0:00

Hey, before we get started with this episode, if you're into

0:02

the future of digital collectibles, make sure you check

0:04

out the latest episode of The Nifty Show

0:07

at theniftyshow.com.

0:09

Which countries around the world are welcoming towards

0:12

crypto and blockchain innovation? How

0:14

can we help advance these technologies

0:16

both home and abroad? That's

0:19

the mission of Sheila Warren, CEO

0:21

of the Crypto Council for Innovation.

0:24

Formerly the head of blockchain at the World

0:26

Economic Forum, Sheila lives,

0:28

breathes, eats and sleeps, unlocking

0:31

the promise of Web3. Today

0:33

we discuss how America is falling behind

0:36

and reveal which countries are doing a great

0:38

job of stimulating innovation.

0:41

As a lawyer, Sheila's got a lot of words,

0:43

and they're all really smart. So come listen

0:45

to smart words, dunk on America,

0:48

and feel optimistic about where things are

0:50

headed in the brave new blockchain world

0:52

on episode number 681 of the Bad Crypto Podcast.

1:26

And you

1:26

are in league with the blockchain blockheads,

1:29

the nifty nerds, the Web3

1:32

weenies, the metaverse morons,

1:34

Joel Kamm and Travis Wright here for

1:36

another episode of the Bad Crypto Podcast.

1:39

Hello, Sir Lord Travis. Where the regulation

1:42

rejects. We

1:45

didn't have an hour. That's a good one. We

1:48

have crypto clowns. We got DeFi,

1:50

DoFi, GameFi, Goobers.

1:52

That's a good one. That's right. It's

1:54

good. Well, we just keep adding on the

1:56

Web3 weirdos. We're all of those things.

1:58

And this right here, folks, is a really interesting. episode because

2:01

we have Sheila Warren back originally.

2:03

She led blockchain regulation

2:07

and just innovation for the world economic forum.

2:10

She wised up and was like, I got to get the way from

2:12

Klaus. This guy, ah,

2:15

I don't know. That's not the case or not, but she left out. She

2:17

is now ahead of the crypto

2:20

innovation council. And this

2:22

interview right here is pretty solid. Joel, you're going

2:24

to want to listen to every last morsel

2:26

of it. And afterwards, we're going to tell you how you

2:29

can get an NFT commemorating

2:31

this episode. So let's listen

2:34

in.

2:38

It was just about three years ago

2:40

that our guest today was last on

2:42

the show. And

2:45

at that time she was the head of blockchain

2:47

for the world economic forum, where

2:51

she occasionally interfaced with the Klaus

2:54

Schwab, you've, it's a bugs and you

2:56

will be happy. And

2:58

she is now with the crypto

3:01

council for innovation. She is the CEO

3:03

and her name is still

3:05

Sheila Warren. Sheila, welcome back to

3:07

the show. Thanks so much for having

3:09

me and Joel and Travis. You're

3:12

on tapi's. It was the idea of eating

3:14

the bugs. No, the

3:16

time had come for a change. It had been almost five years.

3:19

And I really wanted to be in a place where

3:21

I could

3:22

always say what I truly, truly thought,

3:24

which as you know, I didn't really hesitate to do at the

3:27

forum. I got a long leash there, but I wanted

3:29

to be more of an advocate than I thought

3:31

I was able to be in an organization

3:33

that was that's objective. That's actually officially

3:36

objective.

3:37

Very nice. Yeah. So now, so

3:39

this is cool. So you have the crypto, was it crypto for innovation.org?

3:42

Crypto council for innovation is crypto council.org.

3:46

Same Twitter handle as I always had at

3:48

Sheila underscore Warren. But yeah, I've

3:50

been in this role now for a little over a year.

3:53

And we are an evidence-based

3:56

advocacy organization that's

3:58

focusing on trying to get.

4:00

sound crypto policy around

4:02

the world. I mean, really, so it isn't really

4:04

that different, I think from

4:06

what my goals were in previous

4:09

roles, even predating the forum,

4:12

just trying to get responsible policy in place. But

4:14

the strategy I can use now

4:15

is obviously very different.

4:17

Do you feel like your

4:19

hands were somewhat tied with

4:21

the WF where, you know, cause what you're

4:23

trying to do is you're trying to eat an elephant, right?

4:26

You're monitoring and changing policy

4:28

all around the world. You're not just like, you

4:30

know, Caitlin Long and saying, all right, let's do Wyoming.

4:33

Like let's go everywhere.

4:36

And so this is all for you more, you know,

4:38

freedom and liberty to do what

4:41

you want to do. You know,

4:43

yes and no, right? Cause I think here

4:45

the connections that I, so that's

4:47

a really interesting question. I love that you asked that. So the

4:49

answer is always complicated and I'm a

4:51

lawyer by training, so, you know, I'm never

4:52

gonna get you, give you a yes or no answer. But

4:55

it is yes and no. It's yes from

4:57

the standpoint of, I truly believe

4:59

that

5:00

crypto governance, crypto economics,

5:02

the blockchain are all gonna underlie

5:05

most of our systems moving forward. But

5:07

I think the connection of other systems is actually

5:09

even more important now than it ever was.

5:12

And a lot of crypto folks only wanna talk about

5:14

crypto all the time, that's it, right? So

5:17

I think the way that we make the

5:19

case for why crypto is so important, and

5:21

this has been successful globally, is by connecting

5:24

it to a variety of other systems, pointing

5:26

out other uses of the blockchain, pointing

5:29

out where legacy systems are not really working

5:31

or where friction is a problem, I mean, those kinds of things.

5:34

And the crypto

5:36

community doesn't necessarily have appetite for that kind

5:38

of longer term strategy always. So

5:40

in a way, and that's very much what the forum focused

5:42

on, right? They were always like big systems

5:44

thinking, how do systems work? How

5:47

are they, you know, but they were maybe less interested in

5:49

like the crypto part of it. So I've

5:51

kind of traded one for the other, you know?

5:54

But I am me and that's the way I think.

5:56

I always think bigger picture, holistic,

5:59

what's going on. on with systems, where are we making

6:01

change, what needs to be fixed, like all

6:03

those kinds of things. So I bring all that sensibility

6:06

to the table. It isn't necessarily always

6:08

celebrated by folks in crypto the way I wish it

6:10

were, but I truly believe this is the way that we

6:12

make the case. And it's the only way I think we're

6:14

actually going to make the case in a way that's going to

6:16

be sticky to the people that we're trying to influence,

6:19

which are policymakers, right? We want them to understand

6:22

what's at stake here, what's at stake for

6:24

how many people, how big this community

6:26

is, how global it is, how many people

6:29

this innovation is already impacting and can

6:31

impact going forward. And the only way

6:33

I think to do that, like I said, is to really connect

6:35

that to a lot of other things that maybe are outside

6:38

the tunnel vision of people in crypto.

6:41

So that's a really unique challenge that you have

6:43

there, right? I watch

6:46

the, you know, the Facebook

6:48

congressional hearings that they had. And

6:50

one of the guys was like, so if I'm on Facebook,

6:53

does that mean I'm on the internet? I'm like, wow,

6:55

these guys are not so bright. And

6:57

they're the ones that they're the ones that's legislating and

7:00

regulating. And I'm hating over

7:02

here. Well, I'm like, wow, this is bad. Even the

7:04

thing around TikTok dude was like, so

7:06

if I have Wi-Fi on his TikTok

7:08

on my internet and do like, wow, dude, what?

7:11

Like I think what he meant to say was if I'm

7:14

on the, if you're on my Wi-Fi with TikTok,

7:16

are you

7:16

accessing my other devices?

7:19

But he kind of said it weird. And so it was just a,

7:21

it's like, these people are not the

7:23

most tech savvy in the world. Most

7:25

of them are attorneys. Whereas Congress

7:27

back in the day used to be, oh, here's some

7:29

scientists. Here's some doctors. Here's some attorneys.

7:32

Here's some businessmen. Now it's like 90% attorneys.

7:36

And most of them have an

7:38

additional passport to Israel. So it's

7:40

like most of these people who are running our things

7:43

aren't necessarily caring about

7:45

the US citizen as much as the

7:47

whole global scene. And so it

7:49

seems like they're trying to regulate things

7:52

in a way that maybe is not

7:54

good for America long-term. Like Joel

7:56

and I have been talking about this for a long time. You

7:59

know, I think the. Silicon Valley will not

8:01

be in America because they're going to leave because

8:03

they're too strong with

8:05

the regulations. We're already hearing

8:08

Coinbase saying, hey, we're going to internationally expand.

8:10

We don't trust being here. Bitrix,

8:13

we're out. You're an American citizen. We're done. Gemini

8:18

saying the same thing. Hey, we're going to expand internationally.

8:21

All of these crypto companies are leaving

8:23

America. How do we solve this?

8:26

So you raise a lot there, Travis, and I'm going

8:28

to kind of, I'll give you a couple of my observations

8:31

over years of working globally.

8:33

So my last

8:35

two roles have been extremely global.

8:37

I've been working all over the world with various

8:39

governments, various sectors. So I worked

8:41

with civil society for a long time. Then

8:43

I worked with government and industry for

8:45

a long time. And now I still work with government industry.

8:47

And I still have eyes and ears

8:49

in a lot of places in the world. And there

8:52

is a uniqueness to the American political

8:54

system that is not shared in other places.

8:56

So I was on a call just this morning with

8:58

someone in London who's observing

9:01

that she is Australian, lives in Britain,

9:03

but she's like, look, in Britain, most

9:06

people in parliament, there's a technical advisor. Maybe

9:08

they themselves are not computer scientists, but they

9:11

have a technical advisor. And that person's

9:13

job is to kind of go in and figure out what

9:15

is this newfangled technology. Of

9:18

course, not everyone knows everything, but there

9:20

is an understanding that you need to be getting guidance

9:22

that you trust from someone who's on your payroll,

9:25

on your staff, and not just getting it from outside.

9:27

In the American political system, you're right.

9:29

I'm a lawyer myself, and I love lawyers, but

9:32

it is a lot of lawyers. And the politics of

9:34

our system, politics are complicated everywhere in the

9:36

world. I mean, look no further than the British parliament to see

9:38

like bananas activity. I mean, this is all

9:40

over the world, like politics or politics. What

9:42

is a politician's goal? It's twofold.

9:44

It's to get reelected and to do right by their citizens.

9:46

And doing right by citizens is in service of getting

9:49

elected. I think a lot of people run for office

9:51

with very lofty goals and ideas

9:53

about how much they're going to be able to change. And

9:55

then realize the system makes it very hard to

9:57

do that.

9:58

So I think that there's

9:59

There's no understanding of

10:02

Washington specifically in tech.

10:04

Like there's just really, really

10:07

limited understanding, particularly in crypto

10:09

or in web three about like how

10:12

Washington functions, what it is, what people know what

10:14

they don't know, et cetera. And similarly,

10:16

there isn't the same access

10:18

to information in Washington to tech

10:21

that there is in other countries. And that's just kind

10:23

of the nature of the beast, but let's

10:26

not echoed in other places. I mean,

10:28

the premier of Bermuda is like a CS grad,

10:30

right? He like codes in his free time. I mean, there's

10:32

a very different sensibility in Dubai.

10:34

Like a lot of the sheikhs actually like get in there and code,

10:37

like they do, they understand this

10:39

stuff in a different way. Singapore, you know, Hong

10:41

Kong, Taiwan, like all over Europe.

10:44

So we are unique in this way and

10:46

not in a good way. Now, that being said,

10:48

that's what the system that we

10:50

have, the system that we have is system that we have. And

10:52

if we want to ensure that

10:55

this innovation keeps its edge in

10:57

the United States, we need to work with the people

10:59

that we have, right? There's

11:01

many people who are out there trying to get a different set

11:03

of people elected and all of that. And look, that's

11:06

all well and good. That's not happening for another couple of years.

11:08

There's a cycle, we're in, we have elections on a cycle. We're

11:11

not a country that has

11:11

coups, right? Thank God, at least not yet, right?

11:14

Like that's not a thing. So

11:16

people have to get elected, they get elected by actual

11:18

citizens. Citizens vote on the things they

11:20

care about. So it's like, who cares about

11:22

crypto people that use crypto? We have to expand

11:25

that set. And it can't just be

11:27

people that are like, oh, I have a wallet and like 10

11:29

years ago, not 10 years ago, three years ago, I got

11:32

one NFT because a friend of mine at a party, it has to

11:34

be people that actually understand what is

11:36

at stake here and what the broader

11:38

goals of what we're all trying to do is.

11:41

And that is not easy. And I think one

11:44

of the challenges is that in the United

11:46

States, this is, I'm thinking kind of

11:48

prior to like CCI and my tenure

11:50

here and all of that, because I wasn't paying a lot of

11:52

attention in the United States, frankly, in policy. I was looking

11:54

really at a lot of other parts of the world in my previous

11:56

role. I wasn't really doing much, if anything,

11:58

in the United States to be very clear. So, and

12:01

this, and I think there's a lot of credit we owe to

12:03

folks that were actually paying attention in the US and

12:05

realizing that someone had to be minding the store.

12:07

But we were always leading with the

12:09

technology. Oh, it's so elegant. Oh,

12:12

it's so complicated. Oh, it's, you know,

12:14

nobody cares, man. Like, nobody cares. What

12:16

they care about is like, what does it do? What

12:18

does it do? How does it help? What problem

12:20

is it solving? What's the use case?

12:23

Does anybody else care about it, right? So

12:25

one thing lobbed at people a lot now who

12:27

are going into Washington talking about crypto

12:30

is, oh my gosh, well, if crypto mattered, it'd be like chat

12:32

GPT. Look at chat GPT within

12:35

like five seconds, 10 zillion

12:37

people were using it for this and that. And it's so,

12:39

you know, it's like, well, of course, that's not, that's

12:41

because the technology is not actually that complicated. These

12:43

are interfaces really simple, right? And

12:46

you're not asking people to engage in massive

12:48

change management that's expensive around their back

12:50

end, which is kind of what you need if you really

12:52

want to super effectively use a blockchain. But also

12:55

look at NFTs. Those things went

12:57

super, super like they went, they got picked up really,

12:59

really fast, right? As an example. So to

13:01

some extent, the more complicated in a

13:03

way, the interface on the technology,

13:05

the harder it is for people to actually engage

13:08

with it and the less likely they are to do so. So

13:11

a bunch of us have been saying for five or six years

13:13

now, until you get this to be more user

13:15

friendly, more obvious, you know, etc. You

13:18

have a barrier to engagement

13:20

with it that you just don't see in something like

13:22

a chat GPT, but that's being used

13:24

now as like, quote, evidence that, oh,

13:27

this stuff can't possibly matter that much because if it did,

13:29

it would be like chat GPT, it would have gone fully viral

13:31

like chat GPT, right? And everybody using

13:33

it for all kinds of things.

13:35

So these are the ways in which we don't help ourselves. This

13:38

is, you know, just more evidence to me that

13:40

America's kind of screwed. We're culturally

13:43

screwed. We're creating an idiocracy.

13:45

There is a handful of people that

13:48

care enough and understand enough about crypto. But

13:51

Travis is right. We've chased innovation offshore.

13:54

They're going to continue to do so. No matter

13:56

how the SEC ripple case turns

13:58

out, you look around the world and you look at it.

13:59

You see, you know, they are talking about

14:02

innovation. I just read today that Zimbabwe

14:04

is creating a gold backed, you

14:06

know, crypto some kind for better or worse.

14:09

I don't know to try to

14:11

stabilize their incredibly inflated

14:15

Zimbabwean dollars, whatever those are

14:17

called. Are they called Zimbabwe's? I don't

14:19

I don't know what they are. I'm going to go

14:21

with no, but I don't know for sure. I think I

14:23

know that it's CBDC that everybody's

14:25

talking about, which is more control, which

14:27

is more centralized, which is

14:30

the very opposite of what crypto

14:32

was intended to be. So

14:34

why would you look at the U.S. anymore,

14:36

except for the creative geniuses

14:39

that are helping to innovate and then going, well, we can't

14:41

do this here. So we're going to go over there.

14:44

I mean, it is like

14:46

I tweeted it. I did. I did two tweets. I think that went viral

14:48

and was on semiconductors and kind of saying the cognitive

14:52

dissonance, meaning like this, the distortion around

14:54

watching the U.S. Like desperately

14:57

trying to get semiconductor manufacturers back

14:59

on shore while either passively

15:02

or actively pushing crypto innovators

15:04

offshore is like absolutely wild

15:07

to me. Right. I mean, wild because

15:09

some of the smartest people in the world are crypto

15:12

engineers. Some of the smartest, most technical

15:14

people in the entire world. And

15:17

after they're done with crypto, their minds are not going to they're

15:19

going to go on to other things. I don't know what that thing is, but

15:21

you want those people not here. That's

15:23

really interesting. OK. All right. You know, like

15:26

people are people are people, brilliant people are brilliant people.

15:28

They're going to go on and do really creative, innovative

15:31

things in all kinds of spaces

15:33

and encourage innovation to be in a place

15:36

I think is really powerful. So you're actively watching

15:38

the U.K., Lisbon, other

15:41

countries be like, come here, please come

15:43

here. We're going to make it France is like it's so easy

15:45

to come here and set up shop. Like we're making it

15:47

so Dublin. You know, they're all like, just come on over,

15:50

give it a try. The water's fine. Whatever. Right.

15:52

Like eat the breeze. I mean, whatever it is. Really, they're

15:54

like, come on over. You know, that's a great campaign

15:56

at all. Yeah, exactly. We're not doing that at all.

15:59

Drink the real champagne.

18:00

because we don't have enough folks that are taking

18:02

the jobs that are at the other end of the pay scale,

18:04

right? Meanwhile, our technical minds

18:07

are offshoring. So Electric Capital

18:09

did this developer report. They

18:11

do it every year, and they're kind of tracking the

18:14

growth or lack thereof, right, of where

18:16

development's actually happening, meaning software development,

18:19

where people are actually submitting code changes

18:21

on GitHub, where that comes from. And the observation,

18:24

and you can look this up on their Twitter, or on

18:26

their website or somewhere, I'm sure, is that over

18:28

time, it's less and less in the U.S. Like,

18:30

it's more and more that these technical code

18:33

comments are actually coming from other places, and

18:36

that is anecdotally observable because people

18:38

are hiring in other places as well as

18:40

the technical talent moves. Now, it's not

18:42

to say that it's not critical. There's, again, I'm

18:44

a lawyer.

18:46

So there's a lot of other folks that go into making

18:48

a business that are not technical. But

18:50

without that talent, you can't

18:52

start a tech company without tech talent,

18:54

right? You can start all kinds of companies, and that's great. But

18:57

if you want to start a crypto company, you need

18:59

people that can code, right, in this,

19:01

like, that understand the blockchain, that connect, right? Like, that's what

19:03

you need. And if they're not here, then

19:05

it's challenging to build a company around

19:08

them when all your talent is kind of offshore. And

19:10

that's what we're seeing happen as the first wave,

19:13

I think, of these companies starting to move

19:15

their other talent, their

19:16

business, their legal, their marketing,

19:18

their all that stuff, right? Moving that

19:20

offshore as well. There's a great

19:22

book that I read called The Network State,

19:24

right? And so it's like, we've almost

19:27

moved beyond the traditional political

19:29

states and the national borders

19:32

where we could sort of say, oh, my people

19:35

might be some over here, there's some over there, there's some over there, and we're

19:37

going to be building some awesome thing. But

19:40

we're kind of aligned, and

19:43

national borders don't necessarily matter,

19:45

right? In the future, it would almost seem

19:47

like this could be the case.

19:50

Now, obviously, nationalism

19:53

is pretty strong, and here's these imaginary

19:55

borders that I can't seem to see from space,

19:58

but it says you can't go past this one.

19:59

or you're bad, right? America seems

20:02

to have their bottom border just wide open. Anybody

20:04

can come in, they want. However, it's

20:06

really impossible for people to come in legally.

20:08

Right? Like my girl, my girlfriend, she's Russian,

20:11

you know, hard it is for her to try to even get even

20:13

if we were to get married, it's going to be hard

20:15

for her to even come over here. And then, as

20:17

you said, that reverse brain drain, you got these great

20:19

people that are going elsewhere, building amazing

20:22

companies, doing amazing stuff. And

20:24

then here in America, we're almost going

20:26

to get bypassed it because of

20:29

some of the reverse brain drain, also the innovation

20:31

leaving the shore. And then bricks,

20:35

right? With the US dollar

20:37

seems to be teetering on

20:39

the edge of relevancy, because

20:41

all these countries around the world no longer are

20:43

buying dollars before they're buying oil, right?

20:46

So now, bricks countries are getting really strong.

20:49

So it seems to me and actually just saw this data

20:51

point late last week was that bricks

20:55

economic wise is 32 point something

20:58

percent of the global GDP, whereas

21:01

America in the West is only 29% GDP.

21:03

So

21:04

the G7 versus

21:07

bricks, bricks is getting stronger,

21:09

G7 is getting weaker. Like here we are.

21:12

This is where we are in civilization right now.

21:14

Yeah,

21:14

here's the thing. So as somebody who

21:16

again has worked globally, who's got family live

21:18

in the world,

21:20

look at the demographics alone. Forget anything about

21:22

policy and anything else. Immigration policy is

21:24

a giant disaster all over the world in my personal

21:27

view. I personally think family reunification

21:29

is critically important. You can't have a society only made up of

21:31

one class of person. You can't have just

21:33

technical people. You can't have just wealthy people. You can't just educate.

21:35

You have to have all kinds of people to make up a society.

21:37

That's just a fact. We may like it or not like

21:40

it and have our political views about it, but that's just reality,

21:42

right? Someone's got to do all the things and

21:44

not everyone's going to be able to get or not like it and have our

21:46

political views about it, but that's just reality, right? Like

21:49

someone's got to do all the things

21:50

and not everyone's going to be able to do all the things and people

21:52

have different skills and talents. So everybody's not

21:54

inherently equal. They have different skills. They're people

21:56

have different skills and talents that are all important and

21:59

all make up a function. Now, all that being said,

22:01

look at the demographics.

22:02

There are some countries where it's getting younger

22:05

and younger, and some people are getting older

22:07

and older. Okay, that is just a reality

22:09

as well. And so the birth rates

22:11

and this and that are not equal around the world.

22:14

So when you look at the biggest markets in the world

22:16

and where they're up and coming, there's a reason

22:18

the Chinese and Russians are investing tremendously

22:20

in Africa, in Latin and certain

22:22

countries, in ASEAN, right? There

22:24

are younger populations there. And in many parts

22:27

of like the Nordic North or whatever, like

22:29

the pop, it's either zero or net negative growth. Japan

22:32

is emblematic of this. They

22:35

have the biggest issues that they've been dealing with for

22:37

a lot of time here as well. Right? Like in terms of

22:39

figuring out like as their population gets older

22:41

and older, how do they accommodate and adjust

22:43

their society to accommodate that? They think a lot

22:45

about mobility and accessibility and other issues, right?

22:48

Because like they have an older population

22:50

and you see other parts of the world that are moving

22:52

there as well. So there is a demographic

22:54

change that's really coming upon us. The

22:56

world has never been, the world

22:59

is majority minority. If you look at it from

23:01

a US lens, which I

23:03

do sometimes and other times not,

23:06

if you look at this globally, you got to take into

23:08

consideration just the pure demographics. The other thing

23:11

you got to take into consideration is how tech forward a

23:13

lot of different cultures are. You

23:15

look at Asia, you look at Latin, you

23:18

look again at Africa.

23:19

People are super tech forward,

23:21

right? Like

23:23

the US is kind of not. I mean,

23:25

we're just not at the cutting edge of

23:27

technology usage. And we pretend

23:29

we are because it's weird that we're not

23:31

because so much innovation has been based

23:34

out of Silicon Valley and New York and a

23:36

couple of places, right? In the US. But

23:38

the reality is that like when you go to like China

23:41

or India or Vietnam

23:43

or Philippines or Columbia,

23:46

like it's just a totally

23:48

different engagement with technology

23:51

that is much more fluid than we have

23:53

here in the US.

23:54

Is it because we focus on the wrong things here? It's

23:56

like, we're so concerned about DEI.

23:59

versus true innovation

24:02

in some cases, right? It's like, that's the most important,

24:04

like people will come in, CEO, I'm gonna make sure

24:06

that, and then their company falls apart,

24:09

but they're like, whoa, we're super inclusive

24:11

now.

24:12

So I would actually say the exact opposite. I

24:14

actually think that when you look at the

24:16

communities in the United States that are more tech

24:19

savvy, they're often poorer

24:21

communities of color. Like those are the folks who

24:23

embrace crypto the most. You look at the demographics

24:25

of who owns crypto, it's a bunch of black

24:27

and brown folk. Like that's who's really embracing

24:30

crypto. Why is that? Because legacy systems

24:32

haven't worked for them more than anybody

24:34

else. So if you just look at the sheer number, it's actually the opposite,

24:37

right? So I actually think that

24:39

part of the problem in the US is that there hasn't

24:41

been enough user

24:44

focus on some of these communities that are really

24:46

inclined to use this stuff. I'll tell you, every

24:48

single app that I use on a regular basis,

24:51

that was not literally about getting services

24:54

in the city of San Francisco, okay? Like whatever,

24:56

like things that are like, literally how to get a thing

24:58

from a place to a place in the city.

25:00

All of my chat apps, everything, my

25:03

cousins in India were using it at

25:05

least a year before any of my friends in the US,

25:07

at least a year, if not two

25:09

years before. So none of this stuff was

25:11

new to me because my cousins were like, oh, hey,

25:14

like boomer, you know, like, I'm like,

25:15

hey, boomer, we're

25:18

using WhatsApp over the hell. And I was like, what the hell

25:20

is WhatsApp? And they're like, oh, it's just like messaging.

25:22

And I'm like, what? I'm like, don't you SMS? They're like,

25:24

who the hell uses SMS? And I was like, what are you talking

25:26

about?

25:27

There's just a totally, I don't know, cause it's

25:29

so different and it's so,

25:32

and a lot of black and brown folks, you know, have family

25:34

in these places, right? Or they have like some connection

25:36

or they, whatever it is. And so the

25:39

familiarity, the willingness

25:41

to kind of give it a try, you're actually

25:43

finding that in a lot of these communities

25:46

more than you're finding it in kind of like other

25:48

parts of the country. And

25:50

I think that's something that kind of gets missed in this.

25:53

So, you know, leaving aside all of the sort of

25:55

internal politics of any company's culture, I

25:58

feel like part of the challenge has been a lot of these. systems

26:00

were not designed to actually be inclusive

26:02

enough of communities that would have quickly adopted

26:05

them. And so they've kind of left

26:07

those folks out and then other places

26:09

where people did have that kind of mindset,

26:12

it blew up there and then it kind of comes back to

26:14

the US. You know what I'm saying? So

26:16

that's a very common path.

26:18

You know, I have a bunch of friends who are like startup

26:20

founders and whatnot, and I have for like decades here.

26:23

And a lot of them are like, okay, I'm going to proto in

26:25

the US, and then I'm going to really alpha

26:27

and like blow the thing up

26:28

in wherever it is. And it's always like, definitely,

26:30

it's never ever, ever here. It's always somewhere else. It's

26:35

like the last play. I made that comment recently

26:37

that it's like, because I'm working on a project. And I was like,

26:39

you know what, I'm going to watch this thing over in

26:41

Southeast Asia and then bring it to America.

26:44

Like Jimi Hendrix did Jimi Hendrix was an amazing

26:46

guitar player. He was in America, nobody cared

26:48

about him. He went to Britain, became Austin, and

26:50

then

26:50

he came here. Like basketball players, right? They go play in

26:52

like Italy or whatever. And then they come on back. You know, it's kind of like, there's

26:55

just this appetite for,

26:57

I don't know,

26:58

we just don't give credit to other

27:00

countries for, but there's really like this

27:02

ease of it, you know? And we think just because

27:05

some of that stuff is developed here, people are trained

27:07

here at our school or whatever it is, that means

27:10

that the user base is ready to do

27:12

it and like, we'll just kind of jump it. And we don't really have

27:14

that. We're kind of a very stodgy culture

27:17

when it comes to being digital about stuff,

27:19

right? Like it's really interesting. The

27:21

other reason why I think you see a lot of this stuff start

27:23

with gamers. Like gamers are definitely

27:26

more of that kind of mindset, right? They'll try

27:28

a different thing. They're kind of familiar. They're online and

27:30

offline. They have that intermediate reality. It's

27:32

also why like artists and Hollywood,

27:35

like culture, you know, people like that, like TV

27:37

film, you see a lot of this stuff happening

27:39

there as well. Like adoption of like new

27:41

cameras often happens with studios

27:43

and Hollywood, right? And indies, because they're like, Oh, we got

27:46

it. We'll try this new thing. We'll get an, it's, it's

27:48

never like the random Joe and Jane

27:50

and whatever randomville, you know, who are doing it,

27:53

right? They're like the last, last, last, last

27:55

adopters, right?

27:56

And our politicians, our politicians

27:59

look at those.

27:59

folks, many of our politics, look at those folks and they

28:02

think like that is indicative

28:03

of the broader

28:05

American society. And it's just, it's kind of not

28:08

in a way, you know, I hate to say it that way, but it's kind of like,

28:10

we need to get it together, I think, on multiple

28:13

axes and we need to recognize that we are

28:15

to the points I think that you're kind of making more

28:17

broadly, you know, we're behind a lot

28:20

of other places in the world on

28:22

a number of different axes. And

28:24

so the policy, to kind of like land

28:27

this point,

28:27

policy around crypto in the United States,

28:30

if we're really honest about it,

28:33

in my opinion, it kind of mirrors

28:35

American society, right? Like,

28:38

if people don't like you, you don't

28:40

get good policy, you know what I'm saying? And so it's

28:42

an interesting kind of time to think

28:44

about this. Whereas if like it's something

28:47

people are using all the time, then everyone's like,

28:49

well, of course we should be thinking about how

28:51

to, you know, be friendly to it or whatever. The

28:54

orientation is completely different and the mindset

28:57

is completely different when you have a society

28:59

that is always trying to embrace,

29:00

you know, that kind of thing and be at

29:02

that forefront. And I don't know that that is

29:05

outside of certain pockets in the US.

29:07

I don't know that that is something I would necessarily

29:09

say about my country, which I love

29:12

and I love, you know, obviously I'm born and raised in Native

29:14

American, but like, it's just really challenging.

29:17

And I should correct that

29:19

if you'll let me. Born and raised in America,

29:22

you know.

29:23

We will let you. It's just challenging

29:26

politics. I'm not actually Native American politics

29:29

lives downstream of culture and our culture,

29:32

you know, being led by academia

29:34

and entertainment. You

29:36

know, there's a lot of bad stuff, you

29:39

know, and of course, in the US starts in California

29:41

and then it moves across the country

29:44

and people get so fed up in California that they

29:46

leave and take the same failed politics that

29:48

made them leave California to these other

29:51

states. I hate that we're dunking so much

29:53

on this country,

29:53

but let's face it, we're

29:56

screwed. So

29:57

unless there's a. I'm

30:00

an optimist and, you know, call me crazy, but

30:02

like, and maybe the part of this is because this is kind

30:04

of my job is to like to, you know, I don't know,

30:06

save us or whatever, but like London

30:08

sounds too lofty and obnoxious. But like, you know, part of us

30:10

is to kind of help make this case and do some

30:13

education around this.

30:13

And I think that's possible. I think you can

30:16

in pockets, but unless we have a massive

30:18

change, a cleaning house of our

30:20

government

30:21

and the forces that have

30:24

become so corrupt in

30:26

America, it's going to be really challenging.

30:29

So let's take the focus off America.

30:31

And what I want to hear is some of the amazing

30:34

things that you're seeing happen. Some

30:36

of the profound advances that are taking places.

30:39

Where are they happening? You know, what's got

30:41

your attention? You're like this. This is how

30:43

we need to do it.

30:44

Yeah. I mean, I think there's

30:46

so much happening that's so exciting. I mean, I think I

30:49

think that.

30:50

Well, you know, actually, let me let me say this in

30:52

a different way, because I actually want to stay

30:54

with America for a second, because because despite,

30:57

you know, the frame we the turn this

30:59

took, I think there is a lot of stuff happening

31:01

here. I think it's really exciting. Right. And that's true

31:03

in the policy space as well. So like literally today,

31:06

as the day we're recording, rather, there

31:09

are two bills coming up in the California legislature

31:11

that I think are important and interesting.

31:14

So one is on how to codify

31:16

protections around DAOs.

31:18

So how can we give DAOs

31:21

some protection so that people that are engaging in

31:23

a DAO have a little bit more, you know, understanding

31:25

of what they are and aren't doing and we're not like opening

31:27

up a lot of like real

31:29

estate for like problems to come down the line?

31:31

I think that's really interesting. There's also

31:34

some discussion happening on a possible licensing

31:36

regime in California that is nuanced

31:38

and complicated, et cetera. But the fact

31:41

that California is kind of saying we

31:43

want to be a place where companies have rules

31:45

and can come and do business, I think is

31:48

is an interesting sign. Right. It's kind of a positive thing.

31:50

And so despite the fact that our federal

31:52

government level, there's a lot of complexity in this

31:54

current political environment. We have bicameral,

31:57

we have Republicans and Democrats, you know, anytime

31:59

you have a split. Congress, like not a lot gets done.

32:01

And that has nothing to do with crypto. It's just in general,

32:04

it's very hard to get legislation passed

32:06

when you've got the two parties each having

32:08

a chamber of Congress, right? For

32:11

reasons that are hopefully really obvious. That

32:13

means a lot of activity is going to the states. And

32:15

that's really actually very interesting.

32:18

Because what you're seeing is a bunch of states jockeying

32:21

to be kind of like the place that a lot of

32:23

this stuff happens, right? Now, there's

32:25

a lot of reasons why people start a company

32:28

in a place, OK? And they have to do with

32:30

the labor force, the labor

32:32

laws, the weather, whatever

32:35

it is, all kinds of things, access to universities,

32:37

and all their family, whatever it is. But

32:40

I think in crypto, you're going to see folks

32:42

that actually want to be in places where there are

32:44

rules that they can then use and

32:46

kind of say, here are rules that actually do

32:48

exist. We are going in compliance

32:51

with these rules. We are working to get, et cetera,

32:53

right? Whether these things pass, whether

32:55

we actually support them or not is an open question. It's

32:58

going through this process right now. People are putting amendments

33:00

in, fixing this, blah, blah, blah. So there's a long way

33:02

to go. But the activity at the state level gives

33:04

me a lot of hope. Because I do feel like

33:06

in the absence of federal

33:09

stuff that there's lots of conversations happening, all

33:11

that's really important. But I do think the states

33:13

are getting really into

33:15

this business, as it were. And

33:17

then in Europe, just earlier this

33:20

week, we had the final passage of

33:22

MICA legislation, Markets and Crypto Assets. And

33:24

so that is a fairly comprehensive

33:27

regime. It's not perfect. It's got some challenges.

33:30

But I would say, I mean, it is. I've been

33:32

working with slash tracking that thing for like five

33:35

years. And here's the comedy.

33:37

I mean, if you think it's hard to get stuff past the US,

33:40

it's like so hard to get stuff passed in

33:42

Europe. The process and bureaucracy

33:44

is mind-blowing, ask me how I know. But

33:46

they got it done. And they got it done way before the

33:48

US, right? This

33:51

thing has landed. So now it moves to what's called

33:53

implementation, because each country is like, well,

33:55

now we have these kind of like frameworks.

33:57

And what do we do with it?

33:59

And the internal jockey.

33:59

is starting. As I mentioned, countries

34:02

in Europe are like, yes, we want this innovation,

34:04

we want it to come here, we want the builders,

34:07

we want all this stuff. And Europe's not

34:09

a bad place to live. The food is good, the weather

34:11

is generally fine. So we're seeing some folks

34:13

who are talking about this, in fact, very publicly.

34:15

And some major companies are now saying, oh, we

34:17

had an outpost in one of these countries. Now we're

34:20

thinking about, should we be going bigger

34:22

in those spaces? And it's fascinating

34:24

watching that happen. So that makes me feel

34:27

excited. I also think there's a lot happening

34:29

out of the Gulf. Now the Gulf

34:31

is often, people I think dismiss

34:34

the Gulf because they're like, oh, there's so much

34:36

money and they just kind of throw it around and do silly things. But

34:38

there's actually a bunch of really interesting things

34:40

happening, not just out of the UAE, but

34:43

also like Oman's been paying attention for

34:45

a long time. There's work happening out of

34:48

other countries in the region as well that I think are paying

34:50

a lot of attention. So that's going to be something

34:52

to watch. And then of course, you've got Brazil.

34:54

And Brazil is basically trying to establish

34:57

itself among the BRIC nations as

34:59

perhaps the one that is not as big

35:01

of a threat to the United States, which

35:05

Russia and China clearly are. India is kind

35:07

of in its own head right now. So

35:09

that's been really interesting to watch as well. And

35:12

some of the work happening there. And again, Brazil

35:14

is a giant market, right? There's a ton

35:16

of people in Brazil. It's a huge country. And

35:18

so there's a lot to be said for how it's going to set

35:20

the tone across South and Central

35:23

America in terms of the work it's

35:25

going to do. Now, something else I think is really interesting

35:27

is of course, Brazil and Lisbon are

35:30

both Portuguese speaking countries. Lisbon,

35:32

as I think you probably are well aware, has

35:34

become a massive hub for kind of Web 3.

35:36

It basically has the weather of San Francisco.

35:39

It's very easy to live there. It's beautiful

35:41

countries. It's

35:42

the west coast of Europe. It's a west coast of Europe.

35:44

West coast of Europe. It's stunning. It's

35:47

just a lovely place. And so there

35:49

are so many people that are doing stints there

35:52

or even moving there. And for a little while.

35:54

It's something

35:55

to make it easy to sort of be an immigrant there.

35:57

It's almost like they basically created

35:59

a whole.

35:59

set of processes. These are from what I

36:02

understand are now no longer in play. But

36:04

the last couple of years during the pandemic, they were kind

36:06

of like, come to Portugal, come and live

36:08

here. We're going to make it ridiculously super

36:10

easy to come and do that. And they

36:12

did. And so I think that there's a

36:14

lot to be said for tracking that

36:17

corridor and that relationship. Now it's a

36:19

fraught relationship between Portugal and Brazil for a variety of

36:21

reasons. But nevertheless, you're seeing

36:23

investment in the universities there, right? And when

36:26

you speak Portuguese, it's not that hard to go down

36:28

and help with it. So all of these corridors

36:30

I think are really important. Now

36:32

you mentioned the BRIC countries, and I think it's a

36:34

lot of folks, I think, underestimate the geopolitics

36:37

of all this and how important that is. Okay. So

36:39

you've got China and Russia in

36:42

this,

36:42

are they allies? Are they not? What's going

36:45

on? You had this thing that I saw a bunch

36:47

of, well, I got a bunch of texts about it too, just

36:49

about how China is not explicitly,

36:52

they're respecting

36:54

the Crimean border, but like kinda, and

36:56

not really, and awkward.

36:58

Yeah. I heard the guy said, yeah,

37:00

all of the former Soviet Union countries

37:03

aren't completely sovereign.

37:04

I mean, like, Oh my God. That was a course disavowed

37:06

by the government.

37:09

It's complicated, but there's clearly, there's a lot going

37:11

on there, right? And then you've got India.

37:13

And so one of the things I think, I

37:15

was shocked how underreported this was, but

37:18

Modi, PM Modi only really had

37:21

one party that was kind of a balancing

37:24

force, if you will, which is the Congress party. And so

37:26

Rahul Gandhi, who was the totemic

37:29

head of that party

37:31

was basically ousted from

37:34

his position, which is bananas.

37:37

And so now there really isn't any hedge

37:39

against Modi who has been in power for

37:41

a very long time, right? There

37:44

are accusations that the elections are not

37:46

fully Democrat. All this, my

37:49

knowledge

37:49

exists. Well, that's the conversation worldwide.

37:51

It's wild. It's wild. So when you

37:54

look at these giant,

37:56

powerful countries, nuclear

37:58

countries, countries with massive

38:00

populations, young populations,

38:03

very tech savvy, extremely

38:05

smart,

38:06

absolutely no qualms about doing whatever

38:09

has to be done very quickly to get policies

38:11

put in place to make people use tech look

38:13

no further than India, and the way they rolled out UPI

38:16

basically like almost overnight, right? Like

38:18

all these things just kind of

38:21

compound the challenges we

38:23

have. Now, I am not in any way

38:25

suggesting that the US should turn into some sort of autocracy

38:28

that's like everyone must use a technology, blah, blah, blah. That's

38:30

the opposite of what I think any of us want. But

38:33

when you are functioning in an actual democracy,

38:36

that is a functioning true democracy,

38:38

it's hard,

38:39

right? Like, it's hard to get consensus on

38:42

things. It's hard to get agreement on things. It is hard. Part

38:44

of the beauty of our process to kind of do the flip

38:46

of everything we've been saying so far is that our process

38:49

is challenging. And in theory, that

38:51

should result in better

38:52

decision making.

38:54

But decision making can be slower, right?

38:56

It can be less efficient. It can be all

38:58

the reasons why we're like centralized intermediaries

39:00

are really challenging. They put friction into

39:03

systems, right? So in a

39:05

place like in India or China, where you've got

39:07

there's a person who can be like, do this thing. And it just happens.

39:10

You don't really have that that challenge.

39:12

But that's not the world I think that

39:15

I want to live in. You know, like, I want

39:17

to have a democracy that is actually

39:19

pure in some ways. And it really reflects

39:22

the will and views of participants. It's

39:24

right to Dao's right.

39:25

We want an election, not a selection.

39:28

And now, where they're saying, Oh, yeah, you

39:30

know what, we don't need to debate you guys

39:32

anymore. And it's like, wow,

39:35

okay. And like, so that's

39:37

some American Paul, I'm not gonna go down that. But I

39:40

did find this chart today that was really interesting. And

39:42

I can actually put this in the

39:46

show notes. Leadership in key

39:48

technologies is increasingly contested.

39:50

And it's showing which technologies

39:53

China's leading in. And they're leading in

39:55

advanced batteries

39:55

and commercial drones 5G

39:58

is becoming more contested.

39:59

US is leading an internet

40:02

platform, synthetic biology, fusion

40:04

energy, quantum computing is becoming

40:06

more contested, biopharmaceuticals

40:09

is becoming more contested, and ones

40:11

that are contested right now, semiconductors,

40:14

advanced manufacturing, next gen networks,

40:16

and AI, between the US and

40:19

between China. And then the one

40:21

thing that Europe has is regulation,

40:23

which is funny because everybody's cracking jokes on Europe

40:26

because, oh, they just like to regulate things. What

40:28

are you going to innovate, right? But I

40:30

didn't see blockchain. I assume blockchain is maybe

40:32

next gen networks or internet platforms or something.

40:34

I don't necessarily know that. But there's a big

40:37

divide that's starting to happen with

40:40

these technologies as China

40:42

and BRICS becomes stronger and America

40:45

and the West become weaker. Like,

40:47

this is an interesting time to be alive for sure.

40:49

Yeah. I mean, let me tell you a story that really changed

40:51

my views on regulation. Okay. Because I

40:54

was definitely of a mind of like, oh, you

40:56

know, well, I'm still of this mind. Like, I

40:58

call it premature regulation. Like, you don't want to regulate

41:00

something too soon because, A, the market's going to like decide

41:02

a bunch of stuff, you know, and like there, a lot of things

41:04

are just going to die. So it's like, why? And someone was like, why

41:06

bother, right? But also you want to make sure

41:09

you're regulating something in a very forward thinking

41:11

way. And that's hard to do. I mean, policy is always

41:13

going to lag tech innovation. That's just

41:15

kind of a fact. And tech innovation is getting faster and faster

41:17

and faster. And policymaking takes time. That's

41:19

just also fair. So a lot of folks,

41:22

and we supported this part of what I was doing about the world economic

41:24

forum was thinking about different mechanisms

41:27

of policymaking that could accommodate the reality

41:29

that tech is always going to move faster than policy.

41:31

So how do you get to a place where you're still keeping the consumer

41:33

safe and you're still protecting innovation, but

41:35

you're not, you're not just like allowing the Wild West or whatever,

41:38

but you're saying like within some boundary, there's got

41:40

to be like something, some things that are just kind of like, yes

41:43

and no, like there's got to be some bright lines, right? To some extent.

41:46

Anyway, so one of those was kind of this idea of sandboxes

41:49

and a sandbox, you know, for those who don't know, it's kind of a regulator

41:52

system. P

41:59

cases, there might even be a safe harbor that

42:02

during the time you're in the sandbox, we're not going to come after

42:04

you and find whatever it is, right? There's all kinds of ways of setting

42:06

it up.

42:07

And I said to a couple of friends, when entrepreneurs, hey,

42:09

sandboxes sound awesome. Don't tell me the sandbox.

42:12

And one of my good friends said to me,

42:14

she's like, No, I don't want to be in the sandbox. She's

42:16

actually I don't want to be in

42:18

the effing sandbox, right? Like, I want

42:20

to be

42:21

absolutely kosher 100% within the rules,

42:23

like I want to come in and have a license. So I have a

42:26

license, then I know exactly what's

42:28

expected of me. And I'm not accidentally

42:30

building on something that's going to evaporate because yes, maybe

42:32

in the sandbox, I don't get like, find

42:34

or you know, slack, shackle, slap

42:36

dummy or whatever for doing something that's just natural

42:39

to my business. But I also don't know if my business is being

42:41

built on air or quicksand. Like I don't know.

42:43

Right. Kind of like what Coinbase has been doing. They're like, Hey,

42:46

we're trying to

42:48

keep kicking the you keep moving the goalposts.

42:51

So it's like, unless you have that

42:53

certainty is why we talk about a lot about regulatory

42:55

certainty, right? Regulatory clarity, unless

42:58

you know, okay,

42:59

all well and good, you're not going to get like slapped

43:02

with a fine or whatever. But like, if the operational

43:04

cost of transitioning into something

43:07

else that's that develops because of your

43:09

goodwill puts you out of business, you're

43:11

still screwed, right? So the market economics

43:14

of things like sandboxes don't always make

43:16

sense. And that's why in the US,

43:19

you hear all this repeated call for regulatory

43:21

clarity, regulatory clarity. That means clear

43:23

rules. We understand what does a regulator

43:25

want from us? What is our reporting requirement?

43:28

What are licensing requirements? What are

43:29

operational requirements? What all of these

43:32

things, and nobody wants to be like too

43:34

hemmed in and constrained because then you can't

43:36

even if the answer is like, I don't know,

43:38

you know, then that might kill my business a couple

43:40

years from now. And you're kind of seeing this with some of these folks

43:43

who are now saying, it looks like it's

43:45

going to be maybe a couple more years for the US

43:47

gets rules in place. Aren't I better

43:49

off spending my money transitioning

43:52

to an HQ where I know what the rules

43:54

are and just running as opposed to

43:56

like waiting around and trying to see

43:59

and maybe I'm right.

43:59

maybe I'm wrong, I don't really know. And

44:02

that's what folks in this industry have been saying for a very long

44:04

time. So what I love about,

44:06

just loop all the way back around, about this

44:08

Dow legislation proposal is

44:10

that it's, because we're still early in Dow's,

44:12

right? So it's providing some of that. It's

44:15

not saying like,

44:16

hey, make it up or we'll guess.

44:19

It's kind of saying like,

44:20

these are what we think the basic rules are.

44:23

And so operate in this way. And

44:25

you're like, great, okay, that is something

44:27

I can work with. Now I understand.

44:30

And what this proposal is actually doing is

44:32

leveraging existing laws

44:35

and saying, these things make sense

44:37

in some way, right? So like, let's do that. But

44:39

then opening them up to say where they don't

44:42

make sense, let's just kind of modify that. So

44:44

rather than this brand new thing that everyone's like, what

44:46

the hell is that? It's like, here is a way

44:48

to leverage something that everybody knows

44:50

and everyone's like, sure, fine, whatever, and

44:53

saying, how do we open that up and create a container

44:56

or some space for the unique properties

44:58

of a Dow that no

45:00

one's ever seen before, right? That no one knows how

45:02

to wrestle with. That's the kind of stuff I

45:05

think makes a lot of sense. And I'm hopeful

45:07

at least some of the governance and those kinds of things will

45:09

be very encouraged to stay onshore

45:12

in the US, even if some of the sort

45:14

of mechanics around exchanges and things like that,

45:16

that one piece of our very big ecosystem

45:19

do wind up moving more

45:20

offshore. I will willingly

45:23

join you in optimism because I would love

45:25

for that to happen. I

45:27

just see, observing how things

45:29

have been, just thank

45:31

you for

45:32

lifting that up there.

45:34

We could use that. Yeah, well, it's like a psycho. You caught me on

45:36

an optimistic day. There's days that I'm like, ah, god. I'm curious

45:38

about, I wanna know about your

45:41

day. There's gotta be all kinds

45:43

of variety. What does a typical day

45:45

in the life of Sheila Warren

45:48

look like?

45:49

Well, yeah, I mean, I

45:52

would not necessarily wish a typical day in my life

45:54

on anyone, but it's a lot. That's

45:57

why I'm super early because of course I'm dealing

45:59

with.

45:59

like what's happening in Europe, what's happening on the East Coast.

46:02

I live in California, you know, although I'm traveling

46:04

all the time.

46:05

So a typical day when I'm not traveling, which

46:07

is unusual, is I'm up,

46:09

I'm kind of doing a lot of reading. I am scrolling through Twitter.

46:11

We have a lot of our news from Twitter. Let's be real in this industry

46:14

and in this space. I'm reviewing

46:16

bills that might be coming up. I'm like responding.

46:19

All the stuff you do as a CEO of a company, right? A

46:21

lot of it is that kind of stuff. But it's also just tracking what's

46:23

happening on the East Coast and in Europe

46:26

specifically. Then I move

46:28

into internal kind of team meetings where I'm

46:30

checking in with my executive team, with

46:32

other folks and we've got like, oh, we're commenting on this,

46:34

we're moving on this, or we have to make decision about that,

46:37

or a hire or whatever it is, right? Like business

46:39

stuff, very typical bit. I run a small business after all.

46:41

So very typical small business stuff. I

46:44

try to reserve time of my day for reading,

46:46

but these days it's just a lot of talking to reporters.

46:48

Unfortunately, like, I mean, fortunately or unfortunately, I'm grateful

46:51

for the opportunity, but it's a lot of press

46:53

lately because a lot of reporters have a lot of questions

46:56

and that's global. So I might be talking to

46:58

somebody in, you know, Hong Kong

47:00

or in Berlin or in, you know,

47:03

wherever it is, right? But also a bunch of

47:05

folks in the US as well, just to get a sense of

47:07

like, you know,

47:08

what's top of mind or the stories coming out all

47:10

the time or trying to kind of make sure we're responsive

47:12

to that. So I do a lot of that kind of stuff. And

47:15

then finally in my afternoon is when I

47:17

get a little more time to read so that I'm kind

47:20

of like sitting down and like reading, you know, new things,

47:22

trying to keep up on the tech, which as you both know, is like almost

47:24

impossible in this space, right?

47:26

You just summarizing all your

47:28

news articles for you. Yeah, not yet, right? It's

47:31

wild. But I feel like that's kind of the,

47:34

one of the things I'll tell you that's really challenging about this

47:37

role versus my last role is, you

47:39

know, part of my job, I think is to actually

47:41

have my finger on all those pulses and really

47:43

real synthesize at a different level what's

47:45

going on, right? And that's why

47:48

I think I was so effective

47:50

in my last role and why I'm so effective in this one, but

47:52

that takes time, right? You've got to have the

47:54

inputs to form those views. And

47:57

so spending a lot of time reading and really

47:59

just kind of looking.

47:59

and reading outside of crypto, by the

48:02

way, reading on all kinds of other things that are happening.

48:04

Again, the geopolitics are so important and

48:07

a lot of folks miss that or they aren't sophisticated

48:09

enough and haven't spent enough time thinking about

48:11

it to understand what these things actually mean. So

48:15

looking at some of those things I think is really important

48:17

for me. Talking to a bunch of just contacts

48:19

in and outside of crypto in broader tech

48:21

and FinTech is really

48:24

important as well to get a read on things. But

48:27

right now, I mean, let's be real in the United States,

48:29

we're playing a lot of defense.

48:32

I mean, we are not a popular industry

48:34

right

48:34

now. And a lot

48:36

of that is due to one particular individual, he

48:39

who shall not be named, et cetera.

48:41

But a lot of it is because I think

48:43

we didn't do a great job, like

48:46

I said, early on with the, until

48:48

NFTs, honestly, with things like user interfaces

48:50

and with things like safety and security

48:53

and prioritizing that and very openly prioritizing that.

48:56

So easy for some people to do rug pulls,

48:58

right? And then it's like, it's way too easy. Even

49:02

big huge things like FTX and that whole

49:04

scenario where that guy was the guy

49:06

who was working with the, with Gensler

49:08

to write the regular, really? It's

49:10

like having the Fox writing the rules for the

49:12

Hinn House saying, okay, and we're gonna leave the

49:14

door. I mean, look, we are still dealing

49:16

with the massive crater that

49:19

the FTX asteroid like

49:21

slammed into Washington. Okay.

49:23

And like that is a long process.

49:25

Wasn't that an FTX asteroid?

49:28

There it is, right? Yeah, exactly,

49:30

right? That is a long process.

49:33

And I think people can be as pissed

49:35

off as they wanna be. And like, I wasn't part of, I mean,

49:37

fine. Yeah, it's okay. None of us were in that

49:39

like group of four people who made those terrible decisions

49:41

that were sociopathic. Fine, it doesn't matter,

49:43

right? It doesn't matter. Like at the end of

49:46

the day,

49:46

he was showing up. He was showing up in

49:49

Washington. He was pounding the pavement. He was doing

49:51

the calls. He was taking the meetings. He was writing the

49:53

chat. He was doing all that stuff.

49:55

And not that many other people were. And

49:57

so I think a lot of folks like...

49:59

They feel burned by that. And that is a very understandable

50:02

thing. And so we can be outraged by it and we

50:05

can like, you know, pound the pay. But like the

50:07

bottom line is like, that's a thing that happened. And

50:09

it has a massive effect. Like when I use

50:11

asteroid and crater, I'm not being hyperbolic. I

50:14

mean, you know, like it's a really,

50:16

really big deal. You

50:17

know, you know, it would seem to me, Sheila, that

50:19

if he was really an enemy of the state of

50:21

having gone through that, if he hadn't gone and pounded

50:24

the pavement in D.C., he'd be

50:26

in prison. Like he got out of the

50:28

Bahamas. And immediately four

50:30

days before Christmas, he was on a first class

50:32

flight to go hang out in Palo Alto

50:34

or wherever his parents live. Right. Like that

50:36

would not have happened if he had not been pounding the pavement

50:39

in D.C., paying off all these politicians,

50:41

frankly.

50:42

I mean, I have no idea. I have

50:45

I cannot say that I track criminals and their

50:47

behavior and how they're treated. You know what I mean? But

50:49

all I can say is there has certainly been an epidemic,

50:52

it feels like, to me, of like wonderkinned

50:55

young folks who are making

50:58

you know, criminal decisions. Right. I mean, there's

51:00

like there's all of these like what are they saying? Like then the Forbes 30

51:03

under 30, it's like some percentage almost like over

51:05

the last five years, every year has been like

51:07

criminals. And it's like, what the you know. So

51:09

I think look, I think that is far more

51:11

about how we as a society

51:13

like really have this bias

51:15

towards, you know, youth and energy and

51:18

all of a sudden. That's all well and good. But

51:20

like, you know, what young people don't have is

51:22

a fully developed prefrontal cortex,

51:24

right? And that means you make dumb

51:26

decisions. I mean, I was once 22 and I

51:28

was an idiot. OK,

51:30

I might have been a very smart idiot on one axis,

51:33

but I was an idiot, idiot on another axis because I was 22

51:35

years old. What the hell you're doing? So

51:38

what do you have? I do. You

51:40

think you absolutely think you do. You

51:42

know, right. Just this and beyond that fallible.

51:44

Right.

51:44

Like you truly believe

51:46

that you're arrogant. You that is called

51:49

being 22 years or what? 25, whatever it

51:51

is now, whatever. I am

51:52

not those things. It's it's 39 now.

51:54

You tell me. It's like 55. Whatever

51:59

it is. Right.

51:59

And so we kind of like celebrate

52:02

this and we give people prizes and awards

52:04

and they're so mean, you know, and in some cases that's absolutely

52:06

true. In some cases, it is nonsense. It

52:09

is nonsense. The other thing

52:11

that's happening in our society, if you want to talk about this

52:13

as well, is, you know, we proxy

52:15

things now. So we're like, oh, because

52:18

you, you know, we're on the

52:20

cover of whatever magazine and because

52:22

you hang out with so and so, you

52:25

must be a good egg. You

52:27

must be like a brilliant person

52:29

who does

52:29

all the like we have these

52:32

assumptions and it's anyone actually

52:34

doing the diligence anymore. I mean, you know,

52:36

I try to, but it's like it's hard. Right. So

52:40

this is

52:40

clearly you did it because you showed up on bad crypto.

52:43

Well, here it is again, again,

52:45

again twice. Shame on. Well,

52:48

this to get back to that, though, this

52:50

is why I feel so strongly and passionately

52:53

about our space, about DAOs,

52:55

about on-chain action, about all these things

52:58

that enable us to hold

53:00

each other accountable, to create transparency,

53:03

you know, to do certain things in a way

53:05

that like

53:06

the first books written about blockchain were about trust

53:09

and the erosion of trust in our society. That's

53:11

only gotten worse, not better, guys. Right. So

53:14

here is a proposal to how we can solve

53:16

not all of that, but at least address

53:18

it in a more honest way, you know,

53:20

using some of this revolutionary technology. So

53:23

like I say, I think we've gotten in our culture,

53:26

in our government, in our media, in

53:28

our tech, in our industry, in

53:30

our funding, in all of these things,

53:33

you know, we have to question what is real

53:35

and what is not real. And so what I

53:37

love about our space is like we're trying to make that

53:40

an easier, more accurate thing to do. So

53:43

there you have it. You know, that's kind of my take on these things. It's

53:46

a long road ahead of us here in the US, but

53:48

the global scene is very rosy. It

53:50

is very optimistic. It is very

53:52

positive. People love the

53:55

technology. They love the opportunity. They

53:57

may not fully understand it, but they get that there is still

53:59

a lot of people. something really important happening here.

54:02

They get how it connects to AI, they

54:04

get how it connects to AR, like they understand

54:06

that, right? And some of that going back in our

54:08

conversation is because in other places,

54:10

policymakers tend to be either technically

54:13

minded or have a tech advisor

54:15

they trust who's not coming from

54:17

some other place, like that's a person

54:19

that they know and they trust and whatnot, that's

54:22

helpful. We don't

54:24

have that as much, I think here. It's

54:26

why there are some members of Congress who

54:28

are technical, who do understand this a lot, who ask very,

54:31

very sophisticated questions, but there are a lot

54:33

who they just don't know this stuff. They know other stuff

54:35

that's really important too, right? They know about, I don't

54:37

know, housing policy or I don't know, taxes

54:40

or whatever it is, but they know other things.

54:42

No one can know everything.

54:44

Part of our challenge is helping to make

54:46

the case that this does matter, that

54:48

it's not that every other country in the world is like full of idiots,

54:51

it's that they're seeing something that

54:53

America has become blind to for a

54:55

variety of reasons and we need to help

54:57

pull some of that, the

54:59

layers of whatever it is away from

55:01

people and kind of allow them to see what's really

55:04

going on here. And I take

55:06

that responsibility extremely seriously

55:08

and it's something that I remain hopeful about,

55:10

even as I've been saying

55:12

for a while, no one's waiting for

55:15

the US to land the plane. Like everyone

55:17

else, their plane's in flight, they know

55:19

where they're going, they're like, these are the rules,

55:22

you might love them or hate them, but here's what they are.

55:24

And the US were like,

55:25

roads, who needs roads? It's just kind of

55:27

like, it's just crazy. It's wild.

55:30

I think that is a great place to

55:32

put up period for punctuation on this

55:35

talk. This is tons of great info.

55:37

Sheila, where's the best place for people to get

55:39

in touch with you and interact with

55:41

you, ask questions and learn more?

55:43

Yeah, come on to Twitter for a while at last.

55:47

I'm still findable there, it's at Sheila underscore

55:49

Warren or the crypto council. You can

55:51

always ping us there if you have questions. We have a lot of info

55:53

on our website, a lot of explainers about

55:55

how policy is made, including both

55:58

in Europe and in the US.

55:59

about how does it work. We have explainers

56:02

there for those who might be interested. And I guarantee

56:04

you, you'll have something to learn. That's not how you think.

56:06

Thank you so much.

56:09

I'll tell you what, if we didn't cut off Sheila,

56:12

then she just she's like the ever

56:15

ready bunny. She just keep going and going and going. And

56:17

the moment we stopped, she's like, Oh, I got another

56:19

calling. You need to be on. Good thing. And

56:22

you noticed near the end of this thing, she was like, she kept saying

56:24

little nuggets. And I was like, there's the end.

56:26

And then she goes, and then. So

56:32

that's the end of good. You

56:35

know, she was not aware. Last time we had her on the show

56:38

was in spring, April

56:39

of 2020, before blockchain heroes.

56:42

And she was not aware that we

56:44

commemorated her

56:46

by with a hero

56:49

called the Emissary. This was a hero

56:51

in our original 50 blockchain heroes

56:54

that was inspired by Sheila Warren.

56:56

And you got your common, your uncommon,

56:58

your rare, epic, legendary,

57:02

the mythic,

57:03

secret smoke. There's the

57:05

golden. And of course, the what do

57:08

we call the enchanted?

57:10

And

57:11

she also, I forgot,

57:13

she went on to also be, you know, in the

57:15

upland collectible series because all of the blockchain

57:18

heroes were made into

57:20

these upland block explorers.

57:23

And if you got the mythic, which is the yellow

57:25

one, you could actually import that

57:28

into the upland game and use

57:30

that block explorer. By the way, had

57:32

some great conversations recently with duck

57:35

from upland. They I am

57:37

convinced they are leading the

57:39

metaverse right now in without

57:42

me doing my metaverse rant. They are

57:44

number one, their vision for what

57:47

they're doing and where they're going is

57:49

absolute tops. And if you're not in the upland

57:51

game yet, you should be. So Travis

57:53

had a great idea. What was your great idea?

57:56

Eat

57:57

corn. Yeah, corn.

57:59

Great idea. And then it's always a great idea,

58:01

right? That's a good idea. You know, I thought, hey, we

58:03

should probably do an emissary AI version

58:06

like we've done with the other AI

58:10

set that we did. We did 36 regular

58:13

ones and we had one, one of one of

58:15

that. Then we dropped another one there of,

58:18

who was it, Baron, somebody? Van

58:20

Hodling, Van Hodling, we did that. Oh, Van Hodling,

58:23

yep, yep. And then we should

58:25

probably do one for the emissary. Yeah,

58:27

so if you are a bad crypto nifty club

58:30

member and you gotta

58:32

be one pretty quick, I'm not exactly sure what

58:34

day this episode is dropping, but within

58:37

a few days of it dropping, you

58:39

have to have one of these bad crypto nifty. Let's

58:42

just say 72 hours post this dropping.

58:44

Ish, ish, I'm gonna be on vacation,

58:47

you know, so don't hold me to an exact. 84 hours, 102.

58:51

Badcrypto.uncut.network,

58:54

go and get one of these because we drop

58:56

all kinds of cool stuff. I mean, take a look

58:58

here at some of the things that you would have missed.

59:01

There's the Van Hodling energized

59:03

variation that you would have gotten

59:06

for free

59:07

if you had the bad crypto, bad

59:09

crypto. Badcrypto. Badcrypto.

59:11

Badcrypto. Badcrypto. And

59:14

there's a bunch of them that, you

59:16

know, some of them from Cornytopia, some of them from

59:18

other episodes. So you'll want to go to badcrypto.uncut.network,

59:22

scroll to the bottom, pick up this bad crypto

59:25

nifty club and we'll make a nifty

59:27

of the emissary done by

59:30

AI. It'll be super fun. We've done

59:32

over 40 different NFTs so far on that. So that's

59:34

pretty cool. So for the cost of 0.002

59:36

ETH, all

59:39

the rest of those are just part of it. So you

59:41

get to drop them and get those, but sometimes we'll

59:43

create multiples and so we'll drop

59:45

just a rank. So you don't get every one of them. Sometimes you

59:47

got to go into the platform and claim them. Like

59:49

we just had all the people claim Captain Corn

59:51

and then we created a whole Corny Kingdom based on

59:54

that, which we'll talk about. So

59:57

thank you

59:57

so much for Sheila for coming on again.

1:00:00

This was a really long episode, so we don't want

1:00:02

to keep this going on for too long. So what

1:00:04

should we tell them here to end it all, Mr. Jordan? Let's

1:00:06

do like the Beatles, a day in the life

1:00:08

where we'd have an ending, uh, stay

1:00:10

bad that goes on for like a minute. Okay.

1:00:13

Thanks for listening everybody. Stay back.

1:00:15

Who's bad? The bad crypto

1:00:19

podcast is a production

1:00:24

of bad

1:00:26

crypto LLC.

1:00:34

The

1:00:39

content of the show, the videos, and the

1:00:41

website is provided for educational, informational,

1:00:43

and entertainment purposes only. It's not

1:00:45

intended to be and does not constitute

1:00:48

financial investment or trading

1:00:50

advice of any kind. You shouldn't make

1:00:52

any decisions as to finances, investing,

1:00:54

trading, or anything else based on this information

1:00:57

without undertaking independent due diligence

1:01:00

and consultation with a professional financial

1:01:02

advisor. Please understand that the trading

1:01:04

of Bitcoins and alternative cryptocurrencies

1:01:07

have potential risks involved. Anyone

1:01:09

wishing to invest in any of the currencies or tokens

1:01:11

mentioned on this podcast should first

1:01:13

seek their own independent professional financial

1:01:16

advisor.

1:01:20

They see can't end on a D

1:01:23

a hard D doesn't keep resonating

1:01:25

like, uh,

1:01:27

sorry.

1:01:30

This is all the resonating you get folks. Suck

1:01:32

it. That's

1:01:34

pretty horrible. I

1:01:37

apologize. Don't suck it. Okay.