Veteran Wall Street executive Blythe Masters has spoken out in support of the “gigantic potential” of Bitcoin and blockchain technology.
Speaking at Convene, a conference hosted by SourceMedia in New York Tuesday, Masters admitted that while it was early days for the industry, this should not dampen enthusiasm.
“The potential addressable markets for these types of technologies are gigantic,” Business Insider quotes Masters as saying.
She added nonetheless that “in reality, the world is not there yet” in terms of mass adoption. Regulatory, security and authentication hurdles would all need to be overcome in the next few years on a global scale in order for habits to change.
Masters is a former executive at JP Morgan and is credited for creating the bank's derivative products while becoming a managing director at 28, the youngest woman to achieve that status in the firm's history.
However, she has since transitioned from traditional finance and the speech comes as Masters continues a prevalent year in the Bitcoin sphere. Having become CEO of Digital Asset Holdings in March, a move in itself unusual for a senior Wall Street executive, she then announced her appointment as an advisor to the Chamber of Digital Commerce (CDC) at the start of July.
The role sees her attempt to strike up dialog and cooperation with traditional finance institutions, under the auspices of founder and president Perianne Boring, along with fellow Wall Street banker Matthew Mellon, who joined the CDC’s committee last November.
Digital Asset Holdings meanwhile under Masters announced in June that it had acquired two blockchain startups, Hyperledger and Bits of Proof. Now incorporated into its parent company, Hyperledger, a permissioned intrabank network, will form one product separate from so-called ‘permissionless’ distributed infrastructure, i.e. the blockchain.
