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5ire - GRO Discussion on Partnership Toward Sustainability
Recorded: Dec. 13, 2023 Duration: 0:38:45Space Recording
Full Transcription
Hello everyone, welcome back to my channel, and welcome back to my channel, and welcome back to my channel.
hi guys the twitter space uh ended randomly so we're just having to um restart it so we'll
just carry forward the conversation as it was going on so i have prateek the co-founder
and chief product officer and paul and i believe terry would be joining any moment
all right uh paul is is terry joining otherwise you can just kick us off we can continue terry is
yeah terry should be coming in okay i'm happy to kick it off i just gave such a beautiful speech
and then i realized the thing had crashed
so um i'm not sure how much uh this and such is the internet okay i i just maybe repeat the key
tenant of of what we do to um create impact and how do the communities benefit like i said climate
yeah so as i said we are working directly with grassroots communities and we're planting the
trees on institutional land and heritage land which means the land is owned by kingdoms or bishops or
like so churches or uh or mosques so that they guarantee that those three trees will be standing
there for decades to come and we extend natural biodiversity of um pocket forests and natural
forest reserves so that's where the land comes from but the contract is at the grassroots level so
smallhold farming families for example volunteer their time to plant millions of trees with us on land
which is right next to them and we instigate a community stewardship project so now they get paid
for their time that is a simple thing we pay them and they plant trees for us but that's not where
the real benefit comes from they are stakeholders in the projects we do so usually um obviously the
hourly rate in a place like uganda or kenya or tanzania or ghana is very very low but we are building
a project a product locally planting trees and the fruit that we produce is carbon certificates which we
sell on the global markets and that's long-term source of income every year the trees are producing
carbon certificates that we can sell and this becomes a reliable source of funding that goes
directly back to the families that helped us plant those trees and those families are taking care of the
trees so now we fund the food and the food security and water security project that's infrastructure but more
importantly we fund for smaller farmers for youth for women we fund skills training with a very focused
on vocational skills and entrepreneurial skills so they learn opportunities to create money for
themselves and then the income we generate from sales of carbon certificates becomes microfinance for
them to develop their own businesses so now it could be that someone uh started with a fish farm
someone else has a shop that is selling fish somebody else opens a restaurant somebody else invests in
a brand to export fish to the global market this is i think we lost paul um and i think where he was
going with that if yeah so uh where paul was going with that i'll just pick it up uh pick it up from there
uh the it really is uh akin to starting uh uh uh wealth creation economy uh that is focused on the people
at the grassroots uh level uh and uh um paul rejoin us when you can if you if you can uh he just sent a
note saying he's still able to hear but uh so um our focus um prior to the carbon markets really
placing an emphasis and and focusing on uh the impact at the grassroots level that's been our focus
right from the beginning and quite frankly we kind of went against um what the norm was at least in our
research and we chose to actually put a very very heavy emphasis on uh the impact on a social level as
well as naturally the environmental level so we're very conservative uh when it comes to things uh
it's called additionality so we really uh focus on planting trees as opposed to just counting existing
ones and uh um so we we uh generate credits exclusively from uh new planting and that's that's very
important from an environmental impact perspective so uh you'll hear terms being thrown around such as
high quality offsets and i don't think there'd be anyone that would uh uh suggest or imply uh once they've
done their due diligence that ours are not amongst the highest of quality both for their social and
environmental impact so that's very comprehensive a critique do you want to chime in um yeah i mean
i i just want to ask if you can hear me first because twitter has been really really yes yeah twitter
has been really difficult today uh but okay i can hear you and is paul back with us or not yet
yeah yeah okay i think paul's back okay okay that that is what was indeed very comprehensive and and
that's that's i think that's the most important part because uh the income is reaching the grassroot
level so you're hitting the the the poverty the green earth i mean as you said the multiple uh
sustainable development goals and i think that's where the synergy lies i wanted to ask you because
since guys you guys have been working on this for a longer time and we've been also working on this
and more in terms of like you have expertise but we have partial expertise in the carbon markets
where do you see this i mean the total addressable market is increasing uh with cop happening actually
right now in uae there's a lot of focus on on the credits themselves especially for the longer term
and i mean my question is two-fold one is like where do you see this going and the second question
is where do you see the uh you know your your these conservation projects and the sort of issues
and the scams pretty much that happened that sort of tanked the carbon market so where where do you see
the how do you see that being corrected and uh where how do you see the market maturing in the next
uh you know midterm and the longer term want me to run with this one paul yeah terry i think that's
the market i think that's your outlook i can talk about reforestation talk about carbon
yeah so so uh pretty touched on a a good point so part of what uh we did in and on our side paul gets
a lot of the credit for this uh uh in the beginning was we took a deep dive and part of why i said earlier
we went a little bit uh you know if the general market was going in one direction we kind of went
off into another direction because we felt like some of the projects out there some of the quality
of what was being claimed not even produced just claimed it was not ethical and not uh really providing
an environmental benefit and we wanted to make sure we did everything we could to really truly have
that impact that was prior to cop 26 basically and through so through cop 26 cop 27 and now cop 28
they the the core beliefs that we had um have been uh affirmed and reaffirmed uh and have pushed the
markets directly to the type of things that we're doing and you know they've they're you know carbon
the carbon markets although they've been around um for 20 plus years the the they really have taken
off in the last few years and uh they're going to get exponentially larger and like any emerging market
be it digital assets and certainly the uh carbon markets there's maybe sometimes there's bad actors other
times there's um uh just a lack of uh clarity as it uh relates to uh you know what does what does
qualify what are the regulations what you know and so some of some of the stuff
um i think um we lost paul twitter is we lost terry just now are you can you hear me
yeah could you continue yeah we we're losing people one by one like twitter is just picking everyone out
yes so that's good terry and i are taking turns so in a nutshell as you said the carbon market
like blockchain is maturing um the global carbon market is trying to achieve something very very
complicated it's creating a framework the united nations framework convention for climate change
unfccc this is a global framework which all united nations members need to agree upon
so and that creates a lot of confusion on the market with harmonization
so for example uh tesla made 1.5 billion dollars a year the last few years annual turnover through the
sale of carbon certificates but they didn't sell and they didn't plant any trees so how did they create
the carbon certificates um the united the united states passed a law to say well we want to subsidize
electric vehicles therefore every sold electrical vehicle will also be generating carbon certificates
the european union didn't pass that law the european union said we will give offsets to companies based
on their energy efficiency um and how and how like switching to renewable energy putting uh making houses more
energy efficient and then the third pillar is actually planting trees and actually capturing carbon with
technology so there are three different ways of creating carbon certificates and then the big debate
right now in cop is which one is the best and right now and this is very very good for the type of project
we have the european union and cop more or less agree carbon certificates should only be accepted
if they create a tangible impact for the environment and for communities and this is why we're in the top
right corner when it comes to premium premier high level carbon certificates because we are actually
planting trees we're actually creating a benefit for the environment we are actually restoring natural
biodiversity and we are actually working with communities to better their lives and this is now
standardized yeah this is what we do oh please please absolutely i mean that's that's where i think uh
i think uh you guys differentiate yourself and this is where i understand that you know most of the
conservation or so-called conservation projects are going for for for for the short haul and you're going
for a very very long haul um i wanted to drive the discussion a bit towards numbers because people want to
hear numbers a lot uh so how what sort of what's what scale projects are we talking about here
because i know but i think people need to know the the the scale that you're working at so the what
what is what's the community size like what are the carbon credits being produced by you guys in the
projects that you have already be run or you'll be potentially be running uh could you educate us a
little bit on what the scales are there with pleasure so the the advantages again because we work with
grassroots communities we literally get the land for free that is the key we're benefiting the communities
we haven't if technically an unlimited access to land we're entire if we make an agreement with the
kingdom they'll give us the space to plant as many trees as you want so just for comparison microsoft
just made a big announcement that they're working with a south american project and they're going to be
planting 30 million trees that is the big premier announcement of microsoft during cop 28
a project with 30 million trees in kenya alone we have the agreement with kenya forest service
to plant 500 million trees so nearly nearly a 15x to what microsoft has just announced and that is only in
a single country we're doing another 250 million trees in um uganda and we're talking uh we're we're
we're finalizing paperwork on about 500 000 hectares worth of land in malaysia so we are on the way on the
verge of becoming one of the biggest reforestation projects in the world and again what i have to
emphasize that the trick in inverted commas is working with the communities directly we're not
a venture capital company trying to buy land and then hire people as cheap labor we're benefiting with
the communities and this is going both ways they are so willing and happy to work with us simply because
no one has ever offered them this opportunity so yeah we're big that's cool i want to if you guys
can hear me i want to just chime in on one part that uh i think is sometimes misunderstood by listeners
when paul referenced that the land is given to us we actually take no ownership we don't have any claim
to the land we just um are planting trees on that land and then uh um maintaining them for the duration of
the uh uh project and and that's so it's easy for uh governments and institutions and large landowners to
collaborate with us because we make it easy we don't try and lay claim to any uh ownership
yes thank you for having that that's very important fair enough and yeah i think that's very important
because that that gives uh the the kingdoms and the governments and the bishops and the communities
a certain level of security um what and in terms of the amount of carbon credits like what do you
what sort of numbers are we looking at here so we we did we finished our first audit so we have three
registered projects at the moment and we're looking at an average of about 400 million certificates
per project so uh by so we have 400 million certificates on the registry and we can start
distribution um early next year so from january and we have another 600 million um certificates
uh pre-approved that should become uh transferable uh maybe as early as as march april of this year so
we're talking a total of one billion certificates we're talking total of one billion certificates coming up
and uh and uh and that is then before we've done the audit with projects in asia and latin america for
example fair enough and just for context guys uh because i i know you guys everyone likes numbers here
especially uh people who will be listening to the clips uh a carbon certificate of their level generally
sells for 30 cents at this point so we're looking at a 30 billion dollar uh carbon certificate treasury
that these guys are building the next few months i think that's that's amazing and a lot of that is
going back to people and is going to is going to increase uh the the even the gdp of of entire economies and
and uh that's why we think we they they want to they will be a very important part of our ecosystem
which is by the way a good segue so what do you guys feel is is the good synergy in terms of us
us working together um where do you i mean i mean of course i know what the synergy is but again
it's uh the question is for people people to understand so what uh what are the plans for us to work
together i'll i'll add that as well let's say if i yeah well what i love about what what what you are
building what fire is building is to become an esg platform for the world as you said the carbon
market doesn't have a lot of transparency and the esg market also doesn't have a lot of transparency
the blockchain is made again a match made in heaven the blockchain was created to create trustless
transfers to create transparency across all stakeholders and where we divide where we produce
a product we are only one component of that market so we have a very natural synergy we do things that
fire doesn't do that is part as the total solution and fire does things that we as grow don't do namely
creating a marketplace talking to the companies in being a total solution provider so as we approach
the market together we can become a one-stop shop for esg and carbon solutions for some of the biggest
brands in the world and that's the vision that way i think we should aim for absolutely
prateek do you want to explain the layer one angle i think that will help people connect the dots
i'm sorry i could i didn't understand that no could you explain like in more specific terms where fire
it comes in yes yes of course of course i wanted i wanted uh the guys to start so uh the association
here is three falls one of course there isn't a transparent availability of good uh level of carbon
credits so the carbon credits that people are that these people are creating there are marketplaces
they're trying to make a quick bug and that's fine but there's definitely a lack of transparency there so
what we want to do with the grow guys is uh is to create a marketplace that facilitates projects
like theirs and also other projects that can come in which will use the fire token of course uh to to
have a marketplace of carbon credits that are highly verified highly transparent and are massive
building reforestation projects like these guys and not just you know uh you know bookkeeping
conservation projects that are tanked and uh and i think that's that's where the synergy lies
i think we can turn this into one of the biggest marketplaces around and this this bears this boards
really really well for the fire token because this will be all done through the fire token so i think
that's the that's the most natural synergy i'm also we're also exploring uh the carbon futures play which
which will of course we'll talk about later because we're still in the exploratory stage because we want
to make sure that all the compliances and the checks and balances are there but i think the
crypto market uh sort of it um it made sure that the perpetuals are are something that uh that blow up
so i think uh i think that's something that that's really good that came out of it because if the
product is good then the speculation also is becomes a good place just uh it's just when the product is not
good the speculation is not the best thing according to me so i i think uh we'll we'll be doing some
some something in terms of uh carbon futures and perpetuals together because most of the contracts
that they have are for 10 years 20 years 30 years 40 years in the future so um those are the two things
that i see uh see this happening pretty immediately actually as soon as we are uh as soon as the guys are
ready for their uh for the registry which they say they are in in january i think we'll we'll begin
with that um what are some other synergies according to you guys voluntary and utkarsh you can chime in
as well so i think that one of the beautiful things about the uh carbon markets you know um we've been
around uh digital assets crypto for um well in my case a decade and uh you know it's it's a sector where
it hasn't had uh regulatory clarity it hasn't had regulatory support in many markets most markets and
it's been an uphill battle uh getting us collectively to the point where we are the carbon markets are very
interesting in this in in in a completely opposite way there's 196 governments literally holding the door
open to make long-term planning and they're trying to minimize the amount of uh um red tape and challenges
to make this market grow universally and and so that allows for companies like fire and grow
to lay out long-term plans as you pointed out uh you know some of our projects are 45 years in length
we're looking at one right now that would be longer and um we know that there's going to be um
billions of certificates coming we'll be able to collaborate with you guys and and
really lay out a beautiful multi-year plan uh that uh in a market that i think it's very difficult to
find any qualified analyst that is saying it's staying flat or going down in size every single analyst i've
ever seen um is pointing up some of them very very substantially recently i saw a report that
that suggests that the high quality offsets um would be a thousand dollars by uh 2050
and even ten thousand dollars by 2100 i'm not sure i wouldn't place much credibility on the 2100
uh prediction but the point and the good takeaway is that when you actually dissect the data
and look at the growth there's very few companies on a global level at this stage
actually buying certificates and um 20 i think in 2023 50 more companies bought certificates than they
did in 2022 and so on so the market's growing it hasn't hit the proverbial tipping point yet
and um and as uh the regulatory framework starts to include more businesses it's just going to scale
incredibly so um the fact that we can actually work together on a very long-term plan and really build
something that is wonderful from a business perspective but more equally important more important
uh to achieve the sustainability and real impact uh that we're both looking for i think that
and we lost him i think we did lose him yeah yes i'd like to add in it's i would i was just about to chime
in anyway because numbers are important numbers are important so cop just ended and now over the next
six weeks many many countries will be making announcements and here's a fact that literally
just came in this morning belgium uh just passed based on cop belgium just passed um an agreement um to
decarbonize decarbonize faster the belgium court based on cop has said that the country's climate targets
were insufficient and that the government must cut their emissions by 55 percent from 1990s level by the
year 2030 are you still with me yeah of course i'm just i'm just basking in and and harassment right now
okay it was a little bit little bit one day yes exactly but so if you think about what it means
think about the carbon market what is happening to the carbon market in the next 10 20 years
is like what happened during covet the government said next week we all have to wear masks so the
government created an obligatory demand on planet earth and everybody had to buy masks and we all
remember what happened with masks in the beginning the prices exploded decarbonization is the same
thing the government is mandating and creating demand across the world wear masks we all have to wear masks
buy carbon certificates to become to offset your emissions and big companies are forced to buy these
certificates but now the difference to masks masks can be mass produced very easily once the supply chain
gets ready you can't plant billions of trees overnight which means in the next 20 years the global demand
is going to far outpace any possible supply that anybody could make and supply and demand dictates price
and just with those two facts you can think about it it's going to be gigantic
yeah absolutely according to terry's 20 21 prediction uh with only your first billion credits coming in
you will be more than a trillion dollars so that's that's probably that's i'll i'll i'll probably try to
stay alive stay alive till then yeah i don't want to be alive then but like i'm already happy if you look just
at the next five years and ten years according to deloitte here's another number the um deloitte
estimates that the market that we're specifically in for reforestation offsets will be a 100 billion
dollar market by 2030 and will be a 500 billion dollar market before 2035
that's that's that is the wrap and that's only in our sector and that's that's the number by deloitte mckinsey has similar numbers
that's great that's uh so yeah of course you wanted to chime in because uh i i've been cutting you off please carry on no no i think
that the the mask analogy that uh i believe all talked about is helpful to understand but i don't
want the listeners to take away the fact that anybody is going to force people to do the carbon uh mandate
i think the simplest way to look at the association that we are adding with with grow and fire would be on
three levels one is uh fire as an infrastructure where a lot of uh the data would be uh stored
analyzed and uh you know made further second would be as a layer of reporting because you know when
people engage in sort of uh certificates market discussions and so forth they need to be a clear
and transparent player a layer on which people can analyze and know where they stand and third would
be you know the emergence of a marketplace where these transactions can smoothly grow and the demand
and supply can be stoked up all of this can potentially be stoked by uh fire coin uh which
is the tokens that we've just launched and we see this as the emergence of a micro economy and when uh
prateek and i were there around the launch of uh our token earlier this month we were highlighting that
the growth of these micro economies is very very important because that's how the utility of the
token comes in and i just wanted to point out that in the case of masks the government forced it for
our own good in this case there is a government push which is amazing but i think that all of you
listening really want to step in to the fifth industrial revolution so i think there's almost an intrinsic
desire among all of us to try and make uh some concrete steps towards the environment so there's
a subtle distinction but uh i hope all of you yeah i i second that i second that uh because me too you
know um the the government that's uh see governments are not always always wrong or always right i think
there's this gray area uh so i feel that most of the pollution that's been done which has which has
increased the demand for for conservation and and preservation and building and reforestation has
been done by industries because of the industrial revolution of the past so that's why the the even
if there's a mandate it's going to be for industries because they have been the biggest polluters especially
in the first world so that's why you see the european unions of the world and the big and the first
world country is taking much more of an initiative than uh then i guess um uh the this the third world
world countries for lack of better word even though i hate that term uh but uh but having said that
this this then opens up the market for people to to to be financially independent and also then uh make
sure that they're helping the world while being financially independent i think that's the whole ethos of
the fifth and fifth industrial revolution and uh and i feel that and i feel that's why the synergy was so
perfect um i have asked all my questions uh terry and paul so if you have any more for us please
carry on uh if not utkarsh we want to chime in please uh go ahead and we can also open up for the
community but i think this is way too specific so we'll we'll just post clips as we always do those are
the those are the most important things that you always uh want to want to go and watch uh so over to
you paul and uh uh terry if you guys want any anything to ask us yes i don't have a specific
question i from from my point of view i'm just very excited about the collaboration and opportunity
to work together uh with our uh very complementary but yet uh um similar uh vision for what we're looking to
uh um achieve and so that uh that has me excited looking forward to uh a very long uh and beneficial
relationship and likewise likewise just for both for the for the companies and the and the subsequent
communities that will join our company so i think that's great uh any last words paul utkarsh
i i maybe i'll add with one certificate just to echo uh because you're right the the positivity
of this and this is a statistic about again about trees so every year right now on earth 15 billion
trees are cut down and only five billion trees are planted so right now every year we have a net
loss of 10 billion trees so irrespective of and and also we have lost nearly half we've lost nearly 50
of all the trees on earth where places like the united states have lost 80 of the original
forest cover of just 100 years ago so these are all real numbers so this activity is good for
everybody and everybody will agree will agree and be excited about this and i want to leave with one
question and maybe that's how you can put it out i'm most excited about the marketplace that fire
wants to build because the world needs a one-stop shop where um where buyers and and sellers can can
come together and maybe as we go out could you elaborate on the on your plans for the marketplace
because i think that's something people also want to hear is that for me yes that's for you
yeah i mean see the the the marketplace is something people have tried but the problem
the biggest problem has always been that the marketplaces that are present right now they do not
have uh they cannot and probably do not want to separate the good from the bad the right from the
wrong they don't want to have all the checks and balances in place so uh there's two issues one
is the lack of supply which people are not able to tackle because if you look at most of the marketplaces
i was checking for uh as i mean i was checking with you and the total amount of credits that were
available that for high level that for something that you guys are doing was 1000 credits so um the
biggest marketplaces have 1000 credits of the highest level available so where there is no supply at all
adding to that all the others were those conservation projects that that that we have already spoken
about so i think we can uh with with what you guys are doing with with massive crazy numbers 400
million 600 million a billion carbon credits uh we can definitely tackle the the the supply issue but
also most importantly we can tackle the demand the the quality issue and i think that's what i'm the most
excited about one more thing i wanted to add to that is our ethos uh with with sustainability and
also what we're doing now is to make sure that there's as many real world assets in uh associated
to fire chain as possible and carbon is going to is probably the the emerging real world asset that's
going to be big i mean we of course have real estate and all those things but carbon is something that
people have have have still they're still sleeping on it and i think once we hit the critical mass once
once the mandates start coming in you'll see everything blowing up it is sort of the bitcoin
phase of of the 2013 kind of a thing so i think that's also very exciting for me that we have added
one more real world asset to the chain which which will be important in in years and decades to come
uh so please yeah stay tuned for the marketplace
looking forward and all all of that's gonna happen through fire tokens so that makes me happy
so um people have more reason to to stake their tokens perfect and as we started that's the perfect
synergy real world assets on one of the leading platforms that solves the the market needs that's the
synergy we all need and i think that's perfect that's perfect place to end this uh this conversation
exactly where we started synergy and alignment is what will make this a lead platform in the world
yeah yeah perfect any last words with kush uh uh i think it's i think this is the perfect point to
to to to cut it down i think uh we'll have some uh some good memes and tips from this as well
uh get rid of the viral guys yeah well thank you all for joining terry paul yes really appreciate it
and uh we love your energy and enthusiasm towards the broader mission and for anyone listening uh this is
how step by step we want to uh bring in utility for our token thank you all for your support and uh we'll be in
in touch with more and and and we'll we'll we'll we'll be happy to have you back we'll be thrilled
again when we are more uh you know when the development stages are a bit more further with the talk but
when we are already uh maybe done with the marketplace that's when we can we can start
having another conversation with the community and you guys that's great thank you for uh inviting us
uh for this call appreciate it thanks terry thanks paul yeah bye bye bye everyone thank you very much
