Bloq's Matt Roszak on Necker Island: Connecting Multiple Blockchains, China and Tech Cooperatives

Transcript

welcome to forbs podcasts hi everyone welcome to Unchained a forbs podcast produced by fractal recording thanks for tuning in today we're launching with two podcasts both from Sir Richard Branson's private island in the Caribbean and called Necker Island after today you can expect one new show every other week for one of our inaugural podcasts we're talking with Matt rose ak the founding partner of tally Capital and co-founder of new blockchain Enterprise company block spelled BL o Q which aims to be the Red Hat of blockchain software to enterprise companies Matt tells us what he's up to in the blockchain space as

well as his thoughts on other events in the world of blockchain hi Matt ro Zak thanks so much for coming on my show thanks Laura great to be here so um here we are unbeautiful necker island in my hotel room which is also equally beautiful what's been the highlight of the blushing summit so far for you and it can be their personal or not personal but recreational or professional I think when you come upon this island you see it from a distance and this it's this lush green beautiful island and you see all these different animals flamingos and lemur monkeys and turtles and it kind of realized that if we were like movie producers this would

be the setting for this amazing island that we'd want to make a movie in this amazing setting mm-hmm and a great setting for moving about people who are about to change the world yeah no doubt it's uh it's such an honor to be amongst all these folks from industry and academia and banking and policy it's truly an amazing group of folks yeah and I want to thank you in particular for coming during the recreational hour but as far as I understand they think you have a fun appointment after this yeah I'm kind of trying to get mentally prepared I'm playing Richard Branson and tennis right after this and I just went to a gift to the gift shop to buy some

clothes guy I didn't really bring and so trying to you know get ready for that okay well good luck to you well actually yeah yeah I mean yesterday he played the former prime minister of Haiti and he's got games so I got a lot in store for me here right yeah I saw and for our listeners I'll try to give you the update later on whether Matt won or not okay so let's get down to business tell me about your company and I'm interested to hear about it the way that you might pitch it to somebody you know in this case it's our listener but you know maybe adaptive from what you might pitch to your leg and investor or potential client

sure and maybe as background so I've been in the venture capital business for last 20 years and along the way co-founded six enterprise software companies so in areas of HR video surveillance Public Safety and really had a lot of broad exposure selling to enterprise customers and and the opportunity that was kind of the the catalyst for block came about from my experience and underpriced software and then over the last four years now have invested in about 21 companies in the Bitcoin blockchain ecosystem so lots of infrastructure players wallets payment processors exchanges one minor and

bitfury and gave me a really interesting heat map of what was working what wasn't working and the white space that really came about was this this March of the enterprise and blotching every global bank on the planet has pronounced their blockchain strategy Fortune 1000 companies are looking at this space much like they were looking at internet in the 90s to say what's my internet strategy now every CTO on the planet is saying what's my blockchain strategy and so with that demand with that interest and seeing the kind of evolution of technology my co-founder and I saw this as an amazing opportunity to really

think through and and develop these scaffolding layers of software layers for for enterprise customers wanting to manage bought chains and build block sheets and so much like if we were developing a an Internet stack of software and we said what do you need to to have to be online enabled and you know kind of instincts would be content management ecommerce and you'd have all these layers of the onion that you would build out to enable people to go online and so much the same we're watching is is just a raw protocol and most enterprise customers don't want to go to a lumberyard and got lumber and hammers

and nails they want finished product they want they want platforms they could build off of and innovate and manage and so that demand coupled with what's happening in the ecosystem which you have a lot of developers lots of innovation lots of companies that are great products great features but we are taking this sweet approach its product stack and delivering it in a way in which enterprise software has been delivered for Less 30 years to to the Sun user which is productized hardened supported maintained and and all kinda wrapped in a and a service level agreement and some of that is not an innovation to delivery mechanism to to

service these large global companies but the innovation that we're driving is we're taking the font of innovation from open protocols like Bitcoin like aetherium and we're delivering that in in private blockchains and the blockchain management systems that these customers need so my co-founder Jeff Karthik who we actually had some of the kernel of the idea last year here at Necker Island I subsequently had another meeting about block and one thing led to another and given Jeff's experience at Red Hat for over a decade it was a very natural intersection to say let's start

this company and really kind of harness this this demand and this technology so it was very intuitive for us to get kicked off and now we're about seven months into the ball game so tell me why you chose to co-found walk with jeff garsik I think we kind of found each other I was the director Jeff's first board member at dunvegan space when he launched a company to develop a software system on a non terrestrial basis with cube SATs keep satellites in outer space and then when we met last year we we saw this opportunity to build out this technology

stack for the enterprise but Jeff I mean as a core developer he's been at Red Hat for 10 years he's a tech visionary and starting the company with Jeff was just an incredible honor and and we built the company around his energy we started with people I mean and Jeff was the key catalyst to each and every hire that we've had and that that that really sets a trajectory that company the culture the ethos and you know our first you know 15 hires are gonna affect our next 15 or next you know 60 hires after that but we wanted to make sure out of the gate we had the right people

and so jeff has been able that tracks when the best engineers in the space we brought on board and Rochelle Bock who runs the Bitcoin Jay after Mike Hearn left the Bitcoin project now Andreas is managing that repository he's the inventor of the Android Bitcoin wallet we've got a guy named Paul Storch who's kind of the brains behind Drive chains and each we have Jordan Kruger first female data scientist and the blockchain ecosystem so we've got lots of amazing engineers core developers and building on a great team at block and and I cannot all that to Jeff and and kind of

his energy that he brings this ecosystem yeah and that both Jeff and Paul and they they were both just so great and so funny and I really really enjoy talking with them and how do you're about the komono watching so in 2011 I was a co-founder of a social gaming company in Singapore called V wah wah and if you're in social gaming in Southeast Asia you're dealing with peanut processing and Philippines Indonesia Korea Malaysia all over the place and there's a lot of friction and payment processing and they have gaming credits and all this stuff and then Bitcoin came on the scene and it was almost like truly it was like that's like magic internet money how is that

even possible and then you realize that you could mine this and that's like a digital Golden Goose it's like it almost like I discounted out of the gate because I was like that's that's like almost too perfect of a of a solution and and so much like anything else whether you know Laura I tell you about a favorite restaurant mind that you have to try and like okay fine but if 10 other people tell you like you're gonna drop everything and go to this restaurant Bitcoin was much the same to me where that was my first exposure I kind of discounted it quickly and then over the next six to nine months I kept getting reference points of Bitcoin and then so by 2012 I basically you know I did what I tell everybody else is like

lock your door turn off your phone and study this technology learn about it and slowly got into the ecosystem and and started investing in companies and quite frankly building my education set in the space and engaging with amazing entrepreneurs which you know certainly led to their journey I'm on with with Jeff Garza kept Locke and so it's a you know it's an honor to be you know contributor in this ecosystem and we got a lot of work ahead of us so it's will be fun ok great I'm kind of curious a lot of corporations are choosing to go with private blockchains many of them you know prefer that because it's maybe more the equivalent of like choosing to build an intranet it

feels safer why have you staked your business on public bar chains which are more like Internet's and are you finding that enterprise companies are reluctant to go that route and how do you overcome their concerns yeah I think it's a great question it's part of the phenomenon that we're seeing now certainly in the last year year-and-a-half you could not have predicted dynamics like the the March of all these banks or if your em coming from a crowd sale to now a billion dollar market cap and and so the ground shifts in this space and you really have to be prepared for that and some of the common denominators at least for a block is part of our go-to-market is we believe it's gonna be a multi token multi network a multi chain world and so private blockchains like you are looking

at rightly is there there intranets they are closed systems and very purposeful because a lot of these industries a lot of these companies are in highly regulated industries and they see the innovation there's a regulatory framework that they have to behave and play in and they're conscious about they also conscious that tech and and software evolves over time so they need to for the most part get blockchain enabled you know and and kind of jump into the pool and run financial non-financial use cases and really start to swim in this pool that's what pool of innovation and over time you're gonna see a constellation of chains and and everybody has an opinion of the Bitcoin

protocol theory 'm hyper ledger r3s Korda chain has an open source protocol IV all that as innovation I I view all that as an incredibly important stepping stone an investment of time energy and money to get this broader fabric this broader blockchain fabric that we'll see which in my mind will be a constellation of chains we'll see lots of chains for industries geographies different assets but over time what what you could imagine is that there's got to be inter dependencies there's going to be connectivity and that connective tissue is very important software that

connective tissue is what's going to really create this this network in this constellation of chains that'll going to be the the the money layer the data layer secure and private data layer over the Internet Internet and so are you seeing that blocked is creating that connectivity layer yeah absolutely yeah it's it's it's one of the fundamental things on our going to market so the font of innovation really comes from public networks that's where developers want to change the world that's where they wake up in the morning and say we want to build the new frontier of the movement of money or data and so but you harness that in the way you engineer an architect private blockchain it's knowing full

well that there is going to be inter dependencies and connectivity between public and private blockchains over time so you know you might be trading something on a private blockchain and everybody in that chain the traders or the market participants might trust each other may not trust each other there might be auditors involved and they have to hash data to some public chain so that could be verified by a third party so there's going to be utility inter dependency and that's one of the most trivial examples of how they could interrelate but the other dynamic that we will find with the interrelationship between public and private is security and what's truly a secure immutable

ledger and an unhackable protocol and and all these dynamics that play into that and if you're building a private blockchain that's going to have certain pros and cons in terms of security and and the use case that it's trying to solve but if you could find a way to tether that private blockchain with certain security elements of a public blockchain which has much much broader and deeper security benefit then the this whole ecosystem really starts to build lots of momentum and steam so you know it's I guess it's a it's an amazing time of innovation and we're seeing lots of investment and and in innovation within

enterprise customers every single day trying to explore this where it where it goes I think it's it's going to benefit the whole ecosystem given that amount of you know attraction and and for vessels and an investment that's good things come out the other other end of that sometimes things things get scrapped and and you find a new center of gravity and yet and you move towards that and that's that's that's how things go and you know when the internet was being developed you know everybody didn't have the right answers they're gravitating towards certain elements and then it can I see gravitational pull around certain protocols around certain layers of the Internet and I think we're in the middle

not even in the middle where the beginning of that would easily be a blotching okay so you guys also work on private blockchains not only public ones correct okay okay um so who are some of your clients and what are examples of projects they're using that watching for we're under NDA with lots of clients but you know from a industry standpoint it's no surprise financial services supply chain healthcare and insurance has been probably one of the the brighter spots in terms of a propensity to kind of look at that industry and and make some significant change and as I mentioned

earlier the that demand for this technology and and trying to figure out how it applies to their internal business systems I think we're going through a phase of blockchain where it's almost like companies are you know I'm gonna give abstract examples these none of these are customers but I'll give you like an evolution of what's what's happening now lots of caustic companies are coming to what I'll call the blockchain peddler so let's call it you know the change the block streams the are threes the digital asset Holdings the the gems the the blocks of the world and most companies have all these folks

in their Lobby with with contracts and proofs of concepts they're all getting signed up and they're all testing and they're all looking to see what what sprouts some some what blossoms and then they'll start putting more water and sunlight on the ones that start to take shape and for the most part lots of them are looking at ways and I'm gonna give this abstract example of their Walmart and they want to optimize your supply chain they're gonna say oh how do I get better days outstanding or inventory turns or margin or supplier you know finance enhancements and that's kind of I would say optimization and then some people will say well I don't want to be

a Walmart I want to be an Amazon well Amazon is like a 20 old concept the real benefit of this technology will be when companies say I want to be an open Bazaar I want to jump over these traditional channels in traditional blood vessels of of Commerce or finance and say I want to create a decentralized network and that's you know at the end of the day that's what blockchain is it's it's a you know a better name for it from my standpoint it's a it is a network enablement layer it's a network enabler you know and you look at this from the heatmap even geographically where China is is trying to become a major player and investing lots of capital and time and energy into blockchain companies and the

space probably defined and and you know kind of the current state of play you know we're in the year of the monkey but the current state of play for China and Bitcoin blockchain is all the stuff we read about where you know most of the mining happens in China most of the trading happens in China but the entrepreneurs the the VCS the conglomerates the tech companies and the government are all very self-aware that the the real opportunity here is and the software is a software the data and the applications that can be built on this and and take that a step further from a macro standpoint you know how do you you know if you're China or you're in that you and you're seeing the blood vessels

of value today of traditional finance between Swift and DTCC and and and others where you want to leapfrog over that you know and just like going into developing nation and how landlines were were leapfrog to mobile this is what blockchain can do to traditional either business models or or flows of money globally okay so there's a lot in the answer that I want to unpack the first thing is can you describe open Bazaar for listeners who might not be familiar with it open Bazaar is a decentralized marketplace so it's you know it's like a cooperative and hey you know it's like the other analogy that you don't really hear about in terms of blockchain it's

it's a cooperative it's a technology cooperative you know you you market participants all benefit out of that network that that gets developed and you know much like you know I don't know the cooperatives that we know of today is like I don't true value and Ace Hardware you know we're all cooperative or buying nails and hammers cheaper and and we all benefit from that in this case you know the what you're trading can be anything and open Bazaar is creating marketplaces and kind of decentralizing an ebay if you will you know they've you know to a certain extent they've they've even taken uh you know the Silk Road remodel and made it a 2.0 version of that and in certain ways and you know created this

open source marketplace and now are focused and all the other value-added services are on that marketplace in terms of how to help merchants and others participate on that so I think we're gonna see more more and more of those types of initiatives that's where I think this this technology really changes companies and industries and current you know participants that play in the middle you know whether you're in exchange or you know or a broker or or otherwise I think that's where this technology really you know creates and levels a particular playing field so I'm curious you we're seeing that you know maybe there might be a company like

Walmart and then they look at this technology and there is sort of thinking oh maybe it can make us more like an Amazon and you said that for them to be really far thinking with it they should think that you know maybe they should try to become an open Bazaar and yet when I look at open Bazaar I just wonder how what is the business model there you know if you are essentially creating software that allows people that connect peer-to-peer how how are you gonna make money from it you know because the reason that eBay is very successful is that they're constantly taking a cut there at the central place to go but if open Bazaar is just you create the software and it allows people to connect with each other directly and you're cut out as the middleman then why why would a business

go that route this is a great question Laura and this is actually you know amongst other players in the industry one of the the most talked about dynamics is what's what are the economics of a blockchain so you're a blockchain enabler and you're setting up this new way to trade you know I'll just say gold or whatever on the blockchain and how do you make money as a blockchain enabler and a technology company here and there's very very you know there's a variety of ways to look at the economics of that whether it's a transaction fee as part of that network so it's so the market participants say you know we're gonna go after this particular industry and on a private

Hwacheon basis and say costs X to get into this network and it costs y every time we make a transaction or maybe the technology enabler is one of the market participants so you know it gets one of the the benefits of a seat if you would as at an exchange and these are you know would be new new kind of decentralized exchanges centralized network since I'm shy and when you say that they would be market participant it like in what way they would become a seller on their own network er if everybody on the chain has a one-tenth interest maybe the technology provider has one of those seats then it gets economics the economic value of that so the cost to

develop it launches services is is going to have the technology enablers going to have an equity interest and that particular chain or network or blushing like what I'm not following is you're saying that II like you can launch something like an opened bazaar which is a decentralized company and yet people can still take equity in it well that's a public that would be a public marketplace so yeah it's just launched and a market forces prevail whoever wants to participate on that participates and buys their goods or services cheaper and more efficient because there's no middle person on a private basis when you're saying we want

to focus on this particular asset or this particular element then there's certain economics involved amongst the participants because we're all trading gold and we're either the biggest banks or or what-have-you and the economics for the technology enabler could be anything from a front fee transaction fee or equity in the consortium much like you know quite frankly r3 has equity and a consortium that it's built and and so it's not too dissimilar dissimilar of a of a concept okay so it's like open Bazaar and yet with a central actor well I mean yeah I mean III think there's public networks like

an open Bazaar and they'll be private networks like you know a quarter for example you know that's that's a private network that has market participants and r3 is one of the beneficiaries of that in terms of fees or transaction fees or equity stake in that and that enablement layer so there's different ways that you could take a bite at the Apple on the on the private side on the public side so back to open those are you know the the value-added services around the edges of that network and some of the concentric circles whether it's marketing or peer-to-peer lending or other merchant services that they provide for a fee once the network effect starts to take

shape with open Bazaar I think that's the opportunity for them as how they start building these value-added services okay yeah and to hear that like one business that people could you know that they could have an actual business model with that it would be to maybe provide reputation services on a decentralized marketplace like open Bazaar no to say like I can vouch that you know this is a cellar with you know reputable ratings and stuff like that okay so then I wanted to go back to you know what you were saying about China which was pretty interesting you like you kind of made a bit of a comparison between what we're seeing with like the mining and the trading

volume and then you and then the startups but it wasn't sure actually a few are the startups and the regulators in etc but I wasn't sure if you were making that between China and the US or saying within China there's this difference I think within China there's that difference because it does have a strong ecosystem of mining a strong ecosystem of trading of this new digital currency and that's a phenomenon that that is something that lots of people in China are have as a market signal that there's this new innovation and by the way we're the market leaders in you know mining it and trading it and so that's kind of created this dynamic where where people are exploring what else is beyond

that you know even though mining companies that are saying you know these boxes with the blinky lights are not going to last forever maybe there's bigger chip companies that and diving into this space for the next you know five or ten years and but along the way what are the other opportunities within this space this the software is the connective tissue that the data layers the innovations in terms of how do you scale you know the Bitcoin blockchain and how do you do smart contracts with the theorem how do you do stuff with you know the public private Ledger's and so you know the the signal that we've seen coming out of China is that they're and they're aware of the

opportunity and they're they're definitely investing and innovating aggressively with blocking technology interesting so tell me what what you think of kind of what my not super well reported observations are which are that they're really interested in the currency but when it comes to blocking I'm seeing more of that x50 in the West in you were saying that you see block connectivity there ya know I mean there's a there's an entrepreneurial and investment momentum that's happening outside of certainly mining and trading and and you're seeing certain Chinese investors making bets on companies in the u.s. starting companies in in in

China and you know an even dynamics like China Ledger launched the six largest exchanges by the ex CTO of the Shanghai Stock Exchange was launched last month and you're seeing you know China Ledger as a thing as a market signal there's no technology there there's no you know necessarily thing that was launched beyond a propensity to say let's organize an effort to explore this technology see how we could harness it for the benefit of this of this trading environment in in China and so there's enough signals that have come out certainly over the last you know six

months since beginning the year that have and you know we've been to Beijing and Shanghai and Hong Kong and Singapore all over the region and continue to see that firsthand in terms that dynamic where the energy and focus on this and these other layers are very um are happening so yeah I mean tell me if I'm wrong but it just feels like they're they are interested now like I am obviously aware of some of the investments they've made and are still making and but it feels like they're just a step behind and I have no doubt that they could very quickly catch up but that's my read on on things there's enough signals from the beginning of the

year to the untrained eye to see the the dollars the platforms the headlines and some of the other activities that are happening that they're changing their game they're not just saying we're satisfied with with mining or satisfied with trading we are going to innovate we're going to invest and we're going to see what the next job here this books looks like and not only the what it looks like but let's also be participants in writing it because now they have enough clout you know that for the mining and trading perspective now they're there they're big participants as the discussions and dialogue with the scaling dynamics in Bitcoin China was

was a very important participant at that table and will continue to be and so so there's all there's lots of you know some people you know they either discount China or don't have it as part of the discussion it is part of the discussion it is part of this ecosystem it's a it's a global ecosystem and and so you know it's that the more innovation the more of a global layer that network creating with with that specific public ledger the better and what influence do you think that China will end up having once they kind of get the watching stuff going um you know as far as I understand in terms of

peer-to-peer payments they're far ahead of where we are you know it's a big part of the culture already and I think in general sort of this movement of money is like a big part of the culture as we see with the trading volume and you know just this interest in mining but you know now that they're showing interest in watching where do you see that taking the development of watching technology and blocked Bitcoin well I I think it's a great question to see what's what's going to happen now with some of that and and I think the peer to peer lending phenomenon in China the mobile wallet dynamics like you know the lot of the innovations and the ways in which money is moved there is a lot more easy and

frictionless than certainly the u.s. or other parts of the world I think that stems from some of the lighter touch regulation some of that is laissez-faire doesn't mean you know if you know we're dynamic show up with you know either some fraud or hacks or whatever the regulation will come down for consumer a better consumer protection but for now there's a lots of there's lots of innovation on the Dec of a mobile phone in China if you look at that you see lots of peer-to-peer lending lots of digital wallets ways to move money messaging apps that are there innovating with with money and that's uh you know that's being done on scale I mean if you look

at some of the platforms with Alibaba or a ten-cent those are being done at scale and that's it's exciting innovation because you know historically lots of innovation came from the USO it was a photo copied in China now they're seeing some innovations in China that you know can apply through the rest of the world which you know that's a different dialogue these days and that's exciting but you know from the regulatory standpoint I think that's uh it's a keystone issue in our ecosystem you know it's it's a something that I think globally has been relatively less affair certainly in the US has been very welcoming to Bitcoin blockchain technology and we see that continuing the chamber of digital commerce has done

amazing work educating advocating and engaging with with regulators not only three-letter agencies but members of Congress and going on both sides of the aisle to you know really help regulators policymakers appreciate the the the power of this technology the potential is technology and and we're in the early days so you know if you look at technology shifts of railroads telephony Internet you always had effervescence he always had massive investments whether that was a fear of missing out or you know innovation but you always had a certain effervescence and and and even bubbles happening and and that that's rife with fraud and and other issues and

then the regulatory pendulum swings swing so my swings a little too hard and and that's where I think you know platforms like the Chamber help regulators policymakers understand this technology and really help calibrate that that pendulum swing too hard because if it does that will usher in an impact innovation jobs and investment and quite frankly may push that to other geographies and you know the the debate is always o is the wallstreet going to be in Singapore or Zurich or you know and I always find that to be interesting I think you know we've got a long way to go before we're gonna see those types of sensitivities I

think this this technology is super impactful and and we're not talking about internet were you know revolutionize Commerce and communication and you know the bill an app and share a picture of my you know cat or dog with you is one thing but if I'm gonna move value move money title to my house a hundred million dollars of Apple stock or or you know my digital identity or my health records you know those form factors those trust factors for people are way higher and so the systems and the engagement and the adoption of those systems is going to take a you know a slightly different pace but once it does you could see the benefit and kind of

the new you know again blood vessels of value and data movement getting really exciting so I want to go back a couple questions ago to what we were talking about with China and we were talking about their culture of you know kind of just trading money more between each other and and you know on their own to make money and you know you started to say that or you know you tell me if this is where you were going that we're seeing startups that are coming out of there that could potentially influence our behaviors and yet like I reported a little bit on this and I don't pretend to be any expert on Chinese culture um but from the few you know people that

I've spoken with it seems like that really is a part of the culture there to do those kinds of things in a way that it's not in the West you know to borrow money from somebody to go gambling or to come home from work and day trade and so you know what how do you see those startups kind of like bringing that cultures in here because I and you tell me maybe it doesn't need to be a culture change maybe maybe there's some value proposition that is just so obvious that once it gets moved over here it will you know gain adoption I mean I think you know some of the ways in which wallets and the peer-to-peer lending and not sure exactly about the gambling piece but some of those form factors and the

presentation layers and the apps quite frankly that are developed there are very engaging and they you know I they don't pop up here because I think a lot of those areas cross over lots of regulatory hurdles here on the peer-to-peer lending side or certainly on the gambling side and so there is you know regulatory friction in terms of of doing that I see that dissipating over time I think the notion of a digital wallet is going to evolve over time I think right now like Apple pay for example is is training wheels for the next true mobile wallet and and you know where you can a manager identity and assets and and you know not just you know your airline miles or a credit card

that you you know kind of duct tape to your Apple pay account you know real micro transactions and and you know different you know peer to peer lending with with different digital currencies and the the the wallet I think over time will become the browser of the blockchain the browser for your kind of interaction with the world you know the wallet will become your kind of personal data layer where again assets and money and identity and all these things starting to come into play and and you know the identity model specifically tethered to you know blockchain for example I think is one of the greatest

use cases that we have right now we you know go into a store to buy a pack of gum and if use your credit card they might ask you for your driver's license and right there you've given way too much information than you should have you should just my money's you know green or whatever and execute the transaction and leave same thing when you go into a bar you're over 21 apply for mortgage it's a different set of credentials you get a job different set of credentials going to a hospital entirely different set of data that's shared and so this partition identity stack this this wallet this whole dynamic of our digital ID on our on the supercomputers we have in our pockets is I think going to have

tremendous innovation afforded to us by watching technology in the cryptography and all the the benefits in that in that particular that data stack that so we call our identity and our and our digital wallet alright so you have a lot of experience in helping to develop and investing in technology what parallels do you see in the way that this technology is developing with you know what you've seen before and how can we how can watching companies do better this time around well I it's pretty amazing in my lifetime I've seen I remember going to Kmart on my BMX bike and buying a Commodore vic-20 computer and storing my programs on a cassette tape that was

connected to a I know what color screen I had but I had that experience I had a mobile phone that was in a you know mini briefcase that was over my shoulder was a big brick phone I remember using the Internet when you know there was pretty browser days where you at the go on things like gopher and so seeing tech in the early days and you know not necessarily seeing the you know the 1020 your benefits that it gave us at those exact moments in time but now that I've seen some of the evolution some of the ways in which Tech has really changed in

all of our lives when blockchain came on my radar I kind of immediately resonated with it in terms of the way in which this technology's going to change the movement of money it's like that the true invention here is is for the first time ever we have the freedom to convey data or value privately and securely for the first time without a middle party so no bank no visa oh no no B of a and that's that's a big invention that's a big thing it's like life liberty pursuit of happiness type of game changer and so with that and seeing technology of all everything from the early Internet to

to where we are today I know we're in the early days of blockchain so um since you deal with a lot of corporations I'm curious um what are the problems you see in the way that they're looking to adopt this technology what could they be doing better and their approach I think they're actually given where the technology is given where the opportunity is that they're doing all the right things they're they're spending time energy and money and they're getting started versus you know there's the I mean there's two schools of thought just like let's wait like this wait till this technology develops and let's you know call a big IT consultancy or IBM or Microsoft and then you know what five years we'll just buy

something off the shelf that might give them a competitive disadvantage so I think you know much like the internet changed lots of lots of industries you know newspaper you know of voice over IP communications most of the CTOs sitting in companies today have gone through that they've seen that evolution they've seen that disruption and there's winners and losers of the other end of all of those transformations and and so there's lots of Education going on there's lots of experimentation going on and nobody hasn't necessarily figured out but everybody wants to be in the room and that at the table and trying to

figure out what's what's the best way forward and and you know banks have not had a great relationship with technology I think when the internet showed up they duct tape their systems to the Internet then there were pressure tested in 1999 and then mobile telephony came out so mobile banking was a dynamic there to to react to and then other pressure testing in 2008 and now fin tech has become in vogue for investors you know there's new platforms on the on the table between mobile telephony and everybody having that supercomputer in the pocket to do things that they couldn't do before blockchain technology digital currencies peer-to-peer lending

robo robo investing so you know the bullets have been whizzing by their ear and they're very self-aware of that now it's like a machine gun with all the the innovations in FinTech because FinTech entrepreneurs are saying before it was really hard to build a company that's going to compete with a bank or an insurance company or what have you but now that technology has evolved to a point where they're they're coming in on the edges or doing innovative approaches towards solving a problem which has never happened before so FinTech is in vogue right now Bitcoin blockchain is certainly help that as a

catalyst but we're seeing we're all seeing the all these innovations on our on our iPhones that are you know targeting the the status quo targeting banks and and they're reacting and the way they should they they need to innovate they need to partner they need to build a community a fabric of of tech and and partnerships and relationships and they're doing lots of the right things in sitting where they are and you know at the end of a banks they manage risk that's what they're really good at right and so they see this as potential challenge and they're stepping up to the plate and investing and and trying to evolve and and the last piece on on that

is you know human beings you know we have these blockchain networks these trustless protocols which which is true and there's also dynamic where you know I assume it means we trust brands you know you know and and sometimes we we trust brands behind lis some as brands are evolving the brands 20 years ago or maybe not they're the right brands today but we trust brands and and I just saw something that people stay with their bank longer than they stay with her their marriage you know I think it was 17 years an average bank relationship on the UK average marriage in the UK is 11 years so it's it's more of a makes you gonna smirk when you when you hear that but people trust brands and and so

that's going to take another you know trust factor in another element to kind of disengage from from that world and go into this next new digital world where there's a new brand that emerges that that people are going to start trusting okay so the last thing I was curious about was what would you kind of recommend to enterprise that's looking to take advantage of this like you said earlier that you know we're gonna see winners and losers under this what do you think is gonna separate the winners from the losers I think technology is a difficult animal Sims to jump on and harness and and ride sometimes because you know you somebody's you do it too early you're too early you do it too

late you're too late and here I think you need to get started anything you need to get engaged I think you need to you know jump in that pool and much like we all have a mobile phone in our pocket and we're mobile enabled and now any new app that you recommend I recommend we could download we start using and then you know 50 100 500 million people start you know messaging or sharing photos or anything on that app and I think right now we need to get companies and industries Bakhtin enabled so they're ready for the innovations that happen on the horizon you know if we were talking about building over in 1998 you know we kind of be out of luck because a lot of the those layers of tech those very

important layers and and it's like payment processing GPS iOS all these interstitial layers that have been built up at heart and some are invisible some people never know about but that's what enable uber to be over when it launched and we're doing the same thing I'm watching so all those layers to make application development to make the the utility of the blockchain easier and and you know we don't talk about watching we just talk about we're moving money or moving data I have a digital identity and oh yeah it's secure cheap fast and you know that's that's those are the selling points not that it's SMTP or HTTP HTTP or anything like that that doesn't sell to certainly

my mother or brother or sister you know you have to really make the use case shine anyway should so so I saw that you've produced the rise and rise of Bitcoin how did you come up with that idea and committee that well over the last four years I spray-painted the industry with with 21 bets in the space I've been an investor and that's quite frankly given me a good education on the space so everything from you know investing to starting companies serve on the board of but give charity and the ecosystem was the first financial sponsor of the chamber of digital commerce helped

produce the rise rise and rise of Bitcoin and and so I'm very passionate about the space so anywhere any way I could get into this from industry philanthropy advocacy arts I gave Richard Branson a key alaric coin and that that's a piece of artwork in the space of the physical Bitcoin which is kind of funny because we're talking about the movement of digital money and I'm like handing out you know Bitcoin in a very analog way but that goes to the storytelling in the space and and I think you know listen the the Bitcoin blockchain is not an intuitive technology to wrap your brain around but the storytelling the physicality of a Bitcoin and hearing that I think is

always helpful when you can I engage with people and want to talk about this this new technology frontier thanks for joining us today for those of you who were curious about how maths tennis game went and just to let you know he's six foot five and athletic he told me that he got creamed by Richard Branson which gives you a sense of just how athletic and good at tennis Sir Richard Branson is and I guess he also told me that he's been playing tennis ever since he bought the island which was 30-some years ago so that's probably why if you're interested in learning more about Matt and his work check out the show notes which are available on Forbes calm and please review rate and subscribe to the show if you like what you're hearing thanks again you just

enjoyed a forbs podcast to learn more about our other shows visit forbes.com flash podcasts thank you