Innovation X Roundtable – What’s Next for Digital Assets and Cryptocurrencies

Is broader adoption of digital assets and cryptocurrencies just around the corner? As of April 2021, the global cryptocurrency market is at $1.9 trillion, with Bitcoin alone worth half as much as Apple, the world’s most valuable company. Bitcoin is also the highest performing asset of the last decade, returning more than 10 times as much as the Nasdaq 100.

Beyond Bitcoin, digital assets could transform the economy in many ways. Major themes that emerged in 2020 included the meteoric rise of decentralized finance or DeFi, the moves by central banks around the world to develop their own digital currencies (e.g. China’s DC/EP) and the regulatory enablement of stablecoins.

Plus, major financial institutions are preparing offerings of bitcoin or crypto services, such as Fidelity and Goldman Sach’s plans to launch Bitcoin ETFs, BlackRock’s bitcoin futures and Bank of NY Mellons’s crypto asset management.

Large fintech players Square and PayPal are also in the game with crypto payments for merchants and crypto trading for consumers. Even Tesla will now let you buy any model in bitcoin. In addition, new use cases that are targeted at consumers, such as NFTs (non-fungible tokens) from TacoBell and the NBA’s TopShot, have taken off.

In a conversation moderated by University of California, Berkeley Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer, Rich Lyons, a panel of industry experts will convene to discuss the future of cryptocurrencies and digital assets, and how they may shape our digital, social, and financial lives. Join us as we discuss these topics and more at our April 22nd Roundtable.

Panelists:

• Alana Aldag Ackerson, CEO of New Subsidiary at Digital Currency Group | Co-Founder of Figure Technologies | Co-Founder of Provenance Blockchain
• Mike Li, Co-founder, Rally
• Eric Sibbitt, Capital Markets Partner and Head of Financial Technology Industry Group, O’Melveny & Myers LLP
• Sina Nader, COO at FTX.US