Global Ripple Effects: How the shift in US policy and regulation is reshaping Digital Assets
Panel: Dr Lisa Cameron, UKUS Crypto Alliance, Tom Duff Gordon, Coinbase; Wasim Ahmad, Vault12 Moderator: The Hon Albert Isola CBE, ISOLAS LLP
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The Digital Commonwealth
- Dr Lisa Cameron, UKUS Crypto Alliance,
- Tom Duff-Gordon, Coinbase;
- Wasim Ahmad, Vault12
Albert Isola:
First of all, I could just ask my great team here to introduce ourselves. Lisa, do you want to kick us off?
Dr. Lisa Cameron:
Yeah, sure. I'm Dr. Lisa Cameron. So didn't start off in digital assets, as you know. Psychologist by trade, which was well needed when I was an MP in the House of Commons for 10 years. Moved into this sector through chairing of the All-Party Parliamentary Group in digital assets and cryptocurrency for a period of four years prior to the election last year. And since that time, I've been leading up the UK-US Crypto Alliance, and also the Global Legislators Forum, which brings together MPs to educate them on the sector.
Albert Isola:
Thank you very much. Wasim, would you like to?
Wasim Ahmad:
Hi, I'm Wasim Ahmad. I have a startup called Vault12. We're the pioneers in crypto inheritance. As a small eight-person startup, I've been very, very involved in a lot of the regulations in the US Securities Clarity Act, the Token Taxonomy Act, the upcoming Market Structure Act. And later this week, I'm going to meet with the SEC to give them my views, or our views, on utility versus security, and all of the unintended consequences that come from having incomplete and unclear regulations. And then I've also been involved in UK regulations through CryptoUK.
Albert Isola:
Tom?
Tom Duff Gordon:
Hi, everyone. Great to be here. So I'm Tom Duff Gordon. I'm the VP of International Policy at Coinbase. So I look after all the relationships that we have with government and regulators outside of the US. I've been at Coinbase for three years, and prior to that I was in TradFi. I was at Credit Suisse for 15 years. Looking forward to the conversation.
Albert Isola:
Thanks very much. Well, as you can see, we've got a wonderful team who have direct experience of the US market. And I think before we come back home to the UK, I thought a good idea to kick off with the US.
Could you talk us through some, Wasim, if I can start with you, your personal experiences of the US? And by that I mean we know where we are today. It's been a difficult ride these past years, and the speed of the first 100 days of the new administration, is it as good as it looks?
Wasim Ahmad:
I think it's much, much better. I mean, the last four years have been terrible, just like an ice age, with the administration going out of their way to sort of persecute companies. So that is behind us.
There is an awful lot of activity going on behind the scenes, and maybe since we follow it minute by minute, it looks like there's an awful lot, and maybe other people don't necessarily see all of that. But there are several bills going through Congress. The bills are stacked up so that in the future a future administration can't just revoke some law and then everything collapses. So they're all stacked up. Market structure bill is overall stable. Coin bills come underneath, they're covered in the market structure bill, but they're separate bills. Security Clarity Act, which is all about securities and utilities, separate act, covered in the market structure bill, but a separate bill so that you can't just revoke any of it. So that is all the stuff that's going to go through Congress.
And the timeline for that is very, very quick. Those are the stablecoin bills are going through imminently. The first draft of the market structure bill, we'll see this week. That is expected to be signed into law on August 1st, which is the last day that that set of politicians will be working in the summer. So there is a very kind of accelerated timeframe.
And then the other thing is, there are regulations that are internal, or under the control of the SEC, and those are things that don't need to be debated in the Houses. They can do that themselves. And so that's things like Safe Harbor 2.0. And so there's various, and we've seen various things like that. Someone mentioned SAB 121 earlier. So these things, they have already knocked out the troublesome aspects. And they've also, thank God, knocked out all of the pending lawsuits that were sort of making crypto an ice age. So that's kind of where we're at right now.
Albert Isola:
Tom, your firm is one of the recipients of some of that treatment that Wasim is referring to. Do you want to talk us through how your perspective is today, and how that's changed in the recent months?
Tom Duff Gordon:
Yeah, happy to. I think Wasim did a great job of explaining what's going on. That is a 180 degree turnaround from obviously what we had before. I think the previous panelists referred to it. We had regulation by enforcement. Effectively, this was a motorway where you kept getting speeding tickets but no one told you how fast you could drive. And actively we had the banks being discouraged from providing finance right to Web3 and crypto.
Since then, we've got a new administration. Coinbase down with crypto, a bunch of the other US players. We did a lot in the campaign to try and make this the most pro crypto Congress that we've ever seen, and we're really pleased that we have that. And as Wasim was describing, now they're moving at pace to deliver the regulatory clarity that has been so missing for the last four years.
And just because of the size of the US, if the US isn't providing that clarity, is actively working to slow the industry down, that has a huge impact in the US, but also globally, because of the weight and the role and the influence of the US in some of the global standard setting bodies.
I want to pick up, if I may-
Albert Isola:
Please do.
Tom Duff Gordon:
... something that Wasim said, which is really important. The headlines are on the market structure bill and on stablecoins. And that's really important and they're moving very fast, and we should get clarity on those, we hope, even before the summer break. But something which is less noticed but we think is really kind of important, is that the SEC is doing a huge amount of work behind the scenes just on their rule book. And so, we and others are working really actively with them on tokenization.
And here's the thing. The US are not going to spend a bunch of time setting up small sandboxes. They are going to move straight to providing a clear rule book for how to trade existing equity debt and funds on chain. We're about a year away from that, eight months to a year away from that, where you could be taking out of your phone this time next year or in a few months and trading on chain, Tesla, Apple, etc.
So we need, I think in the UK, also in Europe and other places, to look carefully at what we're doing. Are we just putting everything in a sandbox and then just hoping to kind of experiment? Or are we going to match the US for the speed and the kind of clarity with which they're now moving? I think clarity legislatively, very important for stablecoins. That's going to be a big moment for the global market. I think also market structure, figuring out what the SEC does versus the CFTC, but also look under the hood and actually you'll see a huge amount of very ambitious, very exciting work that the SEC is doing. And I think we need to talk about that more, because that's also a big opportunity for the UK with the capital markets here if we can really pursue tokenization and be one of the leaders in the field.
Albert Isola:
So you're comfortable, Tom, just picking up on one of your points, that the work that is going into all of this legislation is sufficiently detailed not to have the unintended consequences that we all fear because of the speed that it's being done.
Tom Duff Gordon:
I think at the moment we're confident. Obviously, it's not all said and done until we kind of get the President's signature. And equally there will be gaps in the text and technical things that will be filled in by the Fed, and by the SEC, and the CFTC, and the OCC, and others. So we've still got a certain amount of road to run on this. But so far I think it looks positive. It's not just we've got David Sachs in the White House, but actually the folks running the CFTC and the SEC and others, we've got experts across the administrations and the different authorities, all that have a pro crypto mindset. So that we're hopeful with good dialogue that we have with them, we'll get to a good place on that. And yeah, we feel confident and optimistic at this stage.
Albert Isola:
Lisa, you have a huge amount of experience of the political systems. What is your take on the speed with which things are happening in the US, and the speed with which that impact will be felt across other shores?
Dr. Lisa Cameron:
Yeah. I mean, I think it's a very good thing, actually, that they're moving at pace now. And I think, well obviously, politically there's a necessity to that. There's a majority in the different constitutional aspects of the legislature, so it's very important to move that at a pace if you want to get things done. It's very nice to see, actually, a jurisdiction where things are getting done very quickly.
Legislation is never perfect anyway, so it's always amended at some point, or reviewed or refined. So I think we shouldn't get too caught up in having to wait until things are perfect at first go. Because I think the important thing is the clarity that it's giving and the intention. And actually, when I was last in the US, just at the change of the administration, you could actually feel the excitement and the exhilaration that this was a complete shift, and that actually it was opening up momentum for a new kind of digital era. And I think this could be felt, not just by the industry, but the population were very excited as well, that things were moving at pace and that they were getting things done, and that once again they felt the US was going to be in a leadership position on innovation and technology. Which I think is very important for growth. It's very important for growth. So of course we need to also move at pace in the UK.
I just came back last week from Latvia, speaking with legislators there, and also some members from the European parliaments who are in attendance, who are already saying that they want to revise MiCA now. They're going to have to do that, because of the shift in gear by the US to remain competitive. I think if you'd asked me last year, I would've said, oh, I think MiCA being so clear and there already and having been worked through, sets us back in a sense in the UK. But actually, I think because they're now going to have to review it, we kind of have a window of opportunity now that we could move, and become more competitive again. And I think that that's one of the things that's very important for the UK is now to take some impetus from the work that's being done in the US. And some of the meetings we're having with the US Crypto Alliance is to bring the MPs together in the UK Parliament with those in the US, so that they can see what's being done, and they can see the benefit for the UK in striding ahead as well.
Albert Isola:
And you do a lot of work in Parliament in pushing and promoting this agenda. Are you comfortable that there is a chance that the UK parliamentary system will wake up? I mean, since you left, I haven't really seen a champion of the industry since you left Parliament. Do you believe that there is sufficient interest with all the other issues that they're dealing with today?
Dr. Lisa Cameron:
Yeah. I think there's so much work that has to be done actually. And I think you're right. We need to have a number of champions in the House of Commons and the House of Lords so that questions are raised every week. Questions are raised to the Prime Minister. Debates are held to speak about jobs of the future and the importance of this industry to speak about how it's going to contribute to growth across the UK. So that there's a lot that still has to be done. I mean, we're still working very hard with MPs to educate them, and there's still a long, long way to go actually.
We had a number of legislators at the Academy, the Polkadot Academy just last month in Lucerne. So we basically took them back to school to learn about blockchain and gave them certificates at the end. But even when, and I, because I do some work with Code Lab as well, when we had the event with them just before Christmas and we were speaking about tokenization of property, some of the MPs were saying, "Well, what happens to the property when it's tokenized? Is it okay?" As though it affected the foundations or something of the property.
So we still have quite a lot of kind of basic education. And I think we could see at the Academy as well. Each step that we take is another step in the right direction. But I think we do need to really come together as an industry to make sure that we're engaging with our MPs, that we're showing them how important this industry is, and that we are in Parliament as much as possible to get that message across. Because I think the UK does have a window of opportunity, but I don't want to see that window close.
Albert Isola:
I think we'd all agree. You're absolutely right that the window of opportunity is now. I mean, MiCA on one side, the US movements in more recent months. Wasim, you're also quite engaged in the UK aspects of pushing the agenda that we were talking about. How confident are you that we will make progress in the way that we'd all like?
Wasim Ahmad:
Well, I think my experience with the FCA trying to bring my company into the UK has been depressing. I mean, it's great that we have MiCA, we have 2000 pages of legislation that takes, you know, no startup is going to go to Europe. I mean, large market marketplace companies may go do that, like Circle. But no startup is going to go do that. And I feel like Paris Blockchain Week just a week ago was very, very despondent, and I see the same despondency here.
It can't take nine months to get approved. It can't take the FCA telling you they don't like the look of your management team. And I certainly don't want to spend time giving all of that documentation to a government agency. It's not like that in the US. And I think the guidelines are going to be very, very clear. I think the opportunity, going to the very upbeat keynote that we just heard from Elise, where she talked about passporting and connecting in and integrating with existing frameworks around the world is very, very important. But the most important framework that Britain should be integrating with is the US frameworks. It lays out very fast and efficient ways to get to market, and it's not what the FCA is doing today, which is basically stifling growth and strangling innovation. So shame on you, FCA. It's not what the British public deserve. It's not what the government is asking for. So we definitely need to move ahead. And the opportunity is right there. It's the opportunity for Crypto Britannia.
Albert Isola:
That's interesting. I mean, I think if you look at passporting as a concept, in Gibraltar, we've got passporting into the UK financial services systems. And we agreed while I was still there, 2023, passporting for Gibraltar, the UK to carry on post Brexit, which is the only part of the world that can passport. It's still not done. And we're a tiny, tiny, very, very small jurisdiction just seeking to carry on doing what we were doing before. And it's in the Financial Services Act of the UK legislation, but we're still transitioning under the previous regime because it's so complex.
If you think about the US and the UK, where we didn't have or don't have passporting in traditional finance, is that not a bridge too far to have a hope that we're going to be able to get passporting from the UK to the US in an area that has never been passported before? Left alone, two partners that have never passported before in financial services?
Wasim Ahmad:
Well, I think the idea has to be thrown out there. I mean, the will-
Albert Isola:
Overall, failists.
Wasim Ahmad:
I don't know. I mean, it's going to take politicians, it's going to take lawmakers, it's going to take tech companies to lobby for this. But it makes an awful lot of sense from the British government's perspective to encourage American companies to come over here. And it's not just American companies, it's American venture funds. Same problem, same exact problem, same exact entanglement with the FCA. And then to give that benefit to British companies who want to expand into the US.
Albert Isola:
I think you're absolutely right. And I believe that it is an ambition worth having and something working towards. There's no question about that.
Tom, you've obviously got a significant presence in the UK and also in the US. You've recently been given the last license here. What's your experience and your ambition in terms of how that relationship between the UK and the US can foster?
Tom Duff Gordon:
Well, I'm optimistic like both of you are. And I think what we do need is now we're seeing digital asset frameworks begin to emerge in all sorts of different jurisdictions. We have to do that work to try and make them speak to each other. To give you a really tangible example, right now in the EU, there's a very live debate in Brussels with regard to US fiat-backed stablecoins that are licensed both in the EU but also they're licensed in the US. And the question is, how on earth do you make sure that we've got similarity of regulation? We don't create issues whereby you have more of incentive to redeem in one jurisdiction versus the other. Perhaps rebalancing the reserves that sit behind these kind of stablecoins becomes complicated. And it's becoming a real topic, because we had MiCA before we had anything else. So we have to preserve the global issuance, double issuance model of stablecoins. Stablecoins are supposed to go cross-border.
A lot of these markets we're talking about tokenizing our global markets. And so I think it's the ambition for the US and the UK to try and develop regulations that are similar. I think Elise made a great point. I came in as she was speaking. There will never be perfect, perfect harmonization. There shouldn't be. There's going to have to be an aspect of tailoring. And I, working for a Swiss financial institution, I knew about that firsthand, given the difficulties that Swiss have getting access to the EU.
So there's never perfect one to one, but if you have enough similarity, you can have substituted compliance, you can have equivalents, these types of things. Particularly for these global markets, for things like stablecoins, we should really strive to make that happen.
If I may, I do think there's one area in particular where we have to look at what the US is doing, and then we have to draw a lesson and a conclusion for the UK. And that's the US political decision not to do CBDC. So they're not doing it. Neither retail CBDC nor a wholesale CBDC. We shouldn't expect to see that anytime soon in the US. That means as they bring these capital markets on chain and funds on chain etcetera, the settlement asset is not going to be a wholesale CBDC. It might be some form of tokenized commercial bank deposit, but it's likely to be a stablecoin. So we've got to get the stablecoin regs right. And also have them talk and be harmonized with what the US is doing, I think if we want the capital markets here in the City of London to really be able to be future leaning and to take advantage of that opportunity.
So we can continue to pilot CBDCs here. I think that makes sense. We're not saying either or, but we're certainly saying preserve the optionality and have a good framework for stablecoins. Because I think we're going to see the US leaning very hard on them, both in the kind of payment space, but also in the wholesale space. And so, that's an area where I think the mental model of the UK and Europe and others was moving towards more of a kind of closed system, single central bank ledger, that type of stuff. I think we need to be starting thinking about public permissionless blockchains, regulated stablecoins, etc. Because that is the direction of travel that we perceive on the US side.
Albert Isola:
Do you think, Tom, that stablecoins should be given a focus on a priority politically and from a regulatory perspective here in the UK as the first big push towards getting closer to that industry?
Tom Duff Gordon:
Yeah, certainly. We think that that's incredibly important. I think the government are going to announce legislation. I would imagine this week would be a good week for them to do it. I don't know, but let's see if that comes. And that will include stablecoins, and it will give then a formal mandate to both the FCA and the Bank of England to kind of move forwards.
I think loads of people in this room have looked at the propositions that the FCA and the Bank of England on stablecoins put forward, and a lot of us had some concerns that what was being put forward in the UK looked different to what we see all around the world. Whether you look at Hong Kong, whether you look at Abu Dhabi, whether you look at Singapore, whether you look at Europe, whether you look at any of these markets, we were proposing something particularly from the Bank of England that was more conservative and more restrictive on stablecoins than anybody else.
And I think we've got to look really carefully and consider whether that is the right approach for us to be taking, particularly when stablecoins if we get them right and not risky assets. This is not fractional reserve banking, this is fully reserved assets. And I think there is a way to regulate these to make sure that we take out the risks, we capitalize them appropriately, we get the reserves in the right place, and then we can see their growth. And they're here already, stablecoins, settling trillions of dollars of transactions already and present a big opportunity for the UK. So I think it should be a priority. And we should, I think, try and create a framework which is a bit less capital intensive than the MiCA framework. Which I think was developed in part to ensure that there was kind of strong adoption of the digital euro. Whereas here, I think we need to really push stablecoins.
Albert Isola:
And a risk of getting it wrong and really finding ourselves in trouble. Do we see that?
Dr. Lisa Cameron:
Yeah. I mean, I think that that's the possibility. And I think that's why it's very, very important that we have the meetings that we're proposing in the Parliament. And so we have with the UK-US Crypto Alliance, we have a series of meetings, somewhat stablecoins actually, coming up. Bringing the legislators together from Congress with UK MPs because we want them to see what's happening elsewhere.
Because sometimes when you're in Westminster it's like being in a bubble. And when I speak to people they say, "Oh well, but London is the financial capital of the world. We are miles ahead." And I'm saying, well actually, businesses are going to the US again, businesses are going to the UAE. There are issues that we need to address. And until they speak to legislators from other jurisdictions, because all MPs are quite competitive people, then they realize what's happening elsewhere.
Then they'll go back and say, "Wait a minute, we need to be doing X, Y, and Z." And we need to be doing it quickly because this is what's happening in the UAE, this is what's happening in the US, this is the direction of travel, and we want to continue to be a hub here, and we want to continue to have a leadership role globally. And I think all the MPs across party will want to sign up to making sure that the UK is in a leadership role. And it's just a matter of them having the information and understanding in actuality where we sit now. And that this window is open, but we can't afford to just rest on our laurels and say, "Well, London has always been fantastic. It always will be." We need to do the work now, and we need to help them to shift the dial actually.
Albert Isola:
When I spoke for one of the first times on what we were doing in Gibraltar in terms of the blockchain framework, the legal framework we introduced in 2018. In 2017 I was speaking at a conference in Shoreditch, and I mentioned the word regulation. And I got booed by half the audience who were all not as smart looking as any of you here. But in those days, it was rather a hippie thing. And I talked there about international standards. And you've referenced IOSCO, FATF, Financial Stability Board. Do you think, Lisa, with your experience, that there is any chance of grappling onto those international standards that each of those organizations are promoting as a baseline?
Dr. Lisa Cameron:
Yeah. I mean, I think we should always have reference to those standards. And I think interoperability and having shared standards is the end goal. But I think we have a bit of work to do before that, even on a baseline. Companies can't get bank accounts here. How can you pay staff and set up a company? Or if you can't have access to banking? If your process here with the FCA is taking 18 months to two years, and you can go to Dubai and do the same thing in four months, why are new start companies going to stay in the UK?
I mean, I've been explaining to people, it's not like in the Parliament. It's not like you have a factory down the road where you have bricks and mortar in the UK and you have to stay here no matter what happens. If companies are wanting to be in this sector, they're global. They can pick up their computer and their phone and go somewhere else. And the times have changed and we need to change with those times to stay competitive.
Albert Isola:
Wasim, you didn't express any confidence that that change would come. What do you think people like us here need to do to make that change happen?
Wasim Ahmad:
Well, I don't see that change in the works right this second, but I think once we see some of those laws signed in in the US, that's a concrete turning point, and I feel like that will... The beauty of where Britain is right now. So Europe, they've done their thing, they've called their shots. So maybe they'll be stuck in a revised kind of situation.
The US will crystallize its regulations in the next sort of, let's say six months. Britain has an opportunity. The FCA timeline, which is 2026, we'll have sort of our ducks in a row. Originally, I thought that was way too far. I thought it would be great if Britain had the right regulatory structure before the US. Now I believe actually it's a perfect opportunity that they can sync up with things like the market structure bill with some of the topics and issues that Tom mentioned around stablecoins.
So I think, yes. I am upbeat now. I'm more upbeat now than I was in December last year. Because there is an accelerated timeframe, and I think we have an opportunity. And the opportunity for Britain is very much, or even London, is to maintain that differentiated approach to financial services. That's what made London the financial center of the world. And we went into Europe and things got a little more sort of the same everywhere. We need to get back to that. So we have to have differentiated offerings here.
Albert Isola:
Fascinating. Tom, what's your perspective on Wasim's optimism?
Tom Duff Gordon:
No, I look, I agree, I agree. I think the UK is going to get there. We need to get it right. And I don't want us to rush to something and get it wrong. I think we should take the lessons from MiCA, take the lessons from the US, etc. But what I would love to see, and I think we're going to see it this week, I think from the government, some signals of renewed interest, a bit of momentum. I think we need to have more focus, more prioritization on this topic. Let's lean in. Let's look at it carefully. And let's make sure that we land the right set of rules in good time next year.
So I think that's more like, it's probably a little bit on the late side, but I think it's still okay, and let's just get it right. I think that's the kind of the key thing here. And if we do do that, then we're also hopeful that some of the existing bits of UK regulation that have kind of been used to be the thing that controls crypto, absent kind of licensing, can be recalibrated and turned down.
So we have things called fin prom, financial promotions regime. Some of you in the audience will be kind of very familiar with it. And that's been used to a good effect, I would say, potentially by the FCA from their perspective in keeping a lid on this industry. But I think as we regulate it and we license it and we move forward, I think there is going to be a really important opportunity to kind of see have we got that right. And particularly the idea that we have cooling off periods. If anyone wants to open an account with Coinbase, some of the rules around that are extremely difficult frankly. And there's a 24-hour cooling off period, and we don't see that anywhere else in the world. And so I think there's an opportunity to get the rules right. And then there's an opportunity to look at the existing rules and then see whether we can tweak those to order it to encourage adoption in this space.
Albert Isola:
So you'd agree with Wasim that it's best to wait to see what the US comes out with, and ensure that they are in some way not the same but synced in terms of learning from their lessons?
Tom Duff Gordon:
I think we can work in parallel. And that's by the way, what's happening. I think there'll be consultations and discussion papers from the FCA and the Bank of England throughout this year. My team is kind of responding to a host of those, they have been kept very, very busy. So I think it'll happen in parallel, but we will have the benefit of looking at probably the market structure and the stablecoin bill come the middle of this year or into Q3, and that is before the cement dries on the UK regime early next year. So I think let's keep moving in parallel, and let's try and learn the lessons where appropriate.
Albert Isola:
Fantastic. And lots of hope there. I'm delighted to hear. And Mr. Bowater is standing up telling us that it's time to go. Lisa, Wasim, Tom, thank you very much. Absolutely fascinating. Thank you.
Growth Mindset podcast: Crypto Inheritance
Welcome to Growth Mindset moment of Rug Radio production, the show where we dive into the power of growth, innovation, and limitless possibilities. Each episode, we explore the intersection of human potential, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technology, uncovering how these rapidly evolving worlds are shaping our future. Get ready to unlock new ideas, spark your curiosity, and embrace the mindset that will drive you forward in this ever-changing digital landscape to whether you're an entrepreneur, a creator, or simply someone who wants to grow. Growth mindset moment is here to inspire you to think bigger, think faster, and evolve with the world around you. Let's begin this journey together. This episode is brought to you by Vault12, crypto inheritance secured. Have you ever thought about what happens to your crypto if something unexpected happens? Let's be real. We spend years building these portfolios, collecting NFTs, holding tokens, but most of us have zero plan for how our loved ones would access it if we're gone.
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The iOS codes are good for 1 year subscription at no cost, then will revert to standard price for Inheritance plan. iOS codes can be redeemed in the Apple App Store.
The Android codes are good for 90 days subscription at no cost, then will revert to standard price for Inheritance plan. Android codes are redeemed when selecting and paying for the Inheritance plan in the app.
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Ron Jordan and Wasim AhmadRon JordanTranscript
Ron Jordan:
Welcome to Growth Mindset moment of Rug Radio production, the show where we dive into the power of growth, innovation, and limitless possibilities. Each episode, we explore the intersection of human potential, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technology, uncovering how these rapidly evolving worlds are shaping our future. Get ready to unlock new ideas, spark your curiosity, and embrace the mindset that will drive you forward in this ever-changing digital landscape to whether you're an entrepreneur, a creator, or simply someone who wants to grow. Growth mindset moment is here to inspire you to think bigger, think faster, and evolve with the world around you. Let's begin this journey together. This episode is brought to you by Vault12, crypto inheritance secured. Have you ever thought about what happens to your crypto if something unexpected happens? Let's be real. We spend years building these portfolios, collecting NFTs, holding tokens, but most of us have zero plan for how our loved ones would access it if we're gone.
That's where Vault12 comes in. Vault12 is a next gen crypto inheritance app that allows you to securely protect and pass on your digital assets without relying on lawyers or centralized custodians. It's like having a personal vault in your pocket, but a little smarter. Here's the best part. As a listener of this show, you get one full free year just by using the promo code stars two five. That's Stars two five at checkout. Seriously, one year, no cost. Total peace of mind. Head over to vault twelve.com or inside of your app store on Android and Apple devices and use Code Stars 25 to lock in your free year today, Vault12, because your crypto legacy deserves a plan.
Alright? All right, welcome everybody to another episode of Growth Mindset moment where you know what we do over here. Inspiring you guys to think a little bit bigger about your current situation. Today I have the co-founder, Wasim Ahmad. He is not only the co-founder, but also responsible for growth, marketing, business development and policy. So this man wears all types of hats. Vault12 is the pioneer of crypto inheritance. It is the backup inheritance for your data, your crypto assets and all of those types of things you guys are DJing out there. But what the heck are we going to do? And we're no longer here. You know that self custody is the utmost importance. That's why we're all here. We're trying to own our assets, but with that comes a lot of responsibility. And do we want to trust that? Who do we want to trust that to? So Wasim, thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate you so much for dropping in and dedicating some time to educate us on this crypto inheritance, so welcome to the show.
Wasim Ahmad:
Thank you so much. My pleasure, Ron.
Ron Jordan:
Absolutely. So let's jump right into it. Vault12, for those of you who don't know, it is all about inheritance and can you give me a little brief synopsis? What is Vault12 in this elevator pitched style?
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, so Vault12 is an app that you can download on iOS, Android, and basically it allows you to create a digital vault, put your crypto keys in there, crypto assets, your NFTs, any of those kinds of things, and it encrypts them and it makes sure that A, they're backed up. You still need to back things up even if you're using hardware wallets and all kinds of other things. But it also sets it up for inheritance so that if you are incapacitated, which is what we saw in the pandemic, if you're in jail or you've passed, that those assets can be transported to your heirs.
Ron Jordan:
So whenever you're talking about the actual keys being backed up, what does that mean?
Wasim Ahmad:
So there's many different ways to do this. So you can back up your crypto wallet seed phrase, you can back up your crypto wallet, private key. You can make a video of a riddle of each of the words in your seed phrase, or you can do many, many things. The app will deal with any kind of file or format, so that bit of it doesn't really matter. But those people that are involved in collectibles and they have digital art, you can literally put the digital art in the vault. And so any of that, you've got to make sure you put the wallet credentials in. And then for many people, depending on exactly what setup they're using, there's other passwords or pin codes that should also be backed up.
Ron Jordan:
So you can upload an MP four, a text file, whatever you want to inside of the Vault12 app and that it can be accessible to your errors. How do they know how to get into the Vault12? What do you have to set up with your attorney, for example, to make sure that they have access to this information? This episode is brought to you by Vault12. Are you worried about what happens to your crypto if something happens to you? Vault12 makes crypto inheritance simple and secure. Get one year free with Code stars25@vaulttwelve.com and Apple and Android app stores. Download the app today and use Code Stars two five to get your one year free subscription. Protect your legacy before it's too late.
Wasim Ahmad:
So the product is independent of whatever legal will or trust or whatever you use. And there's two phases. One is literally just making sure that everything is backed up because the biggest issue with digital assets is every year or every month there's something new maybe on a different blockchain. And if you didn't record that information and either give it to your lawyers or write it down or back it up somewhere, it'll be gone if you are not around to deal with it. So once that is recorded, what happens is that information is encrypted, it's split into pieces, and you assign what we call guardians to protect your vault. And those guardians can be friends, they can be family members, they can be business partners, whatever you want, and you can have any number of them. So you could have three friends, three business partners through family members. So you have nine and you can say, whenever I want to access that asset, I just need three out of the nine to give me an okay. And so these guardians are kind of working with you to protect your assets and then you just designate one of them to be your technical beneficiary. And so they're responsible for if you pass to then ask for the assets and then distribute them to wherever they need to go.
Ron Jordan:
That's interesting. So it almost acts like a multisig wallet.
Wasim Ahmad:
So I mean conceptually it's a similar idea, but with Multisig, everyone knows what it is, what you are storing, and it's pretty much restricted to three or five. This gives you a lot more flexibility and you can dynamically, if you have a different business partner or you got a divorce and you want to change out who the people are that are guarding your vault, you can just swap them out behind the scenes. It recalculates everything. Just make sure that everything is set up correctly and you don't actually have to worry about that behind the scenes.
Ron Jordan:
Oh, okay. So how could somebody get started using Vault12 today if they wanted to?
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, very simple. You can download it off the iOS or the Google Play Store, go to that website, vault twelve.com. You can learn more about it, see videos about how you do all of this. And then it's been in the app store since 2019. So we've been at this actually since 2015. So we've been working on this challenge for a long, long time.
Ron Jordan:
I'm going to put a banner up for you guys to see. Go ahead and
Ron Jordan:
Give you a link to the Vault12 app that's just going to be running on the bottom for you guys who are listening or not just listening, but also watching the show. So you can download the Vault12 app today and protect your crypto inheritance. Go to vault twelve.com or go into the Google Play store or the Apple Store, apple App store and get that downloaded. So Wasim, thank you so much for that piece of it. So you guys could get started today if you wanted to. I tell you what, man, the ability to change who is protecting those assets is something that I wasn't aware of. And then also you can designate that one sort of beneficiary, if you will, inside of the app. Is that accurate?
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you to can change the beneficiary, you can change the guardians at any time.
Ron Jordan:
Right on.
Wasim Ahmad:
We generate a little PDF that records the fact that you assigned a beneficiary and you can go file that with your lawyer. And so everything should be very, very clear.
Ron Jordan:
It's uploading everything, not uploading, but it just knows which wallets that I'm adding to this app. And anytime that I'm doing moves out in the world inside of the crypto world, I'm able to rest assured that all of that information is on the blockchain. So I would assume that whatever I have today, and let's say I signed up for the app today and I have X amount of crypto and I have X amount of NFTs inside of my wallet, my wallet and I signed up today, if I make moves for the next 30 years, all of that is going to be stored inside of the app as well because it's just tied to a wallet. Yes,
Wasim Ahmad:
The reference to the wallet. So being able to access that wallet, the information that you need to access that wallet,
Ron Jordan:
Beautiful.
Wasim Ahmad:
At any point.
Ron Jordan:
Yeah, we always hear about those stories of assets. They're on a hardware wallet or something like that. It gets misplaced. I forgot my keys, I can't ever get my assets back. This sort of solves for that because you've backed up all that information in a really secure encrypted way.
Wasim Ahmad:
It solves for that backup scenario, including where you've only got two more tries left on that hardware because you forgot the pin. So it solves for that. And then there's also the more tragic scenario of someone dying like Matthew Mellon, the Bank of New York Mellon banking Air who died of a heart attack at the age of 52, had 2 million worth of Ripple, which is worth about a billion dollars now.
Ron Jordan:
Oh my goodness.
Wasim Ahmad:
And he had squirreled it away in multiple cold storage locations around the country. He did a very good job of making sure it was very safe and secure, but he never left anything for anyone else to be able to kind of track down and retrieve. And so that family can't access that money.
Ron Jordan:
That is a tragic story on multiple fronts, is it not?
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, yeah,
Ron Jordan:
For sure. So traditional methods of doing this, what are traditional methods to passing on your crypto inheritance and what is Vault12 solving for? Because it sounds really simple to get started in this and there has to be a reason for the simplicity today. If I wanted to do the exact same thing traditionally, what does that process look like?
Wasim Ahmad:
Well, so there's a number of challenges here. So any nine out of 10 of the wallets will tell you when you're setting them up, write down your seed phrase, nine out of 10. I mean, we created digital money and we're backing it up on paper. That's ridiculous. So that's kind of a problem. If you were in the LA fires, if you've that paper burn, other people will engrave their Bitcoin wallets raise into or private key into
Ron Jordan:
Steel. Yeah, I have one of those billfolds myself just for fire protection.
Wasim Ahmad:
But in LA you couldn't get into the home to go find it
Ron Jordan:
If you can even find it.
Wasim Ahmad:
You couldn't find it. It was useless. So it's a nice idea, and I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. You should have lots of backups. Then there's the question of, well, can anyone else access the backups? So what a lot of people do, what a lot of law firms will tell you is, oh, well, we'll take care of the information. Just give it to us on a USB drive or put in a piece of paper and we'll fight it away. Once you've handed it over, you've got two issues, one, who else has access to it? And then the second issue is you might be buying another NFT on a different blockchain that didn't exist when you handed it over. And did you remember to when you set up the new wallet to forward that to your law firm? And we've been through cycles where it was NFTs, it was defi, it was meme coins, it'll be stable coins this year.
It's the year of stable coins, rwa. There's so many new assets on the horizon that people will go off and I'm sure there's going to be new blockchains that are going to be invented. So you have to be constantly thinking. And so I think the mindset of making sure everything's backed up in one place is a good idea. But if you back it up in the cloud, you are at risk of, oh, the vendor changed the business relationship with the cloud vendor and sorry, we can't access the data, which is what happened with Gemini and Genesys after the FTX debacle. My crypto was up there, it was lost for 18 months. Thank God the Bing core bosses got every single penny back. But if it hadn't been for their efforts, that was gone because it was a cloud-based business relationship. So you don't really want to do this on the cloud, you don't want to only put it on a hardware wallet because those can be stolen and they can be lost. And we saw that all last year with multiple attacks on well-known crypto people. So there's a danger in having a single point of failure, and that's what Vault12 guards against.
Ron Jordan:
This episode is brought to you by Vault12. Are you worried about what happens to your crypto if something happens to you? Vault12 makes crypto inheritance simple and secure. Get one year free with Code stars25@vaulttwelve.com and Apple and Android app stores. Download the app today and use Code Stars two five to get your one year free subscription. Protect your legacy before it's too late.
Wasim Ahmad:
It's completely decentralized, which means that Vault12 doesn't know who you are or what your assets are. There's no servers at Vault12 that someone can go get hold of to figure out what you're doing. It's all peer to peer. And even on your phone, there's not going to be any information on your phone. So if someone took your phone, they're not going to get hold of the private keys or everything is encrypted, spit up and sent away.
Ron Jordan:
So it's about as secure as it gets at that point.
Wasim Ahmad:
And the encryption that we're using, which is Samir's secret sharing is quantum safe. So you can't even store up these encrypted pieces and hope that, oh, when there's quantum computers available, we'll hack them. So from that perspective, it's a lot of peace of mind. Building decentralized apps is hard, so that's why you don't see a lot of decentralized solutions like this. You see a lot of centralized solutions which put your profile picture on and are friendly because they know who you are, but then there's all these risks.
Ron Jordan:
Yeah, that's actually something that I wasn't aware of that you do. And what even strikes me even further is the quantum computing aspect because that's a huge conversation that's happening in the encryption world is yes, it's all encrypted and these messages are encrypted, but what happens when quantum computing sort of catches up to that? And you guys have solved for that as well, so you're far beyond where we're currently at.
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, absolutely. And it kind of comes, if I may just talk about the origin story,
Ron Jordan:
I would love to, yeah,
Wasim Ahmad:
Max Stabinski, he was at Andreessen Horowitz, he was part of the blockchain team. He worked with Brian Armstrong and the Coinbase team to bring that deal into a 16 Z. And around that time in 20 12, 20 13, he was talking with a lot of thought leaders in the blockchain and crypto space, and they talked about security is going to be on the heads of every single new crypto investor. They're going to have to deal with it because everyone else has been disintermediated. That's the beauty of blockchain and Bitcoin and those kinds of things. So then they started thinking about, well, what happens when if you die or when you die? I mean no one in Silicon Valley is going to die. So
Ron Jordan:
Yeah, they're living forever with their minds. I mean, I've watched enough black meter to know that none of them are going to die. Their minds are going to be put in other bodies, but for the rest of us.
Wasim Ahmad:
But it boils down to accessibility of assets. Are your assets accessible? And we saw in the pandemic that your assets, even if they were in safe deposit boxes, you couldn't get hold of them if you needed them there and then you couldn't. Yeah. So he tried to convince some entrepreneurs to build this, and they were off building trading apps and other things and swap and other things like that. So he decided to start Vault12 in 20 15, 20 14, 20 15. And we worked on it for several years and then did the beta in 2018, launched the white paper and 2019 it went up on the app store. 2020 was the pandemic. And everyone had to deal with this very stark reality that bad things can happen. And if you don't take care of your financial management, of your assets management, you can lose a lot.
Ron Jordan:
You can lose every piece of it, everything that you've built, you can lose it if it's just stored on paper. And nobody sort of knows the secret code to get into any of these assets.
Wasim Ahmad:
That's right.
Ron Jordan:
I mean, the other side of the sword with self custody is there is no help desk. There's only you. And it feels like a lot of the crypto world is very shortsighted in that respect, where there's a lot of, like you said, trading apps and those types of things where you're trying to amass this asset pool, but you're really not trying to figure out 10 years down the road, 12 years down the road in the scenario where if you pass away or something like that. But these things can happen in a matter of seconds. Unexpected situations happen all the time. You brought up the example with the banker in that tragic situation, these things can happen and we need to make sure that all of you guys that are listening, you know me, I'm a dad, I'm a family guy, and I'm always trying to think about different ways to make it better for my family, make it easier for my family, should I not be here any longer.
And it just felt so on par with who we are here at Growth Mindset moment to have Vault12 on and to show you guys what types of resources are out there today to make this happen. And it's not an overnight thing either. You've been building this since 2014, this is six, seven years in the making at this point. So I wanted to sing your praises in that respect. You guys were in 2020, people started to realize, we went through so many years of not having to deal with a tragic situation in the United States of America. There's always tragedy, but you know what I mean, stuff that just absolutely stopped everything. We've really not had to deal with that even in the entire time I've been alive. And to see that happen and how tragic it was for businesses, for individuals to not be able to access their resources through banks or other traditional methods really opened people's eyes to this digital world that we're all living in here in the blockchain and Web3.
And in the last five years, you've seen an explosion of digital assets and digital currency and different ways to spend it on everyday items. And it's just becoming more and more the norm. And now we have an opportunity to be able to store that in a really safe location, not just on a piece of paper in your safe house or even just etched in a piece of metal inside of your safe or safe deposit box and those types of things. You can do it inside of an app. And I'd be curious, so it's in an app, what happens if the internet goes down? What happens if power goes out? Is it still, I don't know that if you can solve for that, but how do you access it if you don't have access to, let's say the internet, for example? Is it possible?
Wasim Ahmad:
I think, well, with the internet, I mean you need it for blockchain apps. So at some point you'd have to be able to connect, either connect to the internet or go off and find the other guardians and get their phones and move the pieces across. So we've created a toolkit for scenarios where things have dramatically changed than what we thought. You can piece the pieces together, so there is a way to grab all the pieces and connect them.
Ron Jordan:
Okay, love that. I love a little fallback plan B type of scenario.
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think power, hopefully the power will get back up at some point,
Ron Jordan:
But we can always create our own power. I'm in the energy world and I know that we can harness sun's energy and the wind energy and waves and all of these types of things. So energy is sort of my least of the problems there. But no, I totally get what you're saying. So let's see. How did you get involved in Vault12?
Wasim Ahmad:
So my background is I'm a serial entrepreneur. I had worked at a startup that was a spin out from Stanford called Voltage, which was commercializing public key cryptography, a new form of a breakthrough in public key cryptography. So public key cryptography is the thing that allows you to do e-commerce on the internet. So it was revolutionary and we came up with a way to do it that was much more simplified. And that's where I met my co-founder, max. And so had spent nine years, 10 years there in that world because crypto used to refer to cryptography back in the day. And so yeah, they called me and said, Hey, we built this thing, what do you think? And I looked at it and said, well, it needs a little help. It needs to be a little friendlier. And that is what we see with crypto apps, right? They're not that friendly. And so we worked really, really hard to make it seamless and easy because you might be technical and you might know your way around seed phrases and private keys, but the people who are guarding your vault don't need to. And you don't know who is going to be involved in that because you might change them out. It might be your kids might be your guardians at some point. So we built it to really be easy and smooth so you don't have to worry about how the pieces fit together.
Ron Jordan:
Oh, that's great. And I love the background there. And yeah, crypto, it's coined for something different these days, but no doubt about it. And you had mentioned too in our previous conversations that you sort of coach entrepreneurs, you're somebody that they lean to. And I'm curious that background there, what are some of the conversations that you're having with founders whenever they approach you and they're just at their wit's end because they've been doing it themselves and they just can't figure it out? Why won't somebody invest in me?
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah. So I definitely, I meet a lot of founders, first time founders, fundraising, they've tried it, it's not working. And generally speaking, what I find is that their deck is sort of a look, here are our designs and here's our app, and this is the platform we've built. And they really, some of them do a little better. They have, this is the problem we're solving and these are the issues, but very few of them tune in on the one fact that is so, so important, which is investors only care about how much money they're going to make. So you need to tell them that. And you need to tell them that in the first three minutes. So you better start with how big the problem is, how much money there is to be made, and how you are going to make that money given who else is trying to make money in that area.
And then once you've got them and they're relaxed that they can make a billion dollars or they can make a half a billion dollars, whatever floats their boat, then you can show them your designs and your screens and your go-to market plan and all of those. And then the other thing that people miss out is talking about themselves because if you are a first time founder and you don't really have a track record of starting companies and successfully exiting them, the only thing that anyone has to go on is your energy or your passion about it or your credentials. Maybe you have a PhD in something or your team has several PhDs or they've come from very interesting companies, but you have to that branding around you and your credibility of why they should pay attention to you, that is critical. And so that needs to be right at the beginning. And so a lot of people are shy. They're like, oh no, I don't want to be humble. I don't want to toot my own horn. But then why would they listen to anything you have to say? So those two things are the most important and people miss that out time and time again.
Ron Jordan:
Yeah, it's like, why are you interesting? And how much money can I make?
Wasim Ahmad:
Exactly.
Ron Jordan:
Get it done, get it done right out of the front, right out of the gate and have energy about it and have that confidence in yourself and what you're putting the market, what's the target market? What is the market size? How can we attack it? All of those things are just so important whenever you're building a business in general, the problem that you're solving, is it really a problem? And how many people have that problem and then how much are they willing to pay solve it,
Wasim Ahmad:
Right, exactly.
Ron Jordan:
Yeah, no doubt about that. So I love that you are sort of, how do I say this? You attack it from all angles where you've been in the trenches, you've built businesses, you've gone through it, and now you're sharing that knowledge. And here at growth mindset moment, that's what we're all about, is sharing information. So we can, those who want to apply this type of mentality, they can grow themselves and they can make their inspiring us to think bigger type of attitude is don't sell yourself short. Do you ever have those more psychologist type of conversations with people is like, Hey, what you have here is really, really great, but we need to work on how you're presenting it or who you think you are. Do you have those conversations with people?
Wasim Ahmad:
Absolutely. I mean, part of it is how are they personally presenting it? And then often it's just a deck. It may not hit the mark at all. And I think the thing to remember, people approach mentors often because they want introductions because they want advice, but then they want introductions into their network. But I can't introduce someone that has a substandard deck. Those people will say, why did you send this person to me? They haven't got the basics. So that's why I think it's important to uplevel your deck and at least your story
Ron Jordan:
For sure.
Wasim Ahmad:
You don't always have to have a physical deck. It's the story that you tell that has to be, you have to be conversant with it and it has to have all the salient points.
Ron Jordan:
And you've created a resource for people to enhance their decks. Yes,
Wasim Ahmad:
Yes. So I got sick of sending the same email cut and pasting the same email. So I did a LinkedIn post with all of the information about what are the 10 things that you need to include? And then when chat GPT came out, I built a little GPT where you can upload your deck and it'll analyze it and say, oh, you forgot about the team, or you forgot about monetization, which was like, you missed monetization, which is how you make money. It's really important. So it just kind of helps you get over that hurdle. And then we can have a conversation about, well, what type of investor is the best and who do I know and who might you want to go reach out to? And all of those kinds of things. The deck shouldn't be the complicated bit, but it often is the stumbling block.
Ron Jordan:
Yeah, it's the one stumbling block where you can't sort of get out of your own way type of attitude about that.
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, absolutely.
Ron Jordan:
So I'd like to derail this just a tad, just a tad, and I want to know a little bit more about how you apply this growth mindset to what you do on a daily basis. You are obviously in blockchain, you're in crypto, you're going out on these limbs of emerging industries. Where does that mindset come from? Are you reading books? Are you leaning on other mentors? What are you doing on a daily, weekly, monthly, whatever basis to make sure that you stay sharp and where that mindset comes from?
Wasim Ahmad:
Well, I think in the crypto space, we're very lucky because there are some people who have seriously thought about crypto today and crypto tomorrow, and some of them talk about it in terms of what's going to happen to the market. Other people have been looking at it in terms of how do these ecosystems evolve over time? And all of these people are on X, so you can find them, you can go look at maybe more well-known people and see who they follow. Some of them actually have lists set up, and you can go look at the lists and you'll see really smart people in that list. And if you start to do that, you can curate your own set of experts who can answer some of the questions that you're talking about. And then with Rock, rock knows it all, use GR inside X and you'll get the answers to a lot of questions.
And so we use that a lot recently. We use that a lot because it really has dramatically improved and that really drives a lot of the ideas. It stimulates the ideas of what campaign should we do. We just started doing meme campaigns because meme campaigns work, we looked at what are the OGs doing because OGs know everything, so how do you tell them here's a different way to do something that you've been doing for 10 years or 15 years. But we also have used, we look at what experts are seeing as people come into Gemini, come into Coinbase, and then start buying assets that are outside those exchanges and then what problems they run into. So I see that as the main source of finding those experts on X and following them gives you, because especially when you see the same point of view reflected a few times, then you kind of know that they've got a point to be made.
And so that helps, I think, guide you and you don't get too far adrift. And then I think the other piece is just segmentation, making sure, so I don't know what the makeup of your audience is, but 35% of men will do wills, 65% of women. So I'm on a mission to make sure that women know that they have this tool that can be used to manage the finances of their household from a crypto perspective. So I think as you find these nuggets of information, you can start to use that to really drive what kinds of campaigns you do and how you're showing up and a lot of grassroots marketing. I think that's kind of the way to go.
Ron Jordan:
I love that you are leaning into AI tools as well, because I've been a huge proponent of artificial intelligent tools such as your Chat GPTs, your grs, and creating agents to help you. I got to be honest, for 20 to $40 a month to have the upgraded subscription to these things and to be able to create agents and have assistance in many different facets has tremendously increased my output because I'm able to give them prompts that elicit responses that would've taken me hours to research, just even as simple as who to follow on X. If I'm trying to understand more about X, Y, Z topics, for example, it's going to give you a list and then give me a list of that list. Give me a list of people who are the most active on Twitter, and let's follow those people. It gives you this ability to have this broad scope and then really narrow down your vision as to who you want to engage with because those are sort of your thought leaders, if you will. And it sounds like you guys are leaning into that quite heavily.
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, because I think during the pandemic we found that you couldn't rely on the government to tell you what to do. You couldn't rely on institutions to tell you what to do. You really couldn't rely on the neighbors because people had different personal opinions about stuff, but there were experts out there that had experience of pandemics or disease or whatever it happened to be, and they were calling the trends way, way, way before anyone else. And I feel like that was the moment when it really crystallized for me and for a lot of people that yeah, you can find really good information. Yes, the internet is Google has indexed the garbage on the internet, but there is gold out there and you can find it. And that's what X and I'm sure some of these other social media platforms can do. But I feel like X is the most developed,
Ron Jordan:
It seems to be, especially in just this blockchain Web3 world, especially. This seems to be where those natives live, breathe, and are active daily and sharing ideas. I think that a lot is lost. Whenever you're just doing a Google search and you look up something, whatever, pick a topic. I guarantee you, if you pick that topic and you put it into Grok and you ask it for thought leaders on that topic, you will get much more clear information than if you put it into a Google search and you won't have to research, which Google link to click on and things like that. It's just going to be these people. And honestly, the other piece of it too is I feel like people were so open to dms, not the dms that I get on a daily basis to grow my audience and all of those things, but if you have an actual question for somebody and you're thoughtful about it, I have experienced that a lot of people respond to you on Twitter.
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, absolutely. It's a very collegiate friendly,
Ron Jordan:
Yeah, it's very open source mentality. And I think that everybody shares in the vision. I don't want to say everybody, that's such a blanket statement, but a lot of folks enjoy sharing their ideas because they want to have a better tomorrow really is what it's all about. And the traditional ways of doing things, I think a lot of folks are tired of the model, and we're in the midst of this new creation of a new model, and it gets me excited. And to be able to have a tool now with Vault12 and pass that legacy along gives me even more hope because it's not lost with me. It can live on. And that's something that's really exciting for me just as a dad, as a husband, as a brother, those types of things I think that are really impactful. And I love the fact too that you were talking about women inside of this space and they have access to this type of thing too, because we see tons of ladies making huge moves in the crypto space, in the blockchain world and creating amazing apps, and they're not on a silo either.
They're able to access these types of things and that whole entire era of the men control all the finances and stuff that is coming to a halt because of blockchain and these types of resources. So I just love the whole entire ecosystem of what you guys are doing over there, leaning into AI tools, allowing us to have a resource to pass on the inheritance to the next generation should something happen, or even if nothing does happen and we just want to make sure that we have safeguards in place. It just seems like such a, I can't believe there aren't more tools like it, to be honest with you.
Wasim Ahmad:
Well, someone has to be the pioneer. So that's us.
Ron Jordan:
And you guys are the pioneers, right? On the front page of the website, the pioneers of Crypto Inheritance Vault12.
Wasim Ahmad:
Yep.
Ron Jordan:
Yep. So I mean, that's where it's at guys. And I mean we see, was there anything else that you wanted to get across to our listeners that we just missed or I just talked over? Yeah,
Wasim Ahmad:
I mean, I think that you got to do something about your crypto assets and you've got to do it today. You don't really know what's in the future. So just make sure that you've thought through, how have I backed up my ledger device? How have I backed up my meta mask wallet and how am I going to tell someone should something happen to me? What is that? What does that look like for you? Everyone has different circumstances and you may find that our product is a good fit for that for you, but you do need to just think through what would happen, how would it work through, so people don't pay attention to that. And Bitcoin's been around for 15 years, so these scenarios of 10 years in, I threw away the hard drive because I forgot that I had this encrypted piece on it that had the pin code of the wallet. That's already happened. All of those things have happened. And so it's not, it may happen, it's happening. We don't even know how many people have lost stuff. There's a lot.
Ron Jordan:
There are definitely a lot. And we hear stories every single day about people being scammed out of their assets and things like that because of normal phishing techniques and social engineering techniques. And it all comes back to where is all that information stored for your crypto assets? And if you can store it in a place that is secure, encrypted, future encrypted against quantum computing, and I mean you're safe in this respect, and I really hope that you guys lean in and take the advice of Wasim co-founder of Vault12, the pioneer of crypto inheritance. You take this advice, go check it out at the very least, Vault12 over at the Apple Store, at the App store rather, and then the Google Play Store. You can go download it today, go poke around, see what it's about. If you have any questions, you can feel free to email me, ronJordan@thestarspodcast.com, or you can reach out to Asim over on X. If I were to guess he'd be open to the dm.
Wasim Ahmad:
Of course.
Ron Jordan:
Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate every insight that you've given us. You've really shone a light on this movement of crypto inheritance and really thinking about the future for our guests today or for our listeners today.
Wasim Ahmad:
Thanks so much, Ron.
Ron Jordan:
Absolutely. Thanks guys for joining in. As always, enjoy the journey. Thank you for listening to Growth Mindset Moment. Take care everybody. Thanks for tuning into another episode of Growth Mindset Moment, a reg radio production. We hope today's conversation sparked new ideas, challenged your thinking, and inspired you to embrace the power of growth. Remember, the future is unfolding before us, and with the right mindset, there are no limits to what you can achieve. Stay curious, stay driven, and keep evolving. We'll see you on the next episode. Until then, enjoy the journey.
How to subscribe to Vault12 Guard with $ETH and $VGT (and get a 50% Discount)
Updated: Apple now allows external crypto payments
Overview
It's easy to set up a subscription plan for Vault12 Guard, whether you use the Apple iOS App Store or Google Play Store, or you want to use cryptocurrency like Ethereum (ETH) or the Vault Guardian Token (VGT) to pay for a subscription plan.
This article takes you through the step by step process to subscribe using VGT or ETH on the same device as your digital Vault. You can see an overview of the steps in the this video:
Step 1. Go to pay.vault12.com on your mobile device
To start the subscription or plan upgrade, visit pay.vault12.com. The following flow shows you how to complete your plan subscription on the same device as your Vault12 Guard app.
Further down in this article, you can see the flow if you are using two different devices, e.g., a mobile with the Guard app and a laptop to browse the payment website.
View Details
From the pay.vault12.com page, click on the link "Have the Guard app on this device?"
Now, press the "Connect to Vault" button to choose the Vault you will be creating a subscription for.
Step 2. Connect to Vault12 Guard app
When prompted, Open the Guard app.
Press OK to confirm a successful connection.
Step 3. Choose Plan
Now on your browser, choose a plan.
For full Inheritance and Backup capabilities, choose the "Inheritance" plan.
Step 4. Plan Payment
Now you will see the plan details, including length of subscription and the renewal date.
To make the payment, open your digital wallet that holds your VGT or ETH funds, and scan the QR code. This will automatically fill in the details of the amount, and the destination address for the payment.
Automatic Discount for $VGT
If your wallet does not use QR codes, then you will need to type in the details of the destination address, and the payment amount.
Note: The payment amount must be entered exactly as shown on the screen - please double check the amount carefully to prevent typos. (Using the QR code, you never have to enter this information.)
If you have selected VGT as the payment type, then you will automatically receive a 50% discount, and the amount shown will be the discounted price.
Step 5. Payment Complete
Once the funds have been transferred, you will see a confirmation in your browser.
When you open the Vault12 Guard app, you will see a message confirming the subscription.
Subscription Status
At any time you can review "Settings" / "Plans & Payment" in the Guard app to see the status of your subscription. In this example, you can see that a whole year of the new subscription remains.
Alternate approach using your mobile and a second device
Go topay.vault12.com using a laptop or second device that is separate from your device with the Vault12 Guard app installed.
You will be brought to a webpage with a Vault12 code to scan. Leave this page open, because you will be scanning the code using your Guard mobile app.
Scan the code using Vault12 Guard
Once you have opened the Vault12 Guard app on your mobile phone, click on the QR code Scan icon in the top right hand corner and scan the QR code from the browser.
Scan the code on the webpage by positioning the mobile camera so the code is in clear view. Your app will automatically perform the scan.
Select a Plan
After scanning the code, your browser will refresh to the Vault12 web dashboard. Choose a plan by tapping the "Upgrade" button on the bottom of the card that reflects your preferred plan.
Upgrade your plan and get VGT Discount
At the top of the Plan Upgrade screen, you'll see a toggle "Pay with" offering a choice of paying with VGT or ETH. You can get the discount by choosing the "VGT" toggle option to view the amount of your plan payable in VGT.
To make the payment, open your digital wallet with your VGT or ETH funds (Metamask or your choice of wallets), and scan the QR code. This will automatically fill in the details of the amount, and the destination address for the payment.
If your wallet does not use QR codes, then you will need to type in the details of the destination address, and the payment amount.
Note: The payment amount must be entered exactly as shown on the screen - please double check the amount carefully to prevent typos. (Using the QR code, you never have to enter this information.)
50% Discount with VGT
If you paid for your plan with VGT, then your 50% discount was automatically applied. Congratulations!
If you chose the ETH option, then the subscription cost is the normal plan cost.
Plan upgraded
After you pay the correct unique amount with your wallet and the transaction has finalized in the network (~ 1 minute), you will see a "Payment received" confirmation, and your subscription will be activated.
Congratulations - Your subscription Upgrade is complete
At any time you can check your plan status in your Vault12 Guard app.
Get Started Now.
How to claim your Vault12 Promo Codes for Android and iOS
Follow these steps to activate your custom promo code or offer code for Vault12 Guard
How to claim your Vault12 Guard Promo Code for Android
Follow these steps to activate your custom promo code for Vault12 Guard on Android:
1. Open the Google Play Store, Download the Vault12 Guard app, and open it.
2. Follow the prompts in the app to Create Your Vault.
3. Tap the Settings button in the footer.
4. Select Plan & Payment.
5. Swipe to the Inheritance card.
6. Tap 30-Day Free Trial.
7. In the Google Play payment screen, click on your default funding source to access the Payment methods screen.
8. Choose the Redeem Code option.
9. Enter your promo code, click the Redeem button, then Continue.
9. Back in the Google Play screen, click Subscribe.
That's it! Your promotional code has been applied, and your trial subscription has begun. You can manage your subscriptions from the Google Play Store.
💡 Note: Promo codes can only be used once per account and must be redeemed before their expiration date.
How to claim your Vault12 Guard Promo Code for iOS
Follow these steps to activate your custom offer code for Vault12 Guard on iOS:
1. Click on your Offer link or scan the QR code. This will open the Appstore Redeem page.
2. If you don't have Vault12 Guard app installed, you will be prompted to download the app first.
3. After installing the app, you can redeem the offer — just tap the corresponding button.
4. Confirm the 1-year free offer to connect with your Apple ID. Your premium subscription or promotional access will be applied automatically — you are good to go! Open the app and set up your Vault and Inheritance plan with your choice of Guardians.
💡Note: Offer codes can only be redeemed once per Apple ID and must be used before their expiration date.
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Seeking Alpha Podcast: Protecting Your Ass(ets)
Death comes for us all, but your Bitcoin doesn't have to die with you—unless you're James Howells, who accidentally tossed $800 million into a landfill. This week, we're talking crypto estate planning with Wasim from Vault12, because nothing says "I love you" to your family like not forcing them to explain to a therapist why they're digging through garbage to find your hard drive.
- Follow Seeking Alpha on X and instagram at @seekingalphapod
- Submit questions and share feedback at seekingalphapod.com
- Follow Larissa on at @larissabundziak and Instagram at @larissabundz
- Follow Lindsay on X at @lindsayposs and instagram at @lindsayposs
*** Special Offer for Podcast listeners ***
Promo codes for Vault12 Guard
The iOS codes are good for 1 year subscription at no cost, then will revert to standard price for Inheritance plan. iOS codes can be redeemed in the Apple App Store.
The Android codes are good for 90 days subscription at no cost, then will revert to standard price for Inheritance plan. Android codes are redeemed when selecting and paying for the Inheritance plan in the app.
Instructions for how to redeem here.
Code: ALPHA25
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=1451596986&code=ALPHA25
Android: Enter code ALPHA25 when you select the Inheritance plan
Spotify
Transcript
Larissa:
Welcome to Seeking Alpha, the podcast where we're diving deep into crypto, careers, and the chaos of modern dating. I'm Larissa Bundziak.
Lindsay:
And I'm Lindsay Poss. Together we're two women who somehow found themselves at the intersection of crypto Twitter, Silicon Valley, and Tinder.
Larissa:
Let's get into it.
Lindsay:
Okay. So we have kind of a little bit of a nerdy episode today because I'm the one leading it. You always bring really, really fun topics to the table, and I'm like, let's talk about economics.
Larissa:
All right, I got the next one, guys. I got the next one. We'll see who writes that one first.
Lindsay:
But anyways, okay, so I wanted to talk a little bit more about Bitcoin today. Also, because you're secretly a Bitcoin maxi-
Larissa:
I'm not.
Lindsay:
No so secretly.
Larissa:
I'm not.
Lindsay:
You're for sure a Bitcoin maxi. Anyways, Bitcoin has a weird feature to it in that when in 2009 when Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the white paper, he put a limited supply on the number of Bitcoin, so there's only going to ever be 21 million Bitcoin. And so because of that, basic economics say supply and demand, that's why we think that the price is going to go up, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. One of the issues though with Bitcoin is that 20% of it, what's been mined, which is I think around 20 million has been lost already. So there's already over 3.7 million coins gone, and that was a 2020 estimate, so that's been like five years. One of the problems that I didn't think about when it comes to cryptocurrencies in general is that when you own your own money, you're also responsible for keeping track of said money.
Larissa:
When you say lost, it's because people lost their fucking passwords and-
Lindsay:
Or they died.
Larissa:
Or died.
Lindsay:
Or they lost the USB drive, like that one guy who's trying to buy a garbage dump because he accidentally threw it away and it has $800 million worth of crypto on it.
Larissa:
Yeah. So it's not like the Bitcoin itself got lost in ether, it was all human error.
Lindsay:
Yes, all of it, human error. But that's why I want to talk about it because this is a weird feature of cryptocurrency. With real money, if you put it in a bank, it's sort of virtual and you don't ever really lose it unless the bank takes it or the government, which is a thing that you don't have control of. When you have control of your own money-
Larissa:
It's up to you and you're fucked [inaudible 00:02:03]-
Lindsay:
Yeah, exactly. So that's just a really strange feature of it. So I want to talk about that alongside of wealth creation because while there's all this independent financial opportunity, and you have to keep track of it, that also means that there's independent opportunities to build wealth. And so I know for you, one of your strategies for a long time, and you said this on the pod before, is to buy Bitcoin every week, which is why you're a maxi to me.
Larissa:
Being a strong proponent of Bitcoin and understanding its value is not being a maxi. I think there's space for other digital assets, and I don't think it's a Bitcoin only world. But I do think that it is the only truly... I mean, I know it's the only truly decentralized currency, and that's important to me. It's an asset that's scarce and digital.
Lindsay:
I joke about being a Bitcoin midi, by the way. I actually don't think that you're a true maxi. You're not a toxic maxi, you're just a maxi. You're a regular maxi. Whether you want to admit it or not, I'm a midi.
Larissa:
You're mid?
Lindsay:
I'm self-identifying as mid. One of the reasons I think it's really cool is because it's the only asset class that had availability to all incomes immediately. We've seen price go up, which first reflects that scarcity, but also because anyone can actually get in on that scarcity in a way that you cannot with any other asset class, which I think is really cool. So I hope that as we see more asset types get added, and more things get tokenized, and more access to investment tools, that we don't lose the ethos of anyone being able to actually access these things.
Larissa:
It's the tools on the other side that are needed. Once you actually access it, how do you manage it and not lose it?
Lindsay:
When we're thinking about all of these different ways of investing and having it be open to everyone, obviously the power in that is that everyone gets to have their own individual wealth creation opportunities, their own individual portfolios, own individual management tools, all of that stuff. What we don't have is all of the apps and other things that go along with how to actually, first of all, teach coach, and just straight up manage all of these things. And that is something that I hadn't necessarily thought about, and it makes me nervous. When we're power to the people, but then we don't give the people the tools to manage the power. What does that mean?
Larissa:
What do you think about Coinbase?
Lindsay:
Well, it's centralized.
Larissa:
Right. So you want a decentralized solution for people being able to manage their own assets safely?
Lindsay:
Well, they go hand in hand. A lot of wealth opportunities for me start with Coinbase, they just don't end there. And so I think that there's a role that centralized servers play, particularly in interoperability with TradFi, I think that it makes it a lot easier. You can move past that and you should move past that as you put more and more assets and resources into crypto, right? Does that make sense to you?
Larissa:
Yeah. Yeah, totally. I have my assets on a ledger, on a cold wallet. But I know how important that is and not to lose the password to it.
Lindsay:
Well, how did you learn how important that was?
Larissa:
Because I'm not an idiot. No, I'm kidding.
Lindsay:
Okay. Rude.
Larissa:
I'm kidding. I lose my fucking passwords all the time. When it comes to the password, singular password that nobody else has to your money... There are other important things that people have that they know not to lose, and they don't lose them like your birth certificate, death certificates, whatever. You just don't lose that shit.
Lindsay:
I just can't wait for all of that to be put on chain, so I don't have to worry about losing that shit. That's more rhyme. Where I'm like, "Why is the onus so much on one person to keep up? Why isn't there better solutions?"
Larissa:
It's a hard problem to solve. I mean, the solutions are centralized.
Lindsay:
It sucks.
Larissa:
How can you have it both ways?
Lindsay:
But that's a shit system for wealth management, I would say.
Larissa:
I suppose there is an opportunity for a technology company to build the solution.
Lindsay Poss interviews Wasim Ahmad, Vault12 on the Seeking Alpha Podcast
Lindsay:
So as we alluded to, the second half of this episode is an interview with Wasim Ahmad, who is co-founder of Vault 12. Vault 12 is pioneering crypto inheritance management, which was the exact problem that we just discussed. They help users secure and pass on their digital wealth to future generations using social custody with decentralized quantum safe encryption. If you don't know what those words mean, don't worry about it. We totally explain the user experience, and what it's like to be on Vault 12.
Their main app, Vault 12 Guard, makes security simple and user-friendly while keeping you in control. It works on any phone, it can be put on any device, super easy to access and use. It's free to start and protects, not just Bitcoin, but other cryptos as well, and personal files such as financial and medical records. The idea of Vault 12 is that you can make your own personal vault to store key information that can be passed on to loved ones or shared across devices to allow you to access all of your most important information. You can pick trusted people or devices as your guardians who together protect your assets in your vault.
The social recovery approach makes recovering or inheriting assets straightforward and without sacrificing privacy. As you listen to this interview, I hope that you learn a little bit more about how to actually manage your digital assets, and how to protect them in any case of emergency or otherwise, but also just strong safety guards for privacy and protection of what you own. So enjoy the interview.
Wasim:
Hi, I'm Wasim Ahmad. I'm one of the co-founders of Vault 12. Vault 12 is a company that does crypto inheritance, and hopefully we'll get to talk about that. My background is in cryptography, commercializing cryptographic solutions including public key cryptography and other things like that. I've been a serial entrepreneur, and I've been in the US for about 30 years, but these days I spend half my time in London.
Lindsay:
I know you split between London and New York. And I'm so, so excited to have you in studio today in New York. You're our first in-studio guest, which is so much fun for me. I'm really happy to have you here. I would love to start with just walking through kind of the inception story for Vault 12 because I know that there's been some interesting crossovers with other crypto companies and other things that were out there. And also that you all are an OG in the space, you've been around for years. So can you just walk me through how Vault 12 came about?
Wasim:
Yes, absolutely. Well, yes. We've been around since 2014, 2015. CEO, Max Skibinsky was part of the blockchain team at Andreessen Horowitz, and he was one of the ones that worked with the Coinbase team to usher in that deal. He was very much around thought leaders in the crypto space in 2012, 2013, that kind of timeframe. They talked about how security, because the blockchain disintermediates institutions and activities that are not needed. Security is now the responsibility of the individual investor. They thought about what happens when there's millions of new investors coming in, and they're going to have to deal with security. What happens if they lose their crypto keys, seed phrases, private keys? And also what happens if they pass away, or if they're incapacitated? Of course, at that time, there really hadn't been these scenarios. You fast-forward 10 years, 10 years of Vault 12 this year we've had-
Lindsay:
So exciting congratulations.
Wasim:
Yeah, thank you. And we've had a pandemic where people could not get to their safety deposit boxes, and we've had many, many cases of people losing their crypto keys, or passing away and their families not being able to access the assets.
Lindsay:
Yes. I actually wrote down that point about individuals being in charge of their own security. In saying that, you're pointing out both an issue and a feature of decentralization. So one of the things that I hadn't thought about previously was just the amount of individual power that's given in blockchain spaces, and through decentralized systems is obviously full power to the individual. And we talk about that a lot on the show, and we talk about that a lot in the industry with your data is your own, your keys are your own, all of this stuff. But you're totally right that I never thought about, well, then you are also responsible for your own backups.
Wasim:
That's right.
Lindsay:
And for protecting your own assets and all of that, which is somewhat of a newer responsibility than traditional wealth management, of course.
Wasim:
There's a nuance though, which is that many people coming into crypto for the first time, they're coming in through Gemini, or Coinbase, or some well-known centralized exchange-
Lindsay:
Entity.
Wasim:
... and so they have accounts, and they have password resets. And actually they don't have their own keys, so they're in a bubble and they're protected, and that's fine, that's great. That is what is needed in the crypto economy as these people come in. But what happens when they hear about some new DeFi token, or some new meme coin, or some new blockchain that they want to access, and it's not on Coinbase, it's not on Gemini, and they have to go somewhere else to go get that? That's when immediately their assets are at risk because unless they backed it up, they're not protected.
Lindsay:
Right. Do you think innovations like passkeys and all of that are going to make this easier eventually? And especially given that you're a security expert, this is kind of more of a security question on my end. And just for the listeners out there, passkeys are kind of biometric identifiers, so either your face, or your thumbprint, or things like that. I've noticed more and more wallets switching to that for logons and whatnot. Do you think that, that is going to help solve any issues in this apace?
Wasim:
Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to call it biometrics, but yeah, however that biometric is kind of delivered, or interacted with I think is key. I mean, that's exactly how we do our kind of basic tier of security, is through biometric access.
Lindsay:
Well, and speaking of, let's actually talk about the product, that's one thing that I would love to do. I talked a bit about this in the intro, but you all use a system of guardianship. And there's just a couple other key features that you have with Vault 12. Can you tell me about how you built out the product, what the key features are, how people actually are using it?
Wasim:
Yeah, absolutely. Let me just set some context just before we jump into the product features. There's many ways to back up your crypto keys. You can engrave it on a steel plate, you can write it down on a piece of paper, which is a very, very bad idea. And you can put it-
Lindsay:
Before we jump into that, I hear you have a story about someone who wrote it on a piece of paper.
Wasim:
There was that Galaxy Digital Trader who created a new crypto wallet, wrote it down a piece of paper while he was eating. And his dog jumped up and ate the ketchup, covered a post-it note-
Lindsay:
Crazy.
Wasim:
So that wallet was useless.
Lindsay:
Yes.
Wasim:
We had the fires in LA, and the people that engraved their crypto keys onto steel plates or steel rods, they weren't allowed to go into that area. Other ways that people back things up is in the cloud, on their computers, on USB drives, or in hardware wallets. All of these scenarios have trade-offs between convenience, and then kind of the risks around security. We've had situations where people change the business relationship with a cloud provider, and suddenly cloud data is not accessible. We saw that with Gemini and Genesis fallout from the FTX.
I had crypto there and it was lost for 18 months. We got every single penny back thanks to the Winklevoss'. This happens and individual devices get lost or they get stolen. There's kind of not a great solution out there for any of these scenarios. And so we set out to build something that didn't expose any of your private details, didn't have a single point of failure like, oh, you lose your device or someone steals it. These are all concepts that are kind of part of decentralization and decentralized apps. So that was the goal, and so that's what we built.
We were in beta in 2018 and 2019, it's been in the app stores, and on Mac Os and Windows. So you download the app, you create a digital vault, and then you put in your crypto key. So it could be your seed phrase, it could be your private key. You could record a video of you with riddles of each of the words. It can be any type of file really, it doesn't really matter. But that is then encrypted, it's split into pieces, and then those pieces go anonymously to what we call guardians. And the guardians can be people, so it could be three friends of yours, three family members, three business partners, or it can be three devices that you have. So I have kind of my spare iPad, and my spare iPhone are also, and my Mac is a guardian for me. And that just means that when I need something really quickly, I can just use my devices and I get hold of it, but everything's still secure.
The benefit of splitting this information up into pieces is that if I lose my phone, or I change my phone every year, I'm on that subscriber plan. When I get my new phone, everything gets recreated. If I lost my phone, I could recreate my vault with all the information on a new brand new phone. So that's the benefit of having guardians, it's distributed backup, so you never lose your information as long as you can get hold of 3 out of 9, or 5 out of 20 or whatever combination you decide.
Lindsay:
I actually was going to ask about that, so I'm glad that you clarified. You can recreate your vault without needing full access to every single shard.
Wasim:
Absolutely. That's right. That's a feature of the underlying cryptography, which is Shamir's secret sharing. This isn't like multi-sig, which everyone knows what assets you're storing, and you're restricted to three shards or five shards, so it's not very flexible. Our solution was designed for that flexibility, and you get to set how many and all of those kind of settings. Once we had that foundation, we were able to say one of those guardians is going to be your technical beneficiary. And the technical beneficiary is the person who is going to receive all of the information about what the crypto key is, or the pin code, or whatever it is, or the passwords that you stored up there. They'll be able to do whatever you wrote in your will, which is a kind of separate thing. That person may or may not be the executor of your will, but it's kind of the technical person that you've trusted to get hold of the assets and distribute them.
Lindsay:
I am newer to learning about cryptography and how it works, so I'm glad to be sitting with an expert. One other kind of question I have just before we move on from how the shards work is, say you do switch over a device, are you able to make an old device obsolete? Does that information then get transferred to the new one? How does that work when a device goes offline?
Wasim:
Yeah, so this idea of sharding has been around for a very long time. And the innovation that we did was not in the cryptography, it was just in the user interface of what you have to worry about and what you don't have to worry about. So you don't have to worry about that, there's actually no information stored on your phone. You can change phones, delete the vault on your phone, or the app and download it again and set up a new vault. You're not going to leak information, that's one thing. And then the second thing, which is more your question, if you decide that you don't want that guardian, you want a different guardian, you fought with your partner, you can just change it in the app. Just change it from one person to another, and behind the scenes it recalculates everything, grabs the shards, redistributes them, and it just takes care of all of that behind the scenes. And that is really the thing that we're doing that is the nerdy stuff that people have done manually for several years, but we kind of just do it in one slot.
Lindsay:
Oh, I love a simplified user experience too. I mean, with all of these issues, and I'm finding it in my conversation with you, you can become so out of your depth so quickly in crypto. It is impossible to understand every single facet of this industry and what happens with it. And so making a solution where I don't need to necessarily fully understand exactly how sharding works, or cryptography, or some of the more complicated privacy concepts, even though I would love to understand those things. Not necessarily needing to, is so critical to just bringing more people in and just making products that are good.
Wasim:
And we're not done with the evolution of cryptocurrency. There'll be another blockchain that is better than what we have. We have a new number one blockchain, Solana. That wasn't the case three years ago. Our solution is completely blockchain independent, it doesn't matter what the asset is on.
Lindsay:
Well, and I love too that it still fully relies on the principles of decentralization, that's the underlying thing that I think makes it so cool. You're keeping the core tenets of blockchain distributed that just without-
Wasim:
We don't know who you are, there's no account. We don't know anything about what you're storing. I mean, there's no servers, it's all peer to peer. That just reduces any risks of leakage of private information, and I think we're living in a world where we're realizing that, yeah, all of that information that we uploaded into social media-
Lindsay:
I know.
Wasim:
... has been used, and in many cases in an unauthorized way.
Lindsay:
I want to switch gears a little bit. And one of the things that we initially connected on was we're talking about what happens when people die? Storing your assets safely from having access to those assets, even just appointing guardians, and building out a plan for those assets. And what we connected on a couple of months ago now, was women and getting women to invest in crypto. And so we had spoken about that from a couple of different perspectives. One was just education in general and getting more women to actually invest. What you're doing is sort of the next step in that as well, which I think you do a great job with the first part too. But Vault 12 is that next step too of okay, so now you've invested. Now, how do you think about protecting your wealth, and protecting your family in any emergency event? And I would love to talk to you about kind of why women are a good target market for Vault 12? And why you're passionate about getting women into crypto, which is a thing that I'm a huge fan of about you?
Wasim:
I want to paint this as they're a target market and we're going to hit that one and then move on to the next target market. I think the reality is when we look at sort of society and who in society takes care of things like making sure there's a will. 65% is women, 35% of guys. They're already thinking about how can we lower the risk of losing everything, losing what we have, keeping our wealth secure and safe for when we need it? I think the opportunity here is something that has been overlooked by the media across the board. If you say crypto to someone, you immediately start thinking about crypto bros, billionaires, millionaires, Lamborghinis, those kinds of things. The big promise of the blockchain and cryptocurrency is, it's not the price of Bitcoin 100,000 or going to 200,000, it's that you can buy a dollar of Bitcoin.
Lindsay:
Yes, absolutely.
Wasim:
You can buy $20 a month and when that goes up, your $20 goes up too. And that I think is a concept that many, many people can work with, but not a lot of education about it. I know there are some politicians who've talked about it like Cory Booker, but it doesn't make the big news. And I think one of the killer use cases of blockchain has definitely been remittances and sending money back. But I think women in general, in any society who are safeguarding assets and resources for their families, this is a key thing. This is a way to preserve what you have, make a little automatic investment every week, every month, and then just make sure that it's backed up.
Lindsay:
Yes. I wrote a piece about this earlier in the year, but you're totally right that women tend to make the purchasing decisions within a household. Women hold estimates range, but hold something like 60 to 85% of the purchasing power in general. They tend to be the ones making the decisions on healthcare, on groceries, on kind of the more practical matters of everyday life. When it comes to now having DeFi and getting more access to regular investing tools, I think you're totally right that we'll see more of a shift in more women in particular coming on board as there's much easier access to less risky investment opportunities. So I think Bitcoin is definitely still seen as somewhat risky, although I think we're getting over that hump slowly but surely as it reaches its, what? 15th year. But I think that just having access to more tools that have the $20 buy-in, the $1 buy-in or whatever it may be, wealth management tools, DeFi, all of that, I do firmly think that more women will start making those purchasing decisions to moving towards that. And so something like Vault 12, and thinking about how to protect that or encourage that in a safe way is very important.
Wasim:
Absolutely. Absolutely. And there was an article in the Wall Street Journal about banks, and traditional finance institutions who have been the biggest blocker to the crypto economy, now knocking on the door and trying to get in through the door and at some point offer different ways that their retail customers can expose themselves to cryptocurrency. And we need the market structure bill in August to be signed. And then I think that will be a sea change because then we will see TradFi organizations bring real kind of consumer-centric offerings. And that's where I think we'll see a lot more people-
Lindsay:
Definitely.
Wasim:
... kind of coming into crypto.
Lindsay:
Well, and so that actually ties back to one of the things that I really like in your ethos about making an easy consumer experience. A lot of crypto has talked about onboarding the next billion, and how do we get all these people, all this stuff? The reality is you have to have a good and interesting tool that is easy to use and access. I don't think that it's a major mystery how we get people in. A lot of it has to do with education policy for sure, and then the third kind of prong of that is just having cool stuff that people want to use.
I think I've told this story on this podcast before, but I actually was very upset when ChatGPT came out, and they had 100 million users within a month, and I thought, "I have been in crypto for five years now, and we can't reach any type of kind of market mass adoption movement, and here's generative AI, another concept that's difficult to grasp on a technological level, that was able to do this in a month just because they had a product that was easily accessible on any device and easy to use." So that was a real eyeopening moment for me of like, wow, we have got to do a better job for consumers. But I like your point about banks kind of working on that as well because as much as I'm a big believer in decentralization and in cryptocurrencies, we live in a world that hasn't moved away from traditional banking systems, and isn't going to anytime soon. And so allowing the tools that are available there to a very, very small percentage of those customers to actually be available to a lot more customers, I think is something that, hopefully, is what actually unlocks people getting comfortable using crypto.
Wasim:
Yeah. And I think Fidelity has done a good job of that. I mean, they're not a bank, so they've had more leeway to do things. But you can buy ETFs where you're not really buying cryptocurrency, but you are getting the upside and [inaudible 00:25:50]-
Lindsay:
Exposure. Yeah.
Wasim:
Yeah. You're getting the exposure, but you can also buy crypto. So expect all of the high street banks to do the same thing. And then going back to ChatGPT, once people are getting very, very familiar and comfortable with AI... Well, once you have your AI doing your shopping for you, they're going to pay for it With crypto, that is going to be the currency of AI, that is also going to be an accelerator for cryptocurrency.
Lindsay:
You and I both fall into this category of being excited technologists, for sure. Time-wise, what do you think is going to be the tipping point to where we actually get to wake up and use this technology in our daily lives? We're going to play this back when the sea change does happen, and we're going to see how right you were, so it's okay to be totally wrong. But I just keep wondering, is it 1 year, is it 10 years, is it seven?
Wasim:
I think a year from August when the law goes in, within that year, we'll start to see the first retail consumer products coming out from traditional financial institutions. It'll be trading, right? It's not going to be anything more exciting. These people have not spent a lot of time thinking about crypto in the last few years, but then after that, when they are all competing on the same kind of products, you'll see insurance, you'll see life insurance, you'll start to see products that are kind of similar to products that exist today, but have some advantages because they're blockchain-based. I think inheritance is also one of those categories, so I'm expecting within the next year to see people think seriously about this.
And then I think then the next wave, the exciting wave is with AI. And as you said, the user interfaces of crypto products are terrible. I'm not sure that there's enough coders in the world to code themselves or UX designers in the world to design ourselves out of this. I think we need AI to be the layer on top of these crypto apps, kind of deal with consumers so that they don't have to think through all these complicated options. I think that is a moment, maybe for all apps, but certainly crypto apps that is waiting around the corner.
Lindsay:
I want to end with just one final question about kind of you and your philosophy. We have spent a lot of time just today and in general covering all of this possibility, and promise, and excitement in this industry, and that is something that I certainly hold onto in the dark times of the industry. How do you ride the ups and downs of crypto and remain positive?
Wasim:
There's no question that there's been troubles and challenges in the last five, six years. But we're at a moment where we're getting the right kinds of regulations in place, put in place by smart people who've spent a lot of time thinking about this. And I think once those are in place, then market forces will dictate how far and wide that goes. But this isn't going away, it's out of Pandora's box and it's going to be part of how we do business just like tapping your phone to pay for stuff is relatively normal. It's maybe not normal for my parents, but it's normal for a lot of people. This evolution is happening, so yeah.
Lindsay:
Yes. And it's exciting. Sometimes it's sad, but mostly it's exciting for me. I genuinely love working in this industry every day, I think it's a lot of fun. Thank you so, so much for coming on today. I had so much fun in this discussion.
Wasim:
Thank you. My pleasure.
Lindsay:
Yeah. Where can people find you, follow you, find the work of Vault 12?
Wasim:
Yeah. So our website-
Lindsay:
Give all links.
Wasim:
... vault12.com, you can download the app Vault 12 Guard, it's on the App store, Google Play Store, that's kind of the best way. And if you want to see our meme tweets, you can see them on X.
Lindsay:
There you go. I like that. I still call it Twitter secretly. Thank you, this was lovely.
Wasim:
Great.
Lindsay:
Yay.
Crypto Inheritance Update: April 2025 Part 2
- Regs Update.
- Vault12 Guard Product Updates.
- New to Crypto Inheritance? Start here.
The Digital Commonwealth Summit with Dr. Lisa Cameron, former MP, Tom Duff Gordon, Coinbase and Wasim Ahmad, Vault12 discussing US crypto policies rippling around the world.The Digital Commonwealth Summit
Update
April was a jam packed month - Paris Blockchain Week, confirmation of the chairman of the SEC, Stablecoin bills, The Digital Commonwealth Summit in London and then the Hill & Valley Forum in Washington DC - so here is part 2 of our April update.
Key Takeaways:
- Paris Blockchain Week was disappointing, with an all pervading sense of depressing dread seeping everywhere.
Companies in Europe have to go through 2,000 pages of regulations and find a way through — once they do that they get access to markets in Europe, which is a plus. Companies outside of Europe - other than the big fintech platforms will not spend anytime considering Europe as a base. Even Ledger, a French company that derives 60% of its revenue from the US (pre-tarriffs) is not happy with European regulations and will be focused on the US market - remember you should always back up your ledger in Vault12 Guard :) - UK - Lot’s of positive but very slow progress. I had to rebuke the FCA for stifling growth and strangling innovation in Great Britain. Luckily there are some stalwart leaders pushing the pro-innovation pro-digital asset agenda - people like Dr. Lisa Cameron, USUK Alliance, Coinbase and Stand with Crypto UK, Katie Herries together with support from the upper echelons of the UK government like Baroness Uddin, Lord Holmes and Lord Iain McNichol. The opportunity for the UK as a differentiated digital assets hub hinges on alignment and regulatory passporting with the US, this much is becoming clear to many more — need it percolate up to the Government, regulators and lawmakers on all sides.
- US - Finally, Chairman Paul Atkins took the helm of the SEC and was sworn in this week. He has reaffirmed his priorities for cleaning up the crypto market. The upcoming Market Structure Bill (aka FIT21) draft is due this week, a comprehensive bill that defines how crypto markets are regulated, the roles of security and utility tokens, and other market-defining capabilities that will eventually become the standard for worldwide crypto regulation. This is widely expected to be signed into law in August 1, 2025.Impact: While these bills and regulations are being worked on, attitudes and behaviour towards crypto assets may start to change; however, it is important to note that since no laws have changed, until the Market Structure Bill is in place, we remain in nebulous territory with respect to how tokens can be freely disseminated.
The media has reported that firms are applying pressure to consolidate all the bills into a single one and get that passed in one go. While this reflects the danger of losing the attention of lawmakers - multiple bills have been developed in parallel to ensure that the repeal of any one bill by a future administration will not bring the whole crypto market crashing down. - Was in DC this week and got to hear from the Senators and Congressmen, who are behind the efforts to bring clarity to crypto markets - GENIUS, STABLE bills and the upcoming Market Structure Bill. Also got to sit across from Crypto/AI Czar, David Sacks at the Hill & Valley Forum.
- Working on something exciting in DC - more to say in May.
- Stars Podcast:
https://x.com/TheStarsPodcast/status/1914707698408... - CryptoMondays Global Podcast
https://vault12.com/blog/podcast/podcast-crypto-in...
Podcasts:
Vault12 Guard Product Updates
April 2025 - Version 2.6.1
- New "Manage My Vault" page enables you subscribe to Vault12 plans using app store or crypto payments, in addition, provides a place to transport files directly into your Vault.
- Universal file transportation. You can now securely transport assets to your Vault from any device. Visit the Manage My Vault site to upload password backups, secret documents, PINs, and—of course—your crypto keys from Windows, Android, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and more. Files are instantly transferred to your Vault with zero traces left behind once you close your browser tab. It’s simple, fast, and secure—just like the Vault12 Guard app.
- New Actions Dashboard. Stay on top of every important request from your Guardians or the Owner you support. Recover assets, access restored files, or configure Inheritance - all just a tap away. You can even play voice memos directly from the main screen.
- Various bug fixes and performance improvements for the smoothest experience.
New to Crypto
Ah, April – spring is in the air, taxes are due in many regions, and peoples' fancies turn to both love and long-term financial planning! The first step towards putting your long-term financial house in order is to visualize your inheritance goals. Not sure where to start? Vault12 has an article that breaks down for you the difference between estate planning and crypto inheritance planning. You will be more carefree after you plan for what happens to your crypto after you're gone.
Crypto acceptance is growing not only at the level of national governments, but also with smaller localities. This month, Panama City, Panama announced that they will accept crypto payments for municipal taxes, fines, and permits. Another sign to get ready for digital payment opportunities by having your own digital wallet!
As the crypto financial industry grows, so does the scale of crypto hacks and other crimes. In fact, The Street reports that Q1 of 2025 was the worst quarter ever for crypto hacks. (This was largely due to the enormous Bybit exchange hack in February, but there have been plenty more.) You can't control the security of crypto exchanges, but you can control your own security. Make sure you know the basics about how to protect your digital assets.
Global Ripple Effects: How the shift in US policy and regulation is reshaping Digital Assets
Panel: Dr Lisa Cameron, UKUS Crypto Alliance, Tom Duff Gordon, Coinbase; Wasim Ahmad, Vault12 Moderator: The Hon Albert Isola CBE, ISOLAS LLP
*** Special Offer for The Digital Commonwealth Mansion House Summit Attendees ***
Promo codes for Vault12 Guard
The iOS codes are good for 1 year subscription at no cost, then will revert to standard price for Inheritance plan. iOS codes can be redeemed in the Apple App Store.
The Android codes are good for 90 days subscription at no cost, then will revert to standard price for Inheritance plan. Android codes are redeemed when selecting and paying for the Inheritance plan in the app.
Instructions for how to redeem here.
Code: ALPHA25
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=1451596986&code=ALPHA25
Android: Enter code ALPHA25 when you select the Inheritance plan
The Digital Commonwealth
- Dr Lisa Cameron, UKUS Crypto Alliance,
- Tom Duff-Gordon, Coinbase;
- Wasim Ahmad, Vault12
Albert Isola:
First of all, I could just ask my great team here to introduce ourselves. Lisa, do you want to kick us off?
Dr. Lisa Cameron:
Yeah, sure. I'm Dr. Lisa Cameron. So didn't start off in digital assets, as you know. Psychologist by trade, which was well needed when I was an MP in the House of Commons for 10 years. Moved into this sector through chairing of the All-Party Parliamentary Group in digital assets and cryptocurrency for a period of four years prior to the election last year. And since that time, I've been leading up the UK-US Crypto Alliance, and also the Global Legislators Forum, which brings together MPs to educate them on the sector.
Albert Isola:
Thank you very much. Wasim, would you like to?
Wasim Ahmad:
Hi, I'm Wasim Ahmad. I have a startup called Vault12. We're the pioneers in crypto inheritance. As a small eight-person startup, I've been very, very involved in a lot of the regulations in the US Securities Clarity Act, the Token Taxonomy Act, the upcoming Market Structure Act. And later this week, I'm going to meet with the SEC to give them my views, or our views, on utility versus security, and all of the unintended consequences that come from having incomplete and unclear regulations. And then I've also been involved in UK regulations through CryptoUK.
Albert Isola:
Tom?
Tom Duff Gordon:
Hi, everyone. Great to be here. So I'm Tom Duff Gordon. I'm the VP of International Policy at Coinbase. So I look after all the relationships that we have with government and regulators outside of the US. I've been at Coinbase for three years, and prior to that I was in TradFi. I was at Credit Suisse for 15 years. Looking forward to the conversation.
Albert Isola:
Thanks very much. Well, as you can see, we've got a wonderful team who have direct experience of the US market. And I think before we come back home to the UK, I thought a good idea to kick off with the US.
Could you talk us through some, Wasim, if I can start with you, your personal experiences of the US? And by that I mean we know where we are today. It's been a difficult ride these past years, and the speed of the first 100 days of the new administration, is it as good as it looks?
Wasim Ahmad:
I think it's much, much better. I mean, the last four years have been terrible, just like an ice age, with the administration going out of their way to sort of persecute companies. So that is behind us.
There is an awful lot of activity going on behind the scenes, and maybe since we follow it minute by minute, it looks like there's an awful lot, and maybe other people don't necessarily see all of that. But there are several bills going through Congress. The bills are stacked up so that in the future a future administration can't just revoke some law and then everything collapses. So they're all stacked up. Market structure bill is overall stable. Coin bills come underneath, they're covered in the market structure bill, but they're separate bills. Security Clarity Act, which is all about securities and utilities, separate act, covered in the market structure bill, but a separate bill so that you can't just revoke any of it. So that is all the stuff that's going to go through Congress.
And the timeline for that is very, very quick. Those are the stablecoin bills are going through imminently. The first draft of the market structure bill, we'll see this week. That is expected to be signed into law on August 1st, which is the last day that that set of politicians will be working in the summer. So there is a very kind of accelerated timeframe.
And then the other thing is, there are regulations that are internal, or under the control of the SEC, and those are things that don't need to be debated in the Houses. They can do that themselves. And so that's things like Safe Harbor 2.0. And so there's various, and we've seen various things like that. Someone mentioned SAB 121 earlier. So these things, they have already knocked out the troublesome aspects. And they've also, thank God, knocked out all of the pending lawsuits that were sort of making crypto an ice age. So that's kind of where we're at right now.
Albert Isola:
Tom, your firm is one of the recipients of some of that treatment that Wasim is referring to. Do you want to talk us through how your perspective is today, and how that's changed in the recent months?
Tom Duff Gordon:
Yeah, happy to. I think Wasim did a great job of explaining what's going on. That is a 180 degree turnaround from obviously what we had before. I think the previous panelists referred to it. We had regulation by enforcement. Effectively, this was a motorway where you kept getting speeding tickets but no one told you how fast you could drive. And actively we had the banks being discouraged from providing finance right to Web3 and crypto.
Since then, we've got a new administration. Coinbase down with crypto, a bunch of the other US players. We did a lot in the campaign to try and make this the most pro crypto Congress that we've ever seen, and we're really pleased that we have that. And as Wasim was describing, now they're moving at pace to deliver the regulatory clarity that has been so missing for the last four years.
And just because of the size of the US, if the US isn't providing that clarity, is actively working to slow the industry down, that has a huge impact in the US, but also globally, because of the weight and the role and the influence of the US in some of the global standard setting bodies.
I want to pick up, if I may-
Albert Isola:
Please do.
Tom Duff Gordon:
... something that Wasim said, which is really important. The headlines are on the market structure bill and on stablecoins. And that's really important and they're moving very fast, and we should get clarity on those, we hope, even before the summer break. But something which is less noticed but we think is really kind of important, is that the SEC is doing a huge amount of work behind the scenes just on their rule book. And so, we and others are working really actively with them on tokenization.
And here's the thing. The US are not going to spend a bunch of time setting up small sandboxes. They are going to move straight to providing a clear rule book for how to trade existing equity debt and funds on chain. We're about a year away from that, eight months to a year away from that, where you could be taking out of your phone this time next year or in a few months and trading on chain, Tesla, Apple, etc.
So we need, I think in the UK, also in Europe and other places, to look carefully at what we're doing. Are we just putting everything in a sandbox and then just hoping to kind of experiment? Or are we going to match the US for the speed and the kind of clarity with which they're now moving? I think clarity legislatively, very important for stablecoins. That's going to be a big moment for the global market. I think also market structure, figuring out what the SEC does versus the CFTC, but also look under the hood and actually you'll see a huge amount of very ambitious, very exciting work that the SEC is doing. And I think we need to talk about that more, because that's also a big opportunity for the UK with the capital markets here if we can really pursue tokenization and be one of the leaders in the field.
Albert Isola:
So you're comfortable, Tom, just picking up on one of your points, that the work that is going into all of this legislation is sufficiently detailed not to have the unintended consequences that we all fear because of the speed that it's being done.
Tom Duff Gordon:
I think at the moment we're confident. Obviously, it's not all said and done until we kind of get the President's signature. And equally there will be gaps in the text and technical things that will be filled in by the Fed, and by the SEC, and the CFTC, and the OCC, and others. So we've still got a certain amount of road to run on this. But so far I think it looks positive. It's not just we've got David Sachs in the White House, but actually the folks running the CFTC and the SEC and others, we've got experts across the administrations and the different authorities, all that have a pro crypto mindset. So that we're hopeful with good dialogue that we have with them, we'll get to a good place on that. And yeah, we feel confident and optimistic at this stage.
Albert Isola:
Lisa, you have a huge amount of experience of the political systems. What is your take on the speed with which things are happening in the US, and the speed with which that impact will be felt across other shores?
Dr. Lisa Cameron:
Yeah. I mean, I think it's a very good thing, actually, that they're moving at pace now. And I think, well obviously, politically there's a necessity to that. There's a majority in the different constitutional aspects of the legislature, so it's very important to move that at a pace if you want to get things done. It's very nice to see, actually, a jurisdiction where things are getting done very quickly.
Legislation is never perfect anyway, so it's always amended at some point, or reviewed or refined. So I think we shouldn't get too caught up in having to wait until things are perfect at first go. Because I think the important thing is the clarity that it's giving and the intention. And actually, when I was last in the US, just at the change of the administration, you could actually feel the excitement and the exhilaration that this was a complete shift, and that actually it was opening up momentum for a new kind of digital era. And I think this could be felt, not just by the industry, but the population were very excited as well, that things were moving at pace and that they were getting things done, and that once again they felt the US was going to be in a leadership position on innovation and technology. Which I think is very important for growth. It's very important for growth. So of course we need to also move at pace in the UK.
I just came back last week from Latvia, speaking with legislators there, and also some members from the European parliaments who are in attendance, who are already saying that they want to revise MiCA now. They're going to have to do that, because of the shift in gear by the US to remain competitive. I think if you'd asked me last year, I would've said, oh, I think MiCA being so clear and there already and having been worked through, sets us back in a sense in the UK. But actually, I think because they're now going to have to review it, we kind of have a window of opportunity now that we could move, and become more competitive again. And I think that that's one of the things that's very important for the UK is now to take some impetus from the work that's being done in the US. And some of the meetings we're having with the US Crypto Alliance is to bring the MPs together in the UK Parliament with those in the US, so that they can see what's being done, and they can see the benefit for the UK in striding ahead as well.
Albert Isola:
And you do a lot of work in Parliament in pushing and promoting this agenda. Are you comfortable that there is a chance that the UK parliamentary system will wake up? I mean, since you left, I haven't really seen a champion of the industry since you left Parliament. Do you believe that there is sufficient interest with all the other issues that they're dealing with today?
Dr. Lisa Cameron:
Yeah. I think there's so much work that has to be done actually. And I think you're right. We need to have a number of champions in the House of Commons and the House of Lords so that questions are raised every week. Questions are raised to the Prime Minister. Debates are held to speak about jobs of the future and the importance of this industry to speak about how it's going to contribute to growth across the UK. So that there's a lot that still has to be done. I mean, we're still working very hard with MPs to educate them, and there's still a long, long way to go actually.
We had a number of legislators at the Academy, the Polkadot Academy just last month in Lucerne. So we basically took them back to school to learn about blockchain and gave them certificates at the end. But even when, and I, because I do some work with Code Lab as well, when we had the event with them just before Christmas and we were speaking about tokenization of property, some of the MPs were saying, "Well, what happens to the property when it's tokenized? Is it okay?" As though it affected the foundations or something of the property.
So we still have quite a lot of kind of basic education. And I think we could see at the Academy as well. Each step that we take is another step in the right direction. But I think we do need to really come together as an industry to make sure that we're engaging with our MPs, that we're showing them how important this industry is, and that we are in Parliament as much as possible to get that message across. Because I think the UK does have a window of opportunity, but I don't want to see that window close.
Albert Isola:
I think we'd all agree. You're absolutely right that the window of opportunity is now. I mean, MiCA on one side, the US movements in more recent months. Wasim, you're also quite engaged in the UK aspects of pushing the agenda that we were talking about. How confident are you that we will make progress in the way that we'd all like?
Wasim Ahmad:
Well, I think my experience with the FCA trying to bring my company into the UK has been depressing. I mean, it's great that we have MiCA, we have 2000 pages of legislation that takes, you know, no startup is going to go to Europe. I mean, large market marketplace companies may go do that, like Circle. But no startup is going to go do that. And I feel like Paris Blockchain Week just a week ago was very, very despondent, and I see the same despondency here.
It can't take nine months to get approved. It can't take the FCA telling you they don't like the look of your management team. And I certainly don't want to spend time giving all of that documentation to a government agency. It's not like that in the US. And I think the guidelines are going to be very, very clear. I think the opportunity, going to the very upbeat keynote that we just heard from Elise, where she talked about passporting and connecting in and integrating with existing frameworks around the world is very, very important. But the most important framework that Britain should be integrating with is the US frameworks. It lays out very fast and efficient ways to get to market, and it's not what the FCA is doing today, which is basically stifling growth and strangling innovation. So shame on you, FCA. It's not what the British public deserve. It's not what the government is asking for. So we definitely need to move ahead. And the opportunity is right there. It's the opportunity for Crypto Britannia.
Albert Isola:
That's interesting. I mean, I think if you look at passporting as a concept, in Gibraltar, we've got passporting into the UK financial services systems. And we agreed while I was still there, 2023, passporting for Gibraltar, the UK to carry on post Brexit, which is the only part of the world that can passport. It's still not done. And we're a tiny, tiny, very, very small jurisdiction just seeking to carry on doing what we were doing before. And it's in the Financial Services Act of the UK legislation, but we're still transitioning under the previous regime because it's so complex.
If you think about the US and the UK, where we didn't have or don't have passporting in traditional finance, is that not a bridge too far to have a hope that we're going to be able to get passporting from the UK to the US in an area that has never been passported before? Left alone, two partners that have never passported before in financial services?
Wasim Ahmad:
Well, I think the idea has to be thrown out there. I mean, the will-
Albert Isola:
Overall, failists.
Wasim Ahmad:
I don't know. I mean, it's going to take politicians, it's going to take lawmakers, it's going to take tech companies to lobby for this. But it makes an awful lot of sense from the British government's perspective to encourage American companies to come over here. And it's not just American companies, it's American venture funds. Same problem, same exact problem, same exact entanglement with the FCA. And then to give that benefit to British companies who want to expand into the US.
Albert Isola:
I think you're absolutely right. And I believe that it is an ambition worth having and something working towards. There's no question about that.
Tom, you've obviously got a significant presence in the UK and also in the US. You've recently been given the last license here. What's your experience and your ambition in terms of how that relationship between the UK and the US can foster?
Tom Duff Gordon:
Well, I'm optimistic like both of you are. And I think what we do need is now we're seeing digital asset frameworks begin to emerge in all sorts of different jurisdictions. We have to do that work to try and make them speak to each other. To give you a really tangible example, right now in the EU, there's a very live debate in Brussels with regard to US fiat-backed stablecoins that are licensed both in the EU but also they're licensed in the US. And the question is, how on earth do you make sure that we've got similarity of regulation? We don't create issues whereby you have more of incentive to redeem in one jurisdiction versus the other. Perhaps rebalancing the reserves that sit behind these kind of stablecoins becomes complicated. And it's becoming a real topic, because we had MiCA before we had anything else. So we have to preserve the global issuance, double issuance model of stablecoins. Stablecoins are supposed to go cross-border.
A lot of these markets we're talking about tokenizing our global markets. And so I think it's the ambition for the US and the UK to try and develop regulations that are similar. I think Elise made a great point. I came in as she was speaking. There will never be perfect, perfect harmonization. There shouldn't be. There's going to have to be an aspect of tailoring. And I, working for a Swiss financial institution, I knew about that firsthand, given the difficulties that Swiss have getting access to the EU.
So there's never perfect one to one, but if you have enough similarity, you can have substituted compliance, you can have equivalents, these types of things. Particularly for these global markets, for things like stablecoins, we should really strive to make that happen.
If I may, I do think there's one area in particular where we have to look at what the US is doing, and then we have to draw a lesson and a conclusion for the UK. And that's the US political decision not to do CBDC. So they're not doing it. Neither retail CBDC nor a wholesale CBDC. We shouldn't expect to see that anytime soon in the US. That means as they bring these capital markets on chain and funds on chain etcetera, the settlement asset is not going to be a wholesale CBDC. It might be some form of tokenized commercial bank deposit, but it's likely to be a stablecoin. So we've got to get the stablecoin regs right. And also have them talk and be harmonized with what the US is doing, I think if we want the capital markets here in the City of London to really be able to be future leaning and to take advantage of that opportunity.
So we can continue to pilot CBDCs here. I think that makes sense. We're not saying either or, but we're certainly saying preserve the optionality and have a good framework for stablecoins. Because I think we're going to see the US leaning very hard on them, both in the kind of payment space, but also in the wholesale space. And so, that's an area where I think the mental model of the UK and Europe and others was moving towards more of a kind of closed system, single central bank ledger, that type of stuff. I think we need to be starting thinking about public permissionless blockchains, regulated stablecoins, etc. Because that is the direction of travel that we perceive on the US side.
Albert Isola:
Do you think, Tom, that stablecoins should be given a focus on a priority politically and from a regulatory perspective here in the UK as the first big push towards getting closer to that industry?
Tom Duff Gordon:
Yeah, certainly. We think that that's incredibly important. I think the government are going to announce legislation. I would imagine this week would be a good week for them to do it. I don't know, but let's see if that comes. And that will include stablecoins, and it will give then a formal mandate to both the FCA and the Bank of England to kind of move forwards.
I think loads of people in this room have looked at the propositions that the FCA and the Bank of England on stablecoins put forward, and a lot of us had some concerns that what was being put forward in the UK looked different to what we see all around the world. Whether you look at Hong Kong, whether you look at Abu Dhabi, whether you look at Singapore, whether you look at Europe, whether you look at any of these markets, we were proposing something particularly from the Bank of England that was more conservative and more restrictive on stablecoins than anybody else.
And I think we've got to look really carefully and consider whether that is the right approach for us to be taking, particularly when stablecoins if we get them right and not risky assets. This is not fractional reserve banking, this is fully reserved assets. And I think there is a way to regulate these to make sure that we take out the risks, we capitalize them appropriately, we get the reserves in the right place, and then we can see their growth. And they're here already, stablecoins, settling trillions of dollars of transactions already and present a big opportunity for the UK. So I think it should be a priority. And we should, I think, try and create a framework which is a bit less capital intensive than the MiCA framework. Which I think was developed in part to ensure that there was kind of strong adoption of the digital euro. Whereas here, I think we need to really push stablecoins.
Albert Isola:
And a risk of getting it wrong and really finding ourselves in trouble. Do we see that?
Dr. Lisa Cameron:
Yeah. I mean, I think that that's the possibility. And I think that's why it's very, very important that we have the meetings that we're proposing in the Parliament. And so we have with the UK-US Crypto Alliance, we have a series of meetings, somewhat stablecoins actually, coming up. Bringing the legislators together from Congress with UK MPs because we want them to see what's happening elsewhere.
Because sometimes when you're in Westminster it's like being in a bubble. And when I speak to people they say, "Oh well, but London is the financial capital of the world. We are miles ahead." And I'm saying, well actually, businesses are going to the US again, businesses are going to the UAE. There are issues that we need to address. And until they speak to legislators from other jurisdictions, because all MPs are quite competitive people, then they realize what's happening elsewhere.
Then they'll go back and say, "Wait a minute, we need to be doing X, Y, and Z." And we need to be doing it quickly because this is what's happening in the UAE, this is what's happening in the US, this is the direction of travel, and we want to continue to be a hub here, and we want to continue to have a leadership role globally. And I think all the MPs across party will want to sign up to making sure that the UK is in a leadership role. And it's just a matter of them having the information and understanding in actuality where we sit now. And that this window is open, but we can't afford to just rest on our laurels and say, "Well, London has always been fantastic. It always will be." We need to do the work now, and we need to help them to shift the dial actually.
Albert Isola:
When I spoke for one of the first times on what we were doing in Gibraltar in terms of the blockchain framework, the legal framework we introduced in 2018. In 2017 I was speaking at a conference in Shoreditch, and I mentioned the word regulation. And I got booed by half the audience who were all not as smart looking as any of you here. But in those days, it was rather a hippie thing. And I talked there about international standards. And you've referenced IOSCO, FATF, Financial Stability Board. Do you think, Lisa, with your experience, that there is any chance of grappling onto those international standards that each of those organizations are promoting as a baseline?
Dr. Lisa Cameron:
Yeah. I mean, I think we should always have reference to those standards. And I think interoperability and having shared standards is the end goal. But I think we have a bit of work to do before that, even on a baseline. Companies can't get bank accounts here. How can you pay staff and set up a company? Or if you can't have access to banking? If your process here with the FCA is taking 18 months to two years, and you can go to Dubai and do the same thing in four months, why are new start companies going to stay in the UK?
I mean, I've been explaining to people, it's not like in the Parliament. It's not like you have a factory down the road where you have bricks and mortar in the UK and you have to stay here no matter what happens. If companies are wanting to be in this sector, they're global. They can pick up their computer and their phone and go somewhere else. And the times have changed and we need to change with those times to stay competitive.
Albert Isola:
Wasim, you didn't express any confidence that that change would come. What do you think people like us here need to do to make that change happen?
Wasim Ahmad:
Well, I don't see that change in the works right this second, but I think once we see some of those laws signed in in the US, that's a concrete turning point, and I feel like that will... The beauty of where Britain is right now. So Europe, they've done their thing, they've called their shots. So maybe they'll be stuck in a revised kind of situation.
The US will crystallize its regulations in the next sort of, let's say six months. Britain has an opportunity. The FCA timeline, which is 2026, we'll have sort of our ducks in a row. Originally, I thought that was way too far. I thought it would be great if Britain had the right regulatory structure before the US. Now I believe actually it's a perfect opportunity that they can sync up with things like the market structure bill with some of the topics and issues that Tom mentioned around stablecoins.
So I think, yes. I am upbeat now. I'm more upbeat now than I was in December last year. Because there is an accelerated timeframe, and I think we have an opportunity. And the opportunity for Britain is very much, or even London, is to maintain that differentiated approach to financial services. That's what made London the financial center of the world. And we went into Europe and things got a little more sort of the same everywhere. We need to get back to that. So we have to have differentiated offerings here.
Albert Isola:
Fascinating. Tom, what's your perspective on Wasim's optimism?
Tom Duff Gordon:
No, I look, I agree, I agree. I think the UK is going to get there. We need to get it right. And I don't want us to rush to something and get it wrong. I think we should take the lessons from MiCA, take the lessons from the US, etc. But what I would love to see, and I think we're going to see it this week, I think from the government, some signals of renewed interest, a bit of momentum. I think we need to have more focus, more prioritization on this topic. Let's lean in. Let's look at it carefully. And let's make sure that we land the right set of rules in good time next year.
So I think that's more like, it's probably a little bit on the late side, but I think it's still okay, and let's just get it right. I think that's the kind of the key thing here. And if we do do that, then we're also hopeful that some of the existing bits of UK regulation that have kind of been used to be the thing that controls crypto, absent kind of licensing, can be recalibrated and turned down.
So we have things called fin prom, financial promotions regime. Some of you in the audience will be kind of very familiar with it. And that's been used to a good effect, I would say, potentially by the FCA from their perspective in keeping a lid on this industry. But I think as we regulate it and we license it and we move forward, I think there is going to be a really important opportunity to kind of see have we got that right. And particularly the idea that we have cooling off periods. If anyone wants to open an account with Coinbase, some of the rules around that are extremely difficult frankly. And there's a 24-hour cooling off period, and we don't see that anywhere else in the world. And so I think there's an opportunity to get the rules right. And then there's an opportunity to look at the existing rules and then see whether we can tweak those to order it to encourage adoption in this space.
Albert Isola:
So you'd agree with Wasim that it's best to wait to see what the US comes out with, and ensure that they are in some way not the same but synced in terms of learning from their lessons?
Tom Duff Gordon:
I think we can work in parallel. And that's by the way, what's happening. I think there'll be consultations and discussion papers from the FCA and the Bank of England throughout this year. My team is kind of responding to a host of those, they have been kept very, very busy. So I think it'll happen in parallel, but we will have the benefit of looking at probably the market structure and the stablecoin bill come the middle of this year or into Q3, and that is before the cement dries on the UK regime early next year. So I think let's keep moving in parallel, and let's try and learn the lessons where appropriate.
Albert Isola:
Fantastic. And lots of hope there. I'm delighted to hear. And Mr. Bowater is standing up telling us that it's time to go. Lisa, Wasim, Tom, thank you very much. Absolutely fascinating. Thank you.
Media
Vault12 Guard provides inheritance, and secure decentralized backup of seed phrases and/or private keys, giving Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH).
View all articlesHow to subscribe to Vault12 Guard with $ETH and $VGT (and get a 50% Discount)
Updated: Apple now allows external crypto payments
Overview
It's easy to set up a subscription plan for Vault12 Guard, whether you use the Apple iOS App Store or Google Play Store, or you want to use cryptocurrency like Ethereum (ETH) or the Vault Guardian Token (VGT) to pay for a subscription plan.
This article takes you through the step by step process to subscribe using VGT or ETH on the same device as your digital Vault. You can see an overview of the steps in the this video:
Step 1. Go to pay.vault12.com on your mobile device
To start the subscription or plan upgrade, visit pay.vault12.com. The following flow shows you how to complete your plan subscription on the same device as your Vault12 Guard app.
Further down in this article, you can see the flow if you are using two different devices, e.g., a mobile with the Guard app and a laptop to browse the payment website.
View Details
From the pay.vault12.com page, click on the link "Have the Guard app on this device?"
Now, press the "Connect to Vault" button to choose the Vault you will be creating a subscription for.
Step 2. Connect to Vault12 Guard app
When prompted, Open the Guard app.
Press OK to confirm a successful connection.
Step 3. Choose Plan
Now on your browser, choose a plan.
For full Inheritance and Backup capabilities, choose the "Inheritance" plan.
Step 4. Plan Payment
Now you will see the plan details, including length of subscription and the renewal date.
To make the payment, open your digital wallet that holds your VGT or ETH funds, and scan the QR code. This will automatically fill in the details of the amount, and the destination address for the payment.
Automatic Discount for $VGT
If your wallet does not use QR codes, then you will need to type in the details of the destination address, and the payment amount.
Note: The payment amount must be entered exactly as shown on the screen - please double check the amount carefully to prevent typos. (Using the QR code, you never have to enter this information.)
If you have selected VGT as the payment type, then you will automatically receive a 50% discount, and the amount shown will be the discounted price.
Step 5. Payment Complete
Once the funds have been transferred, you will see a confirmation in your browser.
When you open the Vault12 Guard app, you will see a message confirming the subscription.
Subscription Status
At any time you can review "Settings" / "Plans & Payment" in the Guard app to see the status of your subscription. In this example, you can see that a whole year of the new subscription remains.
Alternate approach using your mobile and a second device
Go topay.vault12.com using a laptop or second device that is separate from your device with the Vault12 Guard app installed.
You will be brought to a webpage with a Vault12 code to scan. Leave this page open, because you will be scanning the code using your Guard mobile app.
Scan the code using Vault12 Guard
Once you have opened the Vault12 Guard app on your mobile phone, click on the QR code Scan icon in the top right hand corner and scan the QR code from the browser.
Scan the code on the webpage by positioning the mobile camera so the code is in clear view. Your app will automatically perform the scan.
Select a Plan
After scanning the code, your browser will refresh to the Vault12 web dashboard. Choose a plan by tapping the "Upgrade" button on the bottom of the card that reflects your preferred plan.
Upgrade your plan and get VGT Discount
At the top of the Plan Upgrade screen, you'll see a toggle "Pay with" offering a choice of paying with VGT or ETH. You can get the discount by choosing the "VGT" toggle option to view the amount of your plan payable in VGT.
To make the payment, open your digital wallet with your VGT or ETH funds (Metamask or your choice of wallets), and scan the QR code. This will automatically fill in the details of the amount, and the destination address for the payment.
If your wallet does not use QR codes, then you will need to type in the details of the destination address, and the payment amount.
Note: The payment amount must be entered exactly as shown on the screen - please double check the amount carefully to prevent typos. (Using the QR code, you never have to enter this information.)
50% Discount with VGT
If you paid for your plan with VGT, then your 50% discount was automatically applied. Congratulations!
If you chose the ETH option, then the subscription cost is the normal plan cost.
Plan upgraded
After you pay the correct unique amount with your wallet and the transaction has finalized in the network (~ 1 minute), you will see a "Payment received" confirmation, and your subscription will be activated.
Congratulations - Your subscription Upgrade is complete
At any time you can check your plan status in your Vault12 Guard app.
Growth Mindset podcast: Crypto Inheritance
Welcome to Growth Mindset moment of Rug Radio production, the show where we dive into the power of growth, innovation, and limitless possibilities. Each episode, we explore the intersection of human potential, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technology, uncovering how these rapidly evolving worlds are shaping our future. Get ready to unlock new ideas, spark your curiosity, and embrace the mindset that will drive you forward in this ever-changing digital landscape to whether you're an entrepreneur, a creator, or simply someone who wants to grow. Growth mindset moment is here to inspire you to think bigger, think faster, and evolve with the world around you. Let's begin this journey together. This episode is brought to you by Vault12, crypto inheritance secured. Have you ever thought about what happens to your crypto if something unexpected happens? Let's be real. We spend years building these portfolios, collecting NFTs, holding tokens, but most of us have zero plan for how our loved ones would access it if we're gone.
That's where Vault12 comes in. Vault12 is a next gen crypto inheritance app that allows you to securely protect and pass on your digital assets without relying on lawyers or centralized custodians. It's like having a personal vault in your pocket, but a little smarter. Here's the best part. As a listener of this show, you get one full free year just by using the promo code stars two five. That's Stars two five at checkout. Seriously, one year, no cost. Total peace of mind. Head over to vault twelve.com or inside of your app store on Android and Apple devices and use Code Stars25 to lock in your free year today, Vault12, because your crypto legacy deserves a plan.
*** Special Offer for The Digital Commonwealth Mansion House Summit Attendees ***
Promo codes for Vault12 Guard
The iOS codes are good for 1 year subscription at no cost, then will revert to standard price for Inheritance plan. iOS codes can be redeemed in the Apple App Store.
The Android codes are good for 90 days subscription at no cost, then will revert to standard price for Inheritance plan. Android codes are redeemed when selecting and paying for the Inheritance plan in the app.
Instructions for how to redeem here.
Code: STARS25
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=1451596986&code=ALPHA25
Android: Enter code STARS25 when you select the Inheritance plan
Ron Jordan and Wasim AhmadRon JordanTranscript
Ron Jordan:
Welcome to Growth Mindset moment of Rug Radio production, the show where we dive into the power of growth, innovation, and limitless possibilities. Each episode, we explore the intersection of human potential, artificial intelligence, and blockchain technology, uncovering how these rapidly evolving worlds are shaping our future. Get ready to unlock new ideas, spark your curiosity, and embrace the mindset that will drive you forward in this ever-changing digital landscape to whether you're an entrepreneur, a creator, or simply someone who wants to grow. Growth mindset moment is here to inspire you to think bigger, think faster, and evolve with the world around you. Let's begin this journey together. This episode is brought to you by Vault12, crypto inheritance secured. Have you ever thought about what happens to your crypto if something unexpected happens? Let's be real. We spend years building these portfolios, collecting NFTs, holding tokens, but most of us have zero plan for how our loved ones would access it if we're gone.
That's where Vault12 comes in. Vault12 is a next gen crypto inheritance app that allows you to securely protect and pass on your digital assets without relying on lawyers or centralized custodians. It's like having a personal vault in your pocket, but a little smarter. Here's the best part. As a listener of this show, you get one full free year just by using the promo code stars two five. That's Stars two five at checkout. Seriously, one year, no cost. Total peace of mind. Head over to vault twelve.com or inside of your app store on Android and Apple devices and use Code Stars 25 to lock in your free year today, Vault12, because your crypto legacy deserves a plan.
Alright? All right, welcome everybody to another episode of Growth Mindset moment where you know what we do over here. Inspiring you guys to think a little bit bigger about your current situation. Today I have the co-founder, Wasim Ahmad. He is not only the co-founder, but also responsible for growth, marketing, business development and policy. So this man wears all types of hats. Vault12 is the pioneer of crypto inheritance. It is the backup inheritance for your data, your crypto assets and all of those types of things you guys are DJing out there. But what the heck are we going to do? And we're no longer here. You know that self custody is the utmost importance. That's why we're all here. We're trying to own our assets, but with that comes a lot of responsibility. And do we want to trust that? Who do we want to trust that to? So Wasim, thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate you so much for dropping in and dedicating some time to educate us on this crypto inheritance, so welcome to the show.
Wasim Ahmad:
Thank you so much. My pleasure, Ron.
Ron Jordan:
Absolutely. So let's jump right into it. Vault12, for those of you who don't know, it is all about inheritance and can you give me a little brief synopsis? What is Vault12 in this elevator pitched style?
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, so Vault12 is an app that you can download on iOS, Android, and basically it allows you to create a digital vault, put your crypto keys in there, crypto assets, your NFTs, any of those kinds of things, and it encrypts them and it makes sure that A, they're backed up. You still need to back things up even if you're using hardware wallets and all kinds of other things. But it also sets it up for inheritance so that if you are incapacitated, which is what we saw in the pandemic, if you're in jail or you've passed, that those assets can be transported to your heirs.
Ron Jordan:
So whenever you're talking about the actual keys being backed up, what does that mean?
Wasim Ahmad:
So there's many different ways to do this. So you can back up your crypto wallet seed phrase, you can back up your crypto wallet, private key. You can make a video of a riddle of each of the words in your seed phrase, or you can do many, many things. The app will deal with any kind of file or format, so that bit of it doesn't really matter. But those people that are involved in collectibles and they have digital art, you can literally put the digital art in the vault. And so any of that, you've got to make sure you put the wallet credentials in. And then for many people, depending on exactly what setup they're using, there's other passwords or pin codes that should also be backed up.
Ron Jordan:
So you can upload an MP four, a text file, whatever you want to inside of the Vault12 app and that it can be accessible to your errors. How do they know how to get into the Vault12? What do you have to set up with your attorney, for example, to make sure that they have access to this information? This episode is brought to you by Vault12. Are you worried about what happens to your crypto if something happens to you? Vault12 makes crypto inheritance simple and secure. Get one year free with Code stars25@vaulttwelve.com and Apple and Android app stores. Download the app today and use Code Stars two five to get your one year free subscription. Protect your legacy before it's too late.
Wasim Ahmad:
So the product is independent of whatever legal will or trust or whatever you use. And there's two phases. One is literally just making sure that everything is backed up because the biggest issue with digital assets is every year or every month there's something new maybe on a different blockchain. And if you didn't record that information and either give it to your lawyers or write it down or back it up somewhere, it'll be gone if you are not around to deal with it. So once that is recorded, what happens is that information is encrypted, it's split into pieces, and you assign what we call guardians to protect your vault. And those guardians can be friends, they can be family members, they can be business partners, whatever you want, and you can have any number of them. So you could have three friends, three business partners through family members. So you have nine and you can say, whenever I want to access that asset, I just need three out of the nine to give me an okay. And so these guardians are kind of working with you to protect your assets and then you just designate one of them to be your technical beneficiary. And so they're responsible for if you pass to then ask for the assets and then distribute them to wherever they need to go.
Ron Jordan:
That's interesting. So it almost acts like a multisig wallet.
Wasim Ahmad:
So I mean conceptually it's a similar idea, but with Multisig, everyone knows what it is, what you are storing, and it's pretty much restricted to three or five. This gives you a lot more flexibility and you can dynamically, if you have a different business partner or you got a divorce and you want to change out who the people are that are guarding your vault, you can just swap them out behind the scenes. It recalculates everything. Just make sure that everything is set up correctly and you don't actually have to worry about that behind the scenes.
Ron Jordan:
Oh, okay. So how could somebody get started using Vault12 today if they wanted to?
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, very simple. You can download it off the iOS or the Google Play Store, go to that website, vault twelve.com. You can learn more about it, see videos about how you do all of this. And then it's been in the app store since 2019. So we've been at this actually since 2015. So we've been working on this challenge for a long, long time.
Ron Jordan:
I'm going to put a banner up for you guys to see. Go ahead and
Ron Jordan:
Give you a link to the Vault12 app that's just going to be running on the bottom for you guys who are listening or not just listening, but also watching the show. So you can download the Vault12 app today and protect your crypto inheritance. Go to vault twelve.com or go into the Google Play store or the Apple Store, apple App store and get that downloaded. So Wasim, thank you so much for that piece of it. So you guys could get started today if you wanted to. I tell you what, man, the ability to change who is protecting those assets is something that I wasn't aware of. And then also you can designate that one sort of beneficiary, if you will, inside of the app. Is that accurate?
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So you to can change the beneficiary, you can change the guardians at any time.
Ron Jordan:
Right on.
Wasim Ahmad:
We generate a little PDF that records the fact that you assigned a beneficiary and you can go file that with your lawyer. And so everything should be very, very clear.
Ron Jordan:
It's uploading everything, not uploading, but it just knows which wallets that I'm adding to this app. And anytime that I'm doing moves out in the world inside of the crypto world, I'm able to rest assured that all of that information is on the blockchain. So I would assume that whatever I have today, and let's say I signed up for the app today and I have X amount of crypto and I have X amount of NFTs inside of my wallet, my wallet and I signed up today, if I make moves for the next 30 years, all of that is going to be stored inside of the app as well because it's just tied to a wallet. Yes,
Wasim Ahmad:
The reference to the wallet. So being able to access that wallet, the information that you need to access that wallet,
Ron Jordan:
Beautiful.
Wasim Ahmad:
At any point.
Ron Jordan:
Yeah, we always hear about those stories of assets. They're on a hardware wallet or something like that. It gets misplaced. I forgot my keys, I can't ever get my assets back. This sort of solves for that because you've backed up all that information in a really secure encrypted way.
Wasim Ahmad:
It solves for that backup scenario, including where you've only got two more tries left on that hardware because you forgot the pin. So it solves for that. And then there's also the more tragic scenario of someone dying like Matthew Mellon, the Bank of New York Mellon banking Air who died of a heart attack at the age of 52, had 2 million worth of Ripple, which is worth about a billion dollars now.
Ron Jordan:
Oh my goodness.
Wasim Ahmad:
And he had squirreled it away in multiple cold storage locations around the country. He did a very good job of making sure it was very safe and secure, but he never left anything for anyone else to be able to kind of track down and retrieve. And so that family can't access that money.
Ron Jordan:
That is a tragic story on multiple fronts, is it not?
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, yeah,
Ron Jordan:
For sure. So traditional methods of doing this, what are traditional methods to passing on your crypto inheritance and what is Vault12 solving for? Because it sounds really simple to get started in this and there has to be a reason for the simplicity today. If I wanted to do the exact same thing traditionally, what does that process look like?
Wasim Ahmad:
Well, so there's a number of challenges here. So any nine out of 10 of the wallets will tell you when you're setting them up, write down your seed phrase, nine out of 10. I mean, we created digital money and we're backing it up on paper. That's ridiculous. So that's kind of a problem. If you were in the LA fires, if you've that paper burn, other people will engrave their Bitcoin wallets raise into or private key into
Ron Jordan:
Steel. Yeah, I have one of those billfolds myself just for fire protection.
Wasim Ahmad:
But in LA you couldn't get into the home to go find it
Ron Jordan:
If you can even find it.
Wasim Ahmad:
You couldn't find it. It was useless. So it's a nice idea, and I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. You should have lots of backups. Then there's the question of, well, can anyone else access the backups? So what a lot of people do, what a lot of law firms will tell you is, oh, well, we'll take care of the information. Just give it to us on a USB drive or put in a piece of paper and we'll fight it away. Once you've handed it over, you've got two issues, one, who else has access to it? And then the second issue is you might be buying another NFT on a different blockchain that didn't exist when you handed it over. And did you remember to when you set up the new wallet to forward that to your law firm? And we've been through cycles where it was NFTs, it was defi, it was meme coins, it'll be stable coins this year.
It's the year of stable coins, rwa. There's so many new assets on the horizon that people will go off and I'm sure there's going to be new blockchains that are going to be invented. So you have to be constantly thinking. And so I think the mindset of making sure everything's backed up in one place is a good idea. But if you back it up in the cloud, you are at risk of, oh, the vendor changed the business relationship with the cloud vendor and sorry, we can't access the data, which is what happened with Gemini and Genesys after the FTX debacle. My crypto was up there, it was lost for 18 months. Thank God the Bing core bosses got every single penny back. But if it hadn't been for their efforts, that was gone because it was a cloud-based business relationship. So you don't really want to do this on the cloud, you don't want to only put it on a hardware wallet because those can be stolen and they can be lost. And we saw that all last year with multiple attacks on well-known crypto people. So there's a danger in having a single point of failure, and that's what Vault12 guards against.
Ron Jordan:
This episode is brought to you by Vault12. Are you worried about what happens to your crypto if something happens to you? Vault12 makes crypto inheritance simple and secure. Get one year free with Code stars25@vaulttwelve.com and Apple and Android app stores. Download the app today and use Code Stars two five to get your one year free subscription. Protect your legacy before it's too late.
Wasim Ahmad:
It's completely decentralized, which means that Vault12 doesn't know who you are or what your assets are. There's no servers at Vault12 that someone can go get hold of to figure out what you're doing. It's all peer to peer. And even on your phone, there's not going to be any information on your phone. So if someone took your phone, they're not going to get hold of the private keys or everything is encrypted, spit up and sent away.
Ron Jordan:
So it's about as secure as it gets at that point.
Wasim Ahmad:
And the encryption that we're using, which is Samir's secret sharing is quantum safe. So you can't even store up these encrypted pieces and hope that, oh, when there's quantum computers available, we'll hack them. So from that perspective, it's a lot of peace of mind. Building decentralized apps is hard, so that's why you don't see a lot of decentralized solutions like this. You see a lot of centralized solutions which put your profile picture on and are friendly because they know who you are, but then there's all these risks.
Ron Jordan:
Yeah, that's actually something that I wasn't aware of that you do. And what even strikes me even further is the quantum computing aspect because that's a huge conversation that's happening in the encryption world is yes, it's all encrypted and these messages are encrypted, but what happens when quantum computing sort of catches up to that? And you guys have solved for that as well, so you're far beyond where we're currently at.
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, absolutely. And it kind of comes, if I may just talk about the origin story,
Ron Jordan:
I would love to, yeah,
Wasim Ahmad:
Max Stabinski, he was at Andreessen Horowitz, he was part of the blockchain team. He worked with Brian Armstrong and the Coinbase team to bring that deal into a 16 Z. And around that time in 20 12, 20 13, he was talking with a lot of thought leaders in the blockchain and crypto space, and they talked about security is going to be on the heads of every single new crypto investor. They're going to have to deal with it because everyone else has been disintermediated. That's the beauty of blockchain and Bitcoin and those kinds of things. So then they started thinking about, well, what happens when if you die or when you die? I mean no one in Silicon Valley is going to die. So
Ron Jordan:
Yeah, they're living forever with their minds. I mean, I've watched enough black meter to know that none of them are going to die. Their minds are going to be put in other bodies, but for the rest of us.
Wasim Ahmad:
But it boils down to accessibility of assets. Are your assets accessible? And we saw in the pandemic that your assets, even if they were in safe deposit boxes, you couldn't get hold of them if you needed them there and then you couldn't. Yeah. So he tried to convince some entrepreneurs to build this, and they were off building trading apps and other things and swap and other things like that. So he decided to start Vault12 in 20 15, 20 14, 20 15. And we worked on it for several years and then did the beta in 2018, launched the white paper and 2019 it went up on the app store. 2020 was the pandemic. And everyone had to deal with this very stark reality that bad things can happen. And if you don't take care of your financial management, of your assets management, you can lose a lot.
Ron Jordan:
You can lose every piece of it, everything that you've built, you can lose it if it's just stored on paper. And nobody sort of knows the secret code to get into any of these assets.
Wasim Ahmad:
That's right.
Ron Jordan:
I mean, the other side of the sword with self custody is there is no help desk. There's only you. And it feels like a lot of the crypto world is very shortsighted in that respect, where there's a lot of, like you said, trading apps and those types of things where you're trying to amass this asset pool, but you're really not trying to figure out 10 years down the road, 12 years down the road in the scenario where if you pass away or something like that. But these things can happen in a matter of seconds. Unexpected situations happen all the time. You brought up the example with the banker in that tragic situation, these things can happen and we need to make sure that all of you guys that are listening, you know me, I'm a dad, I'm a family guy, and I'm always trying to think about different ways to make it better for my family, make it easier for my family, should I not be here any longer.
And it just felt so on par with who we are here at Growth Mindset moment to have Vault12 on and to show you guys what types of resources are out there today to make this happen. And it's not an overnight thing either. You've been building this since 2014, this is six, seven years in the making at this point. So I wanted to sing your praises in that respect. You guys were in 2020, people started to realize, we went through so many years of not having to deal with a tragic situation in the United States of America. There's always tragedy, but you know what I mean, stuff that just absolutely stopped everything. We've really not had to deal with that even in the entire time I've been alive. And to see that happen and how tragic it was for businesses, for individuals to not be able to access their resources through banks or other traditional methods really opened people's eyes to this digital world that we're all living in here in the blockchain and Web3.
And in the last five years, you've seen an explosion of digital assets and digital currency and different ways to spend it on everyday items. And it's just becoming more and more the norm. And now we have an opportunity to be able to store that in a really safe location, not just on a piece of paper in your safe house or even just etched in a piece of metal inside of your safe or safe deposit box and those types of things. You can do it inside of an app. And I'd be curious, so it's in an app, what happens if the internet goes down? What happens if power goes out? Is it still, I don't know that if you can solve for that, but how do you access it if you don't have access to, let's say the internet, for example? Is it possible?
Wasim Ahmad:
I think, well, with the internet, I mean you need it for blockchain apps. So at some point you'd have to be able to connect, either connect to the internet or go off and find the other guardians and get their phones and move the pieces across. So we've created a toolkit for scenarios where things have dramatically changed than what we thought. You can piece the pieces together, so there is a way to grab all the pieces and connect them.
Ron Jordan:
Okay, love that. I love a little fallback plan B type of scenario.
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think power, hopefully the power will get back up at some point,
Ron Jordan:
But we can always create our own power. I'm in the energy world and I know that we can harness sun's energy and the wind energy and waves and all of these types of things. So energy is sort of my least of the problems there. But no, I totally get what you're saying. So let's see. How did you get involved in Vault12?
Wasim Ahmad:
So my background is I'm a serial entrepreneur. I had worked at a startup that was a spin out from Stanford called Voltage, which was commercializing public key cryptography, a new form of a breakthrough in public key cryptography. So public key cryptography is the thing that allows you to do e-commerce on the internet. So it was revolutionary and we came up with a way to do it that was much more simplified. And that's where I met my co-founder, max. And so had spent nine years, 10 years there in that world because crypto used to refer to cryptography back in the day. And so yeah, they called me and said, Hey, we built this thing, what do you think? And I looked at it and said, well, it needs a little help. It needs to be a little friendlier. And that is what we see with crypto apps, right? They're not that friendly. And so we worked really, really hard to make it seamless and easy because you might be technical and you might know your way around seed phrases and private keys, but the people who are guarding your vault don't need to. And you don't know who is going to be involved in that because you might change them out. It might be your kids might be your guardians at some point. So we built it to really be easy and smooth so you don't have to worry about how the pieces fit together.
Ron Jordan:
Oh, that's great. And I love the background there. And yeah, crypto, it's coined for something different these days, but no doubt about it. And you had mentioned too in our previous conversations that you sort of coach entrepreneurs, you're somebody that they lean to. And I'm curious that background there, what are some of the conversations that you're having with founders whenever they approach you and they're just at their wit's end because they've been doing it themselves and they just can't figure it out? Why won't somebody invest in me?
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah. So I definitely, I meet a lot of founders, first time founders, fundraising, they've tried it, it's not working. And generally speaking, what I find is that their deck is sort of a look, here are our designs and here's our app, and this is the platform we've built. And they really, some of them do a little better. They have, this is the problem we're solving and these are the issues, but very few of them tune in on the one fact that is so, so important, which is investors only care about how much money they're going to make. So you need to tell them that. And you need to tell them that in the first three minutes. So you better start with how big the problem is, how much money there is to be made, and how you are going to make that money given who else is trying to make money in that area.
And then once you've got them and they're relaxed that they can make a billion dollars or they can make a half a billion dollars, whatever floats their boat, then you can show them your designs and your screens and your go-to market plan and all of those. And then the other thing that people miss out is talking about themselves because if you are a first time founder and you don't really have a track record of starting companies and successfully exiting them, the only thing that anyone has to go on is your energy or your passion about it or your credentials. Maybe you have a PhD in something or your team has several PhDs or they've come from very interesting companies, but you have to that branding around you and your credibility of why they should pay attention to you, that is critical. And so that needs to be right at the beginning. And so a lot of people are shy. They're like, oh no, I don't want to be humble. I don't want to toot my own horn. But then why would they listen to anything you have to say? So those two things are the most important and people miss that out time and time again.
Ron Jordan:
Yeah, it's like, why are you interesting? And how much money can I make?
Wasim Ahmad:
Exactly.
Ron Jordan:
Get it done, get it done right out of the front, right out of the gate and have energy about it and have that confidence in yourself and what you're putting the market, what's the target market? What is the market size? How can we attack it? All of those things are just so important whenever you're building a business in general, the problem that you're solving, is it really a problem? And how many people have that problem and then how much are they willing to pay solve it,
Wasim Ahmad:
Right, exactly.
Ron Jordan:
Yeah, no doubt about that. So I love that you are sort of, how do I say this? You attack it from all angles where you've been in the trenches, you've built businesses, you've gone through it, and now you're sharing that knowledge. And here at growth mindset moment, that's what we're all about, is sharing information. So we can, those who want to apply this type of mentality, they can grow themselves and they can make their inspiring us to think bigger type of attitude is don't sell yourself short. Do you ever have those more psychologist type of conversations with people is like, Hey, what you have here is really, really great, but we need to work on how you're presenting it or who you think you are. Do you have those conversations with people?
Wasim Ahmad:
Absolutely. I mean, part of it is how are they personally presenting it? And then often it's just a deck. It may not hit the mark at all. And I think the thing to remember, people approach mentors often because they want introductions because they want advice, but then they want introductions into their network. But I can't introduce someone that has a substandard deck. Those people will say, why did you send this person to me? They haven't got the basics. So that's why I think it's important to uplevel your deck and at least your story
Ron Jordan:
For sure.
Wasim Ahmad:
You don't always have to have a physical deck. It's the story that you tell that has to be, you have to be conversant with it and it has to have all the salient points.
Ron Jordan:
And you've created a resource for people to enhance their decks. Yes,
Wasim Ahmad:
Yes. So I got sick of sending the same email cut and pasting the same email. So I did a LinkedIn post with all of the information about what are the 10 things that you need to include? And then when chat GPT came out, I built a little GPT where you can upload your deck and it'll analyze it and say, oh, you forgot about the team, or you forgot about monetization, which was like, you missed monetization, which is how you make money. It's really important. So it just kind of helps you get over that hurdle. And then we can have a conversation about, well, what type of investor is the best and who do I know and who might you want to go reach out to? And all of those kinds of things. The deck shouldn't be the complicated bit, but it often is the stumbling block.
Ron Jordan:
Yeah, it's the one stumbling block where you can't sort of get out of your own way type of attitude about that.
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, absolutely.
Ron Jordan:
So I'd like to derail this just a tad, just a tad, and I want to know a little bit more about how you apply this growth mindset to what you do on a daily basis. You are obviously in blockchain, you're in crypto, you're going out on these limbs of emerging industries. Where does that mindset come from? Are you reading books? Are you leaning on other mentors? What are you doing on a daily, weekly, monthly, whatever basis to make sure that you stay sharp and where that mindset comes from?
Wasim Ahmad:
Well, I think in the crypto space, we're very lucky because there are some people who have seriously thought about crypto today and crypto tomorrow, and some of them talk about it in terms of what's going to happen to the market. Other people have been looking at it in terms of how do these ecosystems evolve over time? And all of these people are on X, so you can find them, you can go look at maybe more well-known people and see who they follow. Some of them actually have lists set up, and you can go look at the lists and you'll see really smart people in that list. And if you start to do that, you can curate your own set of experts who can answer some of the questions that you're talking about. And then with Rock, rock knows it all, use GR inside X and you'll get the answers to a lot of questions.
And so we use that a lot recently. We use that a lot because it really has dramatically improved and that really drives a lot of the ideas. It stimulates the ideas of what campaign should we do. We just started doing meme campaigns because meme campaigns work, we looked at what are the OGs doing because OGs know everything, so how do you tell them here's a different way to do something that you've been doing for 10 years or 15 years. But we also have used, we look at what experts are seeing as people come into Gemini, come into Coinbase, and then start buying assets that are outside those exchanges and then what problems they run into. So I see that as the main source of finding those experts on X and following them gives you, because especially when you see the same point of view reflected a few times, then you kind of know that they've got a point to be made.
And so that helps, I think, guide you and you don't get too far adrift. And then I think the other piece is just segmentation, making sure, so I don't know what the makeup of your audience is, but 35% of men will do wills, 65% of women. So I'm on a mission to make sure that women know that they have this tool that can be used to manage the finances of their household from a crypto perspective. So I think as you find these nuggets of information, you can start to use that to really drive what kinds of campaigns you do and how you're showing up and a lot of grassroots marketing. I think that's kind of the way to go.
Ron Jordan:
I love that you are leaning into AI tools as well, because I've been a huge proponent of artificial intelligent tools such as your Chat GPTs, your grs, and creating agents to help you. I got to be honest, for 20 to $40 a month to have the upgraded subscription to these things and to be able to create agents and have assistance in many different facets has tremendously increased my output because I'm able to give them prompts that elicit responses that would've taken me hours to research, just even as simple as who to follow on X. If I'm trying to understand more about X, Y, Z topics, for example, it's going to give you a list and then give me a list of that list. Give me a list of people who are the most active on Twitter, and let's follow those people. It gives you this ability to have this broad scope and then really narrow down your vision as to who you want to engage with because those are sort of your thought leaders, if you will. And it sounds like you guys are leaning into that quite heavily.
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, because I think during the pandemic we found that you couldn't rely on the government to tell you what to do. You couldn't rely on institutions to tell you what to do. You really couldn't rely on the neighbors because people had different personal opinions about stuff, but there were experts out there that had experience of pandemics or disease or whatever it happened to be, and they were calling the trends way, way, way before anyone else. And I feel like that was the moment when it really crystallized for me and for a lot of people that yeah, you can find really good information. Yes, the internet is Google has indexed the garbage on the internet, but there is gold out there and you can find it. And that's what X and I'm sure some of these other social media platforms can do. But I feel like X is the most developed,
Ron Jordan:
It seems to be, especially in just this blockchain Web3 world, especially. This seems to be where those natives live, breathe, and are active daily and sharing ideas. I think that a lot is lost. Whenever you're just doing a Google search and you look up something, whatever, pick a topic. I guarantee you, if you pick that topic and you put it into Grok and you ask it for thought leaders on that topic, you will get much more clear information than if you put it into a Google search and you won't have to research, which Google link to click on and things like that. It's just going to be these people. And honestly, the other piece of it too is I feel like people were so open to dms, not the dms that I get on a daily basis to grow my audience and all of those things, but if you have an actual question for somebody and you're thoughtful about it, I have experienced that a lot of people respond to you on Twitter.
Wasim Ahmad:
Yeah, absolutely. It's a very collegiate friendly,
Ron Jordan:
Yeah, it's very open source mentality. And I think that everybody shares in the vision. I don't want to say everybody, that's such a blanket statement, but a lot of folks enjoy sharing their ideas because they want to have a better tomorrow really is what it's all about. And the traditional ways of doing things, I think a lot of folks are tired of the model, and we're in the midst of this new creation of a new model, and it gets me excited. And to be able to have a tool now with Vault12 and pass that legacy along gives me even more hope because it's not lost with me. It can live on. And that's something that's really exciting for me just as a dad, as a husband, as a brother, those types of things I think that are really impactful. And I love the fact too that you were talking about women inside of this space and they have access to this type of thing too, because we see tons of ladies making huge moves in the crypto space, in the blockchain world and creating amazing apps, and they're not on a silo either.
They're able to access these types of things and that whole entire era of the men control all the finances and stuff that is coming to a halt because of blockchain and these types of resources. So I just love the whole entire ecosystem of what you guys are doing over there, leaning into AI tools, allowing us to have a resource to pass on the inheritance to the next generation should something happen, or even if nothing does happen and we just want to make sure that we have safeguards in place. It just seems like such a, I can't believe there aren't more tools like it, to be honest with you.
Wasim Ahmad:
Well, someone has to be the pioneer. So that's us.
Ron Jordan:
And you guys are the pioneers, right? On the front page of the website, the pioneers of Crypto Inheritance Vault12.
Wasim Ahmad:
Yep.
Ron Jordan:
Yep. So I mean, that's where it's at guys. And I mean we see, was there anything else that you wanted to get across to our listeners that we just missed or I just talked over? Yeah,
Wasim Ahmad:
I mean, I think that you got to do something about your crypto assets and you've got to do it today. You don't really know what's in the future. So just make sure that you've thought through, how have I backed up my ledger device? How have I backed up my meta mask wallet and how am I going to tell someone should something happen to me? What is that? What does that look like for you? Everyone has different circumstances and you may find that our product is a good fit for that for you, but you do need to just think through what would happen, how would it work through, so people don't pay attention to that. And Bitcoin's been around for 15 years, so these scenarios of 10 years in, I threw away the hard drive because I forgot that I had this encrypted piece on it that had the pin code of the wallet. That's already happened. All of those things have happened. And so it's not, it may happen, it's happening. We don't even know how many people have lost stuff. There's a lot.
Ron Jordan:
There are definitely a lot. And we hear stories every single day about people being scammed out of their assets and things like that because of normal phishing techniques and social engineering techniques. And it all comes back to where is all that information stored for your crypto assets? And if you can store it in a place that is secure, encrypted, future encrypted against quantum computing, and I mean you're safe in this respect, and I really hope that you guys lean in and take the advice of Wasim co-founder of Vault12, the pioneer of crypto inheritance. You take this advice, go check it out at the very least, Vault12 over at the Apple Store, at the App store rather, and then the Google Play Store. You can go download it today, go poke around, see what it's about. If you have any questions, you can feel free to email me, ronJordan@thestarspodcast.com, or you can reach out to Asim over on X. If I were to guess he'd be open to the dm.
Wasim Ahmad:
Of course.
Ron Jordan:
Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate every insight that you've given us. You've really shone a light on this movement of crypto inheritance and really thinking about the future for our guests today or for our listeners today.
Wasim Ahmad:
Thanks so much, Ron.
Ron Jordan:
Absolutely. Thanks guys for joining in. As always, enjoy the journey. Thank you for listening to Growth Mindset Moment. Take care everybody. Thanks for tuning into another episode of Growth Mindset Moment, a reg radio production. We hope today's conversation sparked new ideas, challenged your thinking, and inspired you to embrace the power of growth. Remember, the future is unfolding before us, and with the right mindset, there are no limits to what you can achieve. Stay curious, stay driven, and keep evolving. We'll see you on the next episode. Until then, enjoy the journey.
