SmartBrief caught up with Trading Technologies CEO Rick Lane on the sidelines of the Global Financial Leadership Conference to get his thoughts on the event and his insights on topics like cryptocurrencies and the role technology will play the financial markets of the future.
What are your thoughts on this year’s GFLC? Were there any panels or comments that really resonated with you?
It’s been a predictably good conference. Like the last few years at GFLC, the sessions that brought together leaders from the global political landscape seemed to resonate the most, given the climate of politics we’re living in. Personally, I found the intersection of finance and politics a particularly compelling topic this year.
Technology is always a hot topic at GFLC. How do you see technology shaping the markets of the future?
At GFLC, Steve Wozniak talked about artificial intelligence and his opinions on “the singularity” — and while there’s still debate on whether we’ll see machines taking over as some predict, there’s no debate that machine learning and AI are playing an increasing role in capital markets and will likely continue to shape the future of this industry like they have so many others.
What are your thoughts on the evolution of cryptocurrencies? What innovations in the crypto space are most likely to be adopted in other asset classes?
I share the common view that the prolonged low volume and volatility period we’ve seen in most cryptocurrencies is just part of the maturation of the asset class. Regarding technology, I think there’s still a lot of catching up to do from a market infrastructure perspective, when comparing it to the established markets represented at conferences like GFLC. Despite still being a nascent technology with pretty paltry volume, I believe that the underlying technologies enabling decentralized exchanges are innovations that will find themselves applied to broader capital markets in the future.