The Blockchain and Us: Interview with Perianne Boring, Chamber of Digital Commerce

Transcript

there's so much innovation that blockchain technology has spurred all throughout all throughout the world and I have you know absolutely no doubt in my mind that this technology is is going to affect everybody I would you know I would say in 10 20 years timeframe and there won't be a human being whose life is not impacted by this technology I'm Terry I'm boring the founder and president of the chamber of digital commerce we are a trade association that specifically represents the blockchain industry

path to this industry is kind of unique I used to work on Capitol Hill I worked for a member of the Financial Services Committee my biggest interest is in economic and monetary policy so I worked very closely on any relate issues related to finance economics tax budget that went to the House of Representative I was briefed on a technology a digital currency called Bitcoin that operated outside of any type of government or organization or company and to me that idea of a monetary system that nobody controls was just absolutely fascinating and really prompted a very deep personal study so for several years after that I

studied this technology of Bitcoin and and that really led me to eventually dedicate my career to this technology I come from a background of technologist my father and my brother and most of my uncle's all work in IT and so it's I guess it's in my genes Bitcoin in the year of 2013 is the greatest gift you could have given any journalism because that was one of the most interesting and exhilarating years and that was when we had the very first ever Bitcoin conference it was in San Jose it was in early 2013 and I was the only person with a camera that showed up

to that event and that was also the year that the price spiked over 3,000 percent in one year one of the big notable events was also Cyprus went through their bailout and the people of Cyprus started buying Bitcoin and because they really didn't know what was going to happen with their currency and that created a huge amount of interest in the technology globally and then we also had all these crazy and salacious scandals with silk road and mal GOx and Liberty Reserve as you know again as someone who was working in the media but really my expertise and my background is in public policy of the whiffing in Washington DC

really got pretty concerned when he start seeing headlines like Bitcoin associated with drug money and other issues that prompted a lot of scrutiny from the regulatory community there were multiple hearings on Capitol Hill there was a senator who called for a ban on Bitcoin all in response to some of these more salacious events and so I started calling for the industry to have formal representation in Washington one to make sure that the policy community that the regulators had full information accurate information high quality high integrity information about this technology

because we really didn't have any other resource for that and so over time that that spurred into the chamber it really was an opportunity that kind of fell in my lap it's something that I was calling for in my writing and calling for and the work I was doing in the media and over time I I gar nerd a pretty big community of investors and entrepreneurs and see founders and CEOs in this space you said parian and you're right you're right that we really need some type of representative in our nation's capital that can be a resource however we have used her in New York or in San Francisco we don't want to move to DC so what are

you doing so it's it's something that I feel like I was very much called to do and it was an exhilarating move to leave everything I was doing to jump into the space I don't use the word disruptive I really don't I see it as I see it as an evolution I think I'm careful about using the term disruptive because it can be you know scary term to just throw around and what we really want is for the business community being convinced your traditional fortune 500 100 companies we want them to learn about this technology we want them to explore

this technology start investing in it and if you approach them those we're going to disrupt your business model is just going to turn people off so a better way to approach it is this has a lot of powerful and potential benefits and could have implications for different types of businesses 74 percent of the world's population according to the World Bank does not have access to basic financial services in my home country and the United States of America which is one of the most wealthiest countries in the world about 50 percent of the population does not have access to basic financial services including bank accounts there is a huge

amount of people around the world that I don't get to experience and be a part of the global economy because they don't have access to a financial system for a variety of reasons I do think this technology will lift a lot of people out of poverty but will also be an inclusive technology that allows more people to engage in global commerce fluoxetine is changing the world one of the greatest gifts of this technology of its creators who are still anonymous today it's one of the fact that it's anonymous but to that it's open source but anyone can have access to it that's truly a powerful thing and has the opportunity to lift a lot of people out of poverty give them jobs and give them

the opportunity to innovate one of my favorite stories and someone that you you should consider on speaking with is the lady in Afghanistan who has new in Afghanistan women really don't have basically any basic rights including being able to have a bank account but human those laws don't say anything about having a Bitcoin wallet and so there's been a lot of opportunities for women and regions of the world of utilize this technology and very creative ways that are giving them greater access to be a part of you again that the global economy has been an incredibly powerful

mechanism to organize people and it pretty much was the catalyst of the Arab Spring and it tell the people you know throughout that part of the world were able to organize and communicate how they were going to you know protest and and help bring about change and in some of these hostile regions of the world and the problem with Twitter is you can shut it off you can turn it off you can block it government regimes can-can you know set up you know you block the access to the sites that people won't be able to use it a blockchain based application communications application like Twitter really could potentially be

incredibly powerful and in areas of the world where people need to be organized for people need to be able to communicate with each other to to to protect themselves but also to demonstrate for multiple reasons so these are some of these cases that I've had the privilege of seeing from the you know early early business sketches thing that is I think somewhat unjustified is that governments today have a monopoly on currency it hasn't always been like that this is really more of a recent phenomena and if you look across the world our monetary

system is basically a global experiment that is not going to last we're seeing countries all over the world that have all sorts of inflationary issues there their monetary systems are very sick and that's going to continue to get worse the more we continue to use centralised monetary policy mechanisms my wish for blockchain technology is that it will democratize currency a consumers will have the option of what they use to trade goods and services no longer will we be forced to only use money that the government calls money

when you'll have the option of using other types of currencies whether that Bitcoin or G cash or something else that hasn't even been created yet I think this technology really can be a alternative to the centralized monetary systems and really empower people all over the world to be able to take control of their purchasing power one of the biggest challenges that I've seen in this industry is just basic communications it's a very I was really born out of a very technical community we haven't seen very many people who

have been able to take the great work that the technical community has done and really explain it to the masses and that's a big goal and priority and mission of the chamber is promote the acceptance and use of digital assets and blockchain based technologies but a big piece of that is just communication and it's also as a community being able to come together we have a lot of conflicts in our community in terms of being able to agree on basic issues like scaling it is really I guess the biggest one the community's currently divided on but being able to see this from a human aspect in a more personable situation as

opposed to just chat rooms and operating on your computer being able to make this real being able to make this human being able to explain it to the business community the policy community but also constituencies around the world as something that needs to happen something that I'm passionate about something that at the community we need to spend more time and effort on [Music]