Future of Money, part 1: All the Feels

Fintech expert Leda Glyptis, a true Sibos Insider, is a resident blogger for Sibos 2021, offering her unique take on this year’s event. This blog is part of a series released daily throughout Sibos week.

Brace yourselves party people, as I am blessed enough to be moderating both Future of Money sessions this year and I feel that, as a resident blogger and One Lucky Sod (official title), I owe you Dispatches from the Front. So here it is, part one, the tribal gathering session. Watch it. This is not a write up. This is about me, what I felt and what I learned.

What I felt is: all of it.

Casting our eyes to 2040.That is both terribly far away and so very close and the reality of it is: it could be awful. Overpopulation, pollution, poverty. This could get ugly. Or not.20 years is long enough for us to make good choices and avoid the car crash.So what stands in the way of us making good choices?Don’t tell me greed and capitalism. That is like, so 90s.Choice. Sure. Intent. This stuff is hard and sorely lacking. Deliberate, consistent, cumulative choices that provide building blocks for a future we don’t know for sure will pan out the way we want it to (you never do) but that we invest in with intent.But to make the choices, you need to know your options.And that is what I found fascinating about the session. We don’t actually know our options. And although we all want the best for humanity, we don’t know what the curveballs and the challenges will look like. We don’t know which horses will be racing, let alone which ones to back.

So what did I learn?

James Lloyd kicked off the session by quoting the best of quotes: the future may already be here, it’s just not equally distributed. And it’s more than a truism because, as the pitches unfolded, nobody said anything outlandish. Nobody said anything implausible. The soaring hope felt attainable. The darkest dystopian landscape felt… imminent.And in no version of the future, bleak or golden, was poverty or gender inequality eliminated. No future loomed pristine. But some futures were more… welcoming than others. What separated horror from liveable optionality was choice. But choice needs a spectrum. So here’s what else I learned during the tribal gathering session:The most important decision is not where you stand on the big questions of morality but what ingredients you believe the future will consist of.Do we think it’s a battle between private money (crypto) and public money (fiat) and corporate money; money under your skin that doesn’t work when you try to buy a cupcake while your sugar levels are too high, and your insurance says ‘no’ (I would be all over that black market in a jiffy); do we believe the future currency is habitat credits? Bits of access to clean air and clean water and units of survivability?As the pitches articulated images of independence, interdependence, and dependence, painting a world where environmental disasters throw us closer together (because now we compete for the same scarce clean air), or further apart (as all digital connectivity goes down and faxes are the best you can do), I was gripped by white-hot fear. All their worst-case assumptions seemed, if not inevitable, then well on their way to becoming reality.We live in highly divided, polluted, over-wrought societies. Nothing unexpected there.

Ultimately, it was uncomfortable viewing. Because the future is precarious. Also because there was an encyclopaedia’s worth of knowledge packed in what felt like 7 seconds – and I had to take notes, keep things moving and keep an eye on the timer. It was tough. It was fun. Can I come back?

While I was feeling all the feels, I learned something else as well and here it is.

We, as a species, have caused some damage. To our society. To our habitat. All three speakers anticipated environmental strain, social upheaval, corporate retrenchment, even cold war 2.0. They all agreed on what the danger is.Ruth Wandhöfer said ‘look, this will get ugly. Decentralise. Make it harder for this thing to break’.Matt Harris said ‘we don’t know where the road leads, so we need rules of the road, for regulation, identity assets, cryptographic security and data robustness because, whichever way we go, these things will be key’.And Theo Lau said ‘talent is ubiquitous and opportunity isn’t. And when we are in the fight of our lives, we want to make sure we make the most of the opportunity still available. As a species. With intent and purpose’.None of them said these words.They said it much better. But that’s what I took away.And although there was a judge winner and an audience winner, frankly, I think the real winner was me. Because I was in the room where it happened.