Today our moderator for this panel will be the fantastic Miss Maria Xenofontos who is a fantastic member of the crypto industry.
She's an award-winning CMO, a tech entrepreneur and international keynote speaker based in Dubai. Joined by Mr Naeem Aslam who is a prominent figure in the finance and investment industry known for his extensive experience entrepreneurial spirit and deep expertise in various domains of finance.
Join along with Mr Rudy Shoushany, an award-winning founder of Crypto Talks and DX Talks, the digital leaders’ platform.He's affiliated with the BCC management consultancy and is part of the Forbes Technology Council.
Joined by Mr Reece Merrick who is a senior director of the global strategic partners at Ripple where he leads relationships with key financial institutions and crypto partners adopting blockchain based payments and crypto liquidity solutions to enable crossborder payments.
Joined by last but certainly not least Mr Sujay Kanth who is the founder and president of Istakapaza Inc. a blockchainbased ecosystem commerce platform that simplifies home mortgage and reduces friction for every participant. Everyone please put your hands together in a resounding round of applause for this influential panel.
Maria Xenofontos:
Hello everyone nice to see you here I'm very honored to be moderating this panel, as you see we have very good speakers on this panel and they will share their expertise and their experience so let's start.
So today we're talking about blockchain in global money transfers, as we know the blockchain technology has the potential to disrupt industries such as the traditional financial services. I will start with a question of Rudy and you can all reply later on.
How have you seen block in technology evolve in the context of global money transfer since you founded DX talks?
Rudy Shoushany:
Good morning. So you know it's it's a bumpy ride what's happening in the world of blockchain and crypto I think it's up and down.
People are afraid a lot of things has happened but what we see over the years that it's only going up as it's only getting more adoption and more people are joining and this is beautiful so since we started the DX Talks so we're almost now going to our fourth year which is kind of new but the whole Market is also somehow new but since 2018 or 2019 and then the age of going into Covid, things has changed, we've got introduced to a lot of innovation also which was helped by different protocols or different cryptocurrencies and or innovation environments to help us, there's a lot of context globally has changed it's not the same anymore so things are really moving and then if you later on you'll see Ripple they're trying to really disrupt not just the cryptocurrency market but also the payments and trying to play a bigger role and then now with the SEC so we're there we're moving forward, looking back also at the banks right banks has been or financial institutions in general has been kind of reluctant they don't want to go into the space, they're not happy about what's happening in crypto.
Maria Xenofontos:
Why you think they're not happy?
Rudy Shoushany:
All of a sudden they woke up and then now they're pushing ETFs they're pushing more Bitcoin portfolios look at Black Rock, look at JP Morgan, look at Chase Manhattan, because at one point of time and it took us a while, you know you cannot especially in banking a lot of compliance a lot of procedures a lot of traditional ways slower paced and so many other things and then add to that the fraud factor which happened started in early 2013 or 2012 which was kind of a bad reputation but in reality if you look now the fraud has like kind of winded down a lot because who wants to transact and then get his transaction identified for fraud so now you can technically be tracked I would have loved the system to be adopted more but if I was a fraudster, I wouldn't do it on a blockchain.
So we're moving things has moving a lot funny enough you know the world of NFTs and what happened with NFTs is not related directly into the payments but it is related directly into the adoption and then how we were able to get more people involved in this space and then get them starting their journey in the blockchain and the world of crypto and it's only moving so day by day we're only going to get more companies and more regulation and look at Dubai we're centered in a place where I would say one of the most advanced regulations and look at Vara what Vara is doing trying to push in the end of the day regulation regulatory adoption in a very proper way where you can have your transaction done from the bank directly into crypto or fiat currencies or whatever so this has moved a lot you know a few years back you couldn't see this anywhere in the world so now it's very interesting.
Maria Xenofontos:
Yeah thank you so much for the very insightful answer I'm sure most of the projects here and attendees are very interested to this panel because you can have various types of projects but the way you move money around is the most crucial.
So it makes me, your answer give me, I want to jump on another question. Where geopolitical tensions are on the rise how that will impact the crypto space? Naeem this is for you.
Naeem Aslam:
Thank you, I think that's a great question now when it comes to geopolitics I think we are talking about the West, we talking about bricks and everything in between that mhm now given the fact what is happened with Russia, Ukraine and then the whole world is divided in different triangles and in different segments and even mobilization of some nuclear weapons to an extent there is a strong need for a common currency, now with the recent event that happened for bricks the main thing in that particular one is okay are we going to see a currency which is going to threaten the status quo for the United States dollar and where we sit we think the threats are increasing on a daily basis,now will we see BRICS coming up with the cryptocurrency absolutely no, maybe central digital that's not not going to be their option. From their perspective it is going to be a currency which is more likely to be backed by agriculture commodities such as wheat, rice plus gold so I think rather than how our central banks in bank bank of England or Federal Reserve Bank where the the currency isn't actually backed by physically with gold or with anything but just the guarantee of the government these bricks countries are going to come up with a currency which is going to be back by traditional methods of using gold and agriculture because right now if we look at the overall geopolitical situation prices for olive oils, olive oil, I don't know if you guys have noticed but over the last 48 hours there there was in a lot of news flow which is just saying olive oil prices have gone 100%, rice prices are also increasing so I think when it comes to geopolitical tensions it is about it's not about Fiat and if it is not about Fiat I think digital currencies like cryptos are going to struggle to gain confidence among consumers to gain confidence among consumers is going to be okay which particular block of countries have a currency which is actually backed by something because under those geopolitical conditions dollar will lose value pound will lose value euro will lose value because they essentially they're not backed with anything apart from a massive debt on the balance sheets but in relation to BRICS and then this is our own personal opinion and our research base case scenario is that those particular currencies are going to be more valuable which are backed by actual gold and soft commodities because at the end of day consumers will need them. Consumers will need grains to live consumers and I think gold is going to be very important element.
Reece Merrick:
Thank you so much, this gives me on another question talking about Ripple, Ripple is known for its own crossborder payments. How does Ripple’s blockchain technology improve the efficiency of these transactions compared to traditional methods?
So I think if we look firstly at the traditional methods essentially crossborder payments are running on technology that was built in the 1970s right so if you think a crossborder payment can take 3 to 5 days to settle in some cases.
it's extremely expensive with correspondent banks taking their slice in terms of fees along the way and also it's it's pretty inefficient 6% of Global Payments actually fail and this just doesn't serve the needs of the people today right so if you think you know I can send an email to anyone in this room or my colleague in Singapore they're going to receive that within seconds but when I want to send a global payment to the US it kind of falls into a black hole where nobody knows where it is, so Ripple believe and it's always been our focus to focus on cross-boarder payments because we believe that crypto and blockchain technology can really have a huge impact there you know it can reduce the fees to a fraction of what people are paying at the moment the efficiency and speed of which your payment can move goes from days to seconds and ultimately you have that transparency to know where a payment is along the way so you know Ripple have built key product called on undermine liquidity which essentially uses XRP and the XRPLedger as a bridging asset between two Fiat currencies and what that does is it allows the entities that we work with to move value in real time at a fraction of the cost currently moving around 15 billion annually of real value um with our partners who are payment service providers and corporations so we've seen a huge amount of growth and a huge amount of benefits to our customers that are now utilizing our product.
Maria Xenofontos:
Thank thank you thank you so much and we're going Sujay I have a question for you. Istakapaza is involved in blockchain solutions could you please share some use cases where blockchain technologies has had a tangible impact on global money transfers?
Sujay Kanth:
Namaste guys, in fact that's a very interesting question I just saw it actually when I came here and I flew in straight away from Central America and South America where we are act working with the farmers on the ground and uh these farmers supply most of their supplies to uh McDonald's and Burger Kings in fact the sesame that you see on Burger Kings and McDonald's comes from Nicaragua and you know that's where we are enabling the farmers through our blockchain Solutions and that's the best use case where in farmers are getting faster payments and obviously much better price we all speak of farm and folk but where is the finance in It?
Ultimately the farmer has to get benefited and through our technology not only we are moving the money faster but also making it more transparent to all the ecosystem participants be it the industries or whoever is consuming the farmers or anybody else in the chain I think for me that's the best use case apart from that, the I mean I would also address on the point what Naeem said basically going to the fact that soft commodity based whatever currencies or tokens may have value we are actually working on the same system across the Latin American markets,which is mostly agri-based and I mean I can touch on the other topic I'm not sure in the following question but yeah I mean soft commodities-based currencies will have a lot of value in the near days.
Maria Xenofontos:
Thank you so much I want to pass the question to Rudy and that's an interesting question for to know. What emerging trends in blockchain technology should individuals and businesses in the financial sector be aware to stay competitive?
Rudy Shoushany:
Thank you for the question, as we mentioned things are really moving fast and if you want to continue operating the same way you are I think we're going to be in a problem especially now things are has taken with generative AI another dimension of how we're going to be operating even with data so what about payments? And Reece you just mentioned how things are moving if we look at crossborder payment for example and what Ripple is doing and others trying to play a big or fill the gap and using the centralized finance and trying to create innovation in the space so that they can really innovate and I love the word innovate by the way because it really takes us out of our comfort zone to create something totally new and this is what we need the more and more if you look at remittances globally what's happening remittances and we know remittances is a big part of the economy all over the place and especially in UAE you need solutions for these and then how can we partner? How can we create solutions for such?
I've been following a little bit because we're writing on this a lot of times and we're trying to get what's what's happening in the world especially you know because on DxTalks, this is what we're trying to see the latest and greatest the assets tokenization was it from physical assets such as properties and whatever and then the world of assets tokenization and property tokenization has is is really something crazy and then how money is actually flowing how are they tokenizing the assets and how are they able to sell it in a very fast efficient way and now you can talk about even fractional assets no longer you know I want to take shares in property companies or whatever it's it's amazing so CBDCs is another topic which is hot and banking sector or financial sectors are trying to put their thumb print inside so that they are not left alone or outside of the of the game and that's why I think now I would say 99% of the global central banks are trying to to see what it is there's a lot of use cases that already been discussed. UAE is on the forefront I think there's the best use case documentation published by UAE and KSA called Abber uh it's it's an interesting thing and and again I cannot stop talking about the world of decentralized finance and what's happening in there it's a huge economical advantage for all of us where money or cryptocurrencies or financial transfers and instruments are happening in none very fast and new ways where traditional finance or tradify is not able to cope as you mentioned a black hole personally I'm sick of black holes of not knowing what's the status of anything we do, things takes time bureaucracy we want regulation again but we do want it in a faster way and the agendas are being pushed globally and guess what I think we're all here today we all want a faster way to get something or to transact or to get our property deeds or whatever we want so there's a lot of things that we are demanding which is pushing governments to follow but they are a little bit slower so we need also on the regulation side to follow and I think UAE is positioned hopefully in one of the best places and positioned to play a key role in this ongoing revolution and disruption.
Naeem Aslam:
Can I just add a little bit on that, I think we we all talk about efficiency faster payments and all that solution but here are some interesting facts if you look at institutions like Black Rock Fidelity, Numero all of these ones doesn't matter the list is just big they are all talking about the slowest currency within the cryptocurrency space I.E Bitcoin and the reason for that is there's a lot of faith behind it which is consider I don't know I'm not expert enough to say it whether it's a commodity whether it's a currency but there is a faith and then that's the only reason that they're considering it as an alternative asset.
Rudy Shoushany:
But they're not transacting.
Naeem Aslam:
They're not transacting this, they're considering it as an alternative asset in terms of a geopolitical turmoil. It could be considered as an asset which will have some sort of a value so when lot of cryptocurrencies come on the market showing that they have a lot of efficiency and everything else yes they may or may not do but what we believe is I think the CBDCs would be very much on the forefront of that and then going back to the earlier topics. Do you know which country is the biggest holder for the US treasuries? Anyone? China, right?
China has been dumping US treasuries at a record pace for the last 3 years. Look at the chart on bloomberg, it's a record pace and what is China buying if they're dumping treasures they're buying gold and China is part of what BRICS and it goes back to the again the main thing what is the currency for BRICS is going to be backed by what gold soft commodities and then apart from that, what is the other alternative asset in terms of movement of money or a value from one place to another? I think it's still Bitcoin which represents that.
Maria Xenofontos:
Thank you so much, I want to ask you though what is the current situation of liquidity? and I want to pass another question to everyone, where do you think the market is moving? so we will start with you, please.
Naeem Aslam:
so in terms of a liquidity, in my own personal fund, I own real estate in the United Kingdom right so there are assets which are yielding more than 25% of the rental value right and I love to tokenize those ones. This is my own personal Investments which includes apartments hotels and commercial units and then we are buying more because in the UK for the property market because where the interest rates are currently there's a huge opportunity to gain to get bargains just give you an example very recently a PE fund private Equity Fund bought four different assets in the United Kingdom for 4.1 million put it on a an auction for a 1.1 million yielding £300,000 per anom which is more than 20% of that the asset we thought when they put it on the market they were just drumming the Beats they were they were trying to drum them quite as loud as possible to get a lot of interest but guess at what price they were sold at? 1.4 million that is the market in the United Kingdom right now so going back to the liquidity situation I think until unless the bigger institutions I.E Black Rock and every everyone else comes in because tokenization of real estate is not real is it's not new REITs were there already but the ticket size was quite high for REITs for an average investor to get in that is what the traditional or sorry the new cryptocurrencies or real estate tokenization of our projects are trying to do to bring the smaller investors so I think until bigger institutions come provide their credibility on the front we are going to continue to struggle on the liquidity side for the secondary market not for the first market.
Maria Xenofontos:
Yeah totally agree when the big institutions come into crypto things will change and please Rudy and the rest of the panelists where is the market going?
Rudy Shoushany:
Where is the market going? let's see from the audience where is the market is going? it's really interesting to see where is going and how it is evolving every day we wake up with news everything is affecting the cryptocurrencies. It's a crazy time to to live in but it's a beautiful time to follow the Innovation wesuspect we have everybody I think is waiting for the Bitcoin halfing right so.
Maria Xenofontos:
In April.
Rudy Shoushany:
Yeah so that's there's a lot of anticipation there for the next I I would say seven months that are coming so we're waiting what's going to happen there we had a small test with Litecoin nothing happened but in general the adoption regardless of the Bitcoin status up or down for me it doesn't matter it's a it's an asset for me but what's happening in the world of how we are adopting and growing I would say if I ask a few years back how many of you have Bitcoin it would have been different versus today how much the number of transactions you were doing versus today you know for myself it's like I'm mostly trying to do not everything I cannot do everything with crypto but it became a vehicle where I'm using more and more on our daily I get I receive emails or LinkedIn messages you want to pay your HR now in crypto and then how many of you received this message just to to see any hands.
Maria Xenofontos:
Repeat repeat please.
Rudy Shoushany:
You receive emails now or messages in LinkedIn for HR payment systems but in crypto so it is fully automated using crypto and I'm seeing this more and more being adopted and then moving forward so we are not there yet it's moving as we speak we're waiting for the big players to come in to pump more ideas more adoption more liquidity now we're seeing more what do you call it from the such as Black Rock and you know JP Morgan you know a few years back again who would have said they are playing with us now they want part of the game and then this is getting us involved on day-to-day and then once this gives us trust we will see more we want I think we want the next generative AI or chat GPT application in blockchain and crypto so that we can get more adoption faster and faster.
Maria Xenofontos:
Inshallah, we pass to you please tell us where do you think the market is moving and how is Ripple contributing to the whole ecosystem?
Reece Merrick:
Sure so Ripple uh commissioned a report last year which actually showed that 76% of additional FIs are looking to implement some kind of crypto or blockchain solution in the next 3 years, now I think back I've been at Ripple 5 and a half year.
5 years ago we were having meeting with large Banks if you mention the word crypto you know people looked uncomfortable in their seats you know you can see some you know are they going to call security and escort us off the uh off the premises but now you fast forward you know 5 years or certainly for the last 18 months those same banks are calling us back in to discuss what their strategy looks like right so firstly change big change some some you know we've made some huge strides there but we still got a long way to go to actually have these you know traditional FIs implement solutions that their customers can actually adopt a lot of it is is still talk but again we've made some some tremendous progress there and ripple have been quite unique in that sense because we view partnerships between traditional FIs as key to the growth and adoption for crypto and blockchain right we believe that you know these institutions for mass adoption you need to educate,you need regulation, but you also need the big players who have the reach to also support and push that on to you know the benefits to their consumers so that's the big focus
Maria Xenofontos:
So you believe uh that collaboration and partnerships are crucial?
Reece Merrick:
100% yes okay, and if you think about it you have these big slow banks that you know want to implement something cool and sexy but they don't have the infrastructure to do that so the only way for them to do that is to partner with crypto native entities and businesses who can kind of bridge the gap and give them the solution they need without the heavy lift of building it themselves and that's kind of what we're seeing.
Maria Xenofontos:
Totally, so Sujay?
Sujay Kanth:
Well I mean the most important subject is liquidity the biggest market today is the home mortgage industry uh about uh 60% of the US GDP is real estate we do mortgage back securities in fact to increase liquidity what we are saying is we are working with the likes of JPs Wells chasers of the world and trying to bring everyone on the blockchain you know what it enables is typically I mean not to getting not to get too much into the details but typically a securitization process from the time aloneis pulled a I mean a pool of loans is done takes 3 months so on a blockchain it takes about 3 weeks so this is our biggest use case and we are one of the only companies that has done origination to securitization on the block and the way we have done it is as we all know we all speak big things but getting on the ground and rolling your sleeves is completely another thing you know we can all talk big here people will come listen clap and go but who the hell will do it it is we who have to do it so we said okay I am a lender myself I operate in 22 states in the US so I said let me be the first guy who will go and do it on the block the same thing we are implementing in the UK we'll be the first lender in UK on the block likewise in Central America and I mean I would say Latin America in general because people are very much aware to it and are looking for alternative currencies but on the same note if you mention about D dollarization the governments will get thrown because their currency actually fell down in '96 and '97 and there was a huge turmoil so that's a very politically sensitive subject as well so you have to balance it so whatever you do you have to contribute to the socioeconomic growth of the current situation and the only way which I see where mass adaptation can happen is when you put people into the homes and putting people into homes is by increasing liquidity in the market and we are speaking to hedge funds and we ourselves have got the first digital banking license since I mean I not name the country but we ourselves are going to be the first digital bank completely operating in the next 3 months in uh Latin America.
Maria Xenofontos:
Amazing so we have a few minutes left sorry would you like to add something
Naeem Aslam:
yeah just just a few things I as well going back to your original question where the markets are going I'm going to leave you with two thoughts is Bitcoin having halfing is more important or is Black Rock ETF getting approval is more important I think that would very much answer that question because for me it's about Black Rock coming into the space then bitcom’s halfing itself the second thing what Sujay was saying great institutions like these I love to see them to come into the space from from my perspective construction finance cost is 12% currently in the UK or upward of if you don't have an experience for a normal buyer that the price is 6 to 7%, liquidity is a massive issue because of the getting the mortgages easily 3 months very very briefly 3 weeks is great but you can only offer a better rate if you offer a better rate than the Traditional bank that would be great for for for institutions like ourselves and then I think you could why because you've already reduced the time from 3 months to 3 weeks so you are unlocking the locked element of the liquidity so through that you should be able to do that and if you haven't i' be happy to chat.
Sujay Kanth:
No but I think we sit on both sides right this is what I keep saying we all make so much money we're used to it so to pass the benefit becomes a tad bit difficult but then once a person adapts to it then everybody falls in line this is the same case so for us I'm a typical banker I've just entered uh the so-called crypto or the the blockchain industry since the last 3 years but mine was more necessity I had to see this problem because my loans used to get stuck in the pipeline and not getting sold I said why the hell then we said like okay the process is getting repeated and that's when we adapted blockchain.