Henri Arslanian

Controversial view but don’t waste time with VCs who have not been founders themselves or been accountable for running divisions of businesses before. Being a VC gives you a certain illusion of greatness - everyone wants to be your friend and meet you - but it’s often just because of your role. Such individuals often do not understand the actual challenges of a founder. And immediately run away from folks who have only been a VC their entire life.

The biggest challenge today in the crypto industry is the fiat banking system that is needed for on and off ramps. Most banks to not want to touch crypto for completely uneducated reasons that are probably better for another post but are mainly due to US correspondent banking. If as a business you decide to enter the crypto space, you need to be aware of such potential challenges.

You can love Bitcoin or you can hate Bitcoin. You can love cryptocurrencies or you can hate cryptocurrencies. Its irrelevant. But you have a moral (and in many cases a fiduciary) duty to at least try to understand it. And the best way to learn, is to spend couple of minutes to read about the topic and to experiment using actual small amounts of crypto. Then you can make a judgement.

One of the biggest unfairness in life today is that depending on where you are born (the one thing you have no control in your life) it determines what financial services you have access to. You can be as smart or passionate about financial services, but if you are born or live in Iran, North Korea, Syria, Libya, Cuba, Venezuela, etc then you are de facto cut off from global finance although you didn’t choose to be born/live there and you didn’t chose the governments in place who are driving those policies. This for me is a major reason why we need DeFi and crypto.

More than the practical benefits, accepting cryptocurrencies as a business sends the right message that you are open minded and visionary as a business. The reality is that most clients will prefer paying by credit card or the other regular payment apps, but this sends the right message.

The biggest mistake I have seen large corporates do is not to reward failure. We should reward executives who have taken risks and failed. Unfortunately, humans are selfish and will think about themselves first (from their kids' tuition fees to their demanding spouse) and will rather err on the side of caution not to lose their job. This is not beneficial for shareholders or the broader organization.