10-23-2025 
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- CoinGeek returns for Day 2 of the London Blockchain Conference
- Visionaries Stage: How to win the trust wars
- Building brands through community: Elfried Samba’s vision
- Visionaries Stage: Why EQ beats IQ in modern branding
- Visionaries Stage: Execs must boost brand trust
- Visionaries Stage: Marketing the magic, not the math
- Visionaries Stage: Earning trust through action
- Visionaries Stage: CBDCs and the power shift ahead
- Visionaries stage: Cross-border risk management
- Visionaries Stage: Programmable trust for regulators
- Visionaries Stage: Cross-border money: Who leads?
- Visionaries Stage: CBDCs and stablecoins can coexist
- Visionaries Stage: Digital currencies, shared future
- Visionaries Stage: Stablecoins for real-world use
- Visionaries Stage: The rise of stablecoin era
- Visionaries Stage: Stablecoins are mega highway
- Innovation Stage: The culture ownership reset
- Innovation Stage: Music rights fractionalization opens doors
- Visionaries Stage: Stablecoins reshape money like Airbnb
- Visionaries Stage: Stablecoin opportunities for banks rise
- Visionaries Stage: Tokenization takes off
- Visionaries Stage: Checks on tokenization hype
- Visionaries Stage: Bridging finance and crypto
- Visionaries Stage: Tracking assets in real time
CoinGeek returns for Day 2 of the London Blockchain Conference
CoinGeek is back in Battersea for Day 2 of the London Blockchain Conference! We’ve got sessions on personal branding in the DeFi era, stablecoins, how to fix Britain’s public sector, and much more—don’t miss a session by joining us for our Live Blog all day today.
Visionaries Stage: How to win the trust wars
Day 2 opens with another heavy-hitter taking the stage for a keynote—social media and branding wunderkind Elfried Samba. Samba is going to talk to us about how to win trust and attention in the hype-heavy age of decentralization. Samba is CEO and founder of marketing agency Butterfly Effect, and previously served as the Global Head of Social Content for Gym Shark, a brand he helped grow into a social media behemoth and one of the most recognizable, new fitness brands.
Building brands through community: Elfried Samba’s vision
Visionaries Stage: Butterfly Effect’s Co-Founder and CEO, Elfried Samba, believes in building brands through community. While working at Gymshark as their Head of Global Social Content, Samba put this philosophy into practice—and developed it. In his tenure, Gymshark went from:
- • 24 employees to 1000
- • 1m followers to 20m
- • £8m – £1.4bn
- • Shouted out by Mark Zuckerberg
All by leveraging the community.
Visionaries Stage: Why EQ beats IQ in modern branding
Samba started his agency, Butterfly Effect; effectively, he was exporting the model he refined at GymShark to other, new brands.
His philosophy comes down to trust.
“Whatever you’re doing, you’re scaling for trust. People have been bombarded with so many messages, there’s so much AI, people don’t know what to trust.”
One of the big reasons: IQ is becoming democratized, so the only answer now is EQ. The brands that can still make people feel something are those that scale. If you’re still relying on facts, figures, product references to win, it’ll be very difficult to do that. You need to get people to feel something.
Visionaries Stage: Execs must boost brand trust
82% of people are more likely to trust a company if its execs are active on socials
Elfried Samba, co-founder and CEO of Butterfly Effect, offers some stats:
88% of people trust Word of Mouth: the most influential of these are friends and family; next, online reviews; then (and sliding further down the list all the time) creators.
One of the lower-ranked sources in terms of trust? The brand itself. Only 30% of consumers trust brand messaging directly—proof that traditional marketing alone can’t drive belief.
82% are more likely to trust a company when its senior executives are active on social media. 77% are more likely to buy when the CEO uses social media. 50% of millennials expect CEOs to speak out on societal issues.
Visionaries Stage: Marketing the magic, not the math
Elfried Samba flashes a standard definition of blockchain on screen: “A digital database or ledger that is distributed among the nodes of a peer-to-peer network.”
“We can do better than that,” he smiles to the crowd.
Samba says that blockchain innovators and advocates need to take a leaf rom Steve Jobs’ book, communicating the benefits of the technology as opposed to reciting technical capabilities.
When Jobs and Apple marketed the iPod, they didn’t brag about how many gigabytes of storage it had—they merely told their customers that it could let them keep 1,000 songs in their pocket.
Visionaries Stage: Earning trust through action
Talk less, do more.
In closing, Butterfly Effect’s CEO, Elfried Samba, repeats his core thesis: make people feel something. Being known is not enough. You have to be liked. You have to be respected. These things allow you to earn trust. Most importantly, trust is earned through actions, not words.
For blockchain, what’s needed is humanization: tell better stories. Simplify the approach. Talk less, do more.
Visionaries Stage: CBDCs and the power shift ahead
In the first panel of Day 2 on the “Visionaries Stage” of the London Blockchain Conference, a diverse panel of experts explores the global evolution of state-issued digital currencies, CBDCs, and the relative virtues of private vs. public digital money.
The distinguished panel was made up of Angus Brown, founder and CEO of Minit Money; Tamara Schmidt, of the Digital Euro Association; George Samakovitis, professor of fintech with the University of Greenwich; Diego Ballon Ossio, Partner at Clifford Chance law firm; and Myles Wright, CEO Fnality Services Limited.
Discussion kicked off with Brown, who is from South Africa, explaining the outlook in Africa. He talked about how mass migration in Africa is a huge driver of payment system development—people move and need to move their money as well.
“Blockchain and CBDC and stablecoins have the opportunity to make a huge different,” says Brown, who particularly highlights stablecoins as having made significant progress recently in Africa as “return of money, not return on money.”
Visionaries stage: Cross-border risk management
Ballon Ossio: Cross-border risk management is needed.
Diego Ballon Ossio, a partner at Clifford Chance, outlines one of the key challenges in the area of stablecoins and CBDCs, namely the differing categorization of these various assets in different countries. You need to operate with a risk
Visionaries Stage: Programmable trust for regulators
George Samakovitis: “We can ’embed compliance’ in private digital assets.”
Samakovitis “on the compliance side… I think we can establish, what I call “embedded compliance.” This, he explains, is programmable, encoded compliance, already built into the token, allowing regulators to focus on other priorities, such as policy.
Myles Wright follows this up by talking about what excites him the most, which is the ability of smart contract, also built into the assets, to streamline processes such as escrow and repo agreements.
Visionaries Stage: Cross-border money: Who leads?
Angus Brown: Banks must get busy with CBDCs or stablecoins will jump in.
On the much-debated issue of stablecoins vs. CBDCs, Angus Brown describes the role of the central bank in issuance of money as an “existential problem.”
He says that if central banks “don’t do something and get active in this space, someone else will.”
If banks don’t get busy, Brown argues that stablecoins will jump into this space, adding that stablecoins have the advantage of getting round regional trade boundaries. For this reason, when designing a CBDC, central banks must take into account the need or ability to exceed national boundaries.
Visionaries Stage: CBDCs and stablecoins can coexist
Samakovitis: CBDCs and stablecoins can exist alongside each other.
Myles Wright, CEO of Fnality Services Limited, states that, based on his experience and that of Fnality, central banks are primarily focusing on retail CBDCs, which leaves a gap in the market for a wholesale alternative. He believes this will come from the private sector, and says this is where Fnality is active.
Meanwhile, George Samakovitis of the University of Greenwich steers the conversation towards what features a successful CBDC might need. One of the main ones he points to is offline capability.
He also notes that, in his opinion, most of the beneficial features and use cases of CBDCs can also be achieved by private-sector stablecoins. However, he argues that it could, and should, be a situation of “as well as” not “instead of”—both CBDCs and stablecoins can live side by side to benefit users and consumers.
Visionaries Stage: Digital currencies, shared future
A hybrid solution could be answer to the CBDC-stablecoin debate.
Wrapping up, Tamara Schmidt, the host of the panel, asks a final question to all the speakers: “What is one thing we must not forget if CBDCs and digital money are to serve the public good?”
Samakovitis: “Privacy, security resilience and frictionless cross-border transactions.”
Wright: “I believe that there will be a hybrid solution that emerges…and these different solutions will co-exist and are often complementary.”
Brown: “We must place trust in the instrument.”
Ballon Ossio: “You need to also look at the legacy systems and make sure they integrate well.”
Visionaries Stage: Stablecoins for real-world use
Making a stablecoin is relatively easy. Creating one that can work at scale is difficult—and as stablecoins promise to become the next standard medium of transacting, it’s a challenge that any issuer must keep in mind.
The Visionary Stage’s next keynote addresses precisely this subject: “Stablecoins that scale: five tests for real world money” will kick off momentarily.
Visionaries Stage: The rise of stablecoin era
Stablecoins will be the world’s new money.
The designated hitter for this keynote: Dr. Bernhard Kronfellner, Head of Web3 EMESA at BCG.
Dr. Kronfellner looks at the crowd and asks: Do we even need five tests?
“The crowd here has changed—from people wearing hoodies to people that are wearing suits. So, this is actually—without the five tests—the first indicator that stablecoins and digital assets have already become in the interest of the big banks the big brands, and it will be the world’s new money.”
Visionaries Stage: Stablecoins are mega highway
Stablecoins can be the superhighway for money.
Dr. Bernhard Kronfellner, head of Web3 EMESA, BCG, sets out the five tests for stablecoin:
- • Additional value
- • Use cases
- • Revenues
- • Regulations
- • CBDC-Co-existence
To start with ‘additional value’, Dr. Kronfellner shows two images side by side: one warped, pot-hole-stricken road, and another smooth, 20-lane mega highway. Stablecoins, in essence, are the mega highway.
Innovation Stage: The culture ownership reset
Origin Exchange: “A complete reset of the ownership of culture.”
Brendan Lee, CEO and founder of digital consultancy Elas, took to the “Innovation Stage” of the London Blockchain Conference to speak about the “Origin Exchange,” a global marketplace for fractional ownership of music publishing rights.
“Imagine what it would be like to own a piece of Michael Jackson’s Thriller,” posits Lee. He argues that music right has been largely kept in the hands of a few large companies.
“What is needed is a whole new infrastructure layer,” says Lee.
Origin Exchange fractionalizes music ownership and puts it on the blockchain, specifically BSV, opening the door for millions of music fans to own a slice of publishing right to their favorite songs, says Lee. This would be a legally recognized share in the IP, and could open up a huge untapped well of investment opportunity.
Taking that media and adding the value of top is a “gamechanger,” says Lee. “Songs can be broken down into subset units and sold with limited overhead… in instantaneous transfers.”
Origin exchange is “a complete reset of the ownership of culture.”
Innovation Stage: Music rights fractionalization opens doors
Fractionalizing music is just the beginning.
Elas CEO Brendan Lee says that Origin Exchange’s fractionalization of music rights is just the beginning. It can be used across media, including film, television, and art.
“The sky is the limit, and we have the only plane on the runway,” says Lee. He concludes by saying that the only blockchain capable of facilitating this is BSV.
Visionaries Stage: Stablecoins reshape money like Airbnb
Stablecoins can do for money what Airbnb did for accommodation.
In a world of innovation, booking overseas accommodations has been disrupted by Airbnb and has never been easier. But when you want to transfer money to the other side of the world, you’re still looking at five banking days.
Stablecoins can do for money what Airbnb did for accommodation, in other words.
BCG’s Head of Web3 EMESA, Dr. Kronfellner, sets out five benefits stablecoins help unlock:
- • Lightning-fast transactions
- • Reduced transaction costs
- • Enhanced transparency
- • Programmability and automation
- • Global accessibility and financial inclusion
Visionaries Stage: Stablecoin opportunities for banks rise
Stablecoin upside for banks increasing; downsides decreasing
BCG’s Head of Web3 EMESA, Dr. Kronfellner, says banks are exploring various avenues to capitalize on the stablecoin boom. These include:
- • Offering wallets or custody;
- • Issue their own stablecoins
- • Create a consortium with others to issue a stablecoin
- • Issue tokenized deposits (like JP Morgan is already doing)
They could also simply wait-and-see, which might be appropriate for some banks: “They will see that the revenue will be reduced and a decrease in cross-border transactions or other typical stablecoin use cases, and some clients will go away. But not being a first-mover, for a tier 3 bank, might be good.”
Either way, he says the upsides in stablecoins for banks are growing, while the downsides are reducing.
Visionaries Stage: Tokenization takes off
On the “Visionaries Stage,” a panel of industry experts goes inside two tokenization case studies: A digital bond issuance and a tokenized real estate project.
The panel is made up of Armin Peter, executive in residence at Global Digital Finance; Sonia Chawla, head of legal investment transactions at Schroders; Emma Lovett, executive director at J.P. Morgan; Ben Elvidge, product lead at Trilitech; and Sabih Behzad, head of digital assets and currencies transformation at Deutsche Bank.
Behzad began by laying out what tokenization is, and why it is important. For him, tokenization offers three big things: accessibility, programmability, and cost benefit.
On the second of these, he particularly highlights the possibilities of programming compliance, a popular point today, as it was also raised in the first panel of the day on CBDCs and stablecoins.
Visionaries Stage: Checks on tokenization hype
Tokenization holds great promise, but cation may be needed.
Ben Elvidge of Trilitech explains how tokenization is being applied in the uranium field.
“Its about improving the wider market infrastructure for all participants in the nuclear supply chain,” says Elvidge.
Sonia Chawla followed this optimism by introducing an element of caution. She believes the technology is not quite there yet. This is backed up by Emma Lovett, who says that a lot of the work that has been done so far is on private permissioned blockchains, which are much safer but “act like individual island.”
Visionaries Stage: Bridging finance and crypto
TradFi and crypto-native firms converging
Sabih Behzad says there is movement from both ends of the market. Crypto native firms are looking to see how they can get involved in traditional financial products, just as TradFi and banks are looking to see how they can adopt and use blockchain technology.
While this convergence continues, Sonia Chawla says there remains a problem to overcome—education. According to Chawla there is “still a long way to go” when it comes to educating regulators, TradFi, and consumers, which can slow down adoption of new technologies and processes, such as tokenization.
Visionaries Stage: Tracking assets in real time
Emma Lovett: “Real-time” transaction tracking of blockchain can be a game changer.
Blockchain “can give you real-time on who owns what when,” says Emma Lovett, who added that she would like to see more participation.
Summing up the discussion, Armin Peter points to the use case of tokenization in the repo market as a crucial area of promise, while also underscoring that there are issues that still need to be overcome, one notable one being different regulatory environments across jurisdictions.
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