Why Good Content is King in Blockchain PR - David Wachsman, Founder and CEO, Wachsman

Transcript

hello and welcome to the blockchain and us we're pioneers and thought leaders talked about their journey in blockchain technology crypto assets and a token economy and I'm your host manuel staggers this episode is supported by 21 lectures 21 lectures mission is to bring more developers to the Bitcoin ecosystem with in-person courses lectured by world renowned Bitcoin and lightning developers courses teach participants the fundamentals to work with blockchain technologies to learn more visit 21 lectures calm this episode has support from core ledger core ledger is a

blockchain base peer-to-peer transaction infrastructure provider it enables businesses to document tokenize and trade any type of assets in a reliable and flexible environment core ledger makes anything transact able literally anything to learn more about or letras technology and how you can transform your business on the blockchain visit core logic net that cor e led ger dotnet core ledger dotnet [Music] my guest today is David Waxman David is the founder and CEO of Waxman a leading global professional services firm for the blockchain industry David and his

team have represented and acted as strategic consultants to more than a hundred and twenty organizations in the blockchain space including - IndieGoGo crypto Valley Association Bitcoin Swiss coin desk IO HK Liske rootstocks team it and many more before founding his own company David held roles in public relations advertising political affairs and biotechnology and now to the conversation with David Waxman hi David and many thanks for taking time today and well thanks I'm glad so let's jump right in and speak about storytelling in the blockchain space you have said in the past that you help

companies that use complicated technology tell a good story now how do you go about that so it wax then we do something very very traditional and what I think is among the most unorthodox of spaces on earth we do real PR with real messy frameworks and real professional approaches to earned media primarily almost entirely so what that means is we help a company let's take it let's say it's a blockchain protocol development company figure out what makes them special figure out what matters to their core audiences and then we help tell the story through the media to those intended audiences so when you're talking to media you're talking to the most cynical people on earth that's

their job their job is to distinguish the wheat from the chaff and they're not gonna believe almost anything you're saying unless you're able to go and substantiate that so we work with companies and say ok don't claim to be the first don't claim to be the biggest don't claim to be the best unless you can really really prove it fact do everything you can and I know this sounds a little counterintuitive to cut out adjectives and adverbs as few as possible describe the problem you're solving and how you're solving it and with as many use cases as possible use cases are gold especially in the blockchain space we don't have a whole lot of tangible product we've got hardware well let's maybe some mining rigs there's not that much it's physical there are some

blockchain based applications or adapts sometimes but even those are few and far between so at this point you know having something material like a use case can be really helpful like for instance how a company could be a farm to fork blockchain talking about how a cow when milked you can actually track through an app that and use any launching technology of course they you can check whether that cow isn't inoculated if the milk that came out of the cow was processed and pasteurized properly if the food truck ever exceeded a certain temperature those are things media could be interested in they're even more interested not in this technology will exist they want to know how technology

exists today what problems are being solved now so if some of this stuff is pure theory it's not going to go and translate well to media in 2019 that might have played well in the 16 to the 17 but that's the era of theory alone as far as mmm interesting point it's it's good that you mentioned that it may have worked in the past but now it won't anymore I mean how have you seen some of these stories evolve in the blockchain space in the in the past few years well I had this wonderful client called coin Center it was my first ever company in the blockchain space they were a Bitcoin exchange based in New York and in beginning of 2016 we were able to announce and we had every reason to

believe this that a company acquiring them made the largest transaction in Bitcoin M&A in history and enormous amount of attention the the acquiring company was called Kraken and I work with them for much of 2016 and if you you check the media you'll see that this was this made huge waves at the time we didn't even describe the size of the acquisition we didn't describe who or kind of how the actors had occurred because was it an all-cash deal was this cash and stock where there other considerations etc we didn't describe many of the details that someone reporting on a transaction would typically write about just because at the time there weren't that many similar stories in there for attention if you are a company and you

simply added a new advisor to your company that might have been meaningful especially someone from the quote unquote real world in 2000 say 16 but in 2019 every company has great advisors or at least all the ones that are really worth it as I said you really have to go and boil down to what does a company actually do how do they solve real problems who is their team or their team working on all the time what's their approach to problem solving I think that for the news lies and that's what reporters seem to be interested in and so we often advise our clients to try and develop those types of stories if they don't have it yet what will help advise them on how best to go and accomplish the things that are newsworthy and that's why we can tell a better story mmm cool makes a lot of

sense you mentioned you know reporters and in the media a few times just in the last few minutes so I'm wondering where do you see the role of the medium in in the blockchain space so media's first job is to go and figure out whether something is true or not but if it is true I think that their job is to be able to champion things that are worth it and defend people against spurious claims but both to things they can do both at the same time one of the great challenges that mainstream media faces in particular is the education gap first with the obvious one which is with their audience most people simply don't get blocked ain't even in 2019 however most people probably understand the general premise of Bitcoin so far as it's a digital currency of some type

most people get that concept but most people do not understand how blockchain works what the purpose is in one of the various different use cases of a distributed ledger with the various characteristics of botching the second audience which is that needs a little more interesting is reporters have a second job that they don't talk about often in their articles that is convincing and discussing what they've learned with other reporters in the newsroom and with their editors this is a very high bar and hurdle because as I've already said reporter super cynical so now you've got reporters trying to discuss complicated stuff the changes all the time with other reporters we're both cynical and have other specific interests they may not be assigned to to a certain beat but what we've seen is a

lot of and this is where reporters are becoming real heroes they're going out there and campaigning technology and similar type of tech in their newsrooms and they're doing a great job and what I've noticed over time is that more and more of where as I talked to they've got it they understand even ones are necessarily on this beat to say they don't report about watching companies on an everyday basis more and more of them understand how that might work with a financial services that's their focus or with insurance at best of focus or with gaming or with sports or with social networks or any other type of vertical the blocks hand applicable to I think we have a long way to go there but I think made me a lot of progress so far and that's primarily due to some of the early journalists who

came to the space and basically spent time swimming in this 24/7 until they were one of us mm-hmm interesting don't you think that can also be a challenge you know if reporters got in very early and now have become part of the blockchain scene you know for lack of a better word isn't that also creating some kind of distance between their readers who might be very new to the to the whole topic it's it's a challenge and the idea of having to spend to do crypto 101 with everyone you talk to so you can go and use that as a foundational layer and then build on top of that and describe kind of the history of Bitcoin the history of blockchain and then from there what they may have

developed right that is a lot to talk about and let's take a five-minute segment on TV in fact it's impossible it's just impossible so yes I think that's actually a concern the what would excite see though is the blockchain is because of all the attention is received because of all the capital it's been committed to it thus far because of all the IQ points that have flooded into the space I feel like we're reaching a point where block in is no longer to be talked about in the products that use blockchain it's simply going to be a tech in a stack for a product and we've even started taking this position with some companies you might be a thin tech making banking transactions cheaper or faster or safer or more accountable you

don't need to use the word blockchain in that that's not safe you're denying it or trying to hide it but that's no longer the prime the fact that you're using a certain technology that's a means not the end the end here it's something that makes let's say banking safer cheaper fast or whatever it may be or it could be something else that could be for data exchange we've also seen this to where companies might be using blockchain to allow consumers to own their own data and I don't wanna say profit from would own their own data and be able to sell it if they want and permission it I think that's a really powerful use case of blockchain and again you don't necessarily need to go and talk about the blockchain the whole time because you don't necessarily need to know how the sausage is made to understand the

sausage tastes very good and by the consumer that's just trying to own my data it's like Facebook or some other big company doesn't have complete control of it I care more about that fact than they do about whether or not a dag was used as opposed to a DPOs party mmhmm yeah interesting I mean speaking of sausages there's another saying about the sausage factory it's it's ugly in the sausage factory right Martina I'd call a very interesting factory I think there are there's so many brilliant people and from all over the world that's that's the great thing about this and I know youth you face the same as someone who's traveled the world and then lived it all over the world and in blockchain we've got people from everywhere contributing lots of ideas so I'd say it's a chaotic manufacturing

plant but a brilliant one mm-hmm interesting do you have some clients also who are very vocal about the fact that they want a different kind of PR then maybe other clients in in other industrial sectors or even tech sectors yes so I think there are different ways to stand out and thought leadership is a very big one but for us we only work in the earned media space so describing all their earned media means earn media means no pay-for-play no advertising no no subterfuge ever everything is very much open we go we talk to reporters reporters write stories if and only if they want in the basket ori of time they

don't want to and they have their own spin they own the press we simply go and do our very best to support them in their efforts and essentially active support for media that's that's that's our job is to help media tell stories help our clients position themselves well so that media hopefully takes advantage of some of their news hooks and ideas that's our job is to is to assist companies and media alike so on the but however there are time than you need to go into sync with yourself through your own words and throne-room channels whether it's through your blogs or a medium or through byline articles that say articles that are your name that are posted somewhere in some contributing place again that stuff is very very important to get the message out with

your own words specifically when things are very very complicated you might need to do that where you can't risk the possibility that someone might get even the smallest detail wrong the other thing is it's very important to stand out especially in Bakke and I think via conferences now the conference circuit as they say got fast by events team went through 800 different conferences last year vetting them just from the crypto currencies basic alone that's how many popped up last year that we we know about and that we've vetted on behalf of our clients but I do think it's very important although some of those conferences aren't all that great there are a lot of great ones and I think it's important to go and meet people and when you're building something top it when you're building something that you want developers building on top of or

partners using as part of their tech stack you need to go out there and meet them you need to shake their hand answer their questions and I think that's been one of the great things about being are going to conferences and attending them is either to can't ask questions of many many people and I've been able to watch conference attendees and speakers and sponsors talk to each other and kind of build a bit of a community and it to ask those challenging questions and to share ideas it's amazing the amount of deals that I've seen that got put together because two people met with different ideas and different platforms but when they got together they were able to find some sort of confluence there to everyone's benefit and and that's been really interesting so that's another way to go and get attention is by going

these types of conferences and standing out mm-hmm interesting conferences the last few conferences I went to were packed I mean there were so many people there are so many exhibitions and it was almost impossible for individual projects I felt to cut through through the noise how do you deal with that for your clients yeah some conferences are small and intimate others are are vast and I think you think it depends on what type of company you are as an example if you are a consumer technology company selling a product or a game being at CES in Las Vegas is a very big deal that might be just the right place for you to go and

reach a very very mainstream and broad audience far outside of octane but if you are a developer showcasing a new scalability let's go protocol or a second layer solution you might want to do that at something closer to DEFCON or scaling a Bitcoin or something along those lines because you're gonna find the right audience there and so it's very important to kind of pick where you're gonna go and be very decisive about it and then once you get there you need to take advantage of the time you have because there's only so many hours or days of the conference and to your point if you pick the wrong one and you don't know you don't kind of prepare an advance you could basically waste a lot of time and money and energy and there's only so much the bad day out of those 800 conferences I'm just curious how

many did you think were worth attending for your clients quite a lot I'd say between 50 and 100 I would assume these are all over the world you must remember and this is another about marketing isn't this across borders all the time I've traveled so I can't even imagine how many countries in the last year and spent months on the road and that's because that's where blockchain is it's everywhere you can meet incredible companies in Vietnam you can meet extraordinary businesses and people in Australia and Finland and Denmark in the UK it's a truly remarkable thing and we've seen a lot of innovation happen all over the place and you got to travel there yes you can sit behind a computer and and read all about it but I think there's something special

personally about going there and meeting the people who are doing the great work and being able to get to know that mmm-hmm cool when you work with clients David what is the main misconception that you find that they have about your work and maybe PR in general yeah I don't think necessarily always know what PR itself is especially our style what we do is something very very traditional it's something companies have been doing for decades and decades and decades something that I learned from a very traditional shop working with nonprofits for instance where it was how do you go and contact media and find a newsworthy hook and then provide that hook to media let them make the assessment and then

work with them to achieve what is hopefully a good end on behalf of your client and do this on repeat to build a company's brand it's a intricate process it's one that takes time there's a lot of logistics and there's no guarantees ever ever ever ever I couldn't guarantee a place in the smallest blog for the biggest announcement it's just not possible until you actually hear a reporter say yes we'll run the story yes we'll go and cover this and assign a reporter for instance to do it or a podcaster says yes I'd like to do this interview until that happens there's no guarantees and that's simply the nature of working in this business it's it's a business where you are constantly at the edge of your

seat doing your very best on behalf of hopefully great organizations and I've been very lucky to be able to be selective and and then showcasing of what the best they got is hmm okay what is your value proposition to some of these companies because I'm sure you know startups into space may say you know our you know CEO can write this article or we hire somebody maybe even you know a broad remote to write some some blog posts for us that we can spread on social media so how do you how do you differentiate you know what what a big PR firm does from from that kind of communications public relations agencies like mine our job is to go and

tell stories that either exist and help companies figure out what story should exist and then broadcast a movie I'd say a lot of companies they're not ready for a PR agency or it wouldn't be appropriate for them would be a waste of their money if a company doesn't have any news if they don't have anything distinguishing them if they don't have any capital if they can't go meet people it's it's a harder approach I think that the text in fact last year we turned down more than 1,000 companies oh cool that's good to hear Pete we'd spend a lot of time doing due diligence as much as we possibly can and we share that diligence and work with other other great Slayers and space to make sure that we're working with the best companies because for us no we're calling up a reporter and we're

saying hey CNBC hey coin desk hey coin Telegraph this just came out or it's about to come out what do you think and you don't have something newsworthy if we don't have a company that we want to represent it's it makes our job hard or even impossible so we've been lucky to be able to be selective and I and I believe work with a lot of amazing companies too so as far as those other companies I actually have a lot of advice for companies that aren't able to afford a PR agency or room it's not necessary and that for one thing is you need to have a real product if you want to get attention 20:19 so if you don't have a product build one build something and have real partnerships at least develop a proof of concept although many will tell you even

that's insufficient in today's world a whitepaper so to speak is not enough anymore it would need to be something truly amazing probably peer-reviewed and probably reviewed by many of the other otherwise well-known experts this is typically how it works beyond that build a font of information a foundation of content yourself first have something for people to check one of the great things for instance about prints the Cardno project is that by the time most of the world found out about it the IOA HK which is the research team that helped build it they assembled an enormous amount of work from some of the top scientists and photographers in the world so that when people found out

about this they were to check and see that there was enormous amount of innovation and science behind the technology that was being unveiled I think that type of approach is really meaningful and works because there's real substance there and I think that's something that even in 2019 and going into 2020 we're gonna see is gonna be an approach to work so build up that content library make sure it's substantive again if I were this reporter and I were getting a hundred five hundred emails day when I find this interesting enough to spend my time to submit a story on this to even consider this or interview of a subject consider that person before it is that you know go out speech let's take a quick break and we'll be right

back this episode is supported by 21 lectures 21 lectures mission is to bring more developers to the Bitcoin ecosystem with in-person courses lectured by world renowned Bitcoin and lightly developers courses teach participants the fundamentals to work with blockchain technologies 21 lectures covers cryptography the structure of transactions and blocks and how they are chained smart contract language a lightning protocol as well as software and toolkits to develop on top of the blockchain and lightning to learn more visit 21 lectures calm the episode has support from core ledger core ledger is

a blockchain based peer-to-peer transaction infrastructure provider it enables businesses to document tokenize and trade any type of assets in a reliable and flexible environment core ledger makes anything transact able literally anything with core ledger and highly dependable advances to implement products businesses can reduce costs and improve processes individuals can benefit from the full ownership of their own assets and make transactions directly with another party to learn more about core letras technology and how you can transform your business off the blockchain visit core ledger net that cor II led ger dotnet corletta duck left yeah I think that's fantastic

advice David the power of content I mean I've seen this with my films I've seen this with my podcasts the reach can be crazy and I'm always wondering why so few companies are doing things like that content library that you just described I I agree I think that's what's gonna go and provide substance because if I'm an enterprise company trying to pick between two different tech providers I'm gonna probably pick the one that has more substance and these the ultra dentals are what what have you actually done mm-hmm yeah exactly I think it's a good point and they're also size doesn't really matter I mean even you know a few people a small teal team can create a

really good content and really good knowledge library so I think that's quite quite interesting approach there absolutely people who were actually building the tech they're the ones who have the best ability to communicate what makes a difference mm-hmm yeah exactly David how did you how did you get into into this business you know into the into the PR business but also more specifically into the blockchain PR space so I've always been interested in writing and I'm always interested in economics and so the confluence of those two interests turned out to be doing eventually blockchain public relations then building a firm that does that as the core of was actually our more services but in 2014 I was working and kind of running day-to-day for a

different public relations agency in New York but I was out at a bar for at a party for technology companies and I met the CEO of a Bitcoin exchange that exchange was coin Center and evening which went on very very long I learned that Bitcoin exchanges were becoming and even early 2014 increasingly commoditized with fewer and fewer differences between the exchanges outside the fact that they had different trading volumes and back then even the biggest exchange which was bitstamp even they had very small volumes relative to what we see today it's that's how much things have changed but they were trying to distinguish themselves and they actually had ways of distinguishing themselves for instance

and much of your audience might know this but most of the outside world wouldn't these guys have developed the first ever fix API for exchanges which is a way for but to call it machine based traders to access the data feeds and make trades on their own computers for instance without used the order book interface on the web so this company had that tech they didn't know how to tell that story well they didn't know how to tell the story of some of the new features that they were adding whether they changed from regular fees to make her take her pricing which is a way for to try and inspire more trading on the platform and why do you care about that well not just to go and increase fees to the exchange but liquidity very much matters because if you're trying to

choose between exchanges you might choose one with tighter spreads for instance it's a more accurate price discovery mechanism so it happened the opportunity to tell these stories for its exchange I was forced to learn about things like Bitcoin how it works what is mining what are wallets what's a hardware wallet how do you secure these things and then of course an enormous amount that I got to learn about kind of the entire scene where things were going and I got to meet many of the players in 2014 I thought that I was coming in very very late mount GOx already happened in 2013 the disaster and it was it was a very tough slog but in 2015 the CEO of that company asked me to found my own company and so I found a

software wallet called AERB it's a hardware wall called treasure a mining pool accompanied it called slush pool the first one ever a blockchain the base VC and Bitcoin ATM network called point source and was that I found it whacks hmm cool it's 20 50 mm-hmm it just so happened that was in the right place at the right time in New York City and add an array of clients there in the space with the idea being that if I were able to specialize reporters might actually call me I wouldn't always have to call that and the media list so to speak of the reporters that are relevant for one client might be relevant for another client too or at least would there be some sort of sharing and so we've grown from one person to dozens to 100 people with offices in

New York Dublin in Singapore and at its core is the same concept that the connection between these companies this specialization that was call it relative domain expertise could be something that could benefit all the different clients and it turns out the staff that I've been able to hire and train is you you said you founded company 2015 so in just three years you know you you you grew to a hundred people I mean that's very very impressive how did you know how to how to run an agency like this at this scale well be honest I had made some but up as I went and I relied on the counsel of best people I knew this is actually the real trick

I had these clients that were building companies themselves and I had the rare privilege of being able to call up the CEO and ask what do you do about this how do you know that someone's the right cultural fit how do you expand geographically how do you ensure that the cultures are maintained over time how do you build a real operations backbone and I feel very lucky that you know it's been able to sustain in 2015 I wanted to have a three person agency me and two others that was my wild dream that could sustain itself and all I want to do is work in the Bitcoin space that's it I just wanted to work with companies in Bitcoin and be able to tell their stories to reporters and if I had two people to work with and do that every day that kind of shared vision

with me I would have been happy as a clam and I just got lucky that was at the right place at the right time with the industry growing very rapidly this enabled to become more than that mmm interesting what was I mean you mentioned before that many people gave you good advice on your journey there as an entrepreneur what was the best advice that you got so the best advice or at least the one that comes to mind first company culture is completely impossible to preserve it's like a river in so far as if you stick your finger in twice it's actually it's this different water that's there writes a different current and when you're hiring someone you know what the existing organizational culture is like whoever you hire is going to influence that one way another or

another and be super confident that who you're hiring is going to be additive instead of subtractive or someone who's gonna poison the culture that you've built so far and so we I spend a lot into poring over whether or not someone is the right fit from a pure Seavey perspective if they there's a brilliant writer or if they understand the technicals or if they have a background that would be true to Parata did they speak multiple languages and can be helpful to companies across the globe you have to figure out are they people that I would want to go and work with for nine hours a day would I want some what might like colleagues to work nine hours a day with this person and we've been lucky to hire many many many people that fit that mold and they've been able to grow with each

other and add new types of things in there for instance I'm personally not all that good at add certain types of processes I've just unless hyper-organized and many people that I've been able to hire and they've been able to add that kind of new elements to including we have all these training modules when someone starts with wax then they get something like 40 different at 40 hours of training that are actually developed and and broadcast by the team individually to a new person in wax and so by the time they really get started they've really acclimated quite well and they've learned about things like how we approach the media how we build a media list what is blockchain and a number of other things it's been it's been a remarkable thing and it's been a team effort but it

is came down to kind of that first principle which is every time you add somebody you're adding someone new and you can't assume that the companies didn't operate the same way after they joined them mm-hmm interesting so then would you say the most important thing in a company are the people working there by 10 miles mm-hmm yeah it's a cliche but it's always true I mean it's just to know especially for a professional services firm I can't speak for manufacturing where one day robots might take out many of the people actually doing the work today and then it's about simply the end product and whether it's cheaper faster better than what came before but when it comes to professional services what you're doing is you're essentially hiring people's time energy focused connectivity relationships that's not for hire and so Italy all about the people and my many

of my employees have gone to conferences all around the world they've been able to meet people have strong relations with with with my clients as well and I think that's what makes things so great and they have regulations each other so it really is all about the people and you should spend an enormous amount of time training people that you work with and learning from them it's just listening to them there's been some of the best work that I've done so far mmm interesting maybe also regarding clients you know the clients that you work with how you work with them what are important learnings that you had there on your journey but what we've seen is a rapid maturation of the industry so when I started working in this industry as I

mentioned I had a Bitcoin exchange as a client and that had ten people as it was small they worked in a co-working space a very cool one a co-working space and today we'll have clients that are that are equity valued in billions right or some of the largest hoping teams that exist or the biggest exchanges or or other types of organizations enterprises sometimes or if they're a start-up they might be a start-up but they've got some real superstars who have been working in various industries we've seen this kind of change in the industry where it's gone from free people with simply great ID on a message board and it's turn into kind of a much more professional and sometimes corporate world and and that's I think sometimes a bit of a shame because I personally love the startup

space I love working with very young companies and with entrepreneurs with simply great ideas who need help to get them off the ground or even better ones who don't need help but you get to be along to the ride or or watch and support them that's that's that's something that I feel like we're we're kind of losing over time as the space matures but it's it's amazing the the quality of product and output has vastly improved mm-hmm interesting do you think there's today there's still space for new entrants new small companies coming into the space and wanting to do something that's new that's maybe not being done yet in the blockchain space absolutely there will always be room for startups because they can simply pivot and move faster than

enterprises mmm cool if when you work with an enterprise especially from the service side and you need to go and get six checks before someone says yes yeah first startup where there's one there that's an inherent advantage that I have seen time and time and time again my cell be successful yeah and some of the blockchain companies you know despite their reputation as being revolutionaries and all that they've become very corporate I feel you know very complicated structures lots of c-level executives lots of partners in there it's certainly changing the atmosphere and that's why you got to go to different cop for some conferences where people are very og they're they're

very much Bitcoin Lane crypto anarchists and that's of course the oranges industry something by the way I hope has never forgotten that the reason Bitcoin blockchain came about is because there were people with philosophical ideas and they built a technical solution they thought would help implement some of their goals and dreams I think that's that we should never ever forget if at all possible mmm cool where do you see you know other technologies like you know maybe AI data science automation robotics drone technology how do you see that intersect with blockchains the core thing that ties them together is that they're emerging technologies and the people that are succeeding in those fields the ones who are most interested in it are people with lots of

IQ points lots of creativity and enormous enormous personal drive that what I've seen from leaders in all of those different spaces and and some of the new entrants as well and and that's why they're so excited because that's where innovation is happening in these emerging technology verticals how do they intersect in many ways but it again it goes by use-case I don't think you should think let's take AI and block tuna to merge them for no good reason there has to be a purpose for it maybe it is that but you want to go and create a marketplace for artificial intelligences that might be applicable to the the Internet of Things devices made by a certain manufacturer that might be a good use case for instance and then you might build a specific

solution may be some middleware solution or some platform that can go and solve problems and it just so happens to be using AI have using blockchain happen to be using IOT but if the use case you've got to go and and solve them you've got to solve all the problems and technology is that I said is a means to solve those problems not the problem or starting out for the end itself and I think the intersection of those technologies is simply because they often are they they make sense together they have to work well together for instance blockchain is its core is is about having some sort of database on steroids and big data it's all about having enormous amount of data so this way analysts performed on it and AI is nothing more than a large data set and

simply programming to make sure that you can pull applicable data from that data set to make let's call it decisions bar contracts run on these types of decisions for instance or from Oracle so these things can intersect and work together very very well and I think you're gonna see a lot more of the intersection of not just those technologies for those technologies and major industry verticals as well whether it's in the transportation space or supply chain where the confluence of those technologies will be really really helpful mm-hmm cool David in your in your life or also of course in your work who are your role models so in my life I'd say my father first he was a

neurosurgeon and a lawyer who was the first person whose family but high school and I think that's a pretty remarkable thing for someone to care that much about education and spend so many years in school and training she would help many people I think that's a wonderful thing in the industry I have some role models too so I'm a big fan of one of my clients Charles Hoskinson I think he's perhaps the most brilliant man I've had the chance to meet and I listen to every time I can and I suggest all of you do the same I'm a big fan of journalists like Pete Rizzo who have been able to sort the wheat from the chaff as well as anybody in the industry and I'm always on the lookout for other types of entrepreneurs with enormous integrity and vision like rocky Lyon from Horizon

and formerly known as n cash these the types of people who really stand out to me and there are many many more that I can name but who are really making a difference and and have a sort of personal integrity that just shines and everyone who meets them can get cool what are you currently in the process of learning Josh that's a great question I think one of the one of the problems that I'm looking at quite a lot right now is how to handle more international transfers of what's called process we have many clients now that essentially need coverage 24/7 so how do you do handoffs between from one office to another how do you take information

in one person's head not just a data set this is not a spreadsheet and get someone else to be fully honest a few hours later or you know at the end of your day at the beginning of theirs how do you do that how do you do that successfully and repeatable that's something that I'm thinking about quite a lot right now I'm also thinking about where is where were security tokens going and how fast it's a really fragmented space right now it's fragmented that I think the general public realizes this point because the regulatory regimes in all these different jurisdictions are often vastly different there is no single framework for what a security token is there are some who argue security tokens don't

exist there's a security Swifton or technology behind them fine security token exchanges have only begun 80s in the United States start trading but there's very limited I think we're on the press of something really extraordinary that could truly affect financial services but we're at the very beginnings and chaos I think we're gonna go and find a lot of amazing companies not take shape mmm cool excellent what kind of stories do you see on the horizon in the future for blockchain technology a couple I think that we're gonna see hopefully some great stories about philanthropy from blockchain we a lot of people build remarkable businesses in this industry and my hope

is that we see some of those people who have done very well give back in the way that we've seen the titans of industries before hand do the same that's one - as a consequence of the protracted crypto winter I'm guessing we're gonna see a lot of M&A huge amount acquisitions and consolidation of some of the company incumbent companies space where one plus one equals three so I think that we're gonna see that happened quite a lot pretty much cool interesting David this was really great and many thanks for taking time thank you very much to have me mail a little but thanks so much for joining us today more info on our guests and our sponsors isn't the

show notes of this episode and on the podcast web site the blockchain and ask.com to help people find this podcast it's important that you download subscribe and give it a top rating and review on iTunes or on the podcast platform of your choice I'm Manuel stackers and I thank you very much for listening [Music]