Welcome to season 3 of the Public Key podcast! New Season, New Hosts, New Look. You can’t go to a crypto conference in 2025 without a company or a speaker mentioning the convergence of AI and digital assets. In this episode, Jason Somensatto (Head of North America Public Policy at Chainalysis) sits down with Michael Greenwald (Global Head of Financial Innovation and Digital Assets of Amazon Web Services (AWS)) to dive into the intricate world where digital assets and generative AI meet cloud infrastructure through AWS.
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Public Key Episode 152: Behind the Cloud: AWS’s Role in the Global Financial Paradigm Shift
You can’t go to a crypto conference in 2025 without a company or a speaker mentioning the convergence of AI and digital assets.
In this episode, Jason Somensatto (Head of North America Public Policy at Chainalysis) sits down with Michael Greenwald (Global Head of Financial Innovation and Digital Assets, Amazon Web Services) to dive into the intricate world where digital assets meet cloud infrastructure through AWS.
Michael shares his backstory working with the Department of Treasury and how that entered him into the world of decentralized finance and terrorist financing.
He discusses AWS’s essential role in supporting the digital transformation in global finance, while also addressing the implementation challenges and potentials of generative AI in this evolving landscape.
Michael outlines the critical transition from legacy financial systems to agile, cloud-enhanced infrastructures, which is imperative for economic competitiveness and highlights the commitment of AWS in enhancing digital asset scalability, cybersecurity, and collaborations with the public and private sector.
Quote of the episode
”The way I think about it is Generative AI, it assists smart contract parties through chatbots and virtual assistants, in the writing of smart contract code and monitoring unusual networks that may represent a security risk. And a security risk of yesterday may be a growing or a different kind of security risk of tomorrow – Michael Greenwald (Global Head of Financial Innovation and Digital Assets, Amazon Web Services)
Minute-by-minute episode breakdown
2 | Amazon AWS’s Role in crypto and digital assets
4 | From Treasury to AWS: Michael’s journey through finance and technology
8 | The intersection of AI and digital assets in finance and cloud computing
14 | Enhancing blockchain security with AWS and Generative AI
19 | Collaboration between public and private sectors in digital assets
23 | AWS’s role in the future of digital assets and global customer adoption
27 | What’s in store for AWS and their digital asset and AI journey
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Speakers on today’s episode
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Transcript
Jason
Great welcome everybody to public key. I’m Jason Simon Soto, the head of North American Public Policy here at chainalysis. Really fortunate to be joined by Michael Greenwald from AWS, and maybe we’ll just start there. Michael AWS on a crypto podcast. One tell us you know kind of what your role is within the company, but how? How do you guys intersect with the crazy world of crypto that I’ve been working in for
Michael
a while? Sure, sure. Jason, great to be with you and great to be on the podcast. You know, we sit at a unique intersection, because the AWS cloud underpins central banks. Our work with stable coins like circle and Paxos and many of the key players in the web three community. So I have the great fortune in our teams across the board that work with great customers to see each of these buckets scale and their scope grow. In my role as the Global Head of digital assets financial innovation and overseeing the global executive relations team, we get to work with all elements of the US government, so many folks in the national security community, the regulators, federal financial as well as our global partners and our global customers, whether that’s our five eyes partners or new security partners together. So it gives us a unique scope to see what’s happening domestically, but also what’s happening across the globe.
Jason
Yeah, that’s really fascinating, right? AWS is one of those companies that probably for the people who do understand and know it understand, like, how important of an infrastructure layer it is to so much of our system, both on the private sector and on the public sector. And I know we’ve interacted before in the past, and it’s great to have somebody who’s thinking so proactively around specifically the digital asset issue, which is, you know, a ton of data, as our company knows, as a data company, there’s a lot of data to be maintained, but then also just in operating these networks. But I guess before we get into kind of some of the stuff specifically you’re doing at the AWS, let’s, let’s rewind and kind of figure out how you got here. And so maybe you can give me a little bit of your background. I know you spent some time in the government. I know you’ve done some unique things. I think of you myself as like one of the great conveners in the spaces that I’ve worked. Of you know, bringing people together to have these conversations. But love to hear how that career has developed,
Michael
sure. Well, I love a great dinner party and a great I love a great convening conversation. But I had the great fortune to spend almost nine years of my life at the US Treasury Department working on counter terrorist financing and illicit finance. And so I got to work on the legal side, the Intel side, the policy side and the diplomatic side of the Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, and some of the best years of my life, just working alongside these just great Treasury friends around the world, and got to see the counterterrorism threat up close post 911 and Our work that we did to go after al Qaeda and ISIS and other foreign terrorist organizations and and also see the early days of decentralized finance. I i studied hawalas in grad school, and I was fascinated by how Hawala worked and how decentralized finance went through charities or other vehicles. And so that’s what really brought me to Treasury, was to go after al Qaeda and go after its money supply. And it took me to Europe. It took me to Mali in Africa. It took me to Ukraine during, you know, the first time in Crimea. And then it took me to the Middle East, living in Qatar and Kuwait as the first Treasury attache there. So I saw Jason the arsenal and the tools of what treasury and our partners across the US government can bring and and then I also saw our limitations. I saw what it meant for correspond, banking, not just the United States, but overseas. And then at. As we’ve picked up of decentralized finance and the speed of payments and competitiveness, I just seen the convergence of geo economics firsthand, and so it’s given me, now being at AWS, a very unique perspective of our customer domestically and globally. So yeah, but working at Treasury was just some of the best years of my life.
Jason
And so then was it from Treasury to AWS directly, or kind of, what’s the path there? So
Michael
I went into the private sector. I worked for an investment firm called tie to advisors and and got to work with them, actually, on digital assets with many family Office clients and geopolitics, and understand from the investment side what was the opportunity. But a lot of it was explaining it. So I, I was director of digital assets, which, you know, I kind of knew that I was going to become, you know, just like chief AI officers, every company has one the head of digital assets was just coming up. So it was a fascinating time to work with, you know, large institutions on Bitcoin and Ethereum and explaining that to very large investors. So I did that. I had a great fortune of going in the classroom and teaching at Boston University in Columbia and spending a lot of time at Harvard Belfer Center. And I think it gave me an opportunity Jason to really reflect on where we were with the future of money, where we were going, and I was able to publish quite a bit to understand and try to explain what was happening to the US dollar, which is really coming to a head right now in 2025
Jason
Yeah, it’s, You know, you were mentioning being back at that time when you were in the government, and seeing kind of the early signs of digital asset and decentralized finance, and I have to imagine, not that you’re old or anything along those lines, but just the pace of innovation over that time that so much has changed, right and like, kind of getting up to the point that you’re at today at AWS. I know one of the topics that we wanted to spend a decent amount of time on is kind of the intersection of AI and digital assets, which, like, I think if we would have done this podcast maybe three or four years ago, would have sounded like a future world that makes no sense, and now a lot of people listening will have the context for for what that means. It still feels extremely cutting edge to me, and particularly, you know, I, I think of myself as just a pure consumer of what’s going on in the AI space. And, you know, like, I don’t know, whereas I spend a lot of time in the digital asset space. So maybe give me a little framing for like, what are you working on at AI or at AWS? About those issues? Like, kind of, how do you think of them? Like, what are the big projects? Give me a little bit of context around how I should be thinking about AI and digital assets together.
Michael
Sure, well, you’re you’re right that, like, the the plumbing of our financial system is antiquated, and I saw that firsthand. I saw that when it comes to how quickly things can process. And so we’re at such a unique point at AWS, and in this community where you have two emerging technologies, digital assets, generative AI, and when they’re used together, to transform, you know, for our business, public sector entities, it drives new level of efficiency, security as well as financial innovation. And it’s really a dawn of a new era of inclusion. And really, I think, a call to action for customers to have options. And so I think digital assets innovations and such as blockchain and cryptographic signatures, you know, they’re going to bolster public sector information and authenticity, and it’s going to really, I would say, create tamper resistant records for when it comes to, you know, cyber security is, is really important for our customers and so generative AI Jason in the compute power behind it, because in order for really generative AI to be unleashed, you need cloud computing, and it offers the promise of supporting digital assets, large scale problem solving, looking for regularity. Is, you know, security, identifying those emerging financial threats that are around the corner, and so that just gives you a slice of what that convergence looks like.
Jason
Yeah, like, let’s maybe get a little bit more specific. There I was. I remember I saw this video on YouTube recently that just like, walked through what the history of like a derivatives exchange looked like back in the open outcry, days of brokers on the floor calling out orders, paper tickets being distributed over to, you know, a back office to, like, execute and confirm the trades. And, you know, we share a little bit of overlap in spending time with the CFTC, so that’s why I’m talking in this language. But you know that pretty quickly has evolved to the point of, you know, most all trading activity happening in a digital environment, all of that information being publicly, or not publicly, but but reported to like a regulator on a daily basis with tons of information. But now we’re at a period where not only is the amount of information becoming like exponential as it relates to all of this, but then you know also where it lives, and what you can understand about what that information means is changing, you know, and I’m talking in these kind of vague terms, but I was hoping to get pretty specific with you as to Like, what do you see that evolution? Like, what opportunities does it specifically create, right? Like, what does it allow the government to do, or what does it allow the private sector to do? That hasn’t been there before.
Michael
So I think Jason, you know, the convergence of generative AI and digital assets. It’s still early days of implementation and but I think what it could do in use cases that it will bring is a paradigm shift in global financial infrastructure, and so the infrastructure needs to be, I would say, resilient, scalable and secure and AWS. And, you know, Paul and I from Coinbase, we wrote a piece about how, you know, we both support these efforts with a suite of blockchain solutions for customers. And so the infrastructure needs to be robust and it needs to be scalable in that nature. And I think advanced security features need to be continually built in, and we can’t be complacent. And so those features that AWS provides, they’re really an essential component of how to secure operations, and then they’re integral to how public sector institutions will be looking for irregularities, whether it’s the insider threat or the outsider threat, or whether it’s looking at whether there could be a mass exodus of payments, those type of things are really important. To train data, look for patterns, and to have a security and minded approach every day for us. Jason, in everything we do, security is job number one, two and three, and so that’s the mindset as we’re going through this paradigm, as we’re going through this convergence that must stay a top priority.
Jason
I take your point that, like this is a kind of forward looking exercise for you a little bit, right? You can kind of predict out that things are changing very rapidly and that you’re going to see this infrastructure change, and to your point, making sure that is secure, tamper resistant, taking advantage of these technologies and not exposing it too much to the weaknesses, I guess, at the kind of current moment we’re at, though, like, what are some of the practical examples of of, you know, people leveraging AWS and some of this infrastructure and thinking about these problems in The future, and kind of maybe the little laboratories of what is to come, like, what, what are, what are some of those interesting examples?
Michael
Yeah, and I think laboratory is a great way to think about it. So I like that term, Jason. I’ll take that from you. I think, I think if you look at public and private sector, and. These they can leverage these technologies in several ways, to spot issues, monitor networks, but increasing the system uptime. Right? All about efficiency. So decentralized applications, for example, you know, their front end interviews, you know, built onto smart contracts, and so they’re enabling transactions to be run without sharing personal information between the parties. And you know how important and vital that is now generative AI, those tools can be trained on both off chain and on chain data to optimize and secure that smart contract landscape, and that landscape, to your point of a laboratory, it’s shifting rapidly. So today, the way I think about it is generative AI, it assists smart contract parties through chat bots and virtual assistants in the writing of smart contract code and monitoring unusual networks that may represent a security risk in a security risk of yesterday may be a growing or a different kind of security risk of tomorrow, and so that what a risk is continues to grow, and We have to grow and scale with it. So I think the more data the generative AI tools can have access to, the more effectively Jason, they can spot errors or security risks, and that can be proactive to identify and mitigate those risks in real time. And so I think we have something in Amazon called Amazon queue developer, and that is speeding up coding tasks by providing inline code suggestions to improve, you know, developer productivity. And then in addition, for example, you know Amazon queue developer, they can detect hard to find security vulnerabilities, flag emerging security vulnerabilities, and again, that flag may shift right. It’s growing so quickly, so a security vulnerability may shift rapidly, and then generative AI can generate documentation smart contracts make it easier to understand and help an organization or customer make sure that it’s secure.
Jason
Yeah, that’s really fascinating, and it’s kind of incredible that we’re at this point where, like, this is even a conversation to be had. I think, like, I used to work at a company that developed smart contracts. And one of the, you know, very early on in kind of the defi experiment, and one of the like realizations I kind of came to when I was there, was that the security risks were so different in that environment, right? I think if we talk about historically, what cyber security risks you know are, most you know could have the biggest impact and still are. Are those, like, personal pieces of like, hey, somebody got my password. Somebody infiltrated my information. So, you know, there was a weakness in the system in that way, where, when you’re coding up a smart contract to move people’s money. What we’ve learned in the last several years, right is that one of the biggest potential risks is that the logic of that code is wrong, or there’s some unexpected outcome from that, or, you know, and and results in the direct loss of funds. So it is, you kind of need to build up an entire infrastructure around the idea of making sure that code’s good, you know, checking the people who are writing it to be like, Hey, did you mean this? To have this infinity loop of, you know, of outcomes, and I guess do for you is like that conversion with the digital asset space, just kind of where that is most naturally, like the right laboratory to have some of these discussions and some of this
Michael
development. Yeah, I mean, that’s exactly right. And I think especially given the recent executive order from the administration where economic competitiveness was called out, and how do you remove barriers to promote economic competitiveness? And I care a lot about economic competitiveness, because I think how can the dollar be competitive and be different in many forms? So I think that’s right, Jason. I think if you look at we’re at a new dawn, and I really look at it as a paradigm shift in financial infrastructure, and in order for that shift to not just be talked about. It, but actually implemented in real time. That’s where the convergence of digital assets and AI will bring. And I think when you bring those together, and you start to play out the level of transparency, the level of sources of truth and really implement it across the public sector. You know that, to me, will be exciting, and I think especially you know, a huge priority for us is to prevent fraud, waste and abuse, right, and to help organizations the public sector do that. And I think these tools can also be very applicable when it comes to those themes.
Jason
I want to pull on a string there that you mentioned, you kind of brought up the executive order and the public sector here, I’m wondering, like, what do you think the public sector needs to understand about what is happening at that conversion point that we’ve been talking about. Do they need to just kind of have a lot of education on what the private sector is building? Do they need to be involved in the conversations and building next to this, like, how do you see the government’s role vis a vis this kind of quickly evolving conversion of AI and digital assets. You
Michael
know, we really focus on understanding the voice of the customer and understanding the public sector and what they’re eating and meeting them where they are. I think, you know, folks in the national security community, they may be deeper in some areas than others, and be experimenting with emerging tech in different ways. I think that both parties in the public and private sector need to work even closer, because there’s too much at stake. And I think what I think about economic competitiveness, I think about us spending a lot of time with our public sector customers, really trying to understand their priorities, their goals, their mission, and then help them implement it. So we host a lot of gatherings where they’re focused on specific thought leadership. We have one coming up in April at the Milken Center for Advancing the American dream, called the US financial intelligence forum. And so, for example, Jason, that’s an opportunity where, you know, senior folks in the Federal Financial space and the national security space can come together with us, and we can share best practices, and we can hear each other. And I think, to me, that is a great ingredient for boosting economic competitiveness and then helping the administration implement the executive order.
Jason
And how have you felt? I mean, I know you’ve been in conversations like that for a while. Like, how do you feel? The sophistication and understanding and like engagement level is, has that shifted is, you know, with the introduction of a chat GBT, was the like, Okay, now we’re much more engaged on these conversations. Or has it always just been like there is a core group of people who get this and want to engage on that? I’d be interested in, kind of your lay of the land around that engagement with the public sector?
Michael
Well, I think it’s clear that we’re in a new era for the focus on the future of money. I mean, I’ve been focused on it for a long time. I’ve been passionate about it, as you know, for a long time, but I think we’re at the moment where it’s not just going to be a conversation, it’s actually going to be real implementation, and we’re seeing the future of money play out right before our eyes. So I think the executive orders are great for a step. I think there’s obviously a role for different parts of government. There’s a role for private sector entities, and you know, we’re going to work closely. And as you know, the work we, we did on CFTC, is a great example of that, to bring private sector companies in and to have that conversation. So I think we are, I’m expecting to see true implementation, and I think that is really positive for this space. And I think everyone is getting smarter, more collegial, and I think you’re going to see great collaboration. That’s something that we try to foster, because, as I mentioned at the beginning, because AWS cloud underpins. In each bucket of the future of money, we’re going to convene all of those buckets of customers together, and we’re going to talk to each other, and then we’re going to go to these agencies, and we’re going to work collaboratively together. And to me, that will be the essence of the implementation for the future of money.
Jason
Yeah, I was wondering, you know, and maybe you kind of already answered this, but the like, what you see AWS role in this, why you guys are kind of proactive and and participating in these conversations and working on these projects. Because in some ways, I think you could be like, Hey, we’re an infrastructure layer. We provide our service. You know, this is for the people building on our environments to have these conversations. But as you noted, like you kind of underpin it all. And I assume that is, in part, the reason that you guys are in such a good position to to kind of take a leading step in this, but maybe you can give me a little bit of like your thinking and why. You know, you guys are so focused on this issue. Well,
Michael
we’re customer obsessed, and we care deeply about our customers and helping them scale, you know, on us, and working with them and thinking outside the box and constantly inventing and simplifying and taking a think big mindset with our customers. So I think we want to help our customers scale. We want to help bring our customers and public sector partners together, if they’re not already, if we can be a helpful convener, you mentioned, you know, I like convening. If I can convene for our customers and it helps them, then all the better. So I think also, we’re a company that’s based on data, and so we’re looking to understand not just the regulation, but what’s happening to the global customer and are we seeing customer adoption in digital assets? Are we seeing customer adoption domestically, globally? And then we’re trying to really listen to the different types of customers to understand where they’re going, so we can meet them, so we can be supportive. And that’s really part of our role, is to be supportive of our customers, whether it’s in the financial sector, whether it’s in the federal financial sector, whether it’s stable coins, which are going to play a very important role in the coming months and years ahead, and whether it’s the web threes, companies in the startup communities which are going to grow and scale in us. And you know, I’ve got great partners like Brad Feinstein and others that are working with the web three community, and we collaborate together, because I may bring some public sector entity with a web three company, and they’re talking, and to me, that’s healthy, and that, to me, just builds more trust between these different buckets in the future of money. You were mentioning,
Jason
you know, in kind of this customer obsession, you brought up stable coins. I’m interested. Maybe we can talk specifically about stable coins, or maybe if you have other like, I’m interested in, as somebody who is at the front, you know, the leading edge, of what your customers want to do in these environments, like, what are the big trends that you’re focused on from, like, digital asset use case infrastructure perspective, like, what is the data that you know some of these customers are really focused on, on putting on AWS and getting insights into
Michael
so I think, first of all, you know, these tools, along with, you know, customer support and cloud services, which are, you know, essential to what we do with the federal government and our partners Globally, they could greatly benefit, you know, evolving operations countries and corporations, but really is there? They’re undergoing a shift. They’re undergoing a transition from legacy infrastructure Jason to more automated infrastructure, rails and so the way I visualize it, and what I hear from our customers is at the intersection of cloud computing, AI technology and digital assets, along with data storage with cyber security tools built in that’s going to define global. Economic competition in the 21st century. And I think the companies and the technologies that create this future, they’re going to be at ground zero for helping define it. And so we AWS, we want to be right there with our customers, the transition to automation is going to more efficiently help these processes to manage these technologies. That starts with infrastructure investments and build and I think, at the beginning and the end of the day, Jason, we’re builders. We’re builders at the heart of everything we do. And what I love about AWS and working here is, if you have a big idea and you have the data to back it up, they will let you build it, and they’ll let you build it to whether it’s to help a customer or to identify a pain point or to be proactive, and so I just love that you know, to wake up every day to be able to work with a great team and attack big ideas. What could be better than that? Yeah, it’s,
Jason
well, you’ve made a comment. I should have written this down. But like the this infrastructure that you’re working on and thinking about is going to be the infrastructure of the future, of how money moves, how finance gets done at a global level. And I think that is one. It’s, you know, very forward looking. And I think important to, kind of, like, put out that North Star and understand, like, Hey, this is where things are going. I guess I am now also interested in, like, what are the challenges, right? What is, what’s the really hard part of building this new infrastructure. I mean, I think people probably have some expectation, but I’d be interested of like, what you’re seeing on the ground. Like, what do you see as the is it? Is it getting everybody aligned so that that competitiveness aspect is, you know, hey, everybody’s moving towards this idea instead of on a bunch of diverging ideas, or is it something technical? I’d be interested to see where you see, like the roadblocks to getting to some of that future that you see. Well,
Michael
I think as the world continues, globalizing trend and more people are gaining connectivity, one of the largest challenges in the transition will be financing new infrastructure projects that support, you know, telecommunications and so beyond that, it’s it’s governments and the private sector must come to ver together very strategically to advance projects that provide smart, agile, cloud based systems to its citizens. And so I think increasingly, if we can enable this transition from legacy infrastructure to infrastructure that will enable enable that next iteration of the future of money that, to me, is where the competitiveness takes place, and it’s recognizing that now is not The time to be complacent. Now is the time to act with agility, speed, security, resiliency. These are all at the heart of cloud, what we’re building, what we continue to build, for our customers and sensitive workloads that we work with, with the US government, and so we take that history and that practice, and as other customers globally are looking to scale, we want to help them with that transition. So I think it’s just recognizing the transition needs to occur and putting in the appropriate investments in that transition.
Jason
Yeah, that makes sense. And I imagine it’s a fairly big investment, right? It’s quite, quite an undertaking. Well, great. I guess you know, you’ve mentioned some things that you’ve been up to recently, that there’s, you know, some good articles we can probably put in the show notes, or something that that you’ve worked on. You’ve mentioned kind of events you guys have coming up, but anything else on on your radar that you guys have been working on, or that we should be on? Look out for in the near future, sure.
Michael
I mean, I think we are going to do power the American Dream series with the Milken Institute, as I mentioned. And I think that’s a great opportunity for interaction with public sector customers. And so I think when you look at, you know, the aspects of the American dream and the global American dream. You know, access in financial is really important, and financial inclusion is key to that. So we’ll be doing that. We’re going to continue to work hand in hand with our customers globally as well. We’ll be at the Munich Security Forum next week. We’ll be in Brussels. We’ll be in London as well. So we’re committed to working with not just customers domestically, but globally. And I think you’re going to continue to see really a think big mindset from us in months ahead. Yeah,
Jason
as I mentioned at the start, right? A true convener. He’s out there doing lots of meetings and definitely big, big thoughts. Well, I really appreciated this. I mean, I think for me, it’s an area that isn’t always at the front of mind, and it’s really fascinating to get a chance to hear about somebody who’s thinking about these really big infrastructure changes that are going to be underlying, kind of the future of finance. So I really appreciate you spending the time with us, Michael and
Michael
Jason, listen. Thank you so much. And you know, I have deep respect for chain analysis and deep respect for your team. Many are former Treasury friends, and you know, I know you all very, very well, and I think the role that chainalysis has played is critical to the future of money. It’s critical to the integrity of the financial sector. And we’re lucky to have you as a customer and a partner in this effort, and I’m excited to see us together continue to scale as we see that adoption take place. So just the fact that you have been doing this podcast, educating the public, you know, it’s deeply important, and I really appreciate it, and it’s really fun to be on, no, it’s
Jason
great. We could do probably a whole other show on just the data that we have to put out there and integrate and get insights from with your guys help so well. Thanks so much, Michael for joining us. My pleasure. Bye.
