Meet the chief executive of an ASX-listed company who receives 5% of his salary in bitcoin

But later in my career while I was at Bendigo Bank, I began to see that the technology that underpins Bitcoin has the potential to dramatically change finance and financial equity. So I started modeling to see how cost-effective it would be to use this technology, then I ended up at NAB and started looking at it on a larger scale.

At NAB, I worked on several projects including Project Moon on syndicated lending, and what turned into Project Atom, which is a central bank digital currency project with the RBA. But these kinds of projects take years and are never seen, so I pretty much work undercover.

Then suddenly, there was this beautiful little company that actually allowed me to develop this model in depth. I really feel like this is an opportunity to bring everything I’ve been working on into one space.

Are you investing in bitcoin yourself?

Yes, we all have our own wallets, and we have watched them go down every weekend. I would like to say that I have not transacted personally since joining DigitalX. I’m in the process of moving all my investment dollars into a fund so that all my skins in the game will go through the company.

But you have to get involved because understanding this market is very complex – it takes all my trading skills and market knowledge to understand it, especially since it’s an unregulated market.

Have you seen your fair share of crypto market failures?

We’ve all been in it – my biggest carpet pull, TIME Wonderland, was actually recommended to me by a very senior portfolio manager at a large and well-known fund management firm. And we didn’t even see the rug being pulled until a friend of mine who was 24 texted me to say ‘what’s in here?’ And then it all started to unravel.

When can I go and buy coffee with [bitcoin] using my Apple Pay, when we get to that point, every company will need a way to accept crypto.

DigitalX chief executive Lisa Wade

But when something offers 78,000 percent interest per year, you know something is wrong there, so it’s almost like a game to get out before things fall apart. And guess what, it all fell apart before I got out. I think I still have some sitting in my purse somewhere.

But these things show that you have to be very careful. At DigitalX we consider our portfolio risk as we do in traditional finance. The basics of finance don’t go out the window just because we’re in a new market. When we see the risks and we find red flags, we don’t go there. And sometimes it’s really hard when people make a lot of money, but disciplined traders will only support themselves and avoid it.

Load

DigitalX is one of the few ASX-listed companies in Australia with bitcoin on its balance sheet. When it comes to risk management – ​​especially since the value of your bitcoin holdings has fallen by 50 percent in the last six months – how do you ensure that you don’t expose the company to too much risk?

There’s a layer of expertise we have around who has access to wallets and cold storage, at best. And then there is the same hedging policy as you manage US dollars on the balance sheet. All Bitcoins on the balance sheet are also being invested into the fund’s business to help build our track record as a fund.

Such hedges and hedging policies would be very important for any company looking to keep Bitcoin on their balance sheet, and I think every company in Australia needs to know how to manage crypto on their balance sheet because everyone wants to transact in crypto. . Like I get 5 percent of my salary in Bitcoin, which is great for savings but I don’t really spend it on anything.

But when I can go and buy coffee with it using my Apple Pay, when we are at that point, every company will need a way to accept crypto and store it without losing exchange fees by converting it to Australian dollars.

Do you really think we will ever be able to buy coffee directly with bitcoin?

Maybe not in Australia, because we have a fantastic payment system. But that’s not the case everywhere in the world, for people around the world who are not like us and don’t have a bank account, crypto can give them financial equality. So yes, I can imagine myself paying for coffee in, say, Kenya before Australia.

There’s also another part where we have generations of people who grew up at GFC seeing their parents’ financial plight, and they simply don’t trust our financial system. They see all the costs, all the obscurity, so they are out there building something different.

Just like when the internet was born, nothing can stop this. Bitcoin is the poster child currency for the movement and the younger generation who don’t want to use our money.

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