The third episode of our crypto series with David Stancel, our cryptocurrency expert and CTO at Fumbi, is here! The first episode focused on basic crypto terms & explanation of how it works; the second episode was about Ethereum and smart contracts. The third episode – as always, moderated by our host Helene Panzarino – brings the topic of decentralised finance and NFTs!

So first of all, what is decentralised finance?

“As the name suggests, it is a parallel financial universe that consists of decentralized smart-contracts-based applications that perform functionalities that we usually see in financial institutions, banks, and so on.” – David Stancel

And so what is the difference between “standard” functionalities and the ones in blockchain?

“As they are performed in DeFi  (decentralised finance), the pieces of code are uploaded on some blockchain networks, such as Ethereum. They are basically unstoppable in these distributed networks, impossible to temper with. They are fully automated and together they create a beautiful, very exciting universe of applications and actually create products that we didn’t have here before.” – David Stancel

Use cases of decentralised finance are various – first came decentralised exchanges (so-called order book exchanges, AMM (automated market makers) which are one of the greatest innovations so far in DeFi); then there are for example lending protocols or synthetic stocks. All of these run on smart contracts and thus different rules apply to them – they might not have the same limitations or restrictions that are in place in regular trading venues.

NFTs – non-fungible tokens

“Fungible tokens are — by their definition — interchangeable: each Bitcoin is the same as every other Bitcoin, much like every US dollar is equal to every other US dollar. NFTs on the other hand are not interchangeable: each token is unique, which gives non-fungible tokens a unique set of traits or properties that enable them to do all sorts of other things.” – David Stancel

The hype came in 2017 with CryptoKitties when it paralized the whole Ethereum network. Currently NFTs are popular among artists or gamers.

And the future of NFTs according to David? They will be present in segments such as education and will create digital assets for example for university diplomas. Also thanks to COVID, the whole world is getting digitized so there is a lot of space for blockchain, decentralised finance or NFTs to leak into our everyday lives. 

If you’d like to learn more about smart contracts, Ethereum and related topics, don’t miss our second crypto episode with David Stancel. You can listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify or here:

Full transcript of this episode is available here.

Here’s a rundown of the episode:

• 01:55 What is decentralised finance and examples
• 08:15 Why was decentralised created?
• 11:50 DeFi and blockchain
• 14:10 What is NFT
• 17:20 Hype around DeFi and NFT

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David studied Economics at Masaryk University in the Czech Republic and did his Master of Science in Digital Currencies at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus. He then co-founded Blockchain Slovakia – an NGO focused on education, research, and policy advocacy in the area of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. David also lectures courses on cryptocurrencies at the Slovak University of Technology and the University of Economics in Bratislava, and he regularly speaks about cryptocurrencies at conferences, seminars, forums, and universities. He has consulted to multiple crypto-related startups and initiatives all over Europe, and currently serves as CTO at Fumbi Network. He writes regularly about the development of the crypto world in his newsletter – CoinStory.tech

‘Banking on Air’ is the official Vacuumlabs podcast covering the challenges, opportunities, perspectives and opinions that matter to our community. The podcastlooks under the hood of the changing face of tech: the acceleration of all things digital, the impact of regulation (and disruption), the need for collaboration – and the spectrum of businesses competing to be fintech and financial service suppliers around the world.

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