I wear a few different hats as a CFO, you know, sometimes it's referred to as chief fixing officer.

Wherever there's a fire in the business, you know, I'm often there first.

Whatever hats CFOs like him run need to wear, Sages, tools and insights can make sure they fit.

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World, I'm John Batsle with Tom Sandwich. He is the editor of the Economist, the World Ahead 2022.

Ten things to watch out for that we may have an answer to a year from now or not.

Crypto, much in the news because of Bitcoin and its skyrocketing and then its plunge and then its skyrocketing.

But there are many other cryptocurrencies being invented all the time and crypto services.

What are they is not the pursuit? The question is what will they become?

Because right now there's a contest if I understand correctly between people who identify with DeFi, people who identify with central banks,

and then there's the world of technology that doesn't count on a lack of reality to exchange goods.

Tom, this is such a tangle I can't summarize it other than the fact that the Economist had a spectacular auction recently,

of one of your cover illustrations about Alice and Wonderland and the rabbit plunging down the rabbit hole with cryptocurrencies.

It was a great success and none of that is possible without crypto.

Is that the way forward in 2022? Make crypto work for us?

It's one of the possible ways forward.

So what we tend to see with disruptive technologies is that the people who first adopt them become very messianic about them.

And they're like this is going to change everything, it's going to blow up everything, it's going to change the world.

And what tends to happen is that these exciting new technologies end up being domesticated.

They end up being tamed and the incumbent, the old fashioned way of doing things,

sort of reaches some accommodation with the new way of doing things.

And we're seeing that happen in the world of finance now.

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