The Future of Finance & Web3 in Latin America with Marcus AM

Transcript

foreign [Music] podcast if you're just joining us we are building a coordination a network Society of thousands of hackers streamers and doers who are focused on building positive some systems with crypto this podcast features people who are doing it and is published every Tuesday and Thursday if you want more info please visit our website at greenhill.network where you can download the Greenfield book for free join the Discord or become a member of your local greenhill.net chapter my guest today is Marcus who is a researcher and builder in the ethereum ecosystem focused on driving real world adoption and utility for crypto he was born and raised in Guatemala a country in Central America

where centralization and Corruption plague the Fabrics of society is a fellow at the ethereum foundation where he focuses his research on how we can reform the financial systems in Latin America by leveraging peer-to-peer decentralized Network and he's the co-founder of ethereum Guatemala which is a community focused Grassroots driving local ethereum education and uh adoption and has worked at several dials and protocols over the years why did I want to have Marcus on the podcast I'm just really excited about the potential for crypto in Latin America and other places in the global South I think that as someone in North America I didn't quite realize until I went to Devcon in Bogota last year exactly how different

the financial circumstances are in the global South in Latin America I think is a really important place for crypto adoption and crypto adoption brings some really important things into Latin America disintermediation of a corrupt Financial Elite the ability to get loans and not predatory rates and many many other things so Marcus is on the ground floor of it all he has written a paper entitled the last my lt5 report which is all about the last mile of crypto adoption people who are actually using it to improve their lives in Latin America and we also get into another paper that he wrote about gross national happiness so basically the idea here is what if we went away from gross domestic

product which is maximizing the amount of goods and services that we sell to each other as a metric to gross national happiness As the metric for what we're shooting for so I really enjoyed this conversation with Marcus I just think that he's kind of a polymath has all these different skills and it's really on the ground representing Latin America and to some extent the global South in this episode I think we'll do a bunch more episodes in different parts of the global South because there is a diverse and Broad set of humanity that uh we want to cover and that we want to make sure that crypto is bringing positive sub digital systems too so without further Ado I'll give you Marcus I think you're going to enjoy this episode Valley Dao is an open Global Collective working to finance and democratize the

governance of synthetic biology Technologies to protect the future of our planet research and progress into synthetic biology is critically constrained by the world of nation-state regulations and bureaucracy from middlemen but the potential that synthetic biology has for the world is massive it can produce a world in total harmony with nature we can grow stuff using cells like software it's awesome and the best part is we no longer have to pull carbon out of the ground to grow and maintain civilization don't you think we should be funding this Valley Dow does and that's what they're here to do to try and make the solar Punk World of Tomorrow a reality today so join Valley Dao right now and save the planet at valleydow.bio Marcus hey how's it going hey man it's going really well

super happy to be here with you yeah like I was really glad to have you I'm I'm really excited to learn more about ethereum and web3 in Latin America and you've done some some work there so where should we start diving in yeah let me let me set the scene for for the audience you know I don't know how many of you that are listening are familiar with Latin America the ecosystem but uh really the whole region obviously we had at one point uh the flourishing Pinnacle of civilization right so the Mayans prehistorically were some of the most advanced uh astronomers uh and and really focused on like science and Innovation and building these incredible structures in fact little known uh facts but the largest pyramid in the world is actually in

northern Guatemala most people think it's in Egypt but you know so so the Mayans were really kind of like pioneering what it meant to be at the Forefront of technology in in human civilization and the the Spanish come over they colonize the entire region um and then afterwards what ends up happening is the there's this sense of uh the Spanish folks who had settled said we want to make ourselves independent kind of Leverage uh the French Republican ideals and got free from the crown really with the intention of no longer having to pay taxes to the crown and having this whole region largely to themselves so what ends up happening is there's a substantial power vacuum and it gets concentrated into kind of a small set of families that were descendants of colonialists right

and so today one of the big things that holds us back as an entire region is the fact that a lot of these families are still in power we have this uh Republican Democratic theater as you will but unfortunately when you really kind of pull the bail as we could see in across a number of different kind of facets across Society really is so built upon these really centralized power structures right so a lot of the work that we focus on in Latin America is thinking about well how do we build not only an entirely new system but think about kind of the innovations that we can bring to the currently existing system so and and to kind of set the scene and the Arc of my life and how I got into this whole like crypto thing

um I I'd say like the questioning I think there's always this a priori question thing that comes into play when you venture into crypto when it starts to really ask you to think about the way things are in society and why are they the way they are and that for me started growing up in Guatemala you know a country where 50 of the people live below the poverty line 65 of the people are unbanked um it's one of the poorest countries in the region um and that isn't to say that we don't have any economic value in fact we have the highest GDP in Central America at one point we had the most helicopters per capita in the world and at the same time we had some of the highest

malnutrition rates so really the problem here is inequality and disproportionate allocation of value so growing up in this context I was exposed to this from a super early age um my and and and what ends up happening when you create these unequal systems as nature shows right and as kind of these biomes will come to the display is whenever you have too much of something in an ecosystem the system begins to collapse in on itself right uh when I was nine years old I got to live this in a super visceral way when my father and I were sitting in his car it was Dusk and all of a sudden two men came on other side of us and put guns to our heads right and they told us to get out of our car and they drove away with a

car and the next day my dad walks in the police station to report the crime and who does he see at the police station in police uniforms are the same two guys who put gums to our heads they prior right oh wow yeah so when my dad told me that story that for me was just like oh my God you know you have this like child like innocent view of the world and the police are good and they're here to protect you and so on and that's not to say that this is the case and that it can be generalizable but the notion still stands that clearly there are instances where the country itself just was failing and you know many would still consider that to be the case um we we had a few months after that we had to leave the country overnight as

well literally like lying in the back of a car because we're being extortioned and guess where the calls from the extortionists were coming from from a jail right and so that already is like these two like institutions that are meant to protect and serve you are like the center of like corruption and violence right and so that was kind of the instance where I started thinking about like why this doesn't really kind of make sense so you know and really what Guatemala looks like today is we have 250 Guatemalans that own over half of the wealth and two-thirds of the Fertile agricultural land is owned by just 2.5 percent of the population so again lots of centralization that as natural systems will show ends up leading to less than ideal outcomes

wow I mean it's just incredible to your story and and it just one of the reflections I was I was feeling in my mind as as you're going through that is just this this history of colonialism and how it's sort of shaped some of the inequalities and the power imbalances that we still inherit today in in Latin America and I I'm not sure if people in the west if people in America if people in Europe really have heard the story of the other side of that equation and I and I think it's like a really profound thing to just hear how differently the the history is perceived in in a country that was subject to colonialism as

opposed to coming up in the west where it's just not something that is taught in school it's not part of our cultural Legacy so um I think he really set the stage there and for for why some of the problems around inequality exist and um and and and I'm wondering you know like where should where should we go next is it time to get into web three or is there more Tech studying around Latin America that you'd like to give us just like painting like a colorful picture and I think that's a lot of the work that I do and something we spoke about as well on the podcast that we recorded was well how do we build Bridges right and and so for me is my personal sort of like life comes from these two very different spectrums so I'm half English half Guatemalan so on

the one side I have this um this side of me that was like oppressed and colonized and on the other side is like descendant of people that were reaping the benefits of that same process right and so how you kind of bring these two worlds together and build Bridges I think is really important um and so and and that expresses often a number of different ways right so growing up as a kid I grew up on a beautiful day surrounded by three volcanoes um right next to an indigenous Village taking a boat into school every day and then end up founding myself at Oxford like studying environmental governance and thinking about like these really totally different worlds and the question is how do we bring these two worlds together right and how do we kind of pull the Best of Both Worlds because

it's not to say that like all the progress and development that came from like this economic kind of activity has also arguably brought like some some benefits as well so it's not to you know throw out the way with the bath water but I think it's just to have the super like balanced approach when we think about well how do we build better Futures right which is what I think we're all kind of working towards especially in these kind of pro-social pro-environmental ecosystems and communities right and so you know definitely happy to kind of dive into where I believe crypto and kind of the whole crypto journey and and where these specific value ads come in and why why even focus on on building in this ecosystem well you know before we get into that I'm wondering um you know we can kind of get into like

a rationalist economic programmer perspective on these things but I'm wondering just like in general is is crypto and Technology seen as kind of like neo-colonia colonialist like is it like you know the West uh the global North imposing itself on the global South um is is it perceived in that way or is it perceived more in a way of like hey this is open source software and we can deploy it in our own Community according to our own values and and like I guess I'm just wondering like before we even get into the ways it can be used is it seen as neocolonialist or or is it seen in more in like another light or just do people not even really know about it yet you know I would say that there's so

many different perspectives and like different people will will give you like a range of colors with regards to where their stance is on this specifically for me like I I think that again it's it's balanced like I think oftentimes when we end up hitting ourselves into like total aberration against something or total like radical acceptance I just don't think that's like a healthy way to approach things if anything I think we have to be much more judicious and much more critical with anything right um so my the way I see it is yes technology if you look at the ecosystem it crypto or technology writ large largely is developed in the global North and then what ends up happening is Latin America Africa Asia it's like there's a lot of users there

and we want to capture those users right and like that that's often the verbiage that's used as well to describe how the relationship between these two things so I think and and that's not to say that like you know WhatsApp for example is how we communicate uh throughout much of much of the world right like that's a technology developed in the north so but it brings us value right I think the question is like where does the value that we are generating to that ecosystem the data that we provide you know data extraction is huge these days like much more prevalent than I think a lot of people are aware of like they're you know they can literally track everything that you do and while your personal identity isn't necessarily revealed like you are still being tracked everywhere you go right and so um I think that the question is more so

like objectively speaking we can see that a lot of the technology development is happening in the North and the question is well how do we balance that out and how do we bring the technology to the south in a way that's right and how do we also Foster local communities of development and Innovation that can we can develop local Solutions and also think about exporting and that's already happening a lot especially in the crypto world right so like Argentina is a Powerhouse of development um and I think that that's because they face like particularly in a pernicious situations uh with their economic and Democratic systems and so they've really accepted crypto right but I just don't think that's quite the case for the rest of the region um but that's definitely happening and

and you know we can totally dive in into you know how that's going on how we're supporting more and more of that occurring and so on so it sounds like it's I mean it's really just a huge region and there's a diversity of perspectives as there is in any sort of huge region but those are some of the trends that we've seen totally totally yeah yeah well um I I want to take a second and chill this last mile D5 report that you wrote which is uh about the future of Finance in Latin America and I certainly learned a lot by reading it and I'll have a link for it in the show notes so if you're listening on iTunes you can click in the show notes if you're on YouTube there's also the show notes there and you can read along as you listen to this episode

but would love to get into some of the themes about the future of Finance in Latin America awesome yeah so to set the context there the ethereum foundation has a team called the next billion team right and I put out a tweet the other day and it was like block space for what so while we're all thinking about like ZK EVMS and scaling Solutions and optimistic Roll-Ups and uh you know restaking and so on it's like well what's it all for right like what what do we really need all this block space um and the the question is well if we do which you know I think we all agree that we do well how are we going to and I know with that at ECC that was a really

big prevalent conversation right it was like lots of folks are building infrastructure infrastructure infrastructure and there's like a handful of people building applications you know and you're one of them right and so the question is like well how do we bring real world utility and Hayden just put out a tweet as well is like hey we need to stop focusing on like these marginal okay like look we made amm's like two percent better right let's think about like the 10x experience that we can bring to folks um and so that's what I think a lot of the the ef's next billion team focuses on is what I consider to be more of like the demand side of crypto right if like infrastructure is a supply like the demand side is at the application layer onboarding new users uh bringing more folks to download their you know uh

wallets and so forth so um the the next billion team focuses on like creating a lot of Partnerships across the ecosystem and they have a program called the fellowship program right and so the fellowship program is centered around working with different folks across the world who are really at the Forefront of bringing ethereum to people all over so uh some of the other fellows uh that have participated in the program are looking at automating insurance payments in Africa according to uh weather data that then execute smart contracts and can initiate payments according to what that weather uh input right um other folks who are looking at how do we marketize access to self-sovereign Identity that we can scale all over the world and then my specific kind of line

of research is focused on a decentralized finance and how we overcome these what I believe to be again extractive institutions that we have in the region right and so to give an example of this I did a a video and a whole research piece and focused on well what would it be like to show people like side by side comparison of what it's like to take out along with the traditional financial institution versus a decentralized finance protocol right so I went to my bank and I said and I'll get into the last mile D5 report I just really want to kind of set the color here for for the report but I went to my bank and I said hey can I get a loan for uh to buy a car right and they offered me a lonely said sure no worries we can get it to you

next day didn't even mention the interest rate at all and they're like yep we can give it to you and they're just like yeah you just have to pay us x amount whatever and I said but what's the interest rate here and they were like oh and they had to like go through and check for like five minutes before giving me this accurate number and then it came out to be something like 20 plus right uh which is just like this story is if they can't give it to you on its face that it's that it's really high oh my God 20 that's that's crazy 20 interest rate loan right um and it was like collateralized against you know the assets I have in the bank and so then I I went on to um you know kind of my my D5 kind of uh

toolbox and ended up choosing a protocol liquidy that offers zero percent interest rate loans right and so I did this whole like comparison and even when you look at like the off-ramp fees um the conversion fees the you know there is a 0.5 interest rate uh or 45 kind of cost of taking out the loan on liquidy as well right so when taking all that into account like it was still nearly an order of magnitude cheaper than going through a traditional financial institution right so that kind of sets the color for like how broken the traditional financial institution systems are or Trad fi right and so that is where I really wanted to thank and explore specifically looking at like homes right if you want to get a mortgage for a house you're looking at

like 40 particularly if you're like a marginalized person but then like do a really sweeping broad overview into like well where are all these different like entry points for decentrise finance so play a transformative role in society so the research itself uh was over the course of six months I spoke with 400 different uh folks across the ecosystem you know D5 djends the folks at Olympus style people lit maker um all the way through to like academic institutions at the University of Cambridge Stanford people who were doing like really deep work on like economic inclusion Financial inclusion uh the people at Ideo that I feel kind of sit

in between as well right they can kind of walk the web to and web3 worlds a lot of Institutions traditional institutions UNICEF um and and large multinational non-profits and was like hey what are the problems that you're seeing in the financial ecosystem in Latin America and where do you think this technology can kind of fit in right and so I it was a super long 50 page report and it was published in both English and Spanish and really the kind of high level outcomes are if we want to bring more people into crypto um and I think that this is really like the opportunity that we have here and what we have to do is focus on a few

different things right so for sure we want to look at wallets and and making sure that wallets provide like a super seamless user experience uh the state of wallets today like I've had multiple friends and cousins and I'm sure we all know folks right that like set up their wallet they lose their seed phrase and their goal their assets and any of their interests and like engaging in this ecosystem right um scalability also huge right I think that this is something that metallics spoke about recently and his one of his later pieces right is well we really need to focus on like subset transactions that don't cost the the end user anything at the end of the day and really driving like real use cases for the region as well like how many more uh Perpetual uh and

options protocols do we need right like how many more like complex D5 products are we really going to need um and how much value is that really going to bring people in Latin America right and so really thinking about like payments identity uh loans as well I think are huge too and I think and you know this is something we'll talk about as well is like let's focus on nurturing local communities in the region uh that are really driving adoption for ethereum and web3 more broadly speaking so you know those is kind of like the process of the research and it's kind of the high level outcomes like definitely would if if this is of interest for folks like do read the report and and would love your your thoughts and feedback on it as well uh what was really fun about producing it too it was

like all open source as well so like I published version one and then I went out on Twitter and I was like hey you know here's version one and a whole like thousands of people contributed um and then we worked on kind of the next version two together which is the final report so you know the research and and production of the of the content as well was was really great to produce that's why we build it in public it's crazy how much if you share uh sometimes the Bold new initiatives and people see holes in it it'll help you fill those holes and I think that's one of the coolest things that other people see this vision and the need for this technology in Latin America and they they helped you produce it so uh show for the last final D5 report I'll link

in the shout outs is people want to read it foreign totally totally yeah do check it out and and yeah to get any feedback or questions like do reach out right and as you said like this is this is the magic of a building in the open so let me ask you just like anecdotally which are the use cases that you're most excited that you're most excited about like I appreciate that you've got the systematic and sort of like Broad View and you want to set all this context but like let's get into it like you know you as someone who studied this what are you most excited about right out you know I I think that there's different ways of seeing it right and this is something I mentioned the star like either we can build a totally new system or we can improve the current one right

um and so if we think about improving the current one and this is something that's super relevant right now in in Guatemala we just had the first round of national elections and it was a huge huge issue they came up with regards to the ballots and the people that were registered and the way the voting system was done and you know it was like a whole you know pause on the elections because of this right so what the learning there is is that identity identity on chain I think is really important and something that I think will add that 10x experience for what it means to build your credit score to be able to access a loan to vote for a

national election and in fact our most recent election interestingly enough the ballots were hashed the the image of the ballots were hashed and then put on the Bitcoin blockchain as well so on the Bitcoin blockchain there are hashes of every single ballot in the Guatemalan election um so that's like a use case where we're already seeing like blockchain being integrated into the current system but I think that that's like one use case that I'm super excited about is being able to create these like substrates of identity and reputation that can be scaled right and but for that and I think a prerequisite for that is uh privacy so I I would I'm a little cautious on like identity today because I just don't

think that like privacy substrates are quite there yet but we're definitely working on it I would say the other piece that I'm super excited to buy is payments so we already have El Salvador right next to us that you know Bitcoin is literally uh National tender right so they're already able to like tap into that economic value and flow but if we can disrupt the payments ecosystem right now that is for example for you to open a bank account here in Guatemala and oftentimes the case in Latin America if you want to access a online banking you have to pay about the equivalent of five dollars a month which for you or I or a lot of other folks are listing this conversation like five dollars a month doesn't seem like a huge uh barrier to overcome but if we think about

The Last Mile communities right that are living on like two dollars a day like that's huge right and so I think that like being able to surpass this like traditional financial institution with regards to payments uh lending is the other use case I'm really excited to buy right and under clatterized lending and that ties into the reputation and stuff but I I don't think we've quite seen under Colorado's lending take a hold largely in in specifically for retail as well like we've seen uh maybe 11 that has worked uh quite closely with Maple Finance for example um but that's like institutional you know there's a lot of trust that's this place into these institutions as well

and you know we saw like FTX I think just like burned a whole bunch of folks who were looking at like under collateralized lending too and specifically and like at least C5 right and so I that's like another use case I'm excited about although not super bullish on in like the short term specifically for retail um but you know I'd say that those are a few that that definitely will continue to to build out like more adoption and more utility but I think that again and I started with wallets and ux because I think that like building a wallet that becomes your home and I don't think this quite exists yet but building the wall that becomes like your digital home I think will be super crucial for any of this to happen I think that's like the requirement before any of this because asking anyone right

now to have to go through the hassle of switching networks and block you know the usual problems that the audience is already familiar with I just don't think that that is really what is going to get us to mass adoption or you know the next billion is uh the EF team suggests I mean a lot of places that this can get people in in their lives uh where you're excited about is is identity and what that can unlock for people and um you know I also just like I keep going back in my mind to that uh that anecdote about alone that you were gonna get that had a 20 interest rate and you just went and got well not defy for free like it's not Instead This is not some of this stuff is theoretical but some of

this stuff exists today and it's already better than what the traditional institutions are doing I think that's a real proving point exactly exactly like it's already here it's just about like making the user experience super feasible you know and going back to like the car loan the problem here is it was it's an over collateralized like that position right so I'm technically like lending myself uh those funds and the question is like how many people hold eth that they can take a loan out against right and but the question is well maybe there's some sort of like intermediary that we can play in and we can say hey you know we can act as that intermediary and I think that that's where like the questions around like how much do we

want like full decentralization full permissionless protocols when in reality there has to be this sort of like stepping stone for folks to get there um and and that's what I think is like really what will take us to the next level is also building these kind of intermediary ecosystems and spaces that can onboard more folks that already leverage um these decentralized protocols right so I think that's like another big lesson that we should I think requires a bit of a mindset shift as well you know when I had Santi Siri on the podcast uh with with proof of humanity uh you we were talking a lot about people earning Ubi through proof of humanity and this was at bull market so it's possible that they're earning more Ubi through proof

of humanity back then than they would be now but the other thing he talked about was just giving people in certain countries where the inflation rate is over 50 in their access to a stable unit of account is a revolutionary thing and that to me is you know someone who lives in call in in the United States I was just kind of like I don't know most of my life I haven't really had to worry about inflation but if you're someone in one of those countries it's it's revolutionary just to be able to hold US dollars or hold Bitcoin or hold eth I'm wondering if that was a component of your research or if you have any takes on that specifically with inflation this is something that I do highlight in the report um and we speak about well how do we

look at Argentina right that last year had nearly a hundred percent like annualized inflation um Auntie being from there as well is like intimately familiar with that problem and again I mentioned like the Argentinian ecosystem has contributed a lot to web3 so and there's a reason behind that right so being able simply to hold this asset that over the long run has proven itself to be a really strong hedge against inflation um I I think it's huge right and so giving people access to US Dollars I think is is massive I also am a little bit cautious of dollarizing the world if I'm perfectly honest like I I do think that uh we have to give people access to

anti-inflationary means of storing value um but I'm not sure if like continuously comparing uh that to to the US dollar is really the ideal outcome right and so if anything else you'll think it's about thinking about well local community currencies and like will ruddick's work plays into that really heavily right and how do we go on both ends where yes you can access US Dollars and also we have this local community regenerative currencies that can be deployed as well right and so I think we've got to be again balanced in our approach when we think about the the ideal scenarios here got it for sure yeah I think you conveyed some Nuance there and like the goal is not to put everyone on the US dollar but that might be like a

short-term release valve for people who are suffering in these inclusionary economy it's in like yeah and maybe there's like a local currency aspect where you have local regenerative currencies and currencies that represent all sorts of values that all sort of flourish together at diversity but um yeah it's it's sort of sort of an interesting thing to to think about and and though the reason the reason that I did just bring that up is like I just want people to see that this is not theoretical um in there are places there are things in the United United States financial institutions and I think in the European if you're in the global North as I am I want I'm sort of on this journey of realizing oh wow the rest of the world doesn't have the same Financial infrastructure that we have and I think that that's an eye-opening moment for

people um you know quite frankly I've had a couple people with who have takes that they're like oh cryptos all scam there's nothing it could be used for today and I feel like that's actually a very privileged take to be able to say that from from North America because you just take for granted this this financial infrastructure and for me the inflation um thing and the loan thing uh the loan examples are are great uh illustrations of this one totally yeah man I I always get really upset people are like crypto there's no use case crypto's a scam because like come to Argentina come to Guatemala like read this report that I publish like look at this whole video that I

made around one very specific example right and the United States and much of the world really and what allowed us to scale our economies where we are today is access to credit right like that that like the first kind of Corporations were built around this like trust in these other institutions the problem is that these the institutions that we have are substantially worse because they are centered around giving people access who already have power right there is this there there's this entrapment where we live in a society that supposedly is democratic and equal and so on but everything that makes up the society is structured against again it's not that

we are or regions we have a lot of Natural Resources we have a lot of intellectual Capital the problem is the distribution of that power right and and that's the other piece that I think is really important and critical to think about is well when we think about distribution of power is who are we describing that power to and could we use blockchain to create more transparency around where the power is Flowing so when I think about the ideal outcome for me in the future for where Guatemala for example is a country should head is I think the entire National budget should be on chain I think it should be transparent and if I'm inputting similar to a dial right if I'm inputting value into this ecosystem I should see where every single way of

that value is going um but that isn't the case today I'm putting this money into this black box and it's being stifled and funneled out by all these corrupt politicians who have access to this multi-sig right um the problem is I can't see the multi-sig I can't control it I can't provide any input into it and so again that's where this like bridge building across like technology and culture is super important um and and it's a lot of the work that we focus here in in Latin America so I can I can get into that as well and speak to kind of some of the wider Innovations are happening in the ecosystem because I think that's super important too so um having Devcon in Bogota I think was huge and I think really really accelerated the growth of the

Latin American ecosystem so prior to depcon there was uh if latam which was hosted at the same venue and really what that did was it said hey Latin America well there was obviously uh Defcon in Cancun as well but I think having Defcon kind of mature and grow to the to the place where it is today and having thousands of folks descends upon Bogota and say we want to really contribute and add value to this to this ecosystem um and this region was super crucial and so a lot of communities kind of were very fired up about that and we've seen a lot of proof um from Mexico all the way down to Argentina of different communities really showing up and saying we and participating in Bitcoin rounds and clear fun rounds uh and all these other

like crypto native kind of funding operational ecosystems lots of folks from Latin American communities getting jobs at like really exciting Forefront protocols um and being able to add value in this very didactic relationship right and I I really think that like Defcon in Bogota and I'm excited to see what happens in Asia with the next step con as well we've got devconnect coming up in Istanbul so I I love that we're specifically looking at how do we democratize access to these ecosystems and how do we build these Bridges right and so that's what we've seen you know Guatemala ethereum Guatemala was started there we're Now setting up we've got the first two nodes in the country um so we're kind of decentralizing the

geographic location of the network uh we're providing a free developer education bootcamp for 25 students uh we I mentioned the blockchain system that was taken that had taken place here in Guatemala recently we're creating an audit for that system as well just to ensure you know that everything was being done accurately we've got a hackathon coming up where we're going to be hacking around well how do we build a better governance system and how do we think about identity and uh how do we think about Revolution the financial system so you know and it's incredible to see that these little C's that were planted are really huge huge seeds that were planted at that concept continue to flourish and and grow and again it's all about bridge building it's all about bringing this technology to the local communities that have most uh utility

for crypto for distributed systems for blockchain as well and I think that that's super important and something for like the audience as well like I'm sure a lot of the audiences in the north right and it's like look to the South and and not in a way of well what can I deploy here of like actually what can I learn from this region because that's where we'll see really these these huge huge uh increments in adoption and utility for crypto and Beyond yeah I would love to get really like tangible with the use cases here and and I guess one of the questions maybe this this boils down to uh one of the questions that I think is an everyday thing that that people Society have to do is buying a car so can you buy a car with defy

you could right as if you have a enough eth or collateral um in your wallet to do so and you can like manage what it means to go on like defy saver or maker or liquidy or you know any of these different like protocols and and take out a loan and that's why I mentioned like I don't think it's open to the general public quite yet but if we have an institution for example that can like bridge that and a common person that doesn't have access to this and you can say give me some other form of collateral against that collateral I could take out you know about acquire some eth and then take out a loan at a zero percent

interest rate and then be able to like translate back to that person again there's a big centralization back to there but I don't think that's like the end of the world if we're providing this like order of magnitude better service for folks right so that that's again where we need these stepping stones and the ideal outcome is like two different things one this person has sufficient e to like take out a loan against that Eve and I think the other ideal outcome is that maybe you don't even need uh that much each to take out the loan right maybe there's and this is where the identity piece comes in like there's this like substrate of identity that you can tap into that would allow you to take out that loan so those are kind of the two different things that need to be built and are missing currently in the space

right now so it feels like you can take out a load if you have enough collateral with defy today and then if we build out Primitives around identity and maybe sort of credit scoring uh then we could do under collateralized loans in the future yeah I mean we we've got Goldfinch right now who I know you've had previously on the podcasts and yeah they're basically acting as this like centralized kind of intermediary and they're saying we are comfortable enough issuing these under collateralized loans to folks um who are these bigger institutions and we know there is like a degree of trust and sort of these legal agreements as well that we can rely on in the IRL World um and and so I think building more of that I think is One Direction my question is like how scalable are those

Solutions right and like who can really access that so I'm all about like I think Goldfinch has done a lot of great work and look let's think about how we can continue to find fine tune that model that they develop and scale that as well in what ways do you think uh crypto can unlock Financial inclusion so it's just super important to me that people who don't have access to financial resources today we can give them that and I'm wondering in what ways crypto can unlock Financial inclusion like just being able to set up a wallet right and being able to hold your own private keys so if we think about Latin America as a whole uh we've got Nicaraguan Venezuela right now that are largely under dictatorial leadership that at will can basically seize your assets so having these like

seizeless assets or self-sovereign assets right and being able to control that with your private keys I think is like the very uh first step right and I think that already solves a lot of the financial issues that we're seeing in the region having the autonomy and certainty that the money that I hold in the bank or the land that I have the state kind of holding for me cat BCS by anyone I think it was like a huge First Step particularly in like these weak democracies um so so that that's the first step again like being able to access like a substantial amount of the financial transactions in Latin America or done on a cash basis

um so as I mentioned 65 of people in Guatemala alone don't have bank accounts so being able to to bring like these payment infrastructures on chain and being able to transact value seamlessly whether you're in Guatemala or Argentina and being able to send that without having to wait for and reminisces for example or another really really big example that gets talked about and has been talked about for you know years at this point in the crypto ecosystem but if you're sending uh money from the United States to the South which oftentimes is what happens you're under you're ending up having to pay like 40 to 80 dollars or a wire fee um specifically if you want to send it to like a Western Union for example

someone who like doesn't have access to PayPal or um you know another kind of Technology lever Financial rail right so I think that's another huge one and that that one is a massive opportunity that no one has really quite beaten you know El Salvador did a really great job with kind of adopting Bitcoin and I know some folks are using it there um but I think that's another like payments cross-border or national as well right um then again loans which we touched on with a couple of different specific examples with the loans piece I think there do need to be these more centralized intermediaries that play a role similar to Goldfinch that that will facilitate these loans um and then all of this powered by like an identity system right like the

identity system is what sits but beneath all this like a reputation system and um and not in and and like a reputation system can also end up being like a really like less than ideal outcome too right we and I think that's a big fear for folks with when we think about like having one institution like be the purveyor of that identity um you know very prevalent conversations with a lot of the announcements coming out lately uh right but I I think that you know those three use cases under lied by an identity system are what's going to give us that um capacity to really scale and provide real utility and value for folks beautiful well I can't wait to have you back in 2024 25 and ask that question again have that answer be even more uh more profound

um I think we're getting towards the back nine of the episode and we only have looks like nine minutes until the bottom of the hour so maybe I'll start or start moving towards some closing questions is there anything I didn't ask that that you wanna that you wanna say um I I'd love to really like touch on this and we mentioned it right at the start but explore this research that I published at uh whilst I was doing some research at Oxford and it was scheduled around Bhutan which nothing to do with Latin America nothing to do with anything that we've talked about but I think it really is of the underlying notion of what it is that we are building here right and Bhutan is a country that was never colonized by the Europeans it's like nestled in the

Himalayas this tiny tiny country so physically never colonized intellectually never colonized as well um and what they've done is instead of relying on GDP gross domestic product which is the measure of value that we use today across Society what they've done and by the way the the person who came up with Simon kuznat who came up with GDP um he himself said this is not the way we should measure what it means for a society to develop right um and and I think it's important to talk about like this specific example because what GDP does is it simplifies what it means what progress means right so it says

arms development cigarettes alcohol all these things that arguably are not great for the environment you know environmental pollution all of that gets tallied up into like one single number and then it's like hey you have the highest GDP congratulations you now get access to more loans or whatever right so what Bhutan has done is they've said no our development is measured upon Buddhist principles down to Buddhist country um and what we want to focus on is developing a a index of Happiness right and rather than saying it's all about kind of pure economics let's focus on really bringing people like a sense of what it means to be a flourishing human

right um and so they do this by taking like these nine different kind of measurements according to uh what they believe to be development is right and so they look at like environmental sustainability health education and a number of other factors right and and rather than saying like we produce this much like capital economic Financial outcomes is like our population is this much happier our population is this much more educated is this much more healthy and whenever they want to make a decision to I don't know install a new hydroelectric plant and have to cut down an entire Forest to install that electric plant they say well could this affect our environmental uh actions or

our environmental score right and it ties into this notion of kind of the nine forms or eight forms of capital that Gregory Lando talks about right and so let's think about and let's reaccount for what value means right what has happened in Latin America is that we have been force-fed a liberal purely Financial capital mindset around what development is and what value and progress means and whether it's in Latin America or whether it's in the global North or anywhere in the world I think we've got to just really start kind of pulling the strings and pulling the veil from where what it is that we're looking for at the end of the day is it just that

number in your bank account or your crypto wallet against the US dollar to go up is that really like the ideal outcome for everyone or is it being able to account measure and value more important things that are not just solely Financial Capital right and I think we've seen Bhutan do a really great job at this they started uh mining Bitcoin a few years ago as well like I think probably about six years ago and so and using hydroelectric power which is really interesting so you know they're they're very critical and very thoughtful about the way they go about their notion of development and that's not to say they're a perfect country there's certainly like a lot of um challenges and and you know their approaches but I still think that they're a great model for people to like

look into and study and not a lot of folks are like aware of what's going on there but you know certainly something that that I would encourage people to dive into and just like reflect on in in their personal kind of day-to-day lives because it the other day is like these things this change that we're all looking for in crypto and I think it's also something that isn't talked about as well it's like oh yeah we want to chase the world we want to change this ecosystem and we're like spending 10 hours a day in front of a laptop screen right like is that really how we bring about like transformational change to a society or not right and so really let's start being judicious with you know what development means how we want to leverage these substrates of coordination um and this incredible technology

self-solver and permissionless decentralized technology that we have um and and build solutions from that place rather than just like repeating the same pattern because that will get us nowhere I love that I mean we talked about on this podcast a couple times about how capitalism is kind of like a paperclip maximizer in in that it's measuring gross national uh product and and I think that um giving it another or giving us another metric to optimize for could be profound and that will stop optimizing for product and profit but um if if our economy was optimizing for happiness and like of the median person that I think

that there's something really really profound about redirecting all of our energy towards something like that there's obviously a lot of details to work out and the cool thing is that you've written a paper about this which we'll have in the show notes also for people who want to check it out so uh the title of the paper is uh gross national happiness a Buddhist perspective on the narratives of transformative social Innovation so excited to to dive in on that myself and uh we'll have a link in the show notes for the listeners there definitely definitely well yeah thanks Kevin it's been great joining you on the podcast and being able to build Bridges right and and that's what we're here for

uh so really appreciate all the work you do and excited to keep building very grateful to you for opening this perspective on ethereum and web3 in Latin America to us and I think that I learned a lot if people want to learn more about you where can they go to find you online yeah uh you can follow me on Twitter uh Marcus d-o-t-a-m uh marcus.am which is also my website so marcus.am uh feel free to reach out there VMS are open and uh just really excited to continue to build and create connections and my cereal networks uh um like-minded folks who are super aligned and resonating with each other to build better Futures so that's the

best place and excited to connect with with the listeners as well amazing Mark thanks so much for being on the podcast awesome Kevin really appreciate it take care peace [Music] wow what an episode we just heard from Marcus and I was just really excited to hear about all the ways that crypto can help with financial inclusivity and uh with the financial system in the global South especially in Latin America thanks for listening to the greenpill.network podcast again we are trying to feature the people who are doing dreaming and building crypto for positive some

systems in the world I think Marcus was a great example of that and I can't wait to invite him back onto the podcast in a couple years see how the work has proliferated in Latin America if you value our work please make an offering to our algorithmic overlords don't forget to like And subscribe please gratify us likes and sharing this episode with your friends that's the source of all of our powers at least until we rewrite social media to be more focused on the public good Please Subscribe rate and review see you next time decent love