Annelise: 0:00

I think that we will get more comfortable with this. We won't be talking about blockchain in five or 10 years, because it will be underneath. It'll be the layer underneath everything being built. So that's exciting.

Joeri: 0:10

Hello everyone and welcome to the Web3 CMO Stories podcast. My name is Juri Billast and I'm your podcast host, and today I'm so excited to be at WebSummit and doing this recording in real life with Annelise. Hi Annelie, how are you.

Annelise: 0:28

I'm excited to be here. Ju Thank you so much for having me.

Joeri: 0:31

It's exciting. I always love these podcast episodes at the Web Summit. You will maybe hear the vibes, the sound of Web Summit on the background. Guys, if you don't know, Annelise nnelies. Annelieseis Oborne, she's the chief business officer at Kadena. I hope I pronounced it indirectly. That's correct, and Kadena adea is a layer one proof of work, blockchain for business, and she has extensive experience in traditional finance and digital assets. Her book from goodies to suits inno Innovating Digital Assets for Traditional Finance is available now and actually, if you are now listening to this podcast, you know there are show notes. I will have a link in there. So, Annelise aneliee, happy to have you here. Let's dive straight in With your extensive background in traditional finance. What was the key moment that led you to focus on blockchain and digital assets?

Annelise: 1:25

Sure, I do want to first say there's 80,000 people at WebSummit, so there's so much energy here. It's super exciting to see and I really appreciate the kind of outside of AI. There's a lot of AI here, but really the push into payments and in crypto and in blockchain. So my kind of aha moment. I had worked in traditional finance for many years and then I was doing a lot of corporate governance and board work and I was asked to join a Rainsbury task force focused on ICOs, which are initial coin offerings, and for me, just researching blockchain and what it was, to understand what an ICO was, really opened my eyes to how beneficial this technology would be for capital markets and for traditional finance, and so that was my thought process.

Annelise: 2:09

Also that other people were doing this already and I was just learning about it now. But honestly, that was back in 2017, 2018. And it really was. Some of the banks were starting to look at blockchain and how it worked, but it really hadn't become mainstream in the tech side for TradFi at the time. We're still working on institutional adoption now, but that was really just understanding what blockchain was. It opened my eyes to all of the benefits be it faster, cheaper, more secure that it could offer to financial services.

Joeri: 2:39

And Kadena.

Annelise: 2:41

Maybe a lot of listeners haven't yet heard about Kadena, so explain maybe a bit what is the unique approach that you have. Who created JP Morgan's Innovation Lab, but also their first blockchain, and they left to create the best of both worlds, with a blockchain being public because they were working on a private chain, with Bitcoin being the security of a proof of work and then with Ethereum being the scalability the way that we're structured I'll talk about and then also lower gas costs and the programmability that Ethereum offers. And so they merged that together and they also set it up in a structure that is a scalable proof of work. That is a web of chains, so there's not one main chain, there's multiple chains. There's 20 chains.

Annelise: 3:36

Right now we're adding more chains as we increase the usability. And they launched and they were very successful when they launched, but they really were focused on tech and innovation at the time, and so I've joined them almost six months ago now and I'm really focused on how do we bring this to the next level, how do we make a difference and how do we expand. And it was built for a financial settlement, it was built for financial services, and so my goal is to make this more and take this to the next level find more users, find more both in the financial services, but also we've got data projects, we've got DPP digital product passports, we've got supply chain products as well, and there's a number of other things outside of just traditional finance that we're working on.

Joeri: 4:17

That sounds exciting, and I also have the feeling that there is more positivity now in the markets. I don't know, is it also what you are experiencing?

Annelise: 4:26

Absolutely. We have a DeFi aspect as well, and I'm a big believer that, in the way blockchain is continuing to evolve, that public is going to be really where we end up, and so I think a lot of the traditional finance institutions are focused on private chains, but moving to public, having both the DeFi and TradFi, that will merge. I really believe and there's absolutely positive sentiment. Now we have a president-elect that's expected to come in that has come out as very pro-crypto. The idea of having more clear regulation would be helpful in the United States, and I think that, ideally, the path is being paved for that and there's definitely positive sentiment.

Joeri: 5:03

Absolutely, and I also feel it with my podcast, the number of people that are now wanting to come on the show and the stories that I hear. Also, what I find interesting is that you have written a book, like I have written books too. I don't know if it's your first book, annalise, but yeah, tell us a bit. What is it about?

Annelise: 5:22

Sure, it is my first book. I never thought of myself as being a published author, but I did. I think there's three impediments to institutional adoption in this space. I think the first is education, the second is regulation and the third is interoperability, and so the first one I could do something about. So, from an education perspective, there were no other books out there talking about how blockchain affects capital markets and how blockchain is beneficial for traditional finance and explaining why the Black Rocks, the JP Morgans, the Franklin Templetons, fidelity, hamilton Lane all of these large institutions are using blockchain.

Annelise: 6:00

So the goal is really to open people's eyes to recognize Bitcoin and blockchain are not the same thing, which I think there is. There's a lack of education or understanding that blockchain is volatile. In a cryptocurrency, it's really the technology on which cryptos are built, and so my goal with the book was really to share that. To share. Look at this. $2 also just be picked up by. Think of the payments that go through. There's so much that can be done.

Annelise: 6:34

We move this, merge this with TradFi, and that's where the suits come in, because we're working with securities, we're working with money, all of which is regulated, and so my goal is for the hoodies and suits, to speak the same language and work together, and that was really the goal of the book, and so it's been. I'm so flattered by the positive reviews I've gotten out there. It came out this summer, so only a few months ago. Also, I wrote it for finance people with the idea of being an easy to read, entertaining read, not a textbook, not something that's too heavy. But I've gotten such positive push like positive responses from tech people as well, so they are now understanding why finance is doing this, and so that's super exciting to me.

Joeri: 7:17

Wow, yeah, for me. I definitely will check out the book. I had an investment club for years, actually traditional stocks, of course. I had also on the podcast one time someone that came to talk about Warren Buffett for Web3, how you know of the principles in investing are also relevant for Web3. But when you mentioned suits, I was thinking of BlackRock. When they the suits that are now supporting, yeah, mattia, etf, supporting Bitcoin. What are your thoughts on that?

Annelise: 7:45

Sure, so the Bitcoin ETF allows traditional finance people that want to invest. It allows institutions to invest in the same way they invest today in anything else. So it's a very traditional wrapper, but it gives them exposure to a cryptocurrency and Bitcoin, which is now seen as an alternative investment. So I think that is a big step. I think that will also help if you think about the value of Bitcoin, the idea of the money that goes into the ETF that is not likely to be day tradable and such that will hold that value and then less is tradable. So the thought process of supply and demand if there's less of a supply, then that's highly likely to increase the prices. So I think it will help keep the Bitcoin prices more stable.

Annelise: 8:30

I think that you'll see ETFs. I think that you'll see ETFs. I expect that you will see ETFs mixed with other bundles of currencies. So it's not just Bitcoin or Ethereum that it's alternative assets mixed in alternative coins. I think that will happen as well. But also, if you think about the world of alternative assets, there's $40 trillion in retirement accounts in the United States and I just heard there's $40 trillion from the head of the New York Stock Exchange person that just spoke as well, but $40 trillion of 1% of that goes into cryptocurrency investments as an alternative asset. That's $400 billion. So I think that there's a lot of room for this to move forward.

Joeri: 9:10

Absolutely. I think that there's a lot of room for this to move forward, absolutely. And because now I'm not in the US, but I hear stuff about what the Trump administration is wanting to do, and so I think there is a lot of potential if the government even wants to, part of their budget, wants to have it in crypto, and it can be, yeah, really powerful or really have a real impact on the market. So we talked about ETF. Have a real impact on the market. So we talked about ETF. Do you see, in general, a different mindset with people, with investors, traditional investors on digital assets? That has changed maybe.

Annelise: 9:41

Sure, I think that more asset managers are tokenizing funds. I think there's a lot of tokenized treasury funds out there and they can be used for different things, and I think that is opening people's minds to understand that you can have lower fees in these funds. You can accept lower minimum investments in the funds. I think, if we look what's happening in Europe, there's a lot of tokenized debt, debt that's using blockchain, and I think that can be all programmable as well, and then the real change maker, I think, is digital programmable money, and so there's different ways where we can money. If I pass money to you, you get it immediately. You don't have to wait for a check to cash, or you don't have to If you use a credit card. The vendor doesn't get paid for a few days, and so this will, I believe, increase the velocity of money, even if we're able to receive it immediately and then reinvest it or spend it or whatever we decide to do with it no-transcript these regulations.

Joeri: 11:04

But how do you manage all of that as an executive, because now Atomont is a bit in a gray area, web3. I guess there are different challenges because of the lack of regulations.

Annelise: 11:17

Sure. So within the US there's that gray area. There's not black and white and if I'm an institution, you can't play in the gray, so you have to know what the rules are to actually play, which is why MICA has been fantastic to give the roadblocks of what works. I think there's a lot of opportunities with the sandboxes in Singapore right now with Project Guardian and MAS that are giving opportunities to work things through. I think also South America has some positive crypto world, but I do think that within the United States there will become more clarity.

Annelise: 11:48

There are discussions about stablecoin bills. There are other opportunities. I think that will come through. There's an idea of the SEC becoming a little bit more open-minded with this technology. No other technology do you have to report for a bank to touch. So our cell phones are all built on technology and we don't talk about the specifics of exactly how it works. Ai is something that banks and things can touch, so it's interesting that anything blockchain has to be reported. But I think that we will get more comfortable with this. We won't be talking about blockchain in five or 10 years because it will be underneath. It'll be the layer underneath everything being built. So that's exciting.

Joeri: 12:26

Absolutely Just like you pay with your credit card. You're not wondering what is happening, you just do it and then you don't. That's why, in Web3, we talk about technology, but it should not be about technology If you want to have user adoption, mass adoption, as they always say. And then, of course, technology Crypto. It has now been several years that we have been the hype. We have been the bull market. It's also been the depressed market at a certain moment. What do you do with people, and maybe seasoned executives, that are skeptical about crypto and everything around? How do you talk to them? And maybe is there some kind of education that you would suggest?

Annelise: 13:10

Sure, I think people look at there being a lot of fraud in crypto and I think people point out FTX. Ftx was bad actors and it was also people getting ahead of their skis. I think there weren't actual suits there. There were checks and balances. There wasn't a board of directors. There was no kind of compliance setup. So I think from a bad actor perspective, we have that traditional finance as well.

Annelise: 13:32

If you look at Luna, we had long-term capital management which was algorithmic, with Nobel laureates there that went down, and so I do think there's a lot of similarities. But go back to Silk Road, where people the idea was it was money laundering and people paying crypto. That money can be traced and tracked. So that's what's amazing about this technology as well is it leaves a fingerprint, and so regulators and legislators should love this technology. But I think that we're going to get there. I think I talk a lot about that in the book, about what we've learned from crypto's mishaps is what I call it and there's a lot of benefits the last 15 years. We can learn going forward. But I think that's just getting rid of the stigma. But as soon as we recognize the benefits that this provides, I think people won't think crypto and blockchain are the same thing, and cryptocurrencies, with Bitcoin and stablecoin, have a lot of benefits.

Joeri: 14:20

And how do you for the outside world? How do you do etiquette? I know you're speaking on stage today. Do you do a lot of speaking You're writing the books or is there anything specific that Kadena does to educate the world? Will?

Annelise: 14:33

reach out about the book that they've read it and it's helped them understand the ecosystem. I have one of my friends who's the CEO of a blockchain said his wife read it and now understands what he does, and so that is amazing to me. But absolutely, I actually teach some college courses as well. I generally do one-offs, come in and speak to students because I believe really, gen Z and millennials are the driving force that will change finance as well as uplift this technology. I try to do my part so as much as I can do. Kadena absolutely is very supportive and it's Kadena that's coming out and speaking to everyone. We try.

Joeri: 15:19

Absolutely, and a book is also like a business card and it's just a legacy, something that you leave behind. But I'm always wondering about new books, because I'm also thinking of writing a new book. But the world is changing and e-web tweets changing really fast. How do you write in a way that it still keeps valid from some time? Did you think about that or any tips about that?

Annelise: 15:42

I did In the book. I'm talking a lot about finance in the United States, because I could write another book on Europe and if you use a traditional publisher, it takes a year to come out from when, more or less when I had my deal. It took a year for it to actually come out on the shelves. But I don't think that as much has changed for the idea of this, because this is a primer and explains why things are the way they are. But I do recognize that kind of things are changing. That's why podcasts are so important.

Annelise: 16:09

I listen to podcasts every day and I think it's super helpful to have this conversation and dialogue and that's how I get a lot of information. But it is good to have things in print. I do read the books that are out there and I appreciate them both on Audible, and I actually like hard copy books too. We have to keep learning in this industry because it is constantly evolving. We have to keep learning in this industry because it is constantly evolving. We have to keep learning, but it attracts people that are interested and curious and that are looking to learn as well, absolutely.

Joeri: 16:35

And yeah, you mentioned the audiobooks. I also like to listen to book and then because if then I read it, my brain works better, because I'm better in speaking, in talking about something, in listening, than in really reading, because then your mind can be distracted. Do you also have an audio book?

Annelise: 16:52

I do. I have an audio book out there and a Kindle. Wiley is my publisher, so they're the ones that did all the distribution.

Joeri: 16:58

Okay, yeah, that's a whole different discussion about, because I've self-published a book which was directly out and it was an e-book the 5K Challenge for Solopreneurs when I was still in social media marketing. Actually, thanks to the American market, it made number one on Amazon, congratulations. And then I've written books together with Mark Schaefer the most amazing marketing book ever and with Joe Polizzi, the content entrepreneur, who are two people that are well-known, but then in the web too, and, yes, it took a lot of time. So in the first book, I wrote about Web 3.0 concepts and in the second one was about the metaverse. Books are exciting. This event is exciting. What else at this moment are you excited about, annalisa?

Annelise: 17:39

I'm excited about the next year, the next 12 months. What's everything that we're building? Both. We're building at Kadana, but also the industry and the ecosystem is building. I'm excited about the positive sentiment that we're going to have in the United States different projects that we have in both Europe and Latin America so it's going to be a great year.

Joeri: 17:58

And are there any specifics of specific trends, now that you're seeing this year or the coming year, that we need to pay attention to?

Annelise: 18:07

I do think stablecoin. There'll be more competition for USDC because there's a number of people that are out there trying to create stablecoins and I think there'll be more uses as well. People will get more comfortable using that. I think that there's also. I was at Arca Labs before and we had a tokenized treasury fund and the whole idea there is, instead of holding cash, we can hold these low volatility securities which are backed by a basket of treasuries, which now Franklin Templeton BlackRock has as well, and WisdomTree, and we can earn. We can, in essence, hold. The idea is that it would be a liquid security and that you could generate yield on it. So I think there's a lot of benefits with that.

Annelise: 18:46

I do think the DeFi and TradFi will merge, but not within the next 12 months. I think the private credit market is really what that is with DeFi lending, and what private credit is. We just need to get AML KYC in. We're working on some ZK tying ZK into blockchain as well, which is exciting, because privacy is one of the concerns that people think about when they think about decentralization concerns that people think about when they think about decentralization. So, when we're working with institutions and really weighing the benefits of public and decentralization, and then also at the addition of privacy, we get where some people aren't for it. When we're dealing with money and securities, there really always needs to be some sort of provisioning base. When we're dealing with you know, your customer and AML anti-money laundering. So I'm super excited. There's a lot of great things coming this year.

Joeri: 19:28

Wow, and if you already mentioned podcast, you have the book. There is so much information out there. Is there any specific advice that you would give to, maybe, people in the financial industry or financial executives or just people interested in learning more and really wanting to know about Web3, finance and blockchain?

Annelise: 19:50

I would say technology is an amazing tool, but people are still people in relationships and networks really will move all of this forward. Outside of both education, I would say go to events, reach out to people, ask questions and really create those relationships, because I do think that's just as important as who you're working with, as in what you're building, because trust even though there's an element of trust that blockchain brings, I think, that trust of working together so show up, go out, ask questions, speak to people, and then there's the education on your own as well.

Joeri: 20:22

Absolutely. I love going out to these meetups here at the Web Summit, even if there is not an official WebTree track. But I asked Paddy later this morning why I was there. Not a WebTree track, but he's a founder of Web Summit. He said probably next year he will bring it back. He said yeah, really exciting times, Annelise. We could talk for hours and I know you have to be on stage very soon. Thanks so much for being on the podcast. If people want to reach out to you, they want to know more about Kadena where would you like me to send them?

Annelise: 20:54

LinkedIn is the easiest. Annalise Osborne on LinkedIn and I would love to reach out, I'd love to have conversations, I love to learn. One benefit of being here is just the amazing people that you meet as well, so I would love to hear from you.

Joeri: 21:06

Awesome well, so I would love to hear from you, awesome Guys. As always, there are show notes. All links will be in there, also the link to the book that you cannot miss. I'm looking forward to read it. Thank you so much for listening, and I think this episode is so useful. Please share it with people around you. There will be people that can learn from it. Also, if you're not yet following the show, this is a really good moment to do this. If you haven't given me a review yet, this would help me reach an even bigger audience and, of course, I would like to see you back next time. Take care.