Traditional banks should understand Staking and DeFi or risk extinction

All this has to do with the economy, cryptocurrency, art, and future predictions. Speaking of all this, Cointelegraph Spanish Contacted artist Alberto Echegaray, who is the head of Trustlink and a former Argentine representative of the Financial Action Task Force.

Cointelegraph: Let’s talk about your artwork first, Penalty kick.

Alberto Echegarai: Moneyball started its development in 2012. This is something that touches a taboo in art: money. This is still taboo, although now NFT is changing this.

What Moneyball wants to show is that most or almost all fiat currencies are currently not supported in the world. How many governments use these currencies to generate inflation, which is basically a tax-a phantom that deprives people of purchasing power.

With this concept, I started to use dollars to make penalty kicks into gold. I have lived in Washington, DC for about 12 years-I have done some consulting for the Federal Reserve. This is how I came to the Federal Reserve, and I was invited to visit the facilities of their department that prints U.S. dollars.

At that time, they were replacing old dollars with new dollars in circulation. On the one hand, I found a huge warehouse with billions of dollars destroyed. I thought at the time, It’s unbelievable. You can’t take pictures-there are many safety measures. I asked for the destroyed money, but was told that the money was state property, not ours. Even if it is destroyed, it remains federal property.

I had to write a series of letters, and a few months later, they gave me 2 million US$100 bills and destroyed them. So I started to create art.

CT: How did you think of adding Bitcoin to your work?

AE: At the end of 2013, a Venezuelan in San Francisco introduced me to BTC and gave me some, which I still have. I didn’t start paying attention to it until 2015 or 2016.

I talked to a few people in Silicon Valley and they told me that this will be part of the future, especially the blockchain. I started buying Bitcoin and really invested in it. Then I opened a fund and became a crypto missionary.

“It’s very interesting. Bitcoin started to grow. At that time, I could go to work in different countries. I started to see resistance from all the financial sectors. I seemed to be talking about crime or money laundering. It was terrible.”

But in 2016, a person contacted me, he became a member of the Argentine government and needed some technical help to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing. It is Mariano Federici, the head of the financial investigation department. FIU has almost nothing to use Bitcoin and cryptocurrency to combat money laundering. This is a mess. I was asked to help and it was an interesting challenge. More advanced analysis, data and information systems have been installed.

But I am not interested in the prosecution part of the crime; I am more interested in the technology and encryption part. At that time, Europol held a meeting where security experts held a meeting on encryption and cybercrime issues. I am new here, but I was invited by the Argentine government. Then, I was invited again to join FATF, where I met some people who knew a little bit about encryption technology—especially people from the United States, China, Russia, South Africa, and Australia. They are a very strong team.I started to see how the regulations will develop

CT: Do you want to do more and see the other side behind the scenes?

AE: That was in 2016/2017. But before I joined FATF as the chairman of Argentina, I had four years of experience working in regulatory issues in Paris. At the same time, I started to develop private notes off the counter, which was the first synthetic note based on Bitcoin.

There, I can build a financial product that can be invested from a bank account. It was very successful until the bank told me that they could not accept money because it involved BTC.

I started to think Encryption ball. If I have used fiat currency and prove that it is worthless, I said I would try to use cryptocurrency. I started to develop Cryptoball, but in 2017/2018, it was difficult to obtain a curved display capable of showing the price of BTC. I had to contact a person in China who allowed me to use a flexible screen.

The Cryptoball is a sphere with two flexible screens connected to the software in the processor. The processor will display the real-time value of the BTC held in the hardware wallet in the work. It displays prices in Japanese Yen, Euros, and U.S. Dollars. By then, I got 250 BTC and put them in the Ledger wallet.

“Beside the installation at the Venice Biennale, I invested 1 million U.S. dollars and 1 million Euros. There are many young people. Many people in the art world ask me what it is because they don’t understand.”

At that time, a European collector whom I didn’t know approached me. He offered to see me in a restaurant the next day. It was interesting because they later contacted me on his behalf and talked about “His Royal Highness”.

He turned out to be a prince who was very supportive of culture. We sat down and talked about art. I can’t believe it, because the Venice Biennale is not where you sell things.

The Biennale was over, and I brought the artwork to his home in Switzerland. This is a very interesting story.

CT: Art and the crypto world get along very well. What do you think of NFT? Do you plan to use this technology?

AE: I am beginning the process of marking some works. I am thinking about marking the sphere, but I hope it becomes interesting. Not only a 3D design of artwork or sculpture, but also, for example, a real-time quotation showing prices. Things that exist in real life exist in parallel in different dimensions.

I am also working on 3D mapping and augmented reality with a group of people. I was also invited to serve as a consultant for an established artist’s NFT platform.

I think we are at the beginning of tokenization and many interesting things that can spread art. I mean, it is difficult for artists who graduated from art school to enter the gallery. This situation is changing dramatically. Now, art school graduates who choose to devote themselves to digital or virtual art are getting job opportunities, such as what happens in the game field.

This is added to all mass consumer brands entering the virtual world. What is about to happen is really amazing.

CT: Regarding the future of private banking, do you think banks will use cryptocurrency or oppose cryptocurrency?

AE: All major banks already have large encryption research departments. They know this is a new system within the financial system. Just like we talk about landline phones and mobile phones-they will eventually eat away everything.

But they still cling to their transfer system and the way they collect commissions and make money. They haven’t realized that this has changed dramatically.

“If they don’t understand Staking or DeFi, and if they don’t adopt it quickly, they will see their business disappear overnight. Some people try to understand it, but it’s very difficult.”

The same is true for regulators. There are not enough human resources to ask who understands the two worlds. And there is no ability, brainpower and determination. They think there is still a long way to go.

CT: What do you think will happen to the global monetary system in 2030?

AE: I think the new generation will have great opportunities. This is a parallel government system based on the speed of technological development. I think in 2030, there will be a society that is more integrated on the one hand and more discriminatory on the other. They will become a very powerful group.

The encryption we have seen is basically an asset or private currency revolution that we have never seen before. In the case of encryption, I clearly see that private systems are associated with private space systems, and these systems may or may not be open source. In this field, I see banks, more evolved digital assets, and the tokenization of commodities in the future.

Traders do not want to lose control of all this. This is the projection I see. I think there will be a new system that is neither capitalist nor socialist.