EP 016 Professor Lisa Wilson (Short) "Unraveling the Mysteries of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency: Your Ultimate Guide"

PROFESSOR LISA SHORT
DUniv., FBCS., FRSA., Grad. Cert Sc., Bch T&D, Dip. T&A Sys., Adv. Dip. OHS, BA (Economics, Geog., Fin. Mgt.) Dip. Ed.

Founder Areté Business Performance
Professor Extraordinaire, Innovation, Entrepreneurship & Digital Technology [Adjunct]
Academic Advisory Board – International Association of Trusted Blockchain Applications [INATBA]
Legal Advisory Council – UK ICC Centre for Digital Trade & Innovation
Global Expert: Centre for Finance Technology & Entrepreneurship [Risk, Blockchain, Digital Assets, Cyber, Digital Transformation, Fintech] Programme Director: CFTE & Singapore Management University Blockchain & Digital Assets.

Professor Lisa Short is internationally renowned for a track record that engages and converges the best people, businesses, and stakeholders [both public and private] to design, develop and deploy 'end-to-end' digital technology led ecosystems that are commercially astute, resilient, impact driven, secure, trusted and as innovative solutions crucial for global economic development. Her passion to drive digital trust, de-risked innovation, market acceleration and entrepreneurship that combines the need for education to advance deployment of secure ecosystems of emergent technologies of blockchain, AI, IoT and others, is only rivalled by her determination to ensure the inclusion of SMEs and that parity is attained for women in the economy, start up, security and the technology sectors.

Lisa is a preeminent innovator with vast global experience, including inventing several Patents, as well as founding and managing multiple cross-jurisdictional companies with significant cutting-edge digital technology for trust, value, and supply chain improvement projects, across different segments, and global markets including UK, APAC, Africa, Singapore, Europe, and UAE. Challenging the state of play and disrupting the norm whilst pragmatically embracing the opportunities of the rapidly advancing potential of frontier technology like blockchain, the metaverse, AI and IoT ensure Lisa stays at the forefront of pioneering effective positive change, digital trust, and transformation.

Professor Short’s career is augmented by a lifelong commitment to mentoring others, holding multiple Board appointments, appointments by the EU Commission, INATBA, UN Commission on the Status of Women, pro bono work for the industry and community, and a highly respected international academic, risk and research contribution and why she is known as one of the top 100 B2B thought leaders in the world to follow and one of the world’s top 20 thought leaders and influencers on blockchain, EdTech and cryptocurrency for 2020, 2021 and 2022. A multidisciplinary approach see’s Lisa prioritise, and be highly sought, to work alongside the globe’s leading legal counsel, businesses, security specialists and digital technologists so regulatory and operational environments can mutually embrace digital resilience and the rapidity of digital change. Lisa’s latest book authorships, include contributions to Blockchain Impact, Blockchain: A to Z Explained and the Fintech Job Report and to many Journal publications and commentary in mainstream journals and media publications highlight her passion for advancing digital technology and ensuring people and business are kept secure, educated, and informed.

U K R N : 13678843 A : 71-75 Shelton Street, London, Greater London United Kingdom WC2H 9JQ M : +44[0] 7575052700 E : lisa@aretebp.com.au AustraliaABN: 32918862943 LinkedIn: lisagshort Twitter: @lisagshort

Security Circle ⭕️  is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers

Transcript

0:15

Hi, this is Yo Alejandro. Welcome. Welcome to the Security Circle podcast. If PO is the International Foundation for Protection Officers, we are dedicated to providing meaningful education and certification for all levels of security personnel and make a positive difference to our members mental health and well. Join us and our special guest each week as we delve into all the matters, security related that matter to you. Now, with me today is a very clever lady recognized as one of the top thought leaders and influences in the world for her work in digital tech, blockchain, crypto assets, and ed tech. And I haven't had to say all of those words in one sentence ever. Lisa is a preeminent innovator Strategist and design ecosystem thinker with vast international experience founding managing multiple companies. I mean, we're talking UAE Europe, simple Africa, apac, uk. and there's a list here of top 100 business to business women, thought leaders, and influencers in the world. It just goes on. I haven't had such a long list. Professor Lisa Short, thank you so much for joining me today. My absolute pleasure. Always Yolanda, it's it's always a pleasure. Yeah, it's a bit of a mouthful. Laugh, but you know, us, us women folk. We've gotta make sure that we really say to people what we've achieve. and be proud of it. Yeah, definitely. But look, we had this conversation, didn't we? And I said, look I think you are the right person to talk to about blockchain and cryptocurrency. And I think, if we look at blockchain and cryptocurrency, I think a lot of people have heard of it. I think a lot of people are quite scared of it, and I think, a lot of people don't quite know where they fit in. Just ordinary people just don't know where they fit into the blockchain conversation or the cryptocurrency conversation. So I thought, let's get somebody in who's an expert. it is my passionate topic is to simplify the language down and make it accessible and improve the education around blockchain and blockchain technologies. That's for.. blockchain, how would you define it in simple language blockchain is a set of technologies. I'm gonna say it's got four features. It really is. And I like analogies cause people will get it, right. It's not gonna be one sentence, but it's gonna be a good analogy. Okay. It, makes it easier sometimes. In past times, we've had a centralized ledger, just the same as we've had an accountant where you have a book and it has a page number on every book, and there's Alliance 30 lines to a page, and you write something on that and it says, in a central spot, one person has control of that ledger. It's a ledger or a record of transactions. A decentralized ledger or a blockchain means that there's now no longer one of those. There is now millions and millions of that ledge. Spread out over millions of nodes, which are just a computer. they're just many computers. But I think what's really important is the features of it. They, that's probably what's more important, rather than understanding what it is. It's what it does. So if you think about the old one, that centralized, one person controls it. You can tear a page out, doesn't matter what anybody does, one page can be taken. That page is gone forever. So you've lost a. You can also use liquid paper, you can use an razor, you can, you do all sorts of things to change that ledger, so it's never permanent, ever. That's one of the main features of a blockchain. It is what we call immutable. Nothing can ever be changed, and that's because there is so many copies of it, if you like, over so many different nodes or working computers, and for data to be added to that ledger. All of those computers are very vast majority, or a majority percentage has to agree on any change. So therefore nothing can be changed on it. It's an immutable ledger. Do we know what that percentage is, Lisa? Yeah. We do in most cases it's 51. but that depends on, there are different, we call that a consensus mechanism. It just means agreement. It's just like, married couple having to agree on something. So you know, it's in a consensus agreement that 51% of those working operational nodes or computers have to agree that the data or information that's being added to that blockchain, the block of data is. Is the same, hasn't been tampered with, et cetera, et cetera, and then it gets recorded as a block on that chain. It does change. So the 51% is actually one of the patents that, that I'm working on is that we can change that, what we call consensus mechanism so we can make that 51% much higher if we wished we could make it a hundred percent if we wanted to. And we were actually talking about that for legal and for purposes for dispute resolution, for example, in the law, it just means it's gotta be greater than a half of the, generally 51%. But I think the other things that's really important is, obviously it's decentralized, meaning it's not in the control of one person. And the other thing that's really important is it's peer to peer. So the best way to describe that is when we put money in the. We use a bank to safeguard our information, our assets, and so forth. So we've got a middle person that manages the trust and the security of whatever the asset is, whatever that may be that we're giving them with a blockchain. There is no centralized person. You don't need one. Because the technology does that. It tr it's, it creates a system where you don't need that intermediary. So I can send something directly to you without having to have a bank in the middle. So there's no intermediary. That's what decentralization means. So it's immutable can never be removed. It is decentralized, meaning it's out o over, over, as many nodes as we. And the other thing is that's super important is that evidentiary trail, because it can never be removed. There's always a permanent visibility of every single transaction. Now there's some of the key features of a blockchain and that really is the better thing to understand than what is a blockchain. what are the features of it and what does that mean? It means I don't need middle people. it means nothing can be removed. It means it's fully transparent. You can see transactions on it always and forever. And it's what we call trustless because that's what the technology does. So I don't, I can actually engage with you peer to peer. I could never trust you. I might never have met you, but I can have a financial transaction with you because of the features of a blockchain. And I think that's really what's very, Key to the conversation. It's not as complex as people think how the technology works. Yeah. Forget that you never buy a phone and go and ask Apple, how does this technology work? You go, what does it do for me? That's what you need to know. So what is blockchain gonna do for an ordinary, everyday person? How can we see blockchain becoming a part of their lives in the. Yeah, well it already is that the point? So I'll give you a fascinating, I would love fascinating fact. During Covid, of course, when we all turned digital, the growth of the use of digital assets, particularly in emerging nations like Africa Philippines, Indonesia south America and a lot of the other countries grew at an astronomically fast rate. And that was because you gotta remember that there's a digital driver for them. For them. There's no institutional trust. There's a lot of fraud and corruption in a lot of those countries, so they don't trust those middle men at all. So they've. Cash before and mobile money. Now they can do that securely and they can go peer to peer without having to engage. But we also know even in the emerged world and the developed world and I'll give you an example, in the US for example, for the first time ever, we've now got 24% of US citizens actually have and use digital wallet using digital assets such as crypto curr. and that compares to 23% of the population who use traditional banks. Now, that's actually really profound because digital assets like cryptocurrencies still only constitute 3% of the global economy. So in the US we've now got more people using a very minority piece. the economy, if you like, as opposed to traditional assets. Why? It's lowering cost. Fast and it's efficient. I can move money from one country to another without any exchange fees, from US dollars to g p or from the Euro to G B P. I can move it in Bitcoin, any other form of currency to anywhere in the world. nominal fees and it's instantaneously 24 7. It never stops. But that's only one of the use cases. People just have no idea of some of the other things outside just straight cryptocurrencies. You can use, I, I know we often talk about things like. You've heard the term nft and most people think an NFT or a non fungible token is a piece of digital art. No, it's not. An NFT is a piece of technology, and that piece of technology has one key feature. It represents uniqueness and singularity. Now, I want you to think about that in terms of people like, like us. So an N F T can represent a business's good. it could represent my CV and my reputation and my career. It can represent my land, the asset that I own. It can represent a house, it can represent a car. Now you think about some of the tangible things that we struggle with as people. Every time we sell a house, we have to pay for conveying and search fees and all of the stuff that we pay lawyers and things for. And it's on a physical, centralized. If your land or what we call a cadastral register, a land register, or an asset register was an N F T, all the information about that item, that asset, whatever it may be, even if it's my CV and I'm changing employment, it moves with that N F T. I never have to do those searches ever again. It moves with it and it follows that record through. Now, apart from saving cost, I want you to bring it back to some of the sort of human sort of stuff after natural disasters, easy, eg. Like, the Turkey earthquake in some of the countries that we're looking at when you've got mass destruction like that. And I can tell you also when they had the big tsunami in uh, Bandi Archie in Indian Indonesia, when people came into rescue and help in the natural disaster, they arrived. There's no buildings. There's no people. They'd been mass numbers of people killed, but buildings had been removed. The buildings where the central registers were had been removed. So when you arrive, tell me how you determine what piece of land that you own and what asset you own. you can't. And they didn't. And that was one of the big challenges that we had. So, these technologies aren't just about people making money off retail assets. These are the institutional use cases that make our world and our life. A better place. I mean, we've got unbanked people, particularly women and children who for the first time are being able to use digital wallets because they're not controlled by in many of the countries by men, for example, where women aren't entitled to have digital assets. And so, these are some of the extraordinary use cases. But we can also, only even in our industry of security and cybersecurity we're able to use this technology to what I would say start to valorize and harden and value the data that runs our digital. Because we can protect that data through the use of blockchains. And so this is turning business models and processes that we've never been able to do on its head. It's some of the most extraordinary technology that we will ever see in our lifetime. when you look at how nations have been formed with the foundation of financial institutions, we've only got to look at the founding fathers in the United States, for example. You know the fact that the transactional money is a note and it says, in God, we trust, and that represents the value, the face value. You look at all of that history and how that came about. There's a lot of wealth in that history and I can't help but think. That wealth, the very siloed wealth in financial, institutional history is very much a threat with cryptocurrency. In fact, I'd read recently that major financial institutions are investing in cryptocurrency. Is that right? Absolutely. I've just come back from Dubai the week before last ran a workshop for the Association of Futures Markets and some of the institutional projects are quite amazing. A and at all different levels as well. So you've got the big banks like H SBC Cities, Goldman Sachs. BlackRock, all the big institutions are now able to, and legally able to hold digital assets in their investment portfolios. But I think they're even taking that two and three steps further now. So for example, this morning was announced actually, so Goldman Sachs and a close friend of mine who's one of the managing directors there they've just released a 64 billion digital token program. And that's about digital digitalization of. We also had another one in Logano at a local like a local council level have issued a 200 million Swiss Frank. Digitalized bond as well. And so there's multiple layers of of digital assets, not just cryptocurrencies. We're also seeing the big institutions now look at the way that they can issue a bond, fractionalize it so that the everyday. Say individual canal for the first time, be involved in, financially creating their own wealth. And I think that's important as well. I think that's a really big part of this conversation. Whereas previously, for the individual, mom and dad who might have only had maybe a thousand or 2000 pounds or Euro or whatever, To be involved in purchasing bonds without a fair reach. Now they can because they can be fractionalized. And so, the big institutions have recognized that there's a big difference between what the hype you see on a daily basis, and we call the hype the retail trade. as opposed to the, in the really mature conversations we're having about the institutional adoption and how institutions are seeing these as long-term efficiency gains and opportunities to drive wealth into, to the economy, small to medium enterprises, for example. I know in terms of digital trade, We're 50 trillion taught short in capital and investment available to small enterprise businesses around the world to decarbonize the supply chain. We will do that through blockchain and the use of things like NFTs and the digitalization of carbon credits and so forth and so, the extraordinary ability for this technology to empower people is huge. And you know what? I can bring this down to a, and I love doing this down to a very basic conversation because some people say, well, that's way beyond me. And I talk about this often. I had a close friend in 2020 when I was in Australia during Covid, and she'd been a single mom her whole life. Lived in a rented apartment worked really hard, had a great job, but, had worked really hard but could never have, never been able to afford to save enough money to buy a deposit on a house. I was back there just cause of covid as, as fortuitously as that. And she said to me, Lisa, I wanna know all about this. I wanna understand this. And she had like a thousand dollars to invest. And she said, what do you do? And I sort of walked her through, the basics of what I would do and so forth. in 2021, she put the first deposit on her house, and that was only as a result of her managing her own wealth and the growth in the digital assets that she had invested in. Now, people will say, oh yes, but they've risen and fall. They, they've been in, in peaks and troughs and they've risen and fallen. Correct. They have. but I hate to tell people. So have stocks and shares and bonds and so has Theat. And for anybody as old as me, we would resent, re remember the 2008 financial crisis. And we'd also remember when interest rates were 21%. So please don't tell me that doesn't exist in the real world, but I'm not in control of that. In this case, I am, there's a huge difference. I get concerned when I'm using social media and I keep getting these unsolicited comments popping up on chat feeds that are saying, make some money, buy cryptocurrency. And it, that kind of feels really cheap and sleazy, it doesn't feel right and I think on face value, it is what it looks like. And I think we're a lot more finely tuned now to what we think smell. Fishy. As they say, don't they? If it looks too good, it probably is too good to be true. So for somebody who's genuinely thinking, okay, I got a thousand pounds, I would like to get in this game because I think I'll be foolish if I didn't. Cause we all heard about the guy who didn't invest in Google So, what's the best advice that you can give to somebody who does want to make this an ethical journey for the. Absolutely. But couple things. I'd say first thing, you're a hundred percent correct about the fishing exercises and what have you. But what I'd also say is that's nothing to do with the technology or the assets. I always am very clear about this, there is no such thing as crypto fraud. There's no such thing as, any of those names that it's given. Fraud is fraud. One of the reasons it's been so successful in its early stages is people are uneducated. And so the first thing that I would always say is education. Get yourself educated. And it's not difficult to do. I'll give you an example. I'm just, I'm now the program director. A new program between the Center of Finance Technology and Entrepreneurship based in the UK and the Singapore Management University. And it's a 15 hour online program that takes you from the beginning of blockchain to all about the different types of digital assets. And I'm talking about all of the digital assets. What defi, cfi, all these terms mean? What does it decentralized exchanges mean? What are the benefits? Give me some case examples. 15 hours from the world's best. We're not talking just academics. We are talking about the heads of some of the biggest institutions in the world and the regulators and so forth. It's a very balanced program, 15 hours of your time to get yourself educated. So I would say education is key and we're seeing now. all whole institutions, whole banks, central banks the security industry, insolvency companies all wanting to know and understand about these technologies. So that's always gonna be my first thing is to get yourself educated, because unless you're educated, you always have fear of something that you don't know about. And people think education comes second or third or fourth, but I'm sorry, it has to come. If you go back to when we were teenagers, we wouldn't have put money in a bank or gone and invested in anything unless we were, we, we knew about it. So it's the same here. And that also removes that fear. And it also remains that all those fishing exercises you'll know straight away that, if somebody tells you if you invest a thousand dollars, you're gonna make a hundred thousand dollars overnight on Bitcoin, that is ridiculous. You don't, right? You don't. And so fraud is, as simple as that. And they're just trying new avenues to engage with you. But once you're educated, it's to go out to some of the same as we always say, go to the lowest lowest risk. Biggest, most fundamental blue chip chains. If you like your Bitcoins, your Ethereums, yours, algos, all your big well-known. And I think something's really important to understand. The same as if you buy stocks and shares and you're wanting to invest. You're looking for not just what the rises and faults are. You're looking to see if the company is a legitimate company, what does it do? because the value of a cryptocurrency is based on the work that it does. And so therefore, you've gotta go and have a look and see what does a company do? What are what's the the due diligence and the governance of these companies we're talking about? And people will go, oh yeah, but what about ftx? Good example. In fact, in our program we're talking about ftx. I'm not afraid to talk about ftx. There was nothing wrong with the technology. It was governance and due diligence that was the problem. The same as any company using any form of traditional asset would have the same issue. And so it's about using your brain and it's about making sure you educated and going out and seek. Information and knowledge about a good, investment. And the other thing is, of course, is many of you won't even know that the savings that you are receiving are happening as a result of blockchain technologies already working in your favor. first of all great advice. Just get educated. That's really smart. And I think people will take a lot from that. And you talked about, using reputable organizations and going in low risk until you've understood the art a little bit more. This does kind of give me the same feeling. as when I in 1995 found myself in a business to business meeting with a business that were basically showing us how we could get onto something called the Worldwide Web. And myself and a colleague, we left that meeting in a swanky part of London, very high. At the time, and we left that meeting going, what the heck have we've just seen? Whoa. That's just like way beyond where we are at right now. And then as the introduction of having. you know what web access started, 96, 97, 98 in the uk and then we all know what happened from there. But I just remember that feeling of being in that meeting going, this is way beyond what my brain can comprehend. So I think really you have to kind of, anything new does have an element of fear to it. You talked earlier about. The dividends can be great, but there's also a lot of volatility. Are there any other downsides other than the volatility of cryptocurrency? Well, I'd actually say volatility is not actually a feature. So I don't know, actually don't like, like the word volatility. I would say there's fluctuations and changes and there's a reason for that and I always like people to think about this. And we will see far less of those huge fluctuations as we get greater institutional adoption and less of the retail hype. But I want you to think about, this is, There's one Bitcoin blockchain. There's no bitcoin company by the way. The technology runs itself. So there's no Bitcoin company sitting in beside, behind Bitcoin, which makes it even more a amazing, but I want you to think about it like this. If you go to Lloyd's Bank there's how many branches do Lloyd Bank? Let's just say there's thousands of branches of Lloyd's Bank, and if one of you puts a million pounds in one, Branch somewhere, and you don't even know that's happened. No, no one would even know that's occurred. It makes very little difference to the value of Lloyd's shares or what you think of Lloyd's because you don't even see that level of transparency. And that 1 million deposit is diluted over a thousand branches. And that lack of transparency and centralized. But when you see a blockchain such as one Ethereum or one Bitcoin, it's global. It's live. It's 24 7. It's instantaneous. We can tell when somebody's put a million pounds or a million dollars transaction, we call'em whale transactions and things, large transactions, and all of a sudden people go, Ooh, I wonder why that person's sold a million dollars worth of Bitcoin. Oh, I wonder why they've sold a million dollars. I'll follow suit and we all reactively follow because you know what, we're ultimately all fairly greedy. People who are investing are there to make money, but you've gotta understand, that can't be hidden. It's visual. It's also only one branch, one bank, if you like. And so you will see people follow. You'll see larger fluctuations cause there's only one of them. There's not anything to dilute what you're seeing and the reactivity that we have. So that's one of the reasons we see it. And people don't understand that, that it's a visual and it's, I can get onto my apps and I can see what's happened in the last 30 seconds with Bitcoin globally. Every single transaction. Tell me what bank in the world that you can do that with. Tell me what bank in the world identifies how much amme fees that they charge you and how many times if your transaction fails, I'll get charged a bounce transaction fee. Well, that doesn't happen with blockchain and so, I always say there are fluctuations and there are, there is retail reactivity, but we are seeing that level out substantially. So now that we are starting to see the the non. Productive players disappear out of the market, which is a good thing. It is a good thing that we're seeing the cowboys go and we're now really starting to see mature conversations. So I would say the challenges that we have is, again, around the education phase the risks there are many that would argue that, a cryptocurrency or a digital asset can go from being worth a lot to zero. In some cases that has been the case with some of the rogue scams and things that have been out there. But, you know what, if I lived in Nigeria, or I lived in sometimes Turkey or some of the other countries, guess what would you wanna get? Would you wanna get a million. Nigerian dollars or any of those cause they're worth nothing overnight. They can have interest rates worth thousands and thousands of percent. They're worthless. And so they're not featured just of cryptocurrencies and digital assets. And of course, bear in mind that. Many of the, what we call cryptocurrencies actually are the currency. They're actually an asset and they are backed by certain, physical assets. They are a physical asset sometimes as well. So it's not fair necessarily to say that is a risk. Again, it is the, the difficult things and you've got the things like. let's be honest. The Mona Lisa who says it's a priceless piece of art. Someone, that's what somebody's prepared to pay for it, isn't it? Correct. Yeah. Correct. And it's a moot point really. If somebody wants to pay 69 million pounds for bele for a piece of digital art, then they've seen a value in that at some point. Yeah. And so I think any of those things are moot points, but this technology is not going away. It. Having a huge adoption and, the ability and the efficiency gains that are massive. As I said, I'm working in digital trade at the moment and again, for first time seeing small to medium enterprises. And remember, they're not your mom and dad businesses. These are still businesses that are employing hundreds and hundreds of people and turning over millions and millions of dollars, but therefore, the first time being able to. It might be the UK with Singapore, a small business, or Europe with Australia or whatever, because for the first time we've got no barriers to entry. Because I can exchange currency, I can reduce risk because I can put it in a, what we call escrow or a safe spot on a blockchain until the goods are received and everything's transacted, and then the money's released. It works beautifully. okay. Now I know that there are other perceived downsides, certainly to, uh, cryptocurrency and that is the lack of regulation, and I think this extends as well to blockchain. Where does regulation and blockchain and cryptocurrency, where do they meet in the middle and work harmoniously together, or is it not needed? Well, actually again, it's probably a bit of misinformation really. Because there actually is regulation. There's lots of it. And, uh, and again, most people just aren't aware of it. But I wanna give you a really good example. And there's multiple actually, but in the UK for example, I've been working with the law Tech UK and Sarah Green is the law commissioner and Jeffrey Boss is the master of the roles in the uk. And one of the things that they were looking at is The legislation as it stands around the law, and do we need to change the legislation when we are talking about digital assets and smart contracts in particular? That, that run many of our digital assets that we're using in cryptocurrencies that we're using. And what they actually found is the answer is no. That the legislation that exists actually. Fulfills the same requirements, whether it's in the digital world or whether it's in, in the physical world. There are some tweaks that we've needed. There are some slight changes and some changes around things like, for example, in digital trade up until recently, and it's just only just ascended to the House of Lords now. An act where a, when you did digital trade, it was required to have a physical piece of paper to make a transaction. And so they had to make a different act to allow a digital instrument as opposed to a physical one. But what's been amazing is, and everybody can go and see that there's a fabulous report that they released at the end of last year, uh, and myself and Dean Armstrong King's Council, who's the one of the world's leading experts in digital assets, spoke on this. and that the technology aligns beautifully to most of our standing regulations that are out there. Broad corruption, breaking rules, et cetera, is pretty much covered by most things. What we have challenges around is things like, well, for the first time we have got digital assets, and if you think about this, a decentralized asset, for example who owns it and what jurisdiction does it? Because a blockchain doesn't belong in the uk. It doesn't belong in the eu, it doesn't belong in Australia. It belongs to the world. So what jurisdiction do digital assets belong? And that's where some of the challenges are that we've had is determining one. Does a digital asset exist and is, has its same properties as physical assets And we've determined yes, and there has been some tweaks to legislation and regulations, but we also know that the big exchanges, for example, are registered. They are have to be registered by things like the F C A and the SCC in, in, in Europe and so forth. what the regulations have been trying to protect in many ways are the retail consumer, not the institutional consumer. The investors. They've been trying to protect individuals. And that comes back largely to the lack of education. And in fact, I had a conversation with the commissioner the SSE commissioner in the Philippines the other day, and he openly admitted that they often. Make decisions based on fear and lack of understanding because they too are not as wise as what they could be about this technology that's changing so, so very rapidly. But the regulations exist. I can tell you now, for example, there's a new, uh, regulation to come out in the next couple of weeks that will actually provide a standard or a. For when people create a digital asset, and it now operates across a number of different blockchains. Previously, for example, if you had an asset that was built on Bitcoin, it couldn't work with another blockchain. Well, now you can. They're all very largely interoperable. And so you might have an asset that starts on one chain and ends up on another, or ends up somewhere else. Well, now there's a standard where we can track and trace those assets. Multiple blockchains, so it's actually incorrect to say that they're not regulated. Okay. What's difficult for the people in the mind is that it is often the behavior of people around the technology and setting rules on how businesses can conduct themselves and how we can offer investments to people and the way people behave as opposed to controlling the actual technology. So blockchain itself can't per se be regulated. It, it is a technology that is its own beast, if you like, but how we use it can be correct. And so, but the features that do need to be regulated and I'm gonna, uh, leading a task force with the International Association of Trusted Blockchain applications, which is also by the European Commission on Digital Credentials. Now, I want you to think about, The entry point to every single digital system, whether it's a blockchain or not, is a digital credential. So that is something that should be regulated and managed with standards so that everybody has to comply. So, it is the same principle. Garbage in, garbage out. If you put the wrong thing into a blockchain, it'll permanently record the wrong thing. So we need to make. That is regulated. We also need people to understand if they're creating a smart contract, that it comes with the same requirements of understanding that a physical contract would. So you have to have a meeting of the minds. You have to have an understanding of terms and references. You have to understand that a smart contract is something that's autonomous. It's gonna happen. So if you say A is gonna happen when B occurs, it will. because the technology says it will. That means the raw input and the functionality and what we do as humans should be regulated. So I always like to separate it out and people always sort of get brain fog When I talk this, it's not so much the technology, it's the people. It's what we do with it. It's not what the technology does, it's what we do with it and how we use it. Uh, and I think that is important that we get certain standardized regulations. The challenge that we. is that, as I said, the borderless digital world that we are playing in is currently being regulated by nationalistic borders and boundaries. So what's happening in the UK is different to what's happening in the Philippines or Europe or whatever and that's, Incredibly frustrating for some of these amazing companies. And I can tell you one for example, that's, I used in Australia and when I turn up in the UK it's not yet passed all the ticks with the fca. There's nothing wrong with the product, just hasn't gotten through the regulator and so, the perception that people have is, oh, there must be something wrong with that. And I go no, it's not actually, it's just that there's 6,000 organizations wanting that same piece of accreditation and there's not enough people in that organization to get through. It'll taken five years to get through the 6,000 organizations at this rate. That doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the company, it just means it hasn't passed that nationalistic cross jurisdictional issues that we have. So we need to have greater collaboration across the world in these borderless tech technologies. That's that. That's the point. So my penultimate question is, uh, around limited acceptance. I should imagine this is changing as time goes by. I should imagine, like me, in the beginning when you first heard of it, you thought, this is a whim. It's gonna crash and burn. Clearly it hasn't. Limited acceptance percentages, clearly going in favor of this remaining in our futures. I hear what you're saying. I mean, what's next? Yeah, you are a hundred percent correct. It's a bit like the worldwide web. They said that was a fad too, and the internet was a fad. And guess what? It hasn't been and this is happening faster and faster. So I always talk about, the time between the revolutions if you like. It's just shorter and shorter. So six, six months in blockchain is about like five years in, in previous change times and change years. A bit like dog years really So you are right, the statistic I said before, about 24% of people in the states now having, uh, wallets as opposed to 23 with traditional. That'll tell you the magnitude, given that it's still only, as I said, occupies 3% of the economy. Emerging nations is growing at a faster rate than we've ever seen before. And we are seeing some of the fastest adoption rates in those people under the age of 35 and 40. and that's obviously cause they're more digitally native than older people as well. So I guess that's the challenge for me. I think that what's next is mass education and that's why we are seeing the eg the program with CF T and the Singapore Management University when I was in Dubai two weeks ago. The head of, securities for Hssbc and Citibank and a number of the other big banks were there, and there was one word that every single one of them said was mindset. This is not about the technology, it's about the mindset. And we are now, fortunately, at a time, and I'd say, sitting on that precipice where people have recognized this isn't going away, we've now got pretty much about 180 nations around the world looking at Central Bank digital currencies, which by the way, aren't a cryptocurrency, but they're a digital asset. And so, and we're now seeing mass adoption of these technologies across the board. And so I would say, and we are hearing that what is needed now is on scale mass education at a good level, a good fundamental level. And that's why, when I say to people, get education, Ask people like myself don't go and do a Google and just do a YouTube and listen to some of the far right far lefts. We wanna see balanced, good quality education. Because there is a difference between education and information, by the way. And so, and being sold to and being sold to Correct. And so, I a hundred percent concur that, that like all things some of the language has been inappropriately used and misused. And that creates fear. one of the biggest education pieces that's needed is the media, because if I see one more piece of media that, it's the usual thing. If it doesn't bleed, it won't lead. In terms of the media reporting on digital assets, then I just get incensed by it now when I see it, and I quite often just call them out. And it often is about crypto fraud. And they go, no, it's not. You don't hear anybody say, that's fiat fraud, or you don't te tell anybody, say that's human trafficking fraud or drug fraud. Yeah. It's just crypto fraud because they can say it. Yeah. And so, The very large percentage of them don't understand it either. Uh, they also don't understand, even in our security industry, for example and organizations like Chain Analysis who are doing analysis of blockchains and tracking and tracing assets after ransomware, tax free example, we're actually recovering the very large majority of those funds now where we couldn't do it before with cash if gone. So, and that's phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah, because the audit trail is there, right? And you can't get rid of it, so evident entry trial. Still, there's still more fraud. Much more fraud. It's like 25% more fraud with credit cards than there is any form of people stealing money or fraudulently obtaining money through the use of cryptocurrencies. And people will say, well, why are criminals doing it using it? The ransomware, it's pretty obvious. It's the quickest, easy. And it's easy and they don't have to exchange, oh I'm in I'm in Africa and I want to steal a million pounds. Well, that's how much used to me is it? So what am I gonna do with it? Where if I get it in Bitcoin, I can in fact off ramp it and I've got Cat, but, it's not that quick now. So when you get large transactions, the exchanges are able to block those wallets. They can black ban those wallets, so you can't make a transaction on them. And so, there's some amazing stuff happening and that's what we are not hearing and that's what is really important. Follow on question, really. When you look at cash and you look at how cash was it's dying art, I can't remember the name of it. When you make fake cash and then when the debit card became, uh, an everyday accessible item and the fact that you never touch cash to make a transaction anymore, and now it's evolved F through Apple Pay, for example, and Google Pay where you don't even have to have a card and you can now pay on your watch. And the evolution is phenomenal. But we all knew. that there will be an awful lot of card fraud. We all knew that it was, very easy to do. But do you think there'll be less fraud as we move more into the convergence with cryptocurrency? Yes, definitely. Absolutely. They will be. Because for me to move money to you, there's gotta be an exchange of keys and multiple factors of authentication. Whereas at the moment I'm still trusting. Our third party. uh, to do that transaction for me. And, uh, when I swipe my card and I've got a hundred pound limit on my swipe, that's just invisible money, isn't it? People don't think about it. they go, well, and I go to them, well, you didn't see that money move, did you? Well, no I didn't. Well, guess what? If it's cryptocurrency, I stand at the counter and they say to me, how much is that? And they go, it's a hundred pounds. I literal. Me, I stand there and decide, well, I'm gonna pay for that with Bitcoin, so I'll off ramp a hundred pounds worth of Bitcoin. I'll move exactly the amount to the cent that I want. And I actually use my crypto, visa card or MasterCard to pay at the counter. They can't touch the rest of what I've got. I'm literally paying the merchant or the person that I want to, the exact amount of money and I'm choosing. What currency I'm gonna pay in that so that I can maximize my financial benefit. And I think that's, that's key. We will no longer see this big pool of money that's owned by whatever bank it may be, that big pit of money that we willingly hand our trust over to and walk up to him with our watch and our PayPal and go, oh yeah, I don't mind it. It's a hundred pound limit. Yeah. Where's that coming? But don't forget, banks of financial institutions have spent decades with money and advertisements to help us form that trust with them. Right? So surely. And is this a case that the banks all want in on this and therefore to bridge the gap so people don't feel like they're going cold Turkey into cryptocurrency? Right? I can imagine the banks were already thinking, Hey, do the cryptocurrency thing, but you know, you're gonna have the trust of having us. Helping through it. Right. Well, this is, I think this is the funniest thing though. Even a number of years ago. Uh, the Commonwealth Bank was involved with the World Bank, actually, uh, the World Economic Forum and the World Bank, and they were engaged to build the first, uh, of the digital bonds. The Commonwealth Bank of Australia actually was a big project about three years ago. What I found was fascinating was at the same time that they were doing, that they were still blocking people in Australia from purchasing cryptocurrency using the same bank accounts, that the bank account was actually building digital bonds. Now you can't tell me that was just a vested interest on their behalf because they wanted you to keep the money in that bank. But what people also don't know, and this is, it's not hearsay, it's factual. The biggest fine in history in the last three years for money laundering and failures on money laundering was the Westpac Bank and Australia traditional institutions are the ones that have been getting the fines on failures in money laundering and K YC and a M l. Cryptocurrency. Yeah. And digital asset organizations. And that's not known. People just assume it must be true when people says, oh, it's terrible. K YC and a m l and I say to people, go and try and set up a wallet and see how quickly you'll find out how secure they are. Because to set one up, you've gotta go through two or three forms, and then every time you use it, you've gotta go through the same forms of two. and I, and you've gotta continually update that and continually update it live. Tell me the last time your bank, that you've bank with for the last 20 years have ever asked you to come in and re-bring in your um passport or your passport or your, uh, form of identification. Yeah. Have they ever No. Good point So final question then really is around the decentralization. So, what does it look like to you when you think that all of those big kind of, silos of wealth could literally be massively decentralized and the wealth and the knowledge is being shared. Can the future operate like that? Or does it need to have, rich heads of state, so to speak? Yeah. that's it's a really, uh, ideal idealistic view. There'll always be those who are very rich, and there'll be those that'll certainly make a lot more money than you or me, probably on any of these things. And there'll still be organizations that control capital and wealth without a doubt. And I guess it's, it'll never ever be an even playing field. It just means it's more accessible to everyone. And so, by that I mean that, There's a number of different forms of blockchain. They'll just be broad about it. There's public and there's private, But they're also what we call private permission blockchains. And they can actually, a private permission blockchain can in fact operate on one of the public blockchains. They're just a permissioned section of it. And to get in there, you've got another lock and key mechanism. Now, if you think about it pragmatically, the world's always gotta operate like that because if you have a world where everything is owned by everyone and it's just chaotically decentralized and everything is decentralized, it really gets. The structure that we have in the human race really, I suppose, and the controls and so, and the control, it's, right. So I mean, if you think about, there'll still be organizations that have, certain functionality data. It might be, it could be health records, it could be a whole range of things, financial transactions, where wealth is stored, et cetera. That will be within a, private permissioned blockchain. But what it still means is that within that organization, it's still transparent. So there's corporate governance and due diligence on those transactions and the decisions that have been made and so forth. So again, it still gives us greater confidence and trust in the ability of those functions, those companies to operate. And carbon credits is actually a really good example of that. Carbon credits have been, criticized because of the greenwashing. So where people have either, Misreported didn't actually do the right thing. Said they wanted carbon credits cause they've done one of things somewhere and not employed, slave labor and all those sort, those sorts of things. But in fact didn't do any of that. Or, e s g metrics, whatever. Now they can't do that. So those same companies will be reporting on that, but they'll be visible and and transparent transactions. There'll have to be, uh, an association of photographic evidence of where they've originated the product or where they've done the carbon reduction process or what they've done, et cetera. And so those organizations will still be wealthy and they'll still have, have a lot of money. And there'll be an imbalance in that. And of course we know the UAE for example. Going ahead in leaps and bounds. They were smart enough to realize that yeah, oil's, we're gonna run outta this flavor over the month. That's oil. We're gonna turn to data, but next thing we're gonna turn to is to things like carbon credits and to the blockchain. And cuz that's the next big thing. And they're putting, they're pouring hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars in there. Which is why there's so much effort coming out of the uae, which is an amazing uh, e. So there'll always be that, but I always level it out to say yes. The 17, the 1.7 billion people or whatever that live in Africa that never had access to financial inclusion, that couldn't trade, that couldn't buy seed and what have you. The ability for transactions to be efficient and all of those sorts of things and all the many other myriad of projects that are out there. Does give everyone the opportunity to be included. It's not perfect. Nothing is ever perfect, but it's better than what we've got now. It's better than it being that centralized capacity that we have now where I can't be included. And so it is not gonna, it's not gonna be that pure, uh, social, communist type environment where it all belongs to everyone. But certainly it is much. It's on another planet. And of course it brings in, of course then, and that's another whole conversation around web three and what you can do in the metaverse and all of that sort of stuff, which is about to occur too. But I think the metaverse, again, there's gonna be, and people beware, there's gonna be some hype around the metaverse and it's gonna be all around gaming and all of that sort of stuff, but there's not, there's so much more. That the metaverse is useful for, such as education, corporate governance meetings, engaging internationally and a whole range of things. But there's always gonna be a hype with anything new and then it flattens out and then we get real use cases. So, well, we probably need to get you back then at some point in the future to get the metaverse conversation. Like I think I'm gonna come off this meeting and be like, wow, Thank you very much, Lisa. Thank you very much Yolanda and everyone, and I hope everyone does enjoy it.