Valentina Drofa, fondatrice e CEO di Drofa Comms – Serie di interviste

Valentina Drofa, founder and CEO at Drofa Comms, is a global entrepreneur and business leader with a PhD in Economics and a career spanning finance, education, and public relations. She began her journey in financial markets in 2007 before launching a trading and investing EdTech platform that reached over one million students and hosted around 100 expert-led webinars monthly. In 2011, she founded Drofa Comms, building it into one of the fastest-growing PR agencies focused on finance and fintech, supporting banks, exchanges, trading platforms, payment providers, and blockchain companies in strengthening credibility, influence, and stakeholder trust.

Comunicazioni Drofa is a London-headquartered global PR consulting agency specializing in finance and fintech communications. Since 2011, the firm has helped financial institutions and emerging fintech brands shape clear, credible narratives through public relations, executive communications, crisis management, content marketing, and strategic consulting. With a multidisciplinary team bridging PR and financial expertise, the agency focuses on simplifying complex financial stories and positioning clients for long-term reputation growth.

In this interview, Valentina Drofa shares her perspective on why trust and reputation have become the defining currency in fintech and crypto. She explores how regulation, transparency, crisis communication, and long-term brand building shape credibility in an industry still fighting “Wild West” perceptions.

You’ve spent more than 17 years across financial markets as a consultant, entrepreneur, and author — looking back, which moments in your career most shaped your belief that trust and reputation are now the real currency in fintech and crypto?

Honestly, I wouldn’t really call attention to specific moments here. Of greater importance was the journey itself — and the repetition of the same things that I’ve witnessed along the way. 

Over the course of many years, and across different corners of the financial markets, I kept seeing the same pattern play out. Finance is sempre about other people’s money. Whether you’re an incumbent bank, a fintech platform, or a crypto company, you’re asking people to store value with you, move funds through you, and trust your infrastructure. That trust isn’t an abstract idea — it is real and molto fragile.

What really shaped my view is watching how weak the “institution of reputation” still is outside of traditional banking. I’ve seen projects that promised unrealistic returns, destroyed investor capital, and closed down quietly — only for those same people to resurface six months later with a new company, and a brand new, squeaky clean public image. And all too often, no one bothers to ask the uncomfortable questions.

That’s why I have a very strict point about critical thinking. Reputation cannot be assumed. It has to be earned over time, through transparent practices, consistency, and accountability. This might sound boring to some, but that’s actually a good thing in its own way: in finance, “boring” is often a sign of reliability.

Each time a major hack or crypto crime headline appears, it reignites the “Wild West” narrative — even as adoption continues to grow. Why does this perception still slow mainstream confidence?

Because the risks are real, and they’re visible. Crypto is a market of extremes, and with big opportunities inevitably come big risks. When people chase after fast money, they often meet companies that promise exactly that. High risk meets high expectation, and when it all comes crashing down, it does so extremely loudly.

We also shouldn’t ignore media dynamics and the part they play. Hacks, collapses, and fraud news spread like wildfire while stories about companies that quietly do things right for years are hardly discussed. Add the overall volatility of the crypto market, repeated historical failures and large scandals that people still remember — and the “Wild West” image is indeed exceptionally hard to shake.

Though truth be told, this isn’t unique to just crypto, either. Every financial market has gone through similar phases historically. The only major differentiator here is speed: in crypto, everything happens faster, be it gains, losses, narratives, or consequences.

When institutions, regulators, or enterprise partners assess a crypto firm today, what concrete signals do they actually look for to decide whether a company is credible or not?

Public reporting, clear disclosures, real people behind the company, licenses that can actually be verified, a consistent communication history, a visible operational footprint — any and all of these.

They look for mundane signals that indicate prolonged, stable activity. Which is a good thing, practically speaking. That’s how they can see if the company is truly structured and consistent across all of its channels. If it speaks clearly or hides behind buzzwords without really explaining anything, credibility is fairly easy to ascertain from there.

And they increasingly double-check everything too: LinkedIn profiles, corporate registries, licensing databases, media coverage over time — as they rightfully should. If a company claims it’s been on the market for, say, ten years, it is only appropriate and logical to ask: Dove sono le prove?

Which signals immediately raise red flags — even before a breach, enforcement action, or public failure occurs?

“Guaranteed returns” — that’s the easiest red flag to point out straight away. Only banks can guarantee returns, and even they do it within strict frameworks. If a non-bank fintech or crypto company promises fixed income with zero risk, that’s not some ground-breaking technological miracle at work. That’s a marketing trick at best, an outright scam at worst.

Among other red flags, I would also include things like missing disclosures, lack of named leadership for a company, inactive or newly created social channels, and inconsistencies between what the company says and what independent sources show about it.

A “dead” website is another warning sign. Real companies leave footprints, so if there are no updates and no traceable history of activity, that should immediately leave you with some questions.

Regulation in Europe is tightening through new frameworks like the EU’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, which sets rules for how crypto firms operate, and expanded tax reporting requirements that increase transparency for digital asset transactions. How do these changes reshape what “good behavior” looks like for crypto companies?

They push the industry toward maturity. There’s a popular idea among the “innovation”-obsessed market participants that regulation is the enemy — that it kills modernisation of financial services. 

Personally, I disagree. What regulation really does is expose weak models and force companies to operate properly if they are serious about staying around for the long haul. If we look at the broad picture, this is undeniably a good thing for the industry, as it facilitates mature participation.

Take, for example, retail users. Right now, many of them are simply not protected when it comes to crypto services. Regulation seeks to rebalance that by introducing standards — even if imperfect — and signalling that the market is growing up and can be trusted a bit more.

Is such a transition painful at first? Yes. In no small part because the regulators themselves are still learning. But, once again, in the long term, regulation creates clearer expectations, better protection mechanisms, and stronger growth for the industry as a whole.

Many firms talk about transparency, but poorly handled disclosures can increase uncertainty rather than reduce it. What does credible transparency look like in practice?

In my eyes, it looks like consistent action. Transparency isn’t something you can claim as a result of a one-time announcement or a flashy report. It only happens when your company makes a habit of communicating regularly and clearly — especially when things are not perfect. 

Nobody realistically expects that everything will always go smoothly, but being able to acknowledge a problem and take responsibility for fixing it goes a long way towards building up your credibility.

It also means understanding that even strong partners or big investors are not a guarantee. We’ve seen well-funded, highly connected companies fail spectacularly before. Transparency is not about saying “look who’s backing us.” It’s about showing how you operate, how you manage risks, and how you respond when something goes wrong.

How should crypto companies communicate incidents, investigations, or operational risks without amplifying fear or damaging long-term confidence?

Here, I would say that speed and clarity of communication matter more than perfect execution. 

First, acknowledge the situation quickly, even if details are still limited. You need to seize control of the narrative before panic and misinformation have a chance to spread. Explain what is already known, what is being investigated, and what users should or should not do right now. That will help cool down heads and prevent any rash actions that could be damaging to users and to your company both.

Second, centralise your communication channels: make sure journalists, users, and partners receive the same message from official sources that are linked to you. 

Third, provide updates as regularly as you can. Silence creates room for speculation, and blind speculation is almost always worse than reality.

Crisis communication is not about hiding problems. It’s about controlling the narrative with facts and responsibility.

In your experience, where does trust most often break down during real-world crises — leadership, legal strategy, compliance execution, operations, or product design?

Trust usually breaks down because of poor coordination. Because legal teams act separately from PR, product teams don’t align with compliance officers, and leadership sends mixed signals all the while. Everyone seems to be moving — but they are not all moving in the same direction.

The most resilient companies, in my practice, are the ones that take the time to develop clear crisis protocols ahead of time. That way, everyone knows who is supposed to speak on what topics, what can be said and in what tones, and how decisions are supposed to be made. 

So when a crisis situation comes around, there is no rushing around in a panic. The steps are already clear, and teams move through them together. That’s what helps trust survive.

As crypto becomes more embedded in everyday finance — payments, savings, remittances — how must trust frameworks evolve beyond technical security alone?

Technology is necessary, but it’s not enough. Crypto cannot yet replace banks in terms of large-scale trust and systemic protection. And that’s not some particular failure on crypto’s part. It’s just plain reality.

Building trust takes a mix of reputation, communication, accountability, and human judgment. People don’t trust systems — they trust people dietro the systems. 

As crypto adoption grows, companies will need to act less like experimental innovation platforms and more like financial institutions. And this shift is already happening.

Looking ahead, what should founders and executives prioritize today if they want their companies to be seen as trustworthy five years from now — even as regulation and public scrutiny intensify?

Long-term brand building is what they need. That means investing in communication, compliance, and people — not just product development. It means being visible, consistent, and responsible even when no one is watching.

Trust and credibility don’t appear by themselves simply because you need them. They are built by putting in quality effort into your foundations long before a crisis arrives to test you.

Learning to put value and emphasis on that consistent work is the real competitive advantage now. There are no quick wins: if you want to stay in the market for 10+ years, you need to keep maintaining your reputation through all those 10+ years.

Thank you for the great interview, readers who wish to learn more about their work in finance and fintech communications should visit the Comunicazioni Drofa.