Her insightful journey from ICO boom to future of Crypto

Camila Russo is the founder of The Defiant – a DeFi focused media company. Russo is a journalist who passionately follows the development of a new, decentralized financial system. She is also a published author. Her book: “The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-hackers is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum,” tells the story of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

Russo started as an international news reporter for El Mercurio, Chile’s largest print news company, before switching to Bloomberg, where she worked for nearly eight years.

Russo holds a BS degree in Journalism from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and an MS degree in Journalism from Northwestern University.

She will join Benzinga’s Fintech Deal Day event in NYC on November 13, on behalf of The Defiant, as a media partner, participating in Kevin O’Leary’s roundtable.

The following day, she will attend Benzinga’s Future of Digital Assets event to exchange ideas with entrepreneurs working on breakthrough products in the digital asset space.

Also Read: Welcome to ‘The Acceleration Phase’: Analyst Predicts 88% Increase for Bitcoin

Russo participated in the recent ECC conference and recalled memories of years ago when she admired the crypto market from the sidelines.

“I thought it was a bit maniacal at the time. There was so much idealism about everything that could be built on the blockchain. It was like, stick a blockchain in anything, and it will be better,” she said, after think about the time she covered the ICO boom at Bloomberg.

Among the significant industry developments since then, Russo singles out DAOs and NFTs.

“DAOs have helped organize individuals worldwide to work towards the same goal. Constitution DAO is a great example of that. NFTs have inspired a new wave of users to be excited about owning digital property,” she said and noted that after Ethereum performed the seemingly impossible merger, Layer Two signaled the next step by delivering a more scalable blockchain infrastructure.

Still, Russo acknowledged some DeFi shortcomings, particularly in decentralized applications.

“It’s this idea that so-called decentralized applications that developers portray themselves as decentralized and remove middlemen when it’s actually, you know, a bunch of guys in a room controlling the whole thing.”

Considering these concerns, Russo raises the question of why institutions would trust a system that allows for arbitrary changes when large amounts of money are moved.

So institutions are likely to remain skeptical, as Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas noted in a recent interview with The Defiant.

Commenting on the hot topic of spot crypto ETFs, Balchunas speculates that spot Ether ETFs could get around 20% of the demand for Bitcoin ETFs.

“Most people don’t get Ethereum, whereas Bitcoin, they can be like, okay, got it, digital gold. Time and time again, advisors have generally avoided more complicated things that they don’t understand,” he noted.

Benzinga’s Fintech Deal Day & Awards event will highlight highlights of the current digital asset space. Join Benzinga’s Future of Digital Assets in NYC on November 14, 2023 to stay on top of trends like AI, regulations, SEC actions and institutional adoption in the crypto space. Secure early bird discount tickets now!

Now read: Brace for 2024: Big Bank predicts economic downturn as interest rates fall

Photo: Shutterstock and LinkedIn