It's the future stable coins. You know, whether Ripple is as good or
better than PayPal or you know, Circle, et cetera. It's all around
user adoption and what we as the people and businesses, decide to do.
So, I think, you know, there's still a long way to go
before we get to that. I think stable coins are such a low percentage
of the money out there. This content is brought to you by bitgo,
which is one of the top crypto custodians in the crypto industry. Bitco works
with many big companies and brands such as Pantera Capital, Bitstamp, and bitcoin
Ira. Nike also selected Bitgo to power its wallets for its NFTs and bitco
has many great services such as hot wallets, custodial wallets, self managed cold
wallets, and NFT wallets. Many institutions trust bitgo with its top level security
and incredible services such as being able to deploy your capital while it's in custody,
which includes lending, borrowing, tradings, taking DeFi access and more.
If you'd like to learn more about bitco, please visit bitgo dot com link
in the description. Welcome into the Thinking Crypto Podcast. I'm your host Tony
Edward, and with me today is Anthony Welfare, who's the CEO and founder
of the Commercializing Blockchain Research Center known as the CBRC. Anthony, you welcome,
Hi, Tony, Hi everyone, pleasure to be here. Thank you.
Yeah, Anthony, excited to speak with you. You're building some cool
things and you've got a lot of experiencing cryptos, so want to get your
perspectives on different items. Let's start with your background, where you're from and
what's your professional background. Yeah, so I've been I'm actually from a retail
background from a long time. So we had a family shot back in is
actually from nineteen twenty four, so it's one hundred years. Doesn't exist in
the family now unfortunately. But around the seven eight years ago I moved into
crypto and blockchain and I was in previously in retail career. As I said,
and you know what is this block This bitcoin and blockchain and ethereum was
just coming out in twenty sixteen or so, so it was that, well,
why aren't we using this in retail and global retailers. I was working
with global brands and it's like payments really easy, one currency, you know,
tracking products and those sorts of things. So I joined Oracle Corporation back
in twenty sixteen seventeen, did a few projects with them, launching track and
trace and enterprise blockchain solutions, and moved to DXC Technology. I was global
Managing Director for the blockchain practice, and there we did around about fifty projects
on enterprise blockchain, track and trase, payments, you know, anything token,
you know, tokenization and bonds and securities and all this, and bear
in mind this is like five years ago, so it was really interesting.
But everything in enterprise was about enterprise blockchain, hyper ledge of fabric and corder.
Really ethereum was trying not to use it. So I was started thinking
that we need public blockchain and the whole you know, bigger picture of hybrid
blockchain. So in twenty nineteen, I think it was around about then I
moved to them Protocol and we launched Symbol Platform, which was a hybrid enterprise
enterprise platform for big business but the public in private, which is really important
for blockchain success. And then in twenty twenty summer twenty twenty, I ended
up joining Ripple, so John Ripple looking after cbdc's and stable coins and spent
around about three years at Ripple, sort of moving movie the whole CBDC world
from you know, crypto is it good? Is it bad? Through to
actually working in central banks, which was amazing experience because you're you're from a
crypto basis, but you're talking to some of the most important people in the
world central banks. They control our money, they control everything that we do,
so really interesting time. And then you know, obviously I'm on to
CBRC now. And you did spend some time working on Etherorem you mentioned and
you were a founding member of the Enterprise Etherorem Alliance. Is that right?
Yeah, So back in I think twenty sixteen seventeen, Enterprise the Theorem Alliance
was just being started and I sort of was in retail and I was like,
why don't we do supply chain with Ethereum, And so I joined as
sort of one of the founded members but looking after or set up the supply
chain working group in the Enterprise the Theorem Alliance. It didn't last long.
I moved on to Oracle and things changed, and you know, I couldn't
do much, but it was to try and get the sort of whole supply
chain and ethere and working together which was again a bit ahead of its time,
I think, but really interesting project to work on. I mean,
that's amazing. You were part of a theorem at Ripple, you did some
work with them. That's a lot of experience I'm sure you accrued over those
years working on these big projects. So how did the idea for this CBRC
come about? Yeah, so Commercializing Blockchain Research Center is from the book that
I wrote in twenty nineteen, which is Commercializing Blockchain. So back in twenty
nineteen, between Oracle and DXC, I was thinking, you know, people
need to understand a bit more about enterprise blockchain and less about crypto in the
big business world. And so I've got thirteen contributors, said, let's write
about what's actually happening. Real use case is back in you know, sort
of three four years ago, so they're are on finance and supply chain really,
so it's same sort of a sort of narrative back then, and then
fast forward to sort of twenty twenty four and it's that, well, that's
great, the book's great, But there's been a lot of use cases since
then, and things have progressed. Bigger, more scaled NFTs have come in
defil all this this sort of new stuff. So it to be fair,
Wiley was saying, write another book. And if you've written a book,
Tony, it's hard. It's a lot of time, and I don't think
people really appreciate how much work goes into, you know, just a few
bits of paper. So I thought, actually, why don't I set up
a research center and make the book live inverted commas. So we've basically set
up the CBRC register, so it's a use case register, and what that
is is basically we researched the blockchainatural projects. They could be you know,
pilot launched, you know so, but they're actually give it. There's some
reality about the project in some way. It's been used, it's been launched,
it's piloted, et cetera. We've got a scoring criteria, so basically
it's not about what's good what's bad. It's about blockchain applicability. So you
know, one hundred of the maximums one hundred. If you scored a one
hundred, that means your project is perfect blockchain. It's not about it's the
best project. It might be a terrible project commercially on things like that,
but if it's using blockchain for the reasons you know that that blockchains set up.
So it's basically a resource now where you can go to it research,
you know, have a look at what's happening. It's it's sort of sorted
by layer one, so you can check athereum or xrp ledge a bitcoin,
et cetera. And then by sort of category, track and trace financial transactions,
you know, those sorts of things. So there's around about one hundred
use cases that you know, we did a soft launch back in February,
and then there's about ten very five Now the verified use cases the really interesting
ones. So that means that our team has scored them, verified them,
spoken to the project team, and then myself for one of the senior team
has actually done an interview in a video, and I think that's that sort
of gives you then a real life it's about half an hour video of talking
to the founders or the project team. What did you do, why did
you do it? How does it work? Why using blockchain? And anybody
sort of into blockchain and setting these things up. Now, it's really interesting
because you can see some of these people, you know, some I've known
for a few years and they're actually using blockchain and have been for a long
time. So it's a really useful place to find about real blockchain in the
real world. I love that idea because you know, there's so much noise
in this industry and that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just it is
what it is, right, it comes with the territory. And if I'm
a business and I'm looking for blockchain solutions, I want to filter through that
noise. I want to come to a site like yours to be able to
validate a project and go through that learning and discovery process, and you're doing
a lot of the vetting, so that's really great. And then I can
filter by the use cases. So if I want to use it like tracking
and supply chain management or whatever else, right, I have that resource.
Yeah, No, definitely, that's the point of it there, so that
people don't you know, it's hard to find real projects in the in the
noise because of crypto, because crypto is the noisy parts of blockchain, you
know, fair well, it's it's about money, speculation, et cetera.
But the interesting thing we've done recently is we've signed an agreement with the European
University and they're going to take the scoring metrics and build a scoring panel,
so basically the CBS score will then be not my team, it'll be a
wider team of academics and experts. So probably by the end of this year,
hopefully by the end of twenty twenty four, we'll have that setup,
so that then you'll start to see more projects can come through because at the
moment we're restrained with resource. Everything life is all about resources and how you
can get through these. So we've now got the process working. They're looking
at AI how we can automate some of these things, and basically they're going
to put together a team that can score this and so we can have more
and more projects on it, so you can even check more details and see
more about it. Because my world has always been what is blockchain and why
is it being used? That's what I set you off in twenty sixteen to
do, and I've seen a million projects it feels like, but still everybody
goes blockchain doesn't do anything, or blockchain is bitcoin, and it's like,
no, there is so much to it. So it's give people this real
resource that's referenced and with the university, it'll be academically verified, which is
you know, a really good process and step forward. Absolutely, and then
you have in addition to your scoring system certificates, right, and it's issued
on the XRP ledger. Yeah, exactly. So the projects that are scored,
they then get a verified certificate and it's verified via the XRP ledger.
So in essence, you know, there's a PDF certificate which doesn't sit on
chain because it's not good to put things like that on chain at the stage,
but there's a reference on XRP ledger of the project, the score and
just a little bit of information and it gives you then a real and mutable,
you know, truth that this project scored this and is this type of
projects. So it's using blockchain for one of its it's sort of you know,
most basic uses, but notorization certification of things. Imagine if we had
this on the likes of LinkedIn for our qualifications and things. You know,
you get your university, your college qualifications, but does anyone really know that
you went there? Does anyone really know you did these things? So what
chain? Back in twenty sixteen, this was one of the first things I
thought, and I remember I did one of my first presentations in twenty seventeen
and I said, you know, LinkedIn will disappear because everything will be verified
on chain. LinkedIn is still around and it's not verifying yet, but the
technology is there to do it. And I think as we progress now in
the next you know, a few years, I think you'll start to grow.
I think enterprise blockchain is growing significantly quicker than people think, and that's
what the register helps to show you. There's a lot more happening than you
realize. A quick follow up question on that LinkedIn taught thought because this is
something I've been thinking about as well, where we need social profiles in the
blockchain because there's so many fake accounts, there's so many bots, there's so
many impersonators having a podcast and a brand, get so many people impersonating me
trying to scam people. But if there was a way for people to verify
with the blockchain integrated, you know, behind the scenes, is a one
click dialogue, you know, or this has a check market's verified on the
blockchain and people can look at that. That would change the social media internet
world significantly. Yeah, massively. I think the the verification of truth,
the verification of you know, information is the next stage, and I think
you need AI to do that though as well. I think this is this
is where the two merge together. And I know there's a lot of hype
in AI, and I you know, I'm not necessarily saying AI should be
valued at what it's valued, et cetera. But if you use AI on
information that's from you know, that's verified on the blockchain, then you're actually
using information that's more verified. And I was interested. I was with a
professor from Singapore University a few weeks ago, and I was and he's an
AI expert, and I was saying, how do we marry this, how
do we get rid of fake news? How do we prove that Tony's interview
is Tony's interview? And he said, well, what will happen eventually is
things that are real will be tagged as non AI or something. And again,
that's where you can probably use blockchain to say this is verified by a
person and use it in that way. And you know, even you can
use timestamps and everything. So's the technology is there, it's about making it
easy for us to use. And I'm not sure that piece has been thought
through yet, but there's a lot of people look at that now because it's
it's definitely the most important thing of you know, fake news and people stealing
you know, social media and content. It's it's a massive issue. But
if everything, every piece of data, video, photography was was sort of
embedded in blockchain from the moment is published, you can always then track it
back to where it is. And I think that process is the bit that
needs to be worked on because of the scale. I dread to think that
the size of giga whatever they're called gigabytes, z bites whatever of data,
So you need something that's going to be very clever, and I think AI
will probably help to do that piece of information. So as soon as you
hit you know, pause on the record or you published this video, it
gets tagged and then the credit always goes back to Tony and then we know
it's a real video. So definitely, definitely the next few months, I
think we'll see more interesting projects and sort of progress in that. And when
do you think this is a hard question, you know, is a tipping
point for these Web two companies like LinkedIn and the social networks to transition fully
to Web three where they have the blockchain integration is it like five to eight
years away, or you think it happens sooner. It depends on us,
the people, the citizens and humans, what we trust and what we don't
trust. So if we keep on using Facebook or LinkedIn or whichever and just
blindly agreeing with it and signing up to those million pages of terms and conditions,
that basically means nothing's yours and you've given everything away, which is insane,
and we're going to sell your data and unfortunately, we as humans as
the whole, we're doing that. So unfortunately, I think you've probably talking
nearer the eight years rather than nearer to five years. I think the technology
will be there. Interesting in crypto world, there's quite a few sort of
blockchain based social medias that have been out. I mean, there was,
you know, back in twenty seventeen. I think it's called stream or something
like that. Streamer. I think it's still around, but it was not
easy to use it awful, so why would you use it? And I
think that's still the hook with a lot of things in cryptos. I don't
want to MetaMask to make a payment. I just want to make a payment
like I do with my credit card, right, I don't want to have
to log on to say I remember with stream, I lost my account because
it's on a laptop somewhere and it's that wallet and that's it and it wasn't
transport, but I can tell it on my phone. So those things need
to be fixed first. Then I think mass adoption and you know, I
don't know what Meta is doing Facebook with with you know, the millions billions
that they've spent, but they should really just be looking at how to implement
blockchain as the base. It would be so much cheaper and easier for them
because they've already got the currents, they've got the you know, we all
use Facebook, Twitter or you know Facebook or you know, WhatsApp. So
but definitely it's not as quick as I would want. But it's going to
progress, and it all depends on us and what we decide. If we
still stop using Facebook, they'll have to change. Fortunately. Yeah, no,
that's a great point. Now, tell us a bit more about the
scoring system for the different companies are you know, is it like a fifty
point checklist? You know, what are some of the things that you look
at to validate these companies? Yes, so there's there's ten sort of metrics,
and there's a scale for the metrics of sort of one to five.
So it seems like so if you look at one of the metrics is around
you know are there are there lots of data silos in different companies. Okay,
so if it's you know one, is like, no, there's just
one data silo, great, you don't need blockchain for that. The number
five would be there's data silos in three hundred different companies and trying to connect
that data and stuff is Yeah, blockchain would be amazingly useful for that.
So there's different sort of measures. There's around about ten metrics and then the
scales are sort of a lot more detailed than the high level said, but
they go through to that sort of checking. So again, as I said,
it's around blockchain applicability rather than this is a great, amazing project.
It's not about validating a project, it's validating its use of blockchain. Yeah,
that makes sense. And when you approach the different blockchain projects out there,
how are you pitching them about this? And is there a fee that
they have to pay? Yeah, so at this stage there's no fee because
we don't want to be seen to be taking money to do scores and things
like that, so there's no fee at the moment. We need to work
on how we fund the business bible going forward those so that may or may
not change. But they're sort of interested because it's exposing the project in a
very easy to see way, so it's pr for them. But it's also
the academic side of what with the university going to do. They're actually going
to put analysis together of how we can analyze these better, how we can
deep dive on them, how we can learn more from them. So they're
you know, their data knowledge centers so that they can do that sort of
process. So and I think people are interested because you know, I've got
a great story and it'sponded the use cases that will be published in soon.
But back in the day, in my DXC days, I work with one
of the biggest car companies in the world and we pitched to them and that
then went through and IBM actually won the project and then built this supply chain
trace in the tracking system. That was back in twenty seventeen. Now that
project has morphed and it's now going to be tracking planes and trains and parts
and different things, and it's not just one car company. It's a whole
set of sort of consortiums. So it's really interesting how that's gone from one
tiny project to a very big project and very successful. And they want to
tell the story because most people still think that blockchain projects are failing and things
are not going well, and this is like I didn't even know this,
and I knew the people back in twenty seventeen, so I was quite surprised
to talk to them a few weeks ago. So, wow, this is
light years different from what it was. I'm really interesting. So I think
people are wanting to tell the story of why this is real. And you
know, this is not a judgment. This is a score that says this
is why blockchains good and not and a lot of the reason for that the
scoring of blockchain applicability is lots of projects have failed because blockchain wasn't used properly.
And so if you go back over the last three, four or five
years, and there's lots of people will tell you this failed, this failed,
and this failed. My first response is should it have been on blockchain?
Should use blockchain technology in the first place, And a lot of answers
are no, And I think a lot of the consortiums that have failed have
been because of one the wrong blockchain i e. Private blockchain versus public,
and two the wrong incentive model. They were doing it to try and control
a network, which is what corporates do, whereas blockchain is not about controlling
a network. It's about trusted information and sharing things. So again, if
the incentive model, that the motivations are not there, project's going to fail.
And I think that's why this is good and that's why people come out
going our project is successful and it's done this, and it's that great.
What are the benefits? You know? One of the sections is you know,
what are the benefits? What did you do? What did you learn
from it? And I think that's why people are sort of interesting in talking
to us. Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. And as you're talking about,
you know, the business model, revenue model, and so forth,
I thought maybe this would be a great not for profit type organization and that
works with governments, you know, given that what you're doing is bringing a
lot of validity, clarity, and I'm sure governments are going to want to
have a resource like this of vetted projects, vetted use cases that they can
advocate for too, you know, depending on what it is. No,
definitely, I think that was. I was at the university a couple of
days ago, and one of the things we're talking about is a three year
plan and what does this look like in three years, and the university very
much saying we see twenty five universities looking after this and funding this in different
ways. So I think, less government, more academia. But the same
thing as you're saying, it's you know, it'd be probably an academic resource
because they're the people that know the latest trends in data analysis and then that,
and they're inherently most of them are public anyway, so it sort of
naturally goes through. So I think that seems to be the way we're looking
at it. Obviously we're still early stages, but I think, you know,
it's free there. It's sort of out there, and I think the
university had been from day one talking to me saying it has to stay as
free as possible all the way through. And I'm like, okay, we
need to work on how to do that, but happily open to that because
for me, again, my remit, my sort of motivation here is I
want people to go, not what is blockchain, why is it working?
It's like, can I use blockchain for this? Great, I've got a
new idea. Can I use blockchain for that? Brilliant I've got this?
Can I do that and actually just start building using blockchain for the right reasons,
because that will then there'll be massive adoption. People will then will then
be at the social media which you mentioned before, where automatically there will be
social media sites that are starting to do this because lots of people are using
it and lots of people can see the benefits and success. So I think,
you know that that's the main sort of motivation and reason for myself.
And I think as crypto has becoming less, you know, unacceptable, I
think it's a nice way to put what's been over the last two or three
years or so, you know before that sort of Now it's becoming more acceptable
and ETFs and things like that, which I know are financial, but they
give it credibility a bit more now and the mainstream people go, ah,
this is okay. And I think the more that that happens the better,
and for me, the more when my mum says, do you do you
still work in that dodgy industry? You know, when she stops saying that,
and she says things like I saw bitcoin crashed. Are you are you
poor? Now? Do you know? So once we get that through,
I think we'll be in a good stage. Absolutely, And I've forgotten those
comments suit for my wife and my mom too. Yeah, you know when
they never ask you when bitcoin goes up? Do they They're not interested?
Then it's when it goes down, like are we bankrupt? Now? But
man, Amy, I love the idea because you know, I have a
lot of experience in web two and digital marketing, and I understand content marketing
and building online resources for people to find information and be educated. And I
think this is very much needed in filtering out all the noises mentioned. So
it's really cool. What's on your twenty twenty four role map? Are you
looking to build an app or anything else? No, this stage the twenty
twenty four is all about working out the scoring panel and the scoring system because
I can't really get many more submissions without It's a lot of admin and a
lot of process. It's very manual today. So I won the rest of
this year for the team to automate things, get it working so that we
can accept more use cases. And score more use cases and very final use
cases, because everybody's starting to ask, well what about this one? About
that one? It's like, Wow, we're getting some traction, which is
amazing, but I've got to get the ground floor now fixed and sort of
get a strong basis of verification and scoring. Once that's in, yeah,
then next year will be all about getting more and more use cases in and
then we'll start to be able to do some analysis and some reporting and what's
happening here? Which are interesting, which are moving forward? What are the
types of benefits all that good stuff that's in there, the information's there,
will actually have it at scale that's sort of you know, statistically useful for
businesses and people. I love it. And you know you mentioned like you're
using the XRP ledger. Are there is there any other blockchains? Are you
going to integrate or are you going to stick with the x RP ledger.
So at this stage XRP ledger is just for verification. So you know,
any blockchain in essence can can do verification on certificates, So we're sticking with
XRP ledger at the moment. It is quick and cheap, it's it does
a very good job. It's it's easy enough to use, so so yeah,
we're definitely sticking with that. It doesn't mean anything to do with the
projects that are verified, et cetera. It doesn't mean there are anything to
do with XRP and things like that. It's just that's the verification platform that
we're using. Let's talk about the crypto market at large. Obviously, Anthony,
you've been here a long time, You've seen a lot of things in
this industry. What are your thoughts on the bigcoin ETF launches, the performance
we've seen, and now there's an Etherem ETF coming up. There's talks of
Solana and XRP, but it seems crypto has gone mainstream. Yeah, I
think going I think it's still going mainstream. I think we're sort of we're
at the start of that piece. So definitely, you know, we're out
of the sort of this is this is not good, this is a scam,
and all that old school sort of discussion. And then the bigcoin ETF
there was lots of there was actually lots of et ETF style sort of products
already out there before the Americans of signal, but America being the biggest financial
market. That's a massive stamp of approval and are tick in the box.
So I think some of I've been you know, I was actually looking just
before at some of the inflows and stuff, and it's actually impressive for the
scale of the inflows to Bitcoin, considering the noise that's still out there.
There's still you know, it's not highly positive like gold for example, you
know, where everybody's gold is amazing, it's still you know, fifty to
fifty maybe of where people are positive negative of it. So to get the
growth of inflows and outflows are not bad. There's going to be outflows.
That's the whole point of an etfor you know, it's not just one way,
you know, and it doesn't seem to be too bad process. So
I think, you know, ethereums obviously the one people were in July now,
so people are expecting in July. I think personally, I think that'd
be great if that goes through because I've an etheroreum long long time, so
I'm fingers crossed for that one. But also I think people also if you're
a sophisticated investor, you can invest in this back a long time ago,
and in my UK pension in twenty seventeen, I invested in the bitcoin and
ethereum ETP I think it's called back in the day, and I could invest
my UK regulated pension, where there's only certain things you can invest in.
So this is not me just investing. This is the UK regulated pension.
And I invested back in twenty seventeen both Etheroreum and bitcoin. Now the interesting
thing it then got closed. We didn't get closed, it got stopped,
so that it's you couldn't invest. You could only sell until the bitcoin ETF
and now it's open and you can buy and sell it again now. So
it's actually quite strange in a way that something was regulatory legal in the UK
in a pension back in twenty seventeen. I had three or four years where
you couldn't do anything, and now he's back again, you know. So
there's definitely been ways to sort of do this, which is probably why I've
been less excited about in UTF because I'm like, I've been sort of doing
that inadvertent. I didn't actually realize that was, you know, the way
it was, but you know, it's back. It was actually twenty eighteen
I invested because I actually invested after the Hindman, the very well known Himan
speech, which the SEC basically you know, told me at that day that
Ethereum's okay, it's legal, you know. And I can't remember the exact
phrasing he used, but that was when I invested in the pension, you
know, because I didn't. I'm not going to damage my pension. That's
one of the most secure, important financial products that you have in your life.
So I think, you know, I think I believe Ethereum goes through
say this month, over summer, maybe it goes to September for whatever reasons,
no idea, but and then I think the other ones will be just
a matter of course. I think it's just then a process because there's no
reason not to. I think as long as it then comes down to is
there the market for it is their demands, it goes into a normal,
normal business. So I think, you know, Bitcoin's been the pioneer as
ever, you know, Ethereum's the second biggest and probably the most used,
so great that then sort of backs up the Bitcoin ETF and then the rest
of them are going to be it's likely to go in you know, market
cap top ten type sort of process. But I think some of the others
could be more interesting, because if there's demand for you know, a number
twenty market cap, then these financial institutions and businesses, they'll go, Ah,
people want an ETF for x y z coin, let's bring it in.
So I think there'll be some interesting ones further down the line. But
I think, you know, fingers crossed is a THEORYM gets sorted now,
and I think that opens the doors for the next probably not until twenty twenty
five, but I think because you need the election and things now to settle
down. But assuming that all goes well, the twenty five are assume you'd
say some more. Yeah, we've seen outside the United States, a lot
of these project products have existed, like you mentioned, like you were able
to access some of them years ago. It's just in the United States this
has been a lot of hurdles, but it seems we're making some progress.
I did want to get your thoughts on CBDCs and stable coins because obviously you
have a plethora of experience there working at Ripple and so forth engaging with central
banks. A couple of questions. I guess you know you're no longer a
Ripple, but how are the conversations going with central banks. Are they much
more open to cbdc's and are they really heads down working on these things.
Yeah, I think so, you know, not from a rip up perspective,
but in general cbdc's there's progress happening, and you see it really with
the European banks and a little bit with Latam and Brazil. I'd say so,
ECB's got a lot of work going forward, and Switzerland similar bit slightly
different jurisdiction, and I think Switzerland actually announced last week they did a settlement
of a bond with a digital sort of Swiss Frank type scenario. So they're
actually, you know, quite ahead of most of the countries. ECB is
still in the sort of development sort of phase and sort of working things out,
but they're moving forward to looking at technology in the next I think it's
the end of this year into next year of how they build it. So
you know the Latam as I mentioned in Brazil, but a lot of countries
in Latam, you know, Columbia and all those other countries, they're all
looking at different types of CBDCs and stable crones as well. And I think
a lot of people focus on CBDC and I sort of sit there, going,
it's interesting. It's important because it's the top, it's the most,
but actually all the money you've got in your wallet and your accounts is not
CBDC. It's actually commercial bank money. So ninety five percent of the money
in circulation in most countries is actually commercial bank money. The dollars you have
in your pocket are the only CBDC equivalent. It's not digital, the only
CBDC we have, and so lots of people are talking about cbdc's but actually
it's only going to be five percent of your money, if at all.
It's only going to be your your small spending and things like that, and
I question why you would ever use it that much, whereas a stable crone
or a digital version, digital dollar, digital pound, the commercial bank side
of it, that's the interesting bit, and that's where the traction is starting
to grow. And people talk about tokenized deposits and you know stable coins.
As we said, that is where the growth is, and I think that's
where people need to sort of pay more attention less on the CBDC because you
don't use it that much and you don't need to. You actually don't need
to. We can live our lives without CBDC, you know, whereas commercial
bank money, which is the money in your bank today and in your wallets
and not in your physical wallet, but you are digital wallets. That's what's
important. And obviously meeker regulations just come in Europe, just launched a couple
of days ago. Still new, still still lots to do, i'd say,
with it. But it was very interesting that usd T is not I
wouldn't say it's not illegal yet, it's not allowed. Let's say in Europe,
so I trade with a pole bitstam, all of those USDT has been
removed. The only stable US dollar stable coin is usd C PayPal stable coin.
They're the only ones. And because in the in Europe you have to
have a money transfer license near my license is called so basically need to be
in essence of regulated institution, which Circle and obviously PayPal are. So I
think that's more interesting what's happening there, because are we all going to in
Europe start using us d C and EUROC obviously the other euro equivalent. Interestingly,
not a lot of people use EUROC, and I think that's where the
crypto world comes in, because we all work in dollars when you quote the
price of bitcoin, you always say dollars, are you know, I always
say dollars, even though I live in Europe or when I lived in the
UK, I would always quote bitcoin, you know, thirty thousand dollars,
fifty thousand dollars. So it's going to be interested in this whole stable coin
and regulated stable coins, non regulated stable coins and backed by different things.
That's what we need to look at. And the big banks, you know,
the city banks HSBC's of the world, they're starting to look at that
because that's when the change will happen, you know, And that's when things
like how does MasterCard and the money you know, the credit card, the
American Express, how do they all work if we move to digital money,
digital currency? Because do we need the ends of the sort of the process,
you know, how do we do transactions? Because you and I know,
because we're crypto people, I can show my QR code and my wallet
and you can send me a bitcoin. I'll do it if you want.
By the way, they're going to send me a bitcoin, you know,
and that's p TP to ends. You know, we're done and we know,
you know, within a few seconds if it's on XRP you know it's
cleared and bitcoin tex so you know an urso at the moment, but how
does that work in the new world? And I think that's the bits that's
been thought through. So at a CBDC level, there's lots of understanding around
that. And back to the digital euro as well, the ECB has said
privacy is number one, so you don't need to know the ends of the
transaction for say, you know, five dollars five euros five dollars, that's
not the figure yet, but there'll be things so you can buy your coffee
and things. And I always say to people, don't people get a lot
concerned and annoyed about privacy of CBDC and the central bankers don't care that you're
buying a coffee. They really don't care that you're buying coffee and doing things.
They care about if your money laundry in twenty thousand dollars or you know,
doing things that you shouldn't be doing, that's what they care about,
you know. And so it's a bit of education. I think central banks
don't have the best positivity at the moment, let's say globally, I think
and I have to say you know, Jerome Powell is literally just outside the
window, not not physically standing there, but he's in Centro in Portugal,
which is next to where I live. And yesterday he was at the ECB
President's are all over there at the moment talking policy, et cetera. And
he actually said on Bloomberg that, you know, the the it was something
about the central banks. You know, respect from the people is still at
a very high level. And I thought, yeah, that's obviously on x
dot com, Twitter, it's there's a very difference different. So so I
think there is this this issue around cbdcas and privacy which has been blown out
of all proportion. I would be more worried about my privacy of my my
bank and my state or coin and whatever they do, because they're then going
to be in control of my privacy. Still sorry, quick question on that.
So, are you envisioning that the CBDCs they launch will be wholesale,
so that'll be between the third and the banks, the commercial banks, but
the retail are going to be using stable coins because I've mean hearing more and
more that's kind of the model. And here in the United States, Congress
has put out some bills saying no CBDC issued directly to citizens, So it
seems like stable coins are going to be the retail. I think they'll probably
be both. So I do think you'll you'll sort of have a CBDC element
in a wallet somewhere, but you know, it might be one hundred dollars
or something. The rest of it, as you say, will be wholesale
commercial bank money, which will be your digital dollars sort of thing. So
I think countries will make different decisions on the CBDC to the retail CBDC,
so me and you holding it in our wallets. ECB looks though they'll do
it as you say, Congress, different opinions, and obviously Goodman change maybe
coming. So we don't know yet, but it seems as though they're suggested
no at the moment, but you know, we don't know. So it
will be limited anywhere, be capped anyway, because the central banks don't want
to be dealing with your wallet and your issues of losing your keys, and
it's not what they do. They don't do that. They don't deal with
people. They deal with the banks, as you know, the banks that
we deal with. So I personally, for me, I see a very
clear model going through to commercial banks, a wholesale bank, and as you
mentioned, that's what we'll be using. That's the digital dollar or digital era
that will use and it'll be managed by our commercial bank. What are your
thoughts on Ripple launching a stable coin. I think it's called r l USD.
It's coming up this sometime this year. Yeah, I think it's great
to launch a stable coin. I think at the moment, good things are
happening in the stable coins, so you know, it's it's the future stable
coins. You know, whether Ripple is as good or better than PayPal or
you know, Circle, et cetera, it's all around user adoption and what
we as the people and businesses decide to do. So I think, you
know, there's still a long way to go before we get to that.
I think stable coins are such a low percentage of the money out there,
but there's lots of you know, companies trying this, lots of banks trying
this. It's not just to Ripple, it's it's many others, but it's
it's definitely an interesting step forward, and you know, looking forward to the
launch later on this year. Hard question, you know, what is your
timeline for when you think we might see CBDCs out in in the markets,
is it five years from now the big countries, so you see, if
you take US, eure A, UK, Japan, I think it's probably
getting near ten years. I don't see the countries actually getting themselves sorted in
enough time unless there's some big crisis that means it happens sooner, which may
or may not happen. So I just don't see. There's lots of progress,
but the politics is getting involved, and politics never speeds things up.
Politics always slows it down. So if you take we're not even there yet
with what it would look like and how it would work, So the politics
is going to destroy it, not destroyed, but slow it down some stage
where you will see CBDCs. Are the likes of the sort of other countries,
be at Latam, Africa and some of the Asia countries. You know,
all of those are sort of progressing quite well. Brazil was doing very
well, but they're slowing down from a technology perspective at the moment. But
I think once they get that fixed, they'll move forward. So I think
some countries are just going to go for it quicker because it's less risk to
them it's more needed. You know, some of this is about if you've
got a big physical country and you know you're a poorer nation, it's it's
very difficult to get money around and make it happen. A digital currency in
whatever format stable corn or CBDC means people can just interact straight away, and
it really does. And you saw that with the Ripple Palou project where it
really helps some of the very small projects. You know, only a few
hundred people used it, but it showed that it was really easy for people
to pay for things. It was you know, and the back end of
it, the money is just flowing very quickly and closing at the end of
the day and settling and stuff. So it was a nice easy process.
Now allows a very small island nation, so scale it up. But it
showed that it can happen, and it doesn't. You know, Nigeria has
been doing trials, which I'm not sure entirely whether that's moved forward again,
but I think definitely Brazil and Switzerland too. If you're going to watch who's
going to do it first, I put my money on probably Switzerland, just
because they know how to get things done and they're less political they're very you
know, they're very and I think Brazil, if they can get through,
they've got this tech hurdle at the moment they're just working on and I think
if they get through that and the politics is okay positive for it, which
seems to be okay, then but yeah, I think for Europe, UK,
USA, I'd say I think it's realistically ten years, but let's hope
for a surprise. Yeah, for sure, it's fascinating. I'm very intrigued
by the timeline and when these things were all out. Obviously I'm passionate about
the technology and how it's going to change people's lives and so forth. And
you know, what you're doing in the CBRC is certainly helping to educate the
masses, helping people to adopt blockchain. So help to speed things up a
bit, right, lovely? Hopefully? Yes? Awesome? I go get
some wrap up questions here for you. First, if you could create your
own metaverse, what would the theme be? I think the metaverse for me
would be around just being nice and generally you know, happy and doing positive
things. So instead of negative news, we shared what did you do what
was positive today? And just get people a bit more happy, and there's
amazing things in life, but mainstream news and things is always what went wrong,
And I'd have a metaverse that's a happy metaverse and rapid fire questions.
Favorite food sushi, Favorite musician or band has to be Madonna, especially after
her age. Doing Copa Cabana with one point eight million fans is impressive at
her age. Yeah, favorite movie Devil Words Prada. Favorite book, Well,
I was going to say, thinking crypto the one behind you, but
I'll have to stay commercializing blockchain for sure. I'll put a link to your
book by the way for everyone to check it out. And what do you
do for what do you do for fun? For as a hobby? So
I live in Portugal, so there's lots of outdoor and sunshine. Although this
year it's July and it's only just started the summer. Everybody thinks we live
in the sunshine every day and the rest of it it's, you know,
not too bad, but it's not sunny all the time here, so we've
got outdoors now. And also I love F one as well, and some
really interesting things happening in F one at the moment, which is always good
to watch. Awesome Anthony pleasure chatting with you and we'll have to have you
back on as things progressed with a CBRC, but thank you so much for
joining me. Definitely thanks for your time, Tony, and thanks for yours
pak post The Bok pakstk tak