Matteo Dante Puccio, is President International  and a Partner at Wave Financial Group. He’s had an extensive career across the wealth management, VC tech investing and family office space. He’s currently focused on digital assets at Wave Financial Group.

Our conversation starts with Matteo’s first love, which was for theatre.  We hear how being raised in the US by an Italian family formed his global attitude and reach, and how his acting training laid down some essential skills that he still draws upon today – the power of communication, performance, reading the room and relating to people. His knowledge of Italian got him a job at an Italian bank, and his surprising affinity for all things financial saw him transferred back to the Italian headquarters.

We turn then to his management style, as having cycled through many different types of roles as well as market cycles, managing people has been a core part of his success. We turn then to his current role in the digital assets arena and hear about the complexity and range behind the convenient labels and heuristics in this space.  It is a range that defies easy classification, and in our discussion he draws out the nuances in different kinds of digital assets and the different roles that they can play.  Bitcoin, NFTs, ESG aspects of digital assets . . a lot of ground is covered in this rich discussion.

Finally we reflect on lessons learned through decades in a relatively volatile area of finance – lessons in humility and in what really counts.

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