Feb 1, 2022
Wall Street’s biggest institutions seem to love investing in crypto companies. The week we recorded, FTX, the centralized exchange, closed a $400 million financing led by Temasek, Paradigm, Softbank Vision Fund 2, and including Wall Street names like Tiger Global and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. At $32 billion, FTX is worth more than NASDAQ or Credit Suisse.
Yet, these investors and big banks have been slower to embrace DeFi, despite it being a $250 billion market. Why? How will DeFi create financial products on-chain that will appeal to traditional financial players? What regulatory and technology hurdles must be overcome? What’s a “permissioned pool and how does it work?” Does it matter that Wall Street embrace DeFi? After all isn’t DeFi eating Wall Street?
These are just some of the questions we pose to our guest Lex Sokolin, Global Fintech Co-Head and Chief Economist at ConsenSys. ConsenSys’ mission is threefold: populate Ethereum with things that work; act as a distribution channel for institutions; and help people use Web3. MetaMask, the most popular ETH wallet in the world, is a ConsenSys creation. Previously, Lex has held various senior roles in both traditional finance, fintech and crypto. He earned a JD/MBA from Columbia University and a B.A. in Economics and Law from Amherst College. His writing is publicly available at https://lex.substack.com.