Brace yourself, winter is coming. It is going to be a long and cold one. The actual winter, given the current energy crisis that is affecting a number of countries around the world. If this is not a worry, lucky you! But what about the Crypto Winter? Although not a yearly occurence like the actual winter, this is not the first time that it is happening. How long will it last and how bad will it be? What will be the long term implications of this episode? Fintech Review asked a few questions to Shane Rodgers, CEO of PDX Global.
Tell us more about PDX Coin. What is your elevator pitch?
PDX Coin is at the heart of a global payments and digital banking platform. It will enable hundreds of millions of retail users, institutions, merchants, vendors, and ecosystem partners to participate easily in the crypto economy with instant conversions between digital and fiat currencies. The upcoming virtual banking services and payment apps will permit all major crypto assets supported by the platform to become instantly liquid across tens of millions of locations and online sites around the world. By 2024, PDX plans to also introduce a regulated platform for trading digital shares of most publicly held companies, as well as cryptocurrencies. Shares and crypto can be purchased with either fiat currency or cryptocurrency.
PDX’s primary objective is to capitalize on its crypto payment and virtual banking capabilities in the conventional world. However, we are building our technology and product base in anticipation of a fully functioning and heavily populated metaverse in the near future. The project aims to provide all of its banking and defi products and functions in the metaverse. In addition to being a leader in retail and commercial payments. Consequently, this applies to as many types of compliant DeFi products and services as possible across as many legal jurisdictions as possible.
In the near future, PDX intends to invest in and form long-term partnerships, joint ventures and alliances. We will do that with content developers in the fields of sports, gambling, gaming, and other entertainment. A goal of this project is to be involved in the creation of popular metaverse destinations that are serviced exclusively by our payments and financial platforms. Content creation will also be a significant component of our soon-to-be announced Siberia blockchain protocol
What is your background and what is the story behind the company?
I served more than 30 years in the investment banking and corporate finance sector. I worked in management and operations, in Australia and the United States. As a founder, director and manager at a variety of organizations, I invested in and raised capital for companies in a range of sectors. From media and communications to power generation, real estate, oil and gas, business and financial services, and biotechnology. It helped me develop a broad understanding of many sectors.
Over the course of my career I began to see how antiquated our payment industry is. Banks and major credit cards are charging high fees to merchants. But that’s not it: middlemen are taking a cut, payments being delayed, and on top of that there is a major risk of fraud.
At the time when serious cryptocurrencies began to become popular, I started to look closer at how the blockchain could expedite payment quickly and inexpensively for all parties. Being a peer-to-peer system it could eliminate the middleman, creating savings, while enabling an instant, secure and documented transaction.
At the same time I saw that blockchain could give people the potential to use their cryptocurrency for standard purchases. It is a way to completely sidestep the current payments system, with major market opportunities such as cross border remittances where the average fee is almost 7 percent. We could cut that to 1.5% using our app and the blockchain, and people could send remittances from crypto accounts.
What are the main trends in crypto, is it here to stay in spite of the Crypto Winter?
Crypto is in its very early days still, and is here to stay. Despite the Crypto Winter, the current immaturity of the environment, the lax service providers, and dubious use cases. This is a long-term, cross-generational shift that will be fully transformative over time.
Trends are slowly shifting towards real use cases and utility, and away from trading and speculation. It’s still barely perceptible, but it is happening. In time crypto will have the full functionality of any traditional fiat currency.
How is PDX Global responding to the Crypto Winter and these broader trends?
By spending a lot of money on product development and use cases, R&D, and hiring the right teams for execution in the marketplace.
Any innovation in fintech more broadly that you are really excited about?
I see a complete lack of imagination and innovation in the space right now. All I see is the same old things repeated endlessly under different branding, where anything new is usually a bolt-on approach relying on the same legacy payments system.
You can’t keep on adding new features to an broken old jalopy. At some point you need to design a fast new car.
Shane Rodgers is CEO of PDX Global, a worldwide payments and digital banking platform that is being built as an on-ramp to enable hundreds of millions of retail users, institutions, merchants and vendors and other ecosystem partners worldwide to fully participate in the crypto economy freely and easily with instant conversions and low fees; [email protected]
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