Sign Maine Banking Contract Secure

Industry sign banking maine contract secure

so thank you everyone for joining us today uh we're here to discuss banking and digital asset growth together with joseph seibert and the managing group director and senior vice president of digital asset banking at signature bank as well as ayala moshe the ceo and co-founder of tel aviv's based cyber security firm hub security i'll start a webinar with a brief introduction to our speakers hello yeah uh and then i'll hand over the stage to tuaya moshe and joseph zeibert for the presentations and at the end like i said we'll hold a short q a to wrap everything up so if you have any questions and as the discussions going on feel free to just to just uh you know to just write them and and to send them to us if you can't find the q and a the chat works as well um so i'm joined now by joseph zeibert hi how are you great um in his role as signature bank cybert oversees all aspects of uh private client commercial banking related to fiat settlement for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology firms that are trading digital assets um from otc desk to cryptocurrency exchanges to crypto mining operations uh signature bank's digital assets team manages most of the day-to-day needs of its global clientele so most recently joseph served as vice president and market sales manager at metropolitan commercial bank in manhattan and before that held roles as vice president at valley national bank and bank of america in 2014 he pivoted a bit and to the digital asset banking space and quickly realized that the digital asset industry needed a more defined path to successfully merge its clientele with the commercial banking industry so welcome joseph we're really happy to have you here thank you excited to be here i appreciate the intro and we're also joined here by yael moncia ceo and co-founder of hub security ayala is the co-founder of hub which is a military-grade hardware cyber security firm built by ex-idf 8200 unit security experts i think that's the best way to put it um he's also a former executive at uh ca software uh heading a division and um of their of their uh of their branch and the co-founder of bling dot gui and planet zoho welcome ayal thank you um so i think i'll first hand over the stage to joseph who will share with us his thoughts and insights on digital asset banking and then we'll hear a bit from um yeah and why security is so critical when it comes to protecting digital assets um i think this will be more of a discussion so yeah feel free to jump in if you know if you want to to add anything that joseph is um is saying and um and vice versa um and like i said one more time if you have questions uh drop them in the q a and we will get to them at the end so take it away joseph george thank you so again thank you to the hub security team y'all everybody uh for allowing me to speak today it's exciting times especially for this industry and really for banking in general uh as we see a lot of pivoting towards digital assets and and speeding up payments uh here in the us and around the globe so uh again my name is joseph seibert i'm the senior vice president managing group director for signature bank based in manhattan a top 40 bank in the u.s publicly traded uh in excess of 60 billion in assets and really the largest crypto friendly bank uh in in the us that operates globally so really an important initiative uh to coming to signature was the aspect that we were going to be global and crypto friendly and what that means really the definition of digital asset banking is simply banking the institutional firms that are underbanked you know everyone in this space knows it's very hard to not only obtain a bank relationship but to maintain it there's so many uh green light red light stops and goes from banks that are issued to firms that settle usd and foreign currency it's important to have an institution that's going to be in this for the long term investor resources and really important to have an executive management team that has the vision and the courage to to push forward in this space not only for u.s companies but for companies in asia europe uh really any jurisdiction that that has the need that we are uh comfortable you know with operating in so you know with that said when you really look at uh digital asset banking uh over the last six years uh since i've entered the space it's slowly creeping towards adoption uh more so in the us than it has been but it's really heavily concentrated overseas right now so our main focal point was how do we deliver something that speaks the language of this community speeds up payments you know promotes growth promotes all the things that are necessary cash management services the ability to open accounts without having to visit your branches you know and really base it on a model that allows firms that operate truly operate globally to function properly so a signature you know one of the key aspects for us was you know where we built this balance sheet on organic growth you know funding traditional companies with loans whether it was real estate or business to business and we really have an executive management team that looks at each industry as a whole and says how do we become the specialty bank in that space so really we came to signature with the high hopes that we had a balance sheet to grow the omnibus banking for our digital asset exchanges onboard their counterparties and then come up with a tool that allowed them to settle instantly so most banks aren't friendly to this space so as you convert usd to british pounds or euros you'll find that the bank overseas will kick the funds back say that they are not supporting the space uh and really make it clunky and difficult to settle uh bitcoin trading and and it it's it's a shame because there's so many opportunities to really lend a helping hand most banks are shying away and i feel it's because of the resources lack thereof and really the lack of vision and executive management support and that's what signature bank has brought to the table you know we really have invested a lot of resources most notably the intelligence to support these resources the security which we'll get into later but mostly we needed something again to speed up payments so we launched uh cigna so cygnet is our own proprietary blockchain based payments platform to settle usd instantly 24 7 365 and some of you may be familiar with the platform if you're not you can you can go to cignet.com to give you a quick overview but essentially it's a it's a protocol that's influenced off the ethereum blockchain it's a private commissioned blockchain that we control the power we control you know everything that goes on functionality wise and we partnered with a firm called tacit here in new york city shout out to my good friend nick goodrich who has been a really important partner at tacit uh they control the nodes for our blockchain and continue to help us with the wallet management and uh and and really make this a product that we can use for years and years and years to come and again the reason we chose this was a lot of banks have an archaic infrastructure where you have two operating platforms to choose from fis or pfizer so larger banks are really a get in line type procedure when it comes to enhancing that platform or adding services and products for their clients we wanted to build something that we can control that we can enhance on the spot and not have to get in line and wait uh you know for the resources to either be deployed to our institution or uh the timeline just not meeting our needs so with this blockchain based payments platform again being that it's permissioned and private it's a walled guard so you have to be onboarded as a client of signature bank which then allows us to follow all the bsa guidelines set forth by by the government and really follow protocols that are true to banking yet allow the clients to operate with the speed of payment processing at 3 a.m on a saturday on a bank holiday such as this past week on labor day uh we saw you know nine figures moving on cigna you know over a 24-hour period um these volumes are over you know a span of the last year and a half growing exponentially by the day and it really depended upon the ecosystem so as you know cryptocurrency firms the ecosystem is very tight-knit uh they are very happy to refer the counterparties they do the most business with to make settlement a faster and more efficient tool for them as they trade bitcoin and and our philosophy is we don't want to custody bitcoin right we're a bank we have clients that do that really well um i'll briefly mention you know the occ announcing banks in custody is a great news and big win for the space and as you see there hasn't been a mad rush of banks going to do it i think everyone's kind of looking at it we don't view it as a very profitable uh initiative at the moment that may change down the road but if you look at it again we have clients that custody crypto very well so we thought let's partner with some of those firms and build them an api functionality to settle both sides of the trade instantly and really eliminate third party risk that's also what cygnet does so you may see uh have seen some some recent press releases uh we've partnered with fireblocks some some other custody platforms uh another firm prime trust where we really link our api share our platform knowledge and let them speak to each other as to really eliminate again that third party risk and allow these clients to operate efficiently when it comes to movement of usd foreign currency and bitcoin now right now cygnet supports usd only but our our goal and our mission is to speed up payment processing all around the world uh so when it comes to euros pounds yen you name it uh it's clunky it's inefficient it's expensive our platform is free of charge we do not charge transaction fees we don't charge monthly fees we don't charge any fees to use cigna it settles in under 25 seconds sometimes you can catch the blockchain in that five to ten second range and there's no limit you can send 100 million or a dollar doesn't matter what time of day or night you're not going to need to get authorization from your bank you set up the controls in your firm you allow your users to input approve just like you would a normal bank account and you can execute these transactions free of charge and really at a speed that's unheard of at this day and age in banking and the reason we want to do that again is really to to speak the language and make sure people had a tool to use for years to come when you have an internal bank system that controls all the payments you're reliant upon the fed swift wire window or the banking hours in general we've eliminated that we actually turned signature bank into a 24 7 bank literally overnight about two and a half years ago when my team arrived here you know our team really started with three or four individuals has grown to 14 this year we've just been here for a little under three years and have built a massive ecosystem and we're really proud of that and i think a lot of our clients know that what sets us apart is we are responsive and we are diligent which are two very key factors in this space you have to be responsive and that doesn't mean during our eight hour work window or eleven hour work window their work window so they're deploying labor overnight to meet u.s banking needs it's our responsibility to reply and to get their needs met at 2 3 am so we have an overnight support team that also is there to face all the challenges you may encounter when trying to tee up wires or send signets and to back up a little more you know cygnets are simply tokens so again we have a closed blockchain so what it is is one to one representation of usd so all your usd that's in your bank account signature can be pushed onto cygnet we then hold it in our omnibus account on our balance sheet safe and secure and we represent that digitally in the form of what's called the cygnet token and that's how those tokens move uh you know and then that's how you can send monies to other firms that are operating in this space and vice versa uh so really that's what it does and that's what it's meant to do but it's also a world garden approach where we're in control of the funds you know so if there is an issue we can always look at the walls that are interacting it's not going outside the walled garden we can pretty much understand and know where that transfer has gone to and uh and that again is so important in this day and age because you know people prioritize how uh they do business with with regards to payments and i think a lot of banks want to be in blockchain there's our ceo joe apollo says you have to be in blockchain and if you're not as a bank he believes inside of five years you'll be gone as a bank and that may hold true on his timeline it may be even sooner but that's why signature bank decided to really step up invest resources and build cigna uh really for worldwide adoption not just us adoption uh we also were unique in a way where signature bank was the first u.s bank that gained regulatory approval for such a pro project and platform a lot of fintech firms have built payment platforms that use payment processors but for a bank to do it was unheard of and we did beat jp morgan to the punch which as many of you know jp morgan released their coin project in early 2019. we launched cigna in december of 2018 only after 11 months of starting the project tacit was was excellent on delivering the initiative to market and uh nydfs which is the new york department of financial services our primary regulator launched a press release approving this platform so we really were able to merge the us compliant regulatory aspect with the banking aspect and and that was something our chairman is really proud of our ceo is really proud of and we continue to work closely with the nydfs today so they can understand the space better you know when we think of this space growing we need u.s retail and institutional adoption fidelity entered the space as a custodian egypt excellent news all the institutions that are now investing heavily in bitcoin here in the us big news exciting and i think that'll push the market to retail adoption over time but from the banking perspective you know we have a pretty good head start here signature on what we want to do with this ecosystem uh continue to bank the underbanked case fight case you know you still have to be approved for a relationship to get onto cigna but the important aspect is we have a big bank that's willing to take the challenge on spend the money to to enhance the services and features we we provide now and continue to add and and the ability to grow in this space and that's the functionality that you just don't see to the banks or the bank is too small or doesn't have the executive team that supports it so uh with that said i mean i i have a lot more to share i want to see if there's any questions in the interim or if there's any other topics you want to pursue but that's a quick high-level overview of the bank my career path and what cygnet does today uh joseph i actually have a question for you um uh could you elaborate on what separates uh signature bank from its competition in the digital asset uh banking space sure yeah i'd be glad to and it's a great question you know many many people ask me that same question every day and uh my first response is we're extremely responsive as a unit and being truly 24 7 so it's one thing to say i'll answer an email at 11 30 and go to bed now our team is there overnight so again if you're in multiple time zones australia singapore you name it london we're going to get back to you you may not see it until your work day starts but just trust in knowing that that deliverable is going to be met within a 24 hour span and our balance sheet you know being a publicly traded you know bank here in the us uh with a with a large balance sheet really supports our digital exchanges as you know they're holding a lot of client funds you know they're holding them at omnibus they they were apprehensive to put those funds on a small balance sheet because of the security of that bank especially before some of the smaller banks became publi there was a concentration risk you know especially a regulatory framework in the u.s you cannot be over concentrated with certain clients we don't have that problem here and and it's it's really nice to be able to sell that feature saying you can trust us because we are public we have a balance sheet and you're always going to know that those financial records are public and that you can see our earnings calls and and you can see how the bank's doing from a growth perspective but our our chairman our ceo our vice chairman have been so supportive that might be my number one reason why we're being uh aggressive in this space and so successful we have the leadership that has the vision to accelerate our growth and invest resources and they're really behind us and that's been the biggest driver and difference great that's uh truly enlightening i have a kind of a follow-up question um maybe it's more like a brainstorm i was wondering uh to pick your brain on what are your thoughts around uh the mass adaptation of you know utilizing cryptocurrencies in the us um maybe you have some thoughts on timeline as well sure another another great question i mean if you look at today's timeline i think we're we're well behind here in the us what europe and asia has adopted uh and that's a great tough one um if you note a forbes press release on on the jp morgan coin in our point um we we noted that it was important to understand our bank didn't want to become the venmo platform so our focal point right on the gates was institutional firms we promised our regulators that we would walk before we run because there's no regulatory framework here so i feel that mass retail adoption won't occur until regulatory framework is built and that's probably about two and a half years from now we hope sooner but you're starting to see institutional firms dabble in investments you know larger hedge funds uh fidelity becoming a custody agent is huge news and uh so you're seeing signs of life and until the regulatory framework is built i don't think you'll see the ability to take uh payment at most retail stores in bitcoin but i do i do see that day coming and i see it coming you know like our ceo said before five years which he stated two years ago so we're hoping two and a half to three years and we're hoping uh the regulatory framework is bill and then i think you'll see u.s adoption occur and then all the banks will jump in which is late to the party but it'll be good news and you know that kind of made me think about uh fdic and secure deposits and and you know how would that uh evolve in your in your vision yeah so you know the unique feature again with cygnet is uh your your deposit's insured you know there are the standard fdict limits of 250 000 for tax id however when you put your money into the bank you still have that security of knowing that that deposits insured that translates over to cigna because again that money is held in an omnibus account on a balance sheet it's just a digital representation of your monies in cigna so the fdic which is also another regulator of ours is always concerned with we're functioning as a bank and what type of classifications we have what kind of rules we have in place and we have such a thorough due diligence process during our onboarding and if some clients are listening now you're probably shaking your head yes you know sometimes it's taken many weeks to get on board but we've sped that process up by asking the right questions you know at first we asked i think too many questions and a lot of them were around deposits are they insured do you get past their insurance we we've developed a way now to help our exchanges that have large omnibus accounts get passed through fdi insurance fdic insurance on their omnibus accounts that are holding all these pooled client funds that was a big step for us but again being a top 40 bank publicly traded in the u.s with the fdic as a primary regulator it pushes us to make sure we're following all these protocols and and it won't change so you know there's another uh added advantage where if you have a bank that might be smaller and not publicly traded are your deposits safe you know you have to ask that question and that goes for anywhere you know but especially in the us you know i think banks are shy from jumping in so for us it's a huge win to have a bank this size uh open its doors i mean uh uh and the last the last thing that comes to mind is uh maybe you can share uh some of your thoughts on the road map for cignet yeah or 2021 or and uh again thank you that's a great question uh we launched an api a rest api on subnet um why do we do that so we want our exchanges to be able to fill their order books instantly we want our exchanges to be able to connect with custody platforms and and really speed up every aspect of this transaction but also you don't want to deploy manual labor to do manual things right you need an api we're looking to enhance that api uh add more features and functionality uh we're looking at increasing our ecosystems not only on the crypto side it's already a very large ecosystem but on traditional banking you know we launched with a company called american power net which is based in pennsylvania uh when we launched cygnet they were our first traditional client to adopt signet renewable energy so industries like that cargo sprint there's so many there's so much need for faster payments to move money around the world instantly so we're looking at expanding our product offering on cigna continuing to invest resources make it better um enhance security you know and uh at fx you know and i could say we don't have an exact timeline for that but we're hopeful in 2021 we'll be able to hold multi currencies on cigna so it wouldn't just be usd we're looking to hopefully have canadian dollar pounds euros yen have a whole plethora of options so that we get rid of this clunky fx trading market that's really getting in the way you know if you're really looking into the definition amazing you know we've all figured out how to use bitcoin and move money through stable coins like tether and usdc but we can't figure out how to send euros in three days you know it's it's a shame so we're hopeful that that um is on it's on our roadmap or hopefully it gets executed next year well i'm done with questions i had a lot of them uh we didn't get to cover maybe we can get some questions from the audience yeah i would love to also yeah i'll hear a bit from you about um your take on the cyber security landscape um when it comes to digital assets in digital banking we have a few maybe a few insights you want to share with us before we jump into q a yeah of course so um so uh the last thing that joseph mentioned was uh the cyber risks and security risks so i want to um maybe uh emphasize and talk a little bit about uh what we're seeing as the major risks and then we can touch base on how we look at them here at hub security so i think the main uh one of the main concerns and this is not not a secret um stealing the keys is a big concern stinging the private keys even on separate networks we've we've seen things happen the issue of identity stating the identity i think most of the people here have seen there was a famous story about the german a german ceo that some hacker used deep fake to mimic his voice and these are things that you can basically get pretty much for free with your phone uh i'm talking about deep fakes that are very much advanced right now and you can mimic your voice your video your appearance um so stealing an identity has become extremely easy and almost anywhere between cheap and cost nothing and that's uh that's a huge concern and we're also seeing um the issue of hijacking data um which basically uh goes down to what you see is what you sign and the things that you see on screen is not necessarily representing the reality uh these are all so things that we're uh we're seeing in the in the in the internet and and you know looking and analyzing uh hacks so these these are things that uh they're showing uh showing up so going back to the hub security and what we've done here maybe i'll give a little bit of background into who we are and and what we do um so hub security has been um has been up and running since uh 2017 uh we're a group of highly experienced executives most of the team here came from the nsa of israel units called 8200 and other code names that are maybe [Music] less famous or less familiar and these are people that has been working for the state of israel protecting its most valuable secrets for decades and the idea was to see how we can bring uh that experience to our clients and to the market and i think that the main thing that we look at is how do we keep a secret how do we manage it uh and these days with kovitz how do you manage it remotely how do you deal with your identity remotely and still there are a lot of flexibilities that needs to be adjusted because of this period in time and these are things that we've taken into into our platform as a key as a key ingredient so talking about the um protecting the keys and the identity which is the prime the prime message for us uh at hub security uh we've built a very unique architecture where it is um it's really safe and uh you know once client get uh to interact with us we share um we shared some reports and uh and you can also find that on our website that we have companies that have tried to you know utilize and and and use our uh our platform in various ways and uh the the level of protection we provide is as high as it gets um now the the the deal with uh managing those fees remotely is something that kovid introduced to us and uh and it's a challenge and the fact that uh there are some solutions with splitting keys or splitting the physical representation of a key or parts of a key while legally you can't go to an office or anywhere to uh you know to actually go there and execute a transaction is something that we thought um pretty uh thoroughly about and we've introduced as part of as a key part of our um of our platform uh uh a product called beanie hsm and hsm as i'm sure most of the people here are aware of an hsm is a hardware security module where it basically keeps the keys it generates the keys inside um a secure enclave they never go out it is impossible to reach them and part of uh our perception into how do you how do you interact and how do you approve transactions or identity remotely is with the same architecture as uh as your you know your the hsm that sits in your data center in your bank's vault uh but with a smaller unit that uh can basically is basically holding the same architecture and will allow you to interact with your data center in a highly secure way and these are things that have been implemented on a state level where when we're saying it's a it's a it's a military-grade uh solution that is uh a key component to that statement these methodologies have been embraced by states and they're not so easy to get to so this is something that requires some more uh thinking and and knowledge and experience which we have here at top security um i think another uh key element i wanted to maybe just um get to some of the we have lots of questions pouring in and i just want to make sure that we have enough time to get to all of them um because we have a super engaged audience and um maybe it would be helpful wrap up i'll wrap up very uh very soon so i think that um the last point that i want to talk about is the fact that with our platform one of the key elements which is uh an approval flow or who is going to be the admin for the process of approving a transaction um i can give you a a really quick example uh and we're all you know we all uh know about the famous hack uh from binance uh there was also a very famous hack uh to traditional bank in malta last year and those hacks both happened kind of in a similar way uh those hacks happened when the hackers uh got into the bank system or you know the exchange system and they were able to change the rules and the admin access and not necessarily to reach the keys and uh one of the main things that we're doing at up security is we're also securing the admin process of how you deal with the rules how do you manage the rules and how do you interact between the users of your own system and this is also something that we are looking at this as any other transaction and we're keeping all the rules of the organization uh inside uh the hsm inside the securing claim of the hsm and this is uh we've seen in the market this is a very powerful tool that is being used uh uh quite a lot and i think uh the the last um the last note that i have is that um the fact that we're building the entire stack here and we control the entire flow gives us the ability to be very flexible in terms of the solutions and that's why we were able to adjust uh you know to to to rapid uh business changes uh through the pandemic and i think uh the the time of that pandemic proved that uh uh pretty strongly so that's uh that is i think my last note uh i really think that uh cyber risks should be taken extremely seriously especially when we're uh we're going to enter um the space of regulation and you know when the focus starts to go there uh regulation will start to operate it looks like it has already begun and we're looking forward for the chat for the challenge great thank you so much yeah and yeah i definitely think that there [Music] uh needs to be a broader discussion on the cyber security implications of working with digital assets and protecting and protecting tokens and um especially when it comes to digital banking um okay i'm just going to jump in we have a few questions here and i'll start with with the first one i think um which i find pretty pretty interesting um timothy is asking if that's a signet painting in the back um in the back of you behind you joseph and if it is it's a he says it's brilliant um and we had a company out of uh wisconsin make the canvas art for us um so i have a few my office one at home yeah it's it's it's a it's a logo we've come up with to identify uh a token we're pretty happy how it came out so thank you yeah it reminds me of um the secret logo i don't know if you know this book um yeah um okay great thanks for uh thanks for the question timothy um we have here um gregory swank is asking um saying thanks for your vision um you know he means a signature bank's vision what sort of pushback have you experienced from regulators um when building the company let's push back on what we're doing or push back on their knowledge of the space right so a lot of the field auditors they deploy to banks are green to the space and after they become educated it may move on to other things and then we're almost re-explaining everything that we've done the last two and a half years but the leadership team at the regulatory bodies are understandable they're supportive so the only primary pushback we've got is what we call the retail market as a bank we decided really to not engage in trade activity under 50 000 usd we're starting to get more comfortable with that but that's the one agreement we had with our regulator when we launched cignet it would be institutional only let's walk before we run great thank you um we have a question here from eric um one of our attendees and they said sorry for a bit of a gotcha question but will you allow your customers to take a note in cygnet no not um an anonymous attendee is asking a b2b transaction would the counterparty also need to bank with signature bank uh or can you disburse funds um to accounts at other banks as well yes so right now it's uh internal so it's b2b for any client that's on board at signature that's how we comply with bsa kyc we are believe me we're thinking heavily about how we can make this work where uh you know for lack of a better term let's say signatures the central bank right we want banks to help out and participate on the platform uh we've already you know partnered with a few uh we do some side you know bar transactions and it works well especially if they're overseas uh so for now you have to be in the walled garden and eventually we hope that that changes but we would need regulatory framewor and approval for us to to feel comfortable doing so great thank you um so i think this next question is also for joseph and i have one for you y'all soon coming up um if issues related to cryptocurrencies are so transparent then why are the regulators such government resisting acceptance this is a hard question you need to answer but one question again it's a great question and i think it's really again it comes down to basic knowledge um when people are afraid of something they refuse to learn about it make yourself uncomfortable to get comfortable you'd be surprised how much knowledge you'll gain and i think that's simply and don't take this the wrong way if there's a regulator listening out there it's not an intelligence factor it's a willingness right so let's let's all admit cryptocurrencies are not the normal person on the street you ask them what bitcoin is i still do it today they don't know you have someone in europe or asia they'll tell you in two seconds uh how it's controlled which blockchain you want to talk about you know so mass adoption starts with conversations and coffee shops it starts with uh being able to pay for goods and services in bitcoin you know bermuda for example uh recently is trying to adopt usdc to pay for government taxes and services it's it's initiatives like that that get people more knowledgeable well what do you mean i could pay my taxes in bitcoin teach me about it it's it's the the fear of not knowing so let's ignore it so to me to to answer that question i would say education is important around this space and knowing the rails you got to know how you can operate just like if you're on the highway you got to know the speed limit same thing here you want to know how you can operate so the sec should have guidelines the occ should have guidelines and if you notice the occ just said banks can custody they've become more comfortable with it it's just really about knowledge and getting more comfortable with the space and how it looks you know when this whole initiative started back in 2009 and banks were looking at it they all thought bitcoin was used to launder money uh you know to sell drugs cash is still the number one tool to launder money in this world cash and i don't know if that'll ever change um but you know until people start breaking out that fear and learning about it we'll be stuck in neutral but i think it's we're getting better definitely i think it's a follow-up to that the attendee um asked further when cryptocurrency is a medium of exchange unless the government controls the quantum of issue they will not be able to control inflation how do you reconcile you too i don't know if you can reconcile the two uh you know i don't know if the us government will ever allow a currency to dominate the us dollar uh you know i i think to be used as a means of payment is a really exciting use case a store of value you know people say it's digital gold but you know we have to have support you know and again we're so early in that stage that i just don't see it being something where inflation would even come into play you know right now let's talk about stable points you look at the value some days they're less than a dollar you know it it it's so it's so murky uh it's hard to really pinpoint but i think you'll see eventually once you can use it in our society and you go to an antique shop in maine you could you could use bitcoin uh so that's a good sign but until you could go into your local grocery store and use it to buy groceries i don't know if i'll have an answer to that right i mean and that's what crypto the stable coins like um libra you know from facebook are trying to do and they're having a very hard time cutting through the regular regulatory tape um so so their future is also pretty uncertain it's pretty hot and heavy and then all of a sudden it got to the desk of the us department and yeah so we'll see how that goes um okay so we have a question here i think this is also for joseph um another one from timothy um joe how much focus and investment goes into the cyber security aspect of managing the network and securing the structure ddos by nation states cyber criminals and other actors are getting more and more aggressive how do you instill confidence in clients that your bcnw is secure yeah it's another great question a great point uh today's the first part we spent a lot of time and a lot of resources on this topic we have an entire compliance financial intelligence unit at the bank that and my ceo will not let me dive too deep in our protocol but i could tell you it's an ongoing discussion day by day because you know there's so many bad actors out there and what you know with yale's point we've seen a rash of business email compromise when executing wire transfers so and that's been historic banking that's been going on for years we've seen an increased rashford recently because you know if you're sending a wire for a hundred thousand dollars to buy bitcoin and you get your bitcoin and it's in your wallet adios you know well if you hacked into someone's email and stole their credentials and were able to send that money out the chances you're getting that money back because you didn't perform the transaction are almost zero percent so our main goal and priority is to stop that from happening at the point and it's so important to know your customer know who you're dealing with you know make sure you follow our list of protocols which i will keep private uh but we're always looking for ways to enhance security and i think that's where hub can help you know i banks in general again rely on clunky archaic platforms that we have to hopefully enhance with our own resources security is not one of those you know you can have a corporate security team you can have any confidence units you can have personnel dedicated to cyber security you can have all these in place it's really how do you determine what to focus on first identity theft is a big problem uh senior citizen fraud you know people taking over cedar citizens computers telling them you know this is their local cable company you owe us all this back money and the senior doesn't know enough to to understand what's going on with bitcoin their money's going instantly so protecting the elderly abuse has been another focal point and i think our bitcoin exchanges have been helpful you know recently a few of them have installed new security measures where bitcoin won't leave instantly you know your wallet will be frozen it will be inactive for several days or weeks to prevent any type of unknown uh you know source coming in and tapping to your your credentials we all are guilty of it you send your id over your phone you text things you email things from your phone you reply all all this information's floating so all this data is is constantly out there these hackers are smart they know how to use it and they know how to infiltrate and then they know how to reuse it and that's the dangerous part once they get away at once they double down and then they keep going and it's just a it's a matter of stopping it at the point uh but you're gonna have to and as a bank dump a lot of resources in and time into doing it and we take it very serious here and it's one of the major questions we get asked when we get audited by our regulators definitely and i would love to hear yall um also you know your thoughts on this obviously working in the cyber security space and you know working directly with fintechs and with banks um you know to help them secure their assets um i think that you could probably give us a few um a few thoughts but uh just add maybe to what joseph said and write many banks are built on um outdated legacy systems and um that are just simply not secure and i think that um one of the things that financial institutions will be working to do over the next decade is to prove to um to consumers and investors um that they can tackle uh the security issues and still providing the services um that are needed to to process cryptocurrency and to provide digital services yeah so as i think as uh as joseph mentioned the the um let's call it by its name the outdated and old systems that are now being used by banks are not really a good fit for something so sophisticated as blockchain and i think this is where we're seeing a fracture uh between those uh uh the the more the request that the need for a more modern approach uh supporting blockchain and existing banking system which are pretty old and updated and i think this is part of where we kind of play and other players in the cyber security space that are in need to in some way update uh the bank infrastructure uh with some core systems and just to give you a an example uh quantum computing is already a fact in the market and uh and hackers are starting to uh um to look into uh how you can utilize and you can basically buy uh quantum computing uh resources from the cloud from ibm from google from uh from those players and these can be easily uh uh redirected uh into uh hacking stealing identity and uh being reused for uh for bad purposes and this is also something that uh we thought about and it's part of our um it is a a basic portion of of our platform uh we are quantum quantum ready and this is something that we thought about uh for quite some time for our clients uh so that's that's another uh i think example um of how advanced and how uh forward thinking you need to be in order to try and beat you know hackers which are super sophisticated to the punch definitely okay i'm going to um on to our next question here because i think that we can talk about this all day um and if you want to find more information we have um lots of content on the hub security blog and discussing these topics about securing digital assets and secure banking so check that out shameless promotion um eric eric is asking does cygnet heavily trade ethereum eric from switzerland does it have an h what were the last two words uh designate heavily trade ethereum so this isn't like a typical wallet so it's not a bitcoin wallet it's not a theory wallet it is a private blockchain so only cignets can be settled so when you're you're burning and minting a cigna token it's just a representation of your usd in your wallet we've had clients try to send uh ether but there's there's a uh called a protocol in place to prevent that because we don't want uh to accept digital currencies because remember we're not a bank that will custody that we have clients that will uh you can link up with that uh custody platform on cignet but the digital asset would be pushed to their platform the fee okay great um you mentioned uh signet is pegged to the us dollar how do you offer instant transactions to clients outside of the dollar zone that is a question from adrian so we still have the traditional bank rails open you can do wires in ach which again is reliant upon swift and the fed banking window being open but the instant settlement is because our blockchain settles you know depending on when you catch it could be anywhere from five to 25 seconds so you know it's it's an instant settlement because it's just a signet token transferring from one wallet to another speaking to each other on that platform if you want to get out of your you know cygnet wallet and convert back to your your bank account you still need to go back to your signature bank account send your funds to your home bank which we have a lot of clients do you know they'll settle tens of millions of dollars in an afternoon and then take the money out and send it to their parent company in hong kong via wire transfer so the traditional rails are still there they're still in play this rail is there for you to use 24 7 so you don't have to rely on the bank fed window uh the bank hours the fed window to settle your trade activity you know you don't want to have to wait a weekend or a bank holiday uh to get your your your trades so that's the design and purpose of it great thank you um i have a question here from a participant nitin um i don't know if i'm pronouncing that correctly but i think it's a question that's relevant to both and with your dress of andy yao so i'm just going to throw it up out there and we'll see we'll see who bites um on custody can you define the difference between storage of private keys versus digital assets themselves as in case of crypto assets or cryptocurrency the keys are a claim on assets as opposed to an asset that lives on the chain well what does custody mean and regulatory considerations liquidity and other business considerations you are doing great at cygnet thanks i'm going to surely answer i mean i'm going to share the question if you can see it maybe on the screen um because it's a bit long-winded but um share it in the chat um but i think what they're asking is to define the differences between a storage of private keys versus digital assets themselves which i think y'all maybe can help with answering um hey joseph you can take it away i think you had a hello yeah yeah sorry uh so um the difference i think oh i just i was trying to read uh in the in the chat chat area so i think an easy way to uh to explain that is that um the private key is basically your identity and if your identity holds uh um several details like accounts or or or money or whatever it is which is managed by the blockchain um the identity is the more important part um and the way you interact with your identity and approve this the interaction portion with your identity is a critical one and i think on the banking side uh joseph can elaborate uh furthermore yeah i mean to that further that point uh like i said when we have when you think about it from a private key standpoint the bank controls those right so we're in control of the identity of that uh institution we have our own um security protocols in place that are really controlled by tasks that are our partner in this uh effort but for us the added security layer comes in on the walled guarded approach because we're not custody so we're not allowing ourselves to be open to anyone trying to hack and steal bitcoin out of a wallet or hold it right some banks are looking at doing it you know they want to be a custody solution but not a fiat on an off ramp to me that's putting the you know the carpet for the horse because how can you do one thing if you aren't doing the the thing you're built for you know if you're not settling fiat you're not a fintech firm you're a bank you know fintech firms are there to help you and they do it much better but private keys when you think of cigna are truly private you know you can't essentially obtain that information because it's uh it's again it's a permissioned blockchain as opposed to an open source so there's a little difference there but when you think of costing the digital asset your security has to be ramped up tenfold um people are going to try to get that bitcoin it's just look at it today the value is ten thousand one hundred plus per coin that's pretty significant from where we were in 2010 right so they're always going to try uh with with of course with the supply being cut uh as it was recently this year the demand is going to go up so all these things you have to take into consideration but the unique thing about security on blockchain is that it's so you know transparent for those running the nodes to me it helps us understand when we see attempts when we see too much data coming in you ask yourself why so i think it's an ongoing discussion that is is is really exciting for a bank like us that are that is already on the fiat side if we decide to custody because the occ is now comfortable with it i think we'll do our best to learn everything we can about working with companies like hub and others let them do what they do well and you guys and we'll do what we do well once you get into uncharted territory that's where the hackers see it and they come adios and the coins gone okay so i think uh we want to wrap up uh so i'm just gonna ask a few quick um final questions um and i think they're interesting so i want to touch on them before we we end here um and i think this is directed to joseph so please share how you um incorporate cyber insurance to cover potential losses um due to i'm ass ming cyber security attacks proprietary care because we're publicly traded just know that uh heavily insured okay um [Music] okay um what kind of growth has cygnet experience during the past three years any impact from kovid and 19. interesting we've got our team has become more efficient myself traveling into manhattan once march 17th rolled around it was really a hot spot at that point so you know we were reporting to brick-and-mortar offices um you know following our normal day and having our overnight team take over now i can log in at 5 00 a.m 11 o'clock at night i can work my own schedule based on volume and i think our team feels the same way we become more efficient during token uh digital banking if you take bitcoin out of the equation digital banking has been here for years mobile banking was really incepted bank of america launched that app in 2004 2005. and people were saying what is this i don't i'm not depositing a check on my phone you know now if you can't deposit a check on your phone you're probably not opening an account with that bank so think about that you know your phone security what you're doing with that you know banks have gotten very comfortable with with mobile mobile apps so we've almost adopted mobile banking from a human perspective during covet and all we've done is raise it up a notch to make sure our level of service hasn't dropped off make sure our responsiveness hasn't dropped off we i think increased efficiency on onboarding risk compliance we've gotten faster and better because simply it's a shame i mean it's a terrible pandemic but i think a lot of firms including a lot of uh digital currency firms have noticed they can work from home where your ceo may have not had that mindset before i think that has changed significantly during this past six months okay i think with that and that was our final question um thank you everyone for joining us today and thank you so much for our speakers ayan moshe and joseph as zeibert and we hope um that you're all staying safe and healthy at home um and we look forward to hosting any more discussions like these and to learn more about signature bank you can find them on linkedin um and just stay up to date on upcoming webinars you can follow hub security on linkedin or twitter and um you can also check out hub's weekly digest on medium comes out every thursday um for the latest stories coming out of the blockchain and crypto sphere um so with that i'm going to say a final thank you and thank you to everybody uh who's joining us as well from from all over the world um we hope you're staying and safe and healthy um and we hope to see you next week thank you everyone for joining thank you