Christian Catalini, co-founder and chief strategy of Lightspark, shared his thoughts about the future of money and the role of digital assets in democratizing investment banking features at the Bitcoin 2024 Nashville conference.

In a lively conversation with Joey Garcia of Xapo Bank and moderator Nolan Bauerle, Catalini touted the power of the Bitcoin Lightening Network to deliver nearly instant cross-border payments, an option that was not available to the general public until the advent of cryptocurrencies.

"If you're trying to move out between two countries, and as it turns out, people love Bitcoin on both sides, you can quickly go in and out of the lightning network, you converted the edges."

The discussion revolved around challenging the current banking hegemony layer-by-layer, starting with payment networks and yield-bearing money and eventually introducing more high-end features to the public like securitized lending, a privilege traditionally only open to high net-worth individuals and institutions.

Even inside a heavily developed country like the United States, many are apprehensive about traditional banking. Source: Self Inc .

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Banking the unbanked and potentially soft-landing the imploding fiat system

Cryptocurrencies are already transforming the financial landscape and banking the unbanked across the developing world. In June of 2024, the head of Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission highlighted the  benefit of cryptocurrencies to the country's population for things like cross-border remittances, noting that 34% of the country's residents are already using digital assets.

The decentralized nature and fast finality time of digital assets make the asset class perfect for remittances, vastly reducing the costs and wait times associated with traditional remittance services such as Western Union or MoneyGram. Venezuela exemplifies the  growing trend toward digital assets for this very reason. According to Chainalysis, digital assets accounted for 9% of the total cross-border remittances sent to the country in 2023, a figure that has grown every single year since 2018, except 2020.

Stablecoins have also been presented as a way for residents of high-inflation countries to  preserve their purchasing power and own dollar-denominated liquidity in jurisdictions with strict currency controls.

Oddly enough, stablecoins have been pitched as a way to extend the lifespan of the overprinted US dollar, with stablecoin issuers quickly becoming some of  the largest buyers of United States Treasury bills and other debt instruments, driving up demand for the fiat assets at a time when international blocs like the BRICS countries are seeking to decouple from the dollar.

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