The Human Story Behind Blockchain Technology - Matthew Allen, Zurich Bureau Chief/Business Reporter

Transcript

[Music] hello and welcome to the blockchain and us we're pioneers and thought leaders talked about their journey in blockchain technology crypto assets and a token economy and I'm your host manuel staggers this episode has support from my very own the blockchain and us a newsletter get an email from me every two weeks with a very short summary of new podcast episodes so you can immediately pick those interviews you'd like to listen to to stay up-to-date just visit www.nasa.gov/twan [Music] Matthew is a business reporter and the

zurich bureau chief at swiss info a news and information platform produced by the swiss Broadcasting Corporation where he covers the Swiss crypto and blockchain space I'm at and many thanks for taking time today you're welcome nice to see it let's maybe begin with what was the most interesting story that you recently covered the most interesting story is I I get to cover in general not just in crypto but in in in any any sphere is is when I get out of this office and I go and meet people in their in their working domain that's you you get to learn so much more than just

picking up the telephone and perhaps it wasn't recently but one of the most interesting trips I had was it was was about a year ago at XI when I went down to this tiny little village on the Italian border called Gondo where some guys had set up a crypto mining operation it was a really interesting story because it was a tiny little village smack bang on the border with Italy and it had been in all sorts of trouble this village because it had a big rock slides it was one of these tiny villages where all the young people were moving out going to the bigger towns it was you know a classic almost dying

village and and these guys suddenly pitched up and said we will transform you into a crypto my think economy it's sort of hopefully you know revitalize the finances of this village and also to hopefully attract some young folk back you know and get an economy going here that was really fascinating I remember turning up there it was actually in January and it was snowing like crazy we had a crazy car ride up the pass through the snow wind scar with the the windscreen kept fogging up and everything and these guys were really

enthusiastic but were running their operation on like a shoestring you know and they were building all the stuff themselves they were McKeen their own sort of racks to put their their rigs on they were doing all the electrics all the tubing themselves and and we're using old sort of council buildings where they used to store all their sort of junk and I just have cleared it out and gave me I mean things like this are for me fascinating because you get to see the the project being built from the ground up you you speak to the people and see them in their working environments so trips like this

I mean I mean I can't do them every day but but they're always the most fascinating for me to to get the human angle as well it's definitely more interesting than a whole bunch of people you know with a laptop and no product built and well I mean I mean in in crypto land I mean it's it's all out there in the ether isn't it it's is in Italy is sort of like a few laptops in in many cases but here you had a bit of sort of almost like a factory being built but it was also just just getting the mindset at the people not just the people who were who were doing this project Alpine mining but but also the thoughts of the of the neighbors who living there and suddenly seeing these

guys turn up you know with all the truck notes of tubing and stuff and you know talking about Bitcoin and it's this tiny village sort of stuck out in the middle of nowhere yeah that was very interesting how do you choose the topics that you're right about well that's becoming increasingly more difficult because every day now I get more and more emails coming in I get more phone calls I also attend a lot of crypto conferences there's there's probably a better I don't know about a dozen of them go on in Switzerland every year now and I attend more than half of them and they're you because the problem is

you've got to filter all this stuff from a lot of this stuff coming through is just rubbish it's never going to get off the ground I mean people use the word scam a lot and scam can mean either outright fraud or it's a good idea and these guys are well-meaning but they're never going to pull it off and so you have to filter through through through all this stuff and and I find just to get out there get to these conferences go to the booths speak to people is is the best way but but honestly if if I try and just pick individual firms individual startups individual products I do it a bit if I think is a particular news story in it but that that for me would just

overwhelm me it's like an avalanche so what I try and do is pick up on on themes and trends and speak to lots of different people about these themes and I know with Swiss info we always have to have a a Swiss sort of angle okay which which is in many ways is an anomaly an oxymoron because because the crypto scene is borderless right it's it's about it's about sweeping away the borders of countries of regulators of of the centralized infrastructure we have so I find myself trying sometimes desperately to find a Swiss peg to

something that's that's global it's not even global doesn't even recognize borders and and and but but what I try and do is go for the theme the theme of the day and I think the theme of the day at the moment for me is is how crypto is meeting traditional finance how it's how it's trying to seamlessly merge together and both Sciences are defying each other nervously trying to establish some kind of trust and also some kind of workable technical means of achieving this yeah interesting you've been working as a journalist for for quite a while I mean you've been at the BBC but in this whole blockchain encrypt of space how long did

it take you to to understand enough you know where you feel you understand what these people talk about when you interview them well I I first started looking at crypto I think the first doors was writing about 2014 because when crypto I mean I was following crypto in the news but it was mainly a story about the US and about Japan and then about China in places strange places like Iceland and so on but in Switzerland there was no and like I said I knew always needed Swiss Swiss Swiss pega Swiss anglers say it started getting interesting for me in about 2014 but I was kind of for me I was doing all sorts of business

reporting on I could be doing far more one day in engineering a next and crypto just seemed to me an interesting aside you know this is kind of new and funky and a bit controversial and so I did a couple of articles where you know where you do a little bit of research but you think well I'll just move on and but then it started to become more interesting and encrypt our nation started up in Switzerland and so then then you took a deep dive and we took a decision within Swiss info that it would be a good idea for me to really go down the rabbit hole quite deep and explore this because something was happening in Switzerland with this crypto nation I

would say it probably took me about a year before I was really grasping intricately the themes the problem there comes because I'm writing really for a general audience of people who may have heard of Bitcoin but know nothing about it that the problem with diving too deep into a subjects sometimes is that the UN start writing in very deep technical terms and and the alarm bell goes off for me when I send my story off to my colleagues very intelligent journalists to word search check you know to sub and they come back to me and I said well you

know there's no typos in there but gee I didn't really understand half of it and and then then that's when you know you your your research is in your head but you've you you've then got to translate that into into everyday terms so so so I would say it took about a year for me to get to a level of understanding work where I felt I could I could have conversations with the crypto crowd and not feel out of place but but now the the challenge every day is to translate that into something that the ordinary person can can can relate to that's actually a good point I'm I'm curious about you know where is the balance where you say the ordinary reader or maybe even your

colleagues who you just mentioned who are intelligent journalists but there is you know a point where they cannot follow anymore what you what you write about where where is that deadline you know is it delegated proof of stake or does it already start much earlier IIIi think if you start talking about the different mining protocols then you've lost most people and I spend all my time speaking to crypto people who are much more knowledge than I do and I'm trying trying to keep up with them yeah like you said I've got a step back when I start writing and think about you know what about someone who just isn't into

this space at all but but maybe has an interest and just wants to know what's going on yeah you can't you don't can't start going into sort of difference between proof-of-work delegated true force take federated Byzantine I you know I forget wrong names myself what I what I like to do these days to try and bridge that gap is is to have sort of short explainers so if you if you have like a static page which says what is a cryptocurrency what is mining and you just spell it out in layman's terms then when you're writing the article you can just sort of link to it but you don't

wanna do that too much because you don't want people sort of clicking on and in and out of your story the whole time but but there are certain concepts which you can't sort of explain spell out every time you write a story because the story would just get too big but you know you try and you try and give people and ank these anchor points so that if they start to get lost they can sort of clicking and maybe that's not the perfect way I don't open but it is a luxury you mean yeah like a glossary or why even you know even more of an explaining because a glossary could be a cryptocurrency a digital virtual form of currency decentralized you know peoples of all I want to know more so so you can even provide more

it's a yeah we're experimenting all the time with different ways to bridge the gap between because we want to address the crypto crowd because it's growing in Switzerland and there that it's attracting more and more international people so you don't want to dumb it down to a point where they're not interested but you've got to find a way to bridge between these guys and the you know the personal straight who who are a vast majority of our audiences racing yeah interesting you mentioned before the word scam and I'm sure you're often approached by all kinds of companies who want you to write about them so how do you go about vetting them and understanding whether their ideas are

for real their projects are for real and you know whether you will run a risk covering what they're doing sure well first of all I think a true scammer a fraudster let's say will not be approached in the media saying write about my story that because that they'd like to move under the radar so they'll use medium such as telegram they used to use Facebook they can't so much anymore they will try and get directly to their victims as it were without alerting the media to what they're up to because if I'm committing a fraud the last thing I

want to do is go to it to talk to a journalist and try and convince them because they know the journalists is going to do some checks and they're gonna check them out and they're going to you know check their biography in their profile and see what else they've been up to and possibly check the regulator or about you know you know is this a regulated type of program or not and fin mother the Swiss regulator carries on its website a homelessness a growing list of of a red flagged companies it's I mean that's quite interesting to I flick on

it once in a while and it and it grows exponentially so I don't think an outright fraud stir would come to the media because it would risk exposure but well but then again so I turned to up there I mean there was a maybe you've seen that story as well on Forbes with a guy who claimed he was the co-founder of Manero hmm privacy coin and then you know the whole community said we've never heard of this guy right and he was on the cover of Forbes middle east horse right well that was probably a bit of a mistake from the net because I mean I would like to think you wouldn't get past me because I would be asking people you know I'm I'm in I'm in loads different social media channels were

which are populated by people who know everyone and you could just simply just throw the name in and say you know does anyone know this guy associated with Manero and if they say no than you then you you know you would find a way of getting hold of you know the gut did the real people behind mineiro and and or just do any kind of research you know it shouldn't be possible to perpetrate that kind of scam that was maybe this was a I don't know an egotistical person who just wanted to get their name on in a prestigious magazine or something and and and so you know or maybe it was a joke I don't know

these things go on all the time but hopefully hopefully I would never get the the the wool pulled over my eyes you know quite quite in that way but but there is an ongoing that I mean it can happen I mean what kind of a filter do I apply them and I get emails all the time from X company y company this product that product you've simply got to do a little bit of homework if they're a swiss-based company you can easily find out if they've actually registered a Swiss company you just go into the the online company registrar and you can see if they're there or not you can see the names the people behind the company you can then do checks on

those names to see what other companies they've done and quite another time these people come from other countries straight into Switzerland you've got in and ask yourself what are they here for they here just use swift Suns good name to cover up some potentially bad practices yeah you've got to do quite extensive research I perhaps a year ago with the the initial coin offering Serge tsunami you know there were so many different companies emerging it was it taught me a lot that to to check a lot harder

because I may have written about a couple of companies which of current if now plummeted if not disappeared because it looked like a good idea but they just got something wrong usually with the regulator being a bit too optimistic about what they could do or what they couldn't and from that you then learn well hold on we better check about what the regulator is thinking about all this is to see if this is a viable product on yeah it is it is tough it is a challenge but you know hopefully you draw on your sort of journalistic years of doing all sorts of stories and other industries as well I mean when I started off my my journalistic career was on local

newspapers in London and you would have caused from people almost constantly complaining about the council saying I'm living a home that's sort of subsidized by the council and they're not cleaning the place up there I'm living in squalor because you know they don't care and they're not living up to their responsibilities it's only the same thing they could easily be scamming you just trying to get their story in the newspapers to try and sort of con the councilman to you know the council might think oh we've got to get rid of this guy now because he's giving us bad headlines today they then sort of give

him some more money or something I mean that this is not something that's restricted it's a crypto and at all it's just human nature so even those years of hearing all those complaints from people you know and living in some you know council house and ones worth it it helps you it helps you to filter and to to understand if people it's been completely open with you or not yeah well I mean that's where experience comes in right and a thick skin maybe and and some kind of detector for this kind of stuff yeah you are a detective I was saying this to my daughter the adage who's thinking about what career to have and and she's saying what does a journalist do and I said well

practically every down with detective that's pretty much what I you know III receive a lot of information and I have to find out what's behind it so you do a lot of checks online you doing what a cause you speak to people and that's that's where I find that she did they did the most helpful filter is actually knowing people and knowing who to trust worthy people are in in the in the whole community these are the people who have been there for years and years and years and are very well respected and people listen to them and you can you can bounce things off them you know once you establish your relationship with them but even so I mean there's in my

experience there's very few people who come to you with a piece of information that don't have something to gain from it whether it will be someone wanting to promote their company we're about to do an IC o---- this this this one I get all the time we're about some lunch and I say oh it's gonna be the most magical I see however it's it's a different ice you know it's not like scams of the past we've found a way of doing it in such a novel way it's gonna be brilliant and it's gonna be the way forward for everyone I I tend not to do pre ICO companies but there might also be other people and you you you get whispers in your ear about all you know that company acts down the road or you

know I wouldn't trust them again the guy runs them as you know he came from the traditional banking industry he had a bit of a bad reputation or you know this company will never last and you've and and you find there are chalices within the community as well and so you know no matter how trustworthy contact is you've always got a bear in mind why are they telling you this I mean sometimes I go to someone and I say you know what you make of this you know if you have you heard of this and then and that's me asking them but if they come to you with a piece of information and little snippet which I get all the time you've got to say what's in it for them why they tell amoenus there's always something in it

for everybody usually there's very few people who will who will go to a journalist and given them information because out of the goodness of their heart because they say they think it's nothing this won't happen yeah I mean it sounds like I'm you know giving everyone a bad name but you know it's just human nature I mean I'm like it myself you know so but you know it's it's not necessarily a very harmful practice it's just it's just what people do yeah of course and if somebody is a founder and he believes in his story or she believes in the company that they're building up then obviously they want people to write about it so what what should someone like this what should they do if they

wanted to get you or other journalists to write about their next big thing yeah don't be desperate and don't and don't don't come to the I don't say we're the world's best or the world's first the world's most unique these superlatives are cropping up more and more and more and I'm getting more and more suspicious of them too to be honest there was a there was a story I was always doing a couple of weeks ago on there were a couple of companies about launching Swiss Swiss based stable coins basically or products crypto products and and there's a few of them now and and all of them were kind

of trying to tell me that they were the first or the only one and I was saying well at the same time there's five such products going on in the mark you know and then yeah two of them aren't launched yet well three of them are launched just an idea one of them wants but it's kind of very limited use case there's another one which has another special use case that isn't really a cryptocurrency or a token as such but but they were kind of all wanting me to say that this was this was the best of the most unique or the first the first the first is the one at the moment with the first were the Trailblazers and it you know that's not the important thing

the important thing is can you succeed and will you make an impact and will you change things over the long run and that can only be proven but first of all launching and and then secondly over a few years seeing how you get on and does the market adopt your products and and does it sort of make a difference there is another interesting tactic I find is the stealth mode tactic this is a really interesting one we're a new company a startup will do everything they can to avoid the media and keep things quiet and we'll sort of pot their path until

this kind of big cataclysmic moments where they suddenly go bang here we are we've got everything we've got everything established we will go to well all my team in place we've got the we've got the the technology platform built with we've entered discussions of FINRA and we've got the investors interested in and this is this sort of big bang from Stealth the big bang is is kind of becoming a quite a quite us of a common way of doing it because the theory being if you shout too soon before you've got things ready then no one's going to listen to you and that's a piece of

general advice I supposed to do anyone you you've got to have something to show even if you're not wanted yet but that the guys who are getting the most attention are these guys at the moment who are who are building up really in stealth and and then coming out with this sort of we you know we've got the product and it's been accepted on X exchange or whatever and and and suddenly it takes you by surprise and you know as a journalist you thinking wow why didn't I know about this maybe I should write an in energy because stop yourself because you almost get sucked into this dramatic moment but so it is exactly what they wanted exactly what they want and they probably

work with PR companies who who are very clever at sword unas but part of my job is finding out about them before they've even launched it so I can check them out so that when the announcement comes you know I'm not totally in the dark and I can I can actually but I can't happen every time you know but clearly you'll think as an entrepreneur that's the better strategy yeah it's to keep quiet until you've got something to show for it and then avoid stuff like with you know with the Trailblazers because that's not the important thing you know during a dot-com bubble you had a lot of starters who then disappeared

and then simply got replaced by people who who saw what mistakes you made and said well you had a good product you had a good idea but you did it wrong and so we're coming on and we could taking on that idea and we're doing it properly haven't learnt from your mistakes and so so being the first is very very important to people but don't don't don't sort of think that's to be online air and all you've got to show you've got something sustainable and that the market needs and you know getting being first to get the license is ok that's quite good but it's it's a flash in the pan moment - three years down the line it's gonna mean nothing

yeah that's a good one flash in the pan moment and so it's probably newest coverage - I mean I feel sometimes people overestimate what you know their name in the press will do for them yeah maybe so I mean what we've got is a new form of press a new kind of media has emerged it's not just the the crypto currencies or the auto startups or the products is actually a new a whole new genre the online crypto blog all the online crypto news agency or whatever is as suddenly as suddenly arrived so there's there's sort of math saturation if you like of of news in this area and

sometimes you have to look for it and you know that there might be people listening to just thinking well I haven't seen this I mean they just got this daily newspaper it's not in there but it doesn't take much online searching to find these these guys and I I think that the the whole space the media space is now getting saturated and there is a competition to get the be the first one out there with the news I yes so so it might sort of backfire or all that or the effect of getting your name in the media might get watered down as results because you're that you're just there with a thousand other names out that day you know the the key is to getting your name in in the right corner

media and and also you know you've got to have a story at some kind of you know you've got to be able to properly explain what kind of impact your product is going to have in two years time that's what I want to know as a journalist it's not am I the first to get this all that I don't want to know two years five years down the line who's going to be using your product who's going to be buying your services and what is it and she gonna what concretely you know is it going to achieve what differences are gonna bring to two people's lives that's that's the story I think you've got to tell where you're gonna be once you're past your startup phase and you're properly

established company let's take a quick break for a message from our sponsors this episode has support from my very own the blockchain and us a newsletter get an email from me every two weeks with a very short summary of new podcast episodes so you can immediately pick those interviews you'd like to listen to to stay up-to-date just visit www.cannainsider.com/careers company yeah that's a good blueprint almost for anyone trying to tell their story yeah and and sometimes people just don't know

because they just focused on the on the on the on them on the moment you know and it's it's kind of security token so let's come out with this you know we've got one magic you know with produce one we got together a team of talented programmers who got it together and we've got some kind of underlying products and uh-huh and now we got to think about what's in and and it's kind of like well where are you gonna be in two years time with this product where are you gonna be in five years time with a whole range of probably you know it's I get the impression that people don't think sometimes beyond the end of you know the next couple of months and this kind of idea of everyone talking about

them because they got they they got the first thing of its type out and that there was news this weekend of a new exchange-traded product out on on on the Swiss Stock Exchange I'm you know it was the world's first apparently I'm trying to work out you know how much it were world's first is it a world's first of its type it could easily be a type of ETP that's not been done before encrypt but there's there's others and there will be and you know will it will it will it be adopted will you know where is it going to be in two or three days and you know maybe these guys have thought this one through that she and I don't know do them a disservice but some yeah it's for me I'm looking at the

wider hopefully I'm looking at the wider themes and I've learnt more and more in this space not just to go for the exclusive or the be there first or because you're it's a mug's game because you've got all this online media specialized doing this and also if you get too sucked into being I've got to get the news out first I've got to be I've got to be up-to-date you might be missing your analysis sometimes it's better to leave it a few days even a few weeks and just just find out a bit about it and then you can you can answer the question then to your readers you know where might this be in two or three years time what might this be adding to the whole ecosystem beyond the catchy

headline of today you mentioned before some strategies to do research you've said me namely you need to know people you are connected with them and then you ask them for background on certain stories but what other tools do you use for example just now you mentioned all these news portals about you know the whole crypto and blockchain space that and many of them I think you know are probably not such reputable outlets too but do you still use them in your yeah and I use social media or not I mean let's go back again to the days when I first started off as a journalist 95 where the internet was just starting up

and a newsroom I don't think was really hooked up to it and and we used to go through go to the the library there at the local municipal library and find cuttings of stories we used to have cuttings ourselves a big room full of stack full of newspapers of cuttings to find out Nana's that's been replaced by by the digital world by the Internet but now also by social media so for me is a big a big conduit of information and social media human Facebook Twitter telegram yeah it's weird IIIi use I tend not to use Facebook so my that's just me I'm not just I don't know what I also

find is that Facebook is viewed as the enemy by by a lot of the crypto crowds why have we got Bitcoin it's to do without centralized Big Brother's such as central bank's or Facebook you know it's it's become one of the watchwords for these are the guys we're trying to we're trying to eliminate so so Facebook it is used by the Crips I've seen but I don't find it first of all it got used for a lot of ICO scams and and then all those ads got cats and a lot of other people just will not have Facebook out of principle so I I tend not to use it I might be wrong I might be missing out

on something here but I used Twitter quite a bit LinkedIn I use a fair amount at that at cheese is quite useful for the in-depth articles and separate telegram is is the social media of choice I think for the crypto crowds it's it's kind of like having your own personal group and if you can get in once some of some of those channels that can be very useful but that's just forgetting the the the basic information that's that's the same thing as what I used to do I used to go down to the library to read the cuttings that's this kind of stuff but the thing that hasn't changed from my days of first days of journalism is you've got to get out

there on the street and meet people face to face in their environment and and speak to them and build up a relationship with them of mutual trust where they can trust me not just to blurt out everything they tell me in a big headline with their name attached to it and and I can trust them not to you know just tell me stuff from their own personal gain know the human contact even though we're talking about cyberspace is still a very very important thing and and so you use social media and you filter it and stuff to kind of get the most up-to-date stuff that's going on you know it's almost

like a ticker-tape going around tick tick tick here's this is that is that you can get caught up in that really I can spend the whole day doing that quite frankly but but then when you've seen one or two things you think all that looks interesting that might make a difference then you've got to go got to get out there and you've got to sort of either either go go to this company and sort of see them and speak to them or you've or you've got a or you fall back to your your trusted sort of contacts who you know and you know they know this base and they're trustworthy and you know and so you sort of fill things these ways that part hasn't changed never will and journalism that sort of thing it's kind of it kind of

interesting noting the attitude that the the social change that's crypto is brought it's really interesting decentralizing things sounds like a tremendously fun idea and really good and democratic and but quite often what you end up with when you've decentralized stuff is a big bickering group of people arguing with each other and in many ways that's that's no surprises at hey because you know we've all got families with you we all know what happens when groups of people get together and and it's a really interesting sort of you know

anthropologists should follow crypto just see tribalism and and started a yeah it's a rich picking ground for them I'm sure but the interesting point so you think it's like a big dysfunctional family almost yeah or several families of rival factions and one of the most interesting things about watching following the the the reef orc of the fork of Bitcoin which was going wild on social media is that not only do you have factions but you have that age-old situation of the factions all crowd around like a messiah

figure and what's on so saying you're our leader you're only there you know and they're whatever they you tweet is is gonna be our gospel and it's it's almost like you know that the deforming of a new new religion you know in sort of groups of people who just become so focused on one particular area and they follow the leaders of the area so so closely that they can't have become a bit blanket and and and and narrow-minded for dangerous I think it can be dangerous I think decentralization comes with a lot of risks and and you know I quite often ask myself is this whole experiment gonna work what is it going to end up is is

this you know some people say and a few is downline will be using crypto and decentralized structures in in much the same way that's we now use the Internet you know when it first came out it was all a bit of a pain and difficult to learn and the technology it wasn't very good but now we just take it for granted we use it but our even thinking yeah I I kind of I kind of wonder if if this is gonna happen I think the answer is crypto currencies and blockchain will succeed will reach and limits when society realizes it's had enough

decentralization and its life because you can descent it can go to the point will you decentralize the governments of the world so you know that's that's you know isn't it Ireland is ever gonna happen but some people think that's a great idea yeah but but then but then you should look at these you know you shouldn't you should follow the Bitcoin cash fork I get goddess that's that's just a it's just a horrible thing to follow on social media it's just paper baking and and I remember following the all the issues with tears us this year about some last year and and a you know quite apart from you know the the arguments

between the central characters at the top of the tree the the the emotion and the it was almost yet people it was irrational it was a rational you know I'd go into these groups and people be shouting and screaming and no one would be stepping back and trying to figure out and it was all driven from the emotion of the moment and and straight from the heart and very little from the head or the spirit it was it was it was unleashing the animal spirit and and it was it was very neat jerk you know it was understandable people had invested their money or contributed their money or they believed very strongly in the

tech and and and they thought that you know this dis argument was denying people the the society the chance to to to to to have improvement from this tech you know I could understand it but I've never seen it in any other industry before you know his arguments and all kinds of industries this bickering going on in the engineering stayed all engineering industry in in in Switzerland but you know this as soon as you decentralize the more you decentralize the more you have this noise you know and and of course everyone has a voice and that's the whole point but if everyone has a voice you got more disagreements and and then you get more emotions and and and there

has to be a way of kind of you know controlling decentralization sounds weird that's exactly all you're not supposed to do but I think this is where the limits of work chain and crypto are going to have where people say enough we have to control the centralization I've had enough decentralization in my life and I don't think you're gonna have a sounds strange controlling the central ensure you have decentralization we don't but but you can I mean you can you can of crypto to that you can have a crypto account to pay my household bills and then I have a Fiat traditional account to pay to do my investments or the other way around or something you can have

decentralization running alongside centralization for example you you can have certain regulations applying to decentralized structures which which bring them under control and it's this this is the the the boundary which will show us the limits of where you know where crypto is going to go and where pop chance gonna go it's where society at large decides okay then enough we need money to keep it under control here and yeah we'll see and do you think that's happened already no no we it were we're in the process at the moment of what happened was crypto

Wars and blockchain was a sort of a wild anomaly was was a bit of a revolutionary thought which a lot of people dismissed but then people realized it actually solved a really fundamental question which I think a lot of people still miss now is decentralization is not an easy thing to do that's why we have centralized bodies to to control this and to make make order out of out of our financial transactions out of our data and so on it's not easy to do this in a decentralized way but when the thing

about Bitcoin and blockchain is it it actually cracked the code for the first time and although it's an imperfect model it is a model that actually showed that it could be done and it took a while for you know the general society to realize that hey actually that's that she's very clever what they've done it is actually a functional system that solves a problem and and and it can create efficiencies it can cut costs it can give people you know greater power over their their personal lives and their data it can work but it also can create this chaos and anarchy I just talked about earlier

where it just creates bickering families and factions and forming so what's happening at the moment I think is that big business and governments and the centralized authorities of the world have realized that decentralization actually has a place and can actually work and actually has a function but they're trying to control it so that it works big businesses trying to control it so it works for their profits governments are trying to control it maybe because they're jealous and losing their power I don't know but but they also don't want sort of these bickering social media arguments spilling out onto the streets as well but you're getting

this area now where people have realized the D Center has a function but they're trying to they are trying to put a limit and we haven't we haven't reached that idea we don't know yet where that limit will be adding interesting I mean you know just like a family that is fighting or has some arguments maybe also people can learn and and understand each other better and you know maybe understand also the power that they have and I think that hasn't happened yet I mean many of these entrepreneurs just came into money very quickly and I think emotionally can't really deal with this position yeah I mean there was a lot of I mean short-termism rather than thinking plotting through look at Bitcoin do you think Satoshi Nakamoto

whoever he she they is there are when when this Bitcoin blockchain was designed do you think they visualized where is at the moment 10 years down the line with mining becoming an industry dominated by companies that are sending up whole factories of of you know warehouse the warehouse full of computer stacks churning out huge amounts of energy all competing with each other and the little guy with this little laptop in his bedroom is out the picture you know we

look back with hindsight now and we think of course that was gonna happen that was always gonna happen it only happened when when this strange kind of investor rush into Bitcoin it's irrational enthusiasm exuberance occurred was happening this time last year and suddenly a mom saying well is money to be made and say you know whenever you create something that's going to make a fundamental difference I guess Satoshi Nakamoto was just thinking let's crack the code and throw it out as a society open source and and let's see how it how it how it evolves but this idea of all these sort of huge mining

things occurring I mean I was reading some in some watching some interviews by the bus Tim berners-lee the creator of the world wide web you want you you ask him now what's what was happening with the world wide web he's terrible you know and when it started it was a wonderful thing it was a wonderful thing it was decentralized he uses the word decentralization a lot but it was decentralization among a small group of committed dedicated people who all had the same idea as soon as you open decentralization out to the world then you have lots of different factions of people who disagree that's just an in it changes in evolves in its own kind of

way and not always for the better so yeah it's very hard if you're a startup inventing a new protocol for blockchain to realize how it's going to how society is going to take it up and and and how it's going to evolve in twenty years time from now but maybe people should should start giving it some some of this thought well that's incredibly hard question to answer as well yeah it is I mean you know even even coming up with something like Bitcoin it's difficult enough but imagining that mining industry could you know waste a lot of resources later down the road I mean that's really really complex well that could never have been for cinnamon like I said we were on we can talk about

this with the benefit of hindsight but but it's interesting to note that you know when when you when you come up with a technological breakthrough you don't foresee you know how it is and and you know the point is is at the moment we still don't know we see a fusion between now we're seeing a fusion between the sort of the crypto blockchain Wild West world and and in a centralized additional world of today not just in finance but other industries and in governance and and people are a probing each other and trying to work out you know how you fit a square square peg into a round hole and how you how you change the shape of everything and what has to change it's it's a it's a very

interesting time at the moment and it's it will go on for years and it'll keep me busy and and for me as a journalist it's all about the story in it the story is just just one of the most fascinating ones I've ever I've ever you know explained to people hmm interesting I just wanted to ask that you know where we're on a scale of importance do you see these stories of our crypto and blockchain maybe you know in comparison to other very transformative technologies like AI data science robotics yeah well it's it's very easy I mean as I said earlier on I I threw myself down that the Box chain rabbit hole a couple of years ago and and it's very easy to get stuck down there and and not see the

rest of the world and when I when I talk to you about all these you know narrow minded groups of people bickering you cannot see beyond the end of their noses you know I have to be careful I don't do that as well so I mean what about quantum computing oh yeah that's that's another huge subject and gee I wish that I could throw myself down that rabbit hole man AI and all the rest of it maybe I should maybe I should start that's a very good point you may maybe you should start connecting the dots between these different technologies a lot more because in future they might be fusing and you might see you know who knows a quantum computing generated

script or you know an exchange run on AI or something like that I'm guy thanks very much that because you know that's that's that's quite it that that would be a very interesting sore point that that would still keep me busy for another few years Thanks well I think it's I mean just a little side note but I think that's what's happening you know this when I speak with startups for example in Berlin or in Silicon Valley they all have some kind of you know blockchain and crypto startups they all have some kind of AI strategy they all start talking about how to deal with data right well that's that's what it is isn't it that's that's the whole that's the whole point of it you know it's it's managing data giving

people ownership data being able to transact data and keep control of it all and keep track of it all people can't do that sitting up there you know we've seen with BOC chain you can't do that you can't have every single person in the system validating every transaction at a time this is why I have delegated proof of stake and all this kind of stuff and you have professionals but but hey why should it be down to individuals and and mining you know big mines and stuff why don't you just put it into two AI as well trust the code some more I guess the this sort of the the doomsayers would say well then it's computers taken over the world even more

and you know what if that goes wrong then we're at you know we're all stuffed but it is you know it makes perfect sense to do it to do it this way to have to have artificial intelligence sort of dealing with say the mining of bitcoins so it does so in a rational fairer way it doesn't lead to the concentrations of power only in the ways of electricity that we that we have at the moment with Bitcoin which was because it was just left to people to kind of work out by themselves how to do it yeah it makes perfect sense and yeah Matt do you think you'll still be writing about crypto and blockchain in five years yeah I do

because because you know the discussion we just had ten seconds ago kind of confirms that to me because we learned because because it's gonna develop and evolve and merge with other technologies I think I think it's very unlikely I think so will I still be intensely interested enough boom my enthusiasm be the same in five years time or will in a year's time I start thinking yeah g-iii right nothing but blockchain and crypto I want to write about something a bit else now or maybe our news of quantum computing will take off and and and there will be

a Bitcoin moments in quantum computing where where it's just kind of like yeah we cracked the code and and and now we can start applying it to all facets of life and it will just sue who knows but but it's not just the tank what what interests me about this whole thing you know I got into it thinking was a bit of a quirk you know I'm not only I'm a bit of fun to write about and it might have some some impact but what dragged me in is is is not just a realization that the the the the the tech had solved a proper problem and I come up with a solution to it or you know a proper system or way of doing things but also the people involved it's a crazy world critters

crazy it's it's it's I I used to before this I used to be running about the bankers and parado parts nothing against them at all but but they're very controlled people they only tell you so much and they're they've got they've got all their press people around them the whole time and access is very limited and then you came across the world of crypto pirates and and and this whole sort of family bickering families and stuff owes and and Messiah figures popping up here and everywhere it's it's it's a fascinating not just tech stories are fascinating human stories well and and I think you know you shouldn't forget that although it's tech it's the

people but always people the people behind the tech who run the show until they lose control because it then becomes mainstream and then they lose control and and it becomes a society dominated thing so yeah oh five years some I could will be writing still about this area interesting did I forget to ask anything I don't think so no I I I'm my mouth is gonna be dry and so you know no I think we had a very interesting conversation man thanks a lot for taking time chisel thanks so much for joining us today more info on our guests and our sponsors is in the show notes of this episode and on

a podcast website the blockchain and us comm to help people find this podcast it's important that you download subscribe and give it a top rating and review on iTunes or on the podcast platform of your choice I'm Manuel staggers and I thank you very much for listening you [Music]