Building a healthier, more resilient, and human-centered capitalism is fundamental to Anna Stone’s being. Together with her longstanding interest in economics, it’s not surprising this forms the core of her work in web3 impact and innovation at eToro. Here, she’s developing a web3-forward social impact and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) strategy.
Anna’s main focus at eToro – a leading social investment network revolutionizing the way people invest – is to deliver on its ‘vision for f inancial education and empowerment in digital assets.’
Her multi-faced role has close links to GoodDollar, a social innovation initiative that eToro sponsors. As GoodDollar’s Protocol co-founder and former executive director, Anna describes it as a crypto UBI protocol and social impact DAO. It aims to ‘reduce financial inequality for the 5.5 billion underbanked through improving access to digital assets and the new digital economy, built on blockchain.’
Leveraging decentralized finance protocols, she explains the GoodDollar ecosystem delivers global universal basic income (UBI) to the world by offering free crypto UBI in G$ tokens. Ranked in the top 10 of all DeFi Dapps globally, GoodDollar uses a simple digital web3 wallet for nontechnical users.
“Our focus is reducing the entry barriers so any person can access web3 and give them real crypto they can use to learn-by-doing to build wealth.”
In addition, GoodDollar provides education and community-focused tools to teach people about crypto while doing good for others.
nna’s enthusiasm for economics especially incorporates understanding how technology and innovation enable new solutions for long-entrenched structural and social challenges like financial inequality, or lack of access to capital.
New York, USA Following 10+ years’ experience in marketing and business development strategy in high growth markets, she’s spent the past 4+ years establishing and growing web3 protocols and DAOs – while working in blockchain and specializing in building a more open financial system.
At eToro, Anna’s initiatives are diverse. They include establishing a working model to fight wealth inequality by contributing to decentralized protocols and DAOs, operationalizing millions in social impact grants, and spearheading new money flow/revenue models to support web3 social impact causes.
Anna enthuses about the fact that ‘any person with a cell phone is able to use GoodDollar.’ She asserts it will most benefit people in countries like Nigeria, Argentina, and Vietnam that are isolated from the global economy and underserved by traditional financial services.
Described by LinkedIn peers as a ‘brilliant strategist,’ this native New Yorker is highly regarded as a specialist in blockchain and digital asset technologies.
With her stated belief – re-thinking money to build a better world – Anna commented in an interview (ladiesgetpaid.com), that crypto is more accessible than it’s ever been. And in her own experience, ‘the only way to really start learning about crypto is to get skin in the game.’ She’s also recently tweeted about ‘preaching the gospel on DeFi as the way forward for financial inclusion and connecting the financially ring-fenced to capital markets.’
Viewing the Metaverse as ‘the next generation internet where we own our data and assets, directly,’ Anna remarks there’s been a big push toward mass adoption these past 18 months. With the explosion of NFTs onboarding over one million crypto users to web3, she’s witnessed 1 2 a brand-new trend – every major brand, media and entertainment companies recognizing that NFTs and metaverse ARE their digital strategy to stay relevant.
As for Metaverse opportunities, Anna gets animated thinking about the web3 opportunities for some of web2’s most promising (but challenging) use cases. These include decentralized content platforms and social media as well as decentralized data storage.
However, in the world of crypto, she remarks ‘consumer protection, education and regulation remain some of the biggest barriers to mass adoption.’ In her view, the biggest risk is ‘the narrative of crypto asset speculation overpowering our society and government’s ability to understand crypto’s technological potential.’
Anna’s fundamental belief is that every human being has the right to be connected to the financial system and basic economic assets, no matter where they’re born or what passport they hold. “This is what inspires me to work on onboarding people to web3 via crypto universal basic income systems.”
With her assertion – that crypto really does enable us to dream about money in new ways, and creating money systems more aligned to social, financial and economic justice values – this upbeat innovator is following her own light-hearted advice, that ‘nothing is new, as you’re both later and earlier than you think you are.
As for the future, she’s hopeful about her long-term legacy for GoodDollar and its growing, global, impassioned community – ‘to make a meaningful contribution in using web3 to reduce global poverty, and inspiring others to do the same.’
Website: gooddollar.org
