CVA Podcast: Delphine Forma, TAAL

Transcript

[Music] hello this is your host trash ahmed ready to kick off another bite size episode of the crypto valley association podcast now let's discover together the growing trends of this fast-moving space and try to shed some light on the mysteries it contains today we are joined by delphine former ceo of tal along with many other amazing positions in the space ranging from being one of the board members of the crypto valley association and of the open vasp association so let's dive straight in selfien hello hello how are you today hi sharehouse i'm good it's snowing i'm very excited today wonderful wonderful let's get straight

into things maybe you can tell us a little bit about your first blockchain related experience how do you get into the space yes so basically i've been working in um compliance and banking for a while in london for a big institution and i was working in hsbc and i was responsible for trade finance compliance at the european level and as you may know one of the best application of blockchain i think is for everything dealing with trade finance and supply chain especially in banking because it can reduce costs and it can make the system much more efficient because i know you know everything dealing with trade finance is very paper based right so using the blockchain would be a

very good application combined with iot i think it would be really great so i was working this space in my normal banking job when i was getting bored because when you work for a big bank you know you're just a number everything is slow moving it's just it's just boring right except the business trips the other thing is a little bit boring right so i was thinking okay what could i do and i was like okay maybe i should start looking at blockchain you know i don't want to become one of the all compliance officer was no clue about what is happening in the world you know i was like i think it's a good opportunity for me to not miss a train you know like be part of it

right to be especially in the field of crypto compliance so i decided to check the market and in london there was a few startups at the time but i've kind of wanted to have a full new experience so i started checking switzerland i started to send application to a lot of different companies here in switzerland in the space and nikki replied to me quite quickly because a crypto exchange uh i had five interview with them i also had another offer from traditional banking and i was like i'm just gonna quit everything go to switzerland take a new job new industry big risk

smart startup but i'm sure this can go right right and this is how i ended up working in crypto you know i started as a chief compliance officer for like switzerland and then after a few weeks i become global head of compliance for the exchange and actually i say there's three years and i i learned a lot during those three years i mean like you know the learning curve is huge because i switch it from a pure uh trade finance compliance rules to a general compliance in crypto where at the time in the beginning of 2018 there was no rules there was nothing there was some guidance from finn my but

it was kind of like very open field and i was able you know to create all the compliance framework in uk and i was very much involved in the listing process so when i joined in january 2018 ricky was trying to list as much token as possible so i had to check all those projects i think in the year i checked mother 100 different projects and i learned to learn in this process because when you have to read all this use all this white paper i mean the obviously learn and you know it works and different things and that was really exciting i really enjoy my time with dq and

especially you know here in zoo i joined the crypto valley association in some time in 2018 at the time there was like so many events you know you had like events almost every day you could learn so much your space was super dynamic it was like a really good place to be a good way to start a career i think you know in this space wonderful wonderful and and so why did you specifically choose switzerland was it the snow that brought you here or were there other elements that's okay to be perfectly or nasa i was kind of looking for you know paying less taxes too that was also part of my decision and what made my decision is obviously i love snowboarding you know

i'm skiing or snowboarding since i'm two and after three years in the uk i was very frustrated because in the uk if you want to go snowboarding you need second airplane with all your stuff it's just like a no-go you know i don't want to do that so switzerland you know for snowboarding and if you like i also really like quake surfing so in switzerland you can do that in every day you can see all the parts like you know switzerland is just nice and quiet you know after i leave three years in tokyo before three years in london so after six years you know living in huge cities i come from the countryside in france very very small city with 3 000 people there

so i was kind of you know looking to be somewhere nice and quiet and enjoy you know the nature and you know if you want to go crazy just take an airplane one hour you're in london and you can do shopping and parties right so great and i'm sure it helped that uh switzerland was so crypto friendly and pioneering in the space back in 2017. exactly exactly and also my you know my parents i live in strasbourg so that was also part of my decision it's very close to here you know when i came three hours by train you can get there so that was also important oh great it sounds like all the stars uh were aligned

exactly and so tell us what are you up to now i saw that you're your chief compliance officer at would you be able to share with our audience what role told plays within russian space yes i joined hal in october last year as chief compliance officer and that is really cool company and i think he has great potential so they started at the crypto mining business in canada we are actually listed on the stock exchange in canada and while we are also doing we are also doing transaction processing which is our a new part of our business so we're keeping the crypto mining but we also want to diversify and this is why we're going to our

transaction processing will be our main project it's actually already live and so that's main part and we will also probably open our pool at one point so do full management for the client and we also have a technology called stars and stars is a technology that allows development on top of the bsv blockchain so very new services you know we really plan to be like really big by the end of this year it's really cruel also because you know i mean like a different line of business and as a little bit like i was doing in nike's like i really had to

set up the full compliance framework from scratch and i love doing that this is super exciting you know you have to set up everything work for the business it's super challenging you know i report to the ceo so we can have a lot of conversation and like i love doing that you know it's like i know i'm still a one-woman show but i love that because you you know you can touch everything and it's still a small company we are not too big yet so you know your world is very diverse you sleep i'm chief compliance officer i will also give with me good rules and i mean it's amazing i love it i'm super happy that's great great to hear and so how do you manage the fact that they're based in

canada and you're here in switzerland so we have a company in switzerland we opened the company in switzerland this summer so the swiss company is called target gmph uh so we have a lot of people actually here in switzerland we uh it has been growing very fast so i may have lost a count about the number of people at least 10 people here in switzerland so we have people in vancouver and toronto and canada we also have like an office in switzerland in grafenwoehr so like very central and we also have people in japan so

it's like a 360 you know like my day sometimes i start at 6 30 in the morning where i will chit chat with people in japan i've called with japan then during the day it sits on and it's kicking off and then maybe i have a little break at lunch time and then around three o'clock in the afternoons canada coming so it's very busy but it's really cool you know i love that you know you speak with people from a different country different time zone it's like very busy it's really cool yeah and there must be some layer of similarity between all of these locations being able to ski and snowboard in each one of them exactly fair point that's wonderful to hear and and so

you're involved in in many other different associations and initiatives so maybe you can tell us about uh the open vasp association and yeah and what's happening on that one yes well i mean i've been very busy actually last year you know a lot of people maybe you know with corner a lot of people who are not so busy but myself we've been really busy because we started the open investment association as a project back at the end of 2019 uh you know when the travel rule kicked out so back in 2019 cfatf british new guidance and say it's the crypto industry you're gonna have to try to comply with the travel group so everyone was like

excuse me what did you just say so basically travel means that you need to exchange information about your originator and the beneficiary of a crypto transaction um the threshold is 1000 according to the fatf guidance so that was back in 2019 then the swiss regulator in august 2019 issue a nice guidance you know you come back from holidays it's a monday morning you see oh fema is sending me an email and exercise the new guidance what what is it right open the email opens open the paper remember it was a three pages paper saying to us so travel would has always

apply why are you surprised that you need to apply it and there is no threshold and you're like okay great this is not good at all right the good thing is like at the time you know ricky was uh operating from the uk and in the uk uh this rule was not applicable but i knew that at one point as we were applying for a license in switzerland we would have to apply the wool so i decided with a few other people of the industry so mainly with big countries seba and singham we decided to get together and see you know we can find a solution to this problem from a technological point of view right and at the time david which is uh the head of risk

i'd be conscious wrote white paper on a possible solution to travel world and that was the start of open bus it was our starting point we're like okay we have this white paper from david no we need to see oh we can actually make that happen or that we can make that a reality for the industry to be able to comply with travel so we're starting at the working group and then we actually set up the association in march 2020 so that was the official start of openvast now you're going to tell me but what is supervised you know everyone is talking about what does that mean exactly so as an association when we do is set up standards

so we are not providing a software we are setting up standards so we are writing basically we have built up a protocol and the protocol is there to enable communication between vast a and bus b for them to exchange information on the originator and on the beneficiary so it's a messaging protocol and the goal of this protocol is to be as open as possible as decentralized as possible and as private as possible because we actually want to respect the blockchain philosophy the crypto philosophy right because the travel rule if you look at it

from a pure crypto person point of view as i am when i saw it i was like what is that i mean like you know i mean like how come do i have to exchange personal information on my customer right i mean like this doesn't make any sense you know especially that you know with the blockchain you can actually track the phone you can see where the phones are coming from you can see exactly the full flow so why do you need to to know the name you know people can open wallet as i can i don't drink a bottle of water right so this is why you know when we build up this protocol we really want it to be as decentralized as possible and this is all

we build it up right and then so we have these standards and we're working with partners and our partners i will they have developed ready-to-plug-in solution right so for instance we have 21 analytics we have been working with them nikkei business is the main partner because the key business what they have done is that they have written a card on github which is public and if you look at it you can actually implement the protocol yourself right if you have a tech company you can go on the github look at the code and do it yourself if you have a vas probably seen or a bank you might

not have the capacity to actually go on the github and develop yourself you might just want to say like i just want a way to plug in software right and then you will go say 21986 or notably or ek business and they have a ready-to-plug-in solution right it's really cool right because it works it actually works we managed to make that work and then you will say but you probably have competitor on the market right you're probably not the only one doing that of course we are not our main competitor i would say is trisa and pisa is a protocol that has been developed by cypher trace the main difference is that they are

very centralized where we are open to everyone within different layers so open to everyone and then if you want to have more security and trust as a bus when you register with us first we will give you an identification number we call it a van one is like an iban is a traditional world right so we gave you that and then you can decide to be registered with us to be registered with us we will ask you a little bit more information we'll ask you you know where you're incorporated i will ask you if you're if your licenses are not in the country where you operate

and then we can also ask you more questions there is different level on registration with openvas first one completely open someone want a little bit of questions and third year you can have more information knowledgeable information will be on the bus directory so when you want to use a network you can integrate our network and see if this particular vast virtual asset service provider so is actually registered and is it licensed or not or and where is this place of registration so that's really really cool i'm very excited about that you know i think we were gonna be the future swift messaging systems that's our goal i mean

i mean you know you will see this year it's gonna be a big year i think for openvas the thing is like you know the reality of the market is that the problem with the travel rule is that it hasn't been implemented everywhere by every state so for instance as an exchange if i take the example of an exchange register in the uk well the uk hasn't tell me that i need to implement the travel rule then why would i do that the thing is like it's from regulatory point of view obviously it would be a best practice to do it in switzerland we have to do it in the u.s they have to do it in singapore they have to do it and several year elections they have to

implement it but in some jurisdictions they have it's not mandatory right but i do think that since the very near future uh it will be mandatory in most of country in the world especially that fatf has written down revised guidance in june 2020 and the next one will be for june 2021 and they will assess which countries has actually implemented the travel rule in the regulation and which one has not and i don't know if you know or it works but cfaft they will look at the controlling place in different country and then if you're

a bad student you're going to be put in their monitor jurisdiction mist or in the very high risk type of jurisdiction right and then if you are there the country looks very bad which is not what you want no no you don't want to be there because then you know like the your institution that are based in your countries it's going to be very hard for them to have relationship with other type of institutions in other countries wow okay well that's that's wonderful and so complete and you know best of luck thank you it's great that it was created by some of the leading swiss firms within the space and yourself that you all kind of came

together to to create this i think that's that's truly uh truly beautiful and um wonderful and and um if i may add we also we have a great number you know i mean we have uh tasers we recently get gas pump bank we have confirmed 21 analytics atm labs and we also have lcx and we have a lot of really we have a few members so you can check our website openbus.org and if everyone listening to this podcast want to join the association i'm the board member responsible for membership so please reach out to me sorry a bit of advertisement there sure

no of course chill as much as much as you want i'm sure there will be many people that will join and so perfect and so we're getting towards the the end here of the episode but maybe before we close off i mean can you give us our audience maybe some perspective on how the crypto value association been doing over the last year i mean going full digital and all could can you tell us a little bit more yes so as i said 2020 was really busy i became a board member of the crypto valley association back in 2020 i was really excited about that because you know i think the crypto value association is greater station it's been on the market for a while and really support the ecosystem and i wanted to do to be more engaged and to make the

crypto body association shine even more right so 2020 was actually really challenging yeah i think for a lot of uh association with the pandemic you know events are like basically gone right so we had to adapt to this new world and go online as you said but i think you know the crypto validation have done a really good job on that part there has been like a lot of events organized online uh during one of our first events we had 700 people connecting coming from 50 different countries so this is a great achievement and i think you know at the end of the day it's cool also to have gone like more online and

learn or to you know through online even because you the audience you can reach is way bigger that just uh you know little crypto community in switzerland um but then you're gonna tell me you know there's missing personal contact but i think that you know in our event with a different chat room that we have you can enable kind of a little bit of networking it's not easy but at least you know there is option and we have also tried to work a lot and develop education so we've partnered with sebaver city which is i think really cool you know to have such a partnership in place here for our members i think it's really good for education is absolutely key in

this field so that was very very important to us no definitely no i totally agree well yeah thank you thank you so much for that and um i definitely believe that 2021 is going to bring a lot of bright things both the open vast and the crypto valley association and even the whole industry have we've been seeing the crypto markets grow and grow and grow so maybe you can give to our audience some closing words your your vision on on the future of this this whole industry i think like rhino there is a little bit of a bubble but i think it's good because i really trust in the blockchain technology maybe not so much on the crypto part but really on the technology i think the technology has a

power to revolution the way we are working and to revolution a lot of different business processes and make it more efficient i think this this technology is just amazing but a lot of people are still don't really know about it and a lot of people are still seeing it like associate blockchain with crypto and i think in other ways good because you know crypto you know like block bitcoin and so on has been associated with criminal activity and this is where education comes as a big place there because you need to the more people will be educated about we work and what it can do actually what

is more important is like for people to understand what you can do educate them with use cases the more we will enable uh mass adoption right and at the end of the day that's the goal right and i do think that we are a little bit still a little bit ahead of time but i'm sure that in 10 years you will have like apps on your cell phone and you will not even know what is behind it but it will use blockchain technology right so yes it's even the case now so uh hopefully it will be for for for everyone else as well in the future and i hope that people were able to learn a little bit more about uh first year yourself and also about compliance within the space and uh all these

various great initiatives that that you're on and i think slowly but surely this global adoption uh will happen so um great well we'll well thank you so much delphine for joining and uh if you enjoyed this conversation feel free to check out more on our website cryptovalley.swiss where we host plenty of events educational content and even provide information on how you can join our growing community so thank you so much uh delphine uh for joining us thank you chez really appreciate and yes please everyone come and look at the crypto body association website and join us awesome perfect stay tuned stay safe and until next time from the crypto valley in switzerland bye bye