Dash CEO and former Wall Street executive Ryan Taylor spoke out about the recent Wall Street activity seen in the cryptocurrency space recently, with ICE establishing a bitcoin market and financialization coming in from other avenues of the traditional finance world.
Dash CEO Explains Why He Left Wall Street to Go All in on Crypto
In an exclusive interview, Taylor told CCN:
“I was led away from Wall Street for two primary reasons. The first is the tremendous opportunity I believe is inherent in the space. This is an incredibly immature industry with enormous potential for well-run projects. The second reason is that this technology has the potential to change the world for the better by empowering some of the most disaffected people in the world with a greater degree of financial freedom. It is truly an exciting place to be working.”
Dash is a cryptocurrency and a digital autonomous organization (DAO) aimed at enabling merchants to handle private payments in crypto. The currency has been adopted in Venezuela by over 800 merchants and is also active in Zimbabwe.
After working for 15 years in financial services and technology, Taylor left his position as a hedge fund analyst working for a $20 billion investment firm based in New York to set up Dash, and he has some interesting insights into how things work behind the scenes in the traditional finance world.
“Wall Street has a tendency to work on major new developments in private, and I suspect many others are working on solutions, even while simultaneously publicly shunning cryptocurrencies,” said Taylor.
Cryptocurrency Doesn’t Need Wall Street
The effects of mainstream financial institutions investing in crypto has yet to be seen, but Taylor believes that crypto will make its own way regardless of outside influence.
“Crypto doesn’t need Wall Street to grow. It is getting adopted more and more every year with or without it. There are major benefits and drawbacks from its involvement, but I think netting those out, it is an overall positive thing that crypto is becoming more and more integrated with the traditional financial system.”
“Cryptocurrency can become much easier to use if it is integrated with other financial systems and add to its utility. Would you rather use the U.S. dollar if it were not integrated with the financial system? By turning the question around, it becomes obvious that this will help crypto adoption,” he added.
While Taylor acknowledges that there are benefits as well as disadvantages to Wall Street becoming more involved in crypto, there are other obstacles to be dealt with before we see widespread adoption.
“Right now, regulatory uncertainty is preventing a lot of businesses from jumping in to provide services or become comfortable accepting payments in digital currencies. Regulators will eventually catch up and provide businesses with the guidance they need to gain comfort with it.”
“With banks now jumping into the space, I think regulators will need to finally address this. The problem is that regulators tend to focus on institutions, and this was unusually a market that developed from a grassroots movement by regular people, rather than the financial institutions. Regulators got caught on their back heels as a result, but seem to be catching up to the need quickly,” he concluded.
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