As halftime calms the crowd and enables more conversation, Martinez’s group offers one another ideas and encouragement. Daniel Riceberg’s firm, BTCglobal, allows anyone to buy a share of an 18,000-square-foot building in the city’s Koreatown neighborhood for as little as $10 by turning the real estate into non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
“The concept is to reduce friction in the real estate business, because obviously the barrier to entry is too high for many people,” says Riceberg, a real estate and mortgage broker. He plans to offer tenants on his platform their own digital tokens for paying rent on time.
“The technology is ready for prime time and the assets — meaning lots of unsold properties — are here,” Riceberg says, taking a swig of beer. “The scariest things are, meeting compliance standards is really costly and knowing there are some bad actors in the space.”
Unlike the serial startup founders at the gathering, Persephone Godwin works for London & Partners, an agency that focuses on bringing international business to the British capital and which has worked with a number of U.S.-based fintech companies to expand operations in Europe.
One of those is MoonPay, a New York-based firm that allows users to buy, sell and manage cryptocurrencies using conventional payment methods and which has partnered with Mastercard to create branded cards linked to users’ stablecoin balances.
“This is a great way to connect with innovators and founders,” Godwin says. “But more than that, it’s an effective way to gauge how the industry is evolving, where the excitement is shifting.”
As the game and the meetup begin to wind down, Martinez opens up about the challenges to adoption that cryptocurrencies face and what excites him in this moment.
“I’m not scared about anything,” he says when asked what keeps him up at night. “There’s going to be a lag before there is more mainstream usage but not using this technology would be the scary part. Already I’m seeing tons of regular consumers doing fintech transactions without even realizing it.”
AI may be grabbing all of the headlines, but it’s also allowing people like Martinez to innovate faster. Using AI, he recently built a digital Medicare wallet and rewards app called Alphavisor in about a week.
“I’ve stopped needing to find developers who have fintech experience for little things like integration apps,” he adds. “It’s very hard for programmers to have literacy in different vertical spaces. The regulations are different in different spaces, and most programmers are not used to all the fintech lingo and best practices. Now, you just tell AI what you need as you refine the project.”
The fintech meetup he organized ends almost in perfect synchrony with the match. The blockchain believers exchange business cards and join a sea of green-clad Mexico fans spilling onto the streets, each group satisfied they got what they came for.
