In my role, I meet countless executives, innovators, and thought leaders. But every so often, someone articulates a perspective that reframes how we should all be thinking about business, technology, and leadership.
Recently, in conversation with Jake Tullis, a Cincinnati-based crypto hedge fund manager and blockchain advocate, I uncovered three profound lessons for leaders navigating an accelerating digital landscape. Jake’s decade-long experience guiding high-net-worth clients and experimenting with blockchain-based solutions puts him at the intersection of finance, technology, and human behavior.
What became clear is that Jake’s story is not about crypto for crypto’s sake. It is about what executives must see, prepare for, and act on as the digital economy matures. Whether you steward a global enterprise or sit at the helm of a mid-sized company, these insights reveal where opportunity, risk, and transformation collide.
Below, I’ve distilled Jake’s journey into three key takeaways for executives—insights that will directly impact your competitive edge and your survival in the next decade.
Encryption is Not Optional—It’s the New Business Currency
Jake made a simple but powerful statement that executives need to take seriously: Crypto is encrypted software—protocols that tell the internet what to do.
Behind all the hype, blockchain is about reducing single points of failure. Today, the internet is dominated by centralized power. Amazon Web Services goes down; airlines cancel thousands of flights. One weak link, and entire ecosystems collapse.
In blockchain, data and processes are fragmented and distributed across thousands of nodes. That makes it exponentially harder for a bad actor—or even an accidental misconfiguration—to take everything down.
Why Executives Should Care
- Cybersecurity is not IT’s problem—it’s your fiduciary duty. Regulators, shareholders, and boards are no longer forgiving when businesses suffer breaches. A single ransomware event can destroy value and reputation faster than any market disruption.
- Decentralization is resilience. Blockchain protocols reinvent continuity planning by building redundancy into the architecture itself.
- Customer trust depends on it. As consumers and B2B buyers get smarter, they will ask harder questions about how you secure their data. Blockchain-native companies can answer with credibility traditional firms cannot.
Strategic Question to Ask
If encryption becomes the baseline of digital trust, will your enterprise still be credible if you ignore it?
Data Ownership Will Redefine Customer Relationships
The promise of Web3 is not just about payments or trading tokens. It is about reclaiming ownership of digital interactions. As Jake explained, tokens—whether fungible or non-fungible—transform files into assets. An MP4 isn’t just a file anymore; it’s a tokenized piece of intellectual property with traceable rights, licensing potential, and monetization opportunities.
For decades, big tech companies profited by selling our data back to us. Web2 is structured on centralized ownership, where your customer data lives in Amazon’s or Google’s servers, not on your balance sheet. Web3 inverts that model. It allows businesses—and individuals—to decide who accesses what, when, and under what terms.
Why Executives Should Care
- Privacy as a differentiator. If you can guarantee customers sovereignty over their data, you create loyalty, advocacy, and premium positioning.
- Monetization beyond products. Imagine selling the rights of an executive education seminar as a tradable NFT, or leasing proprietary designs using tokenized smart contracts.
- New IP strategy. Web3 turns intellectual property into liquid digital assets. That forces legal teams and business leaders alike to rethink contracts, licensing, and customer engagement.
Strategic Question to Ask
If customers increasingly demand ownership of their digital identity and transactions, does your organization compete by clinging to old business models—or by leading in transparency?
Adoption Will Be Invisible—But Transformational
Jake emphasized that the future of blockchain adoption will be frictionless and invisible. Most people won’t care if they’re visiting a Web2 or a Web3 site. They won’t know—or need to know—which blockchain underpins the experience. What they will feel is security, speed, and empowerment.
This parallels the evolution of the internet itself. In its infancy, only technologists understood DNS or IP addresses. Today, a grandmother shops for groceries online without ever wondering about the protocol stack. Blockchain will be the same.
Executives must not fall into the trap of waiting until customers force adoption. By then, innovators and competitors will already have weaponized the technology.
Why Executives Should Care
- Transformation sneaks in sideways. Payments, contracts, digital identities, supply chains—all will integrate blockchain quietly. Those who ignore it will simply wake up to declining relevance.
- Capital markets are preparing. Institutional players like J.P. Morgan are already investing in permissioned blockchains. Ignoring where capital flows is strategic negligence.
- You don’t need to become a “crypto company.” You do need to understand how digitized, tokenized ecosystems will impact your industry’s cost structures, compliance frameworks, and customer behaviors.
Strategic Question to Ask
When disruption is invisible until it is inevitable, what early bets should you make to avoid being left behind?
Putting It All Together: What This Means for Leaders
Jake’s vision is bold, but his journey illustrates a bigger truth: We are moving toward a world where assets, identities, and transactions live “on chain.”
For executives, the practical implications are clear:
- Rethink security. Blockchain-native encryption eliminates single points of failure and reframes cybersecurity as part of strategy, not IT support.
- Reframe customer value. Web3 data ownership transforms interactions, giving businesses that embrace transparency a massive advantage.
- Prepare for seamless disruption. Blockchain will infiltrate business models quietly; leadership must prepare before it’s obvious.
Executive Call-to-Action
If the late 1990s were about deciding whether a website was necessary, the 2020s are about deciding whether on-chain solutions are strategic.
Do not delegate this decision to your IT team. Do not wait for consultants to hand you an “adoption playbook.” Your role as an executive is to connect business value to emerging opportunities—to take calculated risks that safeguard relevance.
The future belongs to leaders who:
- Experiment with tokenization to reimagine business models.
- Collaborate with trusted experts to integrate blockchain-native security.
- Build customer trust through data ownership and transparent engagement.
As every generation of innovation has shown, the worst position for leaders is hesitation. Jake’s journey highlights not only the inevitability of Web3, but the opportunities available to those who move from fear to fluency.
From encryption as business currency, to data ownership as customer loyalty, to invisible adoption transforming industries—these lessons are the roadmap for executives committed to not just surviving, but thriving, in the next decade.
Listen to the full episode on C-Suite Radio: Disrupt & Innovate | C-Suite Network
Watch on YouTube: DI 100 The Future of Finance: Exploring Blockchain and Crypto with Jake Tullis
This article was drafted with the assistance of an AI writing assistant (Abacus.AI’s ChatLLM Teams) and edited by Lisa L. Levy for accuracy, tone, and final content.
