Ep. 168: Dante Disparte - On Risk and the Future of Cryptocurrencies, Blockchain and Digital Finance

The All Things Risk Podcast

This is the second of our two consecutive episodes about cryptocurrencies, blockchain, and digital finance. You don’t need to have listened to the first of these with Ethan Lou in order to get out a lot of this one – at the same time, we do recommend you listen to it. In it, we covered the ‘wild west' of the cryptocurrency world.

Today, we continue to talk about the risks and opportunities in this space, but our focus turns to the present and future of these technologies – including other uses of blockchain, stablecoins, and even a prediction or two.

I am delighted to bring to you my conversation with Dante Disparte. Dante is a global leader in harnessing risk and emerging technologies to improve economic competitiveness and resilience. He is currently the Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Global Policy at Circle. Circle is a digital financial services firm, which among other things, has built the US dollar coin (USDC). Prior to this, Dante was a founding executive at the Diem Association. Diem (previously known as Libra) is the blockchain payment system of Meta (formerly known as Facebook of course). Dante was also a member of the USA’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). You may also be familiar with his name as he co-authored Global Risk Agility with Daniel Wagner, a frequent guest on All Things Risk.

We get into a fair bit in this conversation, including:

• The risks and opportunities of crypto and blockchain, which include Dante’s take on his former professor Nassim Taleb (author of The Black Swan)’s prediction that Bitcoin goes to zero. Dante has great respect for Taleb but disagrees with this particular take;
• Stablecoins and what Dante calls “digitally-enabled and secure networks”, including some interesting applications for these technologies;
• Geopolitics and cryptocurrencies;
• What the future holds;
• A lot more!

Show notes:

Dante’s website

Dante on Twitter

Circle

The US Dollar Coin (USDC)

Nassim Taleb’s take on Bitcoin

Yuval Noah Harari and Sapiens

Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and fraud

Our conversation with Oliver Bullough on “Moneyland”

“How Robert Mueller Used Bitcoin to Catch Russia”

The Diem / Libra project

The potential use of blockchain to speed up insurance payments following disasters

“Is America Losing the Digital Currency Race” – Dante’s piece in Project Syndicate

Web 3.0

Our episode on Global Risk Agility with Daniel Wagner

Our episode with Ethan Lou, author of “Once a Bitcoin Miner”

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