Featured Replay - Fintech Talks: Bridging Digital Assets & Traditional Finance - Insights from Annelise Osborne (Kadena)

Speaker A: Welcome to the Georgia Fintech Academy Podcast. The Georgia Fintech Academy is a collaboration between Georgia's fintech industry and the University System of Georgia. This talent development initiative addresses a massive demand for fintech professionals and gives learners the specialized education experiences needed to enter the fintech sector.

Speaker B: Welcome to Fintech Talks, a podcast where we explore people, ideas and innovations shaping the future of financial services. My name is Laura Gibson Lamoth. I'm the Executive Director of the Georgia Fintech Academy. And today's conversation is all about bridging the gap between digital assets and traditional finance. Two worlds that are no longer just adjacent, but digitally intertwined. Increasingly, um, we're challenging old assumptions and institutions are trying to keep up with the pace of changes. But someone who's lived in the intersection of both sides, Anneliese Osborne, who's currently Chief Business Officer at Kadena, is here to join us today. She's also the author of Hoodies Innovating Digital Assets for Traditional Finance. And rather than reading her full bio, which is full of impressive milestones, I'm going to let her introduce herself in just a minute. But I'm also especially excited to welcome a student co host, or I should say formally student, Christian Samuel, who graduated from Georgia State University. He served as one of the leaders of the fintech student organization and I worked closely with him through the Georgia Fintech Academy. He has been deeply engaged in building a community around fintech, innovative and excited students. Um, and so to get the conversation to start today, I wanted to start off with Christian. Just hear a quick update on how it's been since graduation and what's going on in your life currently.

Speaker C: Gotcha. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Laura. So, hi everyone. I'm Christian. I graduated from Georgia State in May with a degree in business analytics. For the past two years, we, we started the, uh, fintech organization at Georgia State and there I served as the vice president. Uh, there we aimed to bridge the gap between technology and finance and connecting students with employers was a big, big mission of ours. And working closely with the Georgia Fintech Academy definitely helped us with that with those connections. Uh, right now I work as a business systems analyst for an auto finance company called Global Lending Services here in Greenville, uh, South Carolina. And uh, I also serve as the uh, new advisory board for the fintech organization as well. So that's just a little bit about myself.

Speaker A: That's so exciting.

Speaker B: Christian, so glad to have you back and see you progressed since graduation. Obviously we can't let you go way too fast. Annalise. So excited to have you here on the podcast today. Can you give us a quick background on you and what led you to becoming an author of such an amazing book?

Speaker A: Well, thank you so much. I apologize that my dog is barking in the background. Um, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. I have been, um, I did traditional finance for a number of years, and then I kind of branched off into the world of blockchain and how blockchain can upgrade finance. Um, and I started in this. There's so much to unpack about writing a book. I. In 2018, I was, um, I did a lot of board work and I was asked to join this regulatory task force, uh, for ICOs, which were. I wasn't even familiar with them at the time, but initial coin offerings. But understanding what blockchain was, it kind of got me into the space back then. Um, and so I had my own startup in 1819. I then, um, I worked, which was a wild ride. And we can talk about that was a failed startup, I have to say, because it did not fly. But it was just. We did some really innovative, amazing things. I worked for arca, which was a crypto hedge fund, and then we created a tokenized treasury fund before Franklin Templeton, Wisdom Tree and BlackRock have tokenized treasury funds now. Um, I left to write this lovely book called From Hoodies to Suits. Innovating Digital Assets for Traditional Finance. Which is what you're referring to, Laura. Thank you. And it was really because there was a lack of education out there on what blockchain was and really the implications, even without using that word, the implications of what it does for finance, how it can upgrade finance. And so I felt that I just. I had this book in my head after FTX happened and FTX was Sam Bankman Fried. There was a very large fraud case. It was the world of bad actors that gave the. Gave the technology a bad name. And so I thought I should go. I had this idea for the book and so I went and wrote the book. Really the goal of it is just an, um, uplifting, educational, and ideally entertaining read about how this technology helps with the next generation of finance. So you asked how. Why I did it. So that was really. It was really the fact there were no other books out there on capital markets. I never thought that I would write a book. I just had it all in my head and I just kind of, you know, fell out. And I really wanted people to become more educated. I wrote it for generally Bob the finance guy, but to who's kind of like risk compliance or whatever is skeptic on the technology and really why, how the world becomes more. Faster, cheaper, more secure. Right, More efficient. That was the idea. Uh, tech people, I've gotten rave reviews from tech peoples because they create the tech and they didn't understand the financial aspects to it. Um, it's been, I would. There's been a big hit with regulators and policymakers as well for them to learn more. Um, and also some, some educators as well to be used in schools. And so, um, yeah, so it's super. Been super exciting. And then after that I figured, how can I make a difference? And I thought it would be either from the institutional side or the tech side. And I went to the tech side. So I've gone full crypto. I'm chief business officer of a blockchain and my whole goal is to see how TRADFI and DEFI merge. So lots to unpack there. But that was really kind of an intro. When you were asking about how I wrote the book, I will say I spent 12 years at Moody's doing uh, mortgage backed securities before that and I worked in commercial real estate and structured finance. So I did very traditional work. And now it is more, um, kind of the way, the way of the future as I look at it.

Speaker B: There's so many gems in what you were just saying, Annalise. And one of the things that I picked up on is through your experience, you identified an opportunity and you said yes to the challenge and you said, let me go ahead and author this book. And then obviously the title of your, your book illustrate quite nicely the fact that there's a lot of folks that are watching this space in this environment and seeing how we're removing or the lack of progress. But now there's been a lot of progress made more recently. I'm interested to know what you think from a next gen perspective. Why should they be excited about this space?

Speaker A: So I feel like students are the ones millennial and Gen Z, really Gen Z are the ones that are changing finance. To be honest, it's a very different world than it was when I was growing up or when I was 20. So we, this is a supercomputer that we hold in our hands and we never had anything like that. And the fact that everybody wants things digital, they want things right now. And this generation was born with a computer in their hands. Um, it's just a different level of efficiency, expectation. And so if you think about, I always point to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange just for an example. It used to be Shoulder to shoulder. That's the only way people could trade stocks. Now it is absolutely empty. And we're not even on of blockchain digital assets. We're just computerized. Everything's digital. And so now they use the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for photos. And so this generation with the, with I think the comfort with technology, the expectation of being able to swipe and manage accounts on your phone, like, uh, ATM cards are going to the bank. Right. That I feel like is not. I rarely ever go to the bank. Um, and so I can't, like, I just think this generation with, with Venmo and passing money back and forth with the idea of investing and also like a creator economy. Not as many people have the regular jobs. And the jobs aren't like my parents generation. They had one or two jobs. That was it. And now it's. There's a lot more movement. Not everything is a W2. And so this does come back to crypto also. A lot of, like, we're talking within the United States. There's huge benefits outside the United States too, where not everyone has a bank account. I want to send money to my family that lives in another country. So that's without even going into kind of crypto. But I love it because, you know, I can Stablecoin, you can transfer money immediately, and I have it today. So I was trying to put money. And not everything is investment, by the way. I'm generally focused kind of more on the finance side. But there's a lot of benefits to it that are, um, that aren't necessarily money or securities. But I put money in my Fidelity account and my Robinhood account same time to see how it would transfer. Fidelity says it took 10 days. They said it takes up to 10 days for your money to hit your account for then you to invest. But with Stablecoin and any sort of payments, you get it immediately. So if I had that money immediately, I can invest it today, not in 10 days. And it didn't actually take 10 days, but it does take good five. Like I think it took five days, but it said up to 10 days. Robinhood, you can actually input some things that you get it immediately, but it's. It's just not very efficient. And if you think about, if I'm running a large institution, there's trillions of dollars that go through the system every night. If I don't have to wait two days for a float and I can have it today, then I can put money to work today. So it increases the velocity of Money. So that's kind of something more for the finance side, um, the crypto side or the idea of investing if you have digital assets. From an investment perspective, obviously there's one side that's kind of cryptocurrencies. So I'm less cryptocurrencies. But obviously that's been interesting to generally a younger generation. The idea of investing Robinhood, for example, that I mentioned, the average age, I think 85% of the people on Robinhood are under the age of 35. And so it's a newer type of investment account. Also super interesting, uh, to me is that there was a study done and this was a while ago in the UK that 85% of Gen Z get their financial inflammation from finfluencers first, before parents or anyone else. And so the idea of it's a social networking thing. So I feel like there's more opportunities to find investments through kind of friends. And again, you know, before we, uh, when we go to financial advisors, they have, that's their business for the most part. And generally they've studied and they might have accreditations. So it's just a different way of thinking about things. And generally, also from an investment perspective, the, the Gen Z is not looking to have their parents financial advisors. There have been studies on that too.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Also, if we're going to dive into it, Gen Z and Millennial will, will soon own more than half the world's wealth because there's a great wealth transfer, it's called, that's being passed down from baby Boomers to Millennial and Gen Z. Sadly, it is skipping my generation, mainly because I am. That's okay. Um, and so it's just, it's just interesting to think is that this, this generation that is much more digitally friendly, they expect things faster than. They're more ready to challenge the status quo, which is partially because of like, I feel like youth are more ready to challenge the status quo than kind of the, the older side. But I also feel like the generation is given more opportunities than say, and more opportunities to challenge the status quo than say my generation necessarily was. So we were more accepting of what we had to work with. So anyway, that doesn't specifically answer kind of the applications of blockchain, but just the fact of having the opportunity both from a, uh, money and from an investment perspective. So the idea of Robinhood, you can actually buy cryptocurrencies on Robinhood, you can also part of that is. Sorry, I'm going to ramble.

Speaker B: No, this is perfect.

Speaker A: Public markets today. So this is investing for kind of Gen Z. If you look at public markets today, there's so many fewer public companies than there used to be. Right. And so more of the world is private companies. And, and what this technology is offer also offering to do is bring some more of those private opportunities to the hands of more people. Because right now they're generally with the ultra high net worth. And this technology can make it lower cost for the back office side so they can take lower minimum investments. So that's what Hamilton Lane, Franklin Templeton, Apollo have done with their private equity funds is trying to find more investors. And so they haven't, they've gone down I think to probably 250,000. But it's not 5 million, right? It's $5 million. And that's the first step. And so the idea is, you know, people, uh, people like us, maybe, maybe you're in the ultra high net worth category. But the idea of like investing $25,000 in a private equity fund that has, you know, could have higher returns than the market, you know, there's no guarantee for any sort of returns, but it just opens up a world of investing and that's what, which I think is be interesting to these upcoming generations. And another thing I will say ultra high net worth. BlackRock Stock Study we were, when I studied finance it was 60% stocks and 40% bonds was a balanced portfolio. Uh, if you look at this BlackRock study which we can all find, it's ultra high net worth wealth or global, global wealth survey or something, it's ultra high net worth are 60% um, traditional assets and 40% private assets. So it's public. So instead of stocks and bonds, they're all limped into one. And then 40% are private investments. So it's, it's very different. So why can't we have that opportunity? Yeah.

Speaker B: Wow. I mean as an elder millennial, I think I resonate a lot of what you describe as far as what the next gen could look forward to with the adoption. And some of the opportunities I think that are stemming from this conversation is, you know, we, we do have a lot of folks who are interested in disrupting, you know, whatever the status quo is. And they're coming up with solutions that could tap into blockchain and other technologies. Digital assets opens up for cross border payments and some other things that have always been a pain point in the payment space. But when you mentioned the digitally native, that struck a chord to me because I'm like, yeah, Christian can attest. And Christian, I know for Some of the conversations we've had in the past, you think digitally first you're not thinking about going to a bank and doing some of these other, you know, traditional practices when it comes to managing your financials. And so when that great transfer of wealth and hopefully it's going to, Christian and others happens, they're going to expect to have these inner, these, you know, user experiences that I think financial services has been trying to adopt. It has been adopting obviously over the past few years. But that's going to be an expectation, the wealth market, where I don't think it is necessarily as much today. Christian, I don't know if you have any thoughts on, on any of that.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, definitely. I mean, a lot, A lot of great points. Of course, digital first, like since the moment, like I kind of knew how to like walk and talk, there was some sort of device in my hand. Like I remember first thing I used was like an ipod. But ever since then, like from a very young age, having access to like you said, like a mini supercomputer in your hand, and especially at this age now where there are so many different platforms you're able to invest on, uh, I can definitely resonate to the fact that I definitely go on TikTok or Instagram and you see like a reputable content creator that gives like some sort of financial advice. And that's definitely like, especially when you see they're not selling something like a course from the very like minimal research that you do about their page, then you kind of trust them like that much more. Um, I also had a question for like a lot of listeners that don't know what, what is blockchain?

Speaker A: So I try to go a little bit less into what, like the specific technology, because we don't talk about back to our phone. Like, we're not like, how does the phone really work? It's more the applications of the phone and what it can mean for me. So what blockchain is though, is in essence it was brought about, if you think about bitcoin. So I think most people probably have heard of bitcoin, which is now in essence a digital currency that sits aton a blockchain. And so the blockchain allows that uh, technology for people to transfer bitcoin back and forth and it always to be held on a ledger and it to be secure and everyone knows who owns what bitcoin. And so that was the first blockchain, um, that rolled out in 2009. In 2008, the first, the bitcoin white paper Came out. And then in 2010 was the first time that bitcoin was actually used to buy pizza. Which is funny if you think about it. It's been 15 years. Yeah. So anyway, what is a blockchain? It's kind of like. Think of it as like a big Excel spreadsheet. Right. But you know what happens in every single block. And it. Everything is recorded, it is timestamped, it's data. And so. And you can't go back and change it. Um, now there's. And so if you had everyone points to. For a great example is if you've ever bought a house, you have to get title insurance. And the reason you get title insurance because who knows if something. If the person that sits in the house now really is the owner or uh, what if there was a lean on it three people back. So if you actually had blockchain, it would continue like that. One block would be the first owners and then the second block would be the next owners and it'd show all the transaction times and who was the real owner. And so that's a way to think about a use case to show, wow, we wouldn't need title insurance. Because you wouldn't need insurance if you had the blockchain. To know exactly where that came from. Which is something that they're actually. One of the regulations in Europe is actually to do with products. Digital product passport is becoming. It's rolling out on different things. I think next year is. Is textiles. So clothing to know the life cycle of that. Of that clothing, which is interesting also. Um, anyway, there's all sorts of different applications, but if you think it as an Excel spreadsheet that everybody has access to, but it's not in one centralized place. It's decentralized, so no one person controls it. So it's not like if power goes out in my house, it disappears. Right. The servers are all down because the power's out because there's. There's multiple nodes running globally and that keeps it secure. Is that helpful?

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: And from that, so what bitcoin was the first blockchain. And you couldn't actually, you can't program a bitcoin really. Like it's. It's a. It is a bitcoin. Ethereum came out, is the next. And on Ethereum you can actually have. You can program the security or the token there. And so you can program it to have KYC AML M. So you have to make sure that you're like, oh, uh, I'm not a bad actor. So I can Own this, which is what a lot of banks have to do. A lot of things in finance, you have to be identified or it can say, pay on this date, this much money. Anything that has a mathematical equation can be codified. And so there's a lot of benefits. You could have smart money. You could have bonds that pay when they're supposed to pay, but not when they're not supposed to pay. Anything conditional. There's all sorts of, uh, different things that you can program onto. There's so many more things we can program than we have yet. But we're getting there as the integration of blockchain is a little bit more accepted into kind of capital markets. Right, Gotcha.

Speaker C: Thank you for that.

Speaker B: Yeah, that was helpful. I think just like we've seen in a lot of, you know, innovation and the advancement of technology, it takes a little bit of time for adoption. And once that, you know, adoption pattern has happened, then there's innovation and people start thinking about the use cases where the technology can be applied. But it was really helpful to have you illustrate. I'm excited to see, I guess, kind of the advancement in the space in the future. I don't know, Christian, if you want to go to our next question from our list.

Speaker C: Yeah. So, uh, Annalise, so what. What inspired you to write from hoodies

Speaker A: to suits, so you can laugh at this. My English teacher in 10th grade told me I'd never get an A in her class because I was too social, which is funny to me anyway. So that's always been in the back of my head. I was. I'm much more of a math brain, but I'm like, really? So I. It was after the fall of ftx. I had always been working with institutions about how do we use blockchain behind the scenes. If we're talking about houses, figure technologies does loans on, uh, mortgages and or helocs, and they save almost like 75 to one person. Like, I think up to 125 basis points. That's a lot of money. So say you're saving like 85. You're saving 85 basis points on every loan. And there's. It's. It just is such a cost savings that it allows money to be cheaper. So I feel like that that's a real benefit, uh, decrease. The reason you like tokenized funds. It's decreased. The reason they can offer cheaper is because it's lower cost. As we mentioned about, like, with payments is huge. Now we can talk about in a little bit, we'll get into kind of regulation Probably a little just touch on legislation, but there's, there's such a gap out there. And I feel like three things. There's three holdbacks to institutional adoption, I thought. And when FTX went down, I was talking to a bank who said they had a cease and desist talking about anything with blockchain until the following year. And FTX had nothing to do with blockchain really. It was really bad actors and there were no suits in the room. It was a bunch of hoodies that kind of got over their skis and there's a lot of money around and you think, you know, rules don't apply to me as much. There was no board of advisors, there was no risk committee. There was no one that was there actually oversight for that. And so I thought three holdbacks to institutional adoption. One is regulation. Clear regulation in the United States, in any, any country. Because this is global, right? It's not, it's not just here, but within the United States. We're like the global superpower. And to be honest, so much is backed by the US dollar, all of these stable coins, $250 billion of stable coins, 99% of them are backed by the US dollars, all these tokenized treasury funds, everything is backed by US Debt, US dollar in some way. So it would be great to have clear regulation. Number two is education. The idea of what does this mean? And is bitcoin and blockchain the same thing? And is it only used by frauds to launder money? And there's a lower percentage. I think it's a fraction of a percent of any crypto that's used to launder money. And it's 5. About 5% of US dollars are. So this is also. These, these are all facts that are quoted in my book with sources. And so it's, it's just unfortunate. So anyway, education. And then the last, I think, is interoperability, which is two ways. One, it's how does blockchain tie into the financial system? And then how does blockchain interoperate together? So I feel like, I feel like education I could do something about, right? And so, and I hopefully that would help the other two. And so that was really the impetus of writing the book. I thought I have this book in my head and I had no idea how to write a book, but other people were writing books, so. And I just decided I want to do it. And I figure, like, I put my head to something and I decided I want to do it and we make it happen. So. Which is grit and Deter and then just keep going. Perseverance. I would say if there's anything I can pass on to any listeners, it's just believe in yourself and keep going. Another thing is like you write a book and it had to be 288 pages because it's nonfiction book. And I used Wiley, who's a big publisher. You don't know like you. I spent, I spent three months writing the book. So. So two months. The majority of it, the last chapter is not fact, is my ideas. And so that was. Took me a lot. It took me another month. But then you're like, is anyone gonna read this? Like, what are they? Are people gonna think how horrible it is? So I had an editor help me pull it together. But, um, I remember sending it out so you can get these, you know, people on the back reading or also giving, giving me critiques. And I thought I would get a lot of negative critiques or I did not. I did not at all. And so that was really interesting. Like I thought people would challenge me more. And even now it's been out for about a year and I've had really great reviews and I'm fine. You know, it's a conversation piece, right? Let's. Let's talk about it. And so that was also interesting. Cause you don't think about, you don't think about that when you're sitting there writing it. That, oh my goodness, this is for people to read. And anyway, so that it's. It's been a great journey. I have loved it in the sense that it's expensive to write a book. Cause you leave work or. I left work to write a book. I hired an editor to help me. Um, so it is not a money making thing, but it was just something that I wanted to do to kind of push this industry forward. But it's really been amazing to me. I was in Dubai at a conference and someone. And I popped my head in. I didn't, I didn't register. I was there for two minutes because the people that I saw wanted to see were gone. Somebody chased me kind of out the door. That was a super fan from Beijing.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker A: That to me was, uh, who was a content writer. And uh, that to me was like, wow, this is really amazing. My neighbors in my suburban New York world went to Brazil and someone told them to read my book. So they think I'm famous, which is hysterical because I'm not. But it's just then I had, you know, I've gotten some calls from random people who've picked it up that are very influential in the economy and that wanted to have conversations. So that's what it's about to me. It's about making a difference for someone, you know, ideally motivating people and inspiring them as well. Because I feel like we. Innovation really takes all of us together to come up with ideas. And how do you come up with ideas is you start sharing them yourself. I never thought that I would have been a founder in an industry that I didn't know as much about. This is an 18, but the people that were the founders were the hoodies and they didn't understand regulation. They were working in securities and security. Finance isn't broken, but it can be better. And so that's where I figured, well, I know how. I understand enough of the technology as a non coder, but I understand the applications, how this works, but the structure of finance that we have to follow. So we're working within regulation.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, so that's. That is kind of why I stepped up. And. And here I am today. And I love it. I love. My job is constantly challenging. I'm always. I never know enough because in an industry that's continuing to innovate, there's always more to learn. But it's just really fun. It's really fun to see kind of progress we make or things we build or things that we can make happen.

Speaker B: I love the educational mission behind it. Obviously, you know, what you've written translates into a great conversation point for a lot of folks. Hopefully for us to leverage as part of the classroom and the conversations we're having as well around blockchain and eventually crypto. I love that you hit on like some misconceptions that education is critical and you're kind of at the forefront of providing that thought leadership, I think.

Speaker A: Thank you. Uh, when I had looked. I read all the books when I was. You have to look and see what's out there and explain to the publisher, like why this, why now, why me? And it really was. There was Digital dollar, there was like there was deep. There was stablecoin. Sorry, which. Same thing. Uh, defi and like crypto trading. But my whole thing is blockchain can make our world more efficient. It's not necessarily the trading aspect. Defi is interesting, which we haven't touched yet, which I'm happy to go into. Little bit. Um, so that's why, that's why I thought like I could be a voice out there to say that. And what's funny is the title. From Hoodies to Suits. The idea is that the hoodies created this three point probably four. I haven't checked recently for probably three and a half trillion dollars about. It was 3, 3, 3 the last time I checked. They created this amazing capital market. Right. And now to get further, I think we need the suits to help along the way. And so I kind of start off the book. It talks about how if we think about Facebook, um, and we think how Zuckerberg initially would always wear his hoodie. Right. But then when he goes to Congress, he actually wears a suit.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So part of that is like the growth project, the growth of the company and the projectory and the idea of kind of web. Two Web. Um, three. Just the idea of it being a startup to being an established company. But kind of the. So for me the hoodies are the. I have the greatest respect for hoodies, which the entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs and tech people that brought us to where we are. And I feel like the hoodies and suits need to work together because neither of them can do it alone.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So much of this ecosystem is really. Is really figuring out how to work together

Speaker B: well. So let's go ahead and get into the tradfi defi conversation. I knew you'd be excited about this, Anneliese.

Speaker A: It's um. I think a lot of people are like, what is defi. Right. What is decentralized finance? I don't get it. It's like crypto and who. Who knows? But um, it's actually super interesting. The idea behind even if you go to Bitcoin, in 2008, 2008 was Occupy Wall street and I was working on Wall street and you had a whole bunch of people that were sitting in. Down at. Near Wall street, um, protesting the banks because they wanted. It was after a big crisis and they wanted, um, to have more access to their own money. Right. The banks had more control.

Speaker B: And.

Speaker A: And so if you think about it, bitcoin white paper came out right around that time. And so for me it was more like for the people. Right. How can I. It was a peer to peer payment. I'd like to pay you without going to the bank. Right. And that's what it's developed into. It was just kind of an idea at the time that. That is. It takes a while. I feel like every overnight success takes seven years, by the way. Right. You don't hear about it for the first seven. And they're like, wow, look at that. But it's a lot of hard work along the way. Well, decentralized finance is. I want to either lend or borrow. Money. And so I can, and I can do that to you, Laura. And so I can do it off of my own crypto. There's different ways we can do it online. There's kind of centralized exchanges, decentralized exchanges of uh, where we can actually transact, but also lending protocols. And I think that's really big because it's kind of like the world of private credit. They're very similar. So private credit is really, um, instead of going to a bank to lend money. Right. Private credit is a private company lending to another person, which is absolutely boomed. Right. If you look at the multiples of increase in private credit, I, I forget, I feel like it's 300%, but I forget the period of time. Um, that's the same thing as decentralized finance. So I, I actually want it. So I have, you know, I've got crypto and instead of wanting to sell my crypto, I want to take a loan out against it. And I want to do that because yes, this is like lending on lending and we can get in derivatives and other other different types of things. But I think my crypto is going to go up. If you think about Bitcoin, over time, Bitcoin's gone up. It was more volatile before, but with the ETFs and more institutions buying, it's less, it's less volatile. It doesn't mean it doesn't go up and down, but I still believe it as a long term hold. But I would like to borrow money against that and maybe I redo my deck with it, for example, which is what I wanted to do, but I didn't do that. Or I can actually buy more Bitcoin. Right, That's. And then if the volume goes down, it automatically liquidates. But the whole idea is like, I can lend to you, Laura, or you can lend to me. And however it sets up, we're taking out the intermediaries and we're creating a world where people can work more closely together. And it's not even just people, but it, you can talk about large flows of money coming in as well. Right. And so that's a big thing. It's like banking. It's the idea of I could, it's harder to open uh, a bank account than a wallet. If I am in a country where I don't have as much like identity is harder. When I lived in London, my job had to write a letter to the bank to allow the bank to open me an account. And this was a large company and a large bank. And so it's just, it's, it's very, there's a lot of things in the middle. And yes, a lot of that is regulation that was created to protect investors or retail people. But I think it's just a way to make things more efficient. Right. And the idea of being faster, safer, more secure. The problem was that safer bit can be tough because if I use my credit card, um, if I use my credit card and, or someone there's a charge on it that I didn't get what I had asked for, the credit card company will help me get that money back. Now that's not, is not the case yet with stablecoin, but it doesn't mean we won't get there. But because Visa and MasterCard are all looking at different ways to use blockchain and use payments because they can save money. Because again, it's just faster, cheaper, more secure. Right? Because it's secure. Because it's, uh, it's on blockchain. This is not like people hacking into your account. Um, but there's different ways for that as well. Like cybersecurity. The whole world, I think, you know, will continue to increase in cybersecurity as we continue to get more digital. Um, so anyway, so I think that the. I think there's a lot of interesting things out there. And then obviously, you know, if you were a trader and into derivatives and tradings of stocks or what have you, that's. Those are the people that I think are drawn to like crypto trading or. And if you think about it as, I mean there's not, they're not backed by countries. If you're thinking about currencies, like. But currencies have been volatile over time as well. And so there's different thing is just different, different strokes for different folks. Not my thing. I would never recommend a crypto to buy. But it's, it's super interesting. I think there's, it's just a step in the process. And also collateralization. So when things are, when things are collateralized, like, you know, stocks are now becoming tokenized too, but, but say I have a share in a real, uh, estate building, right? I own so many shares in that, and then I could borrow against my shares, right? So it's easier, it's going to be easier to do. Like you technically could do that, but not everybody can do that. But there's. That kind of opens up the world too. So if it is a tokenized violin, for example, someone tokenized a violin, you could borrow against the tokenized violin because that could liquidate.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Anyway, there's a lot of different things out there that are kind of the future where you can go. But right now we can open accounts, send money to each other, we can invest in different things, we can borrow against it.

Speaker B: Well, and you mentioned tokenization. I wanted to ask about that because I'm familiar with tokenization, um, as far as security measures. And you have a key and key management and where are the keys, who owns the keys? Is that the same type of tokenization processes that you're talking about when you describe it?

Speaker A: Yeah. So I think there's. There's kind of different words, I think, but they're similar ideas. So a wallet is like an account kind of. Right. And your key is like your password. And so yes, when you're tokenized, there's different types of wallets. So when you hold assets, you hold them in a wallet. It can be. A lot of people will use Coinbase, which is a publicly traded crypto, um, cryptocurrency exchange. It's the. Probably the. It's the largest regulated in the us. Bigger than that is Binance, which is international. So you can go to Coinbase and get a wallet on Coinbase and then it's kind of like an account. Right. So you don't. It's easier. There are different wallets that you can have that are actually hardware, so you could plug it into your computer and take it away with you. The problem is early Bitcoin people, a lot of them had those and then you lose it and your money's gone.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: So there's a lot of stories like that. But there's different types of wallets, there's. That can hold different types of assets. If you're dealing with a security, then you have to think about custodians and who can custody your. Your assets. Securities are a little different too though, because you have that KYC element to a security. Like anytime if I aim to buy a stock, Fidelity has already done their know your customer on me. So they already know who I am. But in. In tokenized world, if I buy it, they know who I am. So that's analysis. And so nobody can really steal that because if they steal it and they're not analysed, they can just burn like mint. Burn that one and mint another one for me. So there's different protections around as well. So I don't want like, uh. This isn't necessarily a world of kind of the fraud and hacking. If you think of what really the big hacks. I do have a chapter in my book about this too, about like looking at what we can learn from mistakes. So, you know, one of which is hacking. But generally what that's happened, it's capitalized on centralized exchanges. So they, they've happened generally on a centralized exchange where that one exchange is holding the money and someone gave out information unknowingly that they got in. Usually, um, if your wallet is hacked, it's because you shared your passphrase or your keys with someone. Um, it's not, they don't go in without that. So those are a lot of phishing attempts generally that come through the other things have been hacked over bridges because a bridge is not technically on a blockchain. You're connecting one blockchain to another. So there was a big old hack, for example, that was over a bridge. So. But you learn from all of this. Right? You learn different ways for protections. I don't want the, like blockchains are, I would say they're. It's impossible to hack a blockchain. It's not impossible because there's always a tiny fraction of a percent from a risk perspective that it could happen. But, but that's not, that's not a concern I would worry about as a blockchain being hacked.

Speaker B: Well, it's interesting that you're describing kind of like a vulnerability point that is like an integration can create a point of vulnerability. And we've seen that in financial services, you know, across the board. So it's nothing unique. And I find it interesting now that, you know, a lot of fraudsters are getting creative where, uh, just to talk about generational type of experiences now you have folks who are not digitally native being coached to create crypto and you know what I mean? And share that information to your point, share the entire set of data and information to access that account to a fraudster. Uh, but they're getting more intelligent in how to be able to kind of navigate that. But yeah, ah, it's interesting to think about how fraud could evolve over time.

Speaker A: So different types of authentication. Right. Find different ways to protect your account. Yeah, but that's not just in like those aren't just wallets. Uh, it's just as much in the, the non crypto world, which probably more so in the non crypto world because the non crypto world is so much bigger.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And also the, the non digitally native are generally like my parents, for example. Right. That are a little less comfortable in that the whole idea of WI fi. Right. If you let someone onto your WI FI router, but but, yes, stay safe. It's, uh, not. I don't. I'm not saying there's. I don't think that blockchain is really created for fraud in any way. I don't think there's. There's bad actors everywhere. I think that they're just more, um. They're. They're more fun headlines when you have it with something tied to crypto, because it started back in Silk Road when. Ages ago, when. When they accepted Bitcoin for payments. But think about technology. It leaves a fingerprint. So there's actually a great book called Tracers in the Dark that talks about how they can track. How they track down a lot of that Silk Road money and how they can track down different, because you can. It's like. It's like following the course of money. But it's all digital.

Speaker B: Yeah. Trace is in the dark. Tracers in the dark.

Speaker A: Tracers in the dark.

Speaker B: All right, Christian, you got another question teed up for us?

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. So kind of shifting gears a little bit or. Ish. Um, what are the biggest challenges preventing institutional adoption of digital assets?

Speaker A: So I think this goes back to the three we talked about before. First is regulation. So I was actually in DC last week. It was crypto week in dc, and so I've been invited down to talk to congressmen about. It was both the Genius act, uh, which is stablecoin, the idea of passing regulation for stablecoin in the United States, and then also the Clarity Act. The Clarity act is putting definitions around what digital assets are, what the SEC is responsible for, what the CFTC is responsible for. This is so important because institutions can't play in the gray. They have to know black and white, and they can't think. Well, this. The current administration thinks this way. So I think they're gonna look at it this way, and then the next administration might think this way. Uh, but that doesn't work. And so having clear guidance is hugely important. So great, last week that Genius X packed and was signed into law, which is super exciting to have. It's really about regulating stablecoins. Right. It's about if your value is this high, then you report. It's making sure that they have the reserves that they say they have. So it's ideally that people are not being scammed, but if you think about the larger stablecoins that are out there, the whole idea is not. It's not for scamming. It's really set up as a financial instrument. And so they're already following these rules. So it's just more of a reporting and putting structure in place which is outstanding. The Clarity act passed the House. It's going to the Senate. The Senate has some ideas as well. But I do think this administration will pass that too. Which then it will make institutions much more comfortable in working. Working with blockchain technology in general.

Speaker B: I think.

Speaker A: So payments is a killer case. Right. Because we can automatically save money. We can do it today. We all see what it can do. Um, and then I think that there's a lot of. Blockchain is kind of back office which just makes the most of us won't even need to know we're using blockchain. Like that's where I see the future going is that we don't talk about it. Things are just more efficient. So the first thing for institutions is regulation. The second is education. And it's just understanding, you know, what the risks are, if there are risks. But. But also understanding the technology and the applications and what it can do and that bitcoin and blockchain are not the same thing. I think that's hugely important. Uh, and then lastly is interoperability. And I only say this because a lot of the banks are financial. Not even banks, just financial companies have had really old tech. There's always been in regulation that you have to keep record keeping, for example. Right. And so generally you build an newer tech on top of old tech and then so it's not.

Speaker B: Not.

Speaker A: It's not a new technology and then you have to plug in. How do you plug blockchain into the old tech stacks? And also usually every group is slightly different. Right. Because the um, the managing director was responsible for his own tech because it wasn't as coordinated. Uh, unless you're in places like the gaming industry. Because the gaming industry is newer and it's all technology. So that's an easier tech stack. But we're talking about finance, which is one of the oldest professions. Right. And so that. So we've always had kind of regulation there to protect people and ensure capital market efficiency. And it's trying to figure that out. So I think that's one thing is how do we, how can we use this? And then also the interoperability between different chains. Right. I think that's important because if I do it on one blockchain and that it's private because I want to use a private. There's private and public chains. I uh, equate them to the intranet like and the Internet. So before we had kind of the World Wide Web, we had an intranet site at work and it was like a bulletin board where we could post things. But it wasn't very helpful because it didn't access any outside information. It was just those of us inside. And so I think there's a lot of benefits. Like the private blockchains are great internally JP Morgan has JP Morgan Coin that's on a private chain. That's fantastic. Inside of JP Morgan, it benefits them. But the idea of stepping out to the whole Internet where you have free range of access to all sorts of information and companies are actually built just on the Internet, that's kind of how I look at blockchain. And so there's a lot more applications for it that we don't even see today. There's loads of people out there building super exciting things. More than we're talking about right now because now we're kind of talking about the basic things to understand how it affects me. But it's super exciting. So I think those are the three things. Back to your idea of institutions. One, understanding like having clear guidelines. Mica in Europe has, has more clear guidelines. There's more out in Singapore. There's a project Guardian which is a sandbox that they have out out there. Most of the people building on our blockchain because I'm actually running uh, the business side of a blockchain are from Europe because Europe had clear guidelines before and so the US is a bit behind for this. But so it's interesting those, they're more advanced, they're further along there, they've already tokenized XYZ and they want to like they're running a business now versus coming up with the, an idea before they run the business. So, so yeah, clear guideline helps education, understanding what it is, its capabilities and then and just being able to how do we work together and plug in.

Speaker B: It seems to be kind of why crypto is kind of felt stuck for so long was that it was lacking that regulation and that support I think because most institutions, especially financial institutions tend to be risk adverse and they'd rather know what you're expecting versus building it and hoping to not get slapped on the wrist, you know, on the back end.

Speaker A: So true. Yeah, I will say there was. Circle is a now public company. It went public two, three weeks ago. And what's amazing is, and this is Stablecoin. Even before the Genius act passed, they have stablecoin. Their stock has just gone through the roof in weeks. And so to me that means the institutions are in there buying the stock because they see the future to It. So this isn't just kind of a small idea now. Now it's like, wow, this makes a lot of sense. And so you have all sorts of people outside of just the government looking and thinking. This is really important. You have the dtcc, which actually deals with securities, trillions of dollars of securities. You have Swift, that deals with all of the payments that go through. They're all looking at blockchain and figuring out how do we do this? Because they don't want to be raid redundant. Because one thing that blockchain allows is to cut out intermediaries.

Speaker B: Oh. I was going to ask you the crystal ball question. What do you see in the future? Maybe in the next five years. It's not that long. You mentioned how long it takes based on historical references to make change happen in this space. But if you could predict like the next 10 years, like, what do you. How do you see this evolving?

Speaker A: Sure. Um, I was. There's a. I have a great graph on innovation and it's just interesting kind of how you go from even like the wheel and fire. Right. But with AI and just, just the, uh, advances in technology now, it is just like, it's like a hockey stick almost of how quickly we are innovating. And so I think we're hitting right now with the openness of the United States from a regulatory and a legislative perspective. I think we're really laying the ground roots right now for having blockchain that we won't talk about. It'll just be whatever it is. Right. I don't think. I think there are kind of crypto assets, but I don't think a bond on blockchain is a crypto asset. I think that's a bond. Digital dollar is, you know, digital dollar. I think there's a stablecoins and stablecoins. So I feel like. So that it will differentiate from crypto, but it will drive so many things that we do that just make our lives more efficient.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So kind of where we go from from a payments perspective, that's going to be the first. I think from an investment perspective, that's going to be there too. I think from, you know, one thing I didn't bring up the first university that asked me to come speak because they. You were using my book in their program. In their syllabus was the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Speaker B: Oh, wow.

Speaker A: And I hadn't even thought one. They've got a blockchain class. Amazing for them to think of innovation in the future. But I hadn't, I hadn't thought about fashion as much, but it's really brand names and it's business and they're not talking about the NFTs they're doing, but most all the big brands are using NFTs for product, lifestyle, for counterfeiting. And so there's so many use cases out there. Um, I think that lending will be less expensive because there'll be fewer people in between. There'll be less errors. So much money goes to errors for companies, for them rectifying them.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: I just think there's so many great benefits. So I just think. I think stablecoins will become much more normal. I think we will have more access to investment opportunities than we do today from different, uh, outlets. I do think we're gonna find accounts that aren't right now. My bank account is here, my Fidelity account is here. My crypto wallet is here. Right. I think you're gonna be able to have em in one place. Yeah. And it's gonna be much more usable. So I think it's just kind of the next generation. I think we're just going to get used to. We're going to get used to it. Not even notice as it creeps in. But it's going to creep in and it's going to make a difference from everything from our credit cards. Right. Our uh, credit cards to you know, maybe even electricity. There's different things called depin where you in essence turn. Like for example, there's one, there's one company where you turns your phone into. It continues to generate and things are run through your phone because it's a computer computer and then it pays you. Right. It's like the idea of solar paying you back when you're using different things like your phone, different types of infrastructure, decentralized infrastructure plays. So I think there's going to be a lot of cool things like that that we don't need to know how they work because we're not so worried about how our phone works. We're just worried that it works.

Speaker B: The what versus the how. I actually thought about as soon as you said solar. I, I have, um, we're in a, um, community where Georgia Power invested in smart homes and we have solar panels and we're actually pushing back into the grid and getting a credit. And I'm like, what is that? May the blockchain in the future. Um, but all of that connectivity is important.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think we'll have a lot. We'll have other opportunities like that.

Speaker B: So Christian, do you have any other questions before we wrap up?

Speaker C: Um, for for the students listening and the ones that are, you know, starting their first jobs off and getting those first couple paychecks, what is your advice to them in regards to investing into digital assets and in that regard?

Speaker A: So I used, um, to run a very large team at Moody's and those first paychecks are tough because that means you also have to pay bills. And part of like figuring out how to pay your own bills is one thing that I, you know, um, I don't remember way back. Yeah, I pay my bills for a while, so. Yeah, but it's just when you start, right. I would say, just in general, I wouldn't even say about kind of, um, investing. Obviously there's different, you know, the more money you save now, it's worth more in the future. But you're also generally making less than you will be making later. Absolutely. Invest in your 401k, especially if there's a matching. But I would say kind of as a, as a younger professional, stay curious. Just keep like, just keep reading and engaging your brain. Um, I'd say play nice because it's not always the smartest person that does well at work and generally you want to be. I went to Columbia Business School. The first week they teach you not to be that guy. And who is that guy? It's the annoying one. It's the one that is always problematic, the one that doesn't get along with anyone, the one that's smarter than everyone else. You don't want to be that guy. And so part of that is just like playing like work hard, play nice. And that is so important in day to day work. Absolutely. Ask, you know, volunteer to help on different projects as boring as they are, because you will learn so much more and, and you will know more than other people because you did that. And it will help you in whatever way it, whatever way it did. You're also showing up and so you're spending more time with colleagues and learning different things. So more important than any kind of investing or even touching digital assets. I would just one, stay curious and what you're interested in. Right. Because if you, if you find something like my job yet, obviously you know, it's, it's job, but I love what I do. Right. I love the, it's challenging, you know, running, running. So many different people in teams and strategy and are we doing the right thing or should we do this or that or, you know, it's. I, um, but I, but I enjoy it. And so, you know, sometimes, right when you get out of school, I would Say try to work with people that you appreciate. So the work might be similar to different things, but if you find someone that believes in you, super important because I feel like your career is decided when you're not in the room. And so you've got to find those people that are going to challenge you and help raise you up, but also give you the opportunities. Doesn't it question. Exactly. But those are all really important things. I think in your first couple years that you just recognize. We all start. I made no money when I started. I was, you know, I laugh at our apartment and you know, you have roommates and what have you, but it's so fun too. So you've got to appreciate that. And it all comes around. It really does. It all works out if you want. Um, this is something also Christian, that we had talked about a little bit before. If you are ever thinking about trying something different, network, talk to people, reach out to them. People want to help other people. Find someone that you have some similarity with is probably the first easiest thing. And that similarity could be the same university, it could be the same program, it could be something similar. But I, when I was um, at business school, I would reach out to people and I had about 75% hit rate asking for coffee, for career advice. And it was just unbelievable. The people that would say yes and meet with me and I was, they didn't know me. So that. Or, or find people that works for a company that you're super interested in. You can do that too because that's a similarity as well. And just be nice. Don't ask for a job, ask for advice. Because as soon as you ask for a job, you put them on the defensive and then they don't know what to say. People love to talk about themselves as well. So let them learn from their career and, and um, and. And don't be shy, but don't be that guy when you're reaching out.

Speaker C: Absolutely. I think I relate to the networking part heavily. Like being the person for our club that spoke to these different companies, reaching out to recruiters, cold emailing them just to touch on your point, like the amount of support that we got just being a new club from the Georgia Fintech Academy. And also these companies like NCR and Visa that were so eager and willing to help just from reaching out, just saying, hey, we'd love to learn more about what you do and more about the company and then the collaborations form. So definitely for the students listening, like all it takes is just that first step, like reaching out and Having the willingness to learn and being eager about it, too.

Speaker B: Yeah, these are good, lasting thoughts to leave with our audience. Uh, Annalise, any recommendations on how people can get in touch with you or can get a copy of the book?

Speaker A: Sure, sure. The book is everywhere, I guess. It's on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, wherever you can reach out. LinkedIn is the easiest for me. I would say. I was on Twitter too, but for some reason that's been shut off. But it should be back on shortly, which is funny. I, um. But LinkedIn. Annalise Osborne, you can always shoot me a note. I'm always happy to, you know, connect and see if there's any ways I can help. I also love. I love LinkedIn. And why I like it is, is because I can read. When I connect with people, I find interesting articles, I find things they're interested in, and then I can, like, I look at it as continued education. Um, and so that's kind of. That's how I see LinkedIn social media now.

Speaker B: I love that because you mentioned, you know, finding something that you connect with an individual when you reach out, when you connect with people you could see they're commenting on and some of the posts they're liking. And that kind of also gives you some ideas of what you can connect with folks on. All your recommendations are good, Analise. I mean, I feel like my personal experience, especially transitioning from industry into this role, some of the things that you mentioned, a lot of our students need to hear. Um, they don't necessarily hear that, uh, in the classroom or in some of their, uh, forums. So you summarized it really, really well. Um, appreciate the time that you spent with us today, educating us across the board. I feel like we might have to do another session in the future or maybe even if you're in town, have you come in, uh, person on one of the campuses. Um, but, yeah, this is really great. Um, I don't know if you have any lasting thoughts you want to leave with our audience, uh, of students and maybe professionals who are just interested in this area. Um, any lasting thoughts that you might have?

Speaker A: Well, no, I just. I appreciate you all for being curious because you're listening and so you're, you know, you're opening your mind and learning something new. So I just. I really appreciate it. And, and keep going. I say that I'm a cockroach sometimes. I didn't realize this one time, but it was like, you know, how do you. What keeps you going? And I was like, I just decide. I want to. You just keep going, you kick down, you keep going. So, so thank you so much for having me. Really appreciate it. And anytime, um, I can help. I'd love to.

Speaker B: Thank you. And thank you all for listening. We'll have more content here in the future. We will have in the show notes, links to to Analise's LinkedIn, since you offer that opportunity, as well as links for you to go out and get your own copy of a book I know within the Fintech Academy. We'll be doing some giveaways of some copies here in the near future. So thank you so much, Annelise. Thank you, Christian, for joining us today and catch you guys on a future episode of Fintech Talks. The Georgia Fintech Academy podcasts are available

Speaker A: on itunes and Spotify. To obtain additional information about the Georgia Fintech Academy, please visit our website@georgiafintechacademy.org.