The Blockchain and Us: Interview Eric van der Kleij

Transcript

the thing that really excites me is the opportunity to take innovations and help them become commercially relevant or relevant for society so my background is that I'm a fin tech entrepreneur before it was called fin tech I built a company called adapter which did credit-card fraud prevention and that experience is what fueled my excitement about taking innovation and turning it into commercial reality I then went on to help the UK government with something called the tech city initiative and this was to amplify the small seeds of growth

in the tech and digital sector that were in the UK at the time of the previous administration first coming into power and that was an exciting time because it combined both policy input from the entrepreneurial community which was quickly turned into policies as well as amplifying the success and and the challenges of the tech and digital entrepreneurial sector I went to establish level 39 which has become one of the preeminent spaces for FinTech I think globally they tell us it's one of the biggest globally we haven't measured but we're delighted that it has become an important part of the FinTech ecosystem following that I've been here in

Switzerland helping the kickstart initiative as part of a special advisor role with four FinTech for the kickstart initiative is part of the digital Switzerland strategy which we're very excited to be part of and my next big project is to create something of the scale of level 39 but for blockchain and related technologies and that's going to take place in up to five cities globally within three years and I'm delighted to tell you that the first two cities are going to be Zurich and London why block tain and related technologies well it's interesting it's because as an

entrepreneur of my age I now there's been a couple of fundamental discoveries that I've seen one was tcp/ip that my older brother showed me because I didn't understand at the time but boy do I understand the impact that that's had then there's things like mobile those are fairly profound transformations in technology which have had a lasting impact on society and I believe that with the satoshi nakamoto white paper we saw the possibility of yet another true innovation one that was yes it's true to say it's the combination of other technologies but used together the

potential for creating trust or even permissionless trust within the internet that's something that we haven't had before and so its impact on society on business on government could be profound in regulated industries it is going to take longer there's no question it does take longer but the benefits are so profound firstly in cost efficiency for the banks in very hugely reduced Coubertin and costs of proving to the regulator that they comply if these systems are adopted they will definitely create more efficient processes for

those those institutions if you like and on the other hand the the one thing that we can be certain about is that the pace of change is always going to be faster than we imagined I really enjoy when I see predictions about adoption for technology you know you see 15 years you see 20 years you see 30 years one thing for sure they were all wrong donation to a charity I want 100% transparency I want to know where the money is going I can see a time when any charity worth their salt will want to adopt the transparency that blockchain gives and and the comfort it gives me as

a consumer that my or is a donor that my eye you know donation is going to the right place when I'm buying and selling my house I want the comfort of knowing that you as the buyer actually do have the money as verified in a block by an a testing authority that that can warrant that and will stand to the fact that you have the money so that there won't be failed house purchase transactions and you will be confident that I own the title and it will be an effortless hopefully frictionless transaction to the regulators in the world's financial services it's incredibly valuable the potential for real-time regulation and the same visibility as to the true exposure to risk as you as an operator

or I as a consumer has that's that's unprecedented and I'm actually really encouraged to see that regulators are doing a lot to increase their knowledge and appetite for this but society in general should benefit in terms of massively reduced cost if we get this right the potential for massively reduced cost and the potential for inherent trust in our daily transactions and activities buying a house for example in the United Kingdom is a traditional process it's probably the nicest way I can put it that requires a lot of at a station by professional organizations by local

authorities by Land Registry by legals by so many attestations as to the truth behind all of these things that are necessary for especially a multi-party chain of purchases house purchase to take place that's incredibly expensive and really partly the cause of a lot of failure of transactions is the process and I think that if for example is a industry that will massively benefit both the consumer as well as the practitioners who plane it because they'll be able to offer a far better service if they embrace the technology

as with all innovations and bringing them to market those that propagate and perpetuate and benefit from the friction in society and capitalize on the friction of society I think we'll be the losers because the determination and the ability for innovators to work their way around the friction is why you end up with things like uber becoming incredibly successful you know the established players would never have dreamed that they would have taken the size of market share they have in the number of countries they have yes it's partly dogged leadership that helps

make that possible and and you know you have to note that but you should never underestimate that there are many people out there that now see that there's an example in an industry they know and strive to transform their industry but I wouldn't underestimate the incumbents what we've seen in the innovation teams and the innovation programs of some of the incumbents is the need to disrupt themselves in the way that Financial Inclusion can be made accessible to millions potentially billions of people in a way in at a cost that was unthinkable before it's it's quite extraordinary it makes

the hair stand up on the back of your neck when you think that that might be possible and by the way that's the trick I think for large corporations is to understand that the cost efficiencies of embracing this new technology will potentially widen they're accessible markets at a cost that's reasonable and that in itself will create prosperity in different areas something that I think we should think about you know we in the societies we live which are fairly privileged we've kind of had a wake-up call over the especially over the last year that we need to listen much closer to the less privileged than ourselves and make sure that we do what we can to

make sure that we are as inclusive as possible that we hold very close to our hearts diversity and accessibility you know I don't like to think that we're creating so much prosperity for the less than 1% I like to think of purpose LED businesses and so there's going to be a strong focus in our next activities on businesses with real purpose one of the tests for our investing in them will be do they really have a profound potential societal impact and I can't wait to see the applications come through one of the most inspiring things that I ever did was creating the first job for

someone I remember the moment to this day and it was where I'd realized that just from my free resource of brain power I had come up with an idea for a business it had enough merit to employ someone I still remember that person and then one of my daughters asked me what am I most proud of and I said of course you know you girls my family etc but she's no apart from that sorry it was the fact that I had managed to come up with an idea that could employ a hundred people right that was amazing so just think of what what a profound thing that is for someone like myself

which just had the ability and good fortune to use brainpower I wasn't cutting down trees I didn't dig up a mountain just from brain power created prosperity for a hundred people who then went on to you know nurture their families and that was quite an exciting thing so that's one of the key triggers or drivers behind my passion for innovation and entrepreneurs I think that my passion for innovation is is fueled by and wanted to make the world better just better ok what's whatever my measure of better is or yours is what might be valued by society but the other

thing is this wonderful opportunity to create a little bit of prosperity because what prosperity offers you is independence the most exciting prosperity is where you create independence for yourself and your family or the lack of dependency on the state so in a perfect world we should have more of societal independence and smaller government because society won't need government quite as much [Music]