New Baseline: Why Digital Assets Are Non-Negotiable for Traditional Finance

Transcript

Why digital assets are non-negotiable for traditional finance. That's the title. And uh a personal note here that back this is the seventh time the crypto valley conference happens. And back then in the early times we had like oh there's a bank on a panel. Wow. Woo. Then the rumors went around in internal groups. There is a bank on the panel right? And now all of a sudden I can still say wow the panel is packed with banks and we have several banks and financial institutions and our amazing technology seems to have found a product market fit in the financial industry. So I'm really

excited about the next panel and they are going to discuss exactly this topic why they are here and why it matters for them. Um, in the moderator role, I would like to welcome Nikki Chani, who is the executive director of the Crypto Valley Association and most importantly the key and head organizer of the Crypto Valley Conference since years. Please put your hands together for our moderator. Thank you. Thanks, Benedict. Please, my panelists, take your seats.

and Benedict stole my thunder a little bit of course with how many banks we have on the on the panel and um I was just going to say that um over the years of the crypto valley conference we have been discussing a lot about why threat and banks should get on board and now I'm so happy that we no longer have to do that and we will definitely not be discussing that on this panel because we'll be focusing on the tangible learnings of what these banks have been experiencing so are since 2004 2024 since they started offering digital assets. Um and of course this is a great panel. So you know a little nepotism I just took it. I said I will moderate

this. Um you know perks of being the conference organizer. Um anyways I would love to start um with asking my panelists to introduce themselves. Um where do you work? What is your role? Um, and maybe a fun fact, when did your crypto personal crypto journey start? Like when what year how did you introduce yourself to crypto? Did you buy Bitcoin? Do you own any digital assets? I do own some. Yes, my name is S Kowitz. Uh, heading digital assets at Luke. Uh, my journey started actually at uh, 2016.

Uh, blockchain everywhere was the topic. So, yeah, excited for the panel. Hi, good morning everybody. Um, Peter Hubli, head digital assets at Saran Albank. And my digital assets journey started with not with Bitcoin, started with uh with tokenized assets and they're still not here. So uh my first touch point was in the area of funds and uh I was involved in a in a PC from our bank with funds DT to tokenized funds and still ongoing and I think that's that's interesting and Bitcoin came later.

Right. So did Bahi here I think I'm one of the only non-bank uh in on the panel. So I'm the executive director um at the Bahrain Economic Development Board. um we worked very closely on Bahrain's crypto adoption journey. So I see it more from an ecosystem development and attracting crypto players to come and set up in Bahrain but also encouraging banks and working closely with the banks um in working uh with digital assets and crypto players. Cool. So uh Casper Lux I work at Crypto Finance. Uh we're also not a bank uh but we help banks on their journey to get into the the crypto space. Uh we're a full subsidiary of Deutsche Buzza Group

based out of Zurich uh but also have offices in Frankfurt. Uh and within crypto finance um I lead the the infrastructure business. So we provide infrastructure to banks to store digital assets and we use that ourselves as well. Um and I started in crypto back in 2017 uh when I got some great investment advice from a friend to buy Ethereum which I did um which crashed quite a bit shortly after. So, I did what every savvy crypto investor did. I bought the dip. Uh, and I'm still buying the dip. So, yeah, still here. Thank you. My name is Sander Bumman. I work in the digital assets team at Post Finance, one of the largest retail banks in Switzerland and

uh before that I was in the asset management industry in Zurich. uh my start was I think also in 2017 into the crypto digital asset space and uh we also structured investment products uh in the asset management uh business line there. So quite a few time already in that uh industry. Great. And yes, as you can see it's a well-rounded panel. We're going to have different perspectives of course three banks um an an institutional service provider who enables banks uh to provide services and of course Dalal is bringing a a governmental sort of top down perspective of how you can um push an industry and how you can incentivize

people to adopt technology that's new and I think that's a very difficult job to do but it's it's commendable so I'm looking forward to hearing from you Um so after introductions I would like to jump in. Um I asked all of my panelists to break out the numbers because what I don't prefer um at a panel is to talk high level very lofty but then not provide tangible information to the audience. So I am going to ask um first the three banks or um the three gentlemen from the banks if you can tell us a bit about your first year of experience or year and a half you know you can tell us when you launched

digital assets sort of what you were offering um what have been really um the the takeaways so far what have you experienced volumes of clients and if you have something that's an outlier or something that you were surprised about that would be fantastic because I think everybody would love to hear. Um Serge do you want to go first? Yeah sure. So uh we started our offering uh at uh February 24 uh with trading pine and hold also planned transfers um and the good good news is it's feasible also transfers uh on the reg regulator framework we have um that was one of the uh key things uh we figured out right so

uh also what I think about the last one and a half years we already or operational is it runs smoothly. So the technology is not that much an issue uh as we think I think it's more about education and how to uh operate with risks. So it was for us in the start a risk based approach for everything. So we do our own custody and AML and 247 trading. So we had to have managed risk really well. So uh a lot of board meetings about that and when you uh go over them uh and and figure all figure out all the risks um

you have a good base to go to go along with the topic. Second one of the key things I I think it's also education internally of the board of the customer relationship teams uh and also the customers and that's actually really hard. So we have a execution only offering and we can't say that much but we have to explain it to our uh customer relationship teams how it works what could be uh the risks on that and I think that's one thing we still have to do and to manage in the future um and yeah we we go on from there okay Pedro I know you have numbers for me I put you on What again? Again? No, no.

I mean like we didn't talk about it. Yeah. No. Um we went live with our offering eight months ago and uh the good news are the the bank still exist. So that's surprised many people in the bank honestly uh because they expected whoa if we go live then it's it's the end of the bank in no time. So we're still here. Um nothing happened at all. Um what I can say is after eight months um we were a little bit surprised because we expected uh a different client segment uh as as many others we expected um that we have younger people and more from the retail corner than from from

the private banking because the advisor in private banking said before we went live they said that my clients doesn't want it. Um so what a surprise after 8 months um we didn't reach the young guys because they are still with Coinbase with Swiss code with Bit Panda. Um but we have seen a strong demand from middle age. So the average uh custody investor is between 30 and 50 years old and it's male. The the female investors are younger than the male. It's also interesting and what we have seen as a result of that is that we have much higher ticket sizes as expected.

So that was a was a big surprise and we see because we offer the service not only to our clients we offer it also on a B2B basis and we see in in our partner bank to our Continental Bank um same same so we see middle-aged people which invest and what is the most surprise for us is that we reach clients which did not do anything with us before. They just hold cash with us and we try to sell them funds, equities, bonds, everything but they were not interested and now they jump in as soon as we offer Bitcoin and Ether. So it's interesting to see we have an

significant number of uh clients which has had to open an portfolio with us because they didn't have it before. That's so interesting and I'm sure it was a pleasant surprise, right? Absolutely. Yeah, that was a a a number which we didn't have on our screen before and was really surprising us because we we tried in the past we tried anything to to uh motivate them to invest their their cash and without any success and with Bitcoin it works. So that's anyway maybe the last one lost finding a very very strong dominance of Bitcoin. We only offer two currencies but uh we have a ratio about 88% to 12 between Bitcoin and Eer. So very strong

dominance to Bitcoin. Very cool. I'll let firstandro also answer and then I I want to circle back to you Serge if you see something similar um as well because the numbers are very powerful. Well, unsurprisingly, we share very similar experiences as the two other banks. Um, we went live with our offering in February 2024. So, last year um with uh currently 16 coins in our offering, we expanded the services with native Ethereum staking at the beginning of this year. So, in a retail format uh which is kind of a world's first as how we do it. And we keep on of course expanding the services also looking at

crypto transfer. So depositing and withdrawing of assets from and to exchanges or private wallets. So this definitely on the road map and more to that coming soon hopefully and also new coins. Um when we look at the customers um from a demographic view I would say the typical customer that we have for crypto client is between 35 to 40. he's male and geographically they are from burn or Zurich. Um so that's the typical investor that we see in our offering and I think the most surprising number is that 55% of these clients of these crypto clients

are firsttime investment clients. So crypto is really the entry point and not the endgame of investing for these kind of investors. And this was really surprising to us, but it's a a very nice number because there you see also the whole cross-selling potential within the bank that you have just by offering crypto. Indeed. In search. Do you see the same trend? I see same trends. Uh we also did demographics beforehand. Uh the project we expected to have customers around well 20 to to 35 something like that. Uh and now we experience around 40. So, and that's shifting actually from the start uh from the offering

younger clients uh before now we go get more into private clients uh and so on and have an average age of uh 44 actually and also maybe to the to the baseline here why it's non-negotiable um we experience right now actually uh already an adoption of all trading clients we have to from four to 5%. So after one year uh we are pretty satisfied uh about that. Um and it's still growing. So we see a lot of uh ETFs and and uh research and adoption and talking about those assets and uh it's happening. Um yeah, that's very cool. Actually, I had an interesting conversation with Fred Gregard from

Cardano two days ago and he was um mentioning the same thing to me. I can't recall the bank, but he said um they had a conversation and basically there's a new study or some research saying that um a lot of lower and middle class people who have no previous savings um they are not very concerned about the future in terms of oh let me buy some index funds for when I retire. They own absolutely zero investment in other assets, but they want to buy and they have bought Bitcoin and Ethereum and then they tell them, "Well, that's actually a saving, you know, like you're actually saving for the future." And they're like, "No, no, I'm just holding." So it's very interesting that

mentally people um on a lower and middle class wages don't necessarily see um digital assets as sort of investing for the future as for retirement but they want it and they are really interested in getting it. Um, and that that brings you a whole set of new customers that otherwise probably wouldn't invest, as you said, in in mutual funds, index funds, stocks, bonds. Um, it's a really interesting dynamic, and I wonder what's the psychology behind it.

Is it the novelty? Is it something risk related? No, I I think first for why so much young customers get into cryptocurrency is it's so easy to hop on. You get an app, you can onboard and then you can buy those things. It's much more complicated to get a bank account. And that's what I see is also the real challenge for banks to get this offerings to to clients make it easy gamification and so on. That's what you actually have to do to make it easier and it's not a it should not be a complex trading tool. It should be easy to onboard and also satisfy young customer and I think that's the main reason why a lot of young people are

getting into it. Interesting. But just in case of expect expectation management we have we have to say that uh for sure it is it is we are quite successful uh we have higher ticket sizes as I mentioned uh but um that is the good story if you are in team crypto but uh if you are not in team crypto in the bank then you see okay let's let's fairly speaking uh what are our assets under management and how much of it is in crypto and that's really it's only footnote and nothing else you know it is a niche and it will it will keep a niche I guess so we do not change our business model only because we are uh have had good success um in this crypto business

so it's for a universal bank it's not a gamecher at all it is interesting and you attract uh new clients for first investment as Sandra said that is very nice and it's good but overall it it's a small piece of the pie niche and that's something that I want to touch upon um later during the conversation as well. Um but maybe just to to begin here what we have seen with some of the the banks who don't have offerings um they see sometimes significant outflows uh that are somewhat material to crypto platforms and I think that's also one of the reasons why a lot of banks are considering to add the asset class. Uh

but also we have some data from some larger private banks where they looked at their ETF flow and they saw that over the last year the most traded ETF on their platform is actually IBIT. Wow. So there is quite a lot of uh interest also from kind of the financial world or or like existing investors to get into this asset class and they might do it via traditional means if they don't have access or it's harder to access the the native asset. But uh it's also the most successful ETF since launch. So from the financial world, there's a very big interest into it. And these products also within the existing financial system do grab quite a bit of attention.

But I also think it's very mediadriven, right? I mean, when was the last time that you read about the MCI world in 20 minutes or something like that? I mean, crypto when prices go up, it's a hot topic. So people want to jump on the train. Yeah. And they always see the high upside potential, right? And many of the investors who are really or the younger investors, they put all their money into crypto. They don't diversify. They put all eggs in one basket, right? And that's the reason because they that there's a lack of knowledge regarding investments.

And although crypto might be the entry, can't be the end, right? And as Pedro said, it it will remain a niche market. But we are not just talking about crypto. It's about the blockchain technology, tokenization and then the traditional assets come into place, right? So it's it's a shift and it takes time. But just putting everything into crypto, I wouldn't advise that to anyone. So yeah, we don't do advise that either. Definitely no investment advice here, but also I agree with you. Um a balanced portfolio is what everybody should be looking or striving towards. Um, Dal, so you bring a very different perspective from the gentleman here. Um, you know,

your job is to promote um the industry in your country, the economy. You probably realized a long time ago that digital assets, you know, blockchain, crypto as a overall, you know, technology um is very important to Bahrain. So how do you see for um banks traditional financial institutions the journey in the past year or two? Yeah. Are banks lining up to adopt digital assets and offer crypto to their clients? So just similar to you know um the panelists here um I started the journey of uh in of crypto and similarly as a as a country back in 200 um and 17 um so that's when the regulatory sandbox

was introduced um in Bahrain and when we had a number of um you know players experimenting in the sandbox and one of them was a digital assets crypto player. So that kind of really fasttracked you know the knowledge um um and and uh of of the regulator how to better uh regulate digital assets and crypto. So we introduced the regulations 2019 and I think what really supported the adoption um of banks is the size of the country um because we're quite small and nimble uh were really easy for us to educate but also encourage uh banks to um support local players um and they all fun under one single regulator central

bank of Bahrain obviously um 2019 few banks you know were were open to it I would say one to two banks to start with. um to date if you look at you know the banks that we work with in opening bank accounts uh for digital assets they go up to five to six banks and we also recently a year ago attracted a wholesale digital assets bank called SGB that mainly caters to digital assets uh whether it's on uh the banking services uh providing different kind of crypto asset uh um uh products assets and wealth management services um so you're really seeing that range um of services and offerings of banks. Not only that as well, recently um our national bank of

Bahrain even partnered with one of our licenses ARP digital to provide digital asset uh uh trans um products um to to to customers. Um so we're seeing that transition. Um I would say it's less um um you know bumpy of a ride than other jurisdictions. And I really I'd go back to my previous point because it was a smaller market where people could really engage and see and understand you know the opportunity we as well at the economic development board played a big role with the central bank of Bahrain to really educate but encourage um local banks to see the opportunity. And another point that I want to mention is

that the central bank of Bahrain is very well regarded in terms of regulations. So any regulator regulations that they take on board they really go through the process. So the so you know banks would really feel more comfortable uh banking with the digital assets that are licensed given the fact that central bank of Bahin went through you know the whole regulatory uh perspective to to adopt them. Um I think right now it's no longer about whether opening a bank account or not. It's no longer a discussion. It's more about what bank will offer a new product or new services you know and that's what's interesting as well that's what the customers are looking for whether it's tokenization stable coins is something else that's coming up as well very soon in Bahrain

um payments as well cryptocards so that that whole kind of um diversity in that sector is what is um um needed um and you know I think it's just it takes you know bank to adopt it and see the journey and you know you've mentioned in eight months for instance uh you've seen how things were were quite smooth it just needs that one kind of I agree I'll take it on board and then it's not as as scary I guess for banks yeah I mean we've been telling banks over over many many years it's not that difficult there's institutional great service providers who can help you you know regulation EMR compliance all in place

um and then your the proof of the pudding that it's working great. It's not the end of the world, doesn't break the bank. Um, so it's fantastic to see. Now I feel like the question is who's not getting on board? Are they getting left behind? And Casper, do you feel like do you see that trend? Clients coming to crypto finance and and wanting to get on board. Yeah. So, so maybe I can give a Swiss perspective and then I can also add a European perspective. So um in Switzerland I think we already have more than 30 banks with some kind of offering and there are various different levels of depth of offering. Some have a very basic offering. Some are already

quite advanced moving more into staking lending huge uh coin coverage and I do think that Switzerland globally is still kind of one of the the market leaders when it comes to having banks offering uh crypto native crypto access. Uh and the EU is now following uh quite closely. So I would say in the Swiss in the Swiss market, a lot of the banks are thinking more around what's next. So I already have an offering. How can what what am I going to do next? Am I going to add staking? Am I going to look at other things for to generate yield? I have a lot of investors holding Bitcoin.

How can I do something with that Bitcoin? Um can I collateralize it? Can I use it for lending? Are there other things we can do with it? Um and we do see a t trend there globally that Bitcoin and also crypto ETFs are becoming more and more accepted now also by banks as collateral. Uh which is good. I think that's really good because if you save into a hard asset, you also want to use that hard asset for the purpose purpose that it's supposed to serve. Um so yeah for in Switzerland we definitely see more maturity people adding more liquidity providers. So um but a lot of the big players are already into the market uh and they also enable other players to come into the market.

Uh then in Europe there the market is developing really quickly. They're behind Switzerland when it comes to live offerings. Uh but with the launch of Mika we now see weekly RFPs coming in from banks all over Europe. Uh Italian banks, Spanish banks, Belgian banks, banks in the Netherlands, banks in Germany, really from all over Europe. and not just small regional banks but also like GIPS so global systemic banks also looking into it uh they're moving a little bit slower because they really take it very seriously also from a risk perspective they you know they don't just have one custody solution but maybe they have two and another backup even before they go live so they they really invest quite a bit into it to to do it

properly uh but that that's also exactly I think the role that banks should play in this ecosystem is bring the trust, bring the security, do it properly under the regulation, make sure it's audited so when people use your service, they can trust it, right? And and they know that it's going to be stored safely, uh it's fully segregated, etc., etc. That's actually what we need as an industry to grow uh and get reach kind of the mass market because if you use I think FTX was mentioned in the past but if there are in intransparent structures there's loose regulation uh people lose their assets uh that's not very good for the industry and I think

this is the the role that banks will play more and more and they would also enable bitcoin and all their assets to to kind of become a a cornerstone of the financial market where you can use it just as any other asset as collateral or for lending or for any other purpose you would use other assets for. I would just want to add as well, I think banks, it's the conversation is no longer should we, you know, bank with digital assets. It's it's that's not the case. It's more of what should we do to compete with other banks that are banking with digital assets. And I think that's that's what's what's very unique and we see that in conversations. I mean today for instance, I'm here with uh you know my colleagues at the EDB. We have Bahin Finte our ecosystem developer and we have a local bank as well BBK here. So

you know you see it's it's it's no longer you know like you know oh should we should we not it's how can we be creative and capture as much um you know digital assets to service our clients and clients actually demand that we and and I think that goes back to you mentioned you know who are your clients it's the young population and we have very young demographic um so they really would want to widen you know their investment pool and their banking uh services as well. Yeah, maybe to add to that the younger generation I think the question is not if a bank will lose.

It's I think it's a yes if you don't offer anything in that space and the question or I mean everybody's free to have their opinion on crypto as of now right and I I know there are different opinions to that topic but where we all should agree and that's a fact is there will be a generational shift in wealth over the next 15 years amounting to 80 trillion US dollars that's now going into Gen Y Z and X right and these generations they don't are they are not used to opening hours for example, they can buy clothes 24/7 on Salando. They order their food online. They do what?

Everything is online, right? And why should they pay a fee for a bank account? For example, if they can open up a wallet in no time, as many as they want. So the question is not if they should offer it, but the question should be what's the business model of a bank in the future, right? And as of now, it's offering services, products, whatever. But I think in the future it will shift to much more in an enabling or a gateway role where banks allow people to interact with financial services whether it's their own the the bank services or from others right so they act as a gateway there and there the technology it probably will be blockchain technology I guess is is a

necessity so you need to start now to really build your future model for your future clients so if you're a traditional bank or traditional financial institution in the in the audience here and your bank or your company doesn't offer digital assets, well, you're behind and you need to catch up at least look at the technology. Um, okay. So, it's here to stay. Um, one quickly before we move on to the next big blog because I also want to talk about not just crypto but more digital assets um you know tokenization um settlements um all of this stable coins fun stuff um I wanted to ask from the three banks because you have various

offerings so um you offer 16 cryptocurrencies and you are offering staking then we have two bitcoin in ethereum with you canab bank and search remind How many? Seven. Seven. Yes. Okay. So my question is does it really make sense at the moment? Is there ROI in on boarding more and more and offering or right now if if a bank says I'm offering Bitcoin and Ethereum because that's 90% of my volume, let's just stick to that and push out really fast. Would you recommend that to them? Um well adding a token to the to the offering doesn't really come with a cost. um for us. So we we we want to listen to the clients. We want to see

their demand and the only impact that it really has is when it comes to custody, right, of these different tokens. Then it has an impact. Of course, I can tell you was shaking his head. I can tell you that removing a token comes with a cost. We had to do this quite a few times where we had uh tokens from the previous generation that they were not so hot anymore, but then you still have some holders and maybe the network completely changes how it acts, behaves, the protocol changes and you have a lot of cost to to keep up with it and then you want to decommission it, but then you have to reach all your customers and say, "Hey, we're no longer supporting this asset. Please move your asset somewhere else or sell it." And that can get quite uh quite tricky. So you do

have to take it a little bit into consideration like how durable is an asset before you decide to list it. And I think especially if you're a bank, most of the banks don't have a business model like uh like a Binance had has where they really want to offer everything that exists. Yeah. But want to be a little bit more curated. So I do think there it makes sense to be a bit considerate what you list. No, fully agree and we it's not our goal to list as many tokens or any project that that we see or that the customer demands. It's really we do a a thorough due diligence in every token that we offer our clients. That's our duty. We need to do that, right? Um but it's also we see a demand for yield enhancing services such as staking for example. And if we

only have Bitcoin and Ethereum, maybe we can only offer it to Ethereum, right? And our goal is to also expand the staking services. We want to improve the flexibility etc. that it becomes a savings tool for for our customers and that's why also we we add more tokens to the offering. Makes sense. I think to add more currencies is is more or less a marketing effect. You you see it on RFP. How many currencies do you offer? But uh but in effectively we see it with us. It's uh as I mentioned it's 88 to 12% the ratio. Uh our clients want don't want to optimize their Bitcoin investment. They buy and hold. They buy

and wait till Bitcoin is 1 million then they will sell it again. Um that's all what they expect and nothing else. And uh we will add over the next few months we will add uh additional currencies but I'm sure they will battle with with ether about this 12% and will nothing change on the dominance of of the bitcoin but what you but you mentioned before I think that is really important because you know um one of the reason and just to come back to the point with the banks of course it's it's between 20 and 30 banks in Switzerland which offer such services but we have more than 230 banks in Switzerland ent. So we talk about 10% and not more and it's still there are some concerns against the

cryptocurrencies and I think there is much more support for uh the technology and for digital assets uh and uh we struggle a little bit with the with the development on the digital asset side. uh we have uh SDX and we have now uh BX digital which is good but we are this this promised shift from traditional assets to digital assets to tokenization uh is not yet happened and if you and I always um take my slide from the web you know this very trustful source WE 2018 showed the the shift from traditional assets to tokenized assets over the next

12 years and if you go and take this shift and and I I showed this this slide many times to the senior management because it's from ve you know you trust them and then you see okay 2025 and you see where we should be in case of this shift and where we are in reality that's a big big gap there's nothing happened but I'm now sorry eight years in the industry and every year should uh should have been the year of the tokenization right and it really never did really happen. So, but what changed now is I think the last years it has always been very coupled to the price of Bitcoin or the crypto ecosystem itself. All these tokenization

initiatives and this is different now. I think five years ago if you started the tokenization initiative within a bank and Bitcoin dumped you would have a problem. You would have stopped your your initiative. I think now it's different. The infrastructure is here and it has maturized. So maybe we see it in the next five years. Hopefully maybe next year is the year of tokenization. Who knows? I still think it moves uh relatively slow but we see some uh some let's say good kind of spots in the market or some lights with you you see the big issuers Black Rockck Franklin Templeton was here. Uh all of these they were saying yesterday that the most boring thing money market funds are now

sexier because of they are tokenized. I think they're slowly starting to push for it and I do think you need the largest capital market in the world to be in the game for it to become significant. Um, and they're you still they're still lacking behind on regulation. Like in Switzerland, you have a very good framework where you can issue a token as a secure and the token is the actual security, but you can't do this in the US, right? And so you have always the kind of the adoption of the technology, you have the maturity of the technology, and you have the maturity of the regulation. And you need those three elements uh before you can really scale it up. And and this just takes a very long time. I just hope it's going to be one of those cases where people

underestimate the impact on or overestimate the impact on the short term but under underestimate the impact on the long term. Um I re I really agree with Casper. So if we don't want miss point uh two po uh two points to uh two points um about that first to see the big picture. I think uh bitcoin is now the fifth biggest asset in the world um under the 25 biggest ETFs in in one year. So there is a shift from from gold to gold to pado or or in a class per se. So we have to that considered the second is the technology and in terms of of cryptocurrencies I also uh have this the

same view as as Peter. So we have over 90% of Bitcoin uh um assets under management in all. So um there there there there are one one thing is is is the asset and second is the technology and and the technology also um is very important to don't miss. Let's see about stable coins. Stable coins have a trading volume per day from 30 to $30 billion. So that's actually the use case we promised with blockchain years ago. Crossber payments it is here and a lot of people don't know actually and we have to be ready. That was our goal when we when we set up our infrastructure custody and so on to be technology ready

and stable coins is a huge case right now mostly in institutional level not on the retail or uh other cases. So we have to consider that and just one point about implementation of cryptocurrencies. It also depends how you do it. When we implement a new cryptocurrency, we always interact with the protocol. And then comes a point with uh uh Casper say you have to know how those protocol works, block times and so on. If immigration or governance um uh something uh changes there, you have to know that and have to integrate and be ready for that. So it's also a challenge on a technical level and I wish I could I have so many more questions that I had prepared four pages

but we don't have time and unfortunately. So let's continue this outside and let's give the floor to Fred. Thank you so much for sharing your insights with us. I think everybody really appreciates it. Let's give a big round of applause for our panelists.