Speaker 1: Hey, everyone.
Speaker 2: We are recording at Halburn's Access Summit at the New
Speaker 2: York Stock Exchange, and joining me is Rob Benke, who
Speaker 2: is the co founder and executive chairman at Helburn. Rob.
Speaker 1: Great to have you, Tony. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great to be here at the Stock Exchange,
Speaker 2: and you know, I'm really looking forward to the panels
Speaker 2: and all the great discussions. I would love to kick
Speaker 2: it off with your background. How did you end up
Speaker 2: co founding Halburn?
Speaker 1: Sure?
Speaker 3: So, I mean, I definitely I think at this point
Speaker 3: qualify as a serial entrepreneur. I've built a couple of
Speaker 3: smaller companies before in completely different world.
Speaker 1: So right out of college I actually.
Speaker 3: Started an organic food company, a salsa company actually, And
Speaker 3: surely as we were sort of winding that down. This
Speaker 3: was back in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, so at the
Speaker 3: height of my CpG experience, we're in about ten thousand
Speaker 3: grocery stores around world, and then you know, it's just
Speaker 3: kind of it's a really tough industry to be in.
Speaker 3: But around that time in twenty thirteen, as we were
Speaker 3: winding that company down, a friend of mine told me
Speaker 3: about this thing called bitcoin, and I said, oh, that's
Speaker 3: funny that scam. You know, what are you talking about?
Speaker 3: Like that PONDSI or whatever. And I went down the
Speaker 3: rabbit hole. And so my exceptionally tiny claim to fame
Speaker 3: in that moment was, you know, I'm I'm I'm always
Speaker 3: about learning. I'm constantly learning. The way that I actually
Speaker 3: learned the best is typically through audio. So I'm a
Speaker 3: musician as a as a fun hobby. I've always been,
Speaker 3: you know, playing drums and electronic music and such and
Speaker 3: playing that. And so when I fell in love with bitcoin,
Speaker 3: there was no audiobook. So I actually created the Bitcoin
Speaker 3: White Paper audiobook that's on YouTube. And so that was
Speaker 3: in like late twenty thirteen that I launched that thing.
Speaker 3: So I've been really into this space for a while now,
Speaker 3: and you know, had another company, had other jobs throughout
Speaker 3: the way, and then in twenty seventeen, you know, got
Speaker 3: you know, was part of sort of the Ico madness
Speaker 3: that was going on in that moment, and uh so
Speaker 3: I started a growth hacking and sort of growth marketing
Speaker 3: agency at the time, and then so that that company
Speaker 3: was called Token Agency. That was a wild moment where
Speaker 3: a couple of things happened there. So, first of all,
Speaker 3: that was my first real.
Speaker 1: Taste of success.
Speaker 3: I was able to bootstrap marketing agency to eight figures
Speaker 3: in revenue on one hundred percent of it and just sort.
Speaker 1: Of grew it that way.
Speaker 3: And throughout that time one of the big projects we
Speaker 3: were working with was so think about this. Twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: I was working with the former Commissioner of the CFTC
Speaker 3: on an asset back stable coin wow wild stuff. Shockingly,
Speaker 3: it didn't end up launching because of all the obvious
Speaker 3: reasons right, way too early and timing is everything right,
Speaker 3: But what happened was throughout twenty seventeen, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: I noticed that very big trend, which was, as much
Speaker 3: as we love this technology for what it's able to enable,
Speaker 3: all the all the concepts that that tokenizing things can
Speaker 3: can bring about, every single one of my clients kept
Speaker 3: getting hacked. And it wasn't just one thing, it was
Speaker 3: just it was a myriad of different things. So of
Speaker 3: course there was a you know, oh we launched this
Speaker 3: big project end boom, No we don't, because you know,
Speaker 3: the smart contract gets hacked or you know, just just
Speaker 3: pure social engineering, right, Like you know, one of my
Speaker 3: clients they just got, you know, an invoice from a
Speaker 3: vendor to change their bank details. They send one hundred
Speaker 3: thousand dollars to you know who knows where, And so
Speaker 3: it just happened left and right, and I realized that
Speaker 3: if if code equals money, well hold on. The only
Speaker 3: thing that matters in order to actually make this thing
Speaker 3: take off is cybersecurity and making sure that folks can
Speaker 3: sort of stay safe out there.
Speaker 1: And so it's just left, right and center.
Speaker 3: So what happened was, uh, put a call out to
Speaker 3: my network, met a friend of a friend. That friend
Speaker 3: of a friend is my now co founder, Steve Wallbrough.
Speaker 3: Turns out he is a world renowned ethical hacker. He's
Speaker 3: known as a Sans Fellow. So in this sort of
Speaker 3: group of you know, the Sands, one of the largest
Speaker 3: you know, uh, technical educators in the world for cybersecurity.
Speaker 3: He's one of the guys that has what's called the
Speaker 3: one coin, So it just means that he's gotten every
Speaker 3: single training session and sort of the height of every single.
Speaker 1: Training session there.
Speaker 3: And when I met him, his penetration his team had
Speaker 3: just won one of the largest penetration testing hackathons in
Speaker 3: the world called NetWars.
Speaker 1: So he's a first place run.
Speaker 3: So I meet this guy and he just has all
Speaker 3: these accolades, and I'm like, okay, Like, first of all,
Speaker 3: I don't think that this guy's real, you know, I'm like,
Speaker 3: all right, this can't be this can't be real. So
Speaker 3: end up meeting Steve turns out, you know, certainly real,
Speaker 3: and we we realized. So I brought him in on
Speaker 3: a couple engagements with my clients and so as a
Speaker 3: marketing agency, the idea was, let's spin off a different
Speaker 3: branch and let's you know, let's do a cyber branch
Speaker 3: and we'll call it Token Hackers. Wow, best worst name ever, Like,
Speaker 3: truly truly incredible. So throughout the year of twenty eighteen
Speaker 3: and nineteen, I realized a couple of things. First of all,
Speaker 3: you know, if you want to go, if you want
Speaker 3: to go fast, go go alone. If you want to
Speaker 3: go far, go you know together. So Steve and I
Speaker 3: vibed really well. We're sort of a Yinging Yang scenario
Speaker 3: where he's good at other things that I'm not.
Speaker 1: So we teamed up.
Speaker 3: We actually built two companies at the same time, and
Speaker 3: then COVID hit So like the moment that lockdown happens.
Speaker 3: We're working on two different things. So the first was
Speaker 3: what we then rebranded to Halborn, and funny enough, the
Speaker 3: second one was a fashion aggregation site, which I still think.
Speaker 1: Is a great idea.
Speaker 3: You know, you got to get the real realm, Poshmark
Speaker 3: and eBay and aggregate that all together so you can
Speaker 3: get some you know, pre owned fashion. Anyway, but the
Speaker 3: moment that Covid hit Halborne signed, it's very first customer.
Speaker 3: And it's fitting that we're talking about this today because
Speaker 3: that first customer was Nicey was the New York Stock Exchange.
Speaker 1: So at the.
Speaker 3: Time, at the time backed bakkt was a division of
Speaker 3: the New York Stock Exchange. You know, they were like
Speaker 3: the big name, right, So we had an opportunity. I said,
Speaker 3: put us in coach, like you know. It took us
Speaker 3: months and months and months of red tape as a
Speaker 3: two person shop to like get all the paperwork ready.
Speaker 3: And yeah, so we did our first pen test, you know,
Speaker 3: back then, and then I had a conversation with Steve.
Speaker 3: I said, look, I'm going to go and I'm going
Speaker 3: to sell so many deals this back in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: I'm going to sell so many deals, you're going to
Speaker 3: quit all your jobs and we're gonna have to make
Speaker 3: Calburn a full time thing.
Speaker 1: And that happened all in the year twenty twenty and
Speaker 1: so it's been kind of crazy.
Speaker 3: So, like you know, twenty twenty, by by the end
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty one, we were completely bootstrapped, never raised
Speaker 3: a single dollar for the company, and had seventy full
Speaker 3: time employees.
Speaker 1: Wow. So it just goes to show.
Speaker 3: You kind of like, you know, I think timing is
Speaker 3: everything as well too, Right, So we didn't know, DeFi
Speaker 3: summer was happening in that time, but it was happening
Speaker 3: during that time, right.
Speaker 2: That's that's an incredible journey. And to have your first
Speaker 2: client being backed, I mean, that's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I kind of realized, you know, in when I was
Speaker 3: when I had the marketing agency, I put feelers out.
Speaker 3: I talked to all of our would be Halborne competitors
Speaker 3: in that time, because I you know, they weren't competitive
Speaker 3: with me at the time. And I realized immediately that
Speaker 3: no one knows what the hell they're doing, and if
Speaker 3: they do know what they're doing, they're very focused on
Speaker 3: like one specific part, but don't look at the forest
Speaker 3: through the trees, right, and that was the market. I
Speaker 3: was like, okay, well, what if we focus on holistic
Speaker 3: security practice all of the things that can go wrong
Speaker 3: on chain, but all the things that can go wrong
Speaker 3: off chain. We saw so many hacks happening over the
Speaker 3: last couple of years that have nothing.
Speaker 1: To do with smart contracts.
Speaker 3: In fact, in a recent Holborn report that we put out,
Speaker 3: over forty percent of the top hacks that have happened
Speaker 3: in the space have nothing to do with smart contracts.
Speaker 1: So if you're just doing smart contract.
Speaker 3: On its all day, that doesn't get that doesn't get
Speaker 3: you secure, that doesn't stay safe. And so that's what
Speaker 3: we've been building towards ever since. You know, and what
Speaker 3: I would say is through that founding journey, when when
Speaker 3: the nicey is your first customer, I think we had
Speaker 3: a really big opportunity to say, Okay, I think that
Speaker 3: blockchain technology in tokenization is going to come. I think
Speaker 3: that we're going to completely transform financial services and we
Speaker 3: need to be sort of ahead of that and take
Speaker 3: those steps. And so you know, it's it's very public now,
Speaker 3: so you know, I can talk about it, but you know,
Speaker 3: even back as far back as twenty twenty one. We
Speaker 3: were working with like B and Y Mellon and a
Speaker 3: couple of other larger financial institutions on you know, a
Speaker 3: number of different initiatives that they.
Speaker 1: Were trying to do.
Speaker 3: And so what I did was kind of an unconventional thing,
Speaker 3: which is, you know, I'm I'm I'm the Web three
Speaker 3: native in the group. I actually went out and we
Speaker 3: hired a CEO. So I went out and we hired
Speaker 3: Jacques Boujeong, who you know, I think you'll talk with
Speaker 3: soon enough, and he's our CEO over at Halborn. I
Speaker 3: transitioned into executive chairman, and I've been you know, I
Speaker 3: haven't stopped, like I'm I'm still knee deep and everything
Speaker 3: that we're working on over at Halborne, and it's just
Speaker 3: been really exciting to can you continue to sort of
Speaker 3: ride the momentum and ride the growth that we've seen.
Speaker 2: Tell us a bit about the services that you provide
Speaker 2: and how institutions are leveraging. You mentioned smart contracts, but
Speaker 2: there are other avenues like social engineering and things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So you know, look, I think for
Speaker 3: better or for worse, we get lumped into the smart
Speaker 3: contract auditor sort of you.
Speaker 1: Know, barriers there, right.
Speaker 3: The reality is that since day one we've been focused
Speaker 3: on what is called assurance works, is security assurance work,
Speaker 3: which is really this world of pen testing, manual code reviewing,
Speaker 3: and if it's on chain, yeah it's a smart contract,
Speaker 3: or it's an L one, or it's an L two.
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, by us being a purely
Speaker 3: sort of ethical hacking operation, that's been able to bring
Speaker 3: additional sort of expansion opportunities, and we want to do
Speaker 3: that in the right sort of way. And what we
Speaker 3: realized is a lot of the financial institutions we were
Speaker 3: working with, you know, great Halborn, Yeah, yeah, you can
Speaker 3: pen test what we're about to launch and so forth,
Speaker 3: so on, but we're years out from that, like we're not.
Speaker 1: Ready for it yet.
Speaker 3: So about two years ago we spun up an advisory
Speaker 3: practice and we said, okay, well we are the experts
Speaker 3: in the space, like we've built custody solutions, we know
Speaker 3: what to look out for, we know more about stable
Speaker 3: coins than most. So we spun up an advisory practice
Speaker 3: so when you start building, like, we're here to help.
Speaker 3: When you start to think about a buy verse build.
Speaker 1: Analysis, should I should.
Speaker 3: I go and get my infrastructure done by fire blocks?
Speaker 3: Or should I build my own home cooked thing? These
Speaker 3: are the things that we help customers with. So our
Speaker 3: advisory practice, we grew four hundred percent last year just
Speaker 3: in that division, you know, and look it's a big number,
Speaker 3: but it was also it was a small It was
Speaker 3: small the year before, and now it's much more sizable,
Speaker 3: more material now. And so that's really the division of
Speaker 3: we do advisory and we do assurance. And so what
Speaker 3: that goes to show you is as early as you
Speaker 3: start to think about building in custody or stable coins
Speaker 3: or tokenization into your financial services, you know, company like
Speaker 3: we're here to help along that way. And I would
Speaker 3: say that the alpha that you can go ahead and
Speaker 3: drop on this podcast that we haven't really talked about
Speaker 3: is that throughout the course of the last year or so,
Speaker 3: we you know, since the beginning, we've had a lab's division,
Speaker 3: a technology division, And I think that what's exciting is
Speaker 3: that throughout the sort of chewing glass and the sort
Speaker 3: of like running into roadblocks and Okay, this isn't working,
Speaker 3: this isn't working, the last six months, something clicked and
Speaker 3: it clicked in a really big way, and so we
Speaker 3: will have a automated code review product out to market
Speaker 3: by the end of this year, and we're pretty quiet
Speaker 3: about it. I don't mind telling you about it or
Speaker 3: telling the world a little bit here about it, but
Speaker 3: you know, you won't see the marketing team talking about
Speaker 3: it too much. And that's because our internal team is
Speaker 3: starting to utilize it. There's never any.
Speaker 1: World where AI takes over one.
Speaker 3: Hundred percent of anything, but the human hybrid of you know,
Speaker 3: here's this piece of technology, here's the human component is
Speaker 3: what will always be our secret sauce. And yeah, I mean,
Speaker 3: so we're really excited about launching and building throughout that,
Speaker 3: and we've been picking up a lot of pilot customers
Speaker 3: along the way there.
Speaker 2: And I'm assuming demand has risen incredibly with so many
Speaker 2: institutions getting involved with crypto. I mean, you go down
Speaker 2: the Wall Street List right, Black Rock and many others.
Speaker 2: So are you seeing a lot of demand on that front?
Speaker 3: I mean, in twenty twenty three, I would say that
Speaker 3: it was a tough moment for probably the industry too.
Speaker 3: But it was a tough moment for me to go
Speaker 3: to my board and basically be like, hey, look, we're
Speaker 3: only going to focus on financial institutions, we're going to
Speaker 3: be the Web three company, web three security company that
Speaker 3: doesn't focus on Web three security.
Speaker 1: And it's like, what do you mean. So it's like, well,
Speaker 1: we're only.
Speaker 3: Going to help financial services companies enable to the next
Speaker 3: digital transformation. So it's like, you know, like IBM, for example,
Speaker 3: considers digital transformation to be sort of like the you know,
Speaker 3: cloud is what people mostly think of, but then it's
Speaker 3: also AI and blockchain. So as financial institutions start to
Speaker 3: realize the power of tokenization, which it seems like they
Speaker 3: are now, you know, this is a thesis that we
Speaker 3: think is the long tail right call. And you know,
Speaker 3: this is where you know, I would say three years ago,
Speaker 3: our enterprise business was two percent of all of Halborn.
Speaker 1: Today it's thirty percent.
Speaker 3: Wow, and we expect it to be you know, a
Speaker 3: majority of the business this year. And we're and and
Speaker 3: so you know, we're really excited. We're six years into
Speaker 3: building out this company. In many ways, I think we're
Speaker 3: just getting started. So yeah, you know, it's it's a
Speaker 3: really exciting time. And yeah, to specifically answer your question,
Speaker 3: I mean, the institutions are coming, They're all here, and
Speaker 3: that's why that's why we threw That's why we put
Speaker 3: together Access frankly, right, you know, like is this you
Speaker 3: know it started off as positioning and then turned into reality.
Speaker 3: You know, it's it's about.
Speaker 1: Positioning us and continuing.
Speaker 3: To be sort of a you know, a thought leader
Speaker 3: in how financial services gets through this digital transformation.
Speaker 1: And the digital transformation is going to take.
Speaker 3: A decade two decades to still keep happening, so we
Speaker 3: want to be the ones to enable that.
Speaker 2: So, speaking of adoption, we have the Crypto Market Structure
Speaker 2: bill that's currently in the Senate is expected to potentially
Speaker 2: pass this year, maybe later this quarter or early Q two.
Speaker 2: What do you think the impact will be of that
Speaker 2: bill passing?
Speaker 3: Will accelerate the adoption, Yes, it will accelerate the adoption.
Speaker 1: I think that there's a bunch of you know, there's just.
Speaker 3: Trillions of dollars of capital and the sidelines kind of
Speaker 3: waiting for regulatory clarity. You know, of course it's you
Speaker 3: know in it a clarity act is good branding, you know,
Speaker 3: you know, it's definitely good branding. I think that the
Speaker 3: devil will be in the details. And you know where
Speaker 3: we're at today filming this this interview, there's a lot
Speaker 3: of uncertainty as to when and how and what it
Speaker 3: looks like. So again, the devil is going to be
Speaker 3: in the details, right, So we'll say, and and look,
Speaker 3: whether it takes another year or two to actually happen.
Speaker 3: I don't think that part necessarily matters for what we're
Speaker 3: building towards at Halborne. But will continued regulatory clarity help
Speaker 3: further the industry, Yes, in a in an incredible way.
Speaker 3: I think the Genius Act was so necessary. Uh, it
Speaker 3: was really exciting to actually get that bill passed through Congress,
Speaker 3: and it's it became a bill, right right, And so
Speaker 3: that's why you see so much stable coin technology taking
Speaker 3: off right now. So you can only imagine with clarity
Speaker 3: it kind of cover everything else. Of course, it covers
Speaker 3: you know, stable coin yield, and that's that's the that's big,
Speaker 3: that's the big spicy topic, right. So I can't weigh
Speaker 3: in as to where where you know, where that pendulum
Speaker 3: is gonna swing. I have my suspicions that the banks
Speaker 3: are probably gonna win out, but I don't think.
Speaker 1: That that's a very spicy take. But we'll say, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's an exciting time and you know, I've
Speaker 2: been here since twenty sixteen, and I remember twenty twenty
Speaker 2: two into twenty twenty three being a rough time. We
Speaker 2: were talking before the recording, I thought of potentially leaving
Speaker 2: the industry. But things have turned, you know, done.
Speaker 1: A one eighty not that you're sticking around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so exciting, and I feel folks are heads
Speaker 2: down building, they're not worried anymore, and it's just a
Speaker 2: good time. There's great momentum.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a there's an incredible amount of momentum. I
Speaker 3: mean that moment in twenty two and twenty three was
Speaker 3: was was pretty incredible in a lot of ways.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, I don't mind.
Speaker 3: I don't mind even I talk about it privately, I
Speaker 3: don't mind talking about it publicly. You know, Tara Luna
Speaker 3: was twenty percent of Holborn business in twenty two. You know,
Speaker 3: there was a lot of people in the web three
Speaker 3: space that were very bullish.
Speaker 1: On that concept.
Speaker 3: Turns out they never had a security issue. It turns
Speaker 3: out their economics were wacky. Yeah, you know, so you know,
Speaker 3: so that was definitely you know, more of a like
Speaker 3: a crazy moment, but you know, we but but it
Speaker 3: also shows you sort of the world of security, how
Speaker 3: necessary it is.
Speaker 1: It just shows you sort of the.
Speaker 3: Resiliency that this industry will continue to remain. Now momentum
Speaker 3: is interesting as well. So I've been having some conversations
Speaker 3: with some folks in the industry about whether or not
Speaker 3: the last ten years of all of this decentralized building,
Speaker 3: all the VC dollars, the billions of billions of dollars
Speaker 3: that have been poured into VC and startups, whether or
Speaker 3: not you know, the big banks are basically just taking
Speaker 3: it and running with it. You know, the real value
Speaker 3: a crew, you know, a cruel is probably going to
Speaker 3: be coming from the Black Rocks and the JP Morgans
Speaker 3: of the world, because they're going to take these open source,
Speaker 3: you know, code bases and use them.
Speaker 1: For for what they're what they're what they are for.
Speaker 3: And I don't have an opinion as to whether or
Speaker 3: not that's good or bad. I just think it's an
Speaker 3: observation of where things are and also sort of how
Speaker 3: things have always been. So, you know, we're we're excited
Speaker 3: by the momentum of how banks are accepting of this technology. Obviously,
Speaker 3: there's also quantum and AI sort of involved throughout throughout
Speaker 3: all those threads. But finally we get to a point
Speaker 3: where twenty four to seven trading is about to be enabled. Yes,
Speaker 3: you know, NASTAC announce that'll be twenty four to five
Speaker 3: right away, right, instant settlement, you know, T zero you know,
Speaker 3: and programmable money, smart contracts like these are the things
Speaker 3: that we've been talking about for the last decade. Yes,
Speaker 3: like oh you know, this is this is you know,
Speaker 3: why why can't I send a USDC over to someone
Speaker 3: in Argentina like that, you know, instantly? Like why hasn't
Speaker 3: that taken off? Where we're at today in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: six is we're here at Access Summit Western Union and
Speaker 3: Swifter in the audience.
Speaker 1: Yeah, crazy, incredible, incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, going into this year and we're already
Speaker 2: you know, middle of January here, what would you say
Speaker 2: are to top three threats from a security standpoint for
Speaker 2: institutions participating in crypto? And I know that can fluctuate
Speaker 2: an EBB and flow, but oh boy, yeah.
Speaker 1: That's a big one. Top three threats.
Speaker 3: So what I've learned being in the security industry now
Speaker 3: is the biggest threat of every organization are humans?
Speaker 1: People?
Speaker 3: Yeah, people, It's social engineering all day every day. So
Speaker 3: you think about some of the biggest crypto hacks and
Speaker 3: even some of the biggest bank banking hacks. You know,
Speaker 3: it might be you know, you might be told that
Speaker 3: it's now where or sort of like a fishing you know,
Speaker 3: fishing is you know, social engineering as well, like you know,
Speaker 3: convincing someone to click on this link and download this
Speaker 3: thing and so on. And I think that that will
Speaker 3: never change. Convincing you know, a low level person inside
Speaker 3: of a company that might be not making as much
Speaker 3: money as they would.
Speaker 1: Like, Hey, under take this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, take this envelope of cash and look the
Speaker 3: other way and just leave your laptop open here.
Speaker 1: Like that stuff is real.
Speaker 3: It happens all day, every day, right, and it will
Speaker 3: only continue to matter, you know, in a in a
Speaker 3: big way. So that's that's one another element that I
Speaker 3: think is big. Is I mean, as institutions start to
Speaker 3: adopt this technology stack, there will also be one of
Speaker 3: the things that we help customers with is how they
Speaker 3: set up their custody infrastructure. Right, so you know, if
Speaker 3: you're a big bank, you have X. You know, let's
Speaker 3: just talk about bitcoin only for a moment. Okay, we're
Speaker 3: not we won't get into many others. So just bitcoin custody, right,
Speaker 3: you have a key ceremony where you're talking about where
Speaker 3: you know, where you're setting up your custody infrastructure. In
Speaker 3: the security industry, it's called a wrench attack, so you
Speaker 3: kidnap a wrench attack?
Speaker 1: Is this idea?
Speaker 3: I think it's called like a five dollar wrench attack.
Speaker 3: So the the idea is that you can take a
Speaker 3: five dollars wrench. If I go up to you, Tony
Speaker 3: and say give me the private keys, You're gonna give
Speaker 3: me the private keys, or I'm going to hit you
Speaker 3: with a wrench, right, So these are you know, I think,
Speaker 3: oh geez, you know there was a company in Canada, Chinese,
Speaker 3: a Canadian crypto exchange, so I can't recall at the
Speaker 3: top of my head, but they had they had a
Speaker 3: wrench attack with the CCO and he was threatened to
Speaker 3: get you know, and so they he luckily got out
Speaker 3: of that situation. But there's been some there's been some
Speaker 3: really bad situations more recently with that. And then third,
Speaker 3: you know, you can't talk about these things without talking
Speaker 3: about smart contract risk.
Speaker 1: Like, great, you're going to issue a stable coin on ethereum.
Speaker 3: Awesome, here's a laundry list of things that if you
Speaker 3: write the code poorly, it goes bad for you. And
Speaker 3: I think that there are dozens upon dozens upon dozens
Speaker 3: of security risks involved with putting anything on chain. So
Speaker 3: one of the things that we did today at our
Speaker 3: summit is we released a stable coin risk framework because
Speaker 3: the way that every financial institution looks at determining risk
Speaker 3: on assets has everything to do rightfully. So with the
Speaker 3: financial sort of efficacy, you know, that stuff goes back
Speaker 3: to the nineteen thirties with like the book, you know,
Speaker 3: security analysis. But now as we enter to the modern
Speaker 3: paradigm with using DLT, nobody's talking about the technical risk
Speaker 3: that everybody is taking on now. So is this stock equity?
Speaker 3: How do you determine that risk on just the financials?
Speaker 1: But hey, that stock equity.
Speaker 3: Is now sitting on an ethereum public main net. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and nobody wants to talk about the fact that that
Speaker 3: contract is a little wacky, or that that contract gets
Speaker 3: upgraded every six months and who's checking that. So these
Speaker 3: are I know, I'm going way past top three, but
Speaker 3: these are just the things that that we think about
Speaker 3: and keep a lot of folks up at night.
Speaker 2: So well, no, I appreciate that insight because security is
Speaker 2: such a core component or pillar for this acid class
Speaker 2: to grow and mature. You mentioned, you know you have
Speaker 2: something on the roadmap for this year. Is there anything
Speaker 2: else you want to highlight that maybe upcoming?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean we're announcing. I'm announcing in a in
Speaker 3: an hour. Uh So this time last year we were
Speaker 3: appro We had some folks from Salona Foundation in the
Speaker 3: audience and I had a conversation here and I was like,
Speaker 3: why is there no ARC? I think it's I always
Speaker 3: mess up the numbers.
Speaker 1: Excuse me? Like the ARC thirty six, forty three.
Speaker 3: You can go, you know, google me, so for you know,
Speaker 3: it's the RWA tokenization sort of ethereum standards. Yet like
Speaker 3: why doesn't that exist on Solana And they're like, well,
Speaker 3: some people have tried, but maybe you should take a
Speaker 3: crack at it. And so we worked with uh, you know,
Speaker 3: Solana's Foundation supported us in our efforts to then go
Speaker 3: and work with a panel of industry expert So we
Speaker 3: put together security panel. The long story shortage, Today we're
Speaker 3: announcing the launch of the Solana Security Token Standard SO
Speaker 3: S S t S dot org SO that's what we're
Speaker 3: announcing today SSTs dot org.
Speaker 1: Go check it out.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 3: And that's really fun, you know, like these are all
Speaker 3: What's fun about this moment for Holborn is we get
Speaker 3: to sort of build the building blocks that are going
Speaker 3: to be around for the next twenty thirty years, maybe
Speaker 3: one hundred years, and so we're creating the standards and
Speaker 3: the frameworks that a lot of these folks you know,
Speaker 3: can sort of take bits and pieces from and then
Speaker 3: go utilize it. So so that's really exciting too. We're
Speaker 3: a big you know, look like we're not Maxi's in
Speaker 3: any particular division. I think the market can tell us
Speaker 3: what the market wants to do, Like if you want
Speaker 3: to build, you know, want to issue something on Ethereum
Speaker 3: made net or issue it on Solana. The trend that
Speaker 3: we're obviously seeing is interoperability. They're not pick in one chain, right,
Speaker 3: they're picking. They're diversifying on like five to six chains,
Speaker 3: seeing what works, seeing what doesn't.
Speaker 1: And going from there. So I'm excited to see that
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: That's awesome. I saw Nick Dukov of Aslana Foundation moving
Speaker 2: running around, so hopefully I'll get to chat with him later.
Speaker 2: But Rob exciting stuff. We're gonna have to do round
Speaker 2: two since you are in New York and I'm in
Speaker 2: New York.
Speaker 1: Hey, sure, hey, sure, Tony.
Speaker 2: They will plan it with some of the announcements. But
Speaker 2: thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Cheers.
Speaker 2: This episode is brought to you by Propy, which is
Speaker 2: leading to charge in putting real estate on chain. Propy
Speaker 2: is a game changer. You can buy and sell real
Speaker 2: estate with cryptocurrencies using the Propty platform, which is powered
Speaker 2: by a blockchain of course, and they have a native
Speaker 2: token call pro And I've been an investor in the
Speaker 2: Propy token since twenty eighteen. So Propy is a licensed
Speaker 2: Web three pioneer operating since twenty seventeen. They have facilitated
Speaker 2: over four billion dollars in transactions. They're putting titles and
Speaker 2: deeds on chain. They use coinbase for their crypto escro service.
Speaker 2: So this is a great platform and once again they
Speaker 2: are ahead of the curve when it comes to putting
Speaker 2: real estate on chain. And they just launch a great
Speaker 2: campaign where you can earn some of the Propy tokens
Speaker 2: and it's simply by doing tasks such as sharing their
Speaker 2: vision video, signing up and inviting a friend, and much
Speaker 2: more so. If you'd like to learn more about Propy,
Speaker 2: visit the link in the description. Thank you so much
Speaker 2: for tuning in. Please hit the like button subscribe if
Speaker 2: you haven't as yet. If you're listening on a podcast
Speaker 2: platform such as Spotify or Apple, please follow and leave
Speaker 2: a five star rating. Thank you so much.