Patrick Sells, chief innovation officer at Quontic Bank, is joining NYDIG, a provider of investment and technology solutions tied to bitcoin and other digital assets. He will be the fintech startup’s head of bank solutions.
The new job is a natural evolution of the work he’s been doing at Quontic, a New York bank with $1.4 billion of assets, said Sells, who was named American Banker’s Digital Banker of the Year in May.
“The catalyst for why I joined Quontic was a belief that bitcoin and banking should be more symbiotic,” Sells said. “We started the process of working with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and we were one of the leading banks on changing the regulations around what a bank could do with bitcoin.”
Sells was chosen as Digital Banker of the Year because of the digital transformation he led during his two years at Quontic. For instance, he helped create a data layer called Quontic.Works that enabled the bank to generate reports quickly and make decisions based on real-time data. He helped created a three-minute process for digital-account opening. And he and CEO Steven Schall started teaching employees about cryptocurrency and developing products around bitcoin.
NYDIG has launched a bitcoin rewards engine that can be plugged into any existing credit or checking account. It can be used to pay interest in bitcoin rather than fiat currency.
Bitcoin rewards could be the only type of reward that appreciates in value, Sells pointed out.
“When you earn a mile at an airline or a hotel, that’s not ever going to become worth more than it is today,” Sells said. “And it’s not liquid. A bitcoin reward could increase in value over time, and it’s liquid. It could also go down. But for most people, if their Marriott points drop in value, they’re not upset. I think bitcoin rewards on credit cards, checking accounts and certificates of deposit will become table stakes.”
In his new job, Sells will be creating bitcoin-related products for banks.
“More than 38 million Americans own bitcoin, and that’s despite the fact that the primary financial entities in their lives, banks or credit unions, haven’t made bitcoin accessible,” Sells said.
The OCC’s announcement in July that national banks may hold cryptocurrency assets as part of their custody services was “a great starting point,” Sells said. “NYDIG has proven it can build the infrastructure, and now I hope that given my experience in understanding the core providers and crafting a compliance framework for bitcoin, I can play a role in serving the industry.”
Sells will be working with banks and credit unions to help them launch products like white-labeled bitcoin custody solutions “so consumers and businesses can buy, sell and hold bitcoin through their trusted banking relationships and not just a crypto exchange,” he said. Or, he could “help those same financial institutions to launch innovative products like bitcoin rewards programs, which I would posit are the most powerful kind of rewards program because bitcoin can appreciate in value and be easily liquidated.”
In research Quontic conducted, 22% of Americans who own bitcoin said they would switch their primary checking account for a checking account with bitcoin rewards. Sells said he has spoken with more than 200 bankers in the past year, and about half of them asked about cryptocurrency.
“Today there’s only a handful of banks in this space, but after the OCC announced [that banks can hold digital currency] in late summer, a lot of banks have been asking about bitcoin and what do you do with it?” he said. “Forty million Americans own bitcoin. So it’s here and my belief is banks should play a role in it. People trust banks.”
The leadership principles Sells has tried to adhere to at Quontic and that he will bring to NYDIG are kindness, humility and focus, he said.
“When I came to Quontic, I didn’t understand bank operations,” he said. “I didn’t understand the life of a teller. But I spent time with a teller, I got to understand their job. Our job as leaders is to live that way: to be kind, to be humble and to be focused. And when you do that you can bring a team together and find the best ideas.”
