The Blockchain and Us: Interview Rik Willard, Agentic Group

Transcript

yeah we're at a crossroads we're at a crossroads here we have the wherewithal now to create technology that would actually help the entire human race the question is will we do it but we can do it now my name is Rick Willard I am the founder of a genetic group which is based in New York City we are a sustainability platform for the blockchain ecosystem we have a federated membership of over 40 companies around the world that focus on blockchain technology specifically or are looking to somehow get into the blockchain space I got involved with blockchain through

digital currencies through through Bitcoin a friend of mine introduced me to Bitcoin in 2012 and I thought it was interesting and like everybody I just took me a few months to wrap my head around it and then we had a think tank I found that it's co-founded a think tank called mint combine in New York City and we spent two years trying to understand the space and and when it would it really meant you know and we found out that it meant a lot more than just another digital currency it actually as the blockchain became more influential in our thinking we began to realize that it was a profound shift in how the

internet could be used to create new forms of value and how it could be used to enfranchise you know and include people in global finance they're communities that make things so or communities that think things or say things or write things and they're all distributed over the Internet so borders matter less nations matter less but communities of people matter more than humans matter more so that for me was the point of no return when I found it actually being an issue about

not only the human human nature but humanity moving forward in the 21st century then I was completely hooked and it was something that I felt that I had to do not just not something that I just wanted to do I felt I needed to be a part of this they would talk with lots of CEOs with lots of CTOs and CMOS and say you know here's Bitcoin here are digital assets here's this blockchain thing you know underlying all of it what do you think and then we'd listen and we would get some really disturbing responses because we had cut we came to realize over time that what we were doing when we attacked

the value of what rather the notion of what value means to an individual it's very subjective right value to me something may have value it may not have value to someone else so when we talk about value all of a sudden we realized that we were actually attacking the values of that individual we were talking to or the values of that corporation that we were meeting with was a corporate culture rather and so not just from a business standpoint is it hard to execute blockchains and how to move the internal needle forward but from a very visceral level in human beings it's hard to move that value needle forward because we're so used to

a system the way it is we're so used to banks acting the way that they act so much so that we actually can't visualize any other way of doing things but I think that in the long tail of recessions that we are now involved in and we're going to see more and more around the world as as the world restructures itself moving forward are going to make it easier and easier and more obvious that things like trust and security online moving value online is where we need to go block teams don't cure cancer right

however they do some things very very well that allow the Internet to act in a way that is beneficial blockchain solve some very basic needs for distributed finance one of them is trust through smart contracts we can actually build trust networks so that people in a peer-to-peer environment can trade back and forth with some level of assurance that the person they're dealing with is or the group they're dealing with at the company they're dealing with it has a good reputation and that reputation you know can it might change and the information about them will change on

the blockchain but it won't be tampered with and that has implications for one's own identity as well so if you can definitively say that you are speaking with Rick and you're transacting with Rick and my identity and my reputation is embedded in a blockchain that is then you know talking with a blockchain that yours is on then we can have a relationship without really having ever met each other or having done business at all with each other I think that's fundamental one of the fundamental things security is another block chains are military-grade cryptology and they

have ever been cracked it isn't when you hear about hack hackers you know stealing Bitcoin or whatever they're not stealing from the blockchain itself they are stealing at the point of entry that the wallet level or at the browser level and they intercept those messages but the blockchain itself is very secure we assume errs are going to have to make a choice about how we want to live do we really want to live in a closed environment where everybody's their nemesis and people who don't look like you were bad people by definition it doesn't seem to make a lot of sense when we're just at the edge of something a lot more glorious that I think humans have inherently been striving towards

ever since the dawn of thought which is we're all just one people so why do we need these banks whatever and I will get into the broader you know question of nation states but but you know like let's just say that we need nation states for now and it serves a function for people to belong okay but who I deal with and who I do business with and who I like as a person or want to trade money with our value that should have no border it simply should have no border yes we have to deal with issues like AML and kyc because there are people out there blowing things up and there are people using money but they're gonna use that anyway I mean that's been happening way before the internet right people

moving cash around for for bad things anything from child trafficking to drugs to whatever so nothing's changed that way bitcoin is or digital you know value is not some monster that unleashed all of this stuff it's just allowing people to do things a little quicker and without the the input of gatekeepers that basically charge you rent for moving your own money and I think that that's you know those those days need to be over I think that most of the banks especially the banks who have the most to lose out of all of this have up to

this point tried to make their own processes more efficient through blockchains and they've internalized it you know dealing with groups like r3 etc and say okay how do we do faster clearance how do we get to t0 how do we do all of these other things okay that's that's fine but but it doesn't address the real issue about the banking system that is broken well beyond you know all reason and those there are some banks that are starting to get it and say well okay maybe we need to do a pivot here maybe

we should embrace but they're very few of them but we should embrace this for what it is a peer-to-peer movement maybe we should step away and try to do value-adds somewhere else to keep our brand relevant and I think that those banks that take that that track and that sort of idea and say we're gonna move this way we're gonna move with it not against it are gonna find themselves in a great position in several years those banks that resist it and continue to fight it they're gonna find themselves in something less tenable a position that's simply less tenable now again certain banks do different things too right if you are a trade finance institution like specifically then

blockchain will help you right away it will help create massive massive efficiencies within that that trade finance ecosystem so you can do business as usual kind of and just better but retail banks or commercial banks they're they're going to have a hard time dealing with this and they're going to have to adjust it it won't be a question of do they want to it one at some point in the future it'll be a question of when are you going to do it because it's your livelihood at stake there are almost 3 billion unbanked people in the world they right now have smart not smart phones but feature phones dumb phones and people call them

pretty soon when smart phones can be had for less than five dollars each which is right around the corner nearly every person living in poverty on earth will have access to a smartphone and be connected to a network that is game changing in and of itself when you have digital wallets on these phones and you have the ability to trade assets we're going to find we're going to answer that question what happens when everybody has money because capitalism itself has thrived in some areas by the natural exclusion of others from markets it actually uses that scarcity principle as

it's driving the basis so what happens when money is not scarce and you see it an analogue sense that Netherlands in other countries do buy you know they have a guaranteed income for people that that's just the beginning of all all this mindset is moving towards the same place you know we don't have to have people who were poor and hungry and without shoes we don't have to have any of that we don't have to have people who were living in squalor and and simply you know fighting for a handful of rice every day we there's too much there's too much in the world to live like that anymore and I think that certain

countries I think even certain corporations are beginning to understand that and certainly this movement this blockchain movement is the technology underpinning so that the technology part of that mindset which exists offline as well and we're at the point where we can do it so I think that I'm very high on humanity right now I think that that we have a shared interest in reducing climate change we have a shared interest in making cleaner water and we can do it we have the technology to do it we have a shared interest in working with people across borders or sharing money and

sharing value with people across borders and I think that you know we're growing up most of us anyway need to stop just talking about what can be done and not just build what can be done but implement what can be done I think once we get to the stage of action then that's what I hope for all of us is that we actually implement these things and not just keep them on the shelf because again you know capital as we've known it over the past eight hundred

nine hundred years or so really does not like it likes a certain amount of competition but not a whole lot of competition it really hates egalitarianism to a large degree but we're coming to a point where the world is going to be sharing all these resources so I hope that we as people can be expansive enough to to get over ourselves and to actually make a change for once a real change