Going Public Strengthens Trust as Digital Asset Infrastructure Matures: Insights From Jody Mettler

Here we are at Money 2020 Europe in Amsterdam, and I had the pleasure of being joined by Jody Mettler, Chief Operating Officer at BitGo.

Thank you so much for joining me, Jody.

Wonderful to be here today.

Uh, so you became one of the first crypto IPOs of the year, um, in this January at New York Stock Exchange.

Uh, tell us a little bit about how that changes the way that BIO is, um, providing services for their clients.

Yeah, so it was such an exciting day at NIC.

It was, it was wonderful hosts, um.

Yeah, being the first of this year in the digital asset infrastructure, we saw a couple go last year.

Being the first this year, it's important to us.

We have been building the company for the last 13 years as a private company.

We have grown into our own skin as an infrastructure company, and the next step for us to that credibility, that next level of having conversations with that tier of companies is to be public.

So it's great.

It's very exciting new.

Speaking of those clients and where they're based and how you've seen the industry develop as a whole.

Um, I've had a little bit of narrative here of like sort of, you know, where the innovation is happening.

Is it very US based, very Europe based?

Is there a race between the two jurisdictions to build that infrastructure?

What are your thoughts on that?

I definitely think that the innovation is happening in both places, right?

You have fintechs that are building the bottom line technology.

I think it's less about where that's happening and where the regulation is happening.

And I think, yeah, there's a race happening between the two, but I don't know that it's a competitive one's going to be they're first, it's better.

It is more about Making sure that the the clients within those jurisdictions are enabled.

Yeah, definitely.

Um, and speaking of that being enabled, um, the industry has been screaming for some global harmony regulation for a really long time, long before regulation was even being drafted.

And what are you seeing as we're finally getting there on the major jurisdictions having their own frameworks?

How are you feeling about How things are diverging, converging, you know, are we getting to the point where we can feel confident in that sort of regulatory harmony?

Yes, I mean, the EU has actually been really forward thinking about this.

Mika came in, was the first harmonized regulatory structure for digital assets.

The US is still working on it.

We had Genius last year.

We're hoping, hoping for clarity this year.

These are borderless assets, right?

So they want to be able to move settlement and transactions and liquidity across borders.

What I am seeing is the EU has absolutely taken the forefront of regulation, but some of the companies here are slower to adopt and be comfortable with it, particularly the traditional companies.

Similar in the US as well, they're waiting on the sidelines for that regulation to pass, and then I think they'll enter.

And then what I'm seeing from other jurisdictions like AIPAC is they're following the lead of these big jurisdictions.

So once you see MICA pass or clarity pass, I think you're going to start seeing that more borderless regulatory framework.

Yeah, and that would imply that everyone is sort of falling into line, which is a nice thing to see.

And so what we can therefore expect as everything falls into place, perhaps a surge in activity and certainly here at Money 2020 we've seen um stablecoins, tokenized assets move from the narrative of this is just for the digital asset space through into actually this is part of the full plumbing of the financial infrastructure.

Um, what do you see in that shift and what is the role of Bitco um in that?

So Bico is an infrastructure company.

We've been building off of initially a wallet infrastructure and then we built a regulated custody business on top of that and then built financial services on it.

So we want to be able to have clients come in and plug and play into any part of that infrastructure.

Uh, what we've seen and, and BIO does stablecoin as a service, so we help our clients actually issue their own stablecoin in multiple different ways, um.

The, what stablecoins did this year is really legitimize that you can move cash on chain.

And now it's the tokenized assets.

So now you're going to see, and you're seeing it already, money market funds, equities, those types of things, um, they're really exciting.

So I think that's the next current wave that's happening.

And then from there you're going to start seeing tokenized real world assets, and I think that's maybe a year or two down the line, but you have to prove it out first, and we've proved stablecoins, Bicco's part of that infrastructure, now it's going to be tokenized more liquid assets.

And so apart from proving it, um, what, what are the other hurdles or challenges awaiting?

Let's say we've got relative regulatory clarity.

Say we've got proof of the assets that we have already tokenized stablecoins.

And money market funds in order to really push ahead into what we know the rest of innovation can be across the banking world and what do we need to do?

What are the big hurdles for institutions in particular?

Um, interoperability, right?

You're gonna hear that word a lot.

You need traditional financial institutions need to have the rails that feel like they're used to with traditional assets.

Adoption for consumers, it also needs to look and feel and act like what they're used to seeing, whether it's CEPA here, instant payments or ACH, those types of things, they want to see it.

Um, that is probably the next big hurdle is making sure that we have interoperability between.

Companies, jurisdictions and rails.

Yeah, the both the technical side and then also that kind of, sure you can have the rules in place, but if we don't, it will have the same standards.

Exactly.

We need to get comfortable to build that trust.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.

So, um, what do you think the landscape will look like this time next year, money 2020 what do you think the um the rest of the industry needs to be focused on?

Yeah, it's a really exciting time.

It's the technology is moving so fast.

So I've been in at BIO for 5 years.

The amount of acceleration of the technology and the adoption of the technology over the last year is probably faster than the 4 years prior to that.

So I see this continuing to go really fast.

Tokenization of all sorts of things are are going to be important, and then it's really going to be the payment space.

You've seen companies out there acquiring different types of stablecoin providers that are more payment rails.

That's a really big thing.

I think next year this time.

This will be really focused on payments.

It feels like a really exciting time for a kind of reshuffling of the industry, which I appreciate can be uncomfortable at some moments, but it's also like wild to see how all the chips are gonna fall in different places and it leads to so much more innovation.

So thank you so much for joining us, talking to us about Bitco.

Yes, thank you.

Enjoy the rest of the conference.

Thank you.