Speaking Of Crypto

Why do you think decentralization is important? “I think because the end user is ready and is asking for it. I truly think that a lot of people want to have ownership of their data and a record of it. And if we really dive a little bit on what is the promise of blockchain. What is the promise of this decentralized ledger that everybody’s talking about? It is a simple ledger. It’s a database with more benefits, but truly it’s the promise that it’s going to deliver personalized experience.” Betsabe Botaitis is someone who really comes from humble beginnings. She comes from a small community in Mexico and Betsabe pursued her passion of becoming a banker and a successful businesswoman. She immigrated to the United States, worked her way up the corporate banking ladder and became Global Director of Finance and Operations at one of the country’s biggest banks. Looking back she’s one of those inspiring people who made her American Dream come true to become not only a successful banker but now a tech startup founder

"Data sovereignty is just a fancy word for saying that whatever of mine, whatever data that I generate, whatever activity that I have, whatever content that I produce to help you power and fuel your ecosystem, I own it and I get to tokenize it and I get to volunteer it and sell it to you in ways that I agree to, instead of this blanket system of fine print that we have every time that we download an app and decide to you use it.” Susan Oh talks to me about data sovereignty and the Internet of Value that is being created by blockchain tech and cryptocurrencies. The way the internet has been going, where we give away all of our data for free isn’t working. “We willingly give away all our data that is worth billions of dollars and then companies take that data and they sell it to third party intermediaries into then weaponizing that data to get us to buy more sh*t” And now that our lives are becoming more and more digital and we have all kinds of data points out there, there’s an opportunity for a new system. Su

“Blockland is a play on the name Cleveland and the idea is that by putting what we identified as the ten critical ingredients to make Cleveland one of the top five most relevant tech cities in the United States that we would do all these 10 things at the exact same time. So, we created ten nodes, everywhere from talent development retention to the entrepreneurial environment to the legal system, the political environment, philanthropy’s engaged, a node that we call place, which is to create the largest tech centre in the world, modelled after Station F in Paris right in downtown Cleveland. How do we build some business applications around what we’re doing already? How do we have thought leadership, so that’s where our conference comes from. And virtually every single day in Cleveland right now there’s a meeting somewhere in Cleveland around blockchain.” From owning and operating 21 car dealerships to launching a city-wide epic-sized blockchain initiative, Bernie Moreno is putting Cleveland or ‘Blockland’ on t

“It’s not something that’s localized. This is something that’s so global now. The Russian government is having crypto classes in all their universities in their curriculum. We have all the best schools in the United States. If you think about it, this technology is scaling, and you see the first crypto exchange open in Uganda just two, three months ago. It’s the next revolution, and my interest has been how do we get more women engaged from the beginning so we’re not left out.” Anu Bhardwaj is the founder of Women Investing In Women Digital, and the State of Women Radio + TV network whose experience, before starting her own company, was in private equity and venture capital including collaborating with the U.S. Department of Commerce, the International Trade Administration, and the U.S Embassies of many countries around the globe. https://thestateofwomen.com/ https://www.facebook.com/WomenInvesting/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/anu-bhardwaj-1726b41b/ And given that her work in global women’s issues & inves

“The companies I will suggest in the next 2 to 3 years that are going to make it are ones that have a real blockchain product with real utility that people really need and they’re getting real quality advantage out of, like any other company. And 2017 was the year of FOMO which is ‘I’m going to miss out so I better buy it’ 2018 is like ‘woah what happened here, hold on here I think we have to go find something real’ and 2019 I think is going to be the year of prove it. ‘Prove you’ve got something. Oh, you’re going to raise a coin? I’ve heard that story. OK what is it really that you’re doing?”. Michael Hyatt has built incredibly successful tech business and he’s been in business since before the days of the internet. He’s got first-hand knowledge of where the internet and computer technology came from and educated and experienced insight as to where blockchain tech is going. https://twitter.com/mhyattspeaker So where is it going? Michael talked about a creative destruction phase or a nuclear winter, much like

“Companies can relocate their business to Malta and they can operate in an environment where the government tells them what you’re doing is perfectly legal, so they’re not operating in a grey area where the government has no clue whether this is legal or illegal. So the companies tomorrow they’re not waking up and being faced with a government that has just decided that what’s happening is illegal but they are operating in a legal framework.” Eman Pulis, with a background in online gaming events, is organizing the Malta Blockchain Summit in November. He’s from Malta and believes that along with the government of Malta’s legislative support, that the country will become one of the key hubs for blockchain innovation. They’re calling it ‘blockchain island’. https://twitter.com/EmanPulis Not all countries are pro crypto or pro blockchain. China banned all ICOs and cryptocurrency exchanges, India banned the exchanging of cryptos for fiat and declared that cryptos are not “legal tender”. Other countries have an out

“You have people trying to take advantage of the fundraising mechanism that is an ICO without having a real business. They’re more excited about raising the money and then figuring it out. That’s a lot of the people. A lot of the people that have ICOed will not stay standing. It will be just like the dot com explosion.” Hartej had read Satoshi’s White Paper back in 2011 but he spent a lot of time in the space without creating his own place in it. Now he and his Hosho co-founder Yo Sub Kwan have founded a company that fulfills a huge need, and one that (especially for how much money is at stake) really isn’t being taken seriously – and that’s blockchain security. https://twitter.com/thehartej https://twitter.com/jchysk https://hosho.io/ What’s the point in creating smart contracts if they can be easily compromised? Who cares if blockchains are immutable, trustless, unhackable if the contracts running on top of them can be breached? And, how is world-wide adoption ever going to happen if news headlines keep sca

“A lot of people think of blockchain and all they think about is Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies and then they immediately, their minds go to the dark web, and money laundering and so forth, but what I wanted to do was put a message out to the world which is, yes, there’s Bitcoin. That’s an important application of blockchain. But, there are all these other ways that it could be used that will actually make the world a better place to live in, so why don’t we push hard, lean in, and try and shape this technology to see if we can’t get those future benefits that people talk about.” I got a chance to speak with Dr. Jane Thomason remotely while she was judging the EOS hackathon in Sydney, Australia recently. Dr. Thomason is a blockchain advisor, hackathon judge, experienced CEO and a women’s advocate who was awarded the UN DecadeOfWomen Quantum Impact Champion Award this year. https://www.decadeofwomen.org/hackquantum/ With her global experience both in business and in international development and now the world of

Hilary Carter is Research Director + Project Leader at the Blockchain Research Institute —  a multimillion-dollar research hub founded by Don and Alex Tapscott who co-wrote the incredibly informative book — Blockchain Revolution. Funded by partners like Microsoft, IBM, SalesForce and PepsiCo, the BRI is working on over 70 blockchain research projects, gathering interviews, videos, infographics and documentation. The big goal is to help to explore and to demonstrate how transformative blockchain technology really is, in order to get businesses to buy in and take steps to implement the technology. And really, the research is for everybody, because it goes into the public domain, so that it’s a resource for anyone looking to use blockchain tech. Hilary says she’s inspired by the blockchain tech. She believes that its higher purpose is to help empower individuals and streamline otherwise bureaucratic systems and we go into some of the examples of how blockchain can do that. She also talks about women in the block

Bob Summerwill brings humour and a genuine adoration to this in-depth conversation about what’s going on in the crypto, blockchain and FinTech worlds. He explains, in accessible and understandable language, where this technology has come from and goes on to share his thoughts on where it may be headed. Bob is Co-Founder and CTO for Varro Technologies, a Community Leader for Ethereum Project and Community Ambassador for the Sweetbridge Project and CryptoChicks. He had loads of knowledge and expertise in code and in looking at the big picture around decentralization. He talks about decentralization completely changing the way we do things, not just with currency, but with changing how databases are stored and maintained and by changing the way things work with the internet of today. Bob gives us a beginner’s look at Bitcoin, as a concept, an open source platform, a decentralized leger, and as a currency. He talks about the revolutionary technology of Bitcoin and how it came to be. And he expands on his view of

Anna Vladi, Founder of Women4Blockchain, and I talk about why blockchain technology is revolutionary, what are some of its uses, like solar power energy sharing via P2P network or the blockchain. Imagine a world where you could buy solar powered electricity directly from your neighbour at a lower cost than from the power company? This is the future. And what will that mean for the cost of our electricity services to have now new competitors who are also consumers. Will we have an EBay for power sharing? Will we have a new EBay for everything? Anna explains that her company Women4Blockchain is set up to educate and promote women who are working in the area of cryptocurrency and blockchain development. She talks about her upcoming Hackathon and Conference in NYC in June 2018 (now postponed until October 2018) that asks teams of women to compete in creating blockchain solutions that require the coming together of three pillars – business, legal, and technical. We also discuss the concept of smart contracts and “

“We’re working with Bermuda right now to put the whole country onto eIDs or digital IDs so one of the first steps would be to do that. The second step will be to make it useful within Bermuda across business and government. And the next step is to enable Bermuda residents to take that ID and use it globally. That’s interoperability.” I talk to Bruce Silcoff at Shyft Network https://www.shyft.network/ about the global identity epidemic. He explains that there are over 1.1 billion people in the world with no official identification, which is a huge problem that is hard for those of us in developed countries to maybe fully understand. It means they have no right to own property, they have no way of being allowed to vote, they can’t access services like healthcare or schooling. Shyft is hoping to do play a role in remedying this global issue by working with the United Nations on two of their initiatives: ID2020 https://id2020.org/ and Blockchain for Impact https://blockchaincommission.org/. Also, where digital id

“You had the birth of bitcoin and all proliferation of really re-evaluating what is value, what is money and how does that get distributed and can tech help to actually democratize? I think these are questions that are challenging existing institutions and models and frankly, I think given the right circumstances, it’s a very healthy thing that’s going on” Sandra Ro , CEO of Global Blockchain Business Council, has been around Bitcoin since 2012, back when one Bitcoin was about ten bucks. Once she heard about Bitcoin there was no turning back. Then her personal interest turned professional when she was at CME group and was given the go ahead to dive deep into research and development on Bitcoin. As Head of Digitization Sandra brought together a group of like-minded financial wizards that would help launch Bitcoin into the mainstream in a big way. They did their due diligence, dotted Is and crossed Ts and paved the way for CME Group to introduce Bitcoin futures at the end of 2017. Then after all that R+D into B

Why is caring about economics important? Because whether we like it or not, we’re making economic choices every day. We may be choosing what to buy or how much to save. Consciously or unconsciously we choose what to spend our money on and how much of it to spend, whether we save some or go into debt, whether we invest in stocks or put all of our money in cash under a mattress. All of these choices are choices – and Andrei’s primary goal for us as consumers is that if we’re going to be making these choices, we might be better off, making educated ones. When it comes to investing in cryptos, Andrei has some really sage advice around how and where he invests and why he thinks Bitcoin is a smart asset. We also talk about ICOs and pump and dump schemes and what he has to watch out for when it comes to his YouTube videos around these kinds of cryptos. And although the focus of our interview was on financial planning, investing and economic preparedness, Andrei talks about his quick success as an entrepreneur until

What if I could get ten of the coolest, forward-thinking, big-picture seeing, crypto dynamos together in one place and pick their brain about things that are blockchain related, and not? I’d want to ask them about what advice they would give to their younger selves? I’d ask what books they’d recommend so I can wrap my head around Bitcoin, blockchain and this whole new crypto world? And I’d want to know what kind of future they see or hope for. Well, today in this compilation podcast, I’m bringing you ten different podcast guests who’ve all answered the same 5 questions. What’s a book on bitcoin, blockchain tech, or cryptocurrency that you would recommend? 2. What’s one thing you would tell the younger you if you could go back in time? 3. If you were the King of the World, what’s one law you’d put into place? 4. What technology would you like to see in the world ten years from now? 5. What’s the best piece of advice you can give to someone who wants to do something great, but he or she doesn’t know where to s

“When bitcoin came along, the thing about it that was so interesting and compelling to me is that, here’s a money that not only is better but that literally can’t be stopped because there is nobody who you can stop. There is no CEO of bitcoin to go after. And that’s why, Satoshi Nakamoto, the story of Bitcoin is so important to Bitcoin not because we’re lacking something, but because by lacking that something it makes it incredibly hard to attack. There’s no one to demonize. There’s no one to go after.“ Adam B. Levine was so inspired by Bitcoin, that he started the Let’s Talk Bitcoin podcast. It was the right show, the right topics, the right everything… and it hit at exactly the right time. Then after producing the show for about a year, and he got to the point where there were enough people listening that it was worth doing, he started the LTB Network. Who starts their own Network? Oprah. Oprah starts her own network. So Adam B. Levine is like the Oprah of the Bitcoin and Blockchain world. https://letstalkb

“What we think Solar Punk is, is this mash up of what Solara is, solar and then this cypher punk cyber punk initiative and so it’s a mash up between this social theme with a technology positivity to it.” Leon-Gerard Vandenberg Solara One of the reasons why the ideology behind bitcoin made so much sense to Leon-Gerard Vandenberg early on is because he had been creating a payment system that had similar goals behind it, called US Navy Cash. As he put it, “Imagine having the United States Treasury Department as a customer!” Well.. the US Treasury Department wanted thier Navy to have its own currency and to create a payment system that was transparent and resistant to fraud. Sound familiar? That was years before Bitcoin was ever mined. So it makes sense that Leon-Gerard, with that background, would go on to mine Bitcoin himself, and be working with related technology many years later. Now Leon-Gerard Vandenberg is Chief Technology Officer for Solara, and developing an incredible clean energy blockchain network. H

“I’d like to see a world where blockchain is just ubiquitous, where every single thing that’s manufactured if you want to know where the touches were so that you know child slave labour wasn’t used or blood diamonds weren’t used or some of the ways that people are ever to exploit leverage for profit, I’d like to see those go away.” Retired United States Air Force Colonel and Chief Innovation Officer at Fr8 Network, Jim Regenor, believes that blockchain is a game changer. The single source of truth, the transparency and the trustlessness can create new business models and he’s working on a few of his own. We talk about how people and different industries will be impacted when there’s no longer a need for an intermediary to govern or to act as the authority over various systems, like with digital currencies themselves that exist outside of traditional monetary or fiscal policies. As a former White House staff member, Jim talks about a day in the life of the White House and said that it was like being able to kn

“How I apply cryptography to mimic the real world, the physical world, on a computer network requires privacy. I can’t read your mind. I only can hear what you say or what you write. We have built in privacy in our physical world. On the internet we don’t have that. And that’s the block.” Adam Helfgott of MadHive and MAD Network has been in working on internet start ups, since the start of the internet. As a hacker in the 90s in Long Island to CEO and Founder of MadHive in Manhattan now, he’s seen and learned a lot along the way… like not thinking big enough when he launched eCamp, that was basically a social media platform for teenagers, years before there was even social media. MadHive enables advertising on a blockchain that can encrypt data or unlock it with a smart contract. Advertisers get more direct targeting and consumers retain privacy. We get into the issue of privacy and how blockchain is built for anonymity and privacy retention. He talks about Bitcoin being build on cryptography and decentraliza

“The blockchain technology, in its basis, the ability to transfer native digital assets from one place to another in an extremely easy way, enables the world, the capital markets, to truly become global.” When Yoni Assia, Founder and CEO of eToro found out about Bitcoin, he realized that it was going to change how financial services work and effectively, change the world economy. His love of financial markets and technology have always been intertwined, and when he learned about Bitcoin and blockchain technology, he found a way to bring those two passions together in one platform, called eToro where social media meets online trading. Yoni realized that we all have to need to connect. Before the days of the internet the way people connected with each other came from our nationality or culture and where we were born, but the internet has no political boundaries, and communities are formed over the internet based on common interests. Now with blockchain technology, like-minded individuals are able to connect in