sunayna🇺🇸

@money2020 is always an event - packed with speaking engagements, roundtables, meets - both planned and the best ones the serendipitous encounters.

this year is extra special: i'm on the jury for the money awards 2026, alongside colleagues from around the world. super grateful for this front row seat to fintech innovation in action.

if you're at money20/20, let's connect - would love to learn what you're building, the gnarly problems you're solving or obsessing over, and perhaps ways we can make good trouble together :)

we treat regulation like an on/off switch, when it’s actually a throttle.

there's a common misconception that regulation is anathema to innovation - that they're competing or colliding forces.

having now spent time on both sides - building and policymaking - color me unconvinced.

done right, they're complementary. maybe compounding.

the right regulation, at the right time and in the right measure, can be a powerful tailwind for innovation. get the setting wrong and it quickly becomes a headwind.

that was the premise for our engaging (ofc 🌶️) panel at the @SALTConference Wyoming Blockchain Symposium w/ @aaron_hedlund @CEA47, @teresagoody @BellementisPLLC and @BrianQuintenz @Kalshi - 3 leaders who can speak to this not as opinionators, but as doers who don't admire the problem, they jump into action.

we got tangible about "unlocking growth through policy innovation" with timely use cases spanning stablecoins, prediction markets, AI & agentic commerce and what it means to build frontier tech when the rulebook is still being written.

a question I always ask before a panel: what do we want people to think, feel, do differently when they leave the room? for this one, five landed:

→ build side by side.
engineers + policymakers at the same table, bringing their unique skills and experiences, solving for the art of the possible. good policy should be anchored in how the tech actually works - hands on keys, not assumptions or perceptions.

→ learn by doing + embrace perpetual beta.
with frontier tech, policy can't be designed for perfection or finality. tech keeps moving. risks keep evolving. no more "one and done" - it's a continuum. only way to learn is for both the public & private sector to ship the work that maximizes desired outcomes whilst minimizing risk, test results against reality & adapt with a bias for action.

→ reuse before you reinvent.
as the saying goes, there is nothing new under the sun. start with the principles, protocols & protections already in place, determine what's portable, then exercise proportionality to the new tech and actual risk.

→ regulate the risk, not the label.
start with the gnarly problem we're actually trying to solve or the risk/harm we're trying to prevent - not who's building it or what tech sits underneath it. new tech or a new class of builders shouldn't automatically mean novel treatment.

→ optimize for optionality.
effective policy manages today's risks without closing tomorrow's opportunities. preserve room to learn, adapt, build as the tech evolves and adjust the throttle as reality gives us better info, facts & data points.

which do you think is hardest to actually operationalize? as practitioners, where do you see the biggest delta between principle and practice?

speaking of making good trouble, massive thanks + congrats to @Scaramucci, John Darsie and team for another successful gathering 🔥

a penny for your thoughts… or perhaps… a USD stablecoin? ;)

my first @pointzeroforum. impressive 👏 kudos to Jael Tan & Maha El Dimachki for curating sessions that turned valuable talking into invaluable doing.

one of my highlights is advancing a roundtable discussion on the derivative impacts of stablecoins scaling in emerging markets was a mind-expander - even for me, who has obsessed over stables for years.

we interrogated several aspects, applying the lens of host jurisdictions to understand the implications where stables have become everyday money, but where many of the key decisions around - reserves, redemption, and resolution (minting my 3Rs) are made elsewhere.

more to come. wdyt? welcome your perspectives.

“Innovation. Central banking. Isn’t that an oxymoron?”

That was the thought bubble in my head five years ago when I was approached about becoming the first Chief Innovation Officer of the Federal Reserve System.

Having spent much of my career at the nexus of finance, tech, and crypto - often making good trouble on the other side of the policy folks - I was skeptical.

But my curiosity superseded my skepticism. So I said yes!

What followed was a master class in central banking. And I can disabuse any notion that innovation in central banking is an oxymoron. In fact, I would submit that in a world where the volume, variety, and velocity of technologies - AI, stablecoins, tokenization, quantum, and more - keep throttling up, innovation is an imperative for institutions, public and private alike, to meet the moment.

A few lessons from five years of hands-on-keys building:

• gnarly problems over shiny objects. Chasing the tech leaves you with a boneyard of zombie projects. The real unlock comes from obsessing over process friction and customer irritants and shipping outcomes that actually move the business or the mission forward.

• the bold and the boring. The glitzy moments are powered by unglamorous discipline - the rhythms, the rigor, the reps. The real work is the scaffolding behind the wins on the board. And often, making the call when the risk of inaction outweighs the risk of action.

• get in the arena. Innovation is a team sport - make that a full-contact sport. No spectators. The best outcomes happen when business, technologists, operators, and your BFFs in legal, security, and risk get in it together - alongside strong public-private partnership.

I leapt in not knowing exactly what I was getting into except that I wanted to serve my country, take on a steep learning curve, and make a meaningful dent. Check.

Super grateful to the many colleagues and partners who were part of the journey and helped build a durable culture of innovation.

Now, on to the next adventure - perpetual beta!