Banks have stopped seeing fintech startups as competition
- The event organized by IEBS last Thursday collected the statements and advice of several of the greatest experts in the blockchain and cryptoactive sector
Barcelona, January 31, 2022.- Last Thursday, IEBS Digital School organized the first edition of the Blockchain & Fintech Day event, an inspiring event in which experts from the world of blockchain technology, decentralized finance, and crypto assets told firsthand hand in hand with their experiences and best practices to take advantage of the new opportunities that digital assets are generating.
In the first place, Jaime Fernández Cerezo, Director of the Blockchain and Fintech Master‘s Degree at IEBS Digital School, had the floor, who focused his reflection on how traditional banks are developing Open Innovation projects to capture the most promising talent and projects. within the Fintech ecosystem. For the professor, “banks have stopped seeing fintech startups as a competition to understand them as a collaboration tool with which to continue growing and offering the best service to their customers”, adding that “traditional banking has reacted with a new image and digital presence”. In addition, he pointed out that “barely 18% of people know the term Fintech”.
The next session was given by Javier Pastor, Director of Sales at Bit2Me, who told how the entire process is to finance oneself through an ICO, Initial Coin Offering: “We are not only talking about a tool for startups but there are also companies medium or large companies that may be interested in this technology as a source of financing or a tool for its users”. Javier shared several pieces of advice after the success achieved by Bit2Me when launching its ICO, such as, for example, communicating and coordinating well with the community and, secondly, developing all the documents, including the ICO whitepaper, in a correct and rigorous.
Third, a round table was held with the participation of Jorge Soriano, CEO, and Co-founder of Criptan, and Luis Gosálbez, Founder and managing partner of Metricson. The conversation focused on cryptocurrencies, where they pointed out the differences between Stablecoins, CBCDs, and Cryptocurrencies, discussing the value and risks of each of them. According to Jorge, “ cryptocurrencies eliminate the need to trust a centralized entity”, but also indicated that many of the current crypto-assets, as they prefer to call cryptocurrencies, will disappear. For Luis, the governments are late and are offering crypto-assets characterized by the negative of an official currency and the negative of a crypto asset, so he does not risk great success. In addition, he added that “we are in such an incipient phase that we think that cryptocurrencies are currencies, but they are still a tool that in the end will serve us because of the usefulness of each one. ” In any case, both speakers captured in their conversation the incipient nature of this entire ecosystem, so the uncertainty is very high.
On the other hand, Maricarmen García, Financial Risk Advisory Partner at KPMG Mexico, discovered the entire ecosystem of decentralized finance or Defi and conveyed the potential moment of disruption that they can cause not only in traditional banking but also in the economic and business system itself. For the rapporteur, “the goal is to achieve a transparent, license-free and open-source new financial ecosystem”.
In another session, Carles Marcos, Country Manager of Qonto, a French neobank valued at more than 4,400 million euros, expressed his vision of the challenges of traditional banking in the face of neobanks, above all on two points: capturing talent, where neobanks monopolize the greatest attraction; and scalability, where traditional banking encounters application problems. According to Carles, neobanks and traditional banks are at very different times due to the state of maturity of their industries. The spokesman pointed out that “eight out of ten companies consider it very important to have a good banking service. In addition, 50% of SMEs state that they go to an office less than once a month, while 12.5% do not do so throughout the year”.
Finally, Marina Foncuberta, Specialist in privacy, blockchain, and digital banking at ATH21, underlined that, in Europe and in particular in Spain, there had been no regulation on crypto assets until 2018, and that at the moment there are already certain European regulations and circulars established and in development that will force us to be very attentive to comply with current legislation. A regulation, according to Marina, increasingly accelerated. “We have come a long way and we have to keep doing it. The regulator stones are the NFT and DEFI. We must establish a secure and Crypto-friendly environment,” he commented.
Blockchain & Fintech Day thus became a space for ideas, trend analysis, and recommendations on the different possibilities that exist within the world of decentralized finance and crypto-assets. The next IEBS Digital School event will be The Next About Digital Leaders, which will reflect on digital leaders and their balance in the four essential approaches they must have for the new digital age: Humanist, Technologist, Innovator, and Futurist.
About IEBS Digital School
IEBS is the 1st digital native online school in Spanish in the world. It was born in 2010 with the purpose of improving society with quality education at a fair price, thanks to technology, automation, and the use of artificial intelligence. Since its inception, IEBS has trained more than 123,000 students in 53 countries with its more than 350 programs at the forefront of innovation. It is considered the 1st online business school in Spain according to the CSIC ranking and the 2nd in Latin America according to the Ibero-American ranking.