How one conversation turned a former AmEx exec from crypto skeptic to enthusiast

Before Wittney Rachlin had fully wrapped her head around what she was getting into, she was already on her way to meet with Zac Prince, the CEO of BlockFi. 

A few days earlier, she applied on a whim to be chief marketing officer at the crypto lending startup. A veteran of the traditional finance world, she had ended her two-year tenure at Prudential not long before, where she worked as vice president of growth opportunities. She also spent over 11 years at American Express, leading the payments giant's credit card development.

She did not know what to expect from her meeting with Prince, who, for all she knew, could be one of those "crypto bros" — a type she describes as annoyingly unable to fathom the possible existence of people not interested in crypto.

"I was very skeptical," Rachlin said in an interview with The Block. "I was like, what was I thinking? They can't afford me. I can't work in a startup environment as a single mom. I have three kids."

Her conversation with Prince, however, turned out not only to be a pleasant surprise — it also convinced her to become the chief growth officer at BlockFi and completely changed her mind about cryptocurrencies as a whole.

An epiphany

Just fifteen minutes into the conversation, Prince had Rachlin re-thinking her skepticism. She says it was his succinct explanation of cryptocurrencies that made her change her mind.

"Zac's reasoning was so logical and made so much sense to me in such a simplified way that I couldn't understand why this was such a foreign concept for me to start," Rachlin said.

What did the trick was the argument, long familiar to any crypto-enthusiast, that bitcoin is like digital gold; a store of value that could hedge against volatility in the traditional markets — like the kind seen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Whether we're recruiting folks who haven't worked in the crypto industry to join the team, or speaking with investors that don't have exposure to the asset class, we focus on explaining BlockFi's and crypto's value proposition in a way that is simple and familiar – like comparing Bitcoin to digital gold," Prince later told The Block.

Whether or not bitcoin really can be thought of as digital gold is the subject of endless debate. But on that day, Prince convinced Rachlin.

In particular, she was sold on the many parallels between the digital currency and the yellow metal. For instance, both have limited amounts of supply and no inherent value except for what's assigned to them by the market. Both face the risk of being stolen or getting lost, except that bitcoin is far more portable: the only thing one needs to access them is a string of numbers and letters representing the private key that can unlock them.

Bitcoin may seem scarier than gold because it is on the internet and less tangible. But once "you get over that factor, the level of security you have in cryptocurrency is almost stronger than you have with dollars in your pocket," Rachlin said.

A bridge between two worlds

Prior to joining BlockFi, Rachlin spent 13 years in the realm of traditional finance, never crossing paths with cryptocurrencies. The skepticism she held before her conversation with Prince is shared by many people in traditional finance.

To them, the world of digital currencies is as uncertain as it is mysterious. Headline-grabbing horror stories like the $400 million Mt Gox bankruptcy or the one day in April when bitcoin's price collapsed by more than 50 percent stick in their minds and prevent them from taking the space seriously.

The user experience of investing in cryptocurrencies can also be discouraging — even to the crypto-curious.

Instead of opening a bank account and trusting the bank with your money, investing in cryptocurrencies requires the management of private keys, and perhaps storing them in hard drives for extra security. While banks can help users recover their funds even when they lose their debit cards or get charged incorrectly, misplacing your private keys or losing your cryptocurrency to a fraudster or hacker often means the money is gone forever.

Rachlin thinks BlockFi is in a position to bridge some of these gaps. "It [BlockFi] is a good place to start playing around," she said. "So it doesn't have to look that different than the thing that you're used to dealing with."

Unfortunately, BlockFi may have its own work to do on the user trust front. Two weeks after it announced Rachlin's hiring, the company revealed that it had suffered a data breach. No customer funds were lost, according to BlockFi.

Now that Rachlin is on the inside, she says she has come to understand that there are better ways to invite people into the crypto world. Mostly what's needed is a change of tone, she said.

"There needs to be a rational tone behind it. It's not like, 'man you got to get on that bandwagon. You're gonna miss out.' It's more like: 'here's why it's so easy to think about it.'"