EXCLUSIVE: Why Traditional Banks Could Play A Major Role In Crypto Mass Adoption

Mina Khattak, senior director crypto and Web3 at Worldpay, recalled at Benzinga’s Future of Digital Assets event how FTX was in her company’s boarding process, but was not approved.

That lucky sidestep underscores the importance of implementing extensive checks and due diligence, including know-your-customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) protocols.

“The ability for Web2 companies and traditional financial services companies to start offering these services is going to make consumers a little more comfortable and giving them payment methods to acquire crypto is also going to facilitate onboarding — by layering all of those many steps with a trusted brand will help onboard users at scale,” she said.

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Getting retail banks involved in the transaction of cryptocurrency would be a major step toward getting more investors to trade the asset class and, eventually, move forward to mass adoption, Khattak and other panelists explained.

An onslaught of fraudsters, hacks, scams and blunders saw millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin ($BTC) and other assets disappear in recent years: Onboarders of potential cryptocurrency traders are in the difficult position of rebuilding trust.

Eric Parker, co-founder of cryptocurrency wallet app Giddy, said that increasing adoption of crypto boils down to getting money onto the blockchain and keeping it safe while it’s there.

“You have to ask what are the use cases to make people willing to take money out of their savings accounts and be willing to put it on the blockchain,” he said.

“It’s not that different to the 1990s when people started offering retail services over the internet and in a world of higher inflation and traditional markets that offer limited yield, decentralized finance is an escape from a system that is failing people,” he added.

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