Jill Carlson: Crypto and Fintech Share Goals: They Should Talk

On one team, cryptocurrency entrepreneurs are taking a first-principles approach, starting with completely new assets and new infrastructure in order to get "Programmable money." On another team, fintech builders are tackling the problem by building around the systems that already exist: Simple APIs will grant us "Autonomous finance." Both approaches promise a new day for the retail experience of finance, but they are taking very different paths to get there.

Jill Carlson, a CoinDesk columnist, is co-founder of the Open Money Initiative, a non-profit research organization working to guarantee the right to a free and open financial system.

Rather, the aim is to build into and among the legacy infrastructure of finance, crafting middleware that enables money management to become "Smart" and money movement to feel fast, even when running on old rails.

While the larger cryptocurrency ecosystem has much more revolutionary aims over the long run, the immediate goals of the programmable money crowd are very much aligned with those of autonomous finance.

While Plaid is "Read only," many of these tools now offer read and write access, enabling fintech companies to make withdrawals and deposits from accounts programmatically.

Given the overlap of goals here, it is surprising to see that these two sides - decentralized finance and fintech APIs - rarely meet.

Investors in crypto could learn many lessons from those in fintech who are deep in the weeds of what is practical and realistic within the constraints of the current system.

Conversely, mainstream fintech investors may find compelling opportunities within the enormous, disruptive dream of cryptocurrency.

Cryptocurrency entrepreneurs and protocol developers might find that they are already using the APIs and tools being developed in the world of fintech.

Fintech builders may find their minds opened to larger horizons by spending a bit of time down the crypto rabbit hole.