Big business has much more in store for digital assets

NASHVILLE — Any time you see that a gigantic, well-established company has announced a new crypto-related product, it's a safe bet that it's been in the works for a long time, according to PwC's Matt Blumenfeld.

Why it matters: Giant financial firms don't move quickly, so it demonstrates that interest in blockchain applications this time around is more than a fad.

Driving the news: Blumenfeld was one of many financial pros from notable firms talking crypto and accounting at a daylong gathering yesterday in Nashville where professionals discussed how to build classic financial controls and audit-readiness for the much-less-new-than-it-once-was world of business on the blockchain.

• The event was organized by Bitwave, which provides software to facilitate accounting for crypto assets by all sorts of companies.

What they're saying: "I think people are excited to bring to life what they've been working on for years," Blumenfeld said, on a panel about institutional-level accounting.

Zoom in: Search and cloud giant Google had a staff member on site, speaking about how the company felt it necessary to use digital assets if they were going to provide cloud services to web3 companies.

• He explained that work has led to the firm seeing an enormous opportunity in cost-savings on business-to-business payments.
• "U.S. dollar-denominated stablecoins are a fantastic tool for payments. Period," Rich Widmann from its web3 team said on stage.
• Not only are they fast, but they can save big companies a little bit of money, especially on international payments (and "a little" adds up to a lot of money when it's a company at Google's scale).

Yes, but: It hasn't all been sunshine and growth over the last few years. There've been lessons. Steven Lim, who oversees finance for NFT marketplace Magic Eden, recalled the Silicon Valley Bank disaster, which hit stablecoin issuer Circle especially hard.

• He was touring Universal Studios with his kids when the executive team messaged him and said they needed him to arrange a wire for many millions of dollars... like, now.
• "It's so important to have a diverse portfolio of banking partners," he said.

What's next: Another example Blumenfeld gave from the front lines of helping big firms deploy distributed ledger technology: Citi's digital payments platform. It uses it to speed up payments to clients all over the world, and there are a lot more projects like that coming, he promised.

• "It really will change the fabric of financial services."