How Crypto is Transforming Traditional Banking: Podcast Ep. 163

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Chainalysis
06-03

This is the third episode from our “Live from Links” series, where we take the hottest conversations that were recorded live from the Chainalysis Links conference in New York City. Solana spot ETF applications, the OCC green lighting digital asset activity and the US emphasizing its desire to be the crypto capital of the world. It’s hard not to feel the momentum that is happening in the US and worldwide when it comes to crypto transforming traditional banking. In this episode, Eitan Danon (Content Marketing Manager, Chainalysis) has an in person discussion with Carlos Salinas, Head of Digital Assets at Morabanc on the fascinating intersection of fintech, digital assets and traditional banking in Andorra.

You can listen or subscribe now on Spotify, Apple, or Audible. Keep reading for a full preview of episode 163.

Public Key Episode 163: The World’s First Digital Asset Custody Wallet in Andorra

Solana spot ETF applications, the OCC green lighting digital asset activity and the US emphasizing its desire to be the crypto capital of the world. 

It’s hard not to feel the momentum that is happening in the US and worldwide when it comes to crypto transforming traditional banking. 

In this “Live from Links” episode, Eitan Danon (Content Marketing Manager, Chainalysis) has an in person discussion with Carlos Salinas, Head of Digital Assets at Morabanc on the fascinating intersection of fintech, digital assets and traditional banking in Andorra.

Carlos shares how his bank has responded to both client demand and new forms of economic activity, highlighting their novel digital asset custody solutions and the transformative role of regulatory frameworks that Andorra implemented three years ahead of its European peers, allowing Morabanc to navigate the burgeoning digital asset landscape effectively. 

The conversation highlights the crucial balance between risk mitigation and innovation, drawing parallels between the evolution of derivatives and the current wave of cryptocurrencies, while discussing the bank’s strategy in offering stablecoin-based settlement solutions.

This is truly a snapshot of current trends but also a look at the future potential for programmable finance and digital assets.

Quote of the episode

” In 2021 the Andorran Government passed a law about digital assets, which is pretty similar to what MiCA is today in Europe. So we are kind of 3 years ahead from our peers in the rest of Europe. So we’ve had this opportunity to basically test out, what is the role of a traditional bank within the digital asset space. – Carlos Salinas (Head of Digital Assets, Morabanc)

Minute-by-minute episode breakdown

2 | Comparing derivatives in the early 2000s to early days of cryptocurrency

4 | Andorra: Unique characteristics and financial environment

6 | Morabanc’s role in digital asset custody came from customer demand

11 | The impact the USA momentum on digital assets has around the world

14 | Introducing Morabanc’s revolutionary new  stablecoin settlement solution 

19 | Consumer protection and crypto security at Morabanc

21 | Future roadmap for Morabanc and digital assets

25 | Attackers try to hack Carlos on LinkedIn

Related resources

Check out more resources provided by Chainalysis that perfectly complement this episode of the Public Key.

Speakers on today’s episode

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Transcripts 

Eitan 

Hello and welcome to another episode of public key. I’m your host. Eitan Danon. I’m joined today by Carlos Salinas, head of digital assets at FinTech at Morabanc. Welcome to the pod, Carlos. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It’s great to have you here before we jump in. I want to kind of scene set and get some, you know, baseline on your interest in technology as it applied to financial services. You know, when you were in school or at investment firms previously in your career, how did your interest in technology broadly and in crypto in particular? How did that all get started? Yeah,

 

Carlos 

so basically, I’ve been working on the financial sector for all my life, basically the last 25 years. I come from an economic education background, so not, not really tech techie, by by training, by but just by personal interest. I’ve always been basically, really, really interested in technology and how, basically it helps, you know, improve processes and things. In my finance career, I’ve always been working on the on the edge of things, like with very complex subjects, and always looking it from a risk perspective. So you kind of need to bring technology into it to make it work right when, when I started working in India and in the early 2000s in investment banks were starting to basically work with derivatives, and that’s something that basically is quite reminiscence from what we’ve seen today with crypto. Right at the time, derivatives was only restricted to very professional type of investors, and and it was basically like devil in the room, right? No one wanted to talk about it because it was very complex, very risky. And the truth of the matter is that no one really understood that. So as soon as it started, but basically getting more mainstream, then, you know, you get derivatives everywhere. So I’m kind of seeing the same trend here with with digital assets and yep, and I’ve always believed that the future of finance is programmable, so it kind of basically all fall into place now.

 

Eitan 

Awesome. Well, before getting into discussions of innovation or the product line in motor bank, its location is super interesting, and I don’t want to throw shade at our listeners, but I would venture to say not all of our listeners could point to Andorra on a map bordering both France and Spain. Could you share some unique characteristics of the country? Certainly, Andorra known for tax advantages, commercial banking options, you know, help us get a baseline about that a little bit. What’s the environment? What are some of the unique characteristics, sure,

 

Carlos 

well, and that is a fascinating place, not just for banking and innovation, just as a country. Basically, he was founded in in 805 by Carlo Magno. When, when he was going through, he was coming,

 

Eitan 

yeah, English, yeah, yeah. He

 

Carlos 

was conquering everything, you know, from from the North. He went over the Pyrenees. He had a very hard time there. And the people living there, which basically were farmers and mountain people, they helped them a lot. And basically, as a gift, he founded Andorra and give the land to the to the people living there, and basically has been like that since then. So it is basically the oldest country in Europe which which borders, hasn’t been touched since then. So it has always remained like, like, neutral and independent. And even though we were not part of the European Union. We obviously have very strong ties and relationship with them, especially on a political let’s say it sets up, although, and there is a constitutional country, basically we hold the the old kind of structure in which basically that’s we have two principles, okay, one is the Bishop of the of La sale, which is a town nearby in Spain. And the other one is the, is the President of France in this in this case, Macron is our CO Prince. So basically, lots of history, lots of tradition, and basically, well, the and lots of always in innovation, you know, living in the in that type of environment, and to be able to, basically to develop what Andorra has become over the years. You know, you needed, like people, like very innovative, very forward thinkers and very, very, extremely resilient. Yeah, extremely resilient, you know, because the environment is really tough in that and especially what we have now, Android is kind of, basically, it’s a love country. There’s a lot of regulation being passed in terms of a Digital Economy and Innovation and trying to attract entrepreneurs and. On a new business models, and to test, to test out different ideas, like from mobility to environmental to finances. Specifically what we’re doing, it’s quite interesting place to be. That’s

 

Eitan 

great. Well, you know Mora bank, you know you were the first to introduce a digital asset custody wallet in Andorra, what are for our listeners? What are some of the use cases for your bank, kind of straddling tradfi and crypto, or what are some of the more innovative offerings that you bring to the market?

 

Carlos 

Well, for us, was basically like we saw that as an opportunity. In 2021 the Andorran government passed a law about digital assets, which is pretty similar to what Mika is today Europe. So we have, we’ve had this kind of three year. We are kind of three years ahead from, from our peers, in in, in the rest of Europe. So we’ve had the this opportunity to actually to test out, to test out, what is the role of a traditional bank within the Digital Asset space. And the conclusions are basically that, okay, regulation is so important without a framework or some rules in which, basically, you can develop safely, safe products for for for the clients and for the bank, that’s it cannot be done. So we had that check, and then the other thing that we had basically, was basically natural client, demand and Dora. Since the since COVID, has become basically a place in which a lot of people, a lot of new people, is coming to live once, basically, well, one of the good things that COVID brought to us was, you know, the, you know, the mass approach to tell it to telework, right? Yeah. And basically that’s been like a massive unlocker in which basically people have been coming to Andorra to live. They work from there. They serve clients all over the world, and most of them and because the profit of these people that has come to livestondor is pretty digital, pretty native digital. They deal in in digital assets. But still, they have the same problems that every, you know, everyday person has, like, Okay, fine. I take my salary. I take part of my salary on on stable coin or Bitcoin or whatever, but at the end of the day, I need to pay my rent Euro, so I need to basically do my groceries and stuff. So what these people were facing was basically were regular banking issues that we couldn’t solve because we couldn’t prove source of funds. We didn’t understand their business model. Everything sounded weird around them, right? So was that’s, that’s one of the things that we did, pretty much the main thing that we did was, okay, really, to understand these new needs and to basically, to take on the role of servicing this our society. This is a new form of economy is a new form of seeing life. And we, as a banks, we need to offer services at the, you know, at the end of the day. And we basically, we, we saw that. So basically the combination of both things, you know, Native Client demand for traditional banking services, mixed up with digital assets or new business models and the regulation these two things together, that’s what basically gave us the the, let’s say, the green light to to start working on digital assets. Excellent.

 

Eitan 

Well, you before your current role in motor bank, you were ahead of risk for 10 years. Yep, you know, you’ve transitioned from a very risk mitigation centric role to, I think it’s fair to say, one that revolves more around innovation and marrying up all of the different demand signals in Andorra in general, and then among its neighbors, and kind of bringing together all of those different payment systems and rails. What has it been like for you? Kind of going from some of that risk mitigation centric philosophy or focus to, you know, a day job that focuses more on technology and harnessing the latest tech innovation. How do you kind of marry the two? Well, it’s been

 

Carlos 

like a great match, to be honest. That’s also probably, that’s also one of the things that I’ve been able to do this within the bank is I’ve been there for a long time. I was holding a position which was basically risk management, so I had the confidence of the board. I had the confidence of my CEO. So this also played an important role in me getting the mandate, okay, not just my personal experience, my personal interest, which also took it was very important, because, you know this, because I consider myself an entrepreneur, and I think basically innovation in the financial sector is extremely difficult to do from the outside. And I. I think you know is, you know, the, if you have the right ingredients, you know the way to do this from the from the inside out, in terms of basically, and my risk background is definitely helping me a lot to be, to be very, you know, to be very picky around basically what we do with with whom we do business. We are applying all these, you know, all these due diligence that basically for us, is kind of second nature. But when you are actually engaging new crypto firms, you realize that, basically, yeah, they know a lot about crypto, but they know very little about, basically how the financial sector works. And

 

Eitan 

usually people know a lot about one or the other, but not both Exactly, exactly, right?

 

Carlos 

So. But the thing is, and that’s why I believe that the financial sector once, basically they they get the head, the head around that, and with all the news that we’ve seen about, you know, all the regulation going, for instance, here in the US and all the unlockers that I believe we’re going to see in the in months to come, they’re going to realize that basically, you know, the tough part is already done by the banks. Okay, we have, we have compliance teams, we have legal teams, we have processes. We have this mindset of risk mitigation around the bank. You know, it’s basically, it is embedded into the culture you have the first line of defense, second line of defense, third line of defense. This is very expensive to build, and it takes a long time. Also important, we already have really good relationships with our regulators, with which, you know, they’re going to also be in charge of regulating digitalized activity. So this is something that it doesn’t happen in a week. It takes years and years and years to build cultural

 

Eitan 

shift exactly right well as a risk professional let me rewind. I would say, like a chain analysis, certainly, we’re focused on the broadening of crypto crime and the professionalization of crypto crime and diversification across lots of different crime types. So we’re seeing growth in the areas way beyond just the cyber domain, I mean, in every category across the globe. So are you, you know, as a risk professional now, and one focused on tech, what are some of the bigger financial crime concerns that you’re trying to mitigate on a daily basis? When we talk about mitigation, what is it that kind of, I won’t say that keeps you up at night, but what is on, what is on the front burner, on, you know, Carlos’ agenda? Well,

 

Carlos 

for us, it’s really, it’s extremely important, basically, to understand our clients and to understand the the origin of funds and basically, and how those funds have moved around the the blockchain before you come to us. So we need to have that crystal clear. We can have any doubt absolutely for custody, for custody, right or off ramping. We for both services. We, we, we offer the off ramp servicing, which basically clients. They have money on exchanges or on wallets or whatever, and they need to have euros, and they want to bring Fiat over, we do all the analysis, and basically we help them as much as we can to bring that money over. It’s new business for the bank, and then also the customer, and then on the on the custody side the same we also accept, accept, like existing Bitcoin or Ethereum. We trace everything up to the point in which the wallet to Wallet transaction has to be, that has has to be made. We monitor everything, and we make sure that all all gets perfectly documented and agreed. And actually we do that, you know, on a case by case basis, because the service that we’re offering is not retail. It’s just basically we are servicing high net worth individuals. So so for us, basically we have few clients, but they have, you know, sizable portfolios of digital assets. That’s one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is starting to bring, to open up the asset class to existing wealth clients that we have that basically, they’ve never touched the asset because, you know, they weren’t feeling confident about sending money somewhere else or whatever, and we’re basically removing the like technological complexity from the equation and treating the asset as any other thing. So they can if they want to allocate 123, up to 5% which I think what everybody should have of the wealth in Bitcoin or Ethereum or a combination of both, that especially we facilitate that. That’s

 

Eitan 

awesome. I think when we talk about demystifying cryptocurrency and making it more accessible, you know, an entity like morab Bank is doing a lot, I think, to bring it to the masses and increase adoption. You’ve posted on LinkedIn, I think recently. Be just about where you think things are going when it comes to crypto and the financial industry, different plays being made by Coinbase, tether, GameStop. What are some of the most interesting stories you think going on right now that you would encourage our listeners to pay attention to?

 

Carlos 

Well actually, lately we’ve seen a lot of it. Actually today we have the the Liberation Day announcement right

 

Eitan 

in in quotes. Yeah, right. So

 

Carlos 

we are all very expect, you know, and really, you know, eager to see what, what the President is going to say about that, you know, it’s a lot of basically FOMO around, around this type of announcements, and we’ll see, probably, you know, this podcast will be out before

 

Eitan 

the fear of missing out, and also the joy of missing out. So, exactly, exactly,

 

Carlos 

it’s a bit crazy, actually, yeah, actually, yesterday, also, you know, the letter of Blackrock, right? It was, you know, it’s a very, very interesting read as well, you know, around basically, it’s just basically, now, no, you know, it’s just basically they don’t hit anything at all. It’s just basically they say that, you know, everything is going to be tokenized. And the change is coming very, very quickly and very soon to all of us. So all these things are really important. And regarding the news, basically, the pace at which this stuff, you know, the sector, is going is quite, you know, it’s dizzying, exactly, right, exactly. It’s just so, so fast, you know. And there are so many things happening at the same time that you kind of lost track. But to be honest, for me, you know, this, this, there were, you know, like when we started, like, getting ready for this podcast, there were other things. But then for me, now, the lottery, fling ledza, basically, you know, it’s a 24 pages document, you know, there’s a lot of material there. I recommend everyone to read that, to go through it, you know, what, very you know, without, with a with a critical mind, of course, but I think you know, setting up is setting up the robot for what the financial sector would look like in a few years time.

 

Eitan 

Excellent. Does some of that momentum in the US now? Does that open up opportunities? Do you think for Mura bank to offer a wider range of services, or kind of to expand the clientele, or is it more focused on the EU local market, EU market. How do you view that? Well, at

 

Carlos 

the end of the day, you know, the the the US market, the US investor is a huge force in the market, not just globally, yeah, not just digital assets, basically any decisions made on US soil, they reverberate across to all of us, right? So we have seen, like, huge movement since, since President Trump came, came to the White House and started basically signing all these executive orders. Basically the European politicians are like, basically chickens with our head just running all over the place. And it’s kind of quite, quite funny to see things that we had all all in the you know, thinking about, you know why we know why we don’t do this. We why wouldn’t you do that? You know. Now they want to, basically, to catch up to 25 years of inactivity in two years time now, with the savings union in Europe, rearm Europe, all these things, you know. So basically, anything that happens in the US, you know, has an impact on the interest of the world. And when you add the digital layer to all this, it’s just gonna get quicker, right? Changes are gonna be much faster. And you know, to be honest, I don’t know how we as a society, we’re gonna really cope with this, because when you start basically adding AI digital rails, changes that happen so quickly within so with some with with that much weight in terms of influencing politics and influencing the life of millions and millions of people, it’s going to be very interesting. To be honest, I think it’s a great place. It’s a great time. It’s a great time to be alive. You know, it’s so crazy. Yeah,

 

Eitan 

no shortage of interesting things. Exactly. Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but Mora bank is developing a stable coin based settlement solution to streamline custody. Can you walk our listeners through a little bit in a little more detail how that works? I think the use courses, use cases for stable coins, are growing by the minute, and certainly not only in the US, but globally, you know, increasing clarity and increasing increasingly frequent discussions around stables. What is the settlement solution? How does it work? And how will it be beneficial for motor banks customers? Yep,

 

Carlos 

basically, what we have is, well, as I said before, basically, I mean, I’m an entrepreneur, right? And because the solution, and the digital solution, because it is scattered for, basically, for a select group of clients. Is, we can, you know, we can pretty much play as we were a startup. So what we realized when we started working with it, and we started getting more, a bit more volumes on it, is that basically mixing the traditional rails and the digital rails, it was basically, you know, dampening the whole process, okay, in which basically, if a client wants to buy bitcoin, but then takes two days for them to take delivery, because I need to send the dollars, you know, through the physical rails. You know, the experience as a whole doesn’t really, you know, it’s not good, good, good, good enough, in my opinion. So basically, what we did is basically, really separate, both both worlds. You know, they work in parallel, different speeds, but I just wanted to make sure that at least the digital asset leg was complete. So basically, not just basically being able to go out to the liquidity providers and get bitcoin or Ethereum, but also at the same time sending them stable coin for that to settle instantly, right? So I execute the trade. I send the stable coin, I get delivery of the Bitcoin in question of like minutes, and I remove all the, let’s say, counterparty risk from from the equation, then the digital, the Fiat part of the transaction. It just goes at its own pace, right? But at least, you know, I can, I can show the clients that they’re digital, that their wallets are completely settled, and basically all the assets that they purchase are perfectly booked and accounted for on the ledger. So that’s pretty much. It is pretty simple idea, but it removes a lot of basically friction. And what we’ve what I’ve noticed by doing this at my scale, which I repeat, is, you know, very small scale. But what I’ve noticed is that basically the the inner inevitability of it all okay. When you are basically doing this, and you notice that basically the same 50k takes one minute, a few minutes to settle in one side and on the other side, it takes two, three days for that to go, go, go back and forth, there are basically days of uncertainty that you don’t know where the money is or it can be stopped somewhere, somewhere along the transit, right exactly in transit that you know is there’s a lot of uncertainty around that. There’s a lot of people involved in that. There’s a lot of companies, different players, involved in that. Whereas the other side, it just takes a few minutes of instant, atomic settlement and liquidity, it’s just going to go in that direction. It cannot go anywhere else. No, the savings are so huge, the savings that can be realized by applying blockchain technology to traditional financial sector processes is so big, there’s a

 

Eitan 

lot of alpha to be made. I think operational alpha, right? Exactly,

 

Carlos 

so, so big that that it cannot be, it cannot be ignored anymore, right? And I think that’s, that’s the way it’s gonna go five years to be is true that the financial sector, traditional, has a lot of motion and traction, and it’s like this big elephant that moves, moves very, very slowly, but they but what we like a lot in the international friendly sector is like, like, three peanuts, right? And, you know, there’s a full bag of free peanuts out there. When you start basically implementing or adopting this new way of doing things. It’s just, it’s a new way of doing things, so nothing else. Yeah,

 

Eitan 

I think when we look at web two in the early days, and to see where we are right now on the internet with encryption and being able to enter personal information securely, it’s very interesting, you know, to take that analogy and look and see where we are crypto wise and in terms of blockchain, and to fast forward and say, like, well, how might, what might the analog be in five years? I think we’re definitely speeding up faster than many people can keep track. But it’s

 

Carlos 

true, and especially is at the end of the day, we are companies that, basically, we worry about our bottom line and and this is, this is going to be a bigger locker of opportunities, and also it’s going to remove a lot of competition, because this is like a Kodak moment for the industry, right? Definitely, it’s like, okay, you know, people are not buying films anymore. They go digital. You know, probably, you know, the digital experience today is a bit you know, it’s not like what we have today, but it will happen. You know, definitely.

 

Eitan 

Well, I want to go back to consumer protection where, you know, just a bit over a month ish, after the bybit Hack, you know, and by bit made its customers whole, but certainly with the Celsius and FTX debacles in the rear view mirror. Beyond. Kind of looking at provenance, or kind of origin of funds, Counterparty, you know, customer funds. What steps is moda bank taking just to help customers feel at ease that their funds are safe and protected at rest and transit, kind of at all, all phases of the transactional life cycle. What does that look like risk management perspective?

 

Carlos 

Yeah, crypto security isn’t a promise, right? It’s it’s a process we build with compliance by design. That’s what we do, and basically, that’s what we’ve been doing for you know this? You know, Barbara is 90 years old. It’s been run by the fourth generation of the same family, which has acquired a new a new company, not a new company. And asset manager in Spain, which is adding 7 billion to our asset management, going to be a group close to 20 billion. So this only happens. You know, when you do things well by the book, you know very conscious about race, about processes, about your clients, and you know, that’s basically what we’re bringing on the table. We’re going to apply the same things, the same processes, the same ideas that have worked with us for the last 90 years to this new asset class. My experience this is never going to be as good as your code base up, or your binance app, you’re gonna have like, 200 different tokens to choose from. No, you’re gonna have fancy colors or like all that. No, their experience gonna be much more, much more different than with this new, newcomer platforms, but on the on the other side, basically, you’re dealing with a company that basically has been through rough seas for many, many years, right? And we, we have survived, and we hear still offering services to our clients. So that’s the value, that’s the value that traditional sector needs to basically capitalize on, because, you know, from, you know, the technology raises lost. It’s completely lost. We, it doesn’t matter how much we invest, you know, we cannot compete with what is already out there, but what, what we but what we can compete with, with, with, with, you know, bringing this, you know, bringing this, this the this historic trust, and putting value to it, and put it on the table and say, Listen, here we are. We can help you build a part of your portfolio, or we can help you cross over some of your assets. And the thing is, you know, it’s basically, it’s always the same problems. It’s like people that started investing in 2010 2012 in crypto, and they’ve made it big. Well, they’re getting older, you know, time is going by, right? So they are starting to get worried about, like, inheritance taxes. Okay, how do I spend significant amount of money that comes from crypto On Dubai, like big house or a yo. So these kind of things are basically these COVID Just have been had. So, you know, without having a, like a, like a traditional financial partner that understands you and basically helps you, you know, cross over those bridges, it’s going to be very difficult, and I think it’s a huge opportunity. There is a huge business to be had there.

 

Eitan 

Absolutely. I mean, trust undergirds the entire ecosystem. If you don’t have that, you know of your clientele, but also you know of counterparties that your friends acting with you really don’t have anything. And I think being able to look at your customer base and say, Hey, we’ve navigated every up and down, every bear market. We’ve been through it. We’re here, and we’re integrating the latest tech. I think that goes a long way. Can you can you share with us a little bit what’s next on the roadmap from Mora bank as it pertains to FinTech in general, or digital assets and crypto offerings in particular, we talked about the stable coin settlement solution. Is there anything else you think our listeners should know about or that you would want to flag for them?

 

Carlos 

Yeah, it was from for more about crypto. It’s not it’s not a product. It’s a strategy, right? So we’re continuously looking at new ways of bringing value to our clients. So what we did, we launched two funds, one for Bitcoin, one for Ethereum, like physical physical custody funds. What I mean by that is basically we use the model of full segregation, full reserve, full segregation. Okay, so we wrap a wallet within a funded structure, and the clients that have the Bitcoin, or if they don’t have we buy them first, and then we put them and say, inside the fund, there is a reason for this. Is basically we’re transforming a digital, Native Asset into a financial product. So in terms of basically, accounting, taxes, valuation, everything else basically just works. I don’t need to touch anything on my let’s say core systems. Within the bank. So it’s like, this is like, like a shortcut to basically, not to having, not to basically create havoc on on the system. So basically it just works exactly as if you had an SRP 500 fund, whatever. Okay, so now what we have is we have the Bitcoin fund, the Ethereum fund, and now basically we’re gonna, we are getting ready to launch the Ethereum staking with the staking version of the fund. Fascinating, yeah, basically to want to also capitalize on on this yield opportunities, native yield opportunity for the Bitcoin fund. Basically, we are trying to think about about different options. But you know, since there is no like a defi native market or native defy systems on built around Bitcoin, you know you can lend out your bitcoins and get yield or whatever, but we don’t see, we see a lot of risk on doing that yet, so we need to understand that much, much better before we adventure doing something like that with Bitcoin, but with Ethereum, since it is native, we can run our own notes or whatever, and add that yield to the fund, which you know our clients are very, very happy with that

 

Eitan 

awesome well, thank you. This has been an illuminating conversation. What do you think is the best method for anyone who wants to follow up with you or kind of keep track of your work? How do you recommend people do that?

 

Carlos 

Well, I’m very active on LinkedIn. I post a lot, so you can just look me up on LinkedIn. I accept everybody so, so no worries about that. I also don’t

 

Eitan 

forget your risk mitigation. Now,

 

Carlos 

actually, this is, this is a nice one. I don’t know. I’m gonna tell you. I know if you want to put it, it’s fine. But I was someone tried to hack me the other day through LinkedIn. Basically they sent me. It was basically a very elaborated profile that got in touch with me, and they offered me like I was, it was, it was from a provider or something like that. They were offering me like a service. And what I said, I engaged into the conversation with this person, and we agreed to to do a call, right? And they sent me a link. Okay? North Korean hacker, yeah, they sent me. It was the by bit. It’s very,

 

Eitan 

very, you know, you’re kidding. I was joking. But here

 

Carlos 

no very similar, very similar to that. So basically, what they did is they, they sent me a link, okay, to go into this call. So I clicked the key, I click the link, but then it just came up a message. Say, Oh, your your camera is not working properly. You need to download these drives. I say, Hang on, this kind of ring the bell. So, okay, so what I did, and this is, you know, this is, you know, it’s basically our awareness. But sometimes, you know you you miss the point, right? Or you are not alert enough, okay, at the time, exactly. So what I did is I took the link and I, I sent and I and I put it on, on, on chat GPT. I say, hey, chat GPT, someone sent me this link. What should What should I do? I just posted the link. And then chat GPT just gave me a full explanation of what was going on behind scenes. That’s incredible, yeah, basically, was my, see, my CI me, my CISO, right? Like, real time there. So, right? So chat GPT just gave me, like, a full

 

Eitan 

explanation strategy, or just look at this, yeah, anatomy of it exactly so. And

 

Carlos 

then, basically, and then I flagged the guy on LinkedIn, and suddenly just disappeared. He was like, like, showing, you know, like a vampire, like, showing light to a vampire that just goes into dust, so

 

Eitan 

you’re not going to be custodying funds on behalf of that customer. No, no. But,

 

Carlos 

you know, it was, he was, you know, and so, so, you know, the, you know, risk

 

Eitan 

is at the core of everything. Absolutely, that’s what it looks like in the wild. Exactly. That’s great research as at the core

 

Carlos 

of everything. And, you know, we all have, like, personal responsibility to know about these things, you know. And especially, you know, I’m a public, you know, I’m a public person. I I do what I do. It also basically the way I do it is also basically to explain about my business, to obviously attract business towards those, my my bank and all that. But that that also has some risks that basically is the basically you can become a target of unwanted attention. And this was, this is an example. So, so be extra vigilant. Be extra vigilant. You know, read a lot, understand a lot, you know what’s going on, but because you know it’s a danger. Is a dangerous world out there, absolutely.

 

Eitan 

Well, I’m glad we ended the conversation with a bang. I think for our listeners, if you reach. To Carlos. Don’t send any links, any sketchy links, but yeah, muchas gracias. Safe Travel some. Thank you.

 

Carlos 

Thank you. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Bye.

The post How Crypto is Transforming Traditional Banking: Podcast Ep. 163 appeared first on Chainalysis.

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Disclaimer: The content above is only the author's opinion which does not represent any position of Followin, and is not intended as, and shall not be understood or construed as, investment advice from Followin.
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