All right. So we've all heard about CryptoKitties, anyone who probably doesn't know that much about blockchain they'll throughout, "Do you have a CryptoKittie?" I'll just talk about that, but there are so many more amazing powerful things in the blockchain can bring, especially disrupting major industries. So I guess first question is do either of you guys own a CryptoKittie? Have you ever owned one? I will not tell. Nicolas is silent on that one. I don't participate in fads. So when I see an asset on the blockchain, which is essentially just a number, right? When you own a CryptoKittie, you own a number. Yep. So when I see a number being sold for hot $100,000 that has no intrinsic value, I say, I'm going to stick my wallet very safe in my hand and not spend any money on it. Yes. It sounds like some self advice. Yeah, I actually agree with you on that one. So that said CryptoKitties, they're one of the first major use cases of non-fungible digital assets being put on a blockchain. Now CryptoKitties might not have any tangible value, but that concept being able to put something on the blockchain and basically digitize ownership, verify ownership digitally, that is something that's extremely valuable. Yeah. So why don't we talk about some of the different use cases that we've seen in terms of digital assets on the blockchain. So I think there's a team we're working with at the den and they're putting real estate onto the blockchain. I think that's a great use case, because real estate is something that's very expensive to get into. Yeah. So now if you can just own a fraction of some real estate or some real estate portfolio, now you can go and expose yourself to the market without having to go put a million down, like you would have to do in California to become a player. So and then there's also other things that are being tokenized or turned into assets, so people say, "You can buy my gold asset token," and one token in its contract represents one bar of gold in the real-world. Obviously, so even with the real estate case, it's very hard to verify that the company isn't just running a scam because that happens a lot, right? If you can go and so easily create a stock or a certificate to own an asset, be very careful when you buy that certificate because that certificate may not be backed up by anything. Their space. It's very true. You could take just a background. The very interesting concept of trying something that is digital to bind it to something that exist in physical world, that's something to consider, because not all the options are still explored. Yeah. Absolutely. Second one is about the digital asset. So CryptoKittie is just a model, it was a social experimental or still is. A successful one. Yes. Which proves that there is a lot of market share or space to cut a lot of, I don't know, to optimize a lot of businesses, and it's up to the agreement of the community or the country if you'd make it part of the law because that has to go hand in hand if you want to make big things happen, then it has to be an interplay. In the beginning as it was, I look at this more of a proof of stake example. It was just the first use case that caught fire and it sparked a lot of interesting topics to analyze and understand. Then what is next? You can make assets for anything, and this will affect every single industry. If you make part of the regulations, then it'll be a lot faster and easier to sign. Simply, it can go even as far as cutting down the use of paper, which has a very good and positive effects on the planet, because they don't have to cut trees in order to sign the papers, so everything. But the way I said it has to be understood because there is digital signature, so it can do everything electronically, so what's the point in having other types of CryptoKitties. So it's a very interesting concept to look at. I can give an example. The VR industry can they still figure out where to go between AR or VR? Maybe it'll be a combination of both. But there is all of the games selling assets in the VR world. In the world, yeah. Yes. Means there is games, they sell things in the VR world, they're virtual, how do you identify them? So it all goes, yes, right now it's just entertainment, but at some point this will become reality and you'll be able to buy stuff and visualize them whenever you want to. Right now we still cannot gain, but imagine a way where you can see this digital asset on your table, it doesn't have to be physical, and you know you own it because that'll be impacting your business. Yeah. Shift away from gaming and think about medicine, where you build a model of the body, of the heart or anything, and you have patents on it, and to understand how to heal a heart, how to dissect virtually and so on. Yeah. So this becomes some asset or part of the IP of your company. How do you identify that? How do you keep control of it so you can license the thing? Whenever it gets used where the model of it gets automatically used by future robots that will do their operations, you automatically get the license because once it's digital, you can control it. Yeah. So it's a whole equation. The gaming right now industry is more of a experimentation platform until it gets a real, and once you see how the real businesses and the money starts to flow in base on direct human impact, this is what the digital asset can play huge role. The final outcome is not can understood it's getting studied from different perspectives. AR, VR, you have the cryptocurrency or the blockchain from another site, and when they meet, the mechanics to have digital asset will be provided by the Cryptospace and impact on people through the businesses will be provided by what's being built today on the VR world for example, that's one example. Later you can modulate houses which goes into real estate, you can modulate psychological experiments and so on. So it's a very wide subject to explore and it's hard to define something right now because it's now not known what's going to be the trigger to make it valuable, that is the question today, why you need that. I think it'll be very valuable. No, I agree. Yeah, segueing over, when we talk about digital assets, one of the very important things when you're in AR and VR, thinking about things that are in the physical world and connecting them to a digital signature is something that exists only in software, only on the blockchain. One of the very important things that you have to do is to be able to verify your identity when you want to access these things, when you wanted to say, cast a vote in an election that's being hosted on the blockchain. So one of the really cool use cases that I've seen in the blockchain space is a company called Civic. Initially, they're taking government issued, the highest level of verification that you can have. So in this case, government issued IDs, and they're allowing you to use that to gain access to things that are stored on the blockchain. So as a first step, I think that is really going to help allow more of these things to be useful in the blockchain space, being stored on a blockchain as opposed to preventing people from adopting that. As far as adoption goals, what are some other issues and other positive avenues that you see people taking when it comes to increasingly adoption of technologies and the blockchain space and actually allowing them to disrupt the industry that people say that they're going to be able to do? What's holding people back and where people currently path finding? Well, I think that the technology is already 5-10 years ahead of what we will actually be using or what the general public is already using. Because no one or not very many people at all use cryptocurrencies. It's never a question of how do we innovate more in this space because it moves so fast, and there's all these new protocols, just in the last year alone tons of new consensus protocols, tons of new easier to use wallets, many more. They call the people who hold your money. Anyway, there's tons of custodial services now for cryptocurrencies. So I think that the biggest barrier to adoption right now is essentially just evangelizing the tech because it's already very good, but in order for it to be widespread, there needs to be a very clear value to the consumer because why should a consumer go and download Blockchain app or Coinbase? Yes, because they are very familiar things, trying to be pushed onto them. If you start, digital asset is not really a new concept. Take the music industry, and you have the DRM concept. That's a digital asset, where you will be able to allow music files to be played only on the specific device if you purchased it. So it's a way to control access to it. You have the music file, and you own it, and you're allowed access to it. Yeah. You can resell it. There are different policies for it also on. I'm not saying that this is the best example, but it's an example that can be digested by anyone. Yeah. It's very simple. Then you can build more complex explanations on it. Another one, you said about the identities. That can be a digital asset coming up. Because digital asset is more if you can pass it along for different reasons, for different values. That is more of a Identity and so on person. So depends again. This is getting to be a new or the next level where they crypto space is going to contribute, and it still has to be understood and defined. As in the beginning, everything was a blockchain. Very wide and abstract buzzword that defines everything in the crypto space. The same will happen in definition that and now it's more defined. The blockchain, this is just the ledger. Then you can have consensus, then you have algorithm, then you have different actors and so on. The blockchain now is not what used to be in the past. In the past, it was just was a buzzword that everyone knows getting attracted to, and the same for digital asset. Right now it means one thing, a year or two years later, once it gets more refined, it will mean totally different things. It will have different implications, it will be a mix of different technologies. The best way, when it will succeed is when it will have direct impact into physical people's lives, to businesses and the digital asset, it'll be just the mechanics to achieve something. I also think another huge hurdle that everyone in the blockchain space needs to overcome in order to evangelize it, and add the value that we need in order for people to want to talk about how it helped themselves is the user experience. Right now, we talked about it before, but in order to make a transaction to send money from one person to another, using Ethereum, using Bitcoin, requires a decent amount of extra steps as opposed to PayPal, or opposed to Venmo. So for the average person, where's the value for them in using Ethereum to send someone money for their food as opposed to venmoing them? So there really isn't right now. Additionally, if you're just an average consumer and you'll want to pay for a cup of coffee with your Bitcoin or with Ethereum, you're actually better off just using a credit card because right now there's no way to reverse a payment. So if you go and send money to someone and you figure out, "Wait a second, we sent it to the wrong address, " your money is gone forever. You can't contact customer support, "Hey can I get my money back?" Because it's decentralized. So once you make a transaction, its final. So right now, there really isn't a whole lot of incentives for people to use these currencies to go by for small transactions. Yeah right. But there is a clear use-case for cross-border transactions, where with traditional bank systems you're going to be paying 5-10 percent, whatever it is, to go send to a certain market whereas cryptocurrencies, if you just buy it, send it over to your friend in India, and then he goes and sells it the second he gets in his account, there's going to be very little loss there. I don't want to derail of the discussion, but I felt like two remarks. One, means that it's not a limitation, it's just a business opportunity to be able to build customer or a business that will handle these cases. Yes, I agree. The next thing is you can issue another transaction, get the money back or call that person, issue it back and so on. Here's a good example of digital asset. Imagine you made this wrong transaction. It doesn't mean the system is bad. It is designed to not have the middleman, so you have fast transaction and it's your business what you do in a way has to check and ask you questions, because the credit cards can be different story. I'll get into it in a second. So the digital asset can be insurance, which you sell, in case you made the wrong transaction, you get it back for free. Because it pushes in the past digital asset. So in this case, can be initials provided by a business, that will take care of your hurdle. Or you'll have to say, "I made the wrong transaction please fix it", and you give them that talk and which will be the digital asset. Once you give it away, you lose it. You can't get it back, but you get your money back, which is a good thing. Because if you made a couple of millions, then you get a couple of million back, you pay the $100 for it. So that's a good example of digital asset, because you spent them, that's it. Do you know of any companies that are currently doing that? No, that's what we're going to point. That's not a limitation. That's the system which works as designed, is just an opportunity for a business. Now on the credit cards. Exactly for this, it will designed not to have the credit card. If you do it through everything through the public ledger, you completely undercut the banking system, because today how they cycle back today by credit cards. You spend money you don't have and then you are in debt for your life. While on the ledger, you spend what you have. So the analogy will be use only your debit card. They make money for your habit of not using debit cards. That also is an opportunity for another business where you don't have the business, where you don't have the middleman, is penalty you have and you can actually create more by not getting in there. I think that the creator of Ethereum will have more opinionated things to say here. Definitely. Yeah. So overall, I'm very excited to see what happens with blockchain technology in the future. We're all going to be a part of it and making something really cool happens. So I'm excited.
