Why Re-Intermediation Might Be Better Than Dis-Intermediation

Transcript

someone from Bitcoin Swiss, the CEO of Bitcoin Swiss whose name is Herman Ramirez and he'll be speaking to you why reintermediation might be better than disintermediation. Herman, the floor is yours. I wouldn't steal any minute from you. Please put your hands together. [Applause] I I will give a fair chance for everyone who wants to leave the room to do so. Buenos, I don't know about you, but I came here today because it hurts me to constantly hear the story of blockchain

disintermediating right and left. I've had the privilege to be in this space for 12 years now, and I've been hearing it maybe once too many times. Today I came here to do three things. I would like to first explain why I believe that the story of this intermediation is misleading and actually maybe scaring people away. Secondly, I'd like to explain what I mean by reintermediation and why it is a good thing.

And third, I would like to leave you with a message that I believe is important in this context. So before I get stoned by the Bitcoin Oh, there you go. It actually works. Before I get stoned by the Bitcoin maximalists in the room, which I hope we have a few at least, I need to make one thing clear. Bitcoin is a bit of an exception. at least Bitcoin in its purest form.

Now, Bitcoin is an exception because Bitcoin was created and the keys were basically thrown away. I think one of the smartest things that Satoshi did was to disappear. So, Bitcoin is done. It's finished. Now, it's being adopted by countries, by institutions. It's becoming even an own business model in itself. So, Bitcoin has found its purpose. It's official. Bitcoin is a store of value. It's digital gold. And again, in its purest form is disintermediated.

And as such, I think that's fantastic. But today, I'd like to focus less on Bitcoin and this thing that I believe to be a reality and more about the rest of the ecosystem. What about all the world of three of all the layer ones all all the rest that there is? How disintermediated are we really? And should we be at all? We've been speaking about the trustless economy. You've heard it, I'm sure, the trustless protocols, the trustless economy. And I like to I would like to break that apart in three different pillars because the peer-to-peer and the

trustless and the disintermediation story I think scary now one we have the protocols the tokens that's the it that's the core then there is the is governance is who runs it if anyone and then there is ownership which who owns it and these are three very different concepts. So first let's look at protocols and tokens at this level actually yeah we are disintermediating right smart contracts do exactly that they do a great job at that and I think there's something to be excited about so in this field I think we're good but there is more to it

let's look at governance and I believe the shift at least the way I market came with going over to proof of stake. We found found a consensus on consensus. Um and I believe that that that marked a that marked a difference because in a proof of work environment machine is running independently and whatever happens with it and the fact that it's running are separated from each other in a way but in proof of stake it's not. So what we have is a series of empowered trusted specialists that are continuing to develop these

environments and we put their hands the power to do so. We are the ones who empower them and that's good because we are still at the very beginning. There is still a lot to be built. These things are not done. Decisions need to be made and we cannot be involved. Not everybody in the world can be an expert and or involved in the ins and outs and the next code upgrade and audit and what have you and of every single protocol they might be interested in. It's just not possible. It needs to be delegated. People need to be empowered and that works. So it turns out that most of us decided that we want to trust somebody

at least with these matters. And that's a good thing. Trust is a beautiful thing. Why do we want to be trustless? And in this case, we actually need to trust somebody. There's nothing ugly about it. Now, let's at least the way I interpret this is we wanted a change in how things are run. We wanted to have a bigger say. And with this solution, we actually do have a bigger say. It's more inclusive. It's more transparent.

It's more democratic. You can be as active as you want. You can be involved. That's it's awesome. That's really good. But it's not disintermediated. It's reintermediated. There's nothing bad about it. This is just not running on its own because it's not done. It wouldn't work like that. Now good example to me that let's look at staking itself. I think it's amazing that every single one of you with without much complexity you could decide to run a validator note. You could become a supportive you just you you can just go and you can do

it. You cannot open a McDonald's tomorrow if you want. It's a very different business model. But you can you can do this. You don't have to ask for permission. I think that's beautiful, isn't it? But it's also quite complicated. I have the privilege of working at a company that's the fourth largest custodial staking provider in the world with 2.5 billion asset under management. Disclaimer that was advertising. But we have an army of experts in cryptography in staking.

We have you have a whole operation running to enable that. And it doesn't have to be that complicated. You can reintermediate it to a player, for example, like ours, and still be part of it and still have a say in the governance. Now, this I left this for last because it's a minefield when it comes to ownership. Got to be honest, right? Here's the reality of ownership. you would have the possibility of having full control and disintermediate.

But how come then therefore that twothirds of assets are not in self-custody? Isn't that weird? Are we not disintermediating? You have the option which I think is great that we do by the way. I think there are advantages to reintermediate these things and this is kind of collectively at least what the majority of us have decided that is better convenience it's much more convenient not only talking about tax reporting and all sorts of other things control depending on how you reintermediate you can still be in full

control of it I believe control thinking in beyond generations or beyond your own body Health can also be part of control. Sovereignity, transferability of sovereignity can happen with solutions that are prepared for it accordingly. And safety depending on how you decide to have a custody solution, it can be safer. You might have heard of this one. And if we look into the latest um news and uh and it can be quite scary. People are being kidnapped and losing fingers, right? So safety might also be a reason.

So again, we're not necessarily disintermediating. We are dis deinter reintermediating. And I believe that's a good thing that there is one one point that I like to leave you with where I believe we need to draw a little bit of a line because with so much talk about disintermediation I mean I think we might have scared people away who wanted to have somebody to trust.

Even those who decided to step into it to a large extent have decided to do so. Now, the success of ETFs, and don't get me wrong, I'm all in for adoption and trfy, please keep coming, right? But I I believe this kind of shows that there was a great deal of people out in the world who not only did not want to be disintermediated, they might not even have to. They didn't want to be even reintermediated. They didn't want to change anything.

And that is the risk. If by telling the wrong story and scaring people away about us not being trustworthy or demonstrating so here and there and we scare them away, we end up having a situation where nothing actually ends up changing. And I do think that we do need to reintermediate especially if it helps to drive as demonstrated earlier more transparency, more inclusion, more democratization, more ownership, more sovereignity, which is things at least 12 years ago when I went down this rabbit hole I was looking for.

So let's continue building together trfy and us and everyone but let's not confuse people about trustless right let's earn their trust and let's build it the way it was intended so reintermediate it thank you very [Applause]