WEF 2022, May 23: Latest updates from the Cointelegraph Davos team

Disclaimer: This article is being updated all day long. All timestamps are in the UTC time zone, with updates in reverse order (the latest update is placed at the top).

This year’s World Economic Forum marks the first in-person event since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Cointelegraph’s team is on the ground in Davos, Switzerland to bring in the latest updates from one of the most significant global events of the year. The topics of discussion among world leaders include blockchain technology, the role of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), Web3 and nonfungible tokens (NFTs).

Don’t forget to check this article regularly to get notified about the most recent announcements from the event.

6:00 pm UTC

International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva, the central bank governors of France and Thailand, and Credit Suisse chairman Axel Lehmann appeared together at a panel on central bank digital currencies. They talked about possible pitfalls in the design of CBDCs and competition from traditional financial solutions.

Read the full conversation here.

5:00 pm UTC

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire was joined by Ripple’s Brad Garlinghouse and BRAC’s Asif Saleh in a panel discussion titled “Remittances for Recovery: A New Era of Digital Money.” Allaire explained why “cash is king” and why blockchain protocols need to incorporate more qualities of physical money to attract new users. 

Read all the important details Jeremy Allaire brought to the table during the panel.

2:30 pm UTC

Cointelegraph editor-in-chief Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr is on stage to moderate the panel “Programmable Money is Here — and It’s Changing the World as We Know It.”

Read the discussion about programmable money here.

12:30 pm UTC

Cointelegraph interviewed Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse at Filecoin Foundation’s Decentralized Web Gateway event at Davos.

“Regulation and clarity are the key things we are looking for from the regulators when it comes to the crypto industry,” Garlinghouse told Cointelegraph. He added:

“Crypto used to be a bad word in Davos. Now, it’s being talked about, and there are more and more cryptocurrency companies taking part.”

Here’s what the Ripple CEO focused on at Davos.

12:00 pm UTC

Hyperledger’s Karen Ottoni and the Digital Dollar Project’s Jennifer Lassiter sat down with Joe Hall to talk about CBDCs and cryptocurrencies. The video interview is coming soon to Cointelegraph’s YouTube channel.

The experts agree that CBDCs and cryptocurrencies will grow alongside each other and “even learn from one another.”

11:00 am UTC

In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, Sheila Warren, CEO of the Crypto Council for Innovation, discussed the growing influence and acceptance of the crypto ecosystem in the mainstream. 

Talking about the growing phenomenon of the metaverse and its impact on the future, Warren stated that the fluidity between digital spaces and real life is the key. “We talk about the metaverse as if it is one thing, but the reality is there are going to be multiple metaverses, and people will have a seamless identity across multiple metaverses,” she added.

9:30 am UTC

Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse shared his views on the recent collapse of the Terra ecosystem and its subsequent impact on the rest of the crypto market. He noted that while the crash was not a good thing, it’s doesn't necessarily indicate that algorithmic stablecoins have failed:

"Who’s to say algorithmic stablecoins don’t succeed in five to 10 years. The industry is here to stay and will find more and more interesting real-world use cases.”

Garlinghouse went on to discuss the state of regulations in the United States, saying: “The industry lacks clarity and certainty. The overwhelming majority of people working in crypto are good actors; however, when the rules are not clear, it is very difficult to manage within that for investors.”

9:00 am UTC 

Alan Ransil, Filecoin’s green project lead, explained the key difference between fiat money and cryptocurrencies:

“Fiat money only has the ability to add and subtract. Programmable money, in comparison, offers real-time solutions and fast response mechanisms.”8:30 am UTC

Ripple senior vice president Brooks Entwistle shared his views on the current debate around whether or not the industry is in a crypto winter. He told Cointelegraph:

“This has happened before. It’s going to happen again. And I think for us, we’re building into it. I think it’s an opportunity. [...] In some ways, a lot of this is noise, and we've got to reduce the noise and focus on the signal."8:00 am UTC

Cointelegraph editor-in-chief Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr got in touch with PayPal vice president Richard Nash to get an insight into the leading payment processor’s blockchain and crypto plans.

Nash told Cointelegraph:

“We are already doing a lot in the space and just working slowly in the crypto field [...] and then looking to work with others to embrace everything we can, whether it be the coins that we have today in the PayPal digital wallets, whether it be private digital currencies, whether it be CBDCs in the future.”