Institutional Adoption of Blockchain and Expanding in Singapore and Asia

00:14Trade talks. I'm Jill Mellon, Torino, global markets.

00:17You put her at nasdaq,

00:18will come to you live from Singapore FinTech Festival.

00:20And joining me for this segment, we have Constantine Richter,

00:22he is the founder and CEO of block Damon.

00:24We're going to discuss institutional blockchain adoption

00:27and expanding into Singapore and Asia.

00:29Constantine, it's great to have you with us.

00:31Welcome to trade talks. Thank you.

00:32Alright, tell us a little bit about yourself and what block daemon is,

00:35what types of solutions that it's provided.

00:37Yeah, sure. So I'm constantly and I'm originally from Germany.

00:40I'm the founder and CEO of block daemon with

00:42the largest crypto infrastructure provider in the world.

00:44So we provide what we call the core node stack,

00:47which is really the individualized ledgers that live in

00:50the Cloud for all these different protocols like Bitcoin and Ethereum.

00:53And so rerun this sort of pretty crazy crypto infrastructure on behalf of

00:57institutions who need really secure on ramps for data and transaction throughput.

01:02So think of it as the transaction pipelines as well as the reward

01:06earning pipelines on crypto protocols for institutions.

01:11So customers range from the Goldman Sachs same to Citibank,

01:14to PayPal and other largest exchanges,

01:18custodians and the world.

01:20And so we're fairly ubiquitous.

01:21It's a software platform.

01:23We have around 50% market share in the global institutional space.

01:28And, um, yeah, We've been around for a little over four years.

01:32We've raised $400 million.

01:33Today, we're 250 people and just recently opened an office in Singapore.

01:39It sounds just like that. That's quite a lot of

01:42philosophy behind you to raise 400 million only within four years.

01:46So rather than large institutions building the infrastructure themselves,

01:49they're leveraging your solutions to put into their infrastructure basically, correct.

01:55Each has opened an office in Singapore.

01:56Why the push into Singapore in Asia.

01:58So Asia has always been one of our biggest markets.

02:01As a software platform,

02:02it's relatively easy to sell software.

02:04You would think if people can go on a website and activate things,

02:08when it comes to crypto,

02:09having really direct relationships with

02:12customers is very important to trust and stability really matters.

02:15And the crypto networks are still so early where either has to be earned, right?

02:21And so I feel like having people on the ground,

02:23being strong and showing also commitment to

02:25the region allows us ultimately to serve our customers better.

02:28It's been a really good decision.

02:30We opened up here earlier in the year.

02:32And it's been really remarkable how much

02:34of a difference that makes in solving customer as well.

02:37I mean, even looking at, we had to do everything hybrid and remote from

02:39the Singapore FinTech Festival in 2020, 2021.

02:42It is definitely a very different vibe when you're back on

02:44the ground and pudding a face to the name to the people that you been talking

02:47to for two years over Zoom or

02:49remotely tell us more about the institutional adoption of blockchain.

02:52Do you think we're still in early stages or hasn't matured of it.

02:56Yeah. I mean, we're we're in early stages.

02:58I think the big difference though compared to like e.g.

03:00the last crypto winter,

03:02which was in 2018,

03:03was that we saw a lot of institutions pull it out of chlorophyll.

03:06And because we built poor infrastructure,

03:09what we haven't seen or really seeing the opposite.

03:11We'd see really all major financial institutions laying

03:14the foundation to allow their customers to interact with peripherals.

03:18So we haven't seen any pullback because of the market collapsed.

03:20Quite the contrary, we've seen more outsourced and immediate paste into crypto offerings.

03:25So think a lot of the financial institutions,

03:27I'm aware that the crypto cat is out of the bag, right to speak.

03:31Everyone, the people expect to be able

03:34to purchase Bitcoin and Ethereum and to send it around.

03:37I think we're, we're,

03:38we're really saw a sea change over the last 12 months, a year.

03:42And so for us, e.g. because we just said for inference,

03:45we saw 60% growth quarter over quarter over the last two quarters,

03:50which is really a good indicator that

03:51a lot more financial services companies are coming into this space.

03:55What I would say has slowed down as the volume.

03:57So everyone builds the capability,

04:00but they're slower to put more assets onto those trends,

04:04mostly because everyone is conservative with how they deploy assets,

04:07considering how the market economics play out.

04:09Um, and so I think there's the regulatory uncertainty.

04:13So pipelines are getting primed and set up,

04:16but they're not really fully.

04:18Let's put the lever hasn't turned to really put volume into it yet,

04:22which is what we're really bullish about.

04:24We see a lot of that happened probably in the next year.

04:27I would expect a lot of institutions to offer

04:30a basic services like acquiring Bitcoin Ethereum,

04:33and to treat it and potentially on interests on it.

04:36I think we will see one of the top ten global banks allowing

04:39the core customers to do that at scale over the next 24 months.

04:42Let's just think now that the infrastructure is being put into place,

04:45That's also going to help push along regulation before it was sort

04:47of there really was no infrastructure.

04:50It was black hole of retail crypto trading.

04:53But now it seems as if the framework is in place,

04:55it can almost off the regulators conceptualize what's happening under the surface here.

05:00That's so well put in,

05:01That's exactly what's happening.

05:02And that's great companies like Coinbase really out

05:04there now fighting the good fight with the regulators.

05:07So I think the crypto industry has been underserved by regulators.

05:10So I think we've all been very clear that we crave regulation and clarity.

05:15And regulators have been very slow to actually

05:18put their word on paper to say this is how we are going to regulate your,

05:22I think at this point in the crypto industry,

05:24we will take whatever get comes to us.

05:28We just want to ultimately run our business in accordance with the law as well

05:33as with consumer protection in mind

05:35that a lot of the criticisms specifically over the last 12 months,

05:38has been unfair on the crypto side,

05:41there's been a lot of efforts to get clarity from the respective regulators and I

05:45think you nailed it because there's products because people are coming into the market,

05:50they can't put it off any longer.

05:51They need to provide clear guidelines to protect consumers.

05:54And right Constantine, we appreciate the insight.

05:55Thanks for joining us on trade talks and thanks for joining me throughout the day.

05:57The Singapore FinTech Festival in jail,

05:59malingering or global market share right now.