VanEck

Laura Vidiella del Blanco, Head of Investor Relations, Digital Assets

Leading Investor Relations in a Digital World

Laura Vidiella del Blanco

Crypto Stability Advocate

Building an Investor Mindset Through Experience

Having navigated multiple market cycles in digital assets, I consider firsthand experience to be my greatest asset in investor relations. Experiencing key industry milestones, from structural shifts to technical breakthroughs, gives me a battle-tested perspective. It allows me to evaluate emerging market positions and protocol innovations against past experiments rather than relying purely on theoretical models.

My approach is also deeply rooted in my personal background. Raised in a family of engineers and doctors, I was conditioned early on to appreciate fast-paced environments and technical precision. Family dinner table debates sparked a deep-seated intellectual curiosity, teaching me to challenge my own assumptions, rigorously test consensus views and identify structural flaws in legacy systems that are ripe for modernization.

Also, having lived and worked in multiple countries prior to entering this space gave me a first-hand view of international payments and banking friction. Even today, in 2026, it remains striking how much legacy financial infrastructure relies on outdated rails. That global perspective drives how I articulate the transformative necessity of digital assets to institutional investors.

Balancing Innovation with Investor Confidence

Every paradigm-shifting technology follows a familiar adoption arc, attracting a mix of long-term builders, core platform architects, speculative capital and bad actors. My role in IR is to help investors look past short-term noise and evaluate core value creation mechanisms.

Today, we see parallels between the AI boom and the 2021–2022 digital asset cycles, capital is flooding in and while not every project will survive, market discipline will inevitably highlight the true category leaders. I structure investor conversations around a clear taxonomy of value, identifying standalone category winners, platform layers that enable broader ecosystem infrastructure and network effects that drive sustained protocol health. This long-term framework prevents investor burnout driven by short-term return cycles.

“True investor trust isn't built by delivering endless cheerleading; it is earned through candor when things don't go according to plan.”

Fortunately, blockchain technology offers a structural advantage that traditional finance lacks, real-time, public transparency through on-chain metrics. Instead of relying solely on quarterly reports, investors can evaluate live data including Total Value Locked (TVL), active wallet address growth, transaction velocity and real-time protocol revenue generation. And still, not all is perfect. My role is to translate these rich on-chain data points into actionable insights, grounding investor expectations in verifiable, fundamental truth rather than speculative hype.

Building Trust through Transparency

The single most valuable lesson is practicing constructive realism, maintaining high conviction in a project's long-term potential while remaining completely transparent about operational challenges or strategic missteps.

True investor trust isn't built by delivering endless cheerleading; it is earned through candor when things don't go according to plan. Calling out vulnerabilities directly, without fear of alienating short-term capital, builds lasting credibility. When stakeholders know you will deliver bad news with the same clarity and speed as good news, they gain the confidence required to remain committed through volatile market conditions.

The Next Phase of Digital Asset Adoption

The defining trend of this era is the "invisibilization" of digital assets, the transition of blockchain from a standalone asset class to foundational financial infrastructure. We are moving away from discussing "crypto" as an isolated vertical. Major fintechs, global payment processors and traditional banking institutions are now actively embedding stablecoin architecture into their settlement layers to achieve faster, cheaper and fully traceable transactions.

However, technology adoption rarely fails due to technical capability; it fails due to human and organizational friction. Upgrading systems that manage and custody sovereign wealth or personal savings creates natural institutional hesitancy, similar to the uneven enterprise adoption curve we see with AI today, even in innovation epicenters like the U.S.

Overcoming these psychological and regulatory friction points will be the primary catalyst for the next phase of institutional integration.

Building a Career on Knowledge and Integrity

First, prioritize uncompromising data integrity. In an industry anchored by immutable ledgers, attempting to spin numbers or obscure facts is a self-defeating strategy because the truth always emerges on-chain or in market performance.

Second, read relentlessly and read widely. To truly excel, you must look beyond today's fast-moving headlines and digital asset whitepapers. Read deeply into the history of money, banking and capital markets, studying how technological and monetary innovations have interacted across industries for decades and centuries. Understanding historical market cycles, sovereign monetary shifts and past financial infrastructure evolutions provides the macro perspective needed to navigate today's market dynamics and guide institutional investors with true authority.

Finally, embrace transparency during market downturns. Don't shy away from negative headlines or industry headwinds. Addressing setbacks openly demonstrates institutional maturity. When you can articulate what went wrong, explain the structural fixes being implemented and demonstrate how the ecosystem is evolving, you convert market crises into proof of resilience, which is ultimately what attracts sustained institutional capital.