Camila Russo is the Founder of The Defiant – a DeFi-focused media company. Russo is a journalist who passionately tracks the development of a new, decentralized financial system. She’s also a published author. Her book: “The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-hackers is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum,” tells the story of Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin.

Russo started as an international news reporter for El Mercurio, Chile’s biggest print news company, before transitioning to Bloomberg, where she worked for almost eight years.

Russo has a BS degree in Journalism from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and a MS degree in Journalism from Northwestern University.

She will join Benzinga’s Fintech Deal Day event in NYC on Nov. 13, on behalf of The Defiant, as a media partner, participating in Kevin O’Leary‘s round table.

The following day, she will attend Benzinga’s Future of Digital Assets event to exchange ideas with entrepreneurs working on breakthrough products in the digital asset space.

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Participating at the recent ECC conference, Russo recalled memories from years ago when she admired the crypto market from the sidelines.

“I thought it was a little bit manic back then. There was so much idealism about everything that could be built on the blockchain. It was like, stick a blockchain into anything, and it will be better,” she said, reflecting on the time when she covered the ICO boom at Bloomberg.

Among the significant industry developments since then, Russo singles out DAOs and NFTs.

“DAOs helped organize individuals worldwide towards working towards the same goal. Constitution DAO is a great example of that. NFTs inspired a new wave of users to be excited about owning digital property,” she said, noting that after Ethereum executed the seemingly impossible merge, Layer Two signaled the next step by delivering a more scalable blockchain infrastructure.

Still, Russo recognized some DeFi shortcomings, particularly in decentralized apps.

“It’s this idea that so-called decentralized apps that developers are portraying themselves as decentralized and removing intermediaries when, in fact, it’s actually, you know, a bunch of dudes in a room controlling the whole thing.”

Considering these concerns, Russo raises the question of why institutions would trust a system that allows for arbitrary changes when moving large sums of money.

Thus, institutions will likely remain skeptical, as Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas noted in a recent interview with The Defiant.

Commenting on the hot topic of spot crypto ETFs, Balchunas speculates that spot Ether ETFs could get about 20% of the demand of Bitcoin ETFs.

“Most people don’t get Ethereum, whereas Bitcoin, they can be like, okay, got it, digital gold. Time and time again, advisors have generally shunned more complicated things they don’t understand,” he noted.

Benzinga’s Fintech Deal Day & Awards event will enlighten highlights of the current digital asset space. Join Benzinga’s Future of Digital Assets in NYC on Nov. 14, 2023, to stay updated on trends like AI, regulations, SEC actions & institutional adoption in the crypto space. Secure early bird discounted tickets now!

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