Welcome to the Arena from ICR – Conversations with Today's Innovators & Business Leaders Pete Najarian, Managing Partner, RW3 Ventures – Digital Disruption: Decoding the crypto world and revolutionizing finance through blockchain technology
As the world embraces cryptocurrency, blockchain technology, and deregulated finance, there's a massive transformation on the horizon. But if you're going to invest in these innovations, you need to be incredibly diligent and have a deep understanding of the tech. Today's guest has both.
We're sitting down with Pete Najarian, who is the Managing Partner of RW3 Ventures. RW3 is a digital asset venture firm built in partnership with The Raptor Group. The Raptor Group is a multi-sector venture firm with significant investments across fintech, sports and gaming, healthcare, and digital assets.
Pete has significant dedicated digital asset experience, having previously served in senior leadership roles for two leading digital asset operating businesses: Zappo, which was ultimately acquired by Coinbase in 2019, and BitGo, the leader in digital asset security, custody, and liquidity. They provide the operational backbone for more than 1, 500 institutional clients and over 50 companies. They also process 20 percent of all the global Bitcoin transactions by value.
Prior to that, Pete spent 20 years plus building and leading the global emerging markets businesses for some of the world's largest banks, UBS and RBS in particular.
Highlights:
- Pete's experience in finance, discovering cryptocurrency, and founding RW3 (4:10)
- Pete's approach to investing at RW3 (7:24)
- Bitcoin, and Pete's outlook on when to invest in crypto (8:18)
- Analyzing Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies' place in the market (9:53)
- Pete breaks down the opportunities opened up by blockchain innovation (11:30)
- The use and value of cryptocurrency technology in the world economy (13:35)
- How Pete makes decisions on blockchain investments (16:03)
- How RW3 assists clients (18:47)
- Pete breaks down the relationship between traditional finance and cryptocurrency (21:06)
- Pete's predictions on the future of blockchain technology and finance field (24:11)
- Understanding decentralized finance (25:03)
- Government involvement in cryptocurrency (26:38)
- Some of Pete's current investments at RW3 (30:00)
- Qualifications for an investment at RW3 (33:10)
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If you have questions about the show, or have a topic in mind you'd like discussed in future episodes, email our producer, marion@lowerstreet.co.