Jack Shaw, a world-renowned technology futurist and one of the “Top 25 Speakers in the World” as ranked by the National Speakers Association, has spent over three decades advising Fortune 500 companies on disruptive innovation.
A pioneer in blockchain thought leadership, Shaw has led strategic initiatives at the intersection of emerging tech, AI, and financial transformation long before digital assets became mainstream.
In this exclusive interview with The Champions Speakers Agency, Shaw offers a clear-eyed view of how cryptocurrencies are redefining the global financial landscape—accelerating cross-border transactions, reducing costs, and challenging legacy systems.
But with innovation outpacing regulation, Shaw warns that new safeguards are urgently needed to protect consumers and ensure fair, secure adoption.
Q: As cryptocurrencies gain traction across global markets, how are they redefining traditional finance—and what safeguards are still missing?
Jack Shaw: “The notion that we might be able to have a valid currency that could be exchanged digitally has been around for at least 35 years. People have been trying to work on how to do this.
“As soon as the internet began to emerge and people began to recognise that there was commercial potential, people were saying, “Well, wouldn’t it be great if there was some way we could make a payment over the internet that didn’t require us to go through a third-party provider?”
“Whether we’re talking about a bank, or a service provider like Venmo, or a credit card processing company like Mastercard or Visa or some of the other alternative processors — all of these third-party organisations add cost to the exchange and transfer of money in one way or another.
“Wouldn’t it be great if I could just send you money digitally, and you would somehow magically have that money, and I could send it directly to you?
“The problem that we had prior to the incorporation of blockchain technology to leverage cryptocurrencies — the first one of which was Bitcoin — and that goes back 16 years now (the seminal paper was written at the end of October in 2008 describing how blockchain technology could enable cryptocurrency)… they named the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
“They didn’t actually use the phrase “blockchain” in the initial paper that described it, but very quickly, the technology and the way it worked was described as blockchain — and the name has stuck.
“The reason why blockchain works — and we’re not going to get into the technical details of how blockchain works because it gets into some sophisticated mathematics, and unless you have the responsibility of being the technical person or part of a technical team that’s implementing blockchain, you really don’t need to understand the details of exactly how it works — but what it does is it validates that we are both looking at the same information.
“So if I send you £100, then it is now telling me we are both looking at the same data, and we are now seeing that this £100 that used to belong to Jack now belongs to you. And everybody knows that that’s the case, and we don’t have to worry about a situation where I say I sent you the £100, and you say you never received it, and then we have to worry about, well, all right, so who’s telling the truth here?
“So you basically have what’s called a “single shared version of the truth”, and that’s what blockchain enables. By enabling that and enabling cryptocurrency, it means money can be moved far more quickly and cost-effectively.
“The combination of those things is very important. Prior to the emergence of cryptocurrencies — and this is still the case for a lot of organizations and banks and financial institutions and so forth that haven’t yet implemented cryptocurrency — is that if you wanted to move, say, €1 million from a payer or a bank in one country to a bank in another country, for example, well, you would have to go through some third-party organization like SWIFT, or through your various national banking organizations, make a series of accounting entries.
“Typically, what would happen is it would take anywhere from hours to a day or more to make the transfer, and there would be a cost of several euros that was imposed — mostly by the third-party organizations that are effecting these changes.
“Whereas with cryptocurrency, if you’re utilizing a shared cryptocurrency system, you can make that transfer of funds essentially instantly. Now, it’s not going to be instant, but certainly within minutes, if not seconds, and the cost becomes very, very small — a tiny fraction of a euro, for example. Because there does typically need to be some cost to help offset the underlying cost of the systems.
“But what’s happening is you’re not paying large third-party financial organizations a significant profit margin.
“What we’re going to see happening over, I think, a relatively extended period of time is that cryptocurrencies are going to continue to act as — and increasingly act as — a lubricant for financial systems and make it easier and less expensive to move money around. And that’s a good thing.
“One of the problems that we have had with cryptocurrencies now over the last 10 years or so is that people have looked at this value and said, “Well, if using cryptocurrencies can add value to global financial systems, then implicitly that means that those cryptocurrencies have a value themselves because they’re being used to replace something else that costs us money at a much lower cost.”
“And there’s some value to that. And so, presumably, then, there would be value to me in holding cryptocurrencies with the understanding that perhaps over time, as they’re more widely used, the value of those cryptocurrencies will increase.
“The mathematics that underlies Bitcoin, for example, dictate that there will only ever be a certain maximum number of Bitcoins that are created. It will take literally over a hundred years to get to that point, but fewer and fewer Bitcoins are being created each year. Eventually, there is a limit — and I believe the number is 21 million — Bitcoins are all that there will ever be.
“So, if there’s an increased value to the financial systems of using Bitcoin, and Bitcoin reflects, in part, some of that increase in value, then there’s going to be a certain amount of value but a limited number of Bitcoins. Therefore, those individual Bitcoins might increase in value.
“So people speculate on the potential value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. As those speculations go up and down, it’s an investment with some potential long-term value, but in the short term, it’s a very volatile — cryptocurrencies are a very volatile — investment.
“They’re also ones that people who understand how these systems work well — and again, are unscrupulous — can use to defraud people who think that there’s a great opportunity for them to profit by investing in cryptocurrencies but don’t understand the systems and the economics well enough to do so more effectively.
“So, there’s been a lot of negative press about cryptocurrencies — that this is all just a giant scam and there’s not really any value because it’s just ones and zeros.
“In fact, there is certainly value to cryptocurrencies. But I advise that people think about cryptocurrencies in terms of: “How can they be used as a tool to facilitate financial transactions of various types?”
“And if you want to take your chances on investing in cryptocurrencies — just as you might want to invest in penny stocks or speculative forms of real estate or something like that — have at it. That’s your opportunity, and there’s nothing that says people shouldn’t be allowed to do that.
“But we do want to make sure that it’s being done in a way where it is very difficult, if not impossible, for unscrupulous people to defraud others when it comes to cryptocurrencies.
“So various countries around the world are looking at how do we put the right controls and laws in place, so that we can utilise cryptocurrencies effectively, but also fairly and safely.”
This exclusive interview with Jack Shaw was conducted by Mark Matthews of The Motivational Speakers Agency.
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