Episode 5: Around the Block with Kristy-Leigh Minehan: What Asset Managers Need to Know
03/18/2022
Around the Block Ep. 5 Recap with Kristy-Leigh Minehan:
Improving and Adapting to Crypto Investing, What Asset Managers Need to Know
Thank you for reading another recap from Around the Block. In episode 5, host Dave Uhryniak, Director of Blockchain Strategy at TRON, has a discussion with Kristy-Leigh Minehan, Technical Advisor of Valkyrie Investments, about what asset managers need to learn and improve to adapt to crypto investing.
Before joining Valkyrie, Kristy-Leigh worked at companies including Core Scientific, Genesis Mining, and others across multiple countries and blockchains. Her experience includes writing, mining, managing software, and contributing to the design and development of various proof-of-work and proof-of-stake protocols with over a decade of experience in the blockchain industry.
In this episode streamed on March 18, 2022, Dave began asking Kristy-Leigh about the role of a Technical Advisor. She explained it’s just a fancy way of saying if anyone needs guidance or advice on mining or staking, she’s the go-to person.
She also added that most asset managers come into cryptocurrency from a traditional finance background. Usually, an asset manager would study a company’s financials, but you have to look at the cryptocurrency protocols with crypto. What is the innovative technology, and does it have a trajectory or a community? For example, Bitcoin and Ethereum are sufficiently decentralized chains where we have providers everywhere.
The two also touched on the pain points for asset managers. One of them is that everyone relies on third-party service providers to create trusts. When a trust is created, you need a few things; one is that you need funded administrative, a custodian, and you need a service provider for the structure. Kristy-Leigh said the problem is that most service providers can’t keep up with the innovation in this space. A new coin is launched every day. Kristy-Leigh explained that a big issue is when a coin is launched, it takes a long time for them to get listed on an exchange and to gain traction with some of the service providers. Hence, they’re hesitant to support the coin until there’s a sizable amount of interest. For the asset manager, that sizeable interest isn’t going to wait six months. She calls it a “chicken and an egg problem.”
“How do we package this up as one smooth product where we’re no long bottlenecked waiting for service providers so that we can move at the speed of this industry,” Kristy-Leigh said. She believes that to solve this is to streamline the solution, which is what they’re already thinking about at Valkyrie. Kristy-Leigh expressed that asset managers need to start thinking about this problem.
Dave then asked Kristy-Leigh about the differences between proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. She explained that proof-of-work is pretty simple. Depending on your protocol, you take any computing power and get paid out in coins according to how much computing power you’ve contributed. Proof-of-stake is suitable for long-term investors and long-term stability.
“Once you get to your third or fourth year, that is the time to move over to proof-of-stake and onboard these long-term users, make sure you have large pools of capital, and lockup to power on DeFi,” Kristy-Leigh said.
The conversation concluded on the topic of investing in DAOs. Kristy-Leigh noted that Valkyrie has a trust around TRON. The trust accepts investments from outside people. Each trust holder gets to weigh to some extent based on the amount they hold and how the company is run.
Thank you for reading this short recap of another great episode of Around the Block. We look forward to bringing you another episode soon with our team, engaging experts, and conversations.