Lex Sokolin, ConsenSys CMO & Fintech Futurist — Fintech Trends, Defi, & Digital Collectibles
Listen on Apple | Spotify | Soundcloud
On today’s episode, I sit down with Lex Sokolin, CMO, Chief Economist, and Global Fintech Co-Head at ConsenSys, the world’s leading ethereum software company. Lex also writes the Fintech Blueprint, an amazing fintech subscription newsletter (that also comes with the occasional podcast).
Lex worked in strategy at Lehman Brothers before getting a JD/MBA from Columbia. At Columbia he founded NestEgg, a private label robo, later selling it to Advisor Engine, then worked in research at Autonomous Research before taking the plunge full-time into crypto.
Lex is a fintech and technology futurist in every sense of the word, always writing at the intersection of finance, tech, law, philosophy, economics, and sociology. We are a huge fan of his work here at Wharton Fintech!
Here are a few fun snippets…
On the recent rise of crypto art, NFTs,
“Everyone needs to understand that we’re entering a different world…Life is a circus and nothing matters. We work serious jobs at serious companies that run on serious accounting software, but Mr. Beast is the most popular person in the world and he’s a Youtuber…the economies of virtual worlds are throwing off billions in revenue, and esports is more popular than real sports.”
“If an artist spends forever making something with physical paint, it’s worth millions. But if he spends that same time doing it on Microsoft Paint, it’s suddenly worthless. Why? Physical paint is just a technology.”
I also chime in here with the parallelism of The Crypto Art Craze and Duchamp’s Fountain, and why my generation is having a bit of its own dada movement.
Why he’s tired of neobanks and robos:
“It’s deeply uninteresting that some feature hack is touted in the future of finance. And when that feature hack generates 1–5M users, the playbook is we’re gonna make Citi Group from the 80’s but 40 years later and digital…it’s cool to show on a slide, but the moment you invoke the fintech bundle it’s deeply boring.”
On one of the reasons why he’s moved on from neo and robo work:
“Google Pay is going to kill all of you, The End…So what are the platform shifts that matter? I wanted to spend time on AI, blockchain, and other parts of the value chain.”
In today’s episode, we discuss:
- The deep meanings behind his career decision making, breaking from gold-star chasing to startups and now frontier technology
- Why we both think Duchamp’s Fountain can teach us about NFT’s
- How a conversation with a Deloitte exec turned him into a budding futurist
- What ConsenSys is and how it works with the crypto ecosystem
- His predictions for Defi and the road to mass adoption
- His extreme boredom with robo advisors and neobanks, and why he’s so tired of “the fintech bundle”
- Why Google Pay is going to kill many fintechs
Lex is fascinating in today’s episode. It’s one of those episodes that I wish lasted for hours, and I could get in multiple rounds of questions.
Listen on Apple | Spotify | Soundcloud
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Ryan Zauk
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Ryan Zauk is an MBA Candidate at The Wharton School, where he runs the Wharton FinTech Podcast. He currently works with the US International Development Finance Corp looking at technology impact investments in developing markets. He has a passion for music, media, and all things FinTech.
You can reach him at rzauk@wharton.upenn.edu or on Twitter.
