Many people seem to believe that crypto will replace traditional banking, so some platforms are trying to merge the two. One such platform is Pure. which is an ecosystem that connects banking, crypto, trading, and investment services under one platform. To learn more about the platform, we spoke with CEO Daniele Casamassima:
ST: There are already many crypto companies offering different services. What makes Pure. different?
DC: We are an ecosystem that integrates crypto. It has crypto businesses, crypto payments, crypto storage, and crypto cards included. Yet, we are a banking, trading, and portfolio management system, which is different from standard banking solutions. And, as I said above, crypto is included. So that’s why we are different — because we are not a crypto app, and we will never be one. We are an ecosystem, a banking investment solution.
ST: Building a company like Pure. is a long and complicated process. What was the biggest challenge for you?
DC: What we are doing is a complicated process — it takes a lot of time, skills, and work with the regulators. The latest one is the biggest challenge — it takes a lot of effort to work with six different regulators in Europe and make them operate together in one single ecosystem, causing few to zero problems and questions for the customer. We want our service to be user-friendly but still compliant with different regulators in Europe. This is the most difficult thing to conceive in this ecosystem.
ST: How can the traditional banking system and crypto payment work together with the current European framework and regulation?
DC: Right now, Europe still has no unified regulators for crypto. Hence, the only way to let crypto and banking work together is to rejoin the licenses: one crypto license and one banking license. The first one can make an email compliance check for the crypto transactions, and the other can ensure the email compliance check for the standard fiat transactions.
Maybe a year from now, there will be a clearer picture of how the regulators will want to move on. Probably, there will be one single type of license for banking and virtual asset services. But right now, there is the only way to make it work — to combine different entities having different licenses.
ST: Some people believe that crypto services will replace traditional banking systems. Meanwhile, we see how both have collaborated to bring new products to the market. How do you see it, and what should we expect?
DC: I don’t think that crypto will ever substitute the traditional banking system for the full scale. In my opinion, it will rather stay an alternative. Both these systems will co-exist and keep on integrating. I suppose there will always be a demand for storing money in the bank, while, when it comes to transferring funds and making online payments, safer and cheaper digital alternatives will have a place to step in.
ST: Vitalik Buterin has recently said that “crypto itself has a lot of dystopian potential if implemented wrong.” Do you agree with him? What are the necessary steps for making crypto adoption beneficial for the world’s economy?
DC: We are living in an era where crypto has the power to improve payment and contracting solutions, taking us to a fully new level of transparency. Yet, there is a clear critique for NFT and metaverses alike — they are still not tangible, and they are not backed by anything physical and real. A single picture can cause a lot of hype, and there are cases of money laundering with NFT pictures. It is clear the problem is not the technology but how this technology has been used over the last years — not to bring real value but just to create and exchange intangible assets.