Name: The Next Era Of Banking: Blockchain, Tokenization, and the Future of Digital Markets
Uploaded: 2025-09-16T20:41:15.421Z
Duration: 57 min 45 s
Description: The Next Era Of Banking: Blockchain, Tokenization, and the Future of Digital Markets

Transcript for "The Next Era Of Banking: Blockchain, Tokenization, and the Future of Digital Markets": Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you very much for joining us. Also a big thank you to American Banker. Excited to join for another session, specific to banking and blockchain. Since the last time I was on, I think it was about four or five months ago, we've seen a very big shift, and really we could spend, probably hours talking about why. But what we've really seen is that it's become increasingly clear that there's been a change in how traditional financial institutions, specifically banks, are looking at the crypto and blockchain space. It's really no longer a sprint to enable crypto products and services, but really an acknowledgment that there's a fundamental change happening on the technology side, and banks really need to understand the potential short, medium, and long term impacts to their business. To that end, I'm very excited to have Alex, joining me for, joining me today. I'll I'll give her a chance in a second here, to introduce herself, her role, and sort of what she's been working on at the bank for, the last, I believe, it's ten or so years. But for myself, Neil Chopra, I lead, business, strategy and solutions at Fireblocks, focused on The Americas, and have spent the last eight years now, working with banks globally on getting them to understand the impacts and implications of blockchain technology. The first question is always, where do we start? I think this session today will hopefully bring to light where those opportunities are, why this is important, and I think more importantly, how one of the largest and, most important and critical banks in in the world, has been operating. And so to that, I would like to also mention we do have a q and a box. So, Alex, really looking forward to this chat. I know that we've spent some time sort of prepping about what what we wanna focus on and talk about. But if anyone does have any questions or comments as we go through this, we do want this to be interactive. We want this to be productive, and beneficial for everyone on the line. So please feel free to drop anything in the chat. And, of course, if if we're able to, answer that question or those questions, we certainly will. So, with that, Alex, I'll hand it over to you. Just give a quick intro and and overview of your role, please. Thanks, Pamela, and thanks everyone for having me today. Looking forward to the discussion. I'm Alex Prager. I run the Connexus Labs team at JPMorgan, within our Connexus business. So Connexus is JPMorgan's blockchain business. We sit within the payments organization. We have been around for the last five years, but we've been working on blockchain since 2015. So we've reached our first decade in the space. I've been a part of it since 2017 myself, and it's been a really informative, interesting, and crazy ride. And from a labs team perspective, what I lead is our net new use case, ideation, and creation with our stakeholders across the bank, our clients, as well as looking at functionalities to help scale our existing businesses. So whether that be identity or privacy, interoperability, composability, all of those types of things. Amazing. We could probably spend a couple of hours just talking about all that, in in detail. But, I think maybe at a at a high level, I'd I'd mentioned at the outset that, last, I'll say, six or so months, I think we've seen a a major shift in how institutions are looking at this. I think the catalyst, of course, being, in The US, but certainly have seen that ripple out globally as well. Would love to just get your thoughts and perspective, outside of of sort of the role that you have within the bank, but just how you've engaged with the the broader market in this this ecosystem for the last decade or so. What do you think is the catalyst and and the driver for this? And and I'll say maybe what what excites you the most, just given some of the, the shift in in posture over the past six months? Definitely. So anyone who has been in this space for a little bit of time has seen many ups and downs. And so when I first got involved with Blockchain at the firm, it was 2017, and I was looking kind of at that initial real push for, for cryptocurrencies, within traditional finance, looking at, you know, helping educate stakeholders, you know, what is Bitcoin? How do you think about it? How does it relate to other assets? How does it not? Thinking about things like custody, what are keys, and and doing all of that. So that was my first foray into the space, and I was fascinated and, haven't looked back since. And so I would say we've done you know, over time, we've looked at different areas and have, gone along with the ecosystem as well. And so from the early days, you know, we, we worked Ethereum. We created our own protocol, Quorum, so private into those private permission version of Ethereum, and that is what our work networks, run on today. We have done early work in tokenizing different instruments on putting fiat cash on chain and looking across, you know, different DeFi activities and even, doing some projects ourselves in the space. I would say the last six months or so have been what what I think is, you know, a culmination of a lot of different things. There's been a ton of, excitement and development in the space at large. It's become more and more mainstream. I think in the ten years that we've been doing this at the firm, it's gone from, you know, this extremely novel piece of technology to now, you know, a bit more, okay, we know what it is. So how are we actually going to use it for its full utility and that scale? And so in doing that, I think that the rest of the financial ecosystem has also similarly gone on a, that journey. And so what we saw last year, I think, it's a really pivotal time in the industry as we started to see a surge in activity on public chains. And we saw a lot of different asset managers last year, right, and continuing to experiment on public chains as well, launching new products on chain. And then with the regulatory and the regulatory environment, sorry, in The US, shifting as well, there's just more and more momentum in looking at how we can use these technologies and scale them as well. Sitting where we do, we are a large, large global bank. Our clients are in every region. So if you think about, you know, what we might be looking at in APAC versus in EMEA versus in The US. You know, we've been following different jurisdictional rules and regulations and compliance. And so at different points in our journey, we focused in different areas, but what we're seeing now is, you know, kind of the the real push forward from a lot of different, projects and products in the past kind of leading up to now. Awesome. And and you'd you'd mentioned, a lot of different initiatives that you've that you've got underway. Obviously, the the broader narrative from the bank, from from some of the, the higher ups, we'll say, has had this sort of, I'll say, more negative view on on, let's say, Bitcoin and crypto, and and we certainly won't get into that. But, a lot of the conversations that I have with banks are, again, around how do we do this. And so given that you're looking at a lot of the emerging use cases, whether it's from some previous initiatives or or some of the ones that you mentioned that you're looking at, over over the next x number of years. How do you maybe corral the rest of the bank or the the the the required stakeholders to start to move the needle? Because I think that's the biggest hurdle that a lot of institutions have is there may be, I'll call it a digital asset or innovation team that's coordinating with technology and the business and then, oh, well, we have to pull in the the risk team and the compliance team, obviously, the architects and products. So, like, what is or what would you recommend as as maybe the the best approach to looking at this cross functional initiative just given where you sit within the bank and and sort of everything that seems to be, on your plate? Yes. Definitely. It is a kind of operating in the unknown, at at scale and with efficiency. And so it is definitely not one direct, you know, path to follow. But over the years, there's a few different things that, you know, we've learned along the way, and and I think we've kind of gotten it down to a really good cadence at this point. I'd say, you know, the firm, since they stood up the Blockchain Center of Excellence in 2015, has always been a big believer in the technology. The team's only ever grown in the last ten years, no matter what's been going on in the space. And so when we think about different opportunities, I think there are two real, kind of pillars that need to be in place in order for use cases to really take off. And the first one of those is stakeholder buy in. And you really need to make sure that no matter where you are, what business that you sit in, you have buy in from the top for what you are doing. And the best way to get there, I found in the past, is you need to be solving a real problem and showing how to create real utility as opposed to there's a new technology over here. I'm gonna go test something out. Okay. That should be good enough. I think that sitting where we are now and, what are we, 2025 versus, like, maybe five or seven years ago, there were, you know, different, different kind of thresholds, out there. But I think today, looking at, you know, the technology and and and the maturity in the spaces, you need to be able to show that you're really solving an actual problem, that there are real users associated with that problem, and how exactly is incorporating this technology going to make a better experience for yourselves and your clients. So having that stakeholder buy in is really, really important, and having a, a very specific use case is one of my, favorite ways of doing that. And then, obviously, you know, having a few clients that you know that this is an issue for and and that are down to, pilot and collaborate with you is important. The second piece, Emil, you touched on this a bit as well, is being able to navigate your organization. All organizations are extremely complex. And so in thinking about your product teams, your technology teams, your risk and compliance teams, your legal teams, operations teams, it's important that everyone is aligned to the same vision and that everyone is aligned to the scope, the timeline, what you're solving, and is operating in lock step. So, you know, I find that having that, you know, the regular cadence across everyone to making it really horizontal to make sure that everyone is operating in lock step and that everyone's also engaging with their stakeholders. So, you know, that stakeholder engagement case, you'll hear me talk about it a lot, but it's super important. And then making sure that every function that's a part of it, which is it's gonna be every function that that you have, right, is gonna have to be brought in and and involved is also, you know, aligned to the same goal, the same time line, and and the same outcome. That's, that that's really interesting. And I think brings up, maybe another question around that is you you had mentioned we need to sort of bring the entire bank along with this journey. And some of the feedback that I've heard, you know, in a number of different conversations with banks is it's significantly more difficult to bring a new product to market using a new technology than it is, I'll say, inserting it within an existing product or service or business that you already have. Given that you guys literally do everything, obviously, it's tough to find, use cases and applications Mhmm. Where you don't already have a business around it already. But maybe putting your yourself in in the shoes of someone at a not JPMorgan sized bank, What would you say is how should they be evaluating, again, this sort of new business or new product concept versus trying to identify somewhere that it inserts within a bank's existing architecture and infrastructure today? Definitely. And it's a really good question. Right? Because along our journey, we've also asked ourselves and continue to ask ourselves all the time is what are we solving for? Right? Are you creating a new product that is only now possible because of what the technology introduces, that's one area. Right? Can you improve existing businesses and processes? And in doing that, can you create efficiencies across the board? And if those efficiencies are financial, if they are time that you're getting back, they all kind of end up being, you know, worth, something at the end of the day, but those are really the different pieces to look across. And so if I put aside net new product creation for a second, one of the large areas that we continue to always look at and that I look at with our clients and and different lines of businesses all the time is how can we make our existing process or our existing kind of end to end better? How can we speed it up? How can we increase transparency? How can we improve, you know, liquidity and ultimately asset movement? And so I think no matter where you sit, those types of themes will ring true because they're what we all face all the time at any business. And so one of the areas of focus is, you know, we've we've spent, a lot of time looking at, you know, what can you actually gain from a distributed ledger that is a net improvement, today. Right? And whether that's faster settlement, whether that's being able to have all parties to a transaction see the data before the transaction occurs so that everyone can check that it is exactly as it should be, before, you know, someone presses enter. And then it's a game of telephone to figure out, you know, where something went wrong. Did you put the last name in incorrectly? Is the year wrong? There's a whole host of, you know, issues that can happen. But we found that speeding those pieces up in and of themselves has saved hours, days, weeks of time and has gone a long way also improving out the technology's utility away from even net new use cases. And so for that to happen as well, it requires a really deep understanding of all the different systems that you have in place today, where the largest pain is. Right? Like, there's pain everywhere, but I think the lowest hanging fruit is the best place to start. And then I think the biggest hurdle to adoption there, that we all face is making sure that every piece of that ecosystem is also on the same page. Right? Because we all work with so many different parties and and counterparties all day long. If we're all not moving together, we really don't get to see the ultimate benefit of the technology because it does require that all the participants are are in step. That's so this brings me to maybe a a question that we've got in in the q and a. So shout out to to q and a. We will be addressing them as they come in. I think you touched on it there. The question specifically is mentioned real world problems to solve, some examples, of those. And so I promised myself I'd wait twenty minutes before using the the word stablecoin. Made it You almost made it. You were close. It was really close. It was better than I thought you were going to do. So in that context, obviously, the the world of of payments, and I'll say specifically cross border payments, is truly ripe for disruption. I think the the people that have been in this space really understand why and how. Obviously, what you guys have done with, with JPMC, and then the JPMD announcement a couple of months ago, What are maybe some of the tangible benefits that you guys have seen from this? And and again, appreciate you have literally thousands, of participants in your correspondent network, so it's probably much easier to distill down here was the value of doing this, but maybe some of those metrics or or sort of internal proof points that you've taken, to just continue to to build. Definitely. We I promise we will get into the first part of your question, but I'll answer the last part of your question, first. And and looking at how we've specifically, attacked different use cases over the years, our first use case ever actually is which was the, predecessor to our now Connexus Link network, which is all about information sharing and about, you know, facilitating faster payments, and fielding payments inquiries all on the information surrounding those payments themselves. We had initially done a use case with our corresponding banking team to look at how can we actually speed up the payments that are happening between all of our different banking partners. And with that, you know, we found that along the way, payments fail. We don't always know why or where it failed. Right? And so that is, you know, leads to emails, phone calls, faxes, you know, to figure out where something went wrong. And it can you know, we found it can take, like, weeks to a month to to actually solve that. Once we started piloting that on chain, it dramatically decreased that time, to kind of getting to the bottom of the issue, into hours. And so that is where our initial, POC that we did many years ago that, you know, led us to continue down that path. Because when we think about specific use cases, we think about, you know, reducing friction in the system about, you know, how and where can we get to or get near to instantaneous settlement, How can we open distribution channels? Where is there untapped liquidity? And so in doing that, you know, you mentioned JPMorgan coin. It's now, connects us digital payments. So you can think of those as blockchain deposit accounts on chain. So, it's, institutional only, and it you can think of it as your regular, you know, DDA account. It's just on on the blockchain. And then, you mentioned, you know, earlier this year or a few months ago now, we piloted our JPMD, which was our deposit token. And so in looking at, you know, that work, it it's a true token that is evidencing a demand deposit claim for a fixed amount of fiat cash, by the token holder, you know, against the token issuing bank. So it's a true deposit liability. It's yield bearing. It's FDIC insured, and it allows for direct, you know, p to p transfers on among c ones, and essentially down the road, you know, c twos. And so when we think about that product and we think about, you know, what we have been looking at over time, you know, we were talking a little bit earlier about the surge in activity over, you know, the past six months, and, obviously, StablePoint is a humongous piece of that. And, really, what it's shown, me and I think what's validated for the work that we've been doing within Kinaxis is that, you know, there is a real need for on chain cash products. And, you know, they've existed in the web three space for for some time now, right, because there was a, like, a gap, right, in on chain cash. And so stablecoins really fit that need. And then if we look at, you know, a lot of the institutional activity, there is always going to be the need for cash on chain, but it can come in many different forms. So if we think about, you know, what's out there today, we think about, stablecoins themselves, you know, they allow us to direct to their, transfers. It's a stored value. It's pegged to the dollar and in some cases or to other assets, but really helps, you know, provide a cash like mechanism on chain, that doesn't offer, say, yield, or, you know, FDIC insurance. So there'll be some instances where that works and others where it doesn't. And so when you think about other on chain cash solutions, that's where, you know, we've been doing a lot a lot of work on deposit tokens, themselves. And then also, there's a lot of work going on in tokenized money market fund space. Right? And so we think about how different, banks and and peers, you know, outside of ourselves, like, where is the best on chain cash solution for the use case at hand? And I think that's what we look at. Right? And there are multiple different, assets available and different use cases out there. What we really, you know, have been working on and working towards given where we sit within the bank is that, you know, true deposit liability and the FDIC insurance and and the ability, to to have yield. There's a ton of different instruments out there, and they each serve different purposes. And I think in the last six months, we've seen that surge of activity because there's been product market fit. I I think that's, an incredible explanation. I I also fully agree because what we've certainly seen, I'd say over the last eight to ten years is, I'll say, the crypto and blockchain native segments, and really the the we'll call them web three innovators that have been proving out a lot of these models for the rest of us. And so if we can prove all of the interoperability, the integration, the concept of decentralized protocols, security, and scalability around all of that, which, I mean, from where we sit at Fireblocks, we've been working with that core market, since we we came out of stealth in 2018. But we've fully acknowledged and and over the past four and a half years that I've been here, have made a concerted effort to ensure that we're working with and trying to bridge the gap between what's happening on the innovation side and making sure that we're bringing along the rest of the market with us, which actually dovetails into another question, that was dropped in the q and a. Again, shout out. Thank you very much. But, actually, right before that, Neil, just one thing on that as well, I think is really important is we we've, you know, come to similar conclusions on our journey. Right? So we did our first we, tokenized the debt insurance back in 2018, and we realized and we were, you know, really excited, and it wasn't really exciting that that we were able to do that. And then we realized we didn't have cash on chain. Right? So that still had to settle regular way. So we didn't actually achieve DVP, or instantaneous settlement. We'd obviously, you know, gotten to where we needed to get to on on the asset side, but we didn't have a cash on chain solution. And so that's really what led to the development that now connects us to dual payments in 2019. Right? Because as you go and you learn and you take what's happening, you know, from the web three native ecosystem, and that's how we've built on top of it over the years. Right? So we tokenized the asset. Great. We didn't have cash. Then you have cash. Then you can add more solutions. Yeah. And and I think this DVP concept is really where we're gonna see, a major shift in in financial markets because if you can now remove that t plus one, t plus two settlement lag that we have, if you can stall the underlying custody and ownership issues through the use of wallets and blockchain, I think that just unlocks, a ton for liquidity and collateral mobility across the ecosystem. And so when you when you talk about sort of the the product market fit for some of these tokenized cash products and a use case, obviously, payments is top of mind. Not every bank is a capital markets bank. Every bank does payments in some capacity, and it has to be part of their core business. And so one of the questions around, or sorry, in the in the chat is around, messaging standards, ISO 20 o 22. How do these interact and interoperate with, blockchains, from the perspective of just, I'll say, direct wallet to wallet transactions. So there's a stable coin that sits here. I need to, effectuate a payment to a wallet here. Those will incorporate if the the starting and end locations are wallets. Those will follow specific AML compliance transaction screening requirements. But when we talk about what will be most payments, I believe, for the foreseeable future, which is either starting or ending or both in a fiat currency, the same transactional details still need to be sent. The question then is, how do you settle the actual value of the transaction, which today is through Nostro accounts and correspondent banking. Tomorrow can simply be, again, this wallet to wallet transfer in real time. How have you at the bank sort of integrated some of these traditional flows and maybe talk through payments messaging or some of the the tokenized cash products that you have to ensure that you're still adhering to all the risk, regulatory, and compliance requirements that you have? Simply, I'll just oversimplify changing the the settlement mechanism, on the back end. Definitely. I think this is a question that we're also going to see over and over again for for years to come. I think the industry sees it every I don't know what the right cadence is, but it comes up over time. Right? Because if you're going to upgrade technology or change technology, that comes with changing standards, that comes with changing formats, and that affects everyone. And so it's something that I think is not new. It's not specific to blockchain, but it is obviously a factor that, that we look at in order to make sure that everything that we do, you know, is compliant. And I'd say one of the key focus areas for us and the reason why we we've been able to, you know, scale and and keep moving is because, obviously, everything that we do is regulatory, compliant and and, you know, in line with with our kind of the regulatory obligations. And so in doing that, I would say, you know, if you're when you're thinking about projects on your own end or new products or changing, you know, standards and and, that entire category, it's really, really important to make sure that whichever parties you're working with right now, like, you have one party here, another one here, you have to be operating on the same standards. Right? And so that could end up looking like everyone adopting the same thing at the same time. Maybe there are a few participants who are either more forward thinking or have the tech and the budget ability, right, to move faster that you could pilot with first and then grow from there. So I would say the way that we look at that is always kind of where's our starting point and then how do we build off of that instead of saying, okay. We all need to, you know, be changing standards and create new ones and start here. I think that that's really, you know, the way that we've gone about it historically and continue to is where can you start to find real value and where are others on the same page and the same part of their journey as you and then building from there. And and so talking about standards, another another question that came in, referencing swift and and some of the, I'll say, messaging and and payments platforms that are out there today. I've got my views. I'll I'll let you maybe go first in terms of of how you envision or see maybe this future state of payments. I think we can all agree that there's gotta be interoperability across the board. If you were to say, here are the the one or two existing payments protocols or platforms that are going to be critical to allow this to scale. What would you say I would excluding JPMorgan and and what you guys do, what what would you say are are the the key market movers for this to ensure that, that we can truly scale? Yes. So I'll take JPMorgan out of it. My personal views, when I think at you know, I think about the different structures and and utilities that are in place. You know, for me, I know the question is payment specific. I'm gonna make it a little bit wider than that just given the focus on DVP that we have on our side is, you know, Swift is obviously a huge one. Right? And I would also say the likes of, like, a DTCC or, you know, other kind of, settlement locations and and, and securities posture are very important to make sure that the groups today that run our digital networks, you know, those are the ones that I think, are kind of the most important to make sure that we are bringing along on the journey. But, again, my own personal view. Awesome. Well, we might need your own personal view for this next question. It's, I think. But, again, audience questions. So we're we're going off the rails here. But can tokenization replace the ACH network in the future? Again, I've got my thoughts. Would love to to hear what yours are on this topic. Let's start with yours now. I went first last time. Alright. There. So I I I do think in some ways, yes. And and the reason that I say that is it feels like tokenized deposits. And there was a question that was dropped in here earlier, also around, like, the different like, if you have a tokenized deposit, why would you need a stable coin? I think you did address that. But I think one of the key factors here around an ACH network is the ability for banks to truly hold other banks' liabilities on their balance sheet. And so if you think about a tokenized deposit, you're you're really just tokenizing an entry on the balance sheet, which is recorded in the core ledger. And so if you now have banks that need to settle between each other through the ACH network, there's clearly an opportunity here to insert some form of clearing system, whether that's the Fed stepping in, whether that's the clearing house or someone else. I do think this orchestration and clearing through a central entity for bank tokenized deposits, potentially stable coins, could be very critical. I think the question is really gonna be how long does that take to evolve. We know how quickly banks move in this space. In my experience, regulators move even slower than that. That may change, based on what we've seen over the last six months. But but I do truly think that there are opportunities to create efficiencies, not just in domestic payments clearing, cross border payments, but just truly financial markets and that market structure. So long winded way of saying, yes. I think it could replace or augment the ACH network, but at the same time, there's a a lot that would need to happen in order for that to, to come to fruition. Definitely. I agree with you completely. I would say, you know, obviously, we wouldn't be sitting here if we didn't think that this, technology was transformational, and all of you would be would be listening in as well. Right? So, yes, I do believe, to some extent, we can move towards some techno technology, sorry, upgrades that, you know, could replace, could not replace, but definitely make more efficient. But one thing, as Neil mentioned is, you know, we can be slow to operate, but I would even say, like, if you think about the pace of innovation and and adoption over the years, it it kind of, it gets faster and faster. Right? But, you know, there's still faxes out there, and there's still checks out there, and other instruments. So, not to, you know, be negative, but I think it does take a long time for for change to take place. I mean, you know, even the evolution of the Internet over time, right, to, like, where we are now, relatively short amount of time, you know, ten, fifteen years from, like, when smartphones, you know, first came out to now, I think, if I have all my dates right. But it's really not that long in the grand scheme of things. So I I even though we've been in the space for quite some time, it's still very early in the space. And I always find that hard to believe that, like, well, it's been ten years. Like, now what? And I'm like, no. It's actually still very early. Because there's a lot of work ahead, but I think it's it's all exciting work. And just like with any new technology, there'll be replacements. Some things will stay. And and, again, I know I said this earlier, but also goes back to how quickly adoption happens globally. Right? You can have adoption grow really quickly just within, say, your own organization and, you know, one other organization, but it needs to happen on a global scale for it to be truly, step changing. And and I think what what is interesting, at least my work at Fireblocks over the past four to five years is that, you really do see the evolution of technology in emerging markets first. I think if if you look at a lot of jurisdictions, Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, they actually just leapfrogged the SWIFT network, because they went from nothing and then twenty years ago realized, that they needed something. And so this concept of mobile banking, digital banking, wallet technology is really ingrained, within within those ecosystems. And so now it's simply saying, well, this quote, unquote wallet, which is really just the digital version of an asset, can now be actually a token sitting in that wallet, which that end user or the institution has control and ownership over. And and so leads to another question that we've got in the chat here is, do you think blockchain based financial products will compete meaningfully with traditional bank and credit union deposits? This, I think, is a a really loaded question. I'll pass it to you first this Alex, and then we'll, we'll see where we go, go from there. Can you repeat the first part of it just quickly? I was trying to, like, get some thoughts together. I just wanna make sure I can get the whole thing. No worries. So will will blockchain based financial products compete meaningfully with traditional bank and credit union deposits? Got it. Again, I will speak to my own personal views. I think that, you know, over time, we're going to see, you know, blocking, deposits and just digital assets at large. Right? Like, evolve in different ways. And the way I typically thought about it, you know, I have my own views is that over time, I think that the technology itself should be abstracted away from the utility and what all of these different actors are doing and what the business is itself. Right? Like, I don't know if it's gonna necessarily be, I wish I had a, you know, a a crystal ball. But, you know, it's not necessarily gonna be you're gonna have your blockchain assets over here, and then your traditional assets are gonna stay over here, and then, I don't know, your AI generated assets over there. We'll see. But I think it's gonna be more and more the holistic portfolio of products and and technologies that are gonna move together. And so I would say, I don't think it's necessarily, you know, one blockchain based asset, that's gonna single handedly move the entire system. I think you're going to see that, different banks and different parties in the financial ecosystem are going to, you know, keep pushing their digital, you know, assets and digital portfolios forward, and you're going to see, you know, the future shake out that way as opposed to, you know, just say blockchain based assets versus traditional. Awesome. And and, there's actually a question that was dropped in in here as well. I think that you kind of addressed it, but, it's how do you differentiate between a wallet and an account. And, I mean, in in my simple head, it's oh, a wallet is simply a blockchain based account, and that's something that that we've really been trying to make sure resonates and people understand. Your client doesn't need to know that it's a token or a wallet on the back end. All they need to know is that you're able to offer them a better, faster, cheaper offering for whatever it is that product is that they're looking to access. And I think what we've seen in the more blockchain native space, which I think is really interesting, is some of these tokenized money market funds that are actually being used within crypto derivatives trade. And so what people are doing in in institutional trading firms, because you now have the ability rather than funding a collateral account that is subject to domestic rails with dollars or another fiat currency, you can actually take a tokenized yield bearing asset, whether it's a money market fund, a tokenized deposit, etcetera, and actually post that as collateral to trading venues and have full control over where that collateral can be sent in real time. And so these are really some of the proof points that we're seeing in more of the crypto trading side of the house, where we saw DVP settlement of Bitcoin versus USDC or a stable coin now starting to translate into more operational functions at these trading firms. And so I think what we're starting to see now is just this slow convergence between these concepts that are being proven out and then where the regulatory compliance and risk landscape sits in traditional financial markets to be able to adopt. But I think what we're also seeing at the same time is a lot of m and a activity that's driving towards some of these trading flows migrating away from banks and and the capital markets desks there over to the crypto trading and some of the retail trading platforms and fintechs that are out there as well. So, I think from from my seat, what I typically see is this concept of, like, analysis, analysis paralysis at a lot of banks trying to say, well, where do I start? Why do I do this? Where does this go? Versus saying, this is an evolving landscape. We know that this is gonna change over the next one to five, ten years, but we wanna put ourselves in a position to be able to be flexible as new use cases evolve, as new product offerings emerge. And I think, Alex, like we talked about at the beginning, I think you guys have just positioned yourself in such an incredible place to be able to spend more time focusing on the use cases and the applications because the technology is already integrated, already embedded within the core banking infrastructure and architecture. So it's not a technology question anymore. It's really a a a proof of value and and a a business application that you guys are looking at. But would love to to get your thoughts on on sort of where and how you see some of those pieces evolving and and, again, kinda tying it back to how do you get things moving at the bank? Because I I think that's the biggest question. No. Definitely. And, you know, this is a topic I can talk about all day long because given that, you know, the technology is newer and our clients ourselves, right, like, the industry are at different, points in their journey, there is a lot of education that goes in with it. So I can't, you know, underscore the importance, of those blockchain fundamentals and making sure that all of your stakeholders and businesses know different pieces that you're talking about. That piece with the flip side though as well. I will say, you know, there's been times where I'm too deep into the technology and people look at you like you have 10 heads. Right? And I would say there's a few terms too that cause that specifically. Like, wallet is one of them. Right? Like, you technically already have a wallet on your phone today. You you know, different banks already have wallet products. Like, but when we talk about a, you know, a blockchain wallet, we're talking about something similar but different altogether. So, I find that, you know, being able to make parallels to existing processes or existing products is really helpful. And sometimes, I think knowing when not to go too deep into the technicals, is is important and just knowing your audience. Right? I think, you know, you said, you know, like, how do you really get things going? I think it's it's really important to be able to communicate properly, like, what your vision is, but in the right way. Right? Like, I'm if I'm talking to my tech team or our tech leads, I'm talking differently and then, you know, in in different ways than I would necessarily, like, one of my senior stakeholders or someone, you know, in my compliance organization. Because the most important thing is to make sure that people are with you. They know what you're saying, and they're able to kind of move, alongside of that. So I think education is super, super important. The other thing too that I think you touched on a little bit is I I think that at some point, right, there should be there will and should be, you know, and the technology shouldn't be the the forefront. It should be in the back. Right? It should be extracted away. I think about, you know, my phone today or, like, my the shows that I stream. I don't know what server they come from. I don't know where it is. I don't know how it got there. I don't care. I just wanna you know, I'm on the plane. I downloaded my show, and it it plays. Right? Like, that's where that's where we're at, and it's the same with other technologies. And so I think at some point in time, to me, what's always exciting when I see kind of, like, the maturity of different products is when people stop talking about tech, and they're talking about the product and the utility that they're getting or how it fits into their existing trading platform, right, or making sure that it's holistic across the portfolio. Like, I don't know about you. I'm sure the same as, you know, conversations with clients have changed over the years too. Right? Like, so instead of just saying I want all of my blockchain activity here, it's now I need to see this as part of my overall portfolio or it needs to sit alongside the rest of my products. And so there is a really big user experience and user interface, you know, component that goes along with that in developing products that not only work, but make sense to the users. And I think that means extracting away from the tech with time. So that actually leads into, another q and a question here. I think we'll just run the next session purely off of, attendees q and a. Great questions. Keep them coming. This is awesome. I I completely put away the doc that we have worked on. But it's a bit of a loaded one, so maybe I'll give you a second to to think through the the response that you want here. But seems like there's a sort of modern banking and payments battleground, shaping up between crypto natives, fintechs, and traditional banks. How do you see this space evolving? Will consumers move from legacy banks, or will legacy banks be able to modernize and compete in the age of Bitcoin, crypto, and and stablecoins? Again, I will speak to my own views here, not that of the firm. A couple different things. One is I mean, if you put crypto natives aside for a second, I don't think it's a new battle. I think it's been around for some time between digitally native, financial institutions, large traditional banks like ourselves. Right? Like, as long as technology has been around, there has been competition out there. And I think, everyone, you know, would say the same that there are traditional peers and there are tech forward peers, and that just continues to be the case. And here you have an additional of crypto native, peers as well. And so if I think about, you know, that and that, you know, competition's always there and it should be there because that's how we all get better products at the end of the day, is looking at, you know, what is happening in the ecosystem. You mentioned before there's been a lot of different M and A activity. You see a lot of traditional payments players partnering more with digital asset players. Right? Like, you had on, like, Stripe acquisition of bridge and others. Right? Like, there are, a lot of, players are positioning themselves as payments and assets, right, and tokenized assets. And so when I think about, like, what what that means and what the future can look like and, you know, who wins at the end, I wish I I had a firm answer on that. But I think that, you know, what's exciting about doing what we do, where we do it, is that we continue to have the support and we continue to push the boundaries right. And something I said earlier, as well is, like, it it takes everyone. Right? So I think it's great that crypto need to push forward. I think it's great that fintech push forward. I think banks will continue to push forward. And, you know, it'll all be for the end, you know, client, consumer, and retail to all get a better product at the end of it. So there's always winners and losers. Don't know who they are, you know, just yet. I will say, I think that, you know, competition makes us all better and and create more innovative products. So I would expect to see more innovation. I would expect to see more m and a going on. I think we're we're in a really, really exciting time in the industry. Yeah. Fully agree. I'll I'll maybe throw my thoughts out there on this. Hopefully, no one gets mad at me for this, but I'm gonna say it anyway. The this concept of blockchain and everything that you're talking about here, Alex, is obviously delivering better, faster, cheaper, or new novel products to to to end users and clients. It seems as though everything around this technology is essentially looking to drive transaction costs to zero. And so in my mind, I don't know how long this ultimately ends up taking, but if we look at a world fifty years from now, the cost to transact should be zero or close to zero. And I think there really needs to be an evaluation at the bank level to say, what do we look like in this future state? And I I I kinda look back and and think we may just need to see banks as potentially software or technology companies in the future because they will be the enablers and the conduits into this for those that don't wanna do it directly and and have their own wallet and control their own private keys, etcetera. But they need to, I think, start to find ways to, to diversify their their revenue base. Because if cost of transacting goes to zero, that then removes all of the revenues that that a lot of these banks are making. So, I think it'll be an interesting evolution over the next three, five, ten years. To your point, I don't know who the winners and losers will be. I think some of the large, large fintechs and and crypto exchanges, are being very aggressive in in capturing consumers, capturing flows, and rolling out new products. They're obviously more technologically savvy, and and I will say higher up on the risk curve. So willing to to do more to make more. But, again, that all ultimately, over the long term, gets traded out as new participants come in. But, I think it's I think it's a really interesting crossroads. Again, I think that if the last six months are any indication, the next six months and the next six years are are gonna be super exciting for everyone involved. Definitely. There there was also a question in here, and and you touched on it in your intro around identity. And I I know we've got nine minutes left, so, I do wanna be conscious of that. But I think identity is a really important topic. We touched on risk and compliance. Would love to just hear your perspective because we've obviously had some conversations, about this in the past is how do you guys look at identity? How critical is that when you're standing up these products? And then maybe even more broadly, how do you view what we'll call maybe an industry standard or alignment on what identity and on chain wall of verification truly is or or should be? Yes. Very loaded topic. Could also talk about this one all day, but Carrington, we have eight minutes, so I'll try and stick to the the high level points. Simply put, identity is crucial. It's a crucial enabler when you think about, you know, roles that banks play as well. Right? Being able to authenticate, parties, KYC, AML, all these things that we do all day long. Identity is so, so important, for everything that happens in traditional markets and in a web three based, world as well. On the JPMorgan side, we've been spending the past five years looking at decentralized identity as an enabler, to on chain activity. And at the end of last year, so really when a lot of the the activity in The US started on really gaining scheme, we we did a project called ethics. So it was not only a great name, but it's enterprise privacy, identity, and composability. And so what we were looking at there is how does reusable privacy preserving identity really make on chain activity that much faster, efficient, and and ultimately beneficial. Because if you look at today, the amount of different checks that happen across the board for either an investor's identity or an attribute of their identity. So say, I'm an investor. I'm domiciled in The US versus, you know, in APAC. I am a qualified investor. Right? Like, these are the type of funds that I like to invest into, and think of how many times that information is continually replaced over, you know, an investor's life cycle, whether that be, you know, at an up front purchase of, say, a fund or secondary trading off the back of it. These are things that, you know, we spend a lot of time thinking about and, you know, the composability aspect as well. Right? If you really wanna make assets really composable, you know, the having a a interoperable identity is is really important. And, you know, there's different ways to think about how that could actually work. There you know, in the space, there are a lot of different buyers who are who are working on it as well. There's, you know, the ideas of verifiable credentials. You can have sold down tokens, you know, off chain records. There's lots of different methods out there. This is one where I think that you really need standards across, across the industry. Otherwise, everyone will create their own version of identity, but it's not actually portable or usable elsewhere. And so that is one area that we spend a ton of time thinking about. And the other thing I would say there as well is, you know, there's a ton, the surgeon activity going on in the space at the moment, but there at the end of the day, you know, and we I think this is in our, like, initial box. I'm just gonna throw it in here for this. But identity is, you know, privacy preserving identity, you know, for either investors or investment managers, you know, for their, say, fund strategies on chain. Right? But knowing who they can interact with without sharing their strategy or their their kind of future plans, you know, is really important. So when we think about the future of the space, we look at, you know, different permutations of public, of private, of public permission. You know? There's lots of different ways to create, to create different blockchain environments, but the identity is that crucial foundational piece that unlocks it. So I do think there's been a ton of work across the industry on different standards, and and there's more to go. I think to get to a place where where the ecosystem chooses, you know, which ones it will adopt. Awesome. Really, really appreciate it, Alex. We got a a couple minutes left. So maybe with the remaining time, would would love to just hear, sort of, your view perspective and outlook, let's say, over the next two to five years, where do you think the headwinds, the tailwinds are? And in five years, what would make you excited, about where we are at that at that particular time? Definitely. I say we've talked about some of these at large, but I'll just summarize them as we as we close out. I mean, I think from a headwinds perspective, you know, there's a lot of momentum going on in the moat at the moment, but it's still relatively small compared to how much activity goes on in in the the traditional financial markets today. So I think, you know, we need to work on achieving scale, and that really requires the ecosystem to move at pace with each other. You know, never underestimate how how intricate back end systems are and how to, you know, either redesign or, an or automate or, you know, change whatever it is. There's a ton that goes on in the back end of any transaction that is very, very difficult to to change quickly. So I'd say that really is on the headwind side on you know, from the tailwinds, I would say there is a lot of clarity from a regulatory perspective that that's coming out that I think, the industry's been asking for, and will help, you know, move things along. I think there are large institutional clients that are really active and interested in the space. I think you need both of those things. You have to be active and interested. And I think that, you know, if I look at the client conversations that I have and how they've changed in the last year, it's really, really, different. And then the speed at which the technology is moving, and this is where, you know, always look to the crypto native ecosystem, always iterating all the time very quickly. And so, you know, one thing that we always look at as well, which is a whole another webinar in and of itself is, like, how do you look at, what's happening in a crypto native ecosystem and look to adopt it, but not take so long that it's already changed by the time that you get there. Right? So I just think that, you know, now is a really special time for the industry, and it's it's super exciting. In five years, what would excite me? I would love for, for there to be no more questions on what a token is in different conversations. I know that's, like, a really, really small one, but I find like, if I think about conversations five years ago to now, they've you know, everyone is just getting, much smarter and much further along in their journey. So I find that the the less the conversations, you know, center around the pieces of the tech themselves, that to me is a sign of maturity of the space at large. And so that's something that I think would be interesting. Awesome. Love it. Thank you very much. Always great chatting with you. I will add a a KPI for q four to make sure that everybody in the market understands what a wallet and a token is. So wish me luck on that. But thank you everyone, very much for joining us. We had a lot of great q and a. Please feel free to to reach out to Alex, myself on LinkedIn, American Banker. Any other topics you feel, would be relevant to discuss, more than happy to join. There's a lot going on, and I know there's a lot of questions, a lot of excitement, and a lot of engagement, and we are here to help. Everything that we do is, I think, to shepherd along the industry, the ecosystem, and ensure that we can scale across the board. So thank you very much, everyone. Again, looking forward to seeing you on the next one.