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The Rise of Crypto and the Future of Decentralized Finance

August 05, 2025 / 39:45

This episode covers the rise of cryptocurrencies, digital assets, and decentralized finance with guests Kim Harvey and Neha Narula. They discuss the gaps in the traditional financial system that crypto aims to fill, including transaction inefficiencies, high fees, and financial inclusion.

Kim Harvey, a finance professor at Duke University, highlights the inefficiencies in current transaction systems, such as the lengthy settlement times for stock transactions and the exclusion of unbanked populations. He emphasizes that cryptocurrencies can provide a more inclusive financial system.

Neha Narula, director of MIT Media Lab's digital currency initiative, discusses the limitations of the existing financial system, including its inability to settle transactions 24/7 and the high costs associated with money transfers. She argues that the issues are more about market structure than technology.

The conversation also touches on the historical context of digital currencies, linking their emergence to the global financial crisis of 2008, which eroded trust in traditional financial institutions. Both guests agree that while there has been overpromising in the crypto space, there are promising developments, particularly with Bitcoin and stablecoins.

Finally, they address the ongoing tension between centralization and decentralization in finance, suggesting that a balance between the two may lead to a more efficient financial system in the future.

TLDR

Experts discuss how cryptocurrencies address gaps in finance and the balance between decentralization and centralization.

Episode

39:45
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Hello everyone. I am Itai Goldstein, professor of finance at the Walton School. This is the future of finance
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podcast. This is our second season. We did the first season on the future of finance and we talked about different
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dimensions of the future of finance including fintech and AI and finance and uh banking and meme stocks. And in the
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second season we are hoping to dive deeper into the issue of cryptocurrencies, digital assets, uh
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decentralized finance. This is our opening episode in the second season and we're going to talk more generally today
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about the rise of uh crypto and digital assets more generally. And for this we have two perfect guests and they're
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perfect for this uh particular purpose because they have been early movers uh in uh the direction of uh crypto and
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digital assets. uh I would say they identified uh the potential of this early on about a decade ago and uh stuck
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uh with it. Um and I'm happy to start with uh Kim Harvey who is a professor of
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finance at uh Duke University. Kim and I over overlapped at Duke for uh three years uh which was my first academic job
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and he was already a senior professor uh at the time. Um and he was as I said uh
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starting to think about uh crypto and digital assets uh at least a decade ago and I remember having some early
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conversations with him on this uh at the time. Hello Cam. >> Hello. Thank you for inviting me.
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>> Sure. It's great to have you. And our second guest is uh Nha Narula who is uh
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the director of MIT Media Labs digital currency initiative. also identified uh the movement towards uh crypto early on
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and her TED talk uh from 2016 about the future of money has over 2.5 uh million views on TED talk website I I believe.
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Hello Neha, it's great to have you. >> Hi, it's great to be here. >> So uh we have a lot uh to discuss. Uh so
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uh let's uh dive uh right in. Um I I would like to start from kind of the the
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big uh picture. Uh when we are thinking about digital assets and uh cryptocurrency,
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uh we are thinking about a potential change in the financial system, how the financial system works and what we
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should expect from the financial system going forward. Um so in your view, what do you think are the the main gaps in
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the traditional financial system the way that we were used to having it? what are
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the main gaps uh that crypto is trying to fill? >> Yeah. So I think the key word is gap. So
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change just for the sake of change might not be that useful. You need to be solving problems
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and this new technology offers the potential to solve many problems. So I think kind of starting off looking at
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the original Satoshi Nakamoto paper, it was about transactions and the inefficiency of the current uh
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transaction system. So the cost of transferring money uh the cost of transferring money to different
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countries the the weight that's necessary to do a simple uh transfer the middle people that are involved in a
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sort of transfer and it's not just about money transfer uh in our system of equities at the time of kind of the
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foundational sort of work in crypto it took three days to settle a stock transaction. So, so you think you buy it
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instantly, but to actually get ownership took three days. Now, we've improved to
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one day, and one day is not impressive for me. It should be a matter of seconds.
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And I guess um the last thing I'll I'll say and there's a long list of issues
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uh is that our current financial system is very exclusive. So there are four mill four billion
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people uh in the world right now that are unbanked and many that are underbanked.
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And and this idea effectively allows people to become banked in a different way. Your your
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smartphone uh is your bank and you can participate in the global financial system. So this is is really about
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inclusion and fundamentally economic and financial democracy in this space. Everybody is a peer. So there's
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no banker and customer institutional investor or retail investor. People are peers
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and we play on the same level ground. So I think those are some of the gaps that
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crypto has attempted to bridge. We're not there yet but we are moving in a positive direction.
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And nha where do you see the big gaps that we are trying to fill. Yeah, echoing that maybe just summarizing I
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mean I think you know three major things number one you can't settle 247 365
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can't settle money you can't settle equities you just you can't do that
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today with the existing financial system uh second you can't really make programmable payments it's really
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difficult to marry software with the movement of money um and then third the fees are way too high um in the United
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States merchants mostly bearing the cost which they passed on to consumers, you know, up to 3%. But, you know,
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everywhere we're we're paying way too many fees, especially unfortunately for
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things like remittances and crossber transactions. But the thing that I want to emphasize is that, you know, I really
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think what crypto and blockchain technology is addressing is not a technology problem. It's a market
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structure and incentive problem. So, it's not that we didn't have the technology to settle 24/7 on the old
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technology stack or it's not that we didn't have the ability to reduce fees.
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It's that the existing players didn't want to deploy better technology. They
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didn't want to change. There wasn't, you know, whether it's based on regulation
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or whether it's based on incentives, it there just we weren't getting that
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change. So if you look inside any of the major banks today, they're using software that was developed in the
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1960s. And what unfortunately happens, and it's not that they couldn't upgrade that
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software to modern software, they just they just don't want to. And so what happens is that when you have a whole
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new tech stack, a whole new platform, you get these new properties and you get new opportunities. you get new
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opportunities for new players to come in and to experiment and to build in the cryptocurrency blockchain world is this
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new opportunity, >> right? And in your uh TED talk, you basically talk about money as a
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collective fiction and I believe that Yuval Noah Hari was also using similar terms to talk about money and how it
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helps communication and coordination among among people. And basically when we are thinking about that we are
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thinking about crypto as kind of the next step in that process of evolution. So where do you think crypto is going to
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fit into that story and what kind of collective fiction are we going to get? >> Yeah. So, so the idea of the collective
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fiction is that, you know, if we look at this rich history of objects that have been used as money, shells, beads,
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coins, you know, it's certainly the case that there are properties of these objects that make them good at being
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money. Uh, and it's also the case that there are institutions, whether public
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or private, that stand behind the objects. But it really comes down to will someone accept payment in this
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currency? Do I have faith that this currency will be usable tomorrow, that anyone will take it? That it'll be
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roughly worth the same amount? And this faith is part of the fiction. Money isn't something, you know, even when
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we're thinking about it as objects. It's not something you can eat or use. It's
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not actually useful in and of itself outside of this faith and context. And it's even more obvious when you get
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beyond the objects to things like ledgers and accounts that we use to mark who has what. oftentimes it's just
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digital bits and databases. It's it's markers for our collective belief. And
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I'd say that crypto is not so much reshaping that story as much it is the next iteration of that story. And
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something that's coming out of it that's really interesting is that it's
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revealing the set of underlying assumptions behind something that we very much took for granted. The global
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monetary system. The global monetary system as it exists today is mostly just bits and databases. And you know, with
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the advent of cryptocurrency, people are asking questions like, wait, what do these bits actually mean? Who vouches
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for them? Why why can't you write over them? Uh why do people believe in them?
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Why do they have value? And so, you know, I think what's happening is that with the advent of cryptocurrency, it's
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really illuminating uh a lot about our monetary system that your average person maybe didn't necessarily think about or
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understand or, you know, really they they really took it for granted before. >> Yeah. So I agree with this but I want to
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push this a little further. So I agree fundamentally that something has got value because people believe it's got
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value. Uh, and in my book I tell the story of the Iraqi Swiss dinar um, which was printed uh, with Swiss
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printing plates uh, in England. And when sanctions were put on Iraq, they needed
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a plan B. So they started printing Saddam uh DNRs and you had to trade your Swiss dinars in uh for the Saddam DNRs
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or the Swiss DNRs would go to zero. Well, it turned out that Saddam undertook massive inflation and the new
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DNRs were pretty well useless, but people still use the old ones, especially in the north. and
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it wasn't backed by anything, but they believed that it was useful in terms of
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transactions. And and this is an important lesson that we've had kind of historically that you
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have to have faith. Uh we live in a fiat currency sort of system. The US dollar has got value obviously because it is
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number one legal tender. Number two, you need to pay taxes in US dollars. Number
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three, you could be incarcerated if you don't pay your taxes. So, there are like
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intangible values uh from uh the US dollar, but in the end, you can't redeem
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it uh for gold like you could have uh before August of 1971. Uh it is based upon belief that it's got
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value. But the thing that I want to add is that crypto introduces something different. So we could think of a stable
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coin that's linked to the US dollar as just a more efficient mechanism for dealing with the fiat currency.
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But in general, we've got the ability in this space to tokenize anything. And when we tokenize anything, this idea
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of money becomes very fuzzy. So that I can go, let's say, to pay for groceries
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and I usually pay in US dollars, but in the future I can pay with a token that's
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linked to something else. So I can pay in gold if I want. I can pay in Apple stock. I can pay in real estate. So the
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whole idea of money I think fundamentally changes and indeed in my book the first sentence is we've come
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full circle and that's referring to the origins of trade being decentralized
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the very inefficient barter system and where crypto takes us is a totally new direction where we have a a host of
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things that we can use to pay and effectively it is a more efficient barter system and that changes things
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fundamentally. It means that monetary policy is not as important. It means that fiat inflation could be in 15 years
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a historical relic. So this does structurally change what we will look like in the future.
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So both of you mentioned faith and trust and this is indeed crucial for the success of a financial system, the
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success of a monetary system and I wanted to connect back to your uh book uh Cam um DeFi and the future of
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finance. uh and I think one of the points that you're making there is that uh this did not happen now uh as a
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coincident but rather this is uh an outcome of the global financial crisis that we had in 2008 that maybe led uh to
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breaking in in the trust that we had in the financial system. So can you elaborate on this a little more? Do you
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see a direct connection indeed to the global financial crisis? Yes, but it goes even before the global uh financial
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crisis. Indeed, the global financial crisis was the last straw. Uh and and certainly most people know that the very
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first block uh in the Bitcoin blockchain makes a reference to a second bailout from a headline in the Times of London.
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Um so there is a link but this idea of uh some sort of digital money goes back well before indeed there was active
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research going on in the 1980s. There were hundreds of initiatives in terms of digital currency. Um the
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problem was that it was very difficult problem because just like you can make a digital copy of uh a document or a
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picture or a video that causes problems for currency perfect counterfeiting and most of these initiatives uh failed.
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However, when Satoshi Nakamoto published their 2008 uh paper, the game uh changed
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uh because this was a way to avoid uh the so-called double spending or counterfeiting uh problem. And that
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movement that he was involved with um had a number of people, the so-called cipher punks,
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kind of libertarianbased, very suspicious of big government monetary policy and the current financial
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institutions. The last straw was the financial crisis. I remember being in Davos in 2005 and
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having an audience with the chair of the Senate Banking Committee, Richard Shelby, and telling him he need to do
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the basic due diligence on the big banks because I saw extreme leverage. I saw these banks acting as hedge funds and I
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certainly hoped if there was a crisis that they would not be bailed out. But they needed to investigate the risk to
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at least know the risk. Um those suggestions were ignored and then you get this situation where these banks
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that were operating under extreme leverage were bailed out and that seemed very very pugnant to many people
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including me. Um and I think that that was kind of the impetus for um kind of the first wave of interest uh in
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Bitcoin. >> So Neha you also mentioned incentives and the fact that we had the big players
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using old technologies not having the incentive to change and as a result the progress was uh stifled. Um what do you
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see as the big trigger that led us uh to where we are now? Yeah. So, um I think definitely it was
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the case that we had projects that were trying to do digital money in the past. Um eCash is one of the most famous
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examples and um there were uh there were attempts to commercialize ecash to turn
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it into a uh to turn it into a product that people could use. The big big big problem with all of these services was
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that they relied on a centralized intermediary. So they used cryptography. They had, you know, really interesting
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properties. They um they provided a lot of privacy, but they relied on some kind
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of intermediary custodying the funds and being at the center of everything uh to
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solve the double spend problem. The real innovation behind Bitcoin, the first cryptocurrency, was that they figured
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out how to solve the double spend problem, not entirely, but in a decentralized way. That's that's that
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was the key part of that. And so that meant you didn't need a bank. And so, uh, the problem with all of the e-cash
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projects is that they all got shut down. Um, it wasn't, you know, they they were
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sort of kind of skirting around the edges of the law. It was very hard for them to find banks that wanted to kind
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of offer this as a product. um with you know without a bank it it wasn't legal
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but with Bitcoin it didn't require a bank it didn't require any financial
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institution it just required a group of peoples to start running software that was it and I think that was like the
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really key innovation the really key difference there was the fact that you could bootstrap these systems with just
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a group of people with computers that that was the real key idea that you didn't need to get a financial
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institution on board to custody money to plug into the financial system. And you
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know, of course, when it started, no, you know, nobody really wanted any Bitcoin. It wasn't really worth
00:19:08
anything. But, you know, we've seen we've seen how that story plays out.
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Right now, today, as we're recording this, Bitcoin's worth over $120,000 US a
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coin. Um, and and so that it was realizing that you could bootstrap the platform in the system and then let let
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it figure out how to attain value over time. you didn't have to plug into the
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existing financial system immediately. That was really the key idea. >> Can I just build on that a little bit?
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And just to just to emphasize that the situation that we're in right now with our financial system is really
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not that different than kind of like 12 years ago or or 14 years ago. So, I was at uh a discussion that was
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sponsored by a multi-t trillion dollar uh asset manager with senior people and I asked the question uh what happens
00:20:05
within the next few minutes if the swift system goes down. So this is the best of system that we use to
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transfer uh funds around the world and um people started looking at each other and it was very awkward and then
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finally the most senior person in in the room answered uh and the person said well we'll give
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people the day off and then everybody chuckled and I'm saying wow I I I just can't
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believe that. So that means a a fundamental lack of risk management. You need a backup
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and and currently there is no backup. And what the crypto space provides is a backup, an alternative,
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an alternative that does not rely as NA said upon a centralized system. It's decentralized.
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So I think that this is it's not just about making payments more efficient and
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lower cost. It's about having a system that is also more secure. So let me uh
00:21:26
put the skeptic hat on uh for a minute because so far you have been emphasizing mostly the positive aspects of uh
00:21:35
decentralized finance and crypto and and bitcoin but I think a lot of people who
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are looking at it from the outside uh they might say well we haven't really seen any of this progress so far. I
00:21:48
think the promise about Bitcoin initially was that this is going to be a new means of payment and if not Bitcoin
00:21:54
then other cryptocurrency but we haven't really seen that taking off as fast as
00:22:00
some people promised and then we started talking about other rationals other narratives for uh cryptocurrencies that
00:22:08
it's going to be a store of value it's going to be a hedge and other things
00:22:12
like that the question is when we are seeing this shifting narrative and we haven't seen a use case that was fully
00:22:21
established yet. Is this a sign that things are not going as planned that it's not as good as we thought or maybe
00:22:29
this is just a learning process and uh we we are uh going towards a much better place uh in the end. So how do you see
00:22:36
that? >> So I think the answer is a little bit both. Um and uh you know there there
00:22:41
legitimately was a tremendous amount of overpromising and underdelivering and there's been a lot of trying on
00:22:48
different narratives and seeing what fits. The thing is is I think this is actually pretty normal for any you know
00:22:55
new innovative risky technology. It's just that this particular case was about
00:23:01
something as fundamental as money and our global monetary system. So it had a lot of attention very early on. There
00:23:07
were a lot of eyeballs. there were a lot of expectations um so you know and there
00:23:12
and there was also an incentive to create a lot of hype uh because there was a lot of money to be made so
00:23:17
definitely overpromising underd delivering not clear to me it was more so in this space than it was in other
00:23:24
technologies I think there were just more eyes on it but you know we could we could debate that absolutely I think
00:23:29
that you know as we iterate as we go through these cycles uh more and more of what doesn't work gets flushed out and
00:23:38
So that's what we're seeing happening is that the people who overpromised and
00:23:42
underdelivered, the people who were outright scammers or were perpetuating fraud, they're getting flushed out of
00:23:47
the system. And this is good. This is what should be happening. Um, you know, in venture capital, a very small
00:23:54
percentage of startups actually succeed. And so we should expect to see the same
00:23:58
thing here. There's going to be a lot of projects that try to do a lot of grand
00:24:01
things and they're not going to succeed. But there will be a few there will be a
00:24:05
few that do really, really well. And I think, you know, given the stage we're
00:24:10
at right now, you know, there are two things I see that are really promising and that are doing really well. Number
00:24:16
one, Bitcoin has found product market fit as a potential for new digital gold. We are seeing that happen day after day.
00:24:26
We are seeing actual countries decide to hold it as an asset. We're seeing uh,
00:24:31
you know, public companies put it on their balance balance sheets. So, you know, we're seeing we're seeing people
00:24:36
kind of adopt the narrative around Bitcoin. So, Bitcoin has found product market fit or is or is finding it. It's
00:24:42
still in the early stages as digital gold. And then I think the second um you know major uh use case that we've seen
00:24:50
is stable coins for crossber transactions. So, um and for international transactions and and also
00:24:56
as kind of a hedge against inflation. So we are seeing a lot of use for stable coins and bitcoin in the global south in
00:25:07
countries that are experiencing high inflation. People really want these things and you know merchants and
00:25:12
economies are kind of slowly starting to develop around them. So those are like the two areas where I think we have seen
00:25:19
you know actual success and we are seeing like real evidence of product market fit. Of course, the really
00:25:25
interesting question is, well, what's going to be the thing in the next few years? Um, you know, real world assets.
00:25:32
Are they going to be tokenized and move around primarily on blockchains instead of on uh exchanges, traditional
00:25:38
exchanges? Um, is it going to be more about payments? Is it going to be more about a platform for the internet,
00:25:44
digital goods? You know, these are the questions that we're still trying to answer.
00:25:48
>> And I know that you're very optimistic about it. So, what do you have to add to
00:25:52
that? I'm not sure optimism is the right word. Uh kind of implies a a bias. U I
00:25:59
think I'm realistic about it. Uh and I do think it's important to look at the
00:26:04
history of innovation. Uh this is a very significant innovation. It happens to be
00:26:12
um occurring at the same time of other disruptions which is interesting. Historically,
00:26:19
we've never had, for example, decentralized technologies competing with AI and quantum technologies all at
00:26:28
the same time. So, that that's to me very interesting. Um, because we've
00:26:34
never had a situation like this. Uh, but with any innovation, uh, it's hard to guess the timing of how
00:26:43
it plays out. And you always want it to happen faster than it actually does. And
00:26:48
with any innovation, there's risk. So, some things will work and some things
00:26:54
will not work. Uh one of the great things in this space um especially I spend most my time in the Ethereum space
00:27:04
rather than Bitcoin is this idea that you can very quickly innovate by literally looking at the code somebody
00:27:14
else has uh put up grabbing it and making changes to improve it. So the innovation very very fast. So I I do
00:27:24
worry uh again there there are risks here. Um I worry about companies adding Bitcoin to their treasury or their cash
00:27:36
management. Um uh that to me doesn't make a lot of sense. The idea to have a
00:27:43
reserve uh for kind of like bad times uh I totally get. And usually you have your
00:27:50
most liquid assets there that you can draw upon. Bitcoin is highly volatile asset
00:27:56
uh and it may not be reliable. People talk about it as being a hedge uh against various things. Well, it is
00:28:04
unproven. So theoretically, yes, its money supply is not tied to anything um other than an
00:28:12
algorithm. It's not impacted by governments, but nevertheless, it is untested. we know it's volatile and just
00:28:20
the fact that it's four times more volatile than the S&P 500 um that almost
00:28:26
guarantees that it will be unreliable some of the times. So I worry about uh for example Satoshi's vision for Bitcoin
00:28:37
is completely different than what exists today. So, as Niha said, Bitcoin is a store of value, a risky store of value
00:28:47
with four times of all of the S&P 500. Uh, it is done well and maybe it's done
00:28:53
well because there's some momentum. So, these companies adding it to their uh
00:29:00
their balance sheets. Uh, but at some point that's going to stop. Um, and I worry about that. Again, I'm more
00:29:09
interested, frankly, in the Ethereum space. So, this idea of tokenizing real world assets. I agree that the the big
00:29:18
success story in RWA is the stable coin. So, it's done very well. We saw Circle
00:29:26
uh IPO. Uh this is a great innovation, but to me, it is just the tip of the iceberg. So there's so many other things
00:29:37
that can be tokenized and I'll give you just an example here is stablecoin is a
00:29:43
great business to be in. So circle uh IPOed for a very uh rich valuation because you think of what happens people
00:29:53
give circle money. Circle gives them a token that is one to one uh with the dollar. Circle takes that money, invests
00:30:04
in lowrisk treasury bills and repos, and Circle keeps all the interest. So, it's like a money market fund that the
00:30:14
money market fund keeps all the money and the consumer gets nothing. So, we could do this a little differently. So,
00:30:22
we could have a tokenized bond and that bond is going to pay interest. So you got the the ability to use this
00:30:35
token to pay for things, but it's also earning yield. So I think that stable
00:30:41
coins are great. Um it is the most successful uh innovation in the space to date. Uh but they in my opinion will be
00:30:51
disrupted by yieldbearing stable coins. So just another wave of innovation that makes it even better experience uh for
00:31:02
consumers. >> Yes, thank you for saying that. We will also have an episode that is going to be
00:31:08
dedicated to stable coins. So certainly a lot to think about there. The the one last aspect that I want to talk about is
00:31:14
uh decentralization which is clearly key uh to uh cryptocurrencies and and fintech more generally. When we did the
00:31:24
fintech initiative at the review of financial studies, we started with that in 2017 and that was kind of the first
00:31:31
batch of academic papers that came out on on these uh topics. uh we we talked about what is different in uh fintech
00:31:40
revolution relative to previous technological innovations in in finance and we noted that it is certainly the
00:31:46
aspect of decentralization and also the disruption and both of you talked about it quite a bit but I think that when we
00:31:53
are looking at it now uh with the perspective of almost a decade later it seems like we haven't really gotten to
00:32:02
the decentralization as much as some people expected rather We see that there are forces within the DeFi system that
00:32:09
are uh interestingly pushing back into uh centralization. Uh and there is the power of intermediation.
00:32:17
There are certainly advantages to being a large centralized uh player. And so we
00:32:22
see that you know maybe the functions are a little different but at the end of the day we might end up in a system that
00:32:29
still has the big intermediaries and still is centralized to to a large extent. So where do where do you see
00:32:36
that the tension between uh centralization and decentralization and are we really going into a system where
00:32:43
everyone is a peer as as you both mentioned before or it'll still be an intermediated system but just looking a
00:32:51
little different. >> Yeah. So a few things here. First of all definitely want to echo your point that
00:32:56
there are great forces towards centralization there. You know with centralization you get better
00:33:02
efficiency. So just think about if there's two businesses that are kind of in the same area and then they merge,
00:33:10
there's an opportunity there to reduce redundancy, right? However, you've also
00:33:15
made the ecosystem a little bit more fragile and that's what happens with centralization. So we we see these
00:33:22
cycles play out, right? We see these cycles where, you know, just due to this increase in efficiency and and this
00:33:29
ease, there's more and more and more centralization. It becomes winner take all, winner take all, winner take all
00:33:34
and then things become too fragile and we see a big break and then um you know if there was any decentralization in in
00:33:43
that ecosystem those are the players who win because because they were you know they had there's more fall tolerance
00:33:48
there was more redundancy and so we see these cycles and I think we're going to
00:33:53
continue going back and forth like it's very important to note that it's not
00:33:57
like centralization is evil and decentralization is good and you know we we need everything to be 100% super
00:34:03
decentralized. You know, just just thinking about using an intermediary, for example, it's often the case that
00:34:09
it's the right choice for someone to use an intermediary or a custodian or an
00:34:14
exchange. It's not the right choice for them to try to custody their own keys or
00:34:18
to try to do something directly peer-to-peer. I think what's most important is that we have platforms and
00:34:24
systems where you always have the option to exit to your own self-custody to be a
00:34:31
part of the system to run your own node to do your own verification. Not that you have to do that all the time, but
00:34:37
you always have the option to be able to do that. And that I think allows us to kind of seamlessly move between the
00:34:46
centralized and decentralized. When we offer the people to sort of seamlessly kind of like exit the centralized
00:34:52
intermediaries, start running their own nodes, start, you know, custodying their
00:34:55
own funds, things like that, then we can we can create an overall system and ecosystem that is a bit more resilient.
00:35:03
So, I I agree with some of that. Um, and and let me kind of add like my spin on it. So,
00:35:14
centralization is not always the most efficient. And indeed, we've got plenty
00:35:20
of examples that are in our face today of centralized institutions that are extracting monopoly or duopoly. uh rents
00:35:34
and and that leads to welfare loss in our society. So let me be clear that I am not a uh
00:35:44
the type of DeFi person that believes that in the future everything is going to be 100% uh decentralized. We have
00:35:54
come from a time where we were 100% centralized. So I believe that the key word is efficiency
00:36:06
that in certain applications it might be more efficient to have some degree of centralization.
00:36:15
In other applications it might be more efficient to have it decentralized and these work together. So I give an
00:36:24
example of decentralized ride sharing. Well, um that you know the matching of the drivers and the writer is purely
00:36:34
algorithmic. You can imagine reward systems and stuff like that. You can do this in a way that greatly reduces the
00:36:43
45% fee that Uber or Lyft might take or whatever it is. So, we can do that, but there's certain things along the way
00:36:53
that need to be centralized. for example, the certification of the driver, the certification that the car
00:37:00
is safe. It's hard to think about doing that in a fully decentralized way. So, I
00:37:07
believe that there will be kind of a combination of centralization and decentralization in the future that's
00:37:15
really focused on efficiency. And the last thing I will say is that this tension between centralization and
00:37:26
decentralization plays out in in real time uh in the decentralized space even today. So think
00:37:35
about the reliance of decentralized protocols like decentralized exchanges and things like that on centralized
00:37:45
stable coins. So to be clear, the leading stable coins Tether and Circle are centralized. Their token is used in
00:37:56
decentralized finance. We do have decentralized stable coins, but they're smaller. So the success of the
00:38:04
decentralized finance uh kind of platform is greatly reliant upon centralized technologies.
00:38:13
So again I think that uh in the future there will be a balance uh between the centralization and decentralization
00:38:23
that depends on the particular application and the balance will drive the costs to a point that makes it best
00:38:34
for the consumers and the producers and the sellers and the economy uh in general and that's where I hope uh that
00:38:42
we hand up. >> Thank you very much. I certainly agree that this tension between centralization
00:38:47
and decentralization is key to understanding this new wave of uh technologies and potentially the future
00:38:53
of finance and that we will probably end up in some uh middle ground where we have a combination of the two or maybe
00:39:02
partial decentralization. But hopefully it will take us to a much better place in terms of the financial system and how
00:39:09
we uh transact. um with each other. Uh thank you very much uh both Nha and Kim for uh diving
00:39:18
into these topics with us and providing the introduction into the rise of crypto
00:39:23
digital assets and decentralized finance. We're going to continue and talk about these topics in the next uh
00:39:30
few weeks. Uh so uh stay tuned. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thanks.

Episode Highlights

  • The Rise of Crypto
    Exploring the potential of cryptocurrencies to fill gaps in the financial system.
    “Crypto is about inclusion and economic democracy.”
    @ 05m 06s
    August 05, 2025
  • The Collective Fiction of Money
    Discussing how trust and belief shape our understanding of currency.
    “Money is not something you can eat or use; it's about faith.”
    @ 08m 44s
    August 05, 2025
  • Decentralized Finance Explained
    Understanding how DeFi provides alternatives to traditional banking.
    “DeFi is a backup, an alternative to centralized systems.”
    @ 21m 01s
    August 05, 2025
  • Bitcoin's Market Fit
    Bitcoin is increasingly recognized as digital gold, with countries and companies adopting it.
    “Bitcoin has found product market fit as a potential for new digital gold.”
    @ 24m 14s
    August 05, 2025
  • Stable Coins' Success
    Stable coins have emerged as a significant innovation, especially in inflation-affected regions.
    “Stable coins are the most successful innovation in the space to date.”
    @ 30m 44s
    August 05, 2025
  • Centralization vs Decentralization
    The ongoing struggle between centralization and decentralization shapes the future of finance.
    “The tension between centralization and decentralization is key to understanding this new wave.”
    @ 38m 45s
    August 05, 2025

Episode Quotes

  • Your smartphone is your bank.
    The Rise of Crypto and the Future of Decentralized Finance
  • We live in a fiat currency sort of system.
    The Rise of Crypto and the Future of Decentralized Finance
  • This is not just about payments; it's about security.
    The Rise of Crypto and the Future of Decentralized Finance
  • Bitcoin has found product market fit as a potential for new digital gold.
    The Rise of Crypto and the Future of Decentralized Finance
  • Stable coins are the most successful innovation in the space to date.
    The Rise of Crypto and the Future of Decentralized Finance
  • The tension between centralization and decentralization is key to understanding this new wave.
    The Rise of Crypto and the Future of Decentralized Finance

Key Moments

  • Introduction00:08
  • Guest Introductions01:51
  • Discussion on Gaps02:46
  • Crypto's Potential05:06
  • Historical Context14:00
  • Hype and Expectations23:05
  • Flushing Out Scammers23:46
  • Decentralization Debate31:14

Tension Over Time

Words per Minute Over Time

Vibes Breakdown