We're going to get started here in just a couple minutes once we get a couple more panelists
up here, but I appreciate everybody for showing up today.
It should be a good conversation on a pretty big event that we have coming up.
We'll go ahead and get this kicked off.
Welcome back to another Hedera Ecosystem Xspace brought to you by the HBAR Foundation.
I'm Brandon, and I'll be your host.
This week, we're going to be focusing on an event that Hedera will have a pretty big presence
at this year, and we had a pretty big presence last year as well.
That's the World Economic Forum Economic Summit in Davos.
On the panel, we are joined by the CMO from Swirls Labs, Christian Hasker, and soon we should
have the VP of Communications, Zenobia Gazchak, as well as a community member and builder who
attended last year and is planning on going again this year, Max Walker-Williams.
That's a huge commitment for anybody that doesn't know to actually go to these events.
So we appreciate him putting the effort in to do that.
Christian and Zenobia are going to be on for the first half of the hour, so we're going to
We may also get Wes Geisenberger from the HBAR Foundation Sustainable Impact Fund for the
We are not sure because he's actually on a meeting right now with one of the Hedera Governing
Council members, and he's not sure if that meeting's going to run over.
But if it doesn't run over too far, we should be able to get him on.
He's going to be attending at Davos as well for some of his initiatives.
But first off, hold on one second.
Let me get Christian to come back up.
It looks like we have pretty much everybody, so I'm going to bring everybody up as speakers.
I want to offer a warm welcome to Christian, Max, and Zenobia to get this started.
Christian, first, I want to make sure that you can hear me.
I don't know what was happening at the beginning.
It was glitching out, but now I can hear you, and hopefully you can hear me.
Oh, yeah, loud and clear.
We always have some kind of a technical issue, so we're glad we got that figured out.
But Christian, to start off, can you just explain what the summit at Davos is just in general?
So Davos is a small town up in the Alps in Switzerland, about a couple of hours from Zurich.
And for many, many, many years, it has hosted the World Economic Forum.
And over the years, I guess Davos has really become two sort of intermingled and mutually dependent events.
There's the World Economic Forum, which is five days of meetings.
You know, world leaders get together.
They have, you know, real topics of pressing interest in the world.
And then they have breakouts.
And that's the World Economic Forum.
And then there also is this other event, which is Davos.
And that is where a lot of companies from around the world, governments from around the world, come and they have opportunities to interact with them.
And I know we're going to talk a little bit later about what the presence looks like, you know, why we're doing this, et cetera, et cetera.
But, you know, generally, Davos, by participating in Davos, you really are getting access to the types of business leaders and policymakers that otherwise would be very difficult to get in front of.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
And I do want to dive into some additional things around that, specifically around Hedera.
But we do have Zenobia and Max up here already.
We haven't talked in a little while.
But at least we aren't having any technical issues.
And Max, how can you hear me?
Yeah, I can hear you great, buddy.
Well, we'll continue on with this space then.
And, Christian, I am going to go back to you.
So how did and why did Hedera get involved with this event?
You touched a little bit on it because of the access.
But, you know, how did that process happen?
Why are we making such a big commitment here?
So from the inception of Hedera, you know, when Manson Lehman founded Hedera, and even
prior, they were really thinking about what it will take for a distributed ledger to go
mainstream and be widely adopted by everyone, including large enterprises and governments.
So as most people here know, but for new people, you know, Hedera is really architected from the ground
up to meet the scalability performance needs of widespread adoption while not sacrificing security.
And then also, as most people here know, but maybe for new people, another thing that makes Hedera different
different is its governance model.
So it is governed by large global organizations who steward the network.
They make decisions around the roadmap, they engage in a lot of committees to plan
and provide direction for the overall network itself, and they also are responsible for managing the treasury.
Davos is where these companies are.
So if you're going to position yourself as the answer for enterprises and governments, there are really two ways to go about it.
One is to try to attract those individual companies, you know, do a lot of outreach one by one, get in front of middle management, try to work your way up or or and you can go to where these business leaders are and policymakers are and get in front of them and then try to meet them in their own ground at their own level and work that way.
So that is the bet we're making at Davos and it's, you know, it is a large investment both of funds and then also of time and so we want to make sure that we're really maximizing that investment as best we can.
And so there's going to be a sole focus this year really on building out the pipeline of all of these business leaders and policymakers
Sounds like a good strategy.
Now, Zenobia, I want to go to you.
Last year, Hedera had a space dubbed the Hedera House on the Davos Promenade.
What will the presence look like this year for Hedera?
Yeah, so it's a little bit different.
I think last year we learned some good lessons.
We met a lot of good people.
There was a ton of content, but we also discovered that given how much noise and how many other things are happening at Davos,
we really have to have some big sparklers in terms of events that pull people in, right?
We all know and love our community projects.
We all want to tell those stories.
But when you are competing with some big names, you really want to sort of, you know, stand among the giants, right?
So this year we are doing a much more targeted presence.
We are going to have a series of curated events.
We have speakers that have been procured through members of the community and ecosystem,
including former astronauts, the former CFO from Diane von Furstenberg, folks from Coinbase,
people who will really bring in an audience that is new to Hedera and not, hey, let us tell you, you know,
just let us give you the hard sales pitch, but let us tell you about the key themes and topics where Hedera can make a difference
and then almost more lead that horse to water.
So those are a series of C-level events where we have invited CFOs, CIOs, people who are, you know,
really holding purse strings for a lot of dollars to change their mind about how they think about things like tokenization,
how they think about things like how can CFOs get comfortable with digital assets and managing distributed applications,
which require them to use digital assets.
And so those are our pieces of content.
We will, similar to last year, also have a number of folks who are speaking outside.
So Lehman, for example, is doing one of our events, but he has also been asked to speak on a number of other panels
all around sort of this topic of blockchain and AI.
And then we will be hosting a meeting space.
I know Max was sort of squished in with many of us, like sardines, into one tiny meeting space last year.
We learned that those one-on-one conversations are really important and so should be given the space and the allocation that they deserve.
And we will be, it wouldn't be Davos without some celebration.
We will also be hosting people at the Belvedere Bar throughout the course of the week.
And so that is just kind of feeding people, giving them a little sustenance.
Food is a bit hard to come by at the event.
So giving them a reason to stop in and have some more casual conversations with everyone who will be there.
Now, Zenobia, when it comes to discussing Hedera, there's probably not too many people that are better than you and Christian and Lehman and Wes that I mentioned before.
But I think some of the governing council members might do a pretty darn good job themselves.
I know that the Dell paper that came out was pretty much talking directly to potential council members and potential users of Hedera.
Are we going to have any presence from the governing council when it comes to Hedera at Davos this year?
So on the panels, the first panel on tokenization is going to be moderated by Scott Teal from DLA Piper and Toco.
And the last panel on AI is going to be moderated by Monique Morrow, who is another board member.
She is an independent director at Hedera.
Monique has a lot of ties with the telco industry and has been instrumental in some of our work with that consortia.
So those two, as well as others who have just told us that they will be in attendance.
So folks from ServiceNow and IBM and Atma, some of these companies have their own presence.
So they will be, you know, kind of balancing their dual roles there and, you know, and obviously have flagged to us, hey, we want to participate.
We want to, you know, talk to whoever you would like to put us in front of.
And I think to your point about the Dell paper, those are really some of our best spokespeople to talk about why you should join the council, why, you know, it's important to have kind of a voice within a ledger that you are building on top of.
And I think that paper was a great example of here's all the things that we had to go through to get people comfortable with our role in, you know, in doing this.
Absolutely. Now, I know, as I mentioned at the half hour, you guys might have to leave us.
So I do want to open up if anybody has any questions for Zenobia and Christian.
Now is going to be the time you can request to be a speaker and I'll be sure to bring you up and we'll try to get you in.
But Zenobia, you talked about some of the panels and the focus on there.
What are some of the themes that are going to be focused on?
I know tokenization is a big one.
I know that regenerative finance is a big one.
Are those the themes that you're looking at?
Are there others and, you know, how are we going about talking about those things?
Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the overall themes of Davos is rebuilding trust, right?
There is Edelman, which is a big PR and comms firm, puts out something called a trust barometer every year.
And if you look just overall, people's trust in institutions, in others, in what they read online is at an all time low.
So all of our panels, you know, do tie back to this theme of rebuilding trust.
And, you know, I don't know how many of you remember this, but the original, you know, one of the original things that Lehman talked about was this trust layer of the Internet.
We have, you know, we've shifted a little bit away from that, right, because it's not just this singular trust layer of the Internet that Hedera can serve as.
It can serve as a trust layer for AI, which touches, you know, real world.
It touches all kinds of things.
It can serve as a trust layer for finance and banking, which has gone through its own sets of challenges this year, as we've seen some institutions, you know, that we thought were very trustworthy, have some, you know, role in a smaller financial crisis earlier this year.
It can serve as the trust layer for ownership of assets and proof of provenance as we see it being used for tokenization by everyone from companies that are producing consumer goods to people who are trying to demonstrate what's going on in space, where most of us won't get to actually see that with our own eyeballs.
So that theme of rebuilding trust is really one that runs through all of our content.
And I think, you know, that that's convenient for us, but it's the theme for Davos, but it has been the theme for Hedera since day one.
And speaking of trust, I mentioned regenerative finance.
We're talking about carbon markets.
I know that Microsoft, of course, one of the Fortune 10, wanted to make a move into the carbon markets to offset their carbon.
But the main reason they found that they couldn't participate on the level they wanted to was the lack of trust in that market.
And that's what we're focusing on, right?
Yeah, I mean, that's one of the great examples, right?
So you don't, when we talk moving away from just being the trust layer of the Internet, it is really the trust layer of all these systems, right?
For these marketplaces, can you prove that, you know, what the person delivering the credits, you know, is doing has been done?
Can you prove that nobody else is sort of, you know, double spending, right?
That's the exact problem that a ledger was designed for, is to show, hey, I'm not buying the same thing that somebody else has bought and just patting myself on the back without actually making a difference.
And we do have a community member.
Hopefully they have a question or comment here.
Celestial, beating the floor is yours.
Just a quick comment for Max and Christian.
Will we have a part two to the Davos in review?
Because you guys had a nice drive back conversation last year.
So I'm wondering if you guys are going to be doing something similar to that.
I think we're going to have ample opportunity for chats, but I don't think we're going to have the opportunity to spend a car ride together.
um max uh did not uh want to drive me all the way um from san francisco so i'm flying and then
uh i'll be training up the mountain and uh max i think you're flying this year right you're not
coming you're not carring all the way from the uk um and then i'm not sure how you're getting
up the mountain because parking in davos was not great well i was going to pick you up from
california but helicopters are too loud to have a proper chat it's just i've tried even with my
voice it's not possible um and so yeah we're gonna i'm gonna fly in this time because i don't
really want we've done driving so and i was thinking how else can i get to davos i don't know
how to ride a horse and it would take ages and i'd get killed on a motorbike and i'm too young and
good looking to die so um yeah i thought i'd just fly so i just thought i'd let the community decide
whether i go at all or not and um i'm really really um appreciative of the fact that the vast
majority said yeah i should go to davos so so i'm going again but i'm sure we'll get plenty of time
christian and i to chat we were talking about maybe doing some roundup videos for the community at the
end of each day just to talk about you know kind of what what we've seen what we've been doing and
how things are going so that'll be good i'm really looking forward to that under promise over
deliver max now you've put us on the hook for that well that's because i want you to buy me a
drink every night well yeah i think you're going to get into programming maybe but we do have a night
cap at the bar every evening from uh 10 to midnight so that'll be a good opportunity to chat
and sort of reflect on the day and there's also an opportunity for me to try and get you drunk and
get loads of information out of you all right i am i'm trying to bring up dumb kid don't let the name
fool you we've been getting a lot of questions for him for shark bites to rob allen and they've had
some really good questions it looks like he's having some trouble connecting uh hopefully we'll
be able to get him on before too long just to give you a heads up dumb kid uh you do have to join
with mobile if if you don't have that it also can be an issue with um making sure your x app is all
the way updated but while we're trying to get him up here christian there were demonstrations of
hedera use cases last year including one for at mayo can we expect any of the applications built on
hedera to be highlighted in a similar way not in a similar way so the you know what we're sort of
sacrificing by having our own dedicated space for more of this focus on networking opportunities
is um uh the programming that we had with the demo areas and being able to really showcase those
applications it's just not conducive to that in the space that we're in at the belvedere hotel
but what we do have are prominent monitors both around the bar and then lining the hallway
and we will be playing our uh with claudia we've been working on an updated uh use case loop video
where um by theme because we now have so many use cases which is amazing um but we're going to uh
tailor it by theme so there's you know all the applications around real world and virtual asset
tokenization there are the sustainability applications and there are the consumer engagement and loyalty
applications and then the data integrity um applications as well of course some applications
span multiple use cases and may appear in multiple videos but the idea is to loop these across those
screens throughout the week and provide a lot of exposure um to the uh attendees around what is being built
on hedera because the best way to tell the hedera story is through the application ecosystem that has
emerged on top of hedera so um we're very committed to doing that
uh so you know i normally talk to the retail community and the the examples i usually use
are things like galaxy and of course twigital and um and karate combat is some of the first things that
come to mind when i'm talking to retail users um but when you're talking to those c-suite executives
what are the first things that you use as examples christian uh to convey the power of the hedera network
uh so the great thing is now you can very quickly um find the you know enterprises now know what blockchain
is they know maybe how their companies at a high level could benefit from um distributed ledger technology
so depending on who you talk to you're able to really tailor uh what you talk about to the areas of
interest so any financial company um we engage with we talk a lot about um the momentum
around real world asset tokenization being able to have that proof point from um aberdeen
and then also from dla piper toko is great from like an enterprise standpoint but then you very quickly
get into uh talking about being able to tokenize anything and there there are a lot of applications
you name two twigital and um you know galaxy that allow you to tokenize with galaxy that's a really good
example of uh consumer engagement and loyalty you know some of the things they're doing there are
incredibly innovative and that's where we start to talk about um some of the momentum we see in the
nft community around hedera uh for sustainability there's a whole growing ecosystem now you know having
just been uh at cop last month and and seeing that ecosystem in uh action it's it's impressive so
with an enterprise we do find sustainability as a common threat everyone has some sort of goal to
either reduce emissions or be able to offset those emissions um so that's a fairly easy
conversation to have and then to xenobia's point about really being this trust layer
and this is where we see the narrative around the convergence of uh blockchain and distributed ledger
technology to govern ai ai has caught the consciousness so much over the last nine months
and is really one of those trends that is top of mind for business leaders and policy makers and you
know at hedera we believe that we have a really good um approach to having the underlying infrastructure
for folks to be able to govern you know these types of systems and we're starting to see some proof
points of those pop up in the community as well which is which is fantastic so you know over the last
three or four years we've seen the explosion of the hedera ecosystem and we do position those applications
when appropriate with our with our audience well covered and celestial being you have another
question or comment yeah um i don't know if you guys um or brandon if you had the question lined up
but um i don't know if xenobia or christian want to kind of go over some of the speakers and moderators
outside of the ones that we already know that i think there's a big lineup that you guys have that
are coming to have some discussion uh xenobia covered a little bit of that but xenobia why didn't i
just sort of hand it back to you and maybe um you can flesh out the sort of flow of how we see some
of these private events going yeah and um i will also share that those folks um i'm trying to pull up
them now but i believe it's hedera.com davos 2024 um you will see all of the folks who are speaking as
well as their bios on there um but just really quick to capture it on um tuesday which is our
first day of real programming um we have something called tokenizing everything from the clothes on
your back to your ticket to space and that is the one that's hosted by scott teal we have shelly brunswick
who was uh previously in the air force and is the ceo and founder at something called sb global who has
had an amazing career within space exploration we have sandra campos who is formerly the ceo of diane
von furstenberg for those uh who do not know and collect her iconic wrap dresses she that is a major
fashion label she's also a board member at two companies big lots and pet med and then we have another
space uh we have we have a lot of women from space which i um by the way i am also very proud that we
have some very balanced panels here uh christina corp who is ceo at a company called space for a better
world uh she is also uh for 10 years she managed buzz aldrin and all of his foundations and nicole
stott who is an astronaut and runs something called the space for art foundation um so as you
can see the the theme of tokenizing everything from the clothes on your back to your ticket to space
there's going to be a pretty wide-ranging conversation about what tokenization can do
and how it can benefit a lot of different industries the second one is a launch that is
really focused on cfos and i think you know as christian mentioned c level can sound sort of
like yeah they're all the same but if you think about what are the priorities of a cfo versus a uh
chief marketing officer who's trying to you know drive leads and awareness um these are very very
different audiences so this second one is hosted by uh betta bay botaitis who is hedera's cfo
and lara abrash who is the chair for deloitte us which is one of the largest pro-serve organizations
in the world and i think has about 170 000 employees i will be on that franz bergmuller who is the ceo at
amina bank um in uh in switzerland alessia haas who's the cfo at coinbase and sandra roe who's the ceo
of the global blockchain business council so for them it is really a discussion of you know how can
financial professionals think about okay not just you know am i a blocker to people holding digital
assets but how can they think about finance as a profession really developing by embracing these
things like accountability and transparency and finance leveraging dlt and then the last lunch on
thursday is the one that uh lehman is speaking on using blockchain to govern innovation from ai to the
future of money so the theme here is that again we have this you know we have changing landscapes we
have the requirement to really build trust and to kind of govern um how that looks going forward
we'll have gravinder alhuwalia who was the former head of ibm based in the us and now is ceo of digital
twin labs jonathan doton who many of you know who is out of usc show a foundation and stanford running
starling labs and he also has a new initiative called equity lab which is focused on responsible
ai and how you can leverage uh cryptography for that and david schreier who is a professor
at imperial college focused on both blockchain and ai and that one is hosted by monique morrow who is our
board member this endopia that is a heck of a lineup i know you guys do need to jump off but christian i
wanted to give you the opportunity if you wanted any final words uh to be able to pass on to the
community um yes and i know max is going to talk a little bit about this as well and um it's so
awesome that max is coming because he will really represent the community well uh be reporting live from
the grand but um we sort of stumbled into last year um this ability by the hedera
community to really amplify the presence that we had on the ground in davos and that was fantastic
because depending on the day uh we were in the top 10 to uh 50 of the highest engaged um uh twitter
communities i guess now x communities um across the davos week so amplify what you see out there you
know tag hedera use the davos 24 uh hashtag and um you know that's really how you can help our overall
uh presence and you know max is going to do the best job he can bringing a flavor of davos online to the
community no it's a good call to action to make sure everybody engages as much as possible because
it really did kick up the awareness around hedera last year but christian we really appreciate you
taking some time and and uh telling us about your trip to davos coming up yeah thank you so much and
happy new year everyone happy new year all right so we're going to move on to max here so max you
attended davos last year as we mentioned can you tell us what that experience was like and just
overall um yeah i can it so i know that it splits the community a little bit because there are people
that believe that um davos is a it's too powerful it's it's a bad place but i think it's it's what you
make of it and it's who you are going in you know so um and and there is it's the center of the earth
for a week and to kind of put that into context if you imagine the 500 largest companies in the world
298 of their ceos were in davos for the week so it's basically a shortcut so if you if you're a
good person you've got a good use case you're a good company and you want to work with whoever it
might be google or a huge bank or whatever i know from experience that you might spend no matter who you
are you might spend a month six months a year a couple of years trying to make roads into that
company and kind of work your way through the nets that are there to kind of catch people and stop
them getting access to whoever you need to speak to um you know pas receptionists and then you finally
make progress and the person that you're making really good progress with representing your company
moves on to a different department or leaves the company or whatever and you've got to almost start all
over again it's really really time and energy sucking and and um expensive to do um and but in
davos if you get into the right rooms you're literally having a conversation with the people
in charge of some of the largest if not the largest companies in the world people like the gc members
you can have a one-on-one conversation and if you present yourself properly whether you're myself
personally or you know small or hedera or whoever it may be if you present yourself in the correct way to
the right person you can honestly shortcut years months and maybe even years of work by just getting
a yes or a handshake with the right person and that's what makes davos so unique um because it is
a nightmare to get to it's expensive as hell it's hard work but i can't remember which ceo said it but it's
one of the big ones and he said that he gets more done in the week of davos than he does of six months of
real world so that's what it is it's a shortcut that's basically what davos is
and how was the hedera presence last year at the hedera house i know you spent pretty much all your
time there um how was it there compared to other things you might have seen there on the promenade
um yes i i did spend a lot of time there but i did also wander around and have a look to see what
the competition in diverto commerce was was was doing and and i have to say it was it seemed like and of
course it did because it this is the whole point hedera has always been which is why it struggled
particularly in the early days to be kind of understood and accepted by the wider crypto
community because most of the crypto community um were rebels you know outsiders um occupy wall
street you know hippies and that sort of thing so hedera has always been the grown-up in the room
and davos is is for grown-ups uh in every sense and so hadir hadira found its natural home and it was
just it was so exciting to see people walking off the street from all different backgrounds all
different walks of life and you cannot you should never judge a book by its current uh cover but you
should definitely don't do that in davos because i remember a lady walked in and everybody was busy
and so i'm stood there in the middle of the in the middle of the show she comes over to me
who says hi you know i'm from and then it's one of the largest companies in europe um she says i'm
looking to speak to somebody about what what you guys do and i said okay um yeah well you know she
was like what is this what are you selling and i explained you know hedera with dlt etc blah blah
blah blah started talking and then she started asking me like um how hedera might apply to her
business now how it might help her her business um and and when we got to that stage of conversation
i'd say look look you know i'm not actually from hedera but you know i'm a fan of hedera etc but
let me introduce you to somebody i'll go find somebody that can can have a serious conversation
with you in a private room or whatever and the lady was the second in command of this company
and they sell 140 000 items a day in europe and she just walked in off the street now if i said if i
tasked you uh brandon to to make contact with that lady and pitch hedera to her even as good as you are
it would take you six months if you ever get hold of her at all and here she is walking in off the
street inquiring about hedera and those are the kind of opportunities that you just simply don't
get anywhere else in the world um and it and it's the same for anyone if you if you you know i was in
the back room and well i am walked in i was just like you know hi guys yeah i i you know what's this
about i love tech i've heard you guys are you know a really superior tech you know can we talk
and there i am stood there having a chat with about hedera hashcraft with will i am
so to that kind of it's very hard to get into uh both in terms of cost the cost barrier and and um
the security and all that kind of thing they do background checks and all that stuff but once you
get into that it's a safe space for grown-ups to have adult conversations about real world solutions
and and that's what's very very cool about about davos actually it's not hypothetical max i've been
trying to to get like kathy wood and and other big financial inter uh um influencers to realize the
power of hedera um for years and yes it can take a very long time to get those conversations started
but for you personally max what what are your goals while you're there in davos as you mentioned this is
a huge commitment uh to make a trip to davos at this time of the year it's it's crazy expensive
um it takes a lot it's a time sink as you mentioned so what are you trying to get out of this trip um
that's a really good question and i've been asked that a few times by friends and stuff on a personal
level and it's gonna sound nuts but the honest answer is i don't really have one there is no like a
personal agenda i just i'm super interested in business obviously and this is like the mecca for
business if you like and i i love the community i really do everything i do i don't charge any money
for anything that i do and never would because it's not about that for me i'm impartial from hedera i know
i'm i'm a big fan of hedera but i'm a big fan a lot of a lot of things but i i am impartial and so
i think that i'm i like to think i hope they agree that i'm trusted by the community to go there and
show them what's going on as a kind of representative for the community and i can
help bridge the gap between um you know the commercial and and business world and then
us the lay the lay people that are investors and and sponsors and uh and builders in the space um
and rightly or wrongly i seem to be taken quite seriously in in places like davos and the community
trusts me to tell them what's going on and i and good and bad you know if i felt uncomfortable
something i'd report i'd say so so i think i'm trusted to do it so there's nothing really in
it personally for me other than you know maybe grow my following but there are certainly cheaper ways to
do that so i think it's just i enjoy it and i and i'm in a very fortunate position that i can afford to
go um you know both in terms of physically paying the money to get there but also the time that it takes
to do so and then the week there i can take that time and it's how i want to spend my time i enjoy it
it's my hobby so um yeah i think that's it really yeah no makes perfect sense i do want to invite if
anybody wants to come up and ask a question or make a comment you're more than welcome to come
on up um another thing i want to touch on you know we talked about you know the stigma that can be
around it because i mean whenever you get that many powerful people that many privileged people
in one spot you get um some of those thoughts but what would your thought be on that max you know
how does it compare to what you might expect at an event like that compared to what the actual
experience is like well this is that's quite quite quite a good point in terms of this year versus
last year because last year so it's important to understand that hedera have really gone quite big
um this year so it must have been i don't know what their metrics are but it must have been a big
success last year the reason i know that is because this year is going to be a bit different you know
because last year we were on the main strip outside of the security zone so if you can imagine
there's a small village uh which is what davos is it's only like five main streets it's tiny um
and there is the conference center which is like the the hottest part of the sun if you like and then
outside of that which is tiny it's like smaller than the nec in the uk or a decent sized stadium in america
um and then outside of that there is there are a few hotels a few restaurants and that sort of
thing um and then there's literally a security perimeter all the way around that area so you've
got like the center center pinpoint of the earth then you've got a few streets maybe one street
outside of that and you cannot physically get in there even if you're in davos you cannot get in
there without a security pass and you can't get a security pass without first giving your credentials
and and the guys and girls that are stopping people going in and out because i love blagging
my way into all sorts that they're not joking they take it incredibly seriously and it's we're talking
mi5 mi6 cia the full thing so it's not a joke and you cannot get in there and the reason you can't get
in there is because of so many of the people that run the world effectively are there um and hedera was
very close to that and it was on the best bit in my opinion of outside of that but this year they're
actually inside that bit and i'm fortunate enough to get one of the security passes that means that
i can go into the bit that i wasn't in last time and so it's going to be really good to see the
difference um because although there are many powerful people walking around outside the center
there are even more inside um so for example bill gates i saw bill gates um and he he came out for
a minute or two and then was but spent the rest of the time inside the the security bit the entire
time he's inside the security bit so if you want to speak to him you've got to be inside there
but the good news is if you're inside there everybody has their guard down because if you're
inside they know what you've had to go through in order to get in so that so they're they're not
concerned about or not worried about getting a pie in their face or or anything like that
so then everyone's far more approachable which is which is obviously a great plus for hedera
um but hedera have gone all out this year and i'm going to be hopefully having a catch-up with the
hedera team and the sports team and christian and stuff and i'll share that with the community about
their plans for this year ahead of time um we'll probably do a screen record and we can show some
maps and some plans and that sort of thing what they've got coming up so that'll be really exciting
if i can get them to do that with me um but in terms of the evil thing i just think that there are
undoubtedly some bad people in davos but if you go to a shopping center there will undoubtedly be some
bad people in the shopping center you know there'll be people there who are there to steal or or
whatever so i just think it's a group of people and there is a lot of power in one place and
people seem to find that intimidating or scary or whatever but there are good people that are poor
and bad people that are poor and there are good people that are rich and powerful and bad people
are rich and powerful so it's just people it's just a group of people so i think it's really unfair
some of the stigma that people try to apply to davos by saying you know the whole thing's a power thing
and they're trying to dominate the world and enslave everyone it's just nonsense that's not to say
there aren't you know people who are putting business before people of course there are but
there are people putting themselves before other things that they probably shouldn't at every level
in society so i think it's just a group of people some will be good some will be bad some will be
indifferent but you know that's all it is it's just a group of powerful people
sure understandable and uh we do have wes he is the head of the sustainable impact fund
he's going to be going to davos for the hbar foundation now he has already given us a warning
that hold on one second here he has given us a warning that his connection's not great so we're
going to give it a shot anyway but wes welcome can you hear me yep i can hear you brandon and
thanks for having me can you hear me okay yeah you're actually loud and clear so you're heading to
davos you are probably the premier expert on refi regenerative finance within the hedera ecosystem
what are your goals as you head off to davos i think with davos there's a large contention of
people who who do sit in positions of power to change how the world works a lot of times they're
heads of companies sometimes they're heads of states or ministers um and our goal is part of the hedera
ecosystem is to interact with folks who can make some of those changes and are interested in making those
changes in a positive way some companies are looking to decarbonize or even just better report
on how they're investing money in climate projects within their organizations you look at large
companies even on the governing council have made announcements recently around decarbonization like
electricity to funds and you say well how do i interact with those folks or folks like them who
want to make those changes and are looking at ways that they can invest in innovative technology or just
become aware of innovative technology that can help their organization and oftentimes at davos you're
not really pitching folks they're they're just becoming aware of who you are and how you can work
together and um understanding that there's like-minded folks that they can partner with and not everyone
you meet will be that way but oftentimes you find a few really good connections that you find synergies
that you can work on from year to year and so from my perspective there's a lot we can do in emissions
tracking esg reporting where there's regulations that have come into play whether they're regulations in
california um whether the regulations um like tcfd in europe which went into effect on the first
uh this year that folks have to have to comply with those regulations whether you think esg investing is
good or bad that's one thing but the the regulations and compliance to operate in markets especially
global markets whether europe or california being the fifth largest economy if you want to work as a
global business in those areas you have to comply with some of those some of the standards that exist
and so providing a credible application to make it easier faster more efficient less resource intensive
to comply with those regulations that's something that we're really interested in providing open
source software where folks can build or adopt applications that already exist to answer some
of the key questions in the market that they're going to have to answer businesses anyway so those are
the things that we're excited about of course also investing in things like offsets investing and working
in our marketplaces or creating things like green bonds are always important but those are those go hand
in hand with oftentimes the reporting
we were doing really well until the last five seconds west you were breaking up a little bit at
the very end but maybe we can get a few more things i do want to ask so you talked about those that
there's networking things that these opportunities that you have can you give us any examples of some
fruitful conversations you had last year that then throughout the past year uh has has borne fruit has uh
been beneficial for your efforts at the sustainable impact fund well i don't want to speak to any uh
just in the interest of like privacy elements about one specific conversation and some of those
conversations are bearing fruit that we can't yet talk fully about but i will say a lot of the names
that you hear in the ecosystem either have come to davos last year or drawn outcomes so for example
alcott joined us at davos last year um which was well before any any um partnership announcement and
they they had got um in a way that maybe they couldn't uh they hadn't before um and i'll give
that as a good example and you know of course the team at alcott will be joining us uh this year as well
and you know uh there's gonna be a lot of other folks
who are in this and who will be interacting with those events whether it's in networking or speaking
and um those are different types of partnerships that they grow event to event year over year and
there's many similar partnerships to that that we're working on in ways where we can drive sustainable
outcomes outcomes that really affect both climate finance but also communities around the world
in a positive way you know i think that there's like-minded individuals who want to see
credible climate assets created communities positively impacted where financial flows go back to those
communities and davos is a good convening event where folks came together you know further build those
relationships where you build trust um and find organizations that you can work together with to
achieve some of the common outcomes that folks want
i think that's a perfect example now i do want to go to shannon what's that i was just asking if you heard
me heard me on that one they go but go ahead i think we're pivoting system yeah no we got we got 98 of
it it was it was fine and and you're very clear so so it's all good i do want to go to a community
question or comment here shannon uh you can have the floor here but wes after that i'm going to go back
to you uh because i'm curious about i asked christian you know what are the examples he uses to show
hedera's power uh for all kinds of things within various industries i want to ask you kind of the
same question around um you know what examples do you use in the regenerative finance space but
before we get to that shannon go ahead and ask your question or make your comment
okay thank you uh can you hear me you are loud and clear thank you thank you so much uh thank you for
the opportunity to have me and it's i i am in china so it's midnight here but i was i'm i'm still very
excited to join you um i have been holding hbar for almost three years maybe four years and i almost
didn't sell any of each bar during last both cycle so i love each bar i trust this new technology
technology i think it's uh has greater potential to be faster than other blockchain technology
so far uh besides bitcoin and ethereum hbar is my biggest uh crypto assets portfolio in my portfolio
um and my question is well uh i i i think i would love to advise uh maybe hbar foundation that
uh will you consider uh will you consider uh will you consider to expand the influence of hbar
in asian market especially maybe chinese market because we have 1.5 billion people almost 20 percent
of the whole population of the whole world but however i i don't know why
i don't know why i don't know why it seems like there hasn't been a uh chinese community talking about
hbar uh you know so i when whenever i want to find some information i need to go to youtube or twitter uh but
but you know like hbar foundation the community almost you know from the western world so i would
very lovely to uh i would very very love to see hbar foundation uh to do some action or activities to expand the
uh your influence in asian market or chinese community like something like that and if you
are not willing to do that uh what is the reason so i i this is my question
no it's some it's a great question um we do have a significant presence in asia we have uh council
members in south korea we have shinhan bank we have uh nomora in japan we have uh wipro um and
tata communications in india we don't have any council members in china um but we are always looking for
partners sometimes it's because you know that the language barrier and things along those lines so
um we need to have advocates like you in the space that we would love to work with uh and and try to
get more awareness around the power of hedera but we really appreciate your time uh and and your
dedication to the hedera network um wes i'm going to jump back to you again shannon great uh great question
and we appreciate uh everything that you've done for our space but wes i want to go back to that
previous question what do you use as examples uh at places like davos to show the power of the there
yes i think um when we talk about the power of hedera a lot of times i'm doing it in the context
of climate sustainability and and more and more lately even going back to cop 28 last year before
that we've been talking about the power of an ecosystem that we're building but that is built
and plumbed together with open source infrastructure on top of hedera and what we end up doing is we
have this fantastic network with all the all the different performance benefits security benefits
strong governance where those governors are all interested in sustainable outcomes because
a lot of their customers as corporates are whether they're business or or end consumers are
interested in climate and sustainability the products that they're buying or goods or services that
they're they're uh procuring and and when they're interested in that those um those stakeholders
are thinking about how do i track my emissions what's my impact on the planet am i polluting more
than i should be am i credibly improving my environmental footprint am i investing in the right things that
are going to make me competitive as a competitive as a company am i getting renewable energy in a way
that's credible am i going about investing in offsets or projects around my community that have positive impacts
a lot of communities want to be seen in that light and so when we build applications um where the
stakeholders who are governing our network already are in many ways aligned with those areas we all
of a sudden start to build relevant applications for large enterprises and businesses we're already
building um a series of applications through our grant investments in our ecosystem that work together
and we have this supply side of the market where you hear i mentioned alcott earlier but you hear other
folks like dovu you hear other folks who are building these assets where institutions are starting to
adopt them um i don't know if everyone saw but there was a a pretty big announcement from dovu um on the
elv the electric vehicle um end of life vehicle credits that were announced in india we start to see these
large large scale announcements where folks are taking action to create assets that people can invest in
companies can invest in we have companies who need to buy these assets to put on their balance sheet
um to report on to offset their liabilities um in many ways individual consumers may want to do that
as well and when we start to talk about this ecosystem it resonates when you hear large governments
large enterprises institutions adopting applications investing in projects building up projects that impact
communities all around the world that resonates with a lot of people and um i think what really hits home is
there's there's a relatability that well i have to do some of these things in my community i can take one
story back home and it's relevant for me to subscribe to an application think about investing as a corporate
when i'm already making investments and offsets um or maybe use some of the resources to build something
that is a solution that i can take to my customers those are the stories where they say an ecosystem is very
powerful especially as that ecosystem is doing good and and i think that that's you know testament to the
power of hedera the foresight of how a lot of the council members have governed and and allocated
resources to invest in areas that they all they all think a lot about as corporations and and are relevant
to not just their view but also um you know the folks in these communities we interact with whether
it's davos or cop um but in large global events so wes if a cfo or a ceo comes to you at the event
and asks when will they be able to participate and actually offset their carbon using the guardian
ecosystem what would that answer look like well so i think if you you know there's a lot of good nuggets
what i'll encourage is for folks to look look through some of the videos on youtube and maybe some of the
some of the um some of the breadcrumbs that are out there um and i'll give a shout out to danny who
does a fantastic job of that on twitter from uh from time to time and often catches them but there
there's a lot of assets that are in the process of being issued um uh and and i would say that they're
coming um and some of them are already out there and i mentioned the the dobu uh project uh working
with the government of india on the end of life vehicles project but i'll also say that a lot from
the all cop portfolio is coming um to maturity or already is at the point of maturity uh getting
ready for issuance and in that process what you'll see is those assets becoming available
um some of the marketplaces on hedera already are working with corporates
um to be ready to procure those assets um and it really depends on on what process if those assets
are already pre-procured or uh whether they're they're in process uh today to keep to get issued and
for folks who aren't familiar with the carbon markets life cycle when you define a project
it oftentimes takes years um and there's crediting issuance periods and so there's an issuance
often every single year and what it looks like on hedera is a series of serialized nfts that are
issued maybe in a batch of 10 000 or 100 000 um credits that then a corporate would buy and ultimately
retire so a minting and that oftentimes it is part of that issuance there'd be a transfer to a corporate
maybe from a project developer like alcott in the in um the process of purchase and then ultimately
retirement which would look like a burn of a series of nfts that would follow behaviors that
we've actually outlined going back to our work with the inner work alliance um and voluntary ecological
markets fast uh task force and so it's following a pattern um and folks like alcott folks like dovu
are doing that today they're using the guardian ecosystem they're using a lot of other applications
uh that are in our portfolio and what you'll hear me say a lot i want to talk to folks is applications
that talk to applications that drive real world outcomes and that's what we're seeing um today so
that's happening i guess brandon is the best best answers it's happening today but maybe uh you know
it's just quietly happening which is a good thing so well we're looking forward to it i know kino uh you
have requested just to come up but uh we are at the top of the hour i'm going to dm you directly and try
to figure out what your question is and try to get it answered for you but i did want to give max an
opportunity uh for any final thoughts before we let him go uh yeah just really looking forward to it
thanks ever so much for everybody that comes with me on these journeys they are they are such good fun
so just everyone keep in touch if you've got any questions that you or something you want me to cover
specifically just you know tweet me and let me know um and i can't wait to show everyone what's going
on but uh yeah it's going to be very exciting this year i think big things well max thank you so much
for coming on today i also want to thank west for coming up today and christian and zenobia uh i want
to thank uh everybody in the audience who asked questions and made comments everyone who listened in
that's all we have enjoy everything that comes out of davos hbar foundation out