There is a growing trend of professionals and experts from traditional financial service companies engaging in digital assets.

 

 

Paul Tudor Jones, the ex-head of HSBC legal , is to head up Libra as its CEO. Given he was Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence for the U.S. Treasury for 7 years he will be well-aware of what governments are looking for and, no doubt, will be trying to position Libra to be acceptable. Jones, who was famous for predicting the 1987 crash, claims Bitcoin is the best bet against inflation that will arise from governments printing cash;

British historian Niall Ferguson, previously professor at Harvard and New York Universities and senior research fellow at Jesus College, Oxford when asked about Digital Assets  stated, “I think the right lesson to draw from all of is that a global order needs to be based on a distributed operating system, not on a centralized architecture...", noting that cryptocurrencies are “essentially digital gold”;

Angela Knight, former COO of Standard Bank Private Bank in the UAE, has joined as a member of the advisory board of 220, the new challenger digital private banking start-up which is looking to offer access to digital assets as well as traditional assets to clients;

Caitlin Long, who ran Morgan Stanley’s pension solutions business for 9 years and held senior roles at Credit Suisse for 10 years has now set up Avanti - a US bank specialising in providing payment, custody, securities and commodities activities for institutional customers using digital assets;

Christopher Giancarlo former Chairman of U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, is co-looking at a CBDC digital dollar with Accenture.  Giancarlo shown support  as he was reported saying; “unlike bank transfers, crypto asset transactions can be cleared and settled quickly without an intermediary”;

In May 2020, China is going to issue its own CBDC in a selection of cities across the country. Popular refreshment and food outlets including McDonald’s, Starbucks and Subway have all reportedly been invited to trial this new Digital Asset.