6 questions for Mauro Casellini, CEO of Bitcoin Suisse Liechtenstein
Cointelegraph in English asks top minds from the DACH region six questions about the crypto and Blockchainindustry and deviates from the topic in between.
This week, our questions go to Mauro Casellini, CEO of Bitcoin Suisse (Liechtenstein) AG and head of Bitcoin Suisse Europe, where he is responsible for the company’s European operations. Before Casellini joined Bitcoin Suisse, he worked as Head of Blockchain and Payment Service Providers at Liechtenstein-based Bank Frick. Casellini is also a board member of the Crypto Country Association (CCA). Liechtenstein active, the official representation of the blockchain industry to government, regulators and companies.
Cointelegraph in English: How and when did you first get involved with cryptocurrencies?
Mauro Casellini: The first time I came up with bitcoin (Bitcoin) in 2012 during my studies of business administration. One of my professors introduced us to blockchain technology, carried out a Bitcoin transaction and explained why this is revolutionary and will change the financial world forever. Unfortunately, I dismissed this as a technical gimmick at the time, didn’t bother with it any further and lost sight of the topic for about three years.
In 2015, I came into contact with the topic through various customer inquiries at Bank Frick, my founder, employer and have already dealt with it intensively. I quickly ended up in the “rabbit hole”, read more and more about blockchain technology and dealt with the possible applications and individual cryptocurrencies. The greater my know-how in this area, the more convinced I became, and accordingly I actively advocated with my employer that we introduce an offer in the crypto area. Thanks to the support of my team and the support of the CEO and board of directors, this worked out and gave us the opportunity to be one of the first banks in Europe to implement a blockchain offer.
To this day, we are all unaware of what WILL be possible with blockchain technology. Here I always find parallels with the world of the internet and blockchain technology exciting. Compared to the Internet, in the blockchain world we are now in 1998, the year Google was founded. This realization shows me that we are still in our infancy and that everything can still happen or change in the near future.
CT: What were your most important (work) experiences in the last three years?
Mauro Casellini: The last three years in the blockchain industry have been exciting and there have been many notable events, both positive and negative. Of course I could talk about that here collapse of Terra (LUNA) or the Fall of FTX talk, but I would like to consciously focus on positive events.
An impressive and much-discussed event was when ElSalvador in September 2021 Bitcoin will be introduced as legal tender. In addition to the US dollar, since then it has been officially possible to pay with Bitcoin everywhere in the country. Other countries, such as Central Africa, already follows and others are in the process of introducing Bitcoin as official means of payment.
I see that as another important event Ethereum merge from September 2022. Since this date, the Ethereum blockchain has been running successfully based on the Proof-of-Stake algorithm (Pos), and another major milestone towards sharding, the enabling technology for higher scaling on the Ethereum blockchain, has been reached. How insane this event is is shown by the Ethereum Foundation’s apt comparison, which saw this transition from Proof of Work (PoW) to PoS as a spaceship I agreewhich mitten in flight exchanges the old engine for a new one.
Not a direct event, but a movement is the acceptance of cryptocurrencies by institutional financial market participants. Many large financial service providers have announced or announced their own investments in cryptocurrencies, new offers for end customers and partnerships with blockchain providers. One of many possible examples is BlackRock, die in August 2022 agreed an official partnership with Coinbase. The more big players from the traditional financial world discover the added value of Bitcoin and blockchain, the wider the acceptance and, above all, the benefits in the market will be.
CT: What will happen to Bitcoin and Ethereum in the next 10 years?
Mauro Casellini: Bitcoin will prove itself as a secure store of value, also known as a “Store of Value”, comparable to the function of today gold, push through. Bitcoin has many properties that would justify such a development today, but due to the still young history with the Genesis block in 2009, too little time has passed and there is not enough widespread acceptance. To name a few of these properties, Bitcoin is easily transferrable, can be verified for authenticity at any time and can be used in an almost unlimited number of ways.
Due to the rapid acceleration in the field of digitization and the emergence of digital central bank currencies (CBDC), the need for a completely decentralized and neutral solution, the Bitcoin but also other cryptocurrencies, will be very great.
ether will assert itself as one of the most important infrastructures for Web3.0. Ethereum is the most used infrastructure blockchain today and based on the roadmap I see no reason why it shouldn’t stay that way. The aforementioned merge was one of many steps and, especially in combination with so-called second-layer infrastructures such as Polygon or Scale, highly scalable solutions are already successfully in operation on Ethereum. More and more industries are using the blockchain as a base layer for their use cases and many of them are already based on Ethereum or a second layer.
Of course, in addition to Ethereum, there will also be other projects, such as Polkadot or Tezos, that are trying to establish themselves as an infrastructure blockchain. Therefore, close cooperation and no competitive thinking is necessary for the success of blockchain technology. Interoperability is an important term for me here, because only if a “barrier-free” transition from one blockchain to another works can this technology become established in the long term.
CT: What is the biggest hurdle on the way to widespread acceptance of cryptocurrencies in Europe (especially in Switzerland and Liechtenstein)?
Mauro Casellini: The biggest hurdle has a solution right away – effectively regulation. die Switzerland and Liechtenstein Both are already leaders in the field of regulation, but regulation must be understood in a larger context and, above all, in a larger regional framework. Switzerland itself is too small to be able to achieve widespread acceptance in the overall market. Liechtenstein is located in the European Economic Area and therefore has to comply with European regulation.
In September 2020, the European Commission published the first draft of a “Markets in Crypto Assets” regulation (mica) released. It can currently be assumed that the regulation will come into force in spring 2023 and will apply 18 months later, also in autumn 2024. This law WILL allow all European regulated participants to market their services across Europe. Clear regulation gives the entire blockchain industry more weight and legitimacy and enables many institutional market participants to devote more attention to the topic. Even if Switzerland itself IS not in the European Economic Area or the European Union, THIS LEGISLATION WILL ALSO BE POSITIVE IN SWITZERLAND AND LEAD TO WIDER ACCEPTANCE. In any case, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are currently well positioned and some of the largest and most successful projects – Ethereum, Polkadot, Tezos or Near – have chosen one of the two countries as their location.
CT: Do you think DeFi is the future of finance?
Mauro Casellini: For me it is clear that DeFi will be an important part of future finance. Thanks to blockchain technology, we can optimize processes, reduce risks and eliminate unnecessary intermediaries from existing processes. The more parties involved in a process, the greater the risk of errors and problems if an event fails.
It is important for me to mention that I am not convinced that the CeFi world WILL disappear completely. It is important for many parties to be able to interact with a counterparty, for example a bank. They want a partner they trust completely. Many end customers will never be willing to hold their tokenized assets themselves or interact directly with a blockchain.
There WILL be regulated financial intermediaries who will store tokens for the end customer, obtain loans via a decentralized protocol, trade tokenized financial instruments or operate the staking validator.
It WILL be a collaboration between DeFi and CeFi and end customers will have the choice to decide how to interact with their assets. This WILL lead to greater freedom for end customers, which I support and am enthusiastic about.
CT: Which super powers would you most like to have and what would you use them for?
Mauro Casellini: According to World Bank figures, 2.8 billion people in the world are underbanked. That means they don’t have a bank account or have very limited access to the world of finance. Therefore, with my superpower, I would give everyone in this world access to the internet and a smartphone.
With this basis, the first major building block of a fairer world could be created in the area of finance. People could interact with each other more independently, send money to family and friends in other countries at almost no cost, and all without undue involvement of overpriced and slow-moving intermediaries like the well-known money transfer providers. This gives people the opportunity to flee their own inflation-plagued local currency and gain financial security for the first time in their lives.
Blockchain technology is an important building block that will lead to more financial freedom. Among other things, blockchain can help build better-functioning economies in countries with poor financial market infrastructure or facilitate emigration for a better life. Therefore, I am convinced that greater acceptance and use of cryptocurrencies over time WILL increase the economic freedom of individuals in the world without superpowers.