Speaker Name: Theo Dean

In one sentence, what do you do and what is your role?

I'm the co-founder of Riyzo, and my job is to make gold as liquid as cash.

What topic will you be speaking about at FinTech Connect 2026?

Why the world's most trusted asset has been sitting on the sidelines, and how that's about to change. We're building the infrastructure to finally put trillions in idle gold to work through sub-cent payments and sovereign vault custody. Whether you're building payment rails, managing custody, or setting policy, come find out exactly how gold is about to become usable infrastructure, not just something you hold.

What's one thing you hope attendees take away from your session?

If gold can be made usable in a crisis, it can be usable anywhere. In Ukraine, Turkey, and Argentina, where local currencies collapse, people turn to dollars and stablecoins to survive. But what happens when the dollar weakens or a stablecoin depegs? Gold has always been the trader's safety net in a crisis—it should be the safety net for people actually living through one now.

What's the biggest challenge facing the industry in this area?

Public sentiment. Crypto assets are often viewed as one single, volatile category. That's fair enough for Bitcoin, but stablecoins and gold-backed tokens are entirely different and should be distinguished. Nobody assumes the Swiss franc behaves like the Argentine peso just because they're both currencies; digital assets deserve that same distinction. As regulation catches up, public sentiment will follow.

What industry trend are you watching most closely?

Nanopayments. The smallest payments are becoming the biggest opportunity in fintech.

Why is this topic particularly important right now?

True pay-per-use billing has never really worked because transaction fees cost thousands of times more than the transaction itself. That's changing fast—AI agents have already made over 169 million nanopayments in the past year alone to pay for compute and data in real time. That demand is forcing the infrastructure to exist now, and whoever builds the rails that gain mass adoption will define the next era of payments.

What's one prediction you have for the next 3-5 years?

Gold will be what we tap to pay with. In regions where households hold more gold than sovereign vaults, that idle wealth will finally start moving, giving people facing currency collapse something that actually retains value when they need it most.

What's one piece of advice you'd give to someone working in fintech today?

Build for the long term, not the headline, and watch what true leaders are doing. Leaders like Brian Armstrong, Charles Cascarilla, and Vitalik Buterin have weathered multiple crypto winters and are still building. That's the same discipline we strive for at Riyzo.

What book, podcast, or resource would you recommend to our audience?

Gary Gensler's MIT lecture series on blockchain. Whatever you think of his time at the SEC, it's what got me into this space, and even though parts of it are dated now that the GENIUS Act has passed, the core fundamentals still hold up.

Just for fun: if you could have dinner with any person, past or present, who would it be and why?

The obvious answer would be Satoshi Nakamoto, just to finally know if he's one person or twelve—but that would spoil the fun! Really, I'd say Charles Cascarilla. He’s been in this space since Bitcoin's earliest days and built one of the products closest to what we're doing. I'd love to pick his brain on PAXG, regulation, and where he thinks the industry is really headed.