Catholics are looking at crypto with this new conference, and the timing is right

(Kitco News) With the crypto winter still dominating the headlines, many market participants are busy recalibrating as they learn about more grounded ideas. And that’s exactly what the new Catholic Crypto Conference has in mind for its launch – bringing crypto experts and Catholic thought leaders together to encourage adoption, develop new ideas and introduce new technology to the Catholic community.

The idea of ​​bringing people into crypto is a common theme in the overall digital asset space, and the Catholic Church is an institution with billions of members. That’s one of the goals of the conference, said conference organizer Matthew Pinto, who is also the founder of Ascension Press.

“The key to crypto success is adoption. And the Catholic demographic is a massive demographic, and it’s organized,” Pinto told Kitco News. “The idea is to introduce important technological advances like blockchain, crypto, Web 3.0 and the metaverse into this world. And we just need a group of people to step up and say this needs to be done.”

The crypto universe offers many advantages that the Church does not currently take advantage of. And Pinto doesn’t want the Catholic community to miss out on something like it did with the internet a few decades ago.

“This is the first initiative to try to introduce these new technologies to an old church,” he said. “The church mostly missed the internet. We were really eight to ten years behind the secular world. This is our attempt to make sure the church doesn’t miss out on this next technological wave.”

The conference will be held on 17-18. November in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. And it has three goals – let the Church know about these powerful technologies, reduce the potential misuse of new technologies and create a forum for crypto networks, the organizer described.

Still, despite the word Catholic in the name, the conference will have many speakers who are crypto experts and not necessarily part of the community. Some keynote speakers include Robert Breedlove, host of “What is Money?” podcast and founder and CEO of Parallax Digital, and Mark Yusko, CEO of Morgan Creek Capital Management.

Breedlove will close the conference with his keynote on moral money and healthy civilization. For Breedlove, who is known as a philosopher in the crypto space, Bitcoin is essentially a humanitarian movement that exposes the greatest flaw in human history, which is central banking.

“Central banks chain the economic potential of humanity. And Bitcoin is very important in the respect that it frees us,” Breedlove told Kitco News earlier this year. “We’ve been trying to get out of economic scarcity for as long as we’ve been around.”

The current fiat money system is used to inflate the money supply, and Bitcoin offers a solution. “Bitcoin is different because it is dematerialized, and it has perfected the economic properties that we seek in money. We don’t need to centrally store Bitcoin to scale it for the world. That makes all the difference – people can take physical delivery of Bitcoin. Bitcoin, that will take possession of their private keys anytime, anywhere, 24/7, without anyone’s permission. This is the option that citizens need to keep governments and other institutions at bay. Under the gold standard, this was called convertibility,” explained Breedlove .

Apart from the philosophical and moral talks, the conference will also host a series of sessions around finance, economics and technical aspects of blockchain. “I’m interested in some of the conversations with more technical expertise about projects being done with crypto,” said Stephen Barrows, chief operating officer at the Acton Institute, who will also speak at the conference.

Timing is everything

Despite being crypto winter, with prices staying in a fairly tight range, the conference is creating a buzz in the Catholic world, Pinto pointed out. And the timing of the conference works in favor of a smooth approach.

“It would be much easier to hold a conference in a time of FOMO. But this is a better time to do it because we’re really in a time of recapitulation,” Pinto said. “This would be a good preparation time for people because we will have about a year or a year and a half to learn more before the next crypto run starts again.”

The Vatican’s reach

What is unique about this conference is its potential impact on the larger Catholic community. There are plans to publish more white papers that will be shared with all Catholic bishops in the US and Canada and even forwarded to the Vatican.

“We’re going to be releasing five separate white papers. We’re not just making this a conference where we hear interesting ideas. We’re going to come up with practical ideas about what the Church can do with these different technologies,” Pinto said.

The Catholic Church historically had a favorable view of new technologies. “Catholicism sees technology as something that is morally neutral or good,” Pinto added.

The church is unlikely to make any authoritative statement on specific technical issues about crypto, Barrows pointed out. “The Catholic Church is interested in crypto because of its potential to bring the unbanked into the economy and help them gain access. The Church will take into account the moral dimensions.”

And while the Catholic Church has yet to make an official statement about crypto, there have been several hints.

Last year, the Vatican called on the international community to regulate the crypto space, warning that cryptocurrencies are being used in smuggling and exploiting migrants and vulnerable people.

This year there is a project underway for VR and NFT gallery which will host the Vatican’s art, content and academic initiatives. “The public-private partnership aims to expand the accessibility of the Vatican’s heritage – manuscripts, masterpieces and academic initiatives – to people who would not otherwise be able to experience it,” Sensorium said in its press release about the project.

There are also new developments in North America – nuns from Kansas City are using Bitcoin to build and run their convent and the Washington Archdiocese is offering crypto options for donations.

In a recently published book, “Thank God for Bitcoin: The Creation, Corruption and Redemption of Money”, co-authored by Breedlove and other well-known figures with a Christian background, the theme is how Bitcoin can redeem “the ills of our ills of our corrupt monetary system” was explored in detail, questioning the ethics and morality of the current fiat model.

Since the US dollar ceased to be backed by gold in the early 1970s, the US government has been able to print money at will, manipulating the dollar’s value and negatively affecting the lower classes, the book’s thesis argued. Bitcoin is described by the authors as a decentralized and self-sustaining currency solution that is free from manipulation and limited to only 21 million bitcoins, which is designed to prevent inflation.

This general approach differs from other religions. For example, Islam has a much more complicated view of cryptocurrencies. Several prominent Islamic religious figures have recently issued fatwas, urging followers to stay away from the crypto space, comparing it to gambling, which is forbidden in the Koran.

Crypto and the Catholic Church

The Catholic Crypto Conference wants to explore how blockchain and crypto can help the unbanked, reduce money transfer costs and promote social justice and the common good. The use of DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) is an exciting example of how these new projects can proceed, Pinto said.

Other interesting ideas on the radar include putting Catholic teaching on an immutable blockchain and using blockchain for sacramental records.

There’s also the financial aspect, with several dioceses potentially exploring putting assets like Bitcoin on their balance sheets. “We’re having conversations at the conference precisely for these kinds of conversations to begin, so we can address the question of whether it should be put on someone’s balance sheet and the pros and cons of that. I’d be very surprised if Bitcoin isn’t on their balance sheet. most of our dioceses and even parishes balance within five to 10 years,” Pinto said.

For many, it goes back to the good money argument that Bitcoin offers. “Sound money leads to better day-to-day human decisions,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a big leap at all to conclude that the principles of sound money contribute to the question of Christian discipleship and stewardship. I would see Bitcoin as sound money.”

The conference will also explore many blockchain applications, said Deacon Rich Napoli, CEO Emeritus and Advisor at Relevantz, who is another speaker and has been in the software industry for over four decades.

Blockchain has very high potential – from NFT projects to the Vatican being able to create its own currency to send money to poor parishes while minimizing the chance of the funds being stolen, Napoli told Kitco News.

At the time of the conference, Napoli said it’s the perfect time “to look at the technology without the rose-colored glasses.”