The right voices in the right rooms can reshape products, policies and hiring outcomes in the cryptocurrency space, three executives said Tuesday at the CoinDesk Consensus Conference in Miami. Each cited a moment in their own organization when an outside perspective changed what was being built, debated, or prioritized.
Maja Lapcevic, senior vice president of blockchain and digital assets at Mastercard, said her company’s cryptocurrency team initially viewed infrastructure as key to cryptocurrency adoption until partners reframed the problem around usability. “We probably all think infrastructure is the winning formula for cryptocurrencies,” she said. “But one of our partners actually really helped articulate how we could make cryptocurrencies accessible, not complicated, and very easy to use.” That thinking helped Mastercard launch a credit card tied to a stablecoin, she said, including targeting users in markets with limited access to traditional financial services.
Alison Mangiero, chief strategy officer at the Crypto Innovation Council, said her organization had a similar understanding of stakes after engaging builders in policy discussions. “Sometimes we may think we understand, or we put things in a bucket,” she said. “We’ll cut corners and say, oh, that sounds like a fund. Oh, that sounds like interest or yield, but actually what’s going on behind the scenes is fundamentally different.” After listening to the people building the staking primitive, CCI understood the need to describe staking as a technical service rather than a financialized product, she said.
Clerisy co-founder and managing partner Alexandra Wilkis Wilson made this argument in the hiring. “Many of us fall into a very comfortable bias of hiring people who don’t just look like ourselves or remind you of your younger self,” she said. She recalls a 10-person startup where Myers-Briggs analysis found that eight of the 10 team members were extroverts. “When you’re growing your team, it’s important to not only bring in diversity from the outside, but also consider diversity from the inside,” she said.
Mangiero ultimately sees the issue as one for the broader industry. Cryptocurrency, she said, “is now at a point where people are really interested in hearing our voices, but that begs the question, what is our voice ultimately?” She added that the conference “is called consensus for a reason.” Good policy, she said, requires the industry to ensure it reflects diverse communities, including token holders and people building on blockchain networks, while protecting consumers and allowing innovation to flourish.