Different voices in product, policy and hiring change crypto outcomes, panelists tell Consensus Miami
Senior leaders from Mastercard, the Crypto Council for Innovation and Clerisy said the right people in the right rooms can reshape internal decisions, citing examples from stablecoin-linked cards and financial access to staking-policy framing in Washington.
What to know:
- Mastercard’s Maja Lapcevic, Crypto Council for Innovation’s Alison Mangiero and Clerisy’s Alexandra Wilkis Wilson told CoinDesk’s Consensus Miami conference Tuesday that bringing different voices into product, policy and hiring discussions can change the outcomes those discussions produce.
- Lapcevic said an outside partner helped Mastercard think beyond crypto infrastructure and focus on making crypto “accessible, not complex,” including through cards linked to stablecoins for users in markets with limited access to traditional financial services.
- Mangiero said CCI’s policy work on staking changed after builders of staking primitives joined the discussion, helping the group describe staking as a “technical service” rather than a financialized product.
Mastercard SVP for Blockchain & Digital Assets Maja Lapcevic said her company’s crypto team had initially viewed infrastructure as the key to crypto adoption, until a partner reframed the problem around usability. “We probably all thought about infrastructure to be the winning formula for crypto,” she said. “But one of our partners actually really helped shed light on how we make crypto accessible, not complex, very simple to use.” That thinking helped push Mastercard toward cards linked to stablecoins, including for users in markets with limited access to traditional financial services, she said.
Crypto Council for Innovation Chief Strategy Officer Alison Mangiero said her organization had a similar realization around staking after bringing builders into policy discussions. “Sometimes we might think we understand, or we’ll put things into a bucket,” she said. “We’ll take a shortcut and say, oh, that sounds like a fund. Oh, that sounds like interest or yield, when in actuality what’s going on under the hood is fundamentally different.” After hearing from people building staking primitives, she said, CCI understood the need to describe staking as a technical service rather than a financialized product.
