TradFi Rushing towards DeFi solutions

Well, crypto advocates often say we're still early when it comes to mainstream adoption, but many people still see digital assets as either too expensive or too complicated to own, something we've heard firsthand from friends and neighbors.

Now digital asset ownership is growing, driven in part by embedded wallets which let users hold. directly through websites without needing a separate wallet app.

Joining me to break all of this down for us is Debbie Soon, head of marketing at and author of Digital Mavericks.

Good morning and thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Well, first and foremost, when it comes to embedded wallets, explain to us how all of this works.

Yeah, no, and beta wallets are a great innovation, I would say probably in the last couple of years where in the past in order to start owning and transacting with crypto, it was often a really complicated process.

You needed to download a browser extension, manage complicated see phrases, embedded wallets are just sort of directly.

Built into your application, so similar to any familiar login flow, and you could do it via email, call it WhatsApp, even you can verify ownership of your wallet and it's a seamless experience as you log into the application and you can start funding your wallet and start doing on chain activity right away.

And we're here at the New York Stock Exchange and earlier in the month we had a big IPO, and that was first circle and since the circle has gone public, it has tripled in terms of percentage point of its stock.

So tell us why we're seeing this love affair with stablecoins.

Yes, stablecoin definitely seems to be the favorite wood around.

Block these days, but I think it is genuinely showing that there are real use cases.

I think crypto for many years has got a little bit of a bad reputation in terms of it being purely speculative or, you know, being a place where scammers get away with things.

I think that we're really starting to see how there are a lot of benefits in terms of settling payments via stable coin.

It's much faster, the transaction fees.

I think when we think about settling our global remittances as well, there are a lot of valid use cases too.

So you know, obviously excited for how Circle has done, but I think more importantly we're looking at a much more favorable regulatory landscape where there is a little bit more clarity as well as intent in terms of various governments, not just in the US, to really adopt stable point as part of their strategy going forward.

And I want to ask you about onboarding when it comes to DI.

So what do you think needs to happen here?

Yeah, you know, onboarding has been a challenging issue for crypto for several years, I think, and that wallets, you know, definitely starts to resolve a lot starts to solve a lot of that.

Like I said in the past, you know, if I wanted to introduce say a friend or a family to crypto for the first time, you know, I probably had to give them a long list of complicated steps, and I think what's funny is that in my book, which was written in the manuscript was submitted a year ago, there is literally One whole page of 7 steps on how you would get into crypto, which you know it's just not great. um so you know I think obviously what Privy is doing and you know other players are doing in terms of embedded wallets definitely makes that really easy and at the same time still making it a really fast and secure experience, and I think what's more important is that the applications themselves, so from anywhere from consumer applications like games or social. what you would imagine a frictionless experience, but I also think that high frequency trading applications too.

They want that seamless experience that you can get not just on your desktop but also on mobile.

So you know, really meeting users where they are and you know I'm excited to see more advances in this area.

Well, you mentioned a key word that I want to ask you about and that is social.

So blockchain isn't just for crypto.

So what's going on when it comes to on chain creators?

Yeah, I think this is one of the things that I'm personally most excited about, probably because I spend way too much time doing scrolling on social media just like everyone else, but I think blockchain really opens up a whole wave of new creative monetization models.

So I think starting even with the idea of decentralized social where you own your photograph and you know, obviously earlier this year we've seen a lot of back and forth in terms of what is. going to happen to TikTok and you know TikTok is going to get bad and you can imagine a world where TikTok creators have spent all this time and all this effort building their followers and then only for that to kind of get taken away from them and that is a livelihood that you know they can no longer depend on with decentralized social even though it is still nascent and still you know very very small compared to the other larger companies, there is this is a philosop.

Be an idea that you can take your follower graph wherever I go.

So you know if somebody else was building another application that had more of a video format, I could take my same follower graph and take my same content and be able to access it elsewhere.

So I would say that's one.

And then secondly, it's also just the idea that blockchain facilitates micropayments so easily.

So instead of just people liking your posts on social where you don't really get any money.

For it, there are a lot of interesting platforms out there that allow you to make even if it's 25 cents for every single like, and all of a sudden users that are creating the content that is bringing value to the content, value to the platform are getting rewarded for all of their work as well.

Yeah, because Debbie, even just 25 cents can add up depending on how many likes you have.

Well, fascinating conversation, Debbie.

Thank you so much for joining me and thank you so much for sharing your insights.

Thank you so much for having me.