May 26, 2026 · 29 min · 11 segments
Cut through the hype to explore trust, programmability and the forces shaping the future of finance. Join host Ron van Kemenade as he sits down with industry experts to unpack the rise of digital…
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Ron van KemenadeHost
Peter LeftGuest
Tony McLaughlinGuest
Can people actually trust these digital currencies, whether they're GBDD or stablecoins or CBDCs, uh, whatever acronym applies.
Where, where is now trust? Is it in central banks? Is it with the commercial banks? Is it in the software? Where, where do...
That's a really good question, um, in that trust is, uh, what you believe in, and some people believe in Bitcoin, so they trust the bil- the ability to connect and, um, transact globally using a cryptocurrency.
Uh, I think the average person on the street or the Clapham Om- Omnibus, as we used to say, believes in, um, the state's currency, which is the fiat currency, the cash that we use, the dollars and pounds and renminbi or yuan that we transact.
Um, and trust is a huge subject because it's really about s- the confidence we have in the system.
And when I talk about banking, most of the time I say that banks will always exist, um, to be the intermediary of trust because if you have something that's backed by the system, whichever system you're using, then y- you know that that has an insurance if anything goes wrong.
That's why we have the financial compensation schemes, um, in m- or most countries to ensure that if a bank fails or if a bank doesn't deliver a transaction as it should, then you can get your money back, and that's where the trust lies.
the issue for me with a lot of the decentralized currencies is that they are difficult to trust because you have to have self-confidence in your ability to transact and manage those processes yourself, and there's nothing to fall back on as an insurance.
So it's really around how can you trust a system if it has no backup and no insurance, or do you want that? And I think for most people, they just don't care.
What they want is confidence and security in the system, um, which is backed by government and licensed through banks to ensure that you can always get your money back.
Hey, Peter, and, and are regulators looking at this? I mean, with, call it, "normal money," between brackets, we have in the, in the UK the FSCS system.
Uh, in Europe, obviously in the US you have kind of a deposit guarantee systems, et cetera.
Well, they're looking at making sure there are controls in place around the safekeeping of the backing assets and that, um, they're sufficient.
Maybe there's haircuts involved, so there's a, an element of over-collateralization so that if the government bond market moves in price, then some of that, you know, can be, uh, covered and corrected for and you can still redeem your stablecoin at par.
In the banks, we've got sufficient resilience in our balance sheet, a capital buffer so that if there were some defaults on the loans that back the deposits that we issue, there's a very similar approach being evolved in the stablecoin ecosystem, but reflecting that the backing assets are sort of generally sub one-year government bonds rather than 25-year mortgages.
So the haircut approach is slightly different.Uh, and making sure that, you know, the assets are hold bank- held bankruptcy remote so that if the stablecoin operator fails, the assets that back the issuance are still safeguarded for the beneficial owners of the stablecoin.
And that's exactly what the Bank of England, uh, the Genius Act, uh, and, um, EMICA are looking to make sure apply to the stablecoins that become regulated and material to those economies.
Can people actually trust these digital currencies, whether they're GBDD or stablecoins or CBDCs, uh, whatever acronym applies.
Where, where is now trust? Is it in central banks? Is it with the commercial banks? Is it in the software? Where, where do...
That's a really good question, um, in that trust is, uh, what you believe in, and some people believe in Bitcoin, so they trust the bil- the ability to connect and, um, transact globally using a cryptocurrency.
Uh, I think the average person on the street or the Clapham Om- Omnibus, as we used to say, believes in, um, the state's currency, which is the fiat currency, the cash that we use, the dollars and pounds and renminbi or yuan that we transact.
Um, and trust is a huge subject because it's really about s- the confidence we have in the system.
And when I talk about banking, most of the time I say that banks will always exist, um, to be the intermediary of trust because if you have something that's backed by the system, whichever system you're using, then y- you know that that has an insurance if anything goes wrong.
That's why we have the financial compensation schemes, um, in m- or most countries to ensure that if a bank fails or if a bank doesn't deliver a transaction as it should, then you can get your money back, and that's where the trust lies.
the issue for me with a lot of the decentralized currencies is that they are difficult to trust because you have to have self-confidence in your ability to transact and manage those processes yourself, and there's nothing to fall back on as an insurance.
So it's really around how can you trust a system if it has no backup and no insurance, or do you want that? And I think for most people, they just don't care.
What they want is confidence and security in the system, um, which is backed by government and licensed through banks to ensure that you can always get your money back.
Hey, Peter, and, and are regulators looking at this? I mean, with, call it, "normal money," between brackets, we have in the, in the UK the FSCS system.
Uh, in Europe, obviously in the US you have kind of a deposit guarantee systems, et cetera.
Well, they're looking at making sure there are controls in place around the safekeeping of the backing assets and that, um, they're sufficient.
Maybe there's haircuts involved, so there's a, an element of over-collateralization so that if the government bond market moves in price, then some of that, you know, can be, uh, covered and corrected for and you can still redeem your stablecoin at par.
In the banks, we've got sufficient resilience in our balance sheet, a capital buffer so that if there were some defaults on the loans that back the deposits that we issue, there's a very similar approach being evolved in the stablecoin ecosystem, but reflecting that the backing assets are sort of generally sub one-year government bonds rather than 25-year mortgages.
So the haircut approach is slightly different.Uh, and making sure that, you know, the assets are hold bank- held bankruptcy remote so that if the stablecoin operator fails, the assets that back the issuance are still safeguarded for the beneficial owners of the stablecoin.
And that's exactly what the Bank of England, uh, the Genius Act, uh, and, um, EMICA are looking to make sure apply to the stablecoins that become regulated and material to those economies.
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