It bodes well for cryptocurrencies everywhere that the CEO of the world’s largest exchange, NASDAQ, has their back. Specifically, Adena Friedman thinks they “deserve an opportunity to find a sustainable future in our economy.”
The comments were made yesterday by Friedman in a posting on her LinkedIn profile. The president and CEO of the Nasdaq exchange was writing ahead of her scheduled appearance at the World Economic Forum at Davos.
NASDAQ CEO and Crypto
Friedman believes crypto will have an important part to play in the future, believing “the invention itself [is] a tremendous demonstration of genius and creativity.”
Her posting painted a fair picture of crypto’s journey thus far. She touched on the technology’s innovation, and the hype and intrigue surrounding it. She also called its recent demise “a dose of reality.“
Her opinion now is that cryptocurrency is currently at a crossroads whereby two outcomes are possible:
“1) Either the innovation finds practical utility followed by years of steady and sustainable commercial progress and integration into the economic fabric (e.g., the Internet); or 2) The invention fails to achieve broad adoption and its commercial applications as a medium of exchange is limited (e.g., the Segway).”
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Polar Opposites
The NASDAQ CEO touched on a contentious issue where crypto is concerned, and that is its current ironic position: for crypto to be useable in the everyday and to hold a tangible and stable value, it requires “governance and regulatory clarity.” However, these are “antithetical to the original intent [of] a decentralized, ungovernable global currency.” Herein lies cryptocurrency’s greatest irony.
NASDAQ and Crypto
NASDAQ has offered a helping hand to start-up exchanges in the past. It has offered its in-house technology to new exchanges to help create safe and fair trading environments. For example, earlier in January, DX.Exchange—a platform launching the trade of cryptocurrencies and tokenized traditional stocks—announced that it uses Nasdaq’s Financial Information Exchange (FIX) in its operations.
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