On June 22nd, 2023, the ACAMS New York Chapter held an in-person event titled Digital Assets: Identifying and Mitigating Risks, Part 2: “Failures” and Use Cases. The event was moderated by (pictured from left to right below) Nishi K. Gupta (Head of Compliance, Eco, Inc.) and included the following panelists: Michael Aleman (Sr. Director, GFC Blockchain Innovation, Paypal); Graham Cathcart (Senior Manager, Blockchain & Digital Assets, EY); Mina Eklad (Bitcoin Program Manager, Cash App); and Suzanne Elovic (President & Head of Partnerships, Parallel Markets). Materials from the event are available here.
The event examined some of the higher profile “failures” across the crypto ecosystem, described current and future use cases, and highlighted innovative technology being developed today.
The panel began by describing the perceived failures of Terra/Luna, Three Arrows Capital, FTX, and Silicon Valley Bank. The panel covered the events leading to the failure of each and provided insights on whether the failure could be attributed to web2 factors vs. web3 factors. From there the panel took the audience through a discussion of some common and forward looking digital asset use cases. Specifically, the panel discussed Bitcoin as a long term store of value, stablecoins as a hedge against Bitcoin volatility and a means of access to synthetic dollars, the innovation potential of tokenization of web2 assets, and different mechanisms for KYC and identity management. Pivoting from use cases, the panel described digital asset infrastructure developments that are designed to increase mainstream adoption of digital assets by improving the user experience and increasing blockchain scalability. Finally, the panel took questions from the audience to close out this in-person event.
