Charting the course: Fireblocks’ Vision for the Future of Digital Assets and Custody

1/ In this fireside chat at REDeFiNE TOMORROW 2024, Michael Shaulov @mikeshaulov, CEO & Co-founder of Fireblocks @FireblocksHQ, shared insights on the evolving needs of their customers in the digital asset space. Fireblocks provides infrastructure for custody, asset transfers, and more. The session was moderated by Chris Ahn @ahnchrisj of @HaunVentures

2/ Fireblocks currently works with about 1800 clients and is on track to transfer over $1 trillion per year. Their product portfolio has expanded to address trends and needs in the space, such as providing payment and tokenization engines.

3/ One powerful use case Fireblocks is seeing is the use of stablecoins, primarily USDT and USDC, for moving payments across inefficient corridors or areas with limited access to cheap banking. This is happening between Europe, Africa, US, LATAM, and APAC.

4/ Tokenization is another area of growing demand. With around $150 billion in stablecoins in circulation, people are looking to generate yields through tokenized traditional instruments like money market funds and fixed income.

5/ The approval of the Bitcoin ETF has been important for inflows and the investment thesis in Bitcoin. It makes investing in Bitcoin more accessible to traditional capital market investors who previously faced regulatory compliance and knowledge gaps.

6/ Asset managers launching Bitcoin ETFs have seen successful business cases, opening up their appetite for more digital asset offerings. For example, BlackRock launched a tokenized money market fund with Securitize after their Bitcoin ETF.

7/ Fireblocks is seeing linear growth in stablecoin usage for international payments. Crypto-native stablecoin remittance operators on their platform have shown exponential growth over the past couple of years, unaffected by cutoffs in the core crypto market.

8/ The momentum in stablecoin payments is reinforced by more players jumping in, traditional counterparties becoming comfortable, and prominent regulators allowing this activity under different licenses. Network effects are powerful in driving adoption.

9/ Regulatory clarity in the US, likely through the stablecoin bill, is a remaining hurdle for even greater institutional adoption of digital assets. This impacts banking relationships for stablecoin issuers and on/off ramps.

10/ Fireblocks continues to invest in working with predominant players in the payment space, offering capabilities like cross-border transfer orchestration, treasury management, and merchant services through their payment engine.

11/ In the Web3 space, Fireblocks is excited about the use of NFTs and token economies for innovative loyalty initiatives. They partnered with Flipkart on a loyalty program reaching 3.2 million users and driving significant GMV across sellers.

12/ Other interesting Web3 developments include attempts to disrupt social networks by incentivizing users and providing royalties to content creators, as well as ticketing use cases for concerts, airlines, and more.

13/ Web3 builders are now shifting focus from technology to user experience, adopting a "Web3 in the back, Web2 in the front" approach.

14/ Looking ahead, Shaulov is keen on seeing how blockchain technology can address challenges in the private credit space and create completely new offerings at the intersection of financial assets and Web3 experiences.

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