EB127 – Anthony Di Iorio: Jaxx, Ethereum And Why Community Matters

Transcript

hi welcome to episode of Bitcoin the show which talks about the technologies projects and people driving decentralization and the global cryptocurrency revolution my name is Sebastian cuiture and my name is Brian Fabien crane we're here today with Anthony DiIorio he's a returning guest and and the great thing about Anthony is every time you talk to him he's gonna tell you about three new projects he's starting right now he started an insane amount of projects in in the space so he's known for which is where we recorded the last episode with him decentral which was kind of a cryptocurrency space blockchain space in Toronto he also started a crypto cadiz founder into

your pocket and then he's a co-founder of etherium and she's also a chief digital officer of the toronto stock exchange and it's kind of exploring blockchains in that context so a lot lots of activities and of course he's going to also doing some other things that we will be talking about so yeah thanks for coming on Anthony Brian thanks for having me again nice to meet you Sebastian yeah so last time we talked that was actually in Toronto and and I got it came to your space you had a you guys had a really nice space which was sort of a big house in the middle of the financial district and we record an episode with you and a few of a few other people there that were part of I think what was it Bitcoin Alliance of Canada yeah well people

people have worked out I do central at the time yeah so can you give us an update what's what's been going on with the cetera sure so we opened the central in January 2014 it was literally a month after we jumped into aetherium and that became the first the first hub for aetherium if we had co-working space there and we were doing our meetup set it there was basically a hub that we set up because I'd been involved in the in the in the space for a while doing meetups and sure and as a local Bitcoin seller we would meet at coffee shops and do things and then it's like I got to get a space put together we gotta have someplace that everybody can kind of gather around and

get that community forum and do our meetups and that so I opened up the central in January 2014 the same day we opened up Toronto's first Bitcoin ATM it was a bit access machine it was they'd approached me a couple weeks early and said hey we're starting to make ATM and would you like to be our first customer so we opened that up there and its really morphed into many many different things decentral it's a we had 5000 square feet initially we would do all our meetups and events there we had co-working space we had a bunch of our projects there we we had we had you know it was again the first etherium hub we were hiring people for the initial for the initial team that are there and it's morphed into a bunch into you know we moved last year we moved because we

started doing our events at a much larger space we have a Development Center called Mars and Toronto it's a massive massive like million square foot facility and we do our events at their auditorium so we can fit 600 people there so it just didn't make sense to have event space at the central anymore when we were doing much larger events elsewhere so we downsized we got rid the co-working space and basically as my projects grew we just realized having everybody working on my projects there seemed to make the most amount of sense and a lot less distractions from other things going on so the Central's it's a it's a it's a hub we still do our events out of here for smaller ones we've got our Bitcoin ATM a very active Bitcoin ATM we've got 40 50 people every day coming in purchasing and and buying

selling Bitcoin we do all our projects operator here so cryptic adopter rate operates out of here our consultancy services out of here at D central TV which was going to start pushing a little bit more yeah so everything's everything that revolves around D central it's kind of the the the parent company to all our activities that's fascinating and also I did I had hadn't really realized how the sort of etherium community had started there in Toronto but which is obvious because in the Vitalik is from the Toronto area it's but you know I'm originally from Canada but I've been in France for the last ten years or so and from a distance hadn't realized that they

all sort of started there yeah well it's it's an interesting story I can get in a little bit how that that whole thing emerged if you yeah sure so the first meetup I did it was in 2012 it was I literally heard about Bitcoin summer of 2012 I that day I went out seeking a Bitcoin and I went out and found someone on local Bitcoin I met up with them bought my first Bitcoin it was like nine dollars and seventy five cents and I looked for a community in Toronto I liked I looked on meetup.com there's nothing here there's absolutely nothing so that month after learning a Bic when I started I said I'm gonna start this community so I hold held the first Toronto Bitcoin meetup group and event and at that event there was ten people and there was Pierre Todd was there but

Alec Buren was there and that's where I first met those two guys and then consistently doing events after that's how I got to know them that's how just as we grew we started doing like weekly events and it just grew and grew we moved from different different different bars and and then when we launched crypto kit in 2014 in November I had invited Vitalik Roger ver and error for hues to be part of the team basically there were three guys that I really respected in the space and I said you know I'd love to have you guys here's our product we think it's really cool you know it's a Chrome extension the first of its kind wallets no logins or passwords grabs

addresses from the page he opened it when you want we'd really tried to remove the friction and they all loved the product was actually in Argentina when I approached Roger and Eric to to join crypto kit so there's literally five of us that that moved forward on the project with it and even though they've been at the distance and this was fatality you know it was crucial in some of the things that we did with crypto kit it was literally a month after that when he showed me the white paper and said hey this is what I've been what we've been putting together and I was the first person he showed it to and that was a month out to lunch and crypto kit and then it was like full-on etherion we've dropped I not drop crypto Kade it was it's been going ever since

and we just focused headlong onto etherium and I brought it in Charles Hoskins into the project and he brought in Mihai who was his partner with Bitcoin magazine and I'm a mere Chet rich who he'd been working with upon colored coins and it was the file of us so we were the five initial founders of the project and it started just developing mostly out of Toronto and we started hiring people and out of Toronto and that's where we started the initial meetups and and then in in in January it was the the really came out that was at the Miami Bitcoin conference so that was the where things really started taking off that community started expanding and then Jeffrey and Gavin came in afterwards and Joseph Lubin who actually

was at the very first D central opening day on New Year's Day of 2014 joseph Lubin showed up and joseph of course from consensus he had been traveling he was living in Jamaica at the time and it traveled to to Toronto visiting some family over the Christmas holidays and he came to the event and that's where we connected we fighted him to Miami to the conference and that basically was the initial eight that that that you know that's the initial five and then a few months later we added three more founders to the team and that was the core eight that that formed out of that so that was literally a lot of the action and activity at a Toronto and then we started setting up things in Switzerland and other hubs formed and then it just grew into that massive project where you guys are very well

familiar with yeah and then then from there did some of the but what's the community like now in in Toronto like oh it's so good there's there's tons of meetup groups here there's two aetherium meetup groups here there's just I mean since since opening the first one in 2012 there's there's probably dozens now like I don't know there there's there's so many events that are going such a major thing and and it's really cool is this is like the Central's kind of been that that center of gravity where everybody everybody in the space now has kind of come through to central in some way or another and off doing projects in the space and it's been it's been really interesting as the community has

developed and and I kind of always been on a year basis of things that I do the first year in 2012-2013 was kind of building out that community it's like there's nothing here if I want to be part of this and I'm really passionate what I'm gonna you know I want to be the center I want to build out the community and I think that's what's needed that's start learning about cool projects community is like a keyword for me and building out things like that I think things companies need to build communities around themselves and I'll get more into that when I talk about the Toronto Stock Exchange but it's that's what 2012 in 2013 when the boat was was building out the community 2014 was was big push onto aetherium 2015 for me with you central is a lot more getting businesses involved it was the start of

Nasdaq's announcements that really kind of drove the business community to start investigating blockchain and you know this was three years down the road after I've already gotten into it many other people and I got in kind of relatively late you could say but it takes businesses that amount of time to get involved in these disruptive technologies you can first get the communities and the passion of people working on it and then years later you seem to get that the businesses that start looking into it so 2015 was about for me businesses and we saw the growth in Toronto of a lot of activity from Deloitte Canada from the banks all starting to get their projects together and start thinking about it and and then for me 2016 now is focused on expanding that and getting out to

policymakers in Canada and really tie-ins with with educating on these disruptive technologies and the benefits that they can offer to our country and how jobs a man should be created and how we can really push ourselves forward so that's kind of been the progression and communities growing along the way we had in 2014 we put on the Bitcoin Expo in Toronto we had or think 810 years to that forty exhibitors so yeah it's been a real growth in the community and a lot of excitement and a lot of diversity now many different meetups many different people organising events and it's really great to see it you know the the change and and people start and take initiatives and leaders starting to grow and form here it's been really cool can

you talk about some of the position in Canada there's been quite a few reports and positions for me of the government or the Senate can you talk about the sort of general position of the Canadian government on digital currencies and blockchains sure so Dave I think done a great job so far not rushing into any decisions there's still very little regulations around around crypto right now for example if you're if you're selling or buying or selling you really don't have any regulations or rules right now so you can there's no limitations there will be some in the future that come up so I guess you know money services business license will

probably be needed in the future but they're not right now you can literally sell from a Bitcoin ATM without taking customer information right now it's been really good and I think it's at the smartest move is that taking that time to really understand these technologies the government's are seem to be wanting to learn and want to educate themselves and understanding that you know rash decisions probably aren't the best is the best thing to do and they can really hinder the growth of technologies and industries that your country can be leaders in and I that's I've been very happy with the progress and by them taking their time I mean we had Andreas come up and speak at a Senate committee hearing and I think he really was able to bring across that

message of wait to see educate yourselves and don't don't jump to anything anything rash and just kind of really understand and that's what we've gone through the again the cycle for me it's community learning and getting into it businesses learning and then the next stage is governments and regulators and policy makers and it's really our goal and our challenge to educate them and to bring about that the passion for these technologies and how Canada can be at the forefront of these technologies and then lead it if we are embracive to the technologies if we are encouraging entrepreneurs encouraging startups encouraging FinTech companies to come in and and making sure that there's nothing that that's stopping them I mean I I look at what the UK is done and it's I think it's done a really good model of promoting FinTech and I think even just

the last couple days that they've announced sandboxing system where they can actually have the gray area companies that are involved in disruptive tech feel comfortable investigating what they're getting involved in and that they're not going to be challenged on the regulatory side where they can actually have a sandbox so they can work within so they can start investing and I think that's really important is in a global marketplace governments really need to understand that they have the opportunity to embrace rather than be scared of these techno and that as we've seen with the internet many other things it's the 99% of the amazing things that are going to come out of it that they should be focusing on and again new sectors that emerge new jobs that will be created and I think it's

the the not having a fear system and saying we had to be really worrisome about what this have the negative things could come out but it's if they have to be brought to it has to be brought to light and they need passionate leaders and people that can present the the the the the vision of where Canada can be and where your country can potentially be in a global economy and I think it's it's something that the leaders and the advocates and passionate people in this space have to really be pushing and getting in front of those stages in order to present that that idea that has been one of the exciting things to see just how much has been going on in Canada given you know it's not a huge country but in terms of activity it has definitely been at the forefront startups community activities there's in

Toronto so sorry I just want to say it's not a huge country it's the second largest country in the world just I think you know I think we know what Bryan means though is that you're minority yeah and it's there's been a lot of good companies and a lot of their activity that's come out of such a such a you know a small populous country we've had you know bit access and what they've done in the ATM space coin kite you know who unfortunately shut down their wallet recently but they've always done a good job there's a lot of number you know number of exchanges and a lot of good things that then I mean heck you can say aetherium came out of here too and a lot of a lot of good things and

it's been really cool to see the the progression in Canada absolutely so one of the projects you've been working on a script ticket which was a prior to essentially mentioned it briefly and now a new thing you guys have launches is called Jack's right so Jay a xx it's a wallet that's both hanlin's big coin and you hear him and I was an ether and it was just downloading it before saying it off you know on my phone on a computer really nice what made you start a launch at wallet sure so I'll give you the whole I can give you the whole progression here crypto kick came about

because of a gaming site that we had previously where basically we were we were almost a wallet and at the time and we decided to we wanted to create a wallet that just didn't have any friction I didn't have usernames didn't have passwords weren't needed didn't have to log into websites so that was the Chrome extension that we developed and then a long break because of aetherium and then after the crowd sale when when the funding you know I'm more in the business side and a lot of the the initial founders basically went went other ways because of the you know the funding came in it was to going for developers so I had a chance to get back to my other projects and and we we created rush wallet calm which is an

html5 Bitcoin wallet the crypto kit design and then we spent about a year because we have a lot of customers coming in to the ATM and it's always been you know what wallet should we download and the first question after they asked that is what we have to ask them is well what kind of AI device do you have well if you're on Android you want to download this wallet or if you're on iPhone you want to download this wallet but you can't get that wallet on iPhone because it's only on Android and you can't get that one on Android that's only on iphone and if you want to use it on your desktop well you can't use either of those two so you have to use a different wallet so we've really got to learn what what the customer or what new users would want

and the goal was set to develop a cross-platform unified wallets that look the same on every device and the way we've done this is by creating a single codebase we've creating we do is javascript in HTML and instead of having to keep update on one app and then develop the other one counter to that which you see everybody is kind of doing they'll develop the Android app and they don't do the iPhone because it's a separate code base and they can't keep up production of different features and things so they designed it differently that has to look differently what we want to do is really come up with up one user experience that you could use on your your desktop on your laptop on your iPhone on your Android on your Chrome extension your Firefox extension on your desktop Linux Android sorry Linux window windows and Apple so we created this

this platform that was developed around a single codebase and the single codebase allows us to wrap the app wrap it up on a different platforms and deploy in a matter of like an hour we can put out to our nine different platforms and we can put new features in in one codebase and deploy so rapidly and we just take advantage of the of the onboard cameras or date or local storage which is the only things that you really need to do differently and the rest is all the single codebase so you what you end up getting is a unified experience no matter which device you're using we've got three desktop versions we have two extensions Firefox and Chrome we have Android tablet Android mobile we have iPhone tablet iPhone mobile so and then to be able to push out new fixes and that go

across them all without needing to worry about separate code bases allows us to be very flexible very agile and rapidly deploy so we've had I think we launched about a month than two weeks ago our betas for ether and and Bitcoin and I think yeah they were the first first aetherium wallets the the first etherion mobile wallets the first extensions and we now can we put up 18 versions so far so we've got 18 beta versions that we put out and we can literally put them a day apart if we want we can we people ask us for a feature no problem we got that single codebase we pop the feature in we deploy it we wrap them up and deploy them across all the devices you can sync between all devices so by scanning a QR code you can sync your

extension or you can sync your Android or iPhone it's got a single page experience so everything you need is on one page you're not flipping the different pages we design it in such a way that it doesn't look like it's cluttered we use animations really well and we have that Tet experience that you know with some wallets you have to kind of find whether your QR code is you've got to find where your address is or you have to find how to send and receive we really want to simplify the process we want to make it very easy for people to use and we wanted our customers coming in to use the ATM to go which which wallet should I download and we can tell them no matter what they're using it for they should they can download Jack's so that's really what we tried to do is we

wanted to unify the experience across devices we wanted to offer a theorem and Bitcoin we want to bring those communities together there's no reason for a lot of the the the the you know the negativity between people that don't like aetherium and the big really this is this they complement each other I think they're both extremely useful and a big fan for Bitcoin and etherium and we're gonna be adding a lot of other coins as well our plan is to be adding the next stages we're launching the the 1.0 version so we've got the audits done we had Sergey learners team from coin speck to do the audits which i think is really important we also are very passionate about customer service my my cell number is literally everywhere if you want to call me talk about the while I'm here that's a very important thing

for the space as well to show transparency and to show that we're accessible and now I'm putting my name behind this I'm putting the name behind what we do we never hold or have access to customer funds everything store client site we don't require mean information or from the users you know it's things that we've learned that I've learned across the last few years and things you can't really learn by just getting into the space new you have to kind of understand where the faults are with other wallets understand where the issues were with people holding onto other people's keys and coins that's something I don't want to ever have to take responsibility for our code is not open-source right now but our code is fully auditable and available on our site for inspecting so it's it's it's a business that I run with crypto kit it's

something that I've been been doing for three years we put you know hundreds of thousands of dollars into the project it's been funded by myself and its approach that we think can be the default wallet in the space no matter which coin you're dealing with no matter which country you're in so internationalization is a big play for us down the road is really making this the on all app stores across China I was just in Shanghai last week and understanding that that there are completely different culture out there and well culture yeah but it completely different animal in terms of the way that they treat wallets so the way that they download apps and and I think the community in North America and Europe hasn't done a very good job of reaching out to China so that's one thing we really want to push and I want to get

them out to India all these different app stores around the world we want this to be that default wallet the easiest one to use the one you can use on multiple devices and then we're gonna start popping in integration so we have shape-shift coming in we've got all these integration ways to buy Bitcoin now because we don't take custodianship of customer funds we don't have to worry about about regulations with our wallet we can then partner with localized country local companies and countries that are already offering services to buy Bitcoin for example we're going to be having glide era in there we're gonna be having shape shift we're gonna work probably with unnal coin in India we're gonna work with places in China so depending on wherever you are it's gonna say hey this is this is a service you can ply you can use to buy Bitcoin and you can do it

directly in the jacks so default wallet that can be used across all devices on all app stores around the world multiple coins integrations we really think we have a good opportunity and play to become a default wallet in space yeah awesome I agree I think that's needed and you guys have definitely already at the service stage nailed a lot of things like well now what one thing I'm curious about here most listeners are probably somewhat familiar at least with STV wallets and Bitcoin so wallet said don't have a full note but they still have a pretty good level of security how does that work on the human psyche here is this also an SP vivo left

or is it assumed or some yeah so we're using ether scanner IO right now to push transactions and show balances okay it's we are a a light wallet we've always used other people's API is in order to push transactions and show balances so the longest time with crypto kid on our extension we always just use blockchain dot info okay that was their way that we were using to push transactions and show balances right now we're using block or IO on the Bitcoin side for for Jax when blocker went down a few weeks ago we realized we knew and we've always no need to add redundancy so we've been working and we have now have three we have we have a system in place that back that basically is a if one goes down we've got two others in place on the Bitcoin side so we procurement block or

dial we're working with block cipher and we're working with blockchain on info and we could actually pop in other ones as we want to add redundancy so we use them to basically just push the transactions and to show balances the keys are stored locally not on on the client device never leave the client device so there's no security issues in that sense we've got on the on the ether side we only had the option of ether scan dial right now and that doesn't it's not where we like it to be so we actually got the coin fabric team right now the guys from from Argentina and that's a Sebastian and and Sergio Leonor is part of these teams they're they're they're guys that work with us on on

larger projects so we but our in-house developers and we also outsource larger projects to those guys and they're doing right now there's getting a full note set up for us and server because we realized a lot of the libraries and a lot of the a lot of the api's and things in aetherium really weren't up to where we needed them to be and we've realized that we need to create a lot of our own stuff so we've been working on some of the JavaScript stuff that aetherium had come up with we had found some bugs and issues with it we had presented to the community which is great and then we realized that we need to we need to tailor some of this to our own needs so our eventual goal is to have the backups of these these third-party services but to have our own full nodes that are

going to be running it so we are getting it set up on the etherium side we're not doing it as of yet on the Bitcoin side because there's enough redundancy and some of the other providers right now that we don't need to really focus on that and then we're gonna be setting up our system for dealing with all of the other coins that we're going to be integrating in the path for the other coins is basically if it's on shape-shift we're gonna want for that coin that's our that's our judgment call for for adding new coins this to to Jax it's we're gonna push that off to them we're not gonna decide which ones people might think are not coins we should be getting into and we'll use them as that litmus test where if shape-shift offers it you're gonna be able to get that into

Jax so we're gonna have to figure out those services as well and how we're gonna be doing those because companies like block block or do they don't offer they only offer a few different coins so we're gonna have our owns we're gonna probably setting up our own servers for a lot of them but we're getting that worked out now so now so now we're using third-party services the goal is to use our own down the road and have the third parties as backups so one of the major hurdles to wallet adoption I think is security and just having ye stored on your local machine you on your local phone even for small amounts I don't think it's particularly a good practice and what has emerges

as I guess a better a better practice and this is response or measure that the says is that you sign on a separate device having a hardware device that does assigning I think that's a pretty good pretty good solution for having a wallet that's functional and being able to have security at the same time do you plan to integrate that sort of thing into Jax like and and and how will you implement it if you do if you are implementing hardware security how will you do that on all of these different coins sure so your why I disagree that I think that you for for small amounts or amounts an user might be customer comfortable with that I disagree that having keys on your local device is some

type of security issue or that it might not suffice for a person who wants to keep 50 bucks or 100 bucks on their device and not have to have a separate device in order to send those those type of transactions so it all comes down to choice and all comes down to to usability and customer experience and what we've learned in the space that people want all kinds of options so they want the option of having a device that like I do where I don't want a password on my phone I don't want a password to send Bitcoin I'll decide how much Bitcoin I want to keep on that device and I'll take responsibility that if something were to happen or someone gets my phone that they could do it now I could add a pin on my phone if I want that'll help me I can add a pin into

Jack's if I want on top of that as well so that'll help me even further if I want it all comes back to users and what the user wants to do and it comes down to choice our model has always been we want to offer the least amount of friction in a system okay so we don't we don't force we don't force passwords we will put a notice there saying hey you might be able to you might want to add a pin to your account that's your choice and then we want to take it all the way up to hey if you want to be securing large amounts hardware device we've got that coming out we actually had a prototype done last year and this is something that we're gonna be implementing so I believe there's a full range and it's not about saying it's not

secure it's saying whatever the customer or the user feels is they should have that choice an option and then they should have different levels that they can add security or add different ways of doing it right up to that cold storage system so it's it's it's it's I like flexibility I like being given that choice I don't like being forced into things no matter what it is so that's what we've always tried to do with with with crypto kit passwords are always been optional we want to have a great user experience and we still believe that since everything is client-side and you have an option on your phone even if you can put a pin on there and then you add a pin on decrypted on to Jax that's kind of you know I'm pretty comfortable that system and I and I would be pretty comfortable

telling people and I think that that's a good system and if you want you can use the desktop versions you can eventually will be having where you can add a hardware device to it we are talking to treasure but we're also coming up with our own system cool now one of the interesting things is that if you compare you know Bitcoin to hearing the force with you hearing me and all this other things like a contract and and snaps which add a whole level of complexity right because maybe you're not just sending it's in simple transaction but you know you're doing something more involved how do you plan to handle that in Jax the is there some kind of unified way you can handle that or would you have to do something and if

I knew for every single DAP and then you know a sort of act apps the same way you act if in coins well the first start for us was I'm not sure if you've seen but we've got an advanced send feature on the etherium site that enables custom gasp and adding data so you can now you can send the contracts through through Jack's now so we got a little drop-down menu that comes up that says here's the recommended gas price so you should be sending to this contract so it actually identifies first that it is a contract so you put the address in it identifies whether it's a contract or it's a payment address if it's a contract it pops open the advanced features and says okay here's some things that you can do differently you can change your gas price we recommend putting a hundred

thousand gas you can change that to whatever you want and here's a field where you can add custom data that you can send to the contract so that's our first stage and actually differentiating between the Bitcoin and the theorem sciences is the ability to send two contracts the way that we're gonna be handling DAPs and way that we're going to be handling and I don't want to get into too much so we have some big ideas on the hardware side that we're working on right now and the way that we're gonna be offering a browser similar to what mist is trying to achieve our goal is to is to basically have that that DAP Explorer we're gonna be building in and we will be announcing some of those things in the near future but yes it is it is a main thing for not just not to be a

wallet a theorem is not just not about being a wallet it's about contract it's about sending contracts it's about being able to access your dissent your apps so that is definitely something that we're gonna be focusing on the last thing we want to do is just to be this wallet that you're sending transactions for for Bitcoin or for sorry for aetherium it's much more behind beyond that and we're planning to really push forward with that everything we do is about user experience and I think it's been sorely missing in this theorem community so far what we do is we do we're doing products for the masses our wallet is for the masses being made for that for the person who doesn't want to sit behind behind command line that's what we do education wise we focus on and I focus on things that that my dad would be able to use

that things that and we do it in language that that eighth graders can actually achieve so we put out infographics explaining what aetherium is we do it all in a way that really breaks down what it is so there's a lot of devs that are focusing on it on a theory and that's great we're gonna need to build out that community my focus is how is this gonna get beyond the developers and how are we gonna create things that the everyday person are gonna be other people are gonna be able to use so that's our focus and for me it starts with design it starts with with user experiences user displays and and through that we're gonna start getting this message out to the general populace about the power of aetherium and how it'll be being used in the next few years so it's not just for us about

a wallet or even sending a contract it's gonna be about how are you exploring your ear etherion contract how are you exploring your decentralized applications how is that store that were that we're planning on developing for your gap is gonna be gonna be done in and how will that be experienced by users how a little bit be used in your entertainment system at home on your TV these are kinds of things that we're focusing on with our hardware devices and that'll tie into the wallet it'll offer cold storage and a bunch a lot of things and excited to announce those first pictures in the next week or so is there a unified way that you can do HD wallets across all of these different coins with only one seat where you can do we like one seat back up and basically your whole Jax wallet just

pops up funny you asked and I'm wondering if you already knew that that's what it does so we've developed Jack's in specifically to do that so we have a single key a single seed system mnemonic twelve twelve words that basically will allow you to derive any keys for any coin anything in the future okay that one back up you write down those twelve words you keep it somewhere safe that's all you'll ever need for your HD aetherium for your Bitcoin theorem so I'm not sure if you're aware we just we were the first to launch HD etherion it just went out on our most recent beta launch it's we developed it with with some interaction with your theme community but we basically came up

with it we decided how it should be we're the first ones to launch it it's working really well right now and that single seed that you have from your initial install you write it down put it away or somewhere safe and that's all you'll ever need you can you get any other coin they're adding in the future that one seed will derive in an HD fashion all the coins and your keys for every single thing that you'll ever need including PGP we actually put PGP into the Bitcoin curve so what we did is we took and we took the PGP curve and we put it into the open PGP J's library which means that now you can with your single seed that you're getting with your Bitcoin keys you're getting your theorem keys you can also get out get your PGP keys so

communications for us identity and payments is the three pillars that we do our products on the payment side is obvious that was the initial when we'd even decrypt ok at 2:30 in 2013 we had the payment side we also integrated PGP in cryptic it where you could then send encrypted messages through the system as well we actually made PDP very easy in 2013 we were the first to really simplify the experience for PGP we then will realize that you're still with having issues with having to send your public keys to people and it wasn't very efficient so we wanted to bring the 1 seed and we commissioned again the guys from Coyne fabric to put the curve into Bitcoin and basically put the PGP key a

curve into open PGP J's library so our goal is in the future to have and we have one name integration in Jack's so you can actually send one name's the goal of futures also be able to send messages again by just typing in somebody's name and potentially through the one name system potentially on our own system that we're developing for aetherium we believe when you have payments identity and messaging those are the three cornerstones that you need for any application and all done in a decentralized fashion is the way to go if we're literally I think a few years ahead of where the FinTech industry is in terms of again not collecting user data and not holding on the customer funds not not having access to customer identities customer use like all these things that we've been

developing for a few years now is where I think the future is and where it's going and hence our name D central we try to we only create things that are decentralized things that can live on their own things that if we ever go down they could be imported into other any other systems with the standards that we use so and that all comes back to again that single seed it's the way we design things it's way that we can now add coins in the future and everything can be derived from that that that's individuals single seed is that something that could also be implemented another Wallis is that specific to - Jax like if I could I use that seed on like let's say V aetherium wallet or like yeah a Bitcoin wallet what's going on now it's kind of standards are being

developed and we feel we've come up now with the standards for how it theorems handling HD so that kind of is gonna be pushing other people to be integrating those standards on the HD side for aetherium if we get there first and if people agree that that's the way that it should be done that then becomes the standard and then aetherium wallets that get developed we'll be using that standard which would again yes can tie into our our seed system it doesn't matter if you are just a Bitcoin wallet like you can take our seed and you can put it into my selling you're then going to get your Bitcoin wallet if they were to integrate aetherium now that single seed that you've taken from our wall put it into my cell iam will also generate and derive your aetherium keys if my selling decides to arrive derive that we

basically created that standard that we think it's going to be used for aetherium and it's you know still to be to be to get there I guess it's been had great response so far from the community we think that we've done it in a proper fashion we coordinated and we did get you know we asked if this was a way that we sent this we think that this should be done do people agree and it seems to be the way people think it should work so yeah that single seed be used in other devices and again that's how we always do things we don't want to be creating things that can only be used for us and in case god forbid we ever go down you take that seed you put in another wall you then have access to your funds cool excellent well I'm

certainly looking forward to seeing the continued developments with Jax today's magic word is Canada CA na da head over Lusaka coin comm - sign in enter the magic word and claim you're part of a listener award now among you other projects well let's let's briefly talk about you conferences and you put on a conference before which was the Karen Expo 2014 the the Expo and now you're doing there the world watching expert this fall can you what's different about

this long and what we'll focus here ok so yeah so the the blockchain world expo is a it's an event that i'm contemplating i hired had planned to do one last year and then you know and we talked about this Brian before we started recording here thinks things are changing all the time there's you have to be so agile and fluid and pivoting and as the industry develops you have to completely be changing all the time so 2014 we did a Bitcoin Expo this was for the community it was a really about bringing in the community from around the world the speakers you know we had Andres there and we had Jeffrey Tucker and we had we had like 50 speakers

basically the who's who we had you know Adam Levine was there it it was it was great and really I had people coming away from that saying you know this is probably one of the best events that that have been put on it really was that community focus in that community feel it was something that I had seen in Argentina that I really enjoyed when I was at the conference and that's what we really wanted to bring to Toronto we had multiple multiple tracks there we had a fire fire fire side chat lounge we had a banquet dinner the night before it kicked off it was it was a really great event what's different about this one is now the focus is turning more towards we've got the community there's a ton of events going on in Toronto and in Canada this is now really about getting more

businesses understanding and demystifying blockchain looking at the use cases really trying to understand and break through that 95% of garbage that we're seeing out there and the press releases and really trying to dig down and say okay people need to understand what it's good for what it's not good for stop trying to put things in the blockchain that we're never made for blockchain start taking a holistic technology approach rather than we need to blockchain to Phi this we need a blockchain of Phi that it's not made for that and you're gonna be companies what we're realizing and we've been consulting in the space firm for a while now after the nonstick announcement in Canada we were the ones that people started calling okay we're behind now we need to get caught up what should we do we need to blockchain this we need a blockchain

that it's like okay slow down you need you've got problems is what you have you got problems that need solutions and you don't understand what technologies that might be out there in order to help you solve the problems so what do you want to do with this conference is kind of learning from arc from our clients the banks stock exchanges that we've taken aren't if you central here it's really we wanted to mystify blockchain we really want to get across what the power is of this technology the power of this technology I'd like to say very simply is that with the internet you had communications open up communications line globally you could do it now without needing third parties involved the mail system media companies we now can exchange value we can exchange value globally we can do it

without third parties being in between this is going to be a massive paradigm shift than what were you going to be used to what we've been used to you can now remove all of these unnecessary non-value-added people from the equation and you can be replaced by automation and systems coming out and that's the massive shift that I want to get that people that need to really realize and that's the disintermediation that's going to be occurring down the road this is why clearing and settlements in in are gonna get completely changed and these are easy you know if low-hanging things are gonna be done in the future if you're not a adding extreme levels of value between human interaction you're gonna get wiped out if you don't adapt and if you don't figure out new ways to monetize and new ways to ID value between individuals you're going to be

gone that's basically what I'm trying to get across in this conference it's that's what this technology is going to enable it's also going to you're going to understand what the what the specific use cases are now what's going to be available in a couple years what technology is ready now and what will be available in a few years what's the the noise and garbage and how do you really identify the ideas that people put onto a website and put a press release out and say this is what we're doing how do you break that down and say yeah that's that's garbage you know I can tell by looking at that website that that idea is not going to fly you don't have the people behind it you have an idea but the idea doesn't have any substance it's really too mystifying and breaking down and I want this event to be the event

that people go and come away from and say okay I understand what blockchain is I understand what it can be used for what it can't be used for we want to have a massive but we're gonna be a massive expo hall there where people can actually show the products that they're actually working on there's nothing worse than companies that don't have any substance and don't have any anything tangible before they make their announcements or they come up with their ideas with aetherium you know that was one of the main reasons we waited so long before the crowd sales let's get those proof of concept so let's get people working with it let's get them touching and feeling it before we actually ask them to contribute and buy something it's what I've always done with my products it's cryptokey we do and Jack's we don't say this is what we're doing we put it

out and we say here's what we've done use it try it out test it there's there's there's a lot of noise and I'm sure you guys are aware a lot of noise and a lot of a fluff and garbage out there it's really it's really has to be broken down and it has to be simplified because these businesses really don't get it and they haven't been in the space long enough to really get enough talent and get enough developers and people who do do it starting to work on their project so I'm hoping this event is gonna kind of bring everybody together in a way that we can demystified blockchain show what we're that where the Yuson value is going to be in the next few years and that that's what we're trying to collaborate with this global event our focus is not just on bitcoins on blockchain it's on other

one we want everybody to come together in a rally but it's mostly a Business and Finance event what we're trying to gather and say listen dad this is where you should be focusing your attention this is where you should be focusing your proof of concepts great this is gonna be on September 19 24 first blockchain world exploit calm of course the link to that and also linked to Jax so interesting in don't you man to turn it out that you'll be able to fight that in the show notes now with you so so you mentioned a little bit consulting that you guys have been doing in particular I think you were very involved with the Toronto Stock Exchange how did that come about and what's your

role there so again 2015 was the influx of businesses and enterprise starting to look at blockchain again it came after the Nasdaq announcement so we started getting inundated by calls we were getting called by you know Deloitte was one of our first clients the the guys that eventually became the rubix team and we just started getting calls from banks and from exchanges and basically okay we're behind we don't know what we should be doing can you help us to identify our strategies to move forward so we started working and we started setting up a cloud consultancy business in early 2015 and one of our maybe third or fourth fifth clients ended up being a company that that was part of what's

called the TMX Group and the TMX Group is the the group that that basically owns many companies in Canada including brokerages as an in clearing and settlement so we started working for them and we basically through that relationship and engagement it was asked of me to become more of a permanent member of the team and as of January 1st I became the chief digital officer it was a position that was created for me at the Toronto Star at the Toronto Stock Exchange it's not just the Toronto Stock it's the TMX Group it's like we have a number of companies and that's the that's the the umbrella company that owns the Toronto Stock Exchange it owns the Montreal exchange it owns the natural gas exchange it owns brokerage

firms it owns it's clearing and settlements it's basically we have the whole the whole system so what I what I'm working with them on is digital capabilities and not just in the blockchain space but basically how do you take these digital capabilities and disruptive technologies and how do you become a disruptor that's kind of the focus for me is how do you work with organisations who really maybe haven't done companies like like things like banks and things so maybe I've done a great job of being flexible and agile and be able to really adapt new technologies and how do you turn them into disruptors how do you turn them into and how do you transform their transform culture or transform processes and so they can embrace these new technologies so I work there chief digital officer and as you

can imagine it's another thing that I'm doing in my projects and and I have very long days so I'm do 16-hour days so I I'm between decentraland there I'm back and forth all the time and but I love it and I and I enjoy what I do and it's kind of its it's my life right now and it's planned to be for the next the next few years and keep building out these in ecosystems and infrastructures and especially with aetherium there's a big play there now to just build all the tools that people need to start developing on it and so this was kind of an add-on position I mean I'm enjoying it and it's my goal to really help them this this this this this organization that's that's so part of the Canadian culture that helped it helped to move Canada forward as a whole

so I have I have a vision of where I want to take Canada and TMX is supporting that vision and helping me carry out different initiatives and they're the main sponsor for the expo that we're putting on and and there's a couple other initiatives that that that I'm gonna be announcing actually within the next week as well it's really gonna help move Canada forward in terms of FinTech and innovation and bringing everybody together in collaboration community so that's what you know my strengths are I think is the community building and having people rally around and build up and get passionate people together and and sector is growing and so that's what we're gonna do in the TMX is kind of helping to helping me to carry that out and I'm in turn I have a strategic partnership with them through both my consultancy firm and as as chief

digital officer when you talk about this this emergence of FinTech ecosystem in Canada are you finding that it's mostly concentrated in Toronto and perhaps Montreal or I'm so far detached from that now since I haven't lived there a long time but are we seeing sort of other startup hubs and FinTech innovation happening and some smaller centers as well or is it mostly focused on big cities yeahit's I'd say it's mostly focus on big cities I mean FinTech is still a relatively new term and something that that I mean many people don't don't quite understand what it means it's you know it's finance and technology coming

together since since 2008 we want we have since the crisis you have you have users who want more choice they don't have as much faith and trust in a lot of the institutions and you've seen you know the technology companies the apples and and companies coming in and starting to get involved in finance as I said it was in Shanghai about a week ago and more than half of the traditional transactions of payments and things are now not going through their traditional banking secretary more than half of transactions and financial aids are going through apps now we're going through social media apps things like whatsapp and and WeChat and are actually don't whatsapp Spartan WeChat and some other ones basically they're they're

whole payment networks now it's been completely in China because of the regulatory burden is really low that these these companies can go and start disrupting things so when Canada it's been slower UK it's much further ahead and it's Michael it really bring got this this vision to kind of bring together the community of both in tech f so our startups and institutions around this common play to work together to build up the infrastructure in Canada we've seen difficulties with with Bitcoin companies getting bank accounts in Canada at the same time you're seeing banks who want to get involved in blockchain in these technologies and asking these same companies to start doing work for them and they're like well you can even get his bank accounts how do you want us to get going on this

when we're struggling to do so how do we get to equally the environment better so that startups and disruptive text can start using the systems that that everybody else can in order to help them grow the big guys need little guys little guys need big guys little guys need bank accounts the big guys need strategic partnerships they need Talent it's really time for everybody to work together to build up the infrastructure on a common play so it's it's it's still very small in Canada the FinTech community is definitely growing I have some initiatives that I'm that I'm announcing that's going to help bring everybody together around that common goal to get out to policymakers start educating them giving them a plan of saying here we all got together and said think that this is where Canada should go if they want to be a global leader if they want

to be at par with UK and a par with with with let's say that Singapore and some other places in China we need to set up the infrastructure in a way that's going to encourage entrepreneurs encourage startups encourage people to take risks encourage people to get involved in these disruptive technologies and start forming communities around them and growing we have an opportunity to create more jobs create new sectors and really figure out that when these massive disintermediation technologies really take hold how are people gonna make money down the road that needs to be determined and that's the million dollar question that nobody can answer right now is as your disintermediating people's where will these monies be be where will money be made down the road where will these new monetization strategies come out and they will get figured out and the countries that that

that start tackling and understanding these technologies will be the ones that get the edge start realizing it and start succeeding and that's my goal of what we can do in Canada and I'm really confident with the way that the the regulators have kind of taken this weight back and see approach that if we get to them and educate them and show them the positives that are gonna come out of this the the different benefits that Canada is going to achieve from this I think we can actually do that so it's growing I think we need to accelerate it though we need to expedite it and there's many plans and things that we can do in order to do that and that's what my focus of really my thought goes into a strategizing on how a the TMX can get ahead be how the country and the whole can get ahead by

everybody working together in facilitating community growth facilitating collaboration cooperation facilitating education showing passion for the things that we're doing and showing how we can really come ahead in this global you know this global economy so we're almost at the end of our show but this is one interesting topic we can explore perhaps a little bit before we wrap up which is sort of at the intersection right so at the moment there's a lot of interesting blockchains and and this sort of working with the Toronto Stock Exchange had this loss of that stuff going on at same time you're very involved in the Syrian community like how do you see that playing out why do you think there's going to be kind of

will these two sort of in isolation and there would be a lot of impact on both sides what do you think this minute yeah kind of a merging of those two worlds down the line I think we're still we're waiting for those standards to be developed we're waiting for the HTML we're waiting waiting for the HTTP we're waiting for those common elements and this is like the biggest term I'm hearing you know meeting with with with r3 and meeting with the guys from hyper ledger meeting with you know IBM and it's really giving me the opportunity to really see what everybody's worked for and I think interoperability is like the key term now that's being used it's it's how are all these things all these these different projects gonna be interoperable and that's the most

important thing because if you want to exist down the road you have to be interoperable so for example with Jax if we created something that was proprietary that wasn't being used by other people why why someone wouldn't want gonna want to use this so I think the key is and until that that those standards get defined and developed and we'll probably get there I'm a little bit you know I don't some of these consortiums and the way that that they're bringing in so many different you know banks and so I don't know how the efficiencies are in place that they're gonna be able to come up with something I do believe it's the it's the Vitalik it's the it's these these these people that are that are passionate and trying to solve these really complex problems or be the ones that are gonna

be doing I don't think it's gonna be the banks I don't think it's gonna be some of these larger companies we really need to embrace and start forming partnerships and alliances with these these these these organizations these people these technologies like aetherium that yes are open they're open systems that anybody can participate in and that scares a lot of people because to me it's it's either a you're putting up more walled gardens which is what we're trying to see with some of these consortiums I think and they're saying they won't they say the open source and they say this but or they say that the you know they've got the Linux project that really anything that's got walled garden so that's that's really slowing down participation it's not going to be something in the future I think it's going to succeed I believe it's gonna be

the things like aetherium the open systems anybody can participate are the ones that didn't have a trajectory and Excel so much faster in terms of development so much faster in terms of solving problems because they can just appeal to so many more people to be the ones solving the problem if you look at the community around aetherium if you look at the amount of people that are flooding into the developers the the problem solvers a mathematicians that are that have taken hold and understand you know they're so passionate about weigh theorem is going those will give me the ones that are gonna solve the scalability issues the problems that are gonna gonna enable the the globe and the global population to start using these systems so that's my personal belief I believe that it's gonna be the open systems that will win out the ones that that don't have the

barriers for people participating in and being involved in and I think the other ones are just gonna take so long potentially these walled gardens are just gonna take so long for everybody to kind of figure out what they're doing with it by the time they do the open ones are gonna just take off those are the ones I think that we need to start preparing for there's gonna be if I think in the future that this technology it's here it still has limitations it has scalability problems but I believe it's gonna be solved in the next few years I think that's the thing that we need to start focusing on it that this these are the ones that that everybody's gonna be embracing so that also doesn't have a very good business model behind it and I don't know where some of these companies are going to be they they got

to figure new ways to I value new ways to monetize and I don't have the answer to that but if you stay ahead of the technology understand where it's gonna be five years from now instead work backwards that's probably the best play rather than saying we're gonna have to try to abide by the current financial systems and we have to do things this way so we're limited with technology so I don't that's my my rant on that well Anthony thanks so much for coming on today it was great talking to you as always great to hear about all your projects and and I'm certain we will certainly be watching out for the developments at home both on your wall outside but also hopefully it'll we'll hear some announcements to at some point about what the effects are of your engagement around with softly change and

of course then that you're gonna be putting on in September as well so thanks so much for coming on thank you very much you're still everybody know with the Jax 1.0 we're expecting out very soon the audited version the official release is coming out yeah that's a Jax thought I oh and then the blockchain World Expo September 19th to 21st in Toronto hope to see everybody there thanks a lot guys yeah and of course we'll have links to all of this you know sure no you know sure don't so listen as well thanks so much for joining us as always been part of that I saw people network so you can check out this show and lots of other shows on let's go pick one up from and of course you can subscribe to this on

any podcast application or also on watching on YouTube calm / epicenter Bitcoin and if you would like to you can participate in our t-shirt contest which basically means you're gonna submit every view on iTunes and then we will send you a t-shirt and soon we'll also be able to send you new stickers which the bus and has been reducing but it still has to shipped in mind is there there right here I think it's backwards but can see it so sooner sooner we'll be we'll be adding that should say me the next ones with all the problems thickness as well so

thanks so much and we look forward to be back next week