Fireside Chat: Institutional Adoption at Chainlink with Andrew McCormick and Jill Malandrino

Transcript

[applause] >> I'm excited to be up here with Andrew and with him representing the Chainlink team as I've had a relationship with them over a number of years. Andrew, you know, congratulations on the new role. Chainlink, amazing place to be. You know, for nearly two decades you've been inside trading and capital markets and most recently, you know, running a Nasdaq listed brokerage US business. So, why leave the operator seat to go build infrastructure now? >> Yeah, thanks Joe and thanks everyone for being here today. It's a special time for me. This is day three of my job at Chainlink Labs. So, very excited and to be able to speak here is especially very valuable to me. I have been with

Ethereum since the very beginning, 2015. It was actually my dad who called me one day and talked about all the YouTube videos he's seen and how excited he was. And so, I'm very excited to leave and to tell him I was at ETHDenver. He'll be very, very excited about that. But, look, for nearly 15 years I have been inside regulated institutions, deep into trading, regulation, capital markets, firms like eToro, E*TRADE, Morgan Stanley. And I think we are at such a unique moment in time that really drove me here. Um, I have seen in those 15 years an incredible evolution from when I first started, no one was sure what crypto was, blockchain was, to skepticism to now we should do something to let's do something and now

excitement. And after those 15 years of enjoying being in trading and capital markets, I was inspired by the Mario Brothers movie and they're plumbers, right? And my four kids and they're all about plumbing and adventures and I thought, after 15 years of helping people navigate through the plumbing, I want to build it myself. I want to fix it myself and I think we're such a unique moment to do just that. And why Chainlink Labs? I am passionate about bringing the worlds of crypto and blockchain and traditional finance together and chainlink labs is not just another crypto company. It's a place that is the connective infrastructure between traditional finance and blockchain and when I see chainlink labs over the years and following it very closely working with firms like DTCC, UBS, Swift, that's

a story I want to be a part of and finally it's that impact, right? I got four kids and I want I truly want to build a better world for them and for all of us and I think chain chainlink labs is a place that that's happening and so I'm thrilled to be here. >> Where does on chain make the most obvious difference when you look at how money actually moves through the system? >> Yeah, so I in the world of blockchain, I think what's great is, you know, there's things like efficiency and speed. It'll help with money transfers, but to me it's also topic of freedom and I think in terms of assets moving on chain, it'll be about settlement times and actually assets whether dollars is moving across systems quicker and again that helps people, but also gives them

more freedom and I'm sure Jill yourself and every single person in this room has probably had one of those stressful moments where you need to pay a bill or someone needs to pay you or you move money to the wrong account and didn't work how you hoped it would work. And I had one of those dramatic aha moments about a year ago when me and my family are moving from DC to the New York area and we're in between buying and selling houses and we had to send a wire which in 2025 should be simple and easy somehow it took four days and I had to call so many people and send emails and go to branches and even pay a $35 fee just to move from my money from one bank to the next.

And thankfully it doesn't always involve that much drama, but it doesn't work as well as it should today. Um, you know, it's hard to believe we're in T plus one now which is great, but it's amazing just less than 10 years ago we were at T plus three. So if you wanted to send money on a Thursday, the person might not see it till Tuesday or Wednesday. So, T + 1 is much better than where we were, but the dream is T + 0. And when you can have a tokenized asset that's moving across platforms using Chainlink verification near instantaneously, that's a win for firms cuz they can reduce their risk, collateral requirements, but ultimately end investors and users who can get the money they worked hard for quicker.

>> So, yours is a newly created role at Chainlink Labs. What's the gap that you were brought to fill? >> Yeah, so it's nice having a new role cuz there's no shoes to fill or anything like that. But, my simple role is institutional adoption. And as we heard from the last speaker, what's exciting is it's not starting from zero. Major firms in recent years, especially UBS, Swift, DTCC, JP Morgan, they're building in this space already. So, one is helping those large financial firms who are already building continue on their adventure to go deeper, to help them learn.

And second is those other financial institutions who maybe two or three years ago, they weren't sure what to do or if they can do anything in this space, and now they know we want to build. Helping them through education, like learn what you can do, what the path looks like. And then third, looking at other areas of the community, like financial analysts, research report writers who typically aren't looking at firms like Chainlink like they do a traditional equity or traditional company. And just educating them about what we're doing and the kind of impact it's having. And to me, I'm so excited about it because many, many years ago in the early 2000s, when I was in college, I wanted to go be a high school teacher.

And I ended up going a different path and down law school and all the things like that, but that's in my soul. And my wife was a public school teacher for many, many years, so I love education and I think that's a big part of this role. So, we'll have programming events for research analysts, for members of the community, firms, and just explaining this is what blockchain is, this is how it works, and this is how you can use Chainlink to connect what you're doing today to what you want to do tomorrow. >> Asset managers and institutional allocators, they keep calling and talking about that tokenization is inevitable. So, what's keeping them from moving real money on chain today?

>> Yeah, I love the word inevitable and I think totally agree with it. I'd say there's three big blockers today that have been there. And one is regulatory clarity, two just like confidence and trust. Um and three, education. On the regulatory clarity piece, we've made so much progress in the last couple years, which has helped and it's helped firms move on chain, but I think we certainly need more and something like the Clarity Act, which you heard about earlier today, will certainly help a ton. The trust and confidence piece, uh seeing examples already happen is huge. So, every time a firm like DTCC launches with Chainlink or Swift launches with Chainlink, it gives people confidence at the other firms that hey, this is something we can do. This is a space we need to grow into cuz this is

where this is headed. And then, again, education. So, when I first started talking about blockchain to my co-workers at E*TRADE in 2017, people thought like, what is he talking about? Like, you know, you heard you know, 60-minute conversations on the news about it, but it wasn't in the natural discourse. And we've gone from confusion to skepticism and now firms instead of saying, are we going to do this? They're asking, what are we going to do and when and how. And so, people have been talking about blockchain a lot recently, but it's very different to talk about it to like, hey, let's show you how this works, how an oracle works, how cross-chain interoperability works.

Chainlink Chainlink Labs, we want to educate, we want to help, we want to help you on this journey. And so, that education piece is going to be, I think, a huge unlock. So, we've had, you know, over in our industry, tens of billions of assets move on chain in the last couple years, which is amazing, but when you think there's trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars out there in different asset classes that I think ultimately will move on chain. What's blocking that today is just the confidence and trust, the regulatory clarity, and education, and there's great progress on all three. >> Well, well, speaking of clarity, you know, you should mention before the Clarity Act having passed committee, potentially going for a floor vote soon.

For institutions that you're talking to, what does what could that potentially unlock that they can't do today? >> It'd be so huge, and I can speak both from someone who is the regulated president of a broker-dealer, as well as a former lawyer who advised companies on this. And today, if you're sitting at a financial institution, you're often thinking two or three years out when it comes to your product road map, your marketing road map, and those kind of resources are priceless. And so, large banks, asset managers love certainty, cuz you don't want to devote time, people money resources attention energy to something that you don't know, is it actually going to stick?

And in the last 10 years of digital asset space, if you are in the seat I used to sit in as a lawyer advising major companies about this topic, and an asset manager says, "Hey, we want to tokenize a fund. What does that look like?" As a lawyer, as a compliance person, as a risk official, what you're doing is looking at laws from the 1930s, a Supreme Court case from 1946 about orange trees, and a random selection of speeches, rules, guidance, comment letters that can shift with political winds.

And you also have 50 states who have different views. And so, how to launch a product like a tokenized money market fund is really, really complicated with that regime. So, something like the Clarity Act, right? It's not going to instantly answer every question, and now it's all, you know, like lollipops, and it's easy and wonderful. Like, there's still going to be tough questions, but it's very different having a statute purposely designed for this use case, rather than trying to jam this use case into something from 90 years ago. >> Yeah.

Well, you So, when we think about that over the next year or two, and what would what should we be watching for that signals to you that institutional adoption is genuinely moving along? >> Sure. So, it's it's definitely moving along. I think the signals I've paid attention to and what got me so excited in the last couple months to make the the move over to Chainlink Labs is I think three. I'm on my third day here, so I'll go with Yeah, three reasons. One, every time you see a large bank, large asset manager moving on chain, that's a signal that there'll be more to come because banks and those types of firms, they do not just make rash decisions quickly. Like, it takes a lot of time, devotion, dedication,

resources, and they're planning to stick with it. And I believe that will stay and more follow. Two, hiring. You know, you if you're a bank, an asset manager, a firm, you're thinking of a road map a year or two out, you're trying to hire people today. And I believe I'm an example of that. Like, this role didn't exist, head of institutional did not exist at Chainlink Labs before Monday. And it's cool to see on LinkedIn and Twitter, it seems like every day some new person's hired as head of digital assets, head of blockchain, head of tokenization at different firms. And so, seeing that continued hiring is a signal of what I think the space will look like 12 or 18 months from now.

And Yeah, third is just the education piece. The more the more events, programming, things like this where people are talking about it, it's just going to continue to push the industry in that direction. And again, it feels like we've been talking about for a long time, but two or three years ago, it was just a seed. And now there's tens of billions of dollars on on chain, which is amazing. And so, you think just what will it look like in another two, three, five years? And it's going to be transformative and truly help people as well. >> I think it's a great point that you make in terms of how the industry is hiring cuz it used to be very technical focused.

I moderated a panel on Monday where we were talking about governance and security on chain and that's a sign to me that the industry has turned another leaf as it relates to maturation. And I think we do see roles such as yours is another sign that it's not just about what's happening behind the scenes, but we really are focusing on user experience and helping as an industry to advance framework and policy forward. That is an encouraging sign to me as it relates to the next wave of maturity. >> Yeah, absolutely. That is the foundation of it all. Like a a large institution isn't just let's launch a product and just hope it works and hope our regulators think it works and don't care about like you go through a lot of rigorous diligence, governance, compliance reviews, cybersecurity

reviews as that foundation and we're still in that system today of building that foundation and things are slowly moving on chain, but once that foundation is there and especially with the 2026 Clarity Act or whatever it may hopefully be called eventually, that foundation will be priceless and pay dividends for decades. >> Yeah, particularly as you're seeing companies continue to innovate in the absence of a statute, which is encouraging. It shows that the industry is taking on some sort of self-regulatory role as well. >> Yeah, absolutely. And it's it's tough and it takes some risk tolerance and a lot of creative legal thinking and risk parameters, but it's cool to see the growth that's already happened without that type of legislation. You just think if you have clear legislation, clear

conviction and market demand, it's it's going to be a blockbuster and it'll be truly truly help people. >> I also think you're in a pivotal moment as you had alluded to before how you're starting to see billions of dollars come on chain and in the partnerships that are being announced with Swift and DTCC as an example where perhaps the story of that interconnectivity isn't widely understood and just what DTCC he as an example, right? Of of the you know, the trillions of dollars of the assets that move just through that system and how Chainlink operates within that. I think you were at a really pivotal moment to bring that story to the street, whether it's institutional, retail, or just within the communities which you serve.

>> Yeah, absolutely. Chainlink is doing incredible work and we have loyal community out there. And what's amazing is the community and so many people they get it. They get Chainlink is truly linking, whether it's different blockchains together or traditional finance to blockchains, it's the link of the system and it takes compliance and regulation very seriously. Our our users and the network gets it and what's amazing to see the institutions are starting to get that same story. So, I know out in the room there's probably builders and believers who have been in the space for 10 years and I'm one of them and it's exciting and you're here before the institutions showed up and sometimes I know some people get frustrated by that, but I think what's exciting is showing that, you know, the the builders and believers led the way and institutions realized

this is a good idea and and they're following and um you all were here first and it's it's really exciting moment for sure. >> All right, and to wrap up, tomorrow's day four. >> Day four, game on. >> You walk into the office, what's next? What excites you the most about the role that you are about that you literally just took on? >> Yeah, so my favorite thing in life is meeting people and so I'm excited to get out there and whether you're at day one of your blockchain journey or day, you know, a thousand, just learning and seeing what Chainlink Labs can do to help and, you know, just bringing these two worlds together. Um and again, I still have this desire one day to be a teacher and this is maybe my way to do it and just through education and educating the industry about the work

we're doing and where this whole thing could be headed. >> All right, well, congratulations on the new role. Best of luck with everything and thanks so much everyone for joining us this afternoon. [applause] Thank you.