Is Crypto Becoming Fintech? | Nick Almond

I don't think we deserve a full bear market this time. So my heuristic for sort of crypto bear markets is, do we deserve it? Is is there enough scam that needs to be purged from the system? And I don't feel like we deserve it this time. For the first time, every previous bear market, I felt like, yeah, we absolutely deserved that. There's too much potential. There's too there's too much moving at the big scale for it to feel, like, completely hopeless at this point. Welcome to The Breakdown. I'm your host, David Canales. The following conversation flows on from a recent episode which growing relationship between crypto and fintech and the tension over which camp stands to benefit the most as global finance moves on chain. For the best viewer experience, it's worth going back and checking it out if you missed it. And don't forget to hit like and subscribe so you don't miss anymore. And with that out of the way, let's start the show. Nothing said on the breakdown is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone in the show are opinions, not financial advice. Hosts and guests may hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed. With me is returning guest Nick Armond, the head of governance at the Judo Foundation. Welcome back, Nick. Hi, David. Good to see you again. Cool. Okay. So the topic of today is, yeah, fintech and whether whether crypto is becoming fintech or or the other way around whether fintech is going crypto. So I suppose a good way to start this is, you know, Solana is so crypto native and and Jita itself is also crypto native within the that context too. So do you feel like you're working in fintech or do you feel like you're you're working in crypto these days? It's an interesting question. I I I do feel like Jito feels very crypto to work at. Attitude, sort of the pace, frontier technology. It certainly doesn't feel like what I conceptualize fintech as. Is it getting more institutional? Is more of the conversation becoming about how we interact with institutions and is more of it becoming about conversations around ETFs and ETPs and and, custodial integration, things like that. Yeah. Absolutely. There's more of the conversation is increasingly taking institutional form, but it's also, you know, frontier technology. And we're sort of deep in architecting how blocks are built, and it feels very new in that sense. It's new market structure and a new world that we're playing in. But there is certainly an element of the this the synthesis happening between the sort of traditional world and crypto. Yeah. And it's difficult because, yeah, the the frontier technology thing, by by warrant of that definition, you're gonna start with a relatively small user base and then have to go out and find new users. …