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All right. I will hear me loud and clear.
All right, looks like we're good to go. Everything is recording. And with that said, what is good, everybody? We are back with another exciting episode of Metallicus Live, where conversations between some of the most brilliant minds of both the blockchain industry and beyond.
come to a form and lighten and inspire. And you can find out all live on our Twitter spaces and you can always find out that we are Metallicists and after those conversations we upload those to our Metallicist Live podcast which you can find in every podcasting platform available
including YouTube. Today, here at the talk with us about a brand new book, Big Tech can find out how to prevail in the age of blockchain, digital currencies and Web3. We have the award-winning author Igor Payach with us here today. Igor, thank you so much for hopping on. How are you doing?
Looks like it might be a myth there on the space of Igor one more time.
Does it work now? Do you hear me now? - It's really clear. - Is it better? - It's so great. - Perfect. Hi everybody, thanks a lot for Metallica's. We're having me on the show. You have a great podcast and I'm really happy to be here.
Chatting with you today likewise. I'm happy to have you here. So for those that don't know about Igor page his first book is blockchain babble and wouldn't it that come out?
It came out in 2019 actually. So quite some long time ago in crypto crypto space. A long time and a long time indeed. Now this past month, this past month in May,
It was about earlier, man. I was reading that it was May 2nd, your new book, Big Tech, or I'm gonna get that title right there. Big Tech and Finance, it came out on May 2nd initially, is that correct?
Correct, yeah, it came out beginning of May and actually the whole world except you like it states in Canada so it's launched in North America just this week so it's a brand new plan. Just this week on May 30th.
It's basically available in all major bookstores on Amazon and also Barnes and Noble and all the other big ones. So I think if you're looking for it, you'll definitely find it. I think so too. I checked it out on Amazon. I'm ordering it. Just waiting for it to ship out to its peak.
If everybody is on that side, be sure to check out that sample that she can read on Amazon. It shows you the introduction, the first chapter about how FinTech is al Dorado and then the final thoughts.
I definitely recommend people check that out, but Igor.
The book just launched in the United States and Canada this week. How does it feel?
To put it very, very simply, it feels awesome. So, you know, you're working on something, you're putting a lot of time and effort in it. And then there's two big milestones. The first one is when you hold the physical copy of the book, the first one. And the second one is obviously when it hits the market, this is where the...
rubber mids the roads that's where you basically see if people are liking what you're writing if they're having interest or if basically you've wasted a lot of time and this is super exciting and it's super exciting to get out to speak to the people to speak to the media
to write about the topic because there's a lot of buzz and excitement about the book and about the topic and it's really a great time every time a book launches into the market. Absolutely. And then I can see it over on our on our Riverside chat. Is that the book back there behind you?
Yes, correct, correct. So that's that's the new one and the black one in the back is the old one. I like it. Yeah, I like it. I'm sure they're the good design work, I think, in terms of the cover as well. It must feel surreal just
holding that book in your hand and just like you said all of that years of work. Absolutely. I can't wait. So did you get started on the book right after blockchain battle or was it
at the same time how long I'd even run the book.
I didn't start immediately afterwards, to be honest. As I said, I've been working on that for quite a long time. Though I have to say it's much, much faster than the first one, so the first one I think took me about three years to complete. This one was in total about one and a half years. Though I have to say that the biggest phase was definitely the research.
But it's also one of the most exciting things, right? Talking to people and talk to really to all kinds of different stakeholders that are somehow connected to the new blockchain age and or to the finance age and then writing it was surprisingly quick, you know, you get used to those things if you're writing
writing regularly for a couple of years that goes quickly. And then you have a very long face as well where you're just checking it, editing it, stuff like that, preparing the book launch, which is basically the face where you can't wait until it's over and then the book finally hits the shelf. - Sure, for sure. And now it's hit that shelf.
So yeah, let's talk about that you said I was reading on the summary of the book and the description and Amazon and the book draws on in-depth interviews with founders investors regulators bankers and tax experts is that correct?
Absolutely, absolutely. And I think this is also really what's been driving the whole idea of this book. Because I was very fortunate that the first one, Blockchain Babel, was really quite successful. It was a financial time book of the month, one, a couple of awards this year on.
And it enabled me basically to speak to a lot of people, a lot of highly interesting, high level people from all kinds of industries that are somehow, as I said, connected to this blockchain role. I was very well connected in the financial world because I'm a banker for quite a long time.
But blockchain, as you mentioned, I was able to speak to some very high up managers in terms also in regulators, politicians. I spoke to founders who basically made fortune on crypto and blockchain applications.
everything and they're now again back on the hunt for the next big thing in finance. I talked tech executives, I talked to banking executives to investors, basically to everybody to some who somehow had any kind of touch point with the topic. And the one thing that
They all told me about it. They have very differing viewpoints, very differing angles. But the one thing that they all agreed upon was that the entry of big tech into finance was the biggest thing to come in the financial services industry, the biggest thing in the last couple of decades.
It was a very transformative force. And this is why it was so interesting, as I said, to talk to those people, many off-records, which was sometimes even more interesting because they were talking very openly, right, and then sharing their fears and their hopes. And it was an extremely enriching experience.
and this is why investing all of this time was worth it no matter what. Guys, Alam, like the select groups and individuals in their respective industries, which was the most trickiest of trying to interview or get insights from.
I was quite tricky with politicians and regulators, you know, because they are always trying to be diplomatic, trying to not say anything wrong. This was, I think, the most difficult to access. The easiest group on the other hand were the entrepreneurs, which is also a bit interesting because you know,
Usually you would expect they would be a bit skeptical of sharing their insights, but they were very open, they were talking very directly, very plainly. But the good thing is the people really, and I'm really grateful for that, they gave me quite a lot of their time, I had really in depth,
interviews often stretching for two hours, sometimes even more. And you develop kind of a very good basis for speaking about those things. And I wouldn't say there was any interview that didn't have at least something that surprised me in it, or something where I learned something new and
it. And so it was really every industry, every actor, group, had kind of its very interesting and unique angles to tell. Was there a particular thing that was said that was so eye-opening for you or just such a revelation for you?
Yeah, actually there was, there was, because usually you go into those interviews and the beginning of the book, you have your concept, you have been dealing with blockchain for a number of years, for working at the intersection of tech and finance for more than a decade. And you think you know it all kind of, or at least you know what a thing
is going, but sometimes you're going to an interview in after two hours. You are, I wouldn't say, changed by 180 degrees in what you believe, but you're changing quite a lot your view. And one of the interviews that stuck with me was with George Selgin, who was actually one of the first cipher punks, but he was a monetary economist, so he was not even
a techie which made it even more remarkable. And he was George, so Nick Sabah called him a big inspiration. All these these first cypherpunks were really looking into his work on free banking, the libertarian aspect of the Austrian school of economics and so on.
And I talked to him particularly about stable coins, private stable coins, CBDCs. And I was a very big advocate of CBDCs before that. I still think they have a very important role to play. But after that interview, I understood the real danger that CBDCs, for example, could pose. And I'm not talking about
privacy aspects because this was something that I knew before because I was of course obviously done a lot of research on that and it's pretty clear that CBDC has given you huge powers. I was not so much afraid you know in the United States or Europe where you have still functioning and very strong democracies where you can still you know
have institutions that are looking at data privacy and punishing misbehaving actors, which is no such thing as a too big aggregation of power. But I talked, when I talked to Selgin in particular, I understood that it's about much, much more than privacy actually. Actually, it's about the innovative strength
of the crypto market, of the blockchain market. Because what happens when you as a central bank enter a market, of course you can still allow private stablecoin issues to exist, of course under certain regulations that you need. But still you're competing with them and you can never compete fairly with them, right? If I'm a
central bank, if I'm the Federal Reserve or the Bank of Englander, whoever, and I am competing with banks who am I also regulating at the same time, it cannot be a fair competition. And the second thing is also I'm not just that I'm regulating them, but I can also not fail. I can also, I can never fail commercially, right?
Central Bank can never fail. They can pump money as much as they want into a project, into a certain effort and initiative. So it's not really this perfect free market, economic or free market principles. So you have to be very, very careful if you're going into stable coins and
And if you're really as essential bank deciding to take a try at the market and go to the market, because one thing still rings in my ears, what he said is that it was actually private innovation that made a strong, in particular, a US dollar strong.
not so much central bank innovation. And this is clear because central banks, it's not their task to innovate, not their primary task, at least that their primary task is fight inflation, fight unemployment, but it was always the private sector, private companies, private banks that came up with innovation, whether that be paper money or something else.
Wow, wow, so that must have been a lot to take in at that time.
Yeah, that's not enough. But that's what I say. That's why these interviews and these talks were so rewarding. You know, people really took the time and they talked to you and I threw all of my objections at him. You know, I said, "Okay, you need it. You know, you have interoperability and all of the other arguments in favor of
CVDCs, but basically then if you get into this deep talk level then it makes all the difference. So the thinker book is coming out at a very crucial time with the intersectionality of blockchain and banking, especially these past couple months.
Yeah. Well, first of all, we have to say that, you know, big tech has been pushing into finance for years, at least since the beginning or since the rise of the smartphone or at least since the iPhone 6, which had the first NFC chip in there, which enable us mobile payment, the Apple Wall and stuff like that. So, so this is
This is a push. This is a trend that has been going on for quite a long time for many years. I would say even more than a decade. In China even earlier, then we had in the US or Europe and the other countries. But this, you're right. It is really a crucial time at the moment because the whole banking sector is kind of
of looking not anymore at those innovative things, but they're concerned with financial stability, with liquidity. Regulators are concerned with this as well, which is of course a reason why the focus of bankers and regulators is now moving away from all of those
blockchain and innovation topics. At the same time, while they're moving away, if you look at the big tech companies and Apple is the best point in case here, they are not waiting. So they are not concerned with what is happening, just looking at the value banks and the others.
saw the best now when Apple came out with their savings account, with their Apple pay later products and so on. So it is a crucial time indeed and I think that the timing is very well and very timely that the trend of the book. Yeah, yeah. And you mentioned five big type companies in the book. And one of them was Apple, like you said.
And that also included Google, Microsoft, make your memory into the next two plays.
It's Facebook or meta and Amazon of course, so these are the big yeah, and so it's it's it's sorry go ahead
So it's the five big ones in the US and Europe. And then you have three in China, which is Baidu, which is their search engine. And then you have Alibaba, which is the Amazon of China, if you want. And then you have, of course, Tencent, which is the Facebook of China.
those are the three that, due to the strength of the internal market, because it's huge, are also considerable as big text. So it's five plus three if you absolutely. And so, and that's interesting. That you brought up the, the pay later option and the banking on Apple, because
Like it said, it's been about 10 years since that was the groundwork was first laid out on Apple side and now you see other instances where Facebook is trying to get involved in banking. You got Google in some way, shape, or form with like the Google
as well. So it does seem like they all work hand in hand, not maybe with each other, but of bringing digital currencies and technology into the forefront, especially in this new age when it comes to the banking.
Definitely, it's exactly as you said, right? So actually, I think that we are seeing today a radical change in financial services that we haven't seen in a very, very long time. And you mentioned those big five. I would say I particularly focused on four of them. I didn't focus so much on micro-
Microsoft is more kind of positioning themselves as a technologist and provider also for incumbents. It might change with the metaverse and web free because they're very strong and those technologies that are kind of gatekeeper technology in the platforms. But I focus very much on the four and it's interesting to see that each
of those four big tech companies has a different strategy. Like Apple, I think they are possibly the least innovative when it comes to financial services because they would have no trace whatever that they touched crypto, that they touched blockchain. So there was a couple of years
ago there was some kind of patent where they mentioned blockchain and the footnote and something like that. But other than that, there was nothing from Apple site. Yet they're extremely good when it comes to offering financial services and really capturing the market. You mentioned also the savings account, which is a very strong indication
that they are expanding horizontally in the financial services space, meaning that they have not just the payment sector, but now they're also offering accounts. You have Apple Pay Later, which is kind of going into lending, so they're growing horizontally, but at the same time, they're also growing vertically, so Apple
Please call this the specifically refer to this project as breakout, because they want to break out as much of the value chain from banks and other incumbents by insourcing it in-house. This includes, for example, risk assessment. This is a very core competence of banks, which has done
by Apple. And then you look at others like Amazon, for example, Amazon, which is extremely strong in blockchain. So, and I remember that this really came overnight because I was a couple of years ago, I wrote an article in the American banker saying that, you know, actually, if you look at management strategy and all of the
theories that we have in the past that it would be very wise or it's actually just a matter of time until big tech gets into finance with the help of blockchain technology because it enables them to spread not just from payments but also to other segments of finance. And what happened is that Amazon said no we're not interested in blockchain
at that time, just a couple of weeks after my article, their CEO said so. But then a couple of months later, AWS, which is the cloud computing arm of Amazon, came out and they had said, "Okay, now we're having a blockchain as a service platform, hosted blockchains, and they became the largest, actually the largest."
platform for building ends to end blockchains worldwide. Today we know that they're running most of the Ethereum nodes, for example, also on their hosted infrastructure. Amazon is really a big, big player. Google pretty much sounds the same strategy. Also, blockchain is a service. And what many don't know, Google was actually a big
One point in time, the second largest investor into blockchain technologies and blockchain companies in the world of all companies. So they're doing a lot, even though there might not be communicating so much about it. And then of course we have Facebook or Meta with Libra. I don't know if you want to talk about that or if you
have any follow-up questions? Absolutely. It kind of sounds like when you think of a term blockchain, it's starting to, it's in finance, of course, but the way blockchain is becoming, it sounds like it can be more than just finance.
Absolutely. Yeah, that's crazy and like what other way the the have any predictions of what's next to comfort blockchain?
Well, it's I would say that I'm seeing now a push towards decentralized blockchains within big techs in particular as light push because in the beginning it was merely centralized blockchains. It was use cases not just for big tech but generally for big companies in areas such as supply
chain. It's pretty clear that blockchains, if you have this highly efficient, transparent ledger that you can actually save a lot of money, a ton of money, so this was a no-brainer from any company's big techs included. Now what we're seeing is also a kind of a push into the crypto world.
A couple of years ago, big tech companies were very, very skeptical of crypto. You weren't allowed to advertise ICOs or any kind of investments into crypto on Google or Facebook or whatever. They're slowly starting to open that up. They're allowing ads, you know, then Tesla is not technically a big company, but they even allowed for sort
time to buy cars with pitchcoins. You have telecommunication companies that allow you to pay their bills in cryptocurrencies. Also, you have Apple Pay, Google Pay opening up their wallet, you have the credit card companies opening up, warming up to you to cryptocurrencies. So this is kind of what I believe also
first indication that those big tech companies will also go into that direction. That's exactly what we saw with Libra, which was the huge project that Facebook had in 2019. Facebook actually was heading an alliance of like-minded companies and they wanted to, for those of you who don't remember
remember they wanted to build a global super currency called Libra that in the beginning even was supposed to be pegged to a number of fiat currencies that would be the dollar, the euro, the pound, whatever. And this was I think the best, also the best example of how ambitious, how audacious those big
initiatives can become. So this was really not just, you know, threatening commercial banks, but this was threatening central banks. It was threatening almost the sovereignty of certain countries. And this is why regulators across the world stood up. And this was actually also what got the whole CBBC wave rolling. Now, of course, Facebook later tried to
to renegotiate with lawmakers, they said, "Okay, we would have a US dollar based Libra, Euro based Libra, and so on." They even rebranded this DM, but it didn't help. They made a lot of mistakes in the way they launched their currency or they launched the idea.
And this is of course then before it even could be launched. The project was then sold off to Silverbank and it's actually dead at the moment. Which doesn't mean that Facebook is not working further in the crypto space, especially with their efforts around the metaverse.
you know, even rebranding their own company as meta or the holding company at least is meta. Yeah, and so do you think moving forward just going to be a lot more attempts? Not, not probably not by the folks that we have just named. Maybe there's going to be some other players I come in, but
These companies are big tech and
tier two tech, which I would like to talk about in a moment. Do you think a lot more folks are going to try to keep pushing, like pushing four regulators to come around?
Definitely, I think really that the blockchain is opening up the arena for financial services, but as you said, it also for all kinds of other industries because it is simply a disruptive technology. I know that the term disruption and disruptive is tossed around.
often times and people don't really know what it means. So if you look at how management theory defines it, they said that technology is disruptive if it changes the ways that a certain market competes. And this is exactly what happens with blockchain, right? Just think of cross-border payments of
of remittances. We have remittances of 7 to 10 percent, sometimes even more. And now it's cracked down to 0 or 1 percent. It doesn't take you all of the infrastructure that the Western Union might have had, you know, with 200 countries, local agents and stuff like that, all you need to have is two wallets and you can send around
value. And this is really a disruptive tech. And you also mentioned the second important thing, which is regulation and talking to regulators. And I think that this is the big question mark, the big black box, where we still don't know when they will come around in certain countries.
and how they will regulate it. And this will definitely impact who will end up at the top at the end of the day. - For sure, because it's all on the regular, well, I don't wanna say it's all on them, but a lot of eyes are on the regulators. Is that a fair assessment of the mates?
definitely, definitely. And especially in the United States now, because in Europe, for example, with the Mika, the markets and crypto assets regulation that just was passed by the European Parliament last month, you know, you have, it's not a perfect piece of legislation, but at least you have a very
clear rules set, you know what you need to do, you know what kind of licenses you need to do, you know what is allowed, what is not allowed, which company can offer crypto assets, what you need to do if you're making crypto assets. And as I, again, I don't think it's perfect, I think there's a lot of things to be improved, especially in the stable
But if you compare this to the US, then of course the US definitely has to create some clarity. Because that's I think at the moment the most important issue because a lack of clarity is one of the biggest killers of innovation.
at the end of the day because you have to put money, you have to put effort into something and at the end of the day you might get a well-snowed isn't, you have to pay millions of fines and that's not what you want to do. Yeah, probably not, probably not. So now that the book is launched,
Is there like certain folks where you believe like yeah, you really need to read this book maybe like a regulator you know or Someone in any industry where you can think off the top of your head that really needs to read this book big tech and find out
So the number one target group I would say is all of the professionals in financial services, executives, or basically anybody working or interested in the industry. And I just don't mean traditional banks or traditional players such as credit card companies. I also mean FinTechs, I also mean
on to the block chain space and so on. It's more strategic aspect than a very detailed technical account. It's trying to explain where the market is moving and what you have to do in the mid and long term to succeed in it. Of course, it's helpful.
for regulators, it's helpful for legislators, for politicians, I think that they should as well understand what is going on, what's the rationale that companies and then other, basically all kinds of the actors in this space have to have.
What inspired you to write this book?
especially about the intersectionality between blockchain, digital currencies, and Web 3.
Yeah, very good question. So I mentioned in the beginning that after after I wrote blockchain, that was I was I had the privilege to talk to a lot of people and basically I have to admit that was also asking a bit what what is on their mind what's the biggest topic because I wanted always to be on top of things or of the
Future trends, everybody knows about today's trends, but it's very difficult to find a future one. And they mentioned the entry of big tech into finance. And having had the experience of writing the first book, having had the experience of having dealt with blockchain, researched it,
in detail, that that's why I saw that, okay, they're not just entering finance and they're not just staying with the payment sector and the payment segment, but taking blockchain is something that can enable them to go into other aspects as well and just to give you some experience.
examples because China in many ways, it's a different market we can't really compare to the US or so because they leapfrogged a lot of technological levels and they don't have the same history. But we have the big text there using the blockchain to do things just
for example, built a virtual blockchain-based bank for supply chain financing. So this is something completely different to what's the core business of Big Tech. Because we understand that they are into payments, right? Because they are platform-based.
businesses, they're doing everything in order to make their platforms more attractive and making platforms more attractive is definitely there by providing free payment services like Ali paid it in China, but as I said, it's not the same like having supply chain in the finance and Ali
and financial and financial, they are also thinking of going into asset management and so on. So these are very different areas which would have been completely out of reach if it hadn't been for distributed ledger and everything that came with them.
That's interesting. That's interesting. So you talk about, even just now, we're just talking about some strategies that some of
the biggest players are considering and trying to leverage in the emergence of all of these aspects such as blockchain, digital currencies, Web 3.
But is there a particular strategy that any of them, any of them are doing that you don't particularly like or don't support in your opinion?
Well, it's difficult to say what I don't like because they are, you know, I think they're all of them pretty much leveraging their big strengths. Like Amazon and Google, I said they're very strong in infrastructure. That's why they're providing blockchain as a service, which makes absolute sense. To me, a big question mark is actually
I said that they are not really doing much on blockchain, but what actually hint was that they are not publicly doing much on blockchain. And if we look at, you know, past big tech efforts, not necessarily blockchain ones, but generally the big projects, they were all kept secret and launched overnight just to give you an example. When Amazon
They were not launched AWS, so they are their cloud computing arm. Nobody was talking about it until one day of a sudden they said, "Okay, we're having this cloud computing infrastructure and with a record time they became the world's leader." Apple has surprised us quite often, right? There's a lot of a big degree of secrecy around Apple's road
map. So I wouldn't be surprised if after all of this period of being very silent, they came up with something really, really groundbreaking. So this is something that is a question mark. What I thought was a little bit of a strategic mistake was meta, you know, Facebook's effort into the metaverse.
Because it was a mistake in timing, I think that Web 3 is definitely real, so we will have more and more digital assets, crypto assets, having more and more use cases for them. But I believe that technology was not there and the pivot that Mark Zuckerberg did was
far too early. It should have come three or five years later or maybe not at this massive pace, right? So they were hiring tens of thousands of engineers to work at the Metaverse and of course shareholders punished them. And that they did. That they did. So you say you feel those too early for them to make that happen. Yeah.
>> Yeah, definitely. >> We talk a lot about Big Tech and we listed out the examples of the book, Big Tech, your Apples, your Microsoft, your Alibaba. We already mentioned that.
But you also talk about tier two tech in the context of the financial history. Can you define what the tier team tech is and why it's important that there's a difference?
So basically, Big Tech, we said for me it's just five companies in the US and so on. So five big companies and everything else is TR2 techs, all of the other big important technology companies, IBM, Paypal and so on. So all highly impressive companies who have corporate valuations
and the hundreds of the billions. But they are not there where Big Tech is at the moment. Because if you look at, I always find it impressive to look at the top 10 of the world's most valuable companies. And 10, 15 years ago, you would get 9 out of 10 companies
being in things such as oil, banking, natural resources. Fast forward 10 years and today we have 7 out of 10 top companies being tech giants. So the 5 American ones plus 2 Chinese ones, then you might have a bank and so on. But basically all of them are at the
at the top of the corporate valuation charts. Even if you compare it to historic dimensions, to the carnais and to the Rockefellers, their power and their wealth fails is really nothing compared to what we have today with those big tech companies. So I think they're really the most
powerful companies in the history, probably that we had, economic history with an incredible global reach and what differentiates them from the TRQ tech is that they have in not just one but a couple of crucial industries, they have either a monopoly or a dual-poly. Just think of advertising where you have Facebook.
book and you have Google or think of hardware where you have Apple or think of surgery. Basically, we have only Google and so on. So it's multiple industries. And Tier 2 Tech is still important because they might not have the resources to date that they have. But if
they manage to leverage this new tech. If they manage to leverage the promise of blockchain technology, they might become one of tomorrow's big tech companies because they already have massive resources, they have well-known brands, they have good profitability, solid corporate performances.
There is a challenger. I believe it could be really coming from this tier two tech layer. Maybe just also another tidbit for management theory, we know that every time or most of the times that an industry is disrupted, it actually comes from a very powerful firm in another industry, right? So we call that diversity.
So it's usually not the start-up working in your garage that you know overthrows an industry overnight, but it's usually a dominant player from NANDE, NABA industry. Just think of the smartphone market, right? So it was before the smartphone was Nokia, Siemens, and then you had Apple, which was a dominant player in computing.
And they understood, OK, we can apply our core competencies in phones because the phones are becoming small computers. So they were already a big company and then they grew super big. And this is what the IBMs and PayPal and SAPs or whoever could become as well if they managed to get this new wave of technology right and the timing right.
So one of the main takeaways or actually the insights that readers can expect a game from reading your book, Big Tech and Final.
So, of course, I try to give a little bit of an overview of all of the areas that will be arenas of competitions such as DeFi and so on, all kinds of different assets, CVDCs, stable coins and so on. But I think that the major take away
is that whoever will succeed, I believe, will need to build what I call the super money engine. So this is something that is basically building a capability to handle all kinds of assets at once. So on the one hand, it will be traditional finance, so you will have Fiat current
but you will have cryptocurrencies, you will have CBDCs, you have private stablecoins, you will have all of the non-frontiable tokens obviously. So you will be able, you will have to be able to deal with all of them at once in one place. At the same time, you will have to have a very strong execution capability, meaning that you will have to be able
within that platform to have smart contracts, to have an exchange functionality, to buy assets, to stake assets, to borrow them, to put them into autonomous protocols. So there's a lot of, plus of course the whole traditional finance sector, right? So you still have to be able to let somebody
but he buy and sell shares if they want or securities or whatever. So it's really who will build the strongest engine in a multi-asset world that will really make the difference and that will enable a company to realize a lead as compared to the other companies.
This is just such an awesome conversation with you Igor, I'll just tell you that right now. Thank you. I, of course, realize that Metallicus is going a little bit in the same direction. So I think that's a good way forward. Oh, you think so? Yeah, I think
You know, handling multiple types of assets, you know, not just being focused too narrowly on one of them. So I think that's definitely what some companies are now realizing. And of course, it's really a huge endeavor to build an engine that can really handle everything, but at least we have first efforts.
I love that. I love that. That's just a massive shout out to my all my friends here at Metallicist. We're doing something right. We're doing everything we can in our power to do it right. That's what that for us. Now, I have like another question or two.
But Igor if it's good with you, let me get extended out if there's a question or two from the community that they would like to ask are you good with taking the question? Sure, sure awesome awesome so if folks go ahead and on the Twitter spaces at We Are Metallicist
go ahead and raise your hand and we can take at least one question before the hour is up and while somebody raised their hand Igor are you going to be making any event appearances if so where yeah so
So, as I said, the books come out, my time schedule is quite full, as you can imagine. So, one thing I'd like to mention maybe is that I have a new Udemy course out for blockchain, masterclass, for corporations and businesses. I also have one for banks.
and financial professionals, by the way, I'll be at the Vienna University of Business next week. I was also fortunate to do a part of the blockchain and crypto assets program with the Singapore Management University together with CFT in London, so another financial innovation
And, of course, I'm doing a lot of writing as well. So, if you're interested, for example, in regulation in this space, in the big tech and blockchain space, just pen the op-ed in the American banker this week. And next Tuesday, actually, in my newsletter, I'll do an analysis on
what Apple is doing and their strategy in the financial industry. So make sure to subscribe. It's the new frontier by me. And yeah, subscribe is also got a blockchain from the mental scores for free. So there's two reasons actually to subscribe. So where can we find the new frontier?
Either on Google or you can find it also on my website. It's eGropage.net. So I do RPEJIC.net. And yeah, you can find that also
my two-day account, I guess it's linked here in two different spaces. Alrighty, alrighty. We have someone press their hand but I don't think I've seen him anymore.
But it looks like I'll give it another second for folks to raise their hand up in the Twitter spaces, but Igor, the week is coming to an end. You're both big tech and finance.
How the prevailing the age of blockchain digital currencies and web 3 is officially out as of May 30th. It's Friday. What now?
What's on your mind? What now, Igor? Well, I still have a lot of writing to do, unfortunately, but other than that, I think I'm going to enjoy the great weather and just enjoy that it's out. It's always a lot of anxiety.
the shelves, but it feels really great that it's out there. And the first feedback I'm getting is overwhelming. So I think I'm just going to take a second and enjoy the book as well. Just let it all out or let it all in.
And yeah, it looks like you have it all right there in the back as we mentioned once again folks check it out on Amazon There's a few cut a few chapter samples in there. I was very informative for me. That was awesome. So I can't wait to
to have it in my hands. And it looks like we do have a question from quantum watch. I'm going to go ahead and quantum watch as a speaker and then we'll go ahead and get that question.
All right, Quadam, how you doing?
Sorry, microphones on. Very good. Thank you. How are you doing? I'm doing great. You sound great. Okay, good. Go ahead. What's your question? Yes, sir. So a question for the panel. I'll call it that. So as you know,
in the US and other jurisdictions we pay taxes on digital assets that are deemed assets and yet in the financial advisor community, Lord help you if you mention that you have any digital assets that you could
spread the lag in the financial advisor community versus whatever the revenue jurisdictions are doing. I'm going to turn my call because there's some bad guys.
All right, thanks a lot for the question. Not 100% sure if I got that because of the background noises, but you're definitely right. You know, there's a lack of knowledge that there is with financial advisors as far as I found out also from text advisors, you know, when I asked my text advisor how
How should I do staking rewards and stuff like that? I just got the answer. I have no idea. Please ask somebody else. So there is definitely an opportunity if you're going to go there. And also the same thing with financial advisors. Definitely. I think there's a lot of
lack of knowledge, but also unfortunately there's a lack of clarity still on many things and I think oftentimes it's not even them, but in terms of spread, I'm not sure if I got the question correct, but I think in terms of spread of your
risks or your assets, of course. I've always been a very big fan of spreading them and never putting everything on one card, especially, of course, with something as volatile and with other risks as we are talking here about crypto assets. So definitely.
I hope that answers your question if not if we do. >> No, that's really essentially it. Thank you very much. I have the same fun with my taxes as you mentioned where I end up doing all the research, all the work and hopefully everybody's
Exactly, yeah, that's the point. So thanks a lot for the hint and for the question. I think it's the same all over the world. So I think there's no jurisdiction where you get tax attorneys and investors' investment advice that's really highly competent in the large scale.
Thank you so much for watching your questions. We always appreciate the questions that you all raised in to hear at the talacus. All right, we're starting to come up on time. Do you have any final thoughts that you want to leave with anybody?
Just that we're leaving an extremely exciting times. I was fortunate enough to find that out again during my last one and a half years. And every time we are reading the news today, it gets more and more interesting. You know, there's a lot of things happening. You mentioned it in the banking sector in the blockchain sector.
sector and the regulation sector. And all of these things coming together, it's perfectly a great time to be in the blockchain space and the financial space in general. So let's enjoy it and let's make the most of the opportunities that are presenting themselves.
The gentleman that has been eGorePayage, award-winning author of Blancet Babel, and as we just mentioned earlier, just launched his new book, Big Tech in Finance, earlier this week in the United States of Canada, and it's everywhere else.
as a May 2nd is that correct? I think it was May 3rd but it's all May 7th and that point. Is there anywhere else that's going to launch afterwards or? Oh no, that's it. Oh it's out.
everywhere on the globe you can get it. Hey you're good. Yeah. Congratulations man on that new book. I'm excited for you. I'm excited to read it. Once again folks you can find that book on Amazon. Big Tech and find out how to prevail.
in the age of blockchain, digital currencies and Web 3, eGore Payage, I've been your host, Eric Lyons. Thank you for an exciting episode of The Togas Live. Once again, everybody that's watching on YouTube or through our podcasting platform, which you can find The Togas Live.
Follow us on Twitter @wearmatallic is Igor, do you have any socials? Do you want to plug or any websites that you want to plug again? Yeah, definitely my website, which is the most important hub, probably egorepage.net, so I-G-O-R-P-J-I-C.net.
page 9 and a LinkedIn you can find me as well. We would be very happy to connect and once again thank you very much for having me. It was a great talk and I wish everybody a great weekend. Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen have a great weekend. Metallica's live we're out.