His insightful journey from the ICO boom to the future of crypto

Camila Russo is the founder of The Defiant – a DeFi-focused media company. Russo is a journalist who passionately follows the development of a new decentralized financial system. She is also a published author. His book: “The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-hackers is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum”, tells the story of Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum.

Russo started as an international journalist for El Mercurio, Chile’s largest print media company, before joining Bloomberg, where she worked for nearly eight years.

Russo holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University.

She will join Fintech Deal Day from Benzinga event in New York on November 13, on behalf of The Defiant, as media partner, participating in Kevin O’Learythe round table.

The next day, she will attend The Future of Digital Assets According to Benzinga event to exchange ideas with entrepreneurs working on revolutionary products in the digital assets space.

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Participate in Recent CEC conferenceRusso recalled memories from years ago when she admired the crypto market from the sidelines.

“I thought it was a bit manic at the time. There was so much idealism about anything that could be built on blockchain. It was like putting a blockchain into anything, and this will be better,” she said, reflecting on the time when she covered the ICO boom at Bloomberg.

Among the important developments in the industry since then, Russo singles out DAOs and NFTs.

“DAOs have helped organize individuals around the world to work toward the same goal. Constitution DAO is a great example of this. NFTs have inspired a new wave of users to be excited about owning digital properties,” a- she said, noting that after Ethereum executed the seemingly impossible merge. , layer two marked the next step in providing a more scalable blockchain infrastructure.

Nonetheless, Russo acknowledged some shortcomings of DeFi, particularly in decentralized applications.

“It’s this idea that developers of so-called decentralized applications present themselves as decentralized and cut out the middlemen when in fact it’s actually, you know, a bunch of guys in a room controlling the whole thing. “

Given these concerns, Russo raises the question of why institutions would trust a system that allows arbitrary changes when moving large sums of money.

Thus, institutions will likely remain skeptical, as Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas noted in a recent interview with The defiant.

Commenting on the hot topic of spot crypto ETFs, Balchunas speculates that spot Ether ETFs could get around 20% of the demand from Bitcoin ETFs.

“Most people don’t get Ethereum, whereas Bitcoin, they can be like, okay, I get it, digital gold. Time and time again, advisors have generally avoided things more complicated that they don’t understand,” he noted.

Fintech Deal Day and Awards from Benzinga The event will shed light on the highlights of the current digital asset space. Join The Future of Digital Assets According to Benzinga in New York on November 14, 2023, to stay informed on trends such as AI, regulations, SEC actions, and institutional adoption in the crypto space. Get Discounted Early Bird Tickets Now!

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