Bridging macro and crypto is undoubtedly the key issue in finance today. David Gibson-Moore moderated a panel discussion on this topic at the AIM London Summit on May 17, 2022. The discussion took place at a moment of crisis for the crypto sector.

The highly distinguished panel comprised:

• Reza Bundy, CEO, Atlas Capital
• Dan Morehead, CEO Pantera Capital
• Terry Culver, Senior Executive Officer, Matrix
• John D’Agostino, Senior Advisor: Strategy and Partnerships, Coinbase Institutional

Everybody participating in the discussion was, one way or another, passionate supporters of the crypto revolution. However we are living through tumultuous times.

At the recent Crypto Bahamas event, star power was in abundance: Bankman-Fried, Scaramucci and a host of fellow crypto potentates. The message of the conference … it’s time to get with it, regulators need to catch up and countries which fail to see the light will fall behind.

Almost the next day, and just before the conference, the financial headlines were replete with stories about crypto crisis, collapse, implosion, meltdown … and these are the words of the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times … not the tabloids. The TerraUSD drama and the related collapse of LUNA, the stumbles at Tether, sinking crypto currency prices, the dramatic fall in share price of Coinbase and other crypto-related quoted companies: these developments have all sent major shockwaves through the crypto markets.

Perhaps this is a momentous turning point. So … what now? What will the financial eco-system resemble in, say, ten years’ time? Are we truly looking at the end of money as we know it?

We had a fascinating discussion. We explored the role of bitcoin and other altcoins as stores of value and the implications of their recent price correlation with other asset classes. We moved on to the really challenging issue of regulation and the great areas of tension that exists between unrestrained development of DeFi applications and the concerns of central banks and other regulatory bodies. It was extremely interesting to learn from our panelists about their own first-hand experiences with regulators as they developed their products.

We also discussed briefly whether recent negative developments may have slowed down institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Stablecoins were of course on everybody’s minds and our discussion gave us the opportunity to learn first-hand about the newly developed Atlas stablecoin, an inflation protected, ESG, climate resilient coin backed by a proprietary index which tracks the value of a portfolio of real assets. The underlying algorithm is augmented by macro views from a panel of expert economists and other contributors.

We then took a deep dive into world of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). The establishment wants to take on decentralists at their own game. CBDCs are run on distributed ledger technology however the network would be managed by a central bank. The trusted third party is back!

Will countries veer towards the Chinese model of banning cryptocurrencies and promoting a CDBC or follow the El Salvador model of adopting bitcoin as legal tender? Or will we all end up somewhere in the middle?

A fascinating and most timely discussion. The whole sector is in rapid transition. We were all somewhat reluctant to state categorically what exactly the financial eco-system will resemble in 10 years’ time. Although we were all quite sure that cryptocurrencies will be playing a major, if not the dominant, role!