Nathan Trail
Thank you everyone so much for being here today. My name is Nathan trail. I am the director of technology State Legislative Affairs at the consumer Technology Association. I work on many policy matters surrounding emerging technology but none of gain the momentum or seem to have quite the potential as blockchain blockchain as a way that we do business it can build trust with customers maximize profits for businesses. But there's also a regulatory question behind blockchain. Do we have the current framework to allow these capabilities in the US? I'm joined by the best panel I could possibly think of to discuss this. To my left is Sandra Ro, the CEO of the Global Blockchain Business Council. And we have Tanya Stephens, Senior Innovation Leader at Procter and Gamble. Next is Ed Vaizey, Senior Advisor to FTI consulting, and the former and longest serving UK Technology Minister. Next is New York State Assembly Member Clyde Vanel. And last we have Claire VIshnik Intern Fellow and Senior Director of Technology and Policy at Intel. Thank you guys so much for being here today, Sandra, why don't we start with you and we'll go down the line. I'll give a brief two minute description of your background and how you got involved in watching.
Sandra Ro
Sure. So good afternoon, everyone. So glad to see you all here. We're going to have a lively discussion for the next hour. There's a lot of different things to unpack about blockchain. Just a quick background on myself. I'm a former banker, for better for worse, who went through the financial crisis? It was the scariest time I can think of thinking that the world might implode in the way that we understand it. And I got into bitcoin because a bunch of FX traders was sitting in London and they started talking about this cool tech, you could do p2p payments. You don't need anyone in between and I didn't quite get it until a bit later. But I started looking at the space back in 2012 and eventually evolved to where I now spend 100% of my time on blockchain and what it can do. for society from a social impact standpoint, and so one of the hats that I wear in this space is the CEO of the gold blockchain Business Council, which is a Swiss nonprofit. And we focus exclusively on happening with education, partnership, advocacy, with governments, legislators, of all kinds of regulators and executives at some of the biggest companies in the world. There is a lot of hype. There's a lot of noise, and how do we unpack it so that we can create a democratized opportunity set for all. So that's what we do. Thank you.
Tanya Stephens
And good afternoon, everyone. So my name is Tanya Stephens, I'm with Procter and Gamble. I've been with Procter for a total of about 13 to 14 years now. I'm in the IT space, but have always been at the cusp of, of innovation in that space. As you know, Procter and Gamble is a consumer products good company. So by virtue of that the consumer Being at the helm of the consumer and what the consumer does is always where our interest lies. I got into blockchain probably in 2013 first when I started learning about Bitcoin, but as I started learning more about the technology that underlies these in hardware system design, engineering and working at a consumer products, good company, that we're always looking to speak to the consumer make things more efficient and more effective for consumer. It was really interesting to me that there was this underpinning technology that could create seamless experiences. So that's why we're here. That's why we've been looking at blockchain along with other emerging technologies for, you know, a number of years. And really where we where we see things going is how blockchain will be able to unlock more value for consumers like you.
Ed Vaizey
My name is Ed Vaizey or I served as David Cameron's technology Minister for six years between 2010 and 20. 16 And towards the end of my tenure before I was fired by the new Prime Minister Theresa May, I managed to slip out a report on the blockchain, which was published in December 2015. And you can still find it on the internet. I didn't actually write the report our government Chief Scientist rated but I commissioned it alongside our finance minister. And that kicked off as it were, in the UK Government, an ongoing engagement on policy to do with the blockchain. I left parliament in December 2019. So I now work with FTI working with them on technology policy issues, including the blockchain. And as a little PostScript, I think I'm the only member of parliament who has experienced a physical in their constituency, a physical Bitcoin robbery because one of my constituents was held up at gunpoint, I think and had his hard drive taken and all his bitcoins stolen. I think that might be a unique event in the UK. I don't know if it's a unique event globally.
Clyde Vanel
Wow. Well, my name is Clyde Vanel. I'm a New York State Assembly member. I'm the chair of internet new technologies. And one of the things we passed in New York that we passed one of the first in the nation, blockchain digital currency task force that Sandra sits on. But to figure out how to properly put together the proper regulatory framework around digital currency and blockchain. I first got interested in the space I used to be the chief of staff of a state senator. Back in 2013, similar story to yours. There was something where many investors in New York had their investments in their Bitcoin stolen From a exchange called Mount Gox I'm not sure if you guys heard that. And my sender said Clyde, go get Bitcoin on the phone. So what to do, right? And if I didn't do it within 24 hours, it was my job. My job was on the line. So I had to learn about the blockchain and cryptocurrency really fast and digital and these different types of assets. What they did support that's great now is as the chair of my of my committee, you know, the state the government, municipalities have the keepers, the holders, the guardians of some of your most valuable assets. When you're born, we give the birth the birth certificates when you die, we get the death certificates when you buy a car, you get the titles hot we so because we're the custodians of this, this data, you know, how do we are we using the proper tools to properly secure entrance To use these to use these data points and blockchain technology very interesting for us to be able to explore how to do that.
Claire Vishik
Everyone has a great story here. My name is Claire Vishik. And I work for Intel. I first heard about blockchain from a news feed that came to my mailbox about nine and a half years ago. One of the items said that blockchain will have the same effect on the technology environment as the internet. And it was signed digital donut. Well, naturally, something like that would create a lot of curiosity, especially coming from a digital donut. But speaking Seriously, why? I am interested in blockchain. My topics are in the The intersection of policy and technology. And the technology space here is trustworthiness, something that includes items in topics like encryption, like privacy, preserving data protection technologies and things of this nature as well as hardware related technologies such as Trusted Computing. And technically, what is of interest to me is something that goes from one to the other end of the stack, starting in the silicon in ending in the applications. If you think about blockchain from this point of view, it's an excellent, broad area. If you abstract yourself from the most popular at first, banking, application space for blockchain and think about enterprise applications or even in User applications, then it's an excellent set of broadly applicable diverse technologies that also require some policy action. And why is Intel interested in blockchain? This is also easy to understand. Something like blockchain requires a lot of resources. It requires a lot of computing power. And it runs like other similar technologies on the foundation of hardware. This hardware will benefit from being adapted to specific needs, or blockchain applications. As a result, there is a big potential for semiconductor companies like Intel to look into this.
Nathan Trail
Thank you so much. So today, I'd like to get started with you. One of the ways that blockchain can streamline business operations is by creating transparency and accountability ability and our By chains. Um, can you give an example of how Procter and Gamble has looked at blockchain through the consumer lens to streamline supply chains?
Tanya Stephens
Yeah, absolutely. So when as as Procter and Gamble, we actually look at blockchain distinctly through the consumer lens and the value that we be able to bring to the consumer. So, today, consumers are most concerned with first what goes in their body, then what goes on their body? Right. So, that's one of the reasons why many people would have probably heard about blockchain in relation to different food companies, right, or traceability of food. Will we see that exact same trend happening as we start to talk about ingredients that are in our products, and we've always been a proponent of ingredient transparency, so even today, you could go on any of our websites and you could find all of the ingredients list of ingredients that we have in the different products that you use that are produced by us. But what blockchain does a little bit differently is it allows us to give a deeper lens deeper view of the of the supply chain. Right? So exactly where are those ingredients being sourced from? All right, exactly what type of oil is being used exactly what type of what type of certifications are tied to this clot in that we might be sourcing for your Pampers or that we might be sourcing for your feminine care products. So in doing so doing that, and really looking at blockchain in the entire supply chain, we've been able to start to tell stories about different aspects of the supply chain. What that does is it brings consumers into the journey. It allows them to have timestamp data about where things are at in regards to their specific products, but it also allows us to start educating them and giving them more information. And that's actually where we think we're going to have We've just scratched the surface, right? It's still new. And we're still in pilot mode. But we're excited about it because we'll be able to tell different types of consumer stories using this new technology. And we think that's where it's going to unlock a tremendous amount of value for our consumer base.
Nathan Trail
Absolutely. You know, the way in which companies are using consumer data and artificial intelligence is becoming a growing focus with both customers and with lawmakers. Claire, can you give an example of maybe how blockchain is being used create credibility in our data feeds, if there are any international standards in the works right now to ensure this
Claire Vishik
an excellent question. There was recently an article on Forbes that was entitled something like AI and blockchain that will hype all mutual dependencies. There is always double hype, but there is also a clear supplement parity between these two technologies we live today in technology In the environment that is heavily dependent on data, all the processes that we use every day for transportation for education for supply chain are data dependent. So with the new computing power that's now available with the improved algorithms for machine learning, it was possible to bring forward the new generation of artificial intelligence. And it was possible by that to make some areas more efficient, to make some decisions faster to automate certain things. But there are two parameters in today's data dependent environment that make the use of artificial intelligence for disparate data sets somewhat complicated. They are data privacy and multi domain nature of today's electronic processes, data privacy speaks for itself. Multi domain nature of processes is sort of easy to explain, but may require a little bit of explanation. It would be more efficient if several banks could pull their data together and fighting fraud, but it's difficult because of the regulatory constraints associated with their data sets. On the other end of the spectrum, it would be easier to understand how user connected multi domain processes work. If for instance, you take your smartphone and make a donation to a charity, there will be several domains that you will need to traverse one would be a payment domain wide would be the ISP domain. That one would be the property the web properties The charity that we are talking about. And each of them have their own security models. So how do you share data and policies between all these domains and this is where blockchain can help, it can help by supporting data integrity, it can help by supporting the sharing of data. It can also help by enforcing rules between different data sets. Through for instance, smart contracts in there are various other ways where artificial intelligence technologies and blockchain technologies or elements of them could be used together. Now, how does it reveal itself and standards? This has not converged yet on the standards space. There are several international standards bodies that focus on blockchain sc 20 sec. 42 is a committee that looks at artificial intelligence in ISO IC. In ISO Technical Committee 307 focuses on blockchain. Those two committees work together, but they have not yet created standards that Cabos, this feels a lot more needs to be done. But it will be done. There is a lot of interest.
Nathan Trail
Thank you so much. Perhaps most transformative potential for blockchain is how it can impact the financial markets really the social impact that might create How was blockchain already transforming the financial markets? And what kind of future Do you think that will bring sodra? Could you shed some light on that please?
Sandra Ro
Sure, happy to do so. So Financial Services is a gigantic behemoth. If you think about what it encompasses you've got everything from banking to credit lending services to insurance. Stock trading investing goes on and on. What we're seeing is a wholesale re imagining of various aspects of each of those services. And it's not just FinTech companies that are nibbling the edges of some of the big banks that are out there. But we're also talking now about big tech coming into banking and offering services. So what happens in a world as a consumer, when you are now able to have lots of choice, and that choice might be through your smartphone, Social Media Group. It might be through the supermarket or the bank itself, but you get more choice and where blockchain and crypto comes in. And this is where I think now finally, we've got governments really thinking about this critically, is data is value. So think of it this way. The Internet allows you to move information around very easily. It's called email. We all pretty much do it today, we probably get too much of it today. Now, next generation, what does that look like? Imagine email as money. You can move it that easily, whether it's $2, or it's $2 million. But the minute you allow data to be value, you can't just let it run its course without any sort of oversight and rules. There are lots of rules in financial services, and they're there to protect consumers. So what we are seeing now is the reimagining. And it's a lot of different stakeholders are doing this. It's government. It's big tech, it's small companies. It's the incumbents themselves, is how do you deliver services to the consumer, to the institutions that are asking for these financial services? And how do you do it in a way that fulfills the Security, integrity, privacy efficiency list goes on and on. And blockchain and crypto has a lot to do with that. I mentioned the Bitcoin use case, which was the p2p payments. That was first generation, we have iterations. Now beyond that we're 10 years plus on, I think a lot of people forget that this technology is both old and new. And so we have a world of complications to come. I think users will end up benefiting because we'll have more choice, and it'll be more efficient. And by the way, cross border remittance is one of the biggest pains out there still, why we have to wait five days and pay ridiculous transaction fees to send money abroad is absolutely insane. In this world, we should actually have better solutions than we do today. There's a lot to work on a lot of opportunity. But that also means we need to all collaborate because as one person mentioned in our previous panel blockchain is a team sport. It's not for an individual group or an individual person to do on its own. So, we talk more about that later.
Nathan Trail
Absolutely. And you know, when you when you mentioned choice what I'm also hearing, you know the choices that watching can bring, when I hear choice, I think of empowerment, really, the more options you have, the more empowered you have. So we've discussed some of the current and immediate ways of blockchain is transforming how we do business, but we are here at CES. So let's talk about the future. Let's look over the horizon. What are some of the future ways that blockchain might streamline and improve our economic world? Tanya, do you have any insight on that from Procter and Gamble's?
Tanya Stephens
Yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the interesting things just about not just blockchain but also when you talk about AI, you talk about edge computing, all of these emerging technologies. Right now they're kind of intangible, right? So it really is important for us to develop an experience around that so that people understand how these technologies come together. That's what Going to define your experience. That's one of the reasons why Procter and Gamble we're here. And although this is called the Consumer Electronics Show, internally, we call it the consumer experience show. So we think it's really important to help people envision the future. So if you go when you test some of our products, like we have our Gillette products on display or oral B toothbrush, what you're going to see is we're using a lot of data points, personal data points to help you have a better clean to help you have a better shave, to help you take care of your baby in a in a better way. That is all personal data on you, that we're using to be able to develop your experience. So what becomes really important to us and one of the reasons we're looking at blockchain is because that type of data we know needs to be secured. And although we have great platforms that are securing it today, we we also feel that looking at this type of technology and anticipating what's coming in the future is really critical for us in another sports analogy, skating to where the puck is going, right, so we want to be ready to be able to serve consumers in the way they need to be served.
Nathan Trail
Absolutely. Anyone else have any insight wants to read the blockchain tea leaves as to where this technology is going? Sure.
Claire Vishik
There are a number of use cases in supply well in blockchain that could be pioneering one is obvious, improving reconciliation of data in finance. Some governments have taken interest in this for instance, Australia. Other things are more aspirational. In Europe. When you talk about blockchain, you would hear a lot about how it will make it possible to implement user controlled privacy in user control. Security. This is a reach. But it certainly is something that allows us to look towards the future collaboration in connection with other technologies. For instance, on the privacy side, if we take machine learning related privacy preserving technologies, or technologies that would be used for privacy preservation, such as federated machine learning, homomorphic encryption, and even multi party secure computation. They could have a transformational effect when used together with the elements of blockchain. Others already mentioned government efficiency, supply chain auditability, preservation of government documents, that a lot of use cases, the challenges to put them all together on one pound
Nathan Trail
Thank you so much. So we've discussed some of the incredible ways the blockchain can transform business can create empowerment. Now we're going to get to the fun section and talk about the regulatory environment for blockchain technology. So there's quite a bit going on right now, especially at the state level, just last year, there was I believe, 64, blockchain or digital asset bills introduced 25, past just over 200, introduced overall since 2013. And these really do vary. Some of them are very well intentioned, but some do miss the mark, some of the members and now you've been a true champion for innovation and a leader in this space. Can you maybe talk about the work that you've done in New York, maybe what's needed from our state and federal legislators as well to help promote this technology?
Clyde Vanel
Well, one thing is important to say is that when we look at blockchain technology, just looking at the virtues and benefits of blockchain technology, it's the fact that it's distributed It's democratic. Some of the block chains are permissionless. How do we use some of those benefits to be able to benefit? more people, more New Yorkers, more Americans, more people around the world? And how do we how do we make sure that we do you know, good using these kinds of technologies. One thing that we have in New York State in New York City is that we work in collaboration where we have something called a blockchain Center, where it's like a blockchain incubator for for blockchain companies, but also educates people about the technology. One thing that's important about when we talk about this new technology today, blockchain was introduced only 10. But, you know, a little over 10 years ago. So this is a new thing. Right? A lot of regulators and a lot of people still don't know what it is. In fact, if we go around, we're at CES. If we go around CES, I bet you majority of people don't know what blockchain technology is, what does digital ledger technology is one of the jobs as lawmakers and as regulators in New York and around the country is to educate folks about the opportunities with this technology. One thing that we can't also forget is that the regulators need to be educated on what this thing is also, right. The lawmakers need to be educated. If anybody saw the Zuckerberg hearings, anybody saw them, to hear the questions that our policymakers are asking, you know, I don't want to talk bad about them. But, you know, we have to say, Hey, you know, there's there needs to be an education for many of the people that are making these decisions on what these technologies are. Because as many people on this stage know, that, you know, America. Now, you know, I'm selfish with New York, but New York America does not have to lead in blockchain. Right blockchain Be can happen anywhere. These technologies can happen anywhere. So we have to make sure that we have a proper regulatory environment to foster growth and innovation in this country.
Nathan Trail
Absolutely. And piggybacking off of legislators understanding blockchain technology. And while you were technology minister, as you mentioned before you published a report on blockchain technology. Why did you feel the need to do this? And do you think the UK or the EU has a proper understanding of blockchain?
Ed Vaizey
Well, we published the report, you know, some I think I published it to, you know, be able to milk it for the next four years, appearing on panels all over the world talking about the blockchain. But we published it because there's a sort of general point about how governments deal with emerging technologies, which is, you know, one I think, as a policymaker, a regulator you should be embracing these technologies. You know, we have constant debates about you know, Uber or Airbnb or self driving. Because I think too many policymakers live under the impression that you can somehow put the genie back in the bottle the technology is there and it's going to be used. So you should be out there, engaging with it and thinking about it. And obviously, the blockchain DLT was sexy because of Bitcoin. And we felt in government the way to we wanted to make it less sexy. We wanted to show people that it wasn't just about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency that actually this was a fundamental under the bonnet technology that could, as Claire was saying, transform ways of doing business, particularly the way government does business and if you can secure government documents online land registry documents, for example, using this technology makes it far easier for government, potentially to digitize services and then save costs and improve the experience for the citizen. So the point of the report was to say Some deeply and profoundly obvious things, which is government should have a vision for blockchain and how, what it was and how it could be used. And also, I think really importantly, government should become an expert but not an expert, necessarily in policy and regulation but an expert customer. So that when government was procuring services, it had the expertise to know where and how to use blockchain in that, in that context, and government as an enabler both in terms of forcing forward research in this area academic research, coordinating work between universities and business, government as a Cascada. So central government as a second holding the wheel but local government being able to learn off of central government luckily we don't allow local government passes own legislation, that's a disastrous idea. Much better. Just to have The central government to everything age, with international bodies on core standards, as Claire was also alluding to, and also run trial for real life. case scenarios, case studies where the blockchain could be used in government serves eg the payment of welfare checks, for example. So all those kind of things are the reason why government should be on top of that, but it's not just blockchain. It applies, in my view, across the board on emerging technology.
Nathan Trail
So, Sandra your Association works very closely with state, federal and international legislators from all around the world to promote positive legislation towards blockchain really to promote the industry. Can you briefly describe the work that you've done? And more importantly, do you think that the US is falling behind the UK, the EU or maybe even Asia?
Sandra Ro
Okay, thanks for that, Nathan. I'm gonna get a little bit of a controversy here. So Hopefully too many people won't be offended. But it's fine. We're here to have a discourse. So when we look at the landscape because we look at things globally, we try to go to countries big and small. We would like the opportunity set for a Caribbean nation that's interested, as far as also China and Russia and the US, the big behemoths. But what we do see is that one, desire is high across the board, there's not a single government, and we're inundated with people who are interested in learning more and when a country is there, and we're able to make the time and effort we will go and educate and we focused on the education piece, just unpacking the various use cases, and also explaining what may be a good solution or a starting path for how they would get started as a government, not necessarily just legislative but also on practical use cases and creating those environments to allow for innovation and entrepreneurship. So that's good. What's not so good is just like any technology, we're seeing that governments can use this tech for good, and also for evil. And we're also seeing that happen. And so I think we need to move away. And again, this is actually a personal view of mine, we need to move away from thinking that technology is neutral, because it is being used in ways that are not neutral and that are not good. And so I think having the ability to be able to come out and say that and support the government's that are doing good things, and trying to help citizens in society. We are all for that. So we are constantly also monitoring how this technology is being used. Because the the potential for trust building, and transparency and movement of data as value is incredibly powerful. But if it's used in the wrong way, it's also incredibly disruptive and destructive. So we're also mindful of that, where we see the US is behind significantly At the moment, not because we don't have brainpower, the money, the ability is primarily hampered at the moment by us business uncertainty. We have a patchwork of guidance and legislation that's kind of out there. It's confusing. So no entrepreneur in their right mind thinks of the US is first, if they have other choices, and the problem is, is right now we've got a global landscape where we have other choices, Singapore, Switzerland, the UK, there are many others that have created very clear guidance on what they are pro and what they are not. And that certainty is a very good thing. So what does the US need? The US needs a an agenda at the top and I'm talking not only state and thanks, we have, we've got people like cliven now because frankly, we need more clients in the world. But we also need a federal mandate. The US needs to do what it did when it wouldn't put a man on the moon. Literally, we need to say this is number one priority. And let's face it, other countries have done it already. blockchain is the priority in China. It's been declared. So the US kind of needs to get his act together.
Ed Vaizey
I think that's I think that's right. And it's interesting today while you define, you know, falling behind, and I would I do I define it in a couple of ways. But first of all, the loss of the economic opportunity, you know, if you are, if you have a regulatory environment, one of a better phrase that will attract entrepreneurs and investors, then that is only a good thing. And that is what I think the British government was very good at doing in the early 2010s, increasing that regulatory environment partly based on blockchains relationship with crypto currencies. And the UK is worldwide reputation as a sort of global financial center, but you have to maintain that and the other thing I never understand why governments aren't all over this kind of policy area is because it becomes a fantastic feedback loop. As I said earlier, if you can move quickly and update regulations, you can end up radically transforming government services to provide better services for citizens at much, much lower cost. For example, you know, we in the UK now looking at contracts, they can we update our contract law to ensure that smart contracts do or our contract law rather complies with smart contracts is probably the best way of putting it and then you will end up getting potentially, you know, very significant wins. So, I think when you've got to be always on it in and always engaged in these areas, and you got to have smart people who are passionate about pushing this agenda.
Clyde Vanel
So, you know, one thing I gotta push back just a little bit, just a little bit, you know, America is the greatest place you
Ed Vaizey
We don't need more
Clyde Vanel
Know America is the greatest place to, you know, to to start your business to run your business to create here to have blockchain businesses. So I do but I do agree with with Sandra saying that our federal government needs to work on this. Right. And, and also, I gotta push you a little back a little bit a bit back on on what Ed said about having, you know, just a central government or what have you we have a great we we have a great system. We have a great family system here in the United States with where the states and the federal government work together, but overseeing all of this conversation that we're talking about with blockchain. Right? The world is doing a reckoning on what to do with data, what to do with privacy, how to define data, right Europe came out with their law almost three years ago with the GDPR. California did something I heard I'm not too sure about but you know, so we're all trying to create You know, figure this stuff out. Also, there's a, you know, we have to be honest in America, there's a tech lash with the big with big tech or what have you. So with all this stuff happening in the in the background, you know, we have to be able to say that and which true if our federal government and state governments but if our federal government don't really focus on what to do with technology, what to do with technology policy, how to how to what to do with data, what to do with figuring out, you know, one of the states came out with with a with a lot of change, how do you characterize people in the share economy? We have to figure this that we have to figure this out soon, because we will keep falling behind the rest of the world.
Tanya Stephens
One of the things I just like your constituents are consumers, right? One of the reasons it's important to educate at every level. So the regular regulator is getting educated on the technology but also every level, be it in business or academia. Really educating people about this technology is because the consumers are going to start to ask for certain things. Right. And as they do, because their constituents the regulators are going to respond. Right. And so I think one of the things that becomes really important in this space is our ability to share information, share experimentation, share, what's working, what's not working, why it's not working. And in that way, creating a framework that allows for experimentation, understanding, and continually progressing allows, allows all governments and all consumers and constituents to benefit,right.
Nathan Trail
absolutely.
Claire Vishik
I think we need to disconnect technology and policy in regulations and legislation in this discussion. The technology is just an enabler in the developed world. Typically, we base our laws on the technology neutrality principle. So, blockchain is something that allows us either through the complete picture or through its element to do a lot of things. We have laws that cover other areas of our life. For instance, in Europe and many other countries and to some extent in the US. We have privacy, legislation or privacy requirements. Well, this is sufficient to support blockchain. We don't need to have blockchain privacy laws, we just need to understand what happens when we have permissionless distributed blockchain node who is the owner? Where is the location how to treat situations like that? This is a policy interpretation, not policymaking. And I think we should put everything on the blockchain in this context.
Sandra Ro
So when I think about solutions, because we are not here Just sit around complaining about the US being high. We need to think about what are solutions. So solutions include institutions like organizations like CTA. And the reason why GVC so really grateful to partner with CTA is because the breadth and depth of their reach and their ability to speak to states and the federal government is now more important than ever, right? So we need to as a collective, and I'm talking to everyone in the room, who cares at all, to have a voice to have a view on whatever types of topics it is that matter to you, and force and push the agenda on to federal and state to deal with this because let's face it, glide you have a lot of things to deal with in your day to day. blockchain and emerging tech is only one of many different issues you have to deal with. How do we get to your attention? How do we get you to think about these things? Well, we have to actively communicate with you Yes.
Clyde Vanel
And, as Sandra said, you know, the, the the global blockchain Business Council, that organization CS, another great organization, as a chair of internet new technologies in New York. The tech lobby isn't as strong as other traditional lobbies or other traditional groups, very important for us to make sure you know, for for for, for for blockchain, but just technology as a whole to be able to have a strong lobby for the lawmakers and for the policymakers. I live in a state and I live in a borough where we actually lost the opportunity to have 25,000 jobs in my borough in Queens. Am I gonna say the word I can't if I if I talk about our crime, but
Ed Vaizey
pleasure really, that was a good thing for New York.
Clyde Vanel
Huge anyway.
Ed Vaizey
The land in your city Unbelievable,
Clyde Vanel
unbelievable. But anyway, we lost 25,000 jobs. Part of the reason was because the voices of the reasonable voices were not properly heard reasonable lobby was not properly heard. And that's something that it's important that, you know, we organize around technology and organized around this space.
Nathan Trail
I really like to thank you. That's
Ed Vaizey
brought somebody in from Amazon. Welcome, Amazon. But I think, you know, we it's important that obviously, people lobby effectively, but policymakers themselves have to be interested. I mean, we didn't have a blockchain lobby say please, can you do a report on the blockchain? it? It starts with policymakers saying is our finance minister said in 2015, you know, what is going on with this thing that people call the blockchain? Was it mean for government? What do we have to start thinking about and I would say as well in slightly response to what Claire said is that you I agree with you that existing policy, that the blockchain is an enabler, it's a sort of under the boot under the bonnet technology. But you still have to say you have to interpret existing policy and say, if people want to innovate and do new ways of doing things, whether it's how you hail a taxi, or how you rent out your spare bedroom, I think it's incumbent on policymakers to say, Does our regulation allow that to happen? And if it doesn't, we need to update it.
Nathan Trail
So what can we do better as industry to work and be a resource to our legislators and it's easy to look at legislators and say they need to have a better understanding of blockchain technology, they need to be introducing better and more thoughtful legislation, but we really need to turn the lights on ourselves. What can we do as industry leaders to be a better resource to our lawmakers? How can we be a better ally and partner, technology community community be a resource
Clyde Vanel
We're talking about what you do. But you get what you've been doing, Sandra.
Sandra Ro
I'll give you an example of things that the industry has not done well. So you get a bunch of tech geeks together. And they don't necessarily think about messaging and marketing. So for the first decade, I will say the messaging and the marketing, or just being able to convey what it is this thing is doing. And one of the positive benefits that society has been really bad. Think about the fact that we've got everything named something coin. I mean, that alone should tell you that people are not thinking about proper messaging. So we need to build bridges, and we need to be better communicators. And that's starting to happen. There are some grown up institutions and people who are very well versed in communicating who are coming into the space now, and we desperately need it because a world where we only have developers naming everything and then trying to translate that into plain English or whatever language is not been great. So we need to build bridges. We also need to to also do what we did with CTA earlier this year, and this is scratching the surface, we need to do more. We went to Capitol Hill, we did a city state federal gathering. We invited as many states as we could cities as we could. Clyde, thank you very much for coming. We had the first convening. Do you know what they said to us? We want to know what real use cases where the companies that are actually doing real stuff, because we keep hearing this stuff. And frankly, we don't think there's anything real out there. So guess what we showed up back in November, just this past November, we brought a whole bunch of companies big and small. And let me tell you, they showcased a whole range from looking at human trafficking and how to document people better looking at media and fake news. These are all use cases that one after another were shown to Congress and you know what? They're listening now. And you know what they care about. They care about The use cases that help their citizens, their help the constituency, and frankly are going to create jobs and opportunities because the jobs that we have today, half those job descriptions may be going away. And guess what, we have a whole nother set of job descriptions that will be coming in. And frankly, is the US ready? I hope we are. But we got to work at it.
Nathan Trail
Absolutely. Tanya, Procter and Gamble's really becoming a leader in blockchain. So what do you see as your role in this? how can how can you be a better resource to legislators interested in blockchain?
Tanya Stephens
Yeah, but I think it's exactly what Sandra said about the use cases. So sharing the use cases. It's really interesting, actually, in this space, because for a long time, there was there's a lot of proof of concepts that were going on. There was a lot of internal learning that was going on in different companies. And because it is so new, and nobody wanted to kind of quote unquote, fail. those learnings were not being shared, right. I think having having specific Vic times environments, creating frameworks having the New York City blockchain center. Those type of initiatives have been revolutionary to having companies even like ours come out and say, hey, these are the problems that we that we're looking to solve. This is how we've tried to solve it. But you are the community, you have access to developers. You have access to strategists, you have access to different designers. And we want to work with startups. We want to work with multiple businesses, we want to work with organizations. We want to solve our problems, but we want to help you and enable us to solve yours as well. So starting to share in that way becomes very powerful, and helps us all kind of advance more quickly in this ecosystem.
Nathan Trail
Thank you, Claire. From Intel's perspective, what can we do as innovators and as industry to be a better resource?
Claire Vishik
What can we do? As innovators. One thing that stands out was something like blockchain that is broad that has multiple applications is certainly collaboration. Do not be afraid of collaboration, do not be afraid of looking into use cases that are completely unusual, unusual or appear to be unprecedented. Do not be afraid of tackling really big problems, such problems as the general approach to data integrity, such problems as improvement to performance. It's counter intuitive when we are talking about blockchain, but it is possible from the point of view of the government, what can they do to ensure greater adoption of blockchain or if blockchain is an intermediate stage in this technology direction, greater possibilities greater opportunities for its successor that builds on the foundations of blockchain. What can the government do first of all, and it was mentioned already, the government is a customer. It's a large customer with a large number of very complex, very controlled use cases, well, use more of the emerging technologies. Don't be afraid to experiment with them, to the extent possible, give better feedback to industry so that we can learn from the government experience, create conditions where Research and Innovation could thrive, especially the models that are common in Europe but practically unheard of in the US where both industry and government are funded together to work on the same sometimes very practical technology. Problem problems, what can the consumer consumers do? Well, the consumers are already fearless. I think they are already doing what they can. But what we all can do is to reset the milestones in our education system so that our children begin to learn about technology much earlier. And they learn about it in some depth. What happens in general is that through awareness programs that are very useful you can reach a basic level where you essentially know what button to press where to click to make something happen. But if you start early, then by the time you are a real user of those systems, you will become an expert you will understand much better how they work you will understand much better how they are connected to each other. This will be wonderful various sensors, it will be great because people will understand the constraints of security and privacy much better. But also they will be better at using a promising new systems and providing immediate feedback to us technologists about what to do next, what works and what doesn't.
Nathan Trail
Absolutely. Well, in my experience, and thank you all so much my experience when a group of individuals tech geeks talk about blockchain for an extended period of time, there are quite a number of questions and we have a few minutes left for just that. If there's any audience questions, I think the mic in the center of the room is live. please line up if there's any questions in the room.
Tanya Stephens
As the person comes up for the question, just to build on what what Claire said, I do want to reiterate the education portion of it. I think one of the things we could do as industry as we could tell you what skill sets are going to be needed, right? If these are the base technologies that are Now leading the future for us. And if you go on and see the consumer, the floor right of this show, you're seeing technologies that are very advanced. I think we could do, we could do more to let you know, that's exactly these are the skill sets that we need. We need. We need people who know how to program we need people who know how to problem solve in a different way. We need people who know how to do data and analytics. These are the things that are going to become based and foundational and what we do next.
Nathan Trail
Thank you so much. First question,
Unknown Speaker
*Speaker is asking question*
Clyde Vanel
I think we're going to take all three questions and then answer
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Nathan Trail
Okay, so let's start off How can someone get started with blockchain? Sandra, do you want to take this
Sandra Ro
So if you're a new if you're an entrepreneur and you want to start a company, you know it's the same path of actually starting a company like you would any blockchain company. But with blockchain, if you're talking about getting hooked into the network of other blockchain folks, there are have to say one thing about this tech, it is one of the most collaborative open communities I've ever seen. Now, don't get me wrong. Within each. There are some tribes. There are some groups that focus on specific block chains. But if you do want to get started, organizations like ours, we have a lot of free information. Also, there are other organizations and associations that are out there related to blockchain. Simply Google it, you will get a whole bunch. If you are on Twitter, there is a concept called crypto Twitter Believe it or not, there is a lot of stuff discussed very publicly very technical, very sort of business focused discussions on crypto cryptocurrencies on blockchain on the assets, you start following one person I guarantee to you, you'll see who they're following. You'll get hooked into that network pretty quickly. So if you are a Twitter follower or active on Twitter, that's another great resource. There's a lot of stuff for free. The one thing I will warn people who are not familiar with blockchain space, stay away from the scammers that are trying to charge you thousands and thousands of dollars for courses that them first before you plunk any money down, because there's a lot of free stuff out there.
Nathan Trail
You really only have time for one more question. So somebody a member of an L regarding states, what are they doing to coordinate legislation and what are you doing in New York right now to coordinate?
Clyde Vanel
Thanks for your question. So So New York, one of the things that's interesting that's happening that the would use you spoke in particular about a regulation in New York called the bit license and many other states are have followed suit, where it's basically a money transmitter, kind of license on top of on top of on top of this space. That lies that bitlicense was enacted back in 2015, in response to one of these major hacks, and that was a world pre many of the different types of tokens, many different types of assets. Right? So, right now, what we're dealing with even defining what the different assets are is something that we haven't properly defined. What the the law, generally speaking hadn't properly defined, was great if you'll find it in New York. And DFS, the actual agency that promulgated that, that that license opened up for the first time ever, a department of innovation, to look at, to look at to really look at what's going on. And while we're working with this digital currency, Task Force, a lot of things are are in the process of changing but but just know that we are very blockchain friendly in New York State, combined, check out the blockchain center on 21st Street office Sixth Avenue and give us a shot. You know, things are changing a lot in New York.
Nathan Trail
All right, thank you so much. I believe that's all the time that we have right now. We'll stick around for some additional questions. If anyone has somebody please join me in thanking our panelists here today and enjoy the rest of the show.