The Bank and the DAO with Dan Krewson, SVP & Market President and Director of Specialty Lending at Huntingdon Valley Bank

This week’s guest is Dan Krewson. As Market President and Director of Specialty Lending at Huntingdon Valley Bank, Krewson is building commercial and specialty lending divisions as well as leading the development of several new products including a crypto stablecoin funded participation facility.

Dan and I discuss how HVB, a now publicly traded company and broker-dealer that has provided traditional consumer and commercial banking services since 1871, facilitated the first ever integration between a decentralized finance protocol and a traditional bank.

MakerDAO, a fully crypto-native “DAO” or, Decentralized Autonomous Organization, and the creators of the $5B marketcap stablecoin DAI which is, in MakerDAO’s words, “The world’s first unbiased currency.” opened a $100M DAI loan to HVB.

We provide an overview of DAO structure for those who are unfamiliar, discuss the rules and guardrails HVB implemented and abided by to make this deal happen, the complex considerations and logistics of working with a, by definition, decentralized organization, and more. This story is an important showcase of the ways in which highly regulated traditional institutions are beginning to test the waters, dipping their toes into the growing world of crypto and decentralized finance.

With that, please enjoy my conversation with Dan. For more information about Huntingdon Valley Bank, please visit: https://www.myhvb.com/

Show notes:

[0:07] Introduction to Dan Krewson

[2:10] Dan Krewson's and Huntingdon Valley Bank's backgrounds

[6:07] How did the deal for MakerDAO happen and logistics

[10:11] What is a DAO?

[14:15] How does a firm like HVB able to work with MakerDAO?

[20:02] Transaction with MakerDAO

[23:16] Rules and guardrails for how this deal was structured

[30:45] Fast-forward to 2023, how the MakerDAO/HVB transaction look today

[38:40] View doing more transactions like MakerDAO/HVB in the future?

[41:45] Crypto/blockchain enabling frictionless transactions; how does the MakerDAO/HVB deal reflect that original crypto/blockchain thesis

[44:25] How does Dan see crypto regulation moving forward after deals like this get done + general crypto regulation

[53:50] Biggest opportunity for traditional finance institutions, like HVB, to get more integrated into the up-and-coming DeFi space

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