Bitcoin, Blockchain, Banks and a Birthday

As my birthday is today, I have been reflecting on the tumultuous year we have all gone through together. These opinions are my own.

At this time last year, Covid-19 was a small but rapidly growing story from Asia and Europe. It had only just begun to impact daily life in the United States. As the local and global disruption grew in leaps and bounds, like many others I was wondering what would happen to my company, my life and those around me. Unlike anything else that has occurred in my life, nothing has impacted all of us in so many ways in every country. From the beginning of this pandemic, the lack of knowledge and the conflicting information made a bad situation worse. Recently Covid-19 has impacted my own family and we all wish my mother a speedy recovery.

From a professional perspective, monitoring the impact on our growing company and dealing with the potential changes was a high priority. Most of our team was already working remotely and as banking can be accomplished remotely, the impact of Covid-19 was relatively limited. Our team continued to pull together and move everything forward. You will see many company updates over the next few weeks.

Within the finance industry, this past year has seen some significant changes; including many companies publicly embracing using Cryptocurrencies as part of their investment portfolio. Several significant regulators have now given a tentative nod allowing banks to hold digital assets. The number of announcements of major banks deploying blockchain-based services has continued to accelerate. The financial industry now appears poised to embrace digital assets and the blockchain for a significant but still small part of their future business. Distributed finance came to the forefront of these innovations and is destined to disrupt the finance industry in ways that we cannot even imagine.

Coinbase’s recently announced IPO along with several other crypto-related businesses are set to follow has shed new light on the acceptance of these changes by the financial world at large. Fintech startups are now poised to take the industry into new directions, discovering new opportunities and embracing the inherent risks for the potential of significant returns.

I wish to thank Chris Burke, Mike Taratuta, Adam Kniec, Paul Muspratt, Kim Oishi, Bob Blower, Luigi Wewege, Paul Walsh, Hirander Misra, Amilcar Chavarria, My Nguyen and many others who have over the last few years been there on this journey. Finally, my wife Noni, without whom I could not have done this.

Best wishes to everyone and let’s make the next 12 months more positive and productive.