Four experts spoke about how innovations in digital currencies can benefit marginalized communities, in a breakout session moderated by TIME executive editor Nikhil Kumar at the TIME100 Summit in New York City on April 23.
The breakout session featured Elisabeth Carpenter, chief strategic engagement officer of Circle, which is a sponsor of the Summit; Carmelle Cadet, founder and chief executive officer of EMtech; Rachel Goslins, executive director of the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream (MCAAD); and Karen Harris, managing director of Bain & Company’s Macro Trends Group.
Carpenter kicked off the discussion by explaining what stablecoin is. The concept, she said, is that money goes in a reserve account and the money is only ever invested in cash or cash equivalents. The value of the money doesn’t fluctuate; in exchange for every dollar, you get a digitized dollar, she said. That makes it different from other cryptocurrencies, which tend to be highly volatile.
“There’s an awful lot of friction with the way money moves,” Carpenter said. “Money should move as seamlessly, easily, inexpensively, transparently as a WhatsApp message, as an email, as a text, but it doesn’t.” Stablecoin attempts to address this problem, she said.
“This is a product that was built with equity in mind,” she continued. “It obviously solves an awful lot of efficiency issues and so forth, but especially for marginalized people in hard-to-reach places who need money the most, this is the best, fastest way to enable that money to get from A to B because as long as you have a connection to the internet, this is possible.”
Cadet said there can be challenges in getting money to certain communities because there are multiple intermediaries that need to make that transfer of money happen; blockchain addresses this issue by reducing the number of intermediaries. When you move from one country to another, there’s a local currency that could benefit from blockchain. This, she said, is where EMtech, a technology company that helps central banks make their financial infrastructures inclusive, comes in.
“We help central banks use blockchain to essentially tokenize and issue that local currency in stablecoin,” Cadet said. Having that local currency ensures that “you have the last mile, that you have that integration.”
MCAAD, a cultural institution, looks at the American dream through several different lenses, one of which is access to capital, Goslins said.
“Throughout our history, we have always sought new, different modalities to increase that access,” she said. For instance, Alexander Hamilton wanted to create the half penny to increase access to capital for people from low-income households. Now, we have fintech. Goslins acknowledged that these currencies are not without risk, but said they also can help increase access to capital.
“Moving forward, these currencies, these technologies—whether it’s blockchain, whether it’s bitcoin, or whether it’s stablecoin—all present really promising avenues … [for how people] can access capital so that they can build lives that they want to live and build more meaningful and prosperous futures for their families,” she said.
Harris said that what has the most impact in the digital currency space is, oftentimes, “boring,” prompting a chorus of chuckles from the audience. Experts in the industry are thinking about important questions—What regulation do we need? How do we create access?—to ensure that digital currencies can be deployed effectively, she said. She likened it to plumbing.
“It’s happening in the background, much like plumbing, where you don’t think about it until it goes wrong,” Harris said. “The plumbing of the financial system [is] happening behind the scenes.”
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The TIME100 Summit convenes leaders from the global TIME100 community to spotlight solutions and encourage action toward a better world. This year’s summit features a variety of speakers across a diverse range of sectors, including business, health and science, AI, culture, and more.
Speakers for the 2025 TIME100 Summit include human rights advocate Yulia Navalnaya; Meghan, Duchess of Sussex; comedian Nikki Glaser; climate justice activist Catherine Colman Flowers; Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, and many more, plus a performance by Nicole Scherzinger.
The 2025 TIME100 Summit was presented by Booking.com, Circle, Diriyah Company, Prudential Financial, Toyota, Amazon, Absolut, Pfizer, and XPRIZE.