Hey Joe, how are you doing? Doing very good. How are you guys?
Hey, Carole, hey Andrew. Nice to be in here, guys.
Absolutely audio coming clear on my side. Yeah, loud and clear. What about me? Sounds perfect.
Awesome man. I really appreciate you taking the time. I'm excited to really dive in. Yeah, I want to just kind of breathe
I mean, there's no agenda. If you want to just super briefly introduce yourself and what you're excited about, you're a little bit of your background maybe and then we can dive in.
Sounds perfect, yeah, great.
Remind me, Andrew, where are you calling in from today? I'm based in New Hampshire. Just the north of Boston. OK, very nice.
And when does the snow start to melt?
April ish. Oh wow. So it was we had a on the top of one of the mountains here this last weekend it was negative 110 degrees Fahrenheit.
That I mean that's got to be with windshield. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right with windshield. Yeah, I'm good. I don't need to experience that.
The like ambient was I think like negative 60 Fahrenheit Yeah, it's brutal Yeah, that'll that'll break the human body pretty quickly. Yeah, I would say that's unbelievable
Yeah, I mean right now it's where I where I'm at it's from about 32 Okay, I got a bundle of big time to go outside That's awesome Brian
See y'all make you speaker here.
Welcome welcome excited to have a little chat today and learn all about what Tron's doing and get started here in like in a minute or so. Sounds good. Andrew
If you want to kick us off for like a minute or two, kind of like go into you know, Tron, what you're doing there and tell us a little bit about your podcast warm us up a little bit. Yeah, sure. So my name is obviously Andrew Hemingway. I'm the policy lead at Tron Dow and work with
the team there and across the entire ecosystem helping to primarily monitor, help to advise and think about policy regulation. Of course, this is a rapid
rapidly emerging and growing field. So we're constantly trying to stay on the edge of those things. My background is, I started in Bitcoin really 2010.
and began really immediately seeing the implications of both Bitcoin but also blockchain in the effectiveness and influence on government applications. I think I actually have like a speech on how I've
2011, I give a speech at a Liberty conference on how blockchain could dramatically increase the effectiveness of government. I've helped write papers on using the blockchain to revolutionize voting.
and all sorts of different activities. And so, yeah, I've been involved in a number of different ways. We ran for governor in 2014 on a Bitcoin platform. I was trying to get the state of New Hampshire to use renewable resources to start mining Bitcoin, which obviously would have been an amazing thing.
we had to be able to do that. But you know, so just been, been actively involved and then most recently began working with Tron over the last year and you know, just getting a grasp of the size of the ecosystem that is involved with Tron, the number of, you know, zirosticker
countries in which they are functioning and operating. So, been helping to just monitor that advice on policy matters and help to steer this chip in the right direction. So, it's primarily what I'm focused on today. So, it's not a lot.
Yeah, no, it's not much. A lot of free time hanging around. So you ran for Governor and New Hampshire. I like that's got to be like a heck of a story. Did you run on a particular like political party or were you kind of like independent?
Yeah, I mean, so I'm a personal level, pretty libertarian independence. So I come to this from that perspective. In 2010, New Hampshire had the most Bitcoin millionaires of any location in the world.
It was this really, really tight, small community that just started popping up here. That's how I was introduced to it. That's how I started coming around to it. A lot of the Bitcoin OGs
either were here or moved here or there's just a random little bubble that happened to occur. That sort of started me on that path. Then, to the 14th I ran for governor, the opportunity was to run on the Republican ticket. There was no other candidate running
at the time. And so I just said, you know, it's against the name, it's like an established incumbent. And so it was just an opportunity to raise some of these issues. So I did that. I was CNBC since I was the first candidate to accept Bitcoin as a donation. So I was navigating through the
of taking Bitcoin through that process, I spoke at Coin Congress that year, it just had great opportunities and was able to, I think, raise awareness. It was really a wonderful experience for me personally. That's amazing. It's fascinating.
That's way, way early too in the scene as well. Since then, you've done a couple of different things. At Tron right now, you were saying you were effectively policy and regulation? Yeah, right. I'm just helping to lead the policy effort.
Of course, there's a number of folks who are involved in that across various jurisdictions and places where the trying ecosystem exists. But I helped a monitor and just trying to keep a pulse on
on what's happening, the sentiment of regulators and legislators, and just try to help monitor and provide counsel and ways in which we might be able to, you know, A, watch out for new legislation or new regulation and also position our business.
the right way to be able to effectively use these things and stay within guidelines, but also make sure that the laws that are being made are being made in a way that also take into consideration the innovation that is occurring and are not out to see
just kill it all but to also help to see it flourish and move forward. Yeah, primarily are you US based or are you also global? Do you like the zero, does your kind of like policy span globally as well? Because I want to kind of understand the context. Yeah, so I personally and
I'm primarily watching the US, the UK, and the EU. And then I have a colleague who watches over the APAC region and the other areas. So we split the globe in that way.
That's very cool. All right, so we got the USUK and EU. All right, I'm going to go right to the jugular here. What are you most scared of in terms of some of the policy? And then what are you most bullish on some of the things that are going on policy on this? And I don't know if it's country by country, you want to handle that or you just kind of like want to talk about it in#
around, um, proof of state being like, being made like illegal in the United States. And I don't know how you ever do that. But what are your some of your thoughts on kind of that? And then, um, what are your most bullish on in terms of regulation? And what are you most bearish on? Yeah. So I would say the, uh, the, the,
But there's a new scare every single day. And at this point, like maybe multiple times a day. So it's hard to say what I'm most scared about. I think generally what I'm most scared about is ignorant politicians making ignorant laws.
I think that's probably what I'm, but I'd be the most afraid of. There is a tremendous lack of education, understanding, and you know, I think in some circles, not in every circle or every jurisdiction, but certainly in some, there
is just this sort of predisposition to embracing that ignorance and refusing to accept, you know, or to work to educate themselves. It's basically like we're just going to wait to see what the regulars want us to do as lawmakers and then
will do it. And that to me is something that is obviously really harmful. As we move forward and embrace the innovation and the disruption that this technology occurs, many face it. Many lawmakers see this with great fear and therefore
respond in a fearful manner of just basically saying no and trying to stop any form of it. They ignored it for a number of years. Bitcoin was launched at the end of 2009, in 2010. They ignored the space. It boomed, obviously, in the last
24 months and then all of a sudden, every regulator in the country or in the world at the same time woke up and said, "Oh, this is a real thing. Maybe we should do something." Their first response always is shut it down. One of the things that we saw to
reference about the US here, the reference to banning certain portions of it. Even yesterday, I don't know if you guys saw Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase, this was reporting that the SEC is talking about banning, staking, and they love to say we're doing this to
protect the "retail investor". The whole idea around that is, especially in the US, obviously, is like the small investor, the individual investor, always trying to protect them. The reality is that they use that as a term to gain leverage
and sway public sentiment in order to pass draconian regulation. And that's really what is occurring today. There's just a lot of talk. There's a lot of scare tactics. I would even call it intimidation and bullying from some corners. And so I think that's
something that would scare me. Something I'm really excited about. I think the way Andrew real quick, real quick. I know I know that Brian asked you two really big questions, but there's so much that I want to dive into based on what you said. Number one is, I guess, you know, what a lot of people
I'm really excited to hear your opinion on this is when you have these industries throughout history, especially let's just stick with the United States because that's what I know. I don't want to speak out of my own jurisdiction. But you have, let's say, agriculture, big food, big
pharmaceutical, when they want to educate the politicians, they lobby. And I have not seen much in the way of lobbying on behalf of, you know, decentralization, Web 3, and that's obviously by definition
there's not going to be a centralized power that has budget and resources to lobby in that regard. But is this something that you have thought about discussed with Tron internally, tried to approach this in any manner whatsoever?
or at a very, very minimum, just thought about it. Yeah, I mean, so absolutely. The way to, you know, especially like what you're saying, I mean, I think the way to influence especially in the US, but this is true across, across, you know, every jurisdiction. I mean, humans are human
human. The way to effect change is through influence. We may call that influence lobbying here or maybe call something else somewhere out, but essentially you're trying to influence lawmakers to see your point of view.
And to affect effect change so that that is I would say that that is something that is growing That has that has pretty deep roots already in the US. There's a number of Pretty significant and well established trade groups already that did
The Chamber of Digital Commerce is one that's been established in the United States in D-Space and D-Season's 2014. Most recently, the Blockchain Association two years ago, the Crypto Council for Innovation. There are a number of large, now well-funded organizations working on behalf of
you know, DeFi, Web3, crypto in various ways and through various channels. Each of them have, you know, kind of their own perspective. And then there's a number of other shops, you know, coming along with that. Interesting. Joe, I actually had a conversation recently with
a member of the administration and he is primarily the author of the White House framework and just sort of off the coffee was talking to me just a little bit and just like everybody that I work with, all the smart people that I work with are getting picked up
off by either venture funds or somebody else, you know, A16Z's coming in and just offering these government officials just crazy money to come work for them. And so like every, it's really a harmful thing because so many of the really bright and
and helpful folks who are in regulators seats or in some way to influence government are getting picked off by all of the crypto companies as they all wake up and realize, oh wow, we're going to have to deal with the government. We need to better hire someone who knows how to do that. So I would counter a little bit what you said
in the sense that I do think there's a lot of activity happening around law being there's a number of great groups that I think are emerging and growing. And so, you know, I think from our perspective, it's like where is useful and effective energy already being exerted and how do we add our
resources and time and energy, how do we contribute to those things to make sure that we're also pushing in the right direction. There is also an example if I could of a decentralized effort. There is a group called the DeFi Education Fund, which is actually started by a DAO.
started and funded by Dow, part of Solana. They have as a group, you know, as the Dow essentially, the community voted to start a start and fund a think tank. And they have been very active on a number of really great fronts. They've hired, you know, obviously hired some staff, but even the work that they do goes
back to the Dow for approval and matters of the legislation that they're interested in or that they're lobbying on or fighting for would all come through that as well. So there's a number of really great examples, US-based that are occurring and I think effective.
Okay, that is great to know. I hadn't heard too much about that, so I'm sure that as time goes on, it's going to get a little bit more and more serious and more well-funded, especially as they start to crack down. But yeah, thank you for bringing that up. And then on to Brian's next question, what your
most excited about in bullish on based on policy. Yes, so I'm excited or I think like you're saying bullish on the countries that are united in the sense of like unified around a singular mission that is that is pro crypto and it's
It's not just the fact that they're pro-cryptile, but it's that they're willing to invest the effort and the resources necessary to be educated and informed and make competent decisions. Now, all of those decisions are going to look different no matter what jurisdiction you're in.
is going to make a decision that's very different than the US because we're different countries. We represent different things. We're trying to accomplish different things in the global global platform. And so, I don't think that it's just that all their pro cryptos, so I'm in favor of it. It's more the fact that they are willing to partner that you
You see a lot of private public partnerships. You see educators being heavily involved. One of the great examples of this and one of the countries that I think is leading the way in this regard is the UK. Through the law commission, which is a
and entity that is empowered by parliament to do research and to come back with findings. They were chartered and created by the English parliament led by Dr. Sarah Green. They issued, they did something which no one else has done yet, which is they studied
whether or not the classifications for digital assets and predominantly in law today there are three classifications whether or not these three classifications are adequate to cover what we now refer to as digital assets and their finding was it wasn't and they made a case for the
the expansion of a fourth asset class to be included and they wrote a 568 page paper. This paper, while largely academic and intellectual, has informed and has created essentially the foundation and basis of what the UK has just released in the last week.
And then the minister has come back with a statement basically saying, "Hey, here's our framework." Then we saw right after that the announcement from HM and the bank of England, the formation and the study now of the brick coin and trying to figure out how they might engage in that space. They're moving rapidly, they're moving their
government to a digital and even blockchain-powered effect. So I'm really excited when I see a country like that who's not just trying to grab a headline or trying to do something just for doing it, but that they have a real cohesive strategy.
interesting about the UK, if I can sort of opine in this for a second, is they've had some turmoil in their government with the changing of prime ministers very rapidly over the last several months. And there's been a lot of upheaval. And yet through that, their government has stayed unified and aligned on the idea that
the UK is working towards being the crypto hub for the world. So whether or not that's feasible for them or doable, besides the point, they're unified around it and they're doing it in the right way. They're working on being educated and informed and they're making what appeared to be
measured, reasonable proposals and are working through a process to enable them to do that. That stands in great contrast to the United States, if I could. We are obviously made up differently, and so the folks who are representing us are represented in a different way. There's a lot of
United States is detrimental to the formation, passing of any laws, which I guess on one hand is good. But on the other hand, as institutions, as banks are looking for regulatory clarity, I think we have reached a point where it's beginning to hinder the development and growth of the industry.
Okay, so there's a lot of different ways that we could, you know, that we could take this forward, but I guess I guess one one big question or let's let's take a couple steps back and you know from a really
high level, what is it about crypto that is so threatening to world government? And I know that's very obvious. It's very obvious to you who's been a part of this for
13 years, but to someone that is not really paying any attention and just kind of goes about their day, what is it that's about crypto that is so threatening to world government and fiat?
So if we can sort of step back right to a more of a perhaps philosophical perspective, I would have to say, you know, our current world
dynamic is established and functions around primarily around the transfer and protection of value. So our entire legal
and even world law, international finance law, the very fabric and foundation of our cultures and the idea that a country can be an independent nation state and they
They have their their rights is all is all based around if I could just like boil it way down It's all based around the transfer and protection of value and that is that is a fundamental Fact
And that is, you know, undergirding all that is upholding every government, every legal system, it's all established around that simple, very simple idea.
But what really what truly you know Bitcoin and DeFi truly represent not in not in the twisted form that that perhaps we see it as it's developing right not in like the the DeFi as a label but centralized in practice which we see in so many you know which is
So many practices, but rather like the true a true defy a true Bitcoin what that does is it creates a set of value that is transferable that is protectable outside of the current
infrastructure and the current framework that our societies, countries, cultures ultimately operate under. Right? Like today, the way that you transfer and protect value is by the laws that you have
The police state that enforces it, the army or the military that is built upon that, all of that is done to protect value. The transfer of value all happens, all has to happen through highly regulated
a very specific central banks and whether it's your local bank or whatever, right? But once you start operating in a way where peer to peer, I can transfer value between an individual, whether they're local or whether they're global.
That doing something that the government and that are the current legal US but global has us and through them. So DeFi and Coin and crypto really represent total
I'm not just a financial system, but it might be in the entire system that has been created. I think that's the dream of many, but the reality is that
That's really what it represents. Now, the work that we have to do is not to be an arco-capitalist and not necessarily to see ourselves in that way, but to say how then can we use the best from these things? We obviously live in
side of that culture. But that is, that to me is the threat. That's what they see. It doesn't have to be the future. But I think that that is the threat that governments, the banks see as a real threat of DeFi and Bitcoin, crypto generally.
- No, okay. You're most recent, what you'd said about 10, 15 seconds ago about, you know, kind of a total overhaul and power back into the peer to peer. - That's gonna be a pretty tough sell.
to the politicians when you say it like that. Obviously, I'm with you and that's why I'm here and that's why we're all a part of this. I do not at all want to get political, but I want to bring in in the analogy of the second amendment and the reason that the second amendment in the United
United States was established to basically keep power in your check. And so if you are entirely reliant on just one fiat currency and the government can print as much of it as possible, then the people have no say and their savings accounts can be wiped out like we maybe saw in Germany.
So that's a pretty good segue into, like you said Andrew, the bottom line here is they want to have their finger on every single aspect of value transfer.
and for them to operate and continue to operate they need to have tax revenue and that tax revenue has to be you know at least for now it is in their own native currency which is you know again sticking with the US it's the US dollar so I am
I would love to kind of dive in a little bit to to taxes and how What what you think that's going to look like as Time goes on because obviously, you know, let's say I right now I Somebody gifts me, you know
in Ethereum. I don't have to buy it on a centralized exchange, but I get an Ethereum. And then I go and I play DeFi games with it, and I turn that one Ethereum into 500. And then I say, "Well, I'd like to buy a house now." And so then when I bring that 500 Ethereum to a centralized exchange to trade it,
for US dollars before I can then buy a house because right now, you know, I can't really buy a house with Ethereum. What is the tax implication there? How does that work and how is that going to continue to work down the line? In your opinion, and where would you like to see it?
Yeah, well, this is a technical and I think complicated question to answer. Even it's so technical that the IRS has continued to punt. I don't know.
So, you know, if that's public knowledge or not, but, you know, even most recently they were scheduled to come out with guidance and said, oh, we're going to need more time on actually how we figure this out. So if the entity that's responsible for taxing and collecting taxes doesn't know how to
to do it. It's going to be an interesting conversation. Let me just say this, I think easily. It's a reality that each of us live within some sort of a jurisdiction. And if we
If we seek to enjoy the benefits of that said jurisdiction, then we're going to have to participate in the paying of taxes and the paying for that entity. That's a whole other discussion, and at some point we can talk about that.
saying that some of my libertarian blood boils just a little bit. But that's just the reality of which we are living in. And the beautiful thing in my mind is that today so much tax dollars are actually missed
Because we deal in in dollars, right? So like from the government's perspective here, there's so much that that is missed on cash to cash transfers now your example of Ethereum I'll get to but like just think about on the base level today the issuance of coins
cash by central bank, those things can trade to trade hands. They're obviously not trackable. There's an entire illicit, you know, economy that operates on the transfer of cash, you know, back and forth. So that is something that that I think is interesting because the while they try to
But while they're trying to fight and limit the adoption of crypto at the same time, they have for 100 years allowed this black market to exist. Someone comes in, does a service at my home, I pay them cash, they leave, right?
nothing that's reported, tracked, taxed. None of that is done. And despite the best efforts of, you know, you've got to report this report that we know it doesn't happen. In a space where digital currency and especially digital currency on the blockchain now becomes a
And obviously all of that is public. Every transfer now is public and immutable. So there's not even a there's no there's no way for you to even hide those things. Of course, there's, you know, we can talk about mechanisms for doing this and the, you know, identity issues like it opens up a whole nother
I'm not trying to get into that, just trying to answer your question. But I think that there's coming a moment or coming some time where the government regulators, government entities will, and I think this is what this is going to lead us into a conversation about CBDCs, but essentially they will
they will realize that crypto actually is of great benefit to them. And this is what I think is ironic about the space is that there is a case to be made that digital currency benefits the
ruling entities today more than it could benefit the citizenry. I do think that there's a debate to be had in a very esoteric sense around that. That's wild. But the governments
right are are going to ultimately issue CBDCs and those CBDCs will be tracked and what you'll end up doing is paying tax in real time. That's not my like it's not my dream it's not my hope it's just to be honest that does not at all sound like Andrew's dream
It's not my dream, but it's through. It's through. Yeah, yeah. Let's dive into that. What is first of all, what is a CBDC and how is that, you know, what is the evolution, you know, in the past, past few years, who's already exploring
that where some use cases, if you want to just dive in a little bit for the layman. Yeah, so CBDC is just very simply a central bank digital currency. It is the issuance of a national or a nation state backed currency on
blockchain rails is literally that. Most of those are on private blockchains. Some I know have been experimenting on some of the broader, more publicly adopted blockchains. This is not a country buying Bitcoin like we've seen in some of the Latin American countries. It's very different than that.
It's the exact same infrastructure that exists today, that issues Fiat, and instead of issuing Fiat, they're going to issue a digital currency. As I'm sure we're all aware, most of the currency that's issued today is already digital.
is really the adoption of moving this into the blockchain. So it's a federal government backed fiat currency. And the idea is that's kind of the ultimate stablecoin because it'd be a match one to one because they're the
serve and they're able to issue the money that they would be issuing anyways. Of course, there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there's there#
It's totally different. Now, there's a number of reasons why. One, USDC, A,
a singular when Jeremy sat down and with his developers created an issue in the first batch of USDC. Those coins were not worth a dollar.
There were nothing. The USTC is only worth what it is worth because what they then do is they go and they acquire dollars in the open market to match. So stablecoins today are one of three things. They're either crypto backed.
They're either fiat backed with actual assets or they're algorithmic. And so the idea here is that the USDC, their premise is that for every USDC that's issued, they have a matching one
dollar in reserve. And I think if you saw the most recent report and their partnership with BlackRock, it gives them access. They're using government bonds. They're using actual real dollars in a number of ways to try and build up the reserves necessary to be able to issue one to one.
The challenge for them is that it's very difficult because they have to go acquire that money before that digital currency translates into, you know, they obviously make money when it's transacted, but before they can even issue that money, they have to go and buy that money. It's a very expensive. Much less efficient.
It's much less efficient. The Federal Reserve, when the Federal Reserve decides, hey, we're going to issue a USD, right, a digital USD when they issue it, there is no resistance because they are already, they are the authors of it. They're able to issue it
immediately. Like you know, it literally. And so I mean, as we know today, right, there's there's a lot more complicated than the way that I'm explaining it. I hope you understand that. And for those listening who have, you know, a finance background, they may be laughing like, what is this guy?
talking about, but in essence, what I'm saying is accurate in that when the Federal Reserve's issues money today, they're able to essentially print. They're able to just issue it. And because they say it's worth a dollar, it's worth a dollar.
As we know, over the last three years, essentially, the US dollar has both lost and gained value based on the market dynamics and FX rates and things like that. But the difference between USDC and the Federal Reserve is very dramatic.
They're very they can very easily without any real friction decide to issue another million dollars you know another million Digital coins whereas USDC has to go acquire they have to go go go get a million dollars in order for them to issue it it's a it's a very
So it seems to me that one methodology is kind of taking dollars out of the system and the other one is kind of just printing dollars out of the scenario. It almost seems like the USDC is
is kind of like bearing dollars while CBDC is going to create more inflation. Yeah, I mean that's exactly, I mean that's the difference. So you know the technology, what is under, you know, lying
USDC if we step back from the asset portion of that, what's really powering USDC and other stable coins that are in the market today, of course, the technology is very similar to CBDC. It would be very, very similar. There'd be
additional implications thought, you know, different ways of perhaps solving some of the more minute problems, but theoretically that technology is exactly the same. And that's where the conversation between stablecoins and CBDCs gets misunderstood because they look and
function the same. The difference between those is what's backing it and where is it coming from. We expect to see some great action across the globe on stable coins. Most recently in the EU saw Micah, we were expecting a Micah 2, we expect Micah to be a
in full force. That is a full ban on algorithmic stablecoins. We expect every jurisdiction essentially to pass that any stablecoin has to have some sort of a one to one, some sort of a backing. I would just sort of anticipate that this is something
that's going to happen. The debate will be whether or not you can use crypto assets in that or if it has to be Fiat based, I think that's going to be the variation between countries, how they decide to regulate that. But then on the other side, every
major country today is experimenting with or developing a CBDC without exception. I think today there's over over 180 projects of countries working with their central bank testing and planning to roll out CBDCs. It's an inevitable
Okay, so now I'm not gonna try and sit here and say that this does not sound like Brave New World meets 1984 meets single galactic currency of the Rick and Morty Galactic Federation. However, just to make lemonade out of a situation
like this that is now seemingly inevitable, it would be pretty cool if we can go on, you know, for example, a website like EtherScan and actually see the emissions of a US dollar in real time instead of, you know, whatever the media tells us inflation is
is we can programmatically visualize that and all of it is totally public, you know, how many, you know, right now we kind of just rely on the Fed to tell us how much they're printing and what the buyback rate is and you know, they say that a lot of currency disappears into
cushions and all this stuff. So it would be really cool from an economic and visualization standpoint to have all of that stuff totally public and immutable. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to burst your bubbles too quickly.
Please do I I I don't think that's how this is gonna work. Um, oh no, so it's not gonna be public. It's still gonna be behind behind the curtains 100% I mean there's there's there's such a bummer. There's not a there's not a scenario
in which they launch the federal dollars on a public chain in which you could monitor the spending. Just think about this, like the congressman and they're buying and selling of stocks, right? Everybody knows about that and how it's so obvious that this is insider trade.
reading happens without really without any sort of retribution. And that's only by their own disclosure. That's only when they are disclosing things. So imagine if you would, somebody identifies the wallet of speaker
house and suddenly there are deposits being made into this wallet. Right? Like it's, you're just going to, it's going to create things, you know, issues. If there's, if the CIA is running up, you know, high security, you know, op,
and they're moving hundreds of thousands of dollars around the globe. And we know that this happens, obviously, but like they're not going to disclose it. It's all going to be done on a private chain. And that private chain is going to be held behind the wall. And while it will be
There will be a record of it somewhere. It's going to be a black box, dude. It's not going to be published. Andrew, it sounds like you're describing some of the stuff coming in ZK and some of the privacy layers that are coming. Yeah, I mean, right. I mean, ZK offers some inquiry.
incredible. I think it's a great innovation. I actually think there's already a couple of innovations, a couple of innovative steps even beyond ZK right now. I think ZK is, if I could say maybe already three to six months,
out of date and I think that there's already innovations that are on that. One of those that I think we are just beginning to see and are going to see more of is the introduction and commercial
use of AI into this space, especially around the writing of smart contracts and the application of roll ups. I just, there's a, I can't, we don't have time obviously to get into that today.
but there's a tremendous amount of innovation that's happening in real time around that. Tron just this week announced a $100 million fund to work on AI and blockchain really helping
to hopefully ignite that space. But I think that there's already iterations of ZK that are beyond. There are multiples of what we are seeing today in ZK.
Amazing. Amazing. Yeah, it's just moving super fast. Okay, let's get back to Tron for a second. Tron Dow. Your guys missions, like what's your goal? What's your guys' band-aid or objective? Yeah, I mean, our objective is to decentralize the world, right? So we want
We believe in the value of decentralization. We think that that is the ultimately the path forward. It's why I'm here. It's what I believe in. The ethos of those things resonate.
It is what is best for mankind. That is our objective and what we are trying to pursue after. Obviously, there's a lot of iterations to get to that. It's another thing to try and build a company that does that.
centralization of building a company and you know issuing coins and all of those things are all the challenges that we're trying trying to to navigate through. And so the Dow was created in order to help to steward that and to the Dow forward.
Those are the things that we're really passionate about. Like I just said, here we have a massive ecosystem of 100 million wallets created. We're transacting a tremendous amount of dollars, depending on what you look at, the tron chain holds, perhaps the third largest amount of total value.
It's a significant global chain that is being widely used and adopted by applications all over the world. And so we have a presence and we have an ecosystem that is touching on a lot of the things that we are talking about today, really exciting gaps being built.
on the chain. And so, you know, our job is really to continue to fight for the right regulatory and political environment in which these innovations can emerge and grow and flourish and, you know, bring the benefit that we believe that DeFi can bring.
I'm going to call coming in, unfortunately, I'm going to take Joe from here, Rebecca. Thank you, Andrew. It's great meeting you.
Thanks, Brian Awesome, and so yeah, I guess I guess in terms of you know kind of back to
back to the policy regulatory stuff, what else are you, what else is there? What are some other things that you're really thinking a lot about? What's keeping you up at night? - What's keeping me up at night? You know, I actually had a really great night's sleep.
I did sure. Yeah. No, I think that it's just, you know, it's that there's a constant battle that is necessary, that needs to occur, but it's just a battle of ideas.
at this stage of what is the right way, what is the best way to be able to put some of these protections and regulations, which are necessary in the society and governments in which we live, and also how do we do it in a way that
Like I said, Breeze life and innovation and allows for these things to grow on the floor. I think that's where the tension is right now. It's a classic debate. Benjamin Franklin famously said, "You've got to choose between liberty or security."
You know, you've got to have you know, there's like that constant tension in a in a in a democracy and government. So I think that is the the battle that is sort of happening and regulators and politicians are naturally going to be much more conservative around that and the citizens should be trying to fight for
and embrace the innovation. There's going to be a natural clash. I think we sit in a historic moment, the rapid rate of innovation. The world's knowledge is doubling now. I think the last time I read was almost every three months, something like that, three to six months.
The rate of the world's knowledge is rapidly growing. What does that mean exactly? Well, just think about like, so you just sort of like step back right like the collective knowledge of mankind. There's a metric that they use to trick
to trace that, to track that. And they basically can say, look, every, you know, it was like in the beginning, right? It's like every 100 years or every 200 years or something like there would be, there would be some sort of like rapid, you know, some sort of innovation, not rapid, but there would be some sort of innovation that would move the collective knowledge of mankind forward.
And then as, you know, let me just as an example like when, when telephones were first, you know, brought in and then suddenly you had this opportunity now, a line of communication to be able to transfer knowledge in a different way than that turned to, you know, the next thing and the next thing and suddenly now
We have AI and hyper connectivity. The world's knowledge collectively is doubling. I think the last stat that I saw was, I believe it was three months, but I'm just saying to cover myself, I think it was three to six months. The world's collective knowledge is doubling every three to six months now.
a better insanely rapid pace. And you layer on top of that, obviously, what's happening in the financial system, you layer that on top of that, what's happening in the, you know, with quantum computing, you layer on top of that, what's happening around space travel and space and just in every and every
every possible way, innovation and new knowledge is disrupting all that has been established for a long time. And you're seeing that all diverging and collapse kind of like in these kind of windows of time now. It seems like it's all happening right now because
because human knowledge is evolving at a rate where it's going to happen now this quickly. So, okay, that begs the question, and it might be a little bit of a philosophical question, but when GPT meets quantum computing, is that human knowledge
I mean, you know what I mean? Like I know, dude, 100 years ago, like obviously that was human knowledge that was, you know, we're writing down stuff in books and we're no longer the ones that are writing stuff down in books.
Is it still human knowledge? It's you know, that's a question that's beyond me. You're gonna have to uh, you're gonna have to get another guess on your Twitter page. Oh, there's no wrong answer. That's like a way you think, you know, I respect
You're the way your brain works. So I'm curious how you how you would break that down. Well, it's always going to be it's always going to be human because at the end day, the power to the of
creation lies within man. Nothing that the computer could do, nothing that even on a quantum level or even on an artificial intelligence basis, nothing that it's doing today
is it capable of doing without first, you know, man's brain envisioning, napping out and building the framework in which that could exist. Meaning the AI didn't create itself. It was created.
So at its very genesis, it has a root in some base level of creation. Now could that intelligence begin to continue to develop and form into such a way that it could start to reproduce itself like, yes, of course.
But still in its genesis it still comes back to Man ultimately someone's brain envisioned this and helped to create it Sounds like we got a lot to look forward to in these coming decades Yeah, some some some some depends on your perspective right some people are like this is terrifying
and I'm just totally like not on board for this and you know the sales of like cabins in the woods of Montana are you know going through the goons of the roof and others are like I'm totally on board and excited to see where you know this all leads but yeah so man what if
What a great conversation, Joe. I really appreciate the opportunity to kind of spin on some of these things. Yeah, likewise. Seriously, this is great. And then, you know, a lot of it's like, when you have someone as interesting as you, you know, when we first had a conversation a couple of weeks back, I was like, well, you know,
There's no agenda here. I don't want to have any sort of agenda. So I'm really glad we just kind of go right in and we covered all sorts of different topics in that hour, flu, right by. But if you don't have anything else that you'd like to add, Rebecca, if you don't have any questions, I think there's a great place to stop.
Right on man, I really appreciate it's great time and happy to jump on. I bet you jump on anytime. So, Andrew, yeah, I don't have any questions. I was just soaking full of information in. Thank you so much for coming on board. I'm really looking forward to more AMAs.
Maybe we can invite more people from different ecosystems and all brainstorming, ideate how it will look like in the future soon. But thank you so much. And I think we can wrap up unless someone wants to ask a question from their audience.
All right beautiful right on thank you guys Let's stop it there. Yeah, thanks everybody. Good morning guys. Bye bye