The right voices in the right rooms can reshape product, policy and hiring outcomes in crypto, three senior executives told CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference on Tuesday. Each cited a moment from her own organization when an outside perspective changed what was being built, argued or prioritized.
Mastercard SVP for Blockchain & Digital Assets Maja Lapcevic said her company’s crypto team had initially viewed infrastructure as the key to crypto adoption, until a partner reframed the problem around usability. “We probably all thought about infrastructure to be the winning formula for crypto,” she said. “But one of our partners actually really helped shed light on how we make crypto accessible, not complex, very simple to use.” That thinking helped push Mastercard toward cards linked to stablecoins, including for users in markets with limited access to traditional financial services, she said.
Crypto Council for Innovation Chief Strategy Officer Alison Mangiero said her organization had a similar realization around staking after bringing builders into policy discussions. “Sometimes we might think we understand, or we’ll put things into a bucket,” she said. “We’ll take a shortcut and say, oh, that sounds like a fund. Oh, that sounds like interest or yield, when in actuality what’s going on under the hood is fundamentally different.” After hearing from people building staking primitives, she said, CCI understood the need to describe staking as a technical service rather than a financialized product.
Clerisy Co-Founder and Managing Partner Alexandra Wilkis Wilson brought the argument to hiring. “Many of us fall into a very comfortable bias of hiring people who not only might look like ourselves or remind you of your younger self,” she said. She recalled one 10-person startup where a Myers-Briggs analysis found that eight of the 10 team members were extroverts. “It’s really important, when you’re growing teams, to not only bring in diversity on the outside, but also to think about diversity on the inside,” she said.
Mangiero closed by framing the issue as one for the broader industry. Crypto “is having a moment right now where folks are really interested in hearing our voice,” she said, “but that begs the question, what is our voice at the end of the day?” The conference, she added, “is called Consensus for a reason.” Good policy, she said, requires the industry to ensure different communities are reflected, including token holders and people building on top of blockchain networks, while also protecting consumers and allowing innovation to thrive.
