this that the results were very fast. So when you work in an organization that for your entire life results take years to take effect and that kind of keeps

you down because hey you you work very very hard and you don't see the the fruits of your of your hard work until 5 years later and now you work very very hard and you see this in two months it's like oh this is I'm really doing something is doing an impact right when you see and this is very out there right what people what the community thought about banks is that they didn't like banks. Mhm. Um but when you see clients coming to the bank and congratulating you and thanking you and that that keeps people up like that like hey wow people are talking about my where I work and it's making them happy and it's solving their problems and and they're they're

very thankful every day. that keeps people I mean I I've been I had my team working for the past eight months non-stop to be able to do that launch uh yesterday. Um how many users do you have in the app right now? Um right now in the app I haven't checked the list right now there's like 200 300 people. Um but in the in the bank we have like over 6,000 clients. But I mean in in using the app for crypto yeah right now in the app there's like 200 300 people right now. Our plans are to by the 15th of May, mid May, 15th of May, the idea is for to onboard all the clients into the app, all our crypto, our our accounts in the bank. What is the next step into you

know as we know there's still a lot of skepticism around the topic like you said even inside the bank you mentioned the word crypto and people what is that do they understand it you know what's the next step now to make that transition for the rest of the client to give that option or do you have a product in place well the product the product is in place so today I have around 6,000 clients in the bank that do crypto with us. All those clients are going to be taken to the app by the 15th of May. All right. We're going to we're going to take everybody over there. The idea is to everybody has to the idea behind this is eliminate the manual work and you can self serve yourself. So you

can receive the crypto into the into the wallet and you decide when you sell it or you decide where you send it. It's going to be all self-service. Um but the next steps are first uh 15th 20th of May we're going to make the app public in Panama in the app stores and our idea is to start expanding into different countries in the in in the region but more of that's going to come for I still have to automate the Bitcoin back loans so you can do it from straight from the app. Um also there's a product that I'm dying to launch which is a a bitcoinbacked overdraft account. Tell us about that.

All right, let's say you get home and your wife tells you the fridge broke and you don't get your salary until, I don't know, in two weeks and your wife tells you or you find a fridge or or you're sleeping with the dog outside. Well, this will allow you to give the bank your Bitcoin. You'll have access to an overdraft where you'll pay interest daily, right? a small fee and you pay you buy your fridge and once you get your salary just pay back the the you cover the overdraft. You didn't have to sell your Bitcoin because that was going to be your next option. You're going to have to go out, sell your

Bitcoin, go buy the fridge because you had two options or you sleep with the dog outside or you find the fridge, right? It seems familiar, right? And and the idea came from I was one day I was in a in a call with some YouTubers uh crypto YouTubers in the states and he told me that's and he said that same story. He he was a client of Crypto.com. The fridge broke and his wife told him that he was a big minor and his wife told him or you buy a fridge. Mhm. So fortunately he had a Crypto.com card and he went and he bought a he bought the the fridge with his crypto directly and that's where that's where the idea was born. But why do you have to sell your crypto? Maybe I can give you a better solution.

Leverage, right? you can leverage it. Um, so those that's another thing that we want to do. Uh, I mean, at the end of the day, our plans are whatever you can do in traditional space of banking, bring it to crypto and and the idea is also to keep co-creating with community, right? Understanding their needs, what we can do better. We're far from perfect. There's a lot of things that it's a process. It's a process, right? Only thing is regulate given that we're highly regulated for us is a little bit more we're challenging that regulation um and we're trying to with the superintendent uh bank or with no with we're looking at both. Um

we're we're we're talking directly to the people promoting the new laws and telling them what we what we believe is a good place to start. Regulation is necessary, but overregulation is bad, right? And it's not only bad for the community, it's also bad for us as as a bank because we are highly regulated. Um, but we were we we've been able to demonstrate that you don't need a regulation to to build, right? Imagine us a highly regulated entity is offering something that is not regulated in in in its country. There may be a conflict there, of course. But not only that, the announcement the mayor did yesterday, right? Tell us about that. How did how

that came about? Because there's been a lot of discussion that the way he frame the whole thing as if the Alcalia had a system, but it just happens to be that you guys are the ones that are helping to have that option for the Alcalia. Correct. Right. Um, uh, the mayor came to us a few months ago and he's like, "Hey, I want to be able to receive payments in crypto. How can we do it?" And we're like, "Well, I mean, I can give you a solution." Uh, and we can take care of it. The thing is, how do we solve the legal framework? Because in Panama by constitution any public entity has to

receive funds directly in a a a government bank. So bank national, right? They cannot receive funds in another bank. And then what they did was my lawyers and their lawyers they sat down and they started analyzing the law and what they discovered was there's no legal framework to receive payments in credit cards either. Interesting. Because the what the way the way it works is the whatever the bank what wherever bank issue the the car is the one that's going to the one that's the funds. So at the end of the day what the municipality has to receive is dollars. They can't

receive credit they cannot receive credit card payments. Technically they cannot receive crypto payments. They have to receive cash. Okay. Right. So we just got on board on the same thing. Instead of saying credit cards, this is going to be crypto. The municipality does not have an account with the bank. The municipality has signed an agreement with our fidiciary accounts with our trust. Right? So, it's an escrow account. Okay? Where the escrow does is receive the crypto, convert it immediately to dollars and at the end of the day transfer all the funds to the municipalities account and they right with inside the framework. At the end of the day, we're going to give them the technology where you just have to It's going to be the almost the same

system as where are the with the credit card. The only things you're going to see on a QR code is going to say the amount you have to pay and you're going to pay for the fund. And and the way we question what the crypto community in Pano was saying is that for them to actually receive crypto funds, the Alia will have to have a digital wallet. Now, isn't that a threat for the traditional bank? But they don't need a wallet for that because I mean you're already in place doing it for them. The escrow is doing that to receive it. The municipality is not receiving crypto.

They can't receive crypto by law. Exactly. They can't. But that's what the crypto was saying like oh the mayor came saying that now we receive crypto and some people were saying well this just like another payment processor. It it's we're we're acting as a payment processor for them. Exactly. And at the end of the day we have reduced the cost a third of what it used to cost. Well, that's great. I mean, yeah, but then it will be more than a solution for the is a solution for for your clients. No, not for my clients, for any clients, for everybody. Is is is an option. All right. What what had just happened is Panama is officially crypto friendly. That's what's been announced. Right. How many people are going to pay with crypto?

Honestly, we haven't thought about it. Honestly, we're just giving you another option, right? Um, but what it is true and is official, Panama City is crypto friendly. I thought I was going to get a round of applause. I mean, Panama is crypto friendly, right? So, tell us now uh we still evolving from your standpoint. What What do we still need to move forward?

Definitely more players have to get involved, right? We can't be the only one. And and the reason I say this is because I hear the stories every day, right? People are getting robbed left and right. People are getting scammed left and right. More options have to be in place. More education has to come in be in place. Um so that has to happen. some kind of regulation has to happen, right? There has to be a legal framework to give everybody an equal playing field, right? I am of the belief and actually I was talking to to other other fintexs at the other event and it's like I'm a bank, you're a fintech, but we

need to have the same legal framework. It can't be easier for you or harder for me or vice versa, right? We're offering the same thing or similar things but it's using the same rails crypto. So we have to do AML, we have to do KYC, but it can't be that you ask less ask less questions than I do or it has to be an equal playing field. Well, you already have to go because you are highly regulated. Your KYC has to be more thorough than but I I am of the belief that it can be easier. Mhm. Um we were making it easier. Um you can ask anybody that did their onboarding two years ago and they looked the onboarding

today. It is night and day. All right. So you can do the onboarding through the app as well. You can do the onboarding through the app. So if you signed up to to receive the app, uh we're we're sending emails every day to to everybody that that that signed up and they're getting app access to the app. You don't have to be a client. If you're a client, you can access the app through your credentials, the the same credentials in the bank. But if you're not a client, you can create account your account from the app and your account is open literally immediately. Convert from crypto to fiat. Convert to crypto to fiat, fiat to crypto, wire transfers worldwide. Uh access to a debit card that you can use it worldwide. Uh and you'll have access to the other products banks offers like uh to additional

loans, credit cards, car loans. So your credit cards can be backed by like if you have crypto in the app. That's going to be the next stage. Right now you have to sell your crypto but the next stage is where it's going the way we're I'm designing is going to be like a dual account. So you can pick from the app I want to use my crypto or you want to use my fiat or you can say if I run out of fiat take it from my crypto. Okay. I mean given that everything is in house, the options are endless. I'm I am very confident that the that the community has even more ideas of things that we can do and definitely we're open to to talk about it of what else we can do, what else we can bring. Some things will

take more time. Some things will require some regulation. Some other things um unfortunately I cannot have 50 teams working in parallel and building, right? Uh I I I have to I have to concentrate and go step by step, right? Uh but we're here to stay. Um we're not going anywhere. Definitely don't think we're going to return to the community. One of the things that um some of the speakers we we actually have three different speakers talk about laws and governance.

And one of the thing is that people is of the idea that because it's crypto it's supposed to be safe. that can be a scam and and and it comes when when we talk about investments and such topics, right? Uh but that doesn't exempt the individual of doing their own due diligence. Now you are opening this kind of like democratizing the access through the app and of course that's going to have a positive impact in a bank. What happens when a client comes and tell hey your app the cost that I didn't understand that and I lost money because I'm sure that people say we're talking

about people don't understand the technology they just want to use it but they use it they don't understand it and then come to you and I say well you have to be liable how do you handle that that's an interest go where to what the what the regulation really says Right. I I am of the belief that people have the right to do with their money whatever they want to do with their money. Right? That's a right of everybody. Um but it is true that and the reason rules exist rules don't exist for the good people. Rules exist because of bad people. Right? And you it is impossible to identify who is who. So unfortunately you have to apply the

rules to everybody. Everybody right? It's unfair. Yes. Okay. Um, but that's the way it has to be. But what we can do is make it easier, right? And try to ask the right questions and right to and try to ask the question that we need to ask ask and try to understand. Um, but look at it also as a protection. For for example, nobody here has access to chain analysis, right? So you have no idea where you're sending that crypto. Do you want to be related to a terrorist? Of course not. Do you want to be related to a scammer or to a trafficker? Mhm. Of course not. Right. But you have no way

of knowing if the person next to you is one of those. You don't have no have no you have no way of knowing, right? So look at this as a way to protect you, right? 99 4% of all crypto is not tied to illicit activity, right? only 6% of of crypto in the world is tied to elicit activity. Is that so? It's a very small percentage, but you don't want to be part of that 6%. Or you don't want to be related to that6%. So, let's go to a case where you're sending crypto through Eigi to somebody and we detect that that wallet is related to a scam or to fraud or to an illicit

actor. I'm going to stop that transaction. I'm going to contact you. I'm going tell you, hey, if we detected this, who does that wallet belong to, right? And I'm going to tell you, we've detected it's a scam. So, in other words, I just protected you from getting scammed because you didn't know that who you were tra trading with was a scammer. Mhm. I imagine that's happened to everybody here. I know one person that's happened to him a couple times. He's with his computer over there. Oh, yeah. Um, but you but you don't know. You have you you you have no way of knowing. And it's happened to everybody. I get story of this every single day in the bank. And it's that small that you're talking about. And it's that small. But it happens to

everybody. Like, no, they told me to send the money here or or the wallet is used for scamming people or you can they promise you 20% uh returns uh every month. Yeah, definitely. May maybe in in in the pandemic when the the market went haywire that would happen. today that doesn't happen, right? Um but it's a way also look at it as a way to protect you. Okay. Are we going to make mistakes?

Maybe. For sure. For sure. Yeah. There's a probability, but it's not intentional. Right. And and and over time, it's going to improve. You're going to be able to correct the process, of course. Yes. Right. And the more players get involved, the less difficult that it is because we're going to have even more data and we're going to have less false positives. The the problem is today is we're not that many players in the game. So there's very little information of who's who, where it's going, where it's coming from and then you pretty much have to walk that that road alone, right? But definitely we're going to make mistakes. Are we going to own up to our mistakes? Yes, definitely. We're going to own up to our mistakes, which is what the user want. Exactly. Um but yeah, I mean

definitely going to ask you one more question. I'm going to open up the floor if somebody wants to ask a question. Is you say you operate as a fintech within the bank? So where do you stand now between traditional banking which you're no longer traditional banking because you dipping your toes right and DeFi? No. DeFi. I I believe in DeFi, right? Do I believe that the traditional that trifi is going to connect to DeFi? Um why don't we call it DeFi?

Better where they work both worlds work together. Do I see that in the future? Yes. That's a dream that I have. How am I going to do it? I have no idea yet. Yet. I I I think about it every day. But definitely but what has DeFi done right DeFi is the Macage economy uh a cheaper economy but something that's going to happen with traditional finance is why is trifi so expensive because everything is manual we use traditional rails but if I start using for example if you're going to send $5,000 over swift it's going to cost you 1% that's $50 $50 and it could take up

to three days. But now I have given you the option to do it through crypto and you're only going to pay for the gas fee. Mhm. And even better that all transactions go through batches. So if a thousand people did a transaction at the same time that you did and the gas fee was 50 bucks for extra y reason, you didn't pay 50 bucks. The 10,000 people divided right the cost the cost of those $50. So that's going to make it cheaper and and and less people are because at the end of the day and tell me if I'm wrong, but people go to DeFi because it's cheaper. Exactly. Right. And the time and the time. Right. But if I give you that same experience at the banking side, that's where that's where that's

where I talk about where DeFi and and Trii start working together where definitely I I find my I find a place where I'll connect you directly to DeFi and you'll have the option of going to DeFi. But that's one thing I have to be sure I have to be sure that whoever you're interacting with in the DeFi space is not an illicit actor, right? That's the most difficult part. Okay. And then you're protected. Of course, not only me, banks have a responsibility. Several responsibilities, protect the financial system of of the country where they are, protect the bank itself. But one of the biggest responsibilities to protect their clients, right? That's something that

banks have to do and it should be in in the head of every banker. How do we protect our users? Because we're we're we're safeguarding their money. their hard-earned money which have they have the right to use whenever they want, wherever they want. I think we should have a a panel here between Saurin and and and Gabriel because uh we're talking about own your own money, control your money, right? But now the bank says it's protecting us, right, as clients. And I think the both ideas of philosophy have a place, right? So maybe that's a conversation for later that we can definitely we can have.

Yes. Well, anybody in the audience has a question? Yes. Okay. Oh, me. Hey. Uh, so you mentioned that you guys are doing borrowing and lending against Bitcoin. Um, two-part question. Uh, one, what is the interest rate that the borrower pays and is it variable? And two, do you give any sort of lending rates to people that want to just lend their Bitcoin and collect a yield on their Bitcoin similar to how A or FRA or some of these DeFi platforms kind of do

with like wrapped Bitcoin? That's something that the second one of of of that's something that we're looking into. But there's one rule that we've even put in the bank, right? The bank doesn't buy, doesn't sell, doesn't custody crypto, right? We don't have crypto on the books. And we are of the belief that banks shouldn't have crypto on the books. Why? Because it's too volatile. Um it's very high risk. That's something that we'd look into, but to be able to do that, I will have to have it on the books. It'll be an it'll be an interesting an interesting uh uh product. And in the case of of doing the Bitcoin back loans is uh a 10% interest analyzed, but you only have to pay interest rate. The

interest, you don't have to pay capital. You can pay capital at the end of the year or you can renew the the loan for one more year and keep paying interest and you pay the capital whenever you want to pay the capital. At the end of the day, it's guaranteed. The only rule is you have to maintain the 50% loan to value and we'll do the call at 65. Given the growth that Bitcoin is having year-over-year, I wouldn't sell my Bitcoin. I'll just pay for the interest uh until Bitcoin reaches all-time highs. Right. So, but you just mentioned that you guys don't custody, hold, sell, buy Bitcoin. So, how does the loan work in the first place? Where's the Bitcoin that I use as collateral? Yeah. What we did was we have our own trust that has a contract with a regulated trust that is

our liquidity provider in the in the states. And when what you do when you open an account in the bank is you you sign a three-party contract. The client, the bank, and the trust. So in no way or form the bank cannot do anything with your crypto if you don't authorize it. It is uh bankruptcy acknow. So if the bank goes bankrupt, your crypto is safe. The crypto belongs to you. It's under your name in the trust. So that's why we we there's no what the bank is doing is acting as a bridge. It is advancing the money. When you when you go to Eig and you sell your Bitcoin that's being sold at the

liquidity provider by our trust, the bank is forwarding you the money, but we already sold. So I know that the trust is going to give me that cash when it's ready. Thank you. Hello. Good. Hello. Uh Barry, I actually had uh once I had the crypto friendly credit card, so I'm I'm an old customer. Uh my question is right now uh there are layer 2 in in Ethereum that are going to that are going to be uh private that are going to be privacy first. The one the one one I think I'm thinking of right now is Aztec network. So these are

networks where in where at the very least you cannot trace between one one account and the other easily. It's very hard to do it. It's possible but you can transfer for example USDC in a private way along the Ethereum network. So my question is how does the you already for example will have my KYC and the recipient. too. How does the how does the bank know deal with this as in is this considered is this cons will you accept that money if you know exactly who is receiving it? Yeah, that that's a that's that's one rule that we put from day one. We we don't allow any privacy coins. Um and for a

simple rule, I need to know where the money is coming from. uh can that now it is it's it's it's been pretty obvious first of all crypto has never been about privacy right Bitcoin has never been a privacy it's not private is right so it's not about privacy it's about be so anonymous it's not anonymous it's still anonymous it has it was designed to be traceable and I think it should stay that way um at the end day, the people that want to hide their money, they want to hide it for other reasons.

Um, but at the end of the day, the way technology is advancing, for example, let's look at um, uh, tornado cache. Tornado cache is not anonymous anymore, right? Mixers are not anonymous anymore, right? All that all that technology has been broken apart. that allow you to demix it. Monero is not anonymous anymore. They still they believe it's anonymous. It's not anonymous. So, at the end of the day, all that is going to be broken apart. But there's no need for it. At the end of the day, I believe most of the crypto community, what they want to do is control their money. They want their money to be safe. They want to be

protected from the valuation of their currency. That's what they want. They don't want to hide their money. Yeah. Uh I disagree because again in the United States the Supreme Court says that money is a speech and if if for example the government knows exactly who am I talking to and what I'm talking to. Therefore they they can do a shilling effect on that. For example, uh now when governments start going authoritarian like for example Hungary, they start uh looking at people who have donated to who have donated to OMGs and they have a list of that. So at some point, yes, I do not have nothing to hide, but I it's

not the government, it's not the public, it's not in public, it's not public uh it's not in the public interest for for everybody to have all their dirty laundry all over the place. So I believe there's a a real a real necessity for for privacy coins. Putting it that way, I agree to a certain point. Definitely. But that's also where laws for example if you have and that's the beauty of Panama in a certain way all banking information is private right the only way I can give your information to to a government is that they have a court order right so banking

laws are are very heavily shielded when it comes to that. Um, and I think that's something that is it should stay like that for that's something that that's not going to change. Um, I understand the way you're in the direction you're going and I understand the use case, but as a regulated entity, it would be impossible for me to to receive those kind of funds because I I need to know uh that it's not linked to because yes, you're a good actor, but I have no way of telling the difference between the good and the bad actor and I have to be able to identify him.

Hey, over here. Thank you, Ael. Um, it's a couple of questions really. Well, I'm Costa Rican, so if you could just briefly clarify to me the relationship or the lack of relationship between Tower Bank and Pagalof Fasil since we had like a subsidiary of Pagalof Fasil in Costa Rica, but then it just kind of vanished. But I kind of like the service. So that's one. And um the other one is that um well I work for a crypto project and we've recently partnered with uh Naka which is a credit card scheme on the same rails as Visa and Mastercard. You may know it and we are on the lookout for acquirers because they're coming from Europe to Latin

America. They're already in El Salvador. They belong to Tether, right? So they they have um strong ties. So I was wondering if um my project has technology that can be that can integrate blockchain with um traditional banking. How can I get in contact with Tower Bank and how can I how can I like push this forward? As an example, we we had a service that was connected to SEPA instant uh running in Europe for about two years and we processed um around like $10 million which is not too much but like from buying and selling crypto no KYC

straight from your bank account instant you know and we have been unable to deploy uh that technology because um our bank in Germany was unable to acquire a prop trading license, right? And Baffin, no Baffin um basically told them, "No, you're not going to get this. You're too small. Get out of the way." So now we're looking into Panama and I have you on stage and I wonder how can well first the Pagalopas thing and then how can we start talks to see if our technology can actually go hand inhand with Tower Bank because I see a lot of opening towards crypto.

Um in the case of PO I have no idea what happened with Pop Faci but I'll talk to you about general regulation right that's why I was saying before that that the playing field has to be even right and that's why regulation is necessary that at least some guidance of where fintexs and banks have to operate in a certain way um so that's why regulation because things happen and any fintech right I mean forget about the thing though let's talk about FTX right right at the end of the What happened with FDX was a lack of regulation, not a loss of money because the money comes and goes, it was a lack of regulation which affected negatively the community, right? Because it it opened the doors to have bad regulation.

So at the end of the day and I was talking to other fintexs before coming here, I was like because I was going to participate in a panel talking to regulations like any law that comes into place our we have to be in the even in the same playing field because we're doing similar things. We're handling funds. So, we have to do KYC. We have to do the AML. We have to be registered in the country. And we have to be liable in some way. All right? If I do something wrong in Panama, all you have to do is go to the regulator and put a complaint.

Right? If for a fintech in Panama, in many countries, you have no place to go to put a complaint. So, some some entity has to regulate. In my case, you go to the regulator and say, "Hey, Power Bank did A, B, or C or D." And they're going to come and investigate me. So, if I may, um, on the regulator topic, and this is so you can maybe distinguish Panama from other Central American countries, for me in particular, to me, my understanding of regulators, it is that it is basically game theory. A regulator by nature does not want to change anything because if he does change something, then guilt is upon him. But as soon as one regulator changes something, then the rest of the

regulators need to consider this fact in order to take the better decision. How is Panama or how is the Panama regulation like leading this Central American topic? Because we're such a divided place, right? There's no you you you cannot negotiate with Central America the same way you negotiate with the EU, right? You you take Costa Rica, you take Panama, you take Honduras, and they are all individual. So, how is regulation in Panama moving faster than it is in the rest of Central America?

Fortunately, our regulators are very open to do business. Okay? So, at the end of the day, they they they they didn't put a wall in front of us, right? They told us, "It's not regulated. It's not prohibited. You're a regulated entity. You can do it, right?" Right. And that's that because they knew that they had to understand this first and I think that was a good step. Um now you have we had an intent of a law a few years ago. It got um it got sabotaged and eliminated. Uh now we have another one uh which I believe requires some some modification especially how how it's been written. Um, but I see I do see

some openness from them to do modifications, right? I've met with with with Greasiz many times. I've spoken to some of the things I believe are changing and he's open to understanding in what way. So, I think that the topic is out there, right? They're starting to talk about it, but let's go back to where the mayor announced. When did you guys expect some a government entity announcing that they're going to start receiving payments in crypto? Right. the subject is starting the subject is out there. They're starting to talk about it. Things are changing. It's going to take time. Regulation takes time. Um but but we're getting there. I mean, if we if we talked about this what three years

ago, no one wanted to know about crypto, right? We're getting there. And at the end of the day, but one thing that the biggest difficulty for that when you talk That can't be um Central America countries are the worst people to talk to talk together and and agree on on things, right? I was talking to a regulator uh a few months ago and and and that subject came out like how is crypto going to work all over central around the world and he said it very clearly and he's the president of of a

regulator and he's like we're never going to have an agreement with anybody. That's never going to happen. All right. Everybody has their own rules. Everybody has their own intent. But at the end of the day, we're going to have the same way we work with fiat today, the same way we work with credit cards today with wire transfers, we'll find we'll find out a way to for it to work camp. Uh you were talking before of the subject of uh Bitcoin friendly. Did Tower Bank try to convince the stores and commerces and restaurants and to get an account with you and start accepting

Bitcoin? That that's going to be the next step. That that would make it really a friend a Bitcoin friendly city. Oh, that that's that's going to be the And we're already doing it with some companies, right? We have companies in Sonal Li that sell clothes around Central America and and they had a big problem. they the um these these countries had were having difficulty to taking the dollars out and to pay for the clothes um and those transactions of half million a million dollars and we've given them the rails to start receiving those payments. So they're starting at the end of the day if you're a store you want to see cash. You want to see dollars. You don't want to receive crypto because crypto's too volatile and

you're not in the crypto business. You're in in in the service business and they say in in selling food or clothes or Exactly. So now that now that we're going to have the rails to do that definitely I can go to any store in Panama and say hey you don't have to do anything. here's this device, just say that you receive crypto, we'll take care of it. But also, many of these stores were scared because given that there's no regulation and there's a lot of normally bad press makes more news than good press, right?

So people more people believe crypto is bad than the amount of people I believe that know that crypto is good. Okay? But now that there's a that there's a regulated entity giving them the service and I explain to them, no, don't worry. this is how it works. The bank is is securing the transaction. They start it comes to trust, right? And time over time trust is going to come back into into the table. Absolutely. Well, let's give it up for Gabrielle Campa from Tower Bank. Thank you. Thank you. And he's going to be around for a little Just go right ahead. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Come on, guys. one more time. And now our next speaker, we have a you're going to have a very friendly conversation with the director of the authority of innovation for the government of Panama, Adulo Fabrega. we going to have uh he's going to tell us what is his position and what is uh the the way that the government see the ecosystem evolving. Come on guys, give it up. You see, every time people hear the

word the the word government, it's like what are we going to talk about, right? Not at all. It feels kind of like a standup like maybe I have a ski for that really. Huh? Well, before we start, let's um get to know you. Uh what is your position? How do you get to be the director of I mean what's what what proceeds to be the director of authority of innovation of the and what is what is the position of the government of this the actual administration towards what's happening in the ecosystem first we get to know you a little bit okay sure so my name is

Aulo Fab I'm a I studied computer engineering in in college. Then I came to Panama and I worked at a bank for about six years. It was during the time where banks were starting to to create and put out services in in their online platforms. Um so I worked at the at a bank that created a platform where we started doing more transactions than the actual physical um locations.

At that time that was a huge deal that was around 2007 or so which in that case Panama was a little late than other countries but it was a a big deal for Panama. And then uh after that I actually left the bank in order to create a a software company but I actually worked at the AIG for um about 10 months and that was in 2009. But the reason why I left the bank was actually to start my own business. So I decided to continue that venture and I left the AIG very in a very short time period and uh started a company that developed a software for corporate

administration you know purchasing inventory accounting human resources etc. that's um used a lot in the construction industry in in in industries that need a lot of uh backend that is focused in purchasing and cost control more than let's say sales etc but that I did for for a while it's still operating but then uh two years ago I decided to take a year as the president of the chamber of commerce and that requires a lot of time and uh that you know made me change the way I was operating and and uh and I think that was a good move and then

after that which is just a one-year term I was going to go back to my company and focus on on internationalization of the services but uh then I got a call that that changed everything again and now to serve the country. Yeah, exactly. So now I've been here for I think only about six seven months because my my term started a little later than than the president but um it's been a pretty interesting ride so far. Okay. You mentioned that uh you were the president of the chamber of commerce. What was that shift in your mindset? What do you see that um how commerce and system with crypto was evolving or was that new

preview? I mean when we when I was in the chamber of commerce one of the one of the the let's say most recurring issues is bureaucracy. Um I hate bureaucracy personally. I think that you know there's enough technology at our dispos disposition so that we can actually take advantage of it and and create very efficient processes. That's what I did in the private industry and um because of that I feel I have like a very personal um issue with processes that can be transformed into something efficient and effective. So that's why

While I was at the chamber of commerce, there was a lot of talk of why isn't the government doing this and that or why is the government being so slow bureaucratic or why is the government requiring requiring the citizens to go through a series of hurdles for a service that can be very easily provided. That's kind of the the main reason why I decided to um take uh take some time and and and and you know put a little effort into it. walk the walk in instead of you know talking or at least I'm trying to walk let's see it's not easy I'm sure we're starting because I think that maybe uh what you found that it's hard to change because people have

been doing things in certain way for so long when you try to transform that it's comes as a shock so you had any resistance trying to do that yeah of course I mean there's I think there's a there's that when we go into a into let's say in the private enterprise when you go into a company to change everything in the company, it's sometimes easier to go into a company that has nothing and that has everything um pretty much disorganized and paper based because you can do like a quantic jump to something very well organized and very technologically advanced than know than than those companies that have bureau democratic

processes ingrained in their culture. That's why in my previous private life I I used to ask a lot who is the implementing team on the customer side or on the company side because that's going to that's going to define if the project is going to be easy or not. When we translate that to a country level, you have the same thing. how ingrained is the bureaucratic process in the country in the country's culture and in the in the let's say culture and lifestyle of the fionario as we call them here the public servant um and obviously that's an issue because now in in the way Panama is we can think

we can try to do a quantic jump to a digital state but you might miss the fundamentals you know the the fundamentals in terms of the simple processes that create the governmental ecosystem. In that sense, I'll I'll give you an example because I might be speaking of of something that's not um easily understood if you're not in the day-to-day. But in that respect, let's take AI, which obviously is um you know, talk of the town, right? You know, we can create an AI agent to automate probably 80% of 80% of Yeah.

Yeah. But why don't we or why can't you? It's not because of the technological limitations. Is a different motivation because uh from my as a business person you make like you say you get to a company you make changes to be more efficient. But being more efficient means also less cost to operate. And the government doesn't really see that. The government doesn't see cost. Or am I mistaken? No, no, no. You're not mistaken. I think they they Well, you are mistaken in that the government, at least this administration wants to reduce costs, you know, um everywhere we can find it. Reduce cost

at all cost. But we definitely want to create efficient processes and we definitely want to automate. You have, for example, some things that don't allow you to do that. One of them is loss. that require for example there are laws in Panama that require a sale in a document you know is that necessary I mean I mean because the law hasn't changed yeah that's because the law hasn't changed so you have to go through a long process to change the law to reflect what you can do nowadays with technology but there are some that that do not do not necessarily need that however you have to think of so many factors that you don't need to think of in the

private enterprise. For example, in the in in in public service, you have to think of everybody in the private enterprise. You you say, you know what, we have this amount of people that are just not going to be able to um use the service because they need something as basic as a digital device and connectivity. So, you know what? I can lose 3% of my customer base because I'm gonna benefit greatly 97% of my customer base. You can't do that in the government. Right. Right. Or you have to figure out how you're going to get that 3% and transform it into a 97 so that so that you get complete coverage. Um so there's those factors that that you need

to think of. But returning to my to my point is you got to decide how aggressive you want to be in technology implementation. And if we talk about blockchain which is a technology I'm obviously I not going to say I admire it's just that I know the benefits that you can have in in some cases. I usually get um suggestions or or requests which are very broad. Let's implement blockchain in Panama. What the hell does that mean? But how? Yeah.

Exactly. How? Where? You know, that's not the point. That's not the point of technology. So, we have to make sure that we get the fundamentals right. We transform Panama into a digital nation and select the specific use cases that can greatly benefit from a technology such as blockchain, such as AI, such as many different that exist recently. I think not even past administrations have had access to those types of technologies. So, we're in a in a very good situation that we can take advantage of. But for example, blockchain there's use cases in um like property um titles there's

sorry property deeds exactly and other use cases ingraining the processes themselves for example I I had a recent uh meeting with military ambiente that have the imptontal which is the the the study that you have to do in order to create a construction project or something like that. environmental permits and environmental permits and those are very very sensitive documents. Those are very sensitive pieces of information. Um I think a technology such as as blockchain can play a a very pivotal role in in that process not only to automate or to digitize but to guarantee trust as

somebody was talking about before. You know in the end trust is a very important component of the digital transformation that we want to create right now under your leadership what is AIG's mission what's your agenda so so we have four main objectives um one of them is digital transformation focused on the citizen digital transformation focused on the citizen means that the interaction of the citizen with the government or with the state has to be digital 100% online you ask me but seamless you know a very simple

experience and as efficient as possible so that I think is one of the most important things in in in our agenda because we are way behind in Panama that affects us in getting foreign investment to Panama that affects us in growth of our economy, that affects us in growth of industries. Um, so if we're able to create processes, which is pretty much a service that the government provides in many cases. For example, if you want to register a company, if you want to register for a for a job, if you're a foreigner that wants to work in Panama, all of those cases need a process in the

government. That can take a lot of time or it can take little time. We have the issue of corruption that technology can directly impact or improve. If we have good traceability, blockchain again as a possible, you know, great component of that. But if we have great traceability, we can we can know what pro what transactions are out of range. Not only ones that are taking too long, but ones that are taking too little. Maybe there can be something there as well. Um so that can gives us that can give us trust as well. So digital transformation focused on the citizen the quality of

life of the citizen and their interaction with the government. That's our number one objective. Our number two and actually this is not an order and priority. This is an order just in list a list. Number two is cyber security. Cyber security I would say is one of our one of our main um objectives in the AIG. I think uh it's pretty definite and obvious that the that the Oh, thank you. I mean I don't know if it's that obvious but it is an issue that we have critical infrastructures in Panama that are not at the level we want them to be in terms of cyber security. So you talk about the different departments and

ministries of right critical infrastructures. I mean for example systems that control um water systems that control the grid those types of systems and then there's some applications that we consider critical infrastructures as well. So for example the application that runs the financial system in in Panama is a critical infrastructure. the application that runs the kaha seal is a critical infrastructure. So for example, if I if I if I do a do in the system that pays all of the retired, you know, people the pension funds in in Panama, you have a shutdown in the country.

those type of applications. It it we can we can talk about maybe 10 of them that are critical um applications and then there are some infrastructure as well that require some type of either connectivity or software component that are also critical. So what we're doing is we we right now have a very advanced um critical response team for for incidents. I would say the government actually has an an a very good incident response team. Um we are now improving it of course and we're creating a proactive monitoring center.

So, a sock pretty much uh that's going to be a a a unit that has monitors in these different critical infrastructures so that they can see any tendency or any pattern that's you know different to what it should be and then just on that isolate whatever they have to do in order to guarantee like to monitor and debug and realize if there any threats. Exactly. So sorry it's four that that's number two is cyber security and just to finish the other okay the others so uh we also have transparency as a very extreme objective we want to create a lot of transparency with the data that the government handles and and put at

the at you know any citizen that wants to have access to public data have everything that they need in different formats because that that can't be easy because it's for so on the indexing of all this different information like all over the place. I mean that's we do have an issue with data. Um data governance is a a big issue. It's something that we're we're tackling with but um that can create issues in terms of the data being um trustworthy I would say or no manipulated they say I don't know how to translate it

properly. But that means pretty much that you have data that's different in in different databases but it's the same data point. So we are working in governance so that we know exactly who's the owner of a data point and they have the responsibility to keep it clean. Okay. Yeah. Um among other things but that's a very important issue. And then finally just innovation and connectivity. So when we talk about connectivity is you know connecting not only the citizens in terms of them being able to have access to internet and devices but also the systems you know interoperability uh so that we can integrate the

different systems of the government uh for the simple things like people go to do a process and they ask them for the copy of their ID that shouldn't happen in 2025 right and for more important things like uh analytics and stuff like that yeah I guess uh all the different ministries are like disconnected there's no central base database that you can access and they ask you for the same type of papers every time and you have to make a dozen copies to visit each one of the ministries exactly which I don't think we want a centralized database we might want a data lake for different things but for vulnerability uh reasons and for administration So the the different the

difference in the government with again let's say a company or something like that is that the government every institution has a minister and that's pretty much like a different company having a different CEO. Mhm. So you might have a big picture of what you want things to do which the president has but every institution has their own you know agenda their own in the positive connotation of agenda they have their own you know like the things that they want to they want to implement and yeah and you can't interfere with that what what you can do is what I was saying before create a framework of interoperability so that they know if

they're going to implement a system that has a data point that other institutions are going to need it's going to be their responsibility to have an API well administered you know at the disposition of of a centralized bus that that that's something that we are doing and allowing the other institutions to have access to that data point and then understanding the responsibility of keeping data clean if it's even more if it's a data point that is going to affect the life of the citizens or the services that the government provides. So that's one of the the the main issues that I think we have and that's more along the lines of actual governance than through you know

technical infrastructure like if we put a centralized database or not that type of thing. Yeah. Well, as a software engineer, uh, you focus on processes, structure, systems, and part of the problem is that you have to deal with people. So, in implementing all these new things, your personal agenda, and I'm sure it's a comes as a personal mission to you because of your background. How do you how do you get people to get on board with your ideas? Because when you go and and and look for these services at the different departments of

government, still going to deal with somebody that is there that may not have the expertise or the knowhow of the system. So you can have a perfect system, but then the person doesn't know how to operate or handle. How do how do you deal with that? What what's the plan? Right. So that's the most difficult question. So no, no, no. I mean the thing is one of the one of the things that I that I that I did not expect for my career in IT. I love programming, but I haven't been able to write a line of code in a couple of years. That's kind of frustrating.

One of the things that I uh that I never thought that my career was going to take me to and no offense with a psychologist because they study a lot but is that 80% of my job is psychology right now literally as you mentioned sales and because change management is one of the most important aspects of technology implementation and those that are in crypto So you know right the the the the factor that psychology plays in adoption is huge. It's huge. It's huge. It's how you sell it, you know, and I think crypto is

one of the examples where being a Monday morning quarterback now is totally different than when we were at um years ago. I mean, I I I always remember I I was in a in a there was a party after golf tournament and I was with many very prominent businessmen in Panama. I was way younger than them. Mhm. And I mentioned at that time I was playing with mining, you know, I was doing my thing and I mentioned about crypto and the response that I had that that I got was, you know, that of a crazy person.

But that same crowd and and you guys all ex had the same experiences. And that same crowd now knocks on your door like, "Hey, you know what? What's going on? Lend me." Yeah. But what happened from there to now and it's and it's some something that's the same with the technologies that are coming out now. Let's say with AI I ask people what I mean let me give you an example you can create a contract in whatever ch or anything right so will you sign that contract right now let's say to sell an important piece of your property or or something that's going to

affect you really will you just sign and trust and you know go on with that contract and most of the response is going to be well no No, right now. No, I I'll I'll get a lawyer to check it out. And I do recommend you get a lawyer to check it out. But what is going to change right now and four years from now? Well, people where people are actually going to, you know, print out the AI generated contract, sign it and and go on and move on because the trillions of more parameters that we're going to have is not going to change. Mhm. the lines of the contract that Chad GBT is currently generating. What's going to change is

the fact that your friend did it and he said that it was okay. You know, it's that type of change management that gets technology adopted and that you know gives us that curve of the curve where you cross a Yeah. So those are definitely the most important issues that I have in terms of the government because you not only have just an adoption where you can take a risk and if you get the adoption great and if not maybe you're the one that lost money or you're a company and well you know you have issues in your own circle here you're playing with taxpayer money so you can't you can't risk it right you know um so the fourth

objective that that we were talking about is innovation and and in that we have for example conversations about a stable coin and the angles that you have to analyze are totally different than the angles that you would analyze in just a private venture. Mhm. Um so that has been very interesting, right? Because you have to consider that psychology. If you come up with a stable coin, I mean will people use it? Will I mean I remember um see Panama is very particular because we just talked about banking just a while ago with with Gabrielle, right? The numbers that I have is that

Panama is 20% in the banking system. Yeah. And it's Panama. We have all these buildings and skyscrapers. And there's a lot of people out there that either because of bureaucracy of because of lack of trust in the government, they call it informal, which means there's a lot of money in the streets and there are there's a lot of commerce in the street. So the fact that part of the agenda is to have this to make it seamless to just access go online and register your business. Even the tax thing it's it's still confusing. I mean we don't have that culture like you know United States

people are looking at that and it's like April is it's the month that everybody's running to do the taxes. Um so taking all those factors into consideration I mean the the the work that you have ahead of you and and and because of your background I know that you're trying to create these things but the resistance that you're getting and and this this goes to my next question just giving you this little thing uh backstory and playing devil's advocate is There's a lack of trust in the banking system in the government. And

then you talk about implementing blockchain for traceability. It's how is that going to work within the government to the citizens? How will you sell that idea? No, no, it's I mean it's going to be a tough sale. I think one of the one of the current motivators is that people are kind of fed up and people want to have want to do anything that gives them trust from from the from the government. And I think in this administration there have been some very important steps that have taken us closer to that where we want to be. I think the

the just the president and his plan creates a lot of confidence or where of where we're going. Now we have to just make sure that we walk that way. Um that's going to give confidence in investing in Panama, confidence in the banking system, confidence in the logistics sector, you know, confidence all around. But in the end, one of the uh interesting things that I was that I was that I have listened to now in this in this role is something that I that that was kind of shocking, which was we we hear a lot about other countries and their brands.

Mhm. And we think of what we have as a brand in Panama, but the true the true the truth behind it all is that we don't really have a known brand in the world. We think we're known for logistics, but we're not, you know, in the top logistics of the world on the Singapores and the Roderdams. M we have we have the canal which is amazing and that obviously has something that can create that sense that we're there but we're not there yet. We have um we we think that we are known for different things but we're

not. I mean the the truth is people know Roberto Duran more than than Panama most of the Yeah. more than the Panama skyline. That that's the that's the truth. Yeah. I heard people say, "Is that Miami?" I mean, they don't recognize it. Yeah. Well, you know, amazing things like for example, the owner of one of the most important hotels here in in Casco told me that he has a lot of tourists that that come in, have, you know, stay there, have breakfast, everything. And they tell him, "I didn't know Panama had this skyline." And I would have thought, well, if you're coming, you should at least Google a picture of the exact of the place you're going to. But apparently they're not they're not even doing that. Yeah. So the the the truth

is around the world, you know, we are in we think that Panama is known. Everybody knows the canal. We think, you know, Panama Papers was a disaster. Everybody now knows us because of the Panama Papers. We think, well, everybody knows Bogete or whatever. We think the truth is we have the opportunity to create a brand. Um I think we have we have had the misfortune of having some exterior factors create a brand for us in some cases like in the banking sector. Mhm.

Where there's a lot of misinformation because many many places think that they can come to Panama. It's going to be very liberal in terms of a financial system and opening a bank account here is 10 times more difficult than opening a bank account in pretty much any place in the world. So we have misconceptions but actually that's an opportunity of building a brand and in that sense we can build a brand in terms of being a digital nation and I think that's still an opportunity and going back to your point how do we sell a quantic jump in the way Panama does business does their public

operations does their private operations And I think the only way is a changing the mindset that can take us to be a digital nation. Now how we make that change in the mindset requires quick wins that have high impact and are well sold that creates a my uh you know creates the opportunity in the citizen that gives us the opportunity. I mean the the fact that they can say you know maybe we are a digital nation maybe you can do things online and they work well and they're trustworthy those type of things

um what will be your what is the one message you want us to take from AIG uh under your leadership what what's what can we expect uh in the future for the blockchain ecosystem and in terms of innovation as well what's What's that one message? You know, one message that that I that I that I think people can um consider is that things are different now. Um I think this administration has a great opportunity because it has good leader leadership. it has

um they want to do we want to do very important things and create change. Um I think we have a very clear road map. Maybe the reason why everything got to that point is because of the bad things that have happened in the past. I'm not saying bad administrations. I'm not political. I'm just saying bad things that h have happened to our country in general. But all the factors are in place and in terms of technology we have technologies that are totally transformational and if we take advantage of the fact that we are a

small country with a world known I mean with a with a worldwide footprint um we can have a very fast transition to being considered one of the most advanced digital nations in the world. I I truly think that. Right. So what do we what do I need and what so that's my message and what I need to be able to accomplish that is an open mind from the Panameanian population that not all things are bad that if we implement something it could have a very good impact. One of the the the bad experiences that I have have had so far

is for example um I was in pro of uh the laptop project giving a laptop to every student. Um that's that's something that I that I consider to be a tool that every student should have in order to take advantage of everything that's out there. I mean, everybody in this event, if it weren't for a computer, we wouldn't be pretty much talking or doing anything that we're doing right now. So, um, it's a huge disadvantage if they if they don't have it. And things have to be done in the right way, but we have to be open-minded that if they're done in

the right way, we're going to get a good outcome. So, that would be my message. All right, questions. So yeah, uh around two months ago, uh the ma the main power this is not about crypto. Uh about two months ago, the the main uh water plant in the Panama City called Chili uh it got shut down for one day for one day. uh so the entire country was uh waiting for information about them. So and the only place that

they seem to be informing people was uh what what once was called Twitter today is called X uh but uh the the the aqueducts the aqueduct the aqueduct the national aqueduct company already has its own blog and its own website. Another example of the same problem uh our president uh is our president made some statements about about the current about our current relationship with the United States in the same website that's owned by a person that's very close to the current president of the United States uh which is X again. So we are using the plat a platform that at at any at any point can be that we do not

control and communication platform we do not control. So uh at the same time that all of these all of these institutions uh the presidency the ID the uh each m each each municipal system has its own website and its own blog and its own uh digital already has its own digital presence but it's not using that digital presence is instead using the the social network one. uh I believe we should be more uh we should own our digital that digital presence of each institution has to own it has to own its digital presence otherwise we are vulnerable we do not otherwise we are vulnerable to uh

the real important information like that information the water water company information it can be lost that's a that's a very very important point We're talking about trust and and and uh you know confidence and as you mentioned every time that we need to put out a a formal message they just create a JPEG and distribute it through WhatsApp. So I I don't think there's an easier way for fishing um than that.

One of the main issues and it's what what I was kind of talking before is the fact that you have so many different separate what we call silos. You know, so many separate um entities doing their own thing. So in a more tactical standpoint, one of the projects that we currently have is a single portal or a single point of interaction between the citizen and the government. And that's not only in terms of transactions, that is also in terms of communication. That's one of the things that we want to create. And your profile as a citizen is going to be part

of that. what and that's a very long conversation but just to give you a hint one of the things that we are currently trying to uh work with institutions to implement is something as simple as a single sign on. So you currently have tons of systems in the government and you have different users. Yes, you have different users for everything. So you're not only a mess in like how do I interact but you also don't understand the complexity of the government as a citizen. So if you need something, it's like where do I go? What

do I do? You have no idea. And that creates, you know what, fear and this is actually like amazing because I always thought and that's now my my uh psychological uh knowhow. I have to read books on psychology now. But what I what I had never realized I I thought well what that creates is just bad service. If you have let's say a bank and the bank has a different website for each department, that bank is going to Yeah. go bankrupt quick. That's what the government does. And if we create something that allows you to understand the government more simply, I think that can have huge value for the citizen. What's another value

that we get out of that? Better communication as what you were saying. So what I was saying about fear is that surprisingly what I thought was if the government looks to you like a huge mess. I thought what you get is lack of confidence and what you get is just rejection like I'm not going to use that. I'm going to go somewhere else. What I didn't know and that that I I understood in the last couple of months from studies that that I have received is that what what people actually do is get fear. So they think I might do something bad and since the government can come after me if I do something wrong then I just get fear of doing

something. So imagine the fact that having different systems not connected as silos is actually causing fear in the citizen. That's terrible. That's one of the reasons why we're trying to build this ecosystem. So, in the next couple of weeks, and I actually have a meeting with the president next week where we're going to talk about this is um promoting in terms of change management, promoting a project which is going to be a brand that's going to exemplify the change that we need. And then in the more tactical sense of that project is this portal is an app where

you can interact is a new payment system is a a more efficient electronic signature component that we're working with for that. Um a better management of your profile. That's a huge part of it. identity management if you want to call it that way but we're starting in the technical tactical sense in the single signon and a interoperability layer in the bottom under that the actual data points the actual databases that run our system or our whole ecosystem. So this is like a big picture thing that needs a lot of

sponsorship from the government from the government head which is the president but it needs a lot of sponsorship from the citizens. So that that's actually the the the summary of my of my message is we're going to put out this communication about this huge project. What we need is sponsorship from the citizens and in that in a more technical tactical sense I think we might be able to fix that issue of the communications uh which in terms of cyber security is something that to me every time I receive a communication as you mentioned in X or in an in an unverified social media ch uh channel or uh worse than

that in WhatsApp as a JPEG. I'm like, "Wow, this is a huge risk." Yeah. Yes, I do have another question. Well, I have a ton of of questions, but I think that that's normal when someone from the government uh is talking. uh but I want to I want to focus my question on on the digital presence uh following the same lines that he mentioned the digital presence of the citizens because the same thing that happens with communications happens with for example an ID my digital presence in a bunch of different websites DJI have a a profile of me the the TE have another profile of me uh the transitor have another profile

of I mean I have like 50 different users in different pages that do not communicate with each other to to share what I think is basic information. Um so in that sense is there something that you're planning to to fix that if it can be fixed probably not in the short term but but something that you think that can be done in that sense. So, so that's one of the let's say to me that's like one of the top five issues that we have been tackling with. Um, and it that conversation has a has a huge spectrum of complexity and depth. We can just talk about identity

management. We can just talk about access management. Where do I have access? You know, what's my role in this and that? Who am I? And then there's all the authentication that that that's after that. But in the end, the ideal would be that we get a good profile from the citizen, good interoperability. to that profile has a lot of information and we can use that information for better services and for the government to understand who your customer is which is you know from where I come from in the private sector as the most important question who's my customer I'll give you an example there's a lot of subsidies

here in Panama well who's you know who's absorbing those subsidies who's actually benefiting from that we don't really know to the extent that we should. So all of that data should be used as a fundamental piece of this great ecosystem that I was talking about. What's the issue with that risk in terms of that's going to be extremely valuable data? And I'm not I'm not talking about, you know, your phone number where you live. I'm talking about your behaviors in some cases because you interact with government in many cases.

The psychoraphic exactly where we should know what car you have where what's your home? You know, does your grandmother live in the same home as you? Because maybe if we're talking about subsidies for the gas tanks that is currently a subsidy in Panama, then your home should have more gas tanks because you have more families in the same household. So all of that goes into data that's going to be extremely valuable. So in that case the question comes in I can I can probably respond for me. I don't want to be in a difficult situation later on. I can respond for me. I know the value of that

data and I know the risks of that and I know that I'm not going to get into issues handling that mishandling that. But we don't know what comes you know after. So the conversation goes into what about web three you know should that be distributed? Should that be should the government not have a part in that other than gathering and administering? But maybe that's totally distributed. Maybe we use a blockchain for that. So all of that conversation is we're currently having that. The fact that we need a conceptual centralized identity that helps us provide better services. I

think it's it's a definite thing and we're trying to move in that direction. Sorry for the long response. Yeah. Uh about that uh identity. Thank you. I I there's also a very uh that's also a subject I wanted to talk about. Uh okay, right now we actually in Panama we actually do have a centralized uh centralized entity that handles all identification of every single Panameian and has a lot of valuable information. That's called the electoral the electoral tribunal. And that's the reason and that's the reason why the cryp one of the reasons many reasons why the crypto law uh had stumbled uh a few years ago because they tried to impose

uh digital uh uh digital identity on the tribunal and the tribunal did not it's uh the the national assembly cannot order the tribunal as I understand. So uh a question here is uh is does that are you working with the with the electoral tribunal for for handling uh digital identities for to to for for example uh a wish list of mine will be to be able to sign stuff via using my cellula my the the card that every single panameinian has I want to be able to sign documents with that cellula in through a computer without having using that as a digital

signature. So it should be valid. We can I think many countries already do that. Estonia does that. Yeah. To the first to the first part definitely we're working with electoral very handin hand. They they have the responsibility as I was talking uh before in terms of data governance. They are the ones that should be the owner of who each of us is and the actual identity. I I do consider that one thing is in a digital sense knowing that you are you and another separate thing is knowing that you approved

something. one one thing is you know your actual and we can go into identity you know the the authentication part of it the something that you know something that you have etc etc but in terms of that you actually approved a transaction that you signed it I personally think that's not in the responsibility of tribunal electoral I think they're in charge of the who so in terms of digital signature I think that's something that should be so distributed that the private enterprise should be the leader in the electronic signature market. What that does is that it it

creates the inability of doing what you actually said where you unite the ID like the physical ID with the digital signature. However, I think we might get a benefit if we tie them both so that the digital signature, you know, is based on your identity, which in part is, you know, in hand is controlled by the tribunal electoral. That's the role, but your digital signature to be a service that's provided by the private enterprise.

Currently we have in Panama we only have one um company that's starting that but Raico is the the one that certifies the signatures um that we're going to open for companies to do it and the government is just going to be the regulator you know the of that service-wise in terms of what you do with that you're going to feel like it's the same thing but electoral is probably going to be focused on just identity. I don't know if that makes sense. It's a it's a it's a very interesting topic what you're saying. Yeah. Yeah. Because you have to look at like you say who's going to handle the information which is the crucial part and it's Yeah. And it's

and signature electronic signature is very important because it's in in Panama by law it's you don't you you don't you can't say I did not sign that right in paper you if you go to trial you can first validate if you did or did not sign that paper with the digital signature you can't it's if if your signature is there prove it right and there's a ton of different factors that go in to uh validating that you actually used your digital signature. So it's very tricky and and it has to be very well um implemented and and that's why uh let's say the government if it's a good s

supervisor in that uh and we have good practices in place we can open it to private enterprise and have them provide very good digital signature services um to have all things in place to prevent exactly but it does have to be uh totally integrated with electoral in terms of identity. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Well, we're going to wrap this up. Uh we want to thank you for your time. I know you have another appointment. Yeah. There. Thank you. Uh and I know that part there is going to be I think part of another conversation because as you said, it's it's there's a depth to it that we need to to think about and consider. So, thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you for being here and

sharing your knowledge and sharing what lies ahead for Panama. We're going to take a break now. Uh, I'm going to be back here in about an hour. Yes. So, you can go eat. And let's give it up for uh Adulo Farga, director of AIG.