Cryptocurrencies have captured the attention and imagination of a new generation of investors across the globe. From Bitcoin to Ethereum to the growing list of altcoins, there’s little question that the volatile and fast-moving crypto industry keeps participants, observers, and regulators on edge. More and more, though, mainstream companies are looking at cryptocurrencies and adjacent technologies as a way to tap into new markets—or to create them from scratch in new, virtual worlds.
To features the latest news and trading updates from the digital currency world, IASC conducted an interview with the Professor and a well-known Global Public Speaker, Mr. Gustavo Montero. He has over 30 years banking finance experience. He opened Standard Chartered Bank in Switzerland and was also a Board Member of Cramer Bank. Previous to this Montero was trained as an Internal Auditor by PwC. For the last 8 years he has been very active in the Crypto space and has launched several initiatives such as Carter & Capital, our strategic partner at IASC.
Denisa Kele, Blockchain Managing Director of the IASC: I am going to ask what is most important now for the investors and what is the issue living us sleepless at night, so we have seen crypto winter experience this time, and June in particular was a very difficult time, so. So, companies saw the market capitalization from three $3 trillion go down to almost $1, so we see companies who are now layoffs and and froze their withdrawals. We saw companies who fail from the start of bankruptcy. So some experts are warning what worst maybe have to come. What is your opinion of this? Do you think that crypto is going to see the light to the end of the tunnel, or at all this market and crypto will be in the end a Ponzie Scheme?
Professor Gustavo Montero: Is that the thing that we need to understand. Is that the economic cycle are normal. Economic cycles are between 3 to 5 years. I have been in the financial markets for over 30 years, and i have seen many of them. This is just another one of them, which has affected all assets classes, you know the traditional and crypto ones. Personally i don’t see a problem with that. I think that, the reflection of what’s happening in markets is a fact that we had wait for a while, I quite broken financial system, that was manifested by the excessive quantitative money done by central banks, both in Europe, in the U.S. and in other places. It has provided quite of negative factors globally and that’s affected tradition market and crypto market as well. So i do not see there is a problem. I see this as a natural situation in the global market and as a matter of fact, digital assets or cryptocurrencies what you call it, are really a solution for this world more than a problem. and i can only see them going up again. It’s happening, by the way, as we speak today and the last few days, you’ve seen the main cryptocurrencies going up, and will continue simply because there is no solution for our broken global financial system, and cryptocurrencies represent an option for many investitors.
Igli Tola – Project Coordinator of the IASC: So, Professor, first of all, thank you for your time. My question is related to the financial markets in general. You spoke mostly about liquid assets and crypto currencies markets. But let’s see the situation in a wider scope. So we know that the pandemic crisis, followed by the effects of the war, have caused lots of economic and financial problems in markets. And typically the financial markets are actually quite hardcore and the city region continues to be unclear and the people and the economic actors are in crisis helpless. How do you see the future, the development of these cryptocurrencies markets to grow in these two instances and of the general in general, the financial markets? Are they going to be also in the next months in crisis or the future will be better, in your opinion?
Professor Gustavo Montero: Totally, no problem. I think that we need to get back to basics here. You are speaking about the global financial markets. The reality is that since we abandoned the gold standard a number of years ago, central banks decided simply to print money. This is happening in the States. I think that this morning in the U.S. to announce a new plan for something like $2.5 billion or something like that. I saw in the news this morning is this money is coming from nowhere. Is just printed. There’s is no backing or anything in terms of financial market. So, yes, we have a global problem. Yes, the financial market globally is in some dark problems, and cryptocurrencies and digital assets in general represent the other part of the equation, which is the solution. Let’s remember that cryptocurrencies are non-inflationary. If you take just one example, like Bitcoin, which is the one that most people know, this currency only has 21 million coins. Will never be printed more coins than that. Therefore, the future deflationary assets compared to the future of inflationary assets is quite brilliant If today you have your assets denominated in euros or dollars, you’re losing about 10% of the value of your assets every year, just by definition, just by having them in those currencies, in those denominations. So yes, clearly, cryptocurrencies represent an option for investors, which is, in my opinion, much more solid and much robust than the options that we have on traditional financial markets.
Gabriele Pao Pei Andreoli – President of IASC: Fantastic! Is that the reason why we see more and more governments getting interested in cryptocurrencies? I know you are involved also with some legislation, you involved in working out some problems for the big institutions. It will be interesting and also for the general public to understand, that is not a game that some private people are playing, but It’s something big globally, it’s backed up.
Professor Gustavo Montero: No, no, it’s clearly there in not a game. It’s quite big. As Denisa pointed out early on, the value of this industry, the industry of digital assets and cryptocurrencies in particular, is worth $1 trillion today. You think about the fact that the global value of the economy today is around $100 trillion. In terms of governments, absolutely governments are having huge trouble dealing with cryptocurrencies, mostly because of sovereignty issue. Meaning the following, some of these assets worth more than the value of the entire GDP of many countries. Therefore, we are looking at the situation where governments are having to deal with it, and as matter of fact, there is doing something called CBDC, a Central Bank Digital Currency, which iare by the way, not cryptocurrencies, is a centralized asset manage and own by the government. Do not confuse that. But they are getting into “digital money” envoirment. Clearly, we will come and see the move into it. I would suspect that central banks will begin soon having cryptocurrencies part of portfolio. Some of them do by the way, but it’s not publicly announced for obvious reasons.
In our firm, Carter &Capital, we’re currently advising three countries that are trying to do it. El Savador already did by accepting cryptocurrencies, and Salvador already did by accepting crypto as legal tender. Central Africa followed them just a couple of months ago, and we have a number of countries doing this. We have the possibility and the honor to write a law in the Constitution of one of these countries that is going to put law between the end of the year, where basically, they are trying to have their entire governments functioning based on blockchain technologies. And the logical definition afterwards is cryptocurrencies. Blockchain technology, is the vehicle throgh which we issue cryptocurrencies. So, yes Gabriele, governments are getting into it. They’re trying to deal with it. There were some news this morning about regulatory environment and regulations in Europe, which is notable. They have to deal with it. They are doing it, in a timid way because there’s a governments that work very slow, they’re very scared, which is normal. But in my opinion, they will end up in the digital assets or crypto assets environment without any doubt.
Gabriele Pao Pei Andreoli – President of IASC: I see that also because with the blockchain at the Institute now we have some projects also with the with the military trying to use blockchain to develop the better, energy saving system. So I see blockchain is stealing, you know, from cryptocurrencies to, to to digital contracts to everything. And it seems a very exciting position where are you standing right now? Because you can really see, you know, what’s going on. And with Carter Capital, I know you’re doing a terrific job.