DC Blockchain Summit | The Mindset of Retail Investors
Presented at DC Blockchain Summit 2025 in Washington D.C.
U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar, Andrew McCormick, eToro, Tarek Mansour, Kalshi
Moderated by: Wasim Ahmad: Wasim Ahmad, Vault12
Livestream: livestream
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheDigitalChamber/videos
*** 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: CMNYC25
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=1451596986&code=CMNYC25
Android: Enter code CMNYC25 when you select the Inheritance plan
Transcript
Wasim Ahmad:
Hey, everyone. My name is Wasim Ahmad. I'm one of the co-founders of Vault12, which helps retail investors do cryptocurrency inheritance, something that everyone needs to think about because no one's going to do it for you. And then, joining me on the panel today is Tarek Mansour from Kalshi, Andrew McCormick from eToro and Congressman Shri Thanedar from Michigan.
Shri Thanedar:
Michigan. Yeah.
Wasim Ahmad:
Wonderful. Great. Okay, so we're going to jump into it straight away. So my first question is for Andrew and Tarek really to define for us the conversation around retail investors. So who have they been and how is that evolving? Do you want to take it away?
Andrew McCormick:
Yeah. I'd love to jump in. Thanks, everyone, for being here. So I think we've seen some incredible and really cool trends in the last couple years. Historically, the stereotypes is investing is for older, rich people, and that's it. In the last couple of years, we're seeing all those barriers fall down. In the US in traditional markets, we've seen 50% of Americans typically own stocks. That's now more like 60%, 65%. A percentage of Americans holding crypto assets in the last two to three years has doubled. And I think what's especially cool is there's more people investing, but also at a younger age. And at eToro, we are retail trading platform serving millions of customers around the world and a majority of our users are millennials and younger, which we classify as young investors, which brings joy to my heart, because I'm barely a millennial. So technically I am still at age 42, a young investor.
And so what we see more people are investing, at younger ages and it's having a very interesting impact because younger folks have a longer time horizon so they can take more risk. Stereotypically, that's like the YOLO trades people talk about in the news, meme stocks, meme coins, but it goes beyond that. We've seen ETF assets more than double in the last five years. And I think it's cool because if you're a young investor and you're starting at 20 instead of 45, you can take more risk, you have a longer time horizon. I think that's really, really healthy and really exciting and will seem relevant to your world. An amazing trend we're going to see in 20 years is where just 80 plus trillion dollars are going to pass from older generations to millennials and younger by 2050.
Wasim Ahmad:
And 7 trillion of that is going to be in crypto assets.
Andrew McCormick:
That's a great commercial for you. And what's amazing, most of those assets today are probably in advisory accounts where people go into an office, they meet with a financial advisor once or twice a year. And younger investors, I don't think that's our jam. That's not what people are going to do in the future. And so mobile trading apps where people are doing these trades on their phone, I think are going to be a recipient for a lot of these types of assets. And maybe that's crypto, maybe that's meme stocks, maybe that's really cool binary futures platforms where today, older folks aren't really down with it, but in the future, it's going to be the norm. So more people investing and younger, and I think that's a powerful force.
Wasim Ahmad:
So Tarek, you started your company at the age of 22. So your retail customer's older or younger?
Tarek Mansour:
We have the full spectrum. So it's definitely concentrated. It's a curve that just goes down as the age goes up. But maybe just a little bit of context on how we started the company. So what we do at Kalshi, we're a prediction market in the US, the leading one. If you didn't hear the name of the company, you probably heard that we were forecasting Trump winning the election leading up to the election. What we do is we list derivatives, we're regulated by the CFTC, and these derivatives are yes or no question about anything that could happen in the future. Who is going to win an election? Will it rain tomorrow? What is the Fed going to do at the next meeting, and is a hurricane going to hit a certain city? So I actually started the company after spending some time at Goldman and Citadel, and the key insight that we saw when I was there, the clients were not retail clients, they were institutional clients actually. They were asking very simple questions about the future. It's like, "Hey, we want to hedge against Brexit or get exposure to Brexit." That was actually 80% of the flow we used to get at the desk at Goldman.
And what we would do is we would use traditional assets to give them that exposure they were looking for. But there were a few problems. One, it was a proxy. So a lot of people actually put on an S&P short ahead of the 2016 Trump election because they thought that was a Trump hedge. Trump did indeed win. So they were right, but they lost money because the S&P went up. And then number two is kind of opaque, it was OTC, the banks would decide the price, and there wasn't sort of a dynamic transparent marketplace for these things. That's where we came from to build this marketplace.
So going back to the question about retail, what we see with Kalshi, so we spent years getting regulated, we've grown a lot now, we have millions of customers. And these customers are actually generally speaking, people that have traditionally not been in financial markets. Our average customer, if you ask them, "Do you trade in options and derivatives?" Their usual answer is actually, "No because I don't gamble." And the reason they answer that way is because what we've built is we've built a tool, a financial instrument that a much vaster and wider range of people relate to. A lot of people may relate to things around culture and what's going on there or the weather. Most people relate with the weather, because they can see if it's rainy or sunny or politics, which a lot of people... I mean, I don't need to tell you about how much people relate with politics and a variety of other things, but they didn't really have a mechanism to actually express opinions on these types of topics that they relate to or have views on or hedge risk with respect to these things. And it's so interesting because if you're a person that's worried about Brexit, how it's going to impact your business, you actually understand that very, very well and intricately. You may not understand a lot of the traditional assets.
So we see kind of this rising class of people that are entering financial markets, but really through prediction markets, through Kalshi, and it's this sort of idea of... I like the analogy at the time Uber was like the pitch to a lot of drivers was like you have extra time, how about you monetize it? And this rising class of people that... And it's really beautiful. You read the news a lot. You know a lot about the economy, you have a lot of views, you go to trivia night and argue with your friends on Twitter. You have a lot of knowledge, how about you monetize it? And that's really what we're seeing at least on our end. And I find that very, very exciting because the playing field now is pretty level. Citadel is not actually the dominant force in our types of markets. It's retail.
Wasim Ahmad:
Great. Great. So Congressman, I want to turn to you. You represent a district in Michigan. You were the only democratic co-sponsor of a bill that focused on removing the IRS from being able to kind of mess around with CeFi and DeFi corporations. What is your vision for how crypto can help retail investors?
Shri Thanedar:
Well, look, thank you for having me on the panel, Wasim.
Wasim Ahmad:
Of course.
Shri Thanedar:
My name is Shri Thanedar. I represent Michigan's 13th Congressional District, and I was proud to vote for the FIT21 and as well as Resolution 25. Again making it easier, in my district now, my district is one of the fifth poorest district in the country, and I'm starting to see Bitcoin ATMs popping up especially in the low income areas, something that is charging 20% premium on purchasing Bitcoin. So from that, how do we go to a position where crypto is in every wallet and people, not just the wealthy and accessible, but people at the low income area, how would they start using this as their daily currency? How would my small mama-papa businesses would use this to do business across the world? And then, how does Congress come in and make it easier? How do we make sure that the innovators and entrepreneurs aren't going to UAE and aren't going to Singapore and everywhere else, that we have meaningful guidelines that the innovators and the entrepreneurs feel comfortable setting up their shop in the US because they could go take their laptop and go anywhere they want to go. And how do we keep them here in the US? How do we make this, just make sure that crypto is in every wallet?
Wasim Ahmad:
Great. So I'm going to delve into those questions a little later.
Andrew McCormick, eToro
Wasim Ahmad:
So before we get there though, I would like the panelists to talk about what are the biggest challenges facing retail investors today.
Andrew McCormick:
So there's certainly challenges. I'm a lawyer by trade, so I'll give a disclosure at the beginning because lawyers love disclosures, that there's no better time in American history to be an investor than today. So typically, you would need to know a financial advisor. Just to place a trade, you need $20 to pay a commission. You'd have to buy a full share. And if you want to do that for G&E or something, you might need $300 to place a single trade. Today, you can get started with $10. Whether that's a stock, ETF, crypto. And so there's no better time to be an investor than today. It's never been easier. At the same time, there's never been so many educational resources out there, so many platforms that are making cool, innovative, engaging products that help people build better lives for them and their families.
Some challenges though with that is there's persistent news out there, right? So years ago, if there's a huge drop in the stock market, you read about it the next day in the newspaper, you go to work. Now you're getting alerts on your phone, your friends are talking about it, you see it on TV, social media, emails, so it's easy to freak out and get scared. And there's probably nothing worse as an investor to do is to panic, to make an emotional sell, emotional trade. And I think that's hard in today's market because there's just information everywhere, which is really great and empowering and breaks down barriers but can cause an emotional drain on you, whether it's finance or politics or your sports team is not performing how you want, you see it all the time. So I think that information overload is a challenge, so I think it's important as an investor to stay committed and don't freak out and just plan for the future one step at a time.
Wasim Ahmad:
So eToro is like the Robinhood of Europe, and then you have a footprint now in the US that's growing. Really what is it that you're delivering that addresses the challenges of retail investors? Is it a smoother on ramp into a variety of different financial products? Is that kind of your mission?
Andrew McCormick:
So one is diversity of products, right? We're not just crypto, we're not just stocks. We have crypto, stocks, ETFs. In the future, we'll probably have futures and investment accounts and advisory accounts. So the diversity of offering is number one. Number two, we're very passionate about education. So we have a whole content called the eToro Academy with hundreds, maybe thousands of articles, videos in what we call snackable content. It's like not some long thesis that no one's ever going to read, like a two-minute video on key topics. What's an ETF? What's day trading? Things like that, where people can digest it in the way we digest news and information today.
And then, just trying to make it super easy to get started. No commission on stock trading. You can make investments for as little as $10. So my family, we're passionate about Chipotle. So one thing that like all our kids eat, and historically you might need $500 to buy a share of Chipotle. Now if you're passionate about Chipotle and you're like, you know what? I don't want to be just a customer there, I want to be an owner, $10. And you can start building that platform, and that innovative $10 entry point is not something that most firms offer.
Tarek Mansour, Kalshi
Wasim Ahmad:
That's great. So Tarek, you have upwards of 2 million downloads, billions of dollars in the market, and then you have partnered with Robinhood and Webull. Is that right?
Tarek Mansour:
Yeah. With more in the pipeline.
Wasim Ahmad:
Right, right. So what are you seeing as either challenges or just things that retail investors are overcoming in the rush to jump on top of prediction markets?
Tarek Mansour:
Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, we now have, I would say one of the largest ecosystems in terms of retail presence in the US. I'll talk a little bit about the challenges because I do think it's an interesting question. I think of them as sort of two buckets. One of them is regulation and the second one is let's call it like short attention spans, which I think is a real problem in retail today. The thing with regulation, and I'm talking a bit more strictly about CFTC world, which is the world that we live in. I mean, historically retail has generally been a bit left off the conversation. They're kind of always lagging, generally they're underestimated. And I think the world has woken up now to like, yeah, actually retail can propel a stock to multi-trillion dollar market caps these days. That's something that was totally not possible 10 years ago. It is today. And I think there is a lot of work to do on creating...
One example is in our world in CFTC, there's actually no real consensus definition of what a retail investor is. When you're asking about retail, I'm thinking like, I actually don't really know what that is. Or a general definition, it's a dude trading, but like what is retail, and how do you think about that? Because there's sophisticated retail, there's extremely informed flow, there's less informed flow, and how do you differentiate between these? And I think so that's one challenge. I think there's a lot of work to do and I think it's been very encouraging over... In recent history, we're seeing a lot more willingness and discussion around retail in our world, in the CFTC world.
The second thing is, I think the world is short. Like we talk a lot about retail, sort of short attention span with people, but you're not seeing kind of changes that fit that. But the reality is like people can't really read anymore. The average 25-year-old cannot read a blog post. They just can't. They have to get something in 10 seconds, and if it's less than 10 seconds, they're gone. As we think about that, it's like you need to restructure the marketplace. You need to restructure education. You need to restructure the entire journey that a retail customer goes through when they experience any financial service with that core principle in mind. Like you cannot actually go force people to go read long blog posts or long terms and conditions and then tell them like, "Hey, it was there. You should have known." You have to kind of integrate that into your UX, and that's a lot of the work we do at Kalshi.
Wasim Ahmad:
Great. So Congressman, you touched on this. So how do you see crypto helping the average ordinary investor? You talked about it, you touched on it in your opening remarks, and I know Senator Cory Booker has talked about this, but it's not a general conversation that's out in the media or anywhere. So having seen poverty and all of those kinds of things, where do you see crypto helping the average person, the everyday person?
Shri Thanedar:
Well, look, the small businesses. Doing business across the world is so difficult through the current banking system, the long delays that are happening, the rejections of wires and transfer of money, the cost. As opposed to through crypto, transactions can happen in a matter of seconds. And to having that access, low cost or no cost access to be able to transact quickly, efficiently, without having to go through the bureaucracy of a bank or without having to go through the fee structure. I do a lot of business myself with India, and when it's sending small amounts of dollars to Indian vendor become so difficult because invariably, they get caught into the banking structure, and I get almost half of my wires get rejected when I go through the bank.
Whereas having that access to do business, it would mean a lot to have that access for a small business. It would mean a lot to have that access for person of low income transacting. And the blockchain just takes this further with all kinds of opportunities outside of crypto. That all need to be explored. And we in the United States, need to be the leader of the world in this. And this is where most of the innovation must happen. Unfortunately, currently, the crypto transaction, 90% of them are outside of the US, so that has to change. And that's what something I want to look at it from the Congress's perspective, how can we change regulations? How can we change things to make it easier for people to do business?
Wasim Ahmad:
Okay. So unlike a lot of Congresspeople, you are actually a businessperson, a scientist, and an entrepreneur prior to taking your place in Congress. So how are you working with your colleagues? Earlier today, there was a session with Representatives Sarah McBride, Don Davis and Sam Liccardo, talking about how they were working with Congress. So I'd love to hear from you, what are you doing to further your vision?
Shri Thanedar:
Well, currently, as we look at the voting on the first FIT21, only about 45 Democrats voted for it. The last resolution were about 72 Democrats. So a very small group of Democrats do support this at this time. I am a part of a Congressional Progressive Caucus, and there is a lot of suspicion in the Progressive Caucus about and crypto is looked at as a tool of the rich and the powerful. However, the Progressive Caucus and members of Progressive Caucus who care about access to financial markets, access to transactions, financial empowerment for people at low means, this is really the tool that [inaudible 00:19:03]. So it's going to take a long time to turn people around, but education is the key, education of members of Congress. They need to really understand about the powerful technology this is, and how this is going to help average everyday Americans.
Andrew McCormick, eToro
Wasim Ahmad:
Great. Now, let's hear from the other side. So both of you have platforms, target investors, everyday investors. How are you going to work with policymakers? What do you need the policymakers to do? How do you get better outcomes for your customers as far as working with people in Congress, people in the Senate, etc.?
Andrew McCormick:
I'd say clarity is helpful. It's interesting, in the United States and with our platform, we offer stocks and ETFs and options, but also crypto assets. And what that means, we have over a hundred different regulatory jurisdictions. 50 states all have different says on the security side, stocks, ETFs, as well as the SEC and FINRA. And on the crypto side, 50 different states have opinions on that and all different standards and rules. And when you're trying to run and build a lean, innovative FinTech, a startup that's trying to help empower customers, it's really, really hard when you have over a hundred different regulatory regimes you have to navigate. And we have operations in over 75 different countries, so we always have this very interesting AB test of like how things operate in other countries. And when we talk with our AML and compliance colleagues in the UK, for example, this all sounds crazy to them. They have one regulator, stocks, crypto-
Wasim Ahmad:
I've been working with them. It's insane what they're not doing.
Andrew McCormick:
Yeah. It's just much more efficient. And of course, there's Dubai and Singapore where they're breaking new ground and everything is very clear and certain and welcoming. I mean, this is the best place of capital markets in human history. And the money's here, the talent's here, the brilliance is here. We just need that regulatory clarity. It doesn't need to be perfect legislation, perfect regulations, but just something that's progressing and it's just clear, I think would be helpful.
Wasim Ahmad:
We're going to hear from Commissioner Peirce on the main stage, so hopefully we'll start to see some of that clarity. Tarek, what do you have to add?
Tarek Mansour:
I think we might be out of time.
Wasim Ahmad:
No, no. We have two minutes.
Tarek Mansour:
Okay. I'll do two minutes then. I'll do it fast. And it's pretty simple. I actually think my perspective is slightly different. So I think we're talking about the CFTC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Obviously, CFTC is becoming more and more famous and popular these days. That's pretty cool to be CFTC-regulated because of crypto, which is awesome. I actually think the CFTC has structurally been a very... I mean, the difficulty is always kind of how do you balance sort of innovation and bringing things on shore and having the US capital markets or derivatives markets thrive, and then making sure that you don't let things explode, basically and be diligent and [inaudible 00:22:01]. Actually, my perspective after working with CFTC for I think close to five or six years now, I think that regulator has actually done a pretty good job at kind of towing that balance. And in some ways like, maybe it's one of those rarest things, like we don't have much to complain.
I mean, we have our disagreements with the CFTC. This guy from a company that has sued that regulator two years ago. And sometimes we disagree on certain issues. On that specific issue, we ended up winning. But on most issues, I think it's been a regulator that's been sort of very pro-listening to new entrants and innovation. And maybe the TLDR here is just kind of this sort of bi-directional dialogue. That's I think, pretty critical. It's for companies to actually educate regulators and vice versa for companies to listen to regulators. And so yeah, I think that's probably my perspective on this.
Wasim Ahmad:
Great. Thank you very much. I think we are now out of time. Thank you, panelists. Thank you so much for sharing your insights today.
DC Blockchain Summit
Ledger vs Trezor: Which Hardware Wallet is Best in 2025?
Ledger Nano X
- Bluetooth connectivity — works with or without a cable (at least with smartphones).
- Wider interoperability with wallets, coins, and apps.
- Compact. User input is via buttons, not touchscreen.
- Has Secure Element.
- Price Point: Reasonable.
Trezor Model T
- No Bluetooth connectivity. iOS app is view-only.
- Smaller set of wallets, coins, and apps.
- The touchscreen and input are very well-thought-out experiences.
- Missing Secure Element.
- Price Point: About the same.
Ledger Nano X vs Trezor Model T
Ledger Nano X
- Bluetooth connectivity — works with or without a cable (at least with smartphones).
- Wider interoperability with wallets, coins, and apps.
- Compact. User input is via buttons, not touchscreen.
- Has Secure Element.
- Price Point: Reasonable.
Trezor Safe 5
- No Bluetooth connectivity. iOS app is view-only.
- Smaller set of wallets, coins, and apps.
- The touchscreen and input are very well-thought-out experiences.
- Has Secure Element.
- Price Point: About the same.
Ledger Nano X vs Trezor Safe 5
Comparison of Ledger Stax and Trezor Safe 5
Ledger Stax
- Bluetooth connectivity — works with or without a cable (at least with smartphones).
- Wider interoperability with wallets, coins, and apps.
- Posh design with according price level.
- Has Secure Element.
- Large but potentially irritating display.
Trezor Safe 5
- No Bluetooth connectivity. iOS app is view-only.
- Smaller set of wallets, coins, and apps.
- The touchscreen and input are very well-thought-out experiences.
- Has Secure Element.
- Price Point: About half of Ledger Stax.
Ledger Stax vs Trezor Safe 5
Comparison of Ledger Stax and Trezor Model T
Ledger Stax
- Bluetooth connectivity — works with or without a cable (at least with smartphones).
- Wider interoperability with wallets, coins, and apps.
- Posh design with according price level.
- Has Secure Element.
- Large but potentially irritating display.
Trezor Model T
- No Bluetooth connectivity. iOS app is view-only.
- Smaller set of wallets, coins, and apps.
- The touchscreen and input are very well-thought-out experiences.
- Missing Secure Element.
- Price Point: About half of Ledger Stax.
Ledger Stax vs Trezor Model T
More comparisons coming soon...
Missing comparison for any model not mentioned?
Get Started Now.
How to claim your Vault12 Guard Promo Codes for iOS and Android
Follow these steps to activate your custom promo code or offer code for Vault12 Guard
How to claim your Vault12 Guard Promo Code for iOS
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.
- If you just have a code e.g.XXXXX, you will need to construct the URL to click on, just add the code onto the end of this URL
e.g. https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=1451596986&code=XXXXX
- If you have a link, just click on the link e.g.
Detailed instructions below:
Follow these detailed steps to activate your custom offer code for Vault12 Guard on iOS:
- If you just have a code e.g.XXXXX, you will need to construct the URL to click on, just add the code onto the end of this URL
https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=1451596986&code=
e.g. https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=1451596986&code=XXXXX
- If you have a link, just click on the link e.g.
https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=1451596986&code=XXXXX
1. Click on your Offer link or scan the QR code. This will open the Vault12 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.
How to claim your Vault12 Guard Promo Code for Android
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.
Enter your code when you select the Inheritance plan
e.g. XXXXX
Detailed instructions below
Follow these detailed 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.
.
DC Blockchain Summit | The Mindset of Retail Investors
Presented at DC Blockchain Summit 2025 in Washington D.C.
U.S. Rep. Shri Thanedar, Andrew McCormick, eToro, Tarek Mansour, Kalshi
Moderated by: Wasim Ahmad: Wasim Ahmad, Vault12
Livestream: livestream
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheDigitalChamber/videos
*** 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: CMNYC25
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=1451596986&code=CMNYC25
Android: Enter code CMNYC25 when you select the Inheritance plan
Transcript
Wasim Ahmad:
Hey, everyone. My name is Wasim Ahmad. I'm one of the co-founders of Vault12, which helps retail investors do cryptocurrency inheritance, something that everyone needs to think about because no one's going to do it for you. And then, joining me on the panel today is Tarek Mansour from Kalshi, Andrew McCormick from eToro and Congressman Shri Thanedar from Michigan.
Shri Thanedar:
Michigan. Yeah.
Wasim Ahmad:
Wonderful. Great. Okay, so we're going to jump into it straight away. So my first question is for Andrew and Tarek really to define for us the conversation around retail investors. So who have they been and how is that evolving? Do you want to take it away?
Andrew McCormick:
Yeah. I'd love to jump in. Thanks, everyone, for being here. So I think we've seen some incredible and really cool trends in the last couple years. Historically, the stereotypes is investing is for older, rich people, and that's it. In the last couple of years, we're seeing all those barriers fall down. In the US in traditional markets, we've seen 50% of Americans typically own stocks. That's now more like 60%, 65%. A percentage of Americans holding crypto assets in the last two to three years has doubled. And I think what's especially cool is there's more people investing, but also at a younger age. And at eToro, we are retail trading platform serving millions of customers around the world and a majority of our users are millennials and younger, which we classify as young investors, which brings joy to my heart, because I'm barely a millennial. So technically I am still at age 42, a young investor.
And so what we see more people are investing, at younger ages and it's having a very interesting impact because younger folks have a longer time horizon so they can take more risk. Stereotypically, that's like the YOLO trades people talk about in the news, meme stocks, meme coins, but it goes beyond that. We've seen ETF assets more than double in the last five years. And I think it's cool because if you're a young investor and you're starting at 20 instead of 45, you can take more risk, you have a longer time horizon. I think that's really, really healthy and really exciting and will seem relevant to your world. An amazing trend we're going to see in 20 years is where just 80 plus trillion dollars are going to pass from older generations to millennials and younger by 2050.
Wasim Ahmad:
And 7 trillion of that is going to be in crypto assets.
Andrew McCormick:
That's a great commercial for you. And what's amazing, most of those assets today are probably in advisory accounts where people go into an office, they meet with a financial advisor once or twice a year. And younger investors, I don't think that's our jam. That's not what people are going to do in the future. And so mobile trading apps where people are doing these trades on their phone, I think are going to be a recipient for a lot of these types of assets. And maybe that's crypto, maybe that's meme stocks, maybe that's really cool binary futures platforms where today, older folks aren't really down with it, but in the future, it's going to be the norm. So more people investing and younger, and I think that's a powerful force.
Wasim Ahmad:
So Tarek, you started your company at the age of 22. So your retail customer's older or younger?
Tarek Mansour:
We have the full spectrum. So it's definitely concentrated. It's a curve that just goes down as the age goes up. But maybe just a little bit of context on how we started the company. So what we do at Kalshi, we're a prediction market in the US, the leading one. If you didn't hear the name of the company, you probably heard that we were forecasting Trump winning the election leading up to the election. What we do is we list derivatives, we're regulated by the CFTC, and these derivatives are yes or no question about anything that could happen in the future. Who is going to win an election? Will it rain tomorrow? What is the Fed going to do at the next meeting, and is a hurricane going to hit a certain city? So I actually started the company after spending some time at Goldman and Citadel, and the key insight that we saw when I was there, the clients were not retail clients, they were institutional clients actually. They were asking very simple questions about the future. It's like, "Hey, we want to hedge against Brexit or get exposure to Brexit." That was actually 80% of the flow we used to get at the desk at Goldman.
And what we would do is we would use traditional assets to give them that exposure they were looking for. But there were a few problems. One, it was a proxy. So a lot of people actually put on an S&P short ahead of the 2016 Trump election because they thought that was a Trump hedge. Trump did indeed win. So they were right, but they lost money because the S&P went up. And then number two is kind of opaque, it was OTC, the banks would decide the price, and there wasn't sort of a dynamic transparent marketplace for these things. That's where we came from to build this marketplace.
So going back to the question about retail, what we see with Kalshi, so we spent years getting regulated, we've grown a lot now, we have millions of customers. And these customers are actually generally speaking, people that have traditionally not been in financial markets. Our average customer, if you ask them, "Do you trade in options and derivatives?" Their usual answer is actually, "No because I don't gamble." And the reason they answer that way is because what we've built is we've built a tool, a financial instrument that a much vaster and wider range of people relate to. A lot of people may relate to things around culture and what's going on there or the weather. Most people relate with the weather, because they can see if it's rainy or sunny or politics, which a lot of people... I mean, I don't need to tell you about how much people relate with politics and a variety of other things, but they didn't really have a mechanism to actually express opinions on these types of topics that they relate to or have views on or hedge risk with respect to these things. And it's so interesting because if you're a person that's worried about Brexit, how it's going to impact your business, you actually understand that very, very well and intricately. You may not understand a lot of the traditional assets.
So we see kind of this rising class of people that are entering financial markets, but really through prediction markets, through Kalshi, and it's this sort of idea of... I like the analogy at the time Uber was like the pitch to a lot of drivers was like you have extra time, how about you monetize it? And this rising class of people that... And it's really beautiful. You read the news a lot. You know a lot about the economy, you have a lot of views, you go to trivia night and argue with your friends on Twitter. You have a lot of knowledge, how about you monetize it? And that's really what we're seeing at least on our end. And I find that very, very exciting because the playing field now is pretty level. Citadel is not actually the dominant force in our types of markets. It's retail.
Wasim Ahmad:
Great. Great. So Congressman, I want to turn to you. You represent a district in Michigan. You were the only democratic co-sponsor of a bill that focused on removing the IRS from being able to kind of mess around with CeFi and DeFi corporations. What is your vision for how crypto can help retail investors?
Shri Thanedar:
Well, look, thank you for having me on the panel, Wasim.
Wasim Ahmad:
Of course.
Shri Thanedar:
My name is Shri Thanedar. I represent Michigan's 13th Congressional District, and I was proud to vote for the FIT21 and as well as Resolution 25. Again making it easier, in my district now, my district is one of the fifth poorest district in the country, and I'm starting to see Bitcoin ATMs popping up especially in the low income areas, something that is charging 20% premium on purchasing Bitcoin. So from that, how do we go to a position where crypto is in every wallet and people, not just the wealthy and accessible, but people at the low income area, how would they start using this as their daily currency? How would my small mama-papa businesses would use this to do business across the world? And then, how does Congress come in and make it easier? How do we make sure that the innovators and entrepreneurs aren't going to UAE and aren't going to Singapore and everywhere else, that we have meaningful guidelines that the innovators and the entrepreneurs feel comfortable setting up their shop in the US because they could go take their laptop and go anywhere they want to go. And how do we keep them here in the US? How do we make this, just make sure that crypto is in every wallet?
Wasim Ahmad:
Great. So I'm going to delve into those questions a little later.
Andrew McCormick, eToro
Wasim Ahmad:
So before we get there though, I would like the panelists to talk about what are the biggest challenges facing retail investors today.
Andrew McCormick:
So there's certainly challenges. I'm a lawyer by trade, so I'll give a disclosure at the beginning because lawyers love disclosures, that there's no better time in American history to be an investor than today. So typically, you would need to know a financial advisor. Just to place a trade, you need $20 to pay a commission. You'd have to buy a full share. And if you want to do that for G&E or something, you might need $300 to place a single trade. Today, you can get started with $10. Whether that's a stock, ETF, crypto. And so there's no better time to be an investor than today. It's never been easier. At the same time, there's never been so many educational resources out there, so many platforms that are making cool, innovative, engaging products that help people build better lives for them and their families.
Some challenges though with that is there's persistent news out there, right? So years ago, if there's a huge drop in the stock market, you read about it the next day in the newspaper, you go to work. Now you're getting alerts on your phone, your friends are talking about it, you see it on TV, social media, emails, so it's easy to freak out and get scared. And there's probably nothing worse as an investor to do is to panic, to make an emotional sell, emotional trade. And I think that's hard in today's market because there's just information everywhere, which is really great and empowering and breaks down barriers but can cause an emotional drain on you, whether it's finance or politics or your sports team is not performing how you want, you see it all the time. So I think that information overload is a challenge, so I think it's important as an investor to stay committed and don't freak out and just plan for the future one step at a time.
Wasim Ahmad:
So eToro is like the Robinhood of Europe, and then you have a footprint now in the US that's growing. Really what is it that you're delivering that addresses the challenges of retail investors? Is it a smoother on ramp into a variety of different financial products? Is that kind of your mission?
Andrew McCormick:
So one is diversity of products, right? We're not just crypto, we're not just stocks. We have crypto, stocks, ETFs. In the future, we'll probably have futures and investment accounts and advisory accounts. So the diversity of offering is number one. Number two, we're very passionate about education. So we have a whole content called the eToro Academy with hundreds, maybe thousands of articles, videos in what we call snackable content. It's like not some long thesis that no one's ever going to read, like a two-minute video on key topics. What's an ETF? What's day trading? Things like that, where people can digest it in the way we digest news and information today.
And then, just trying to make it super easy to get started. No commission on stock trading. You can make investments for as little as $10. So my family, we're passionate about Chipotle. So one thing that like all our kids eat, and historically you might need $500 to buy a share of Chipotle. Now if you're passionate about Chipotle and you're like, you know what? I don't want to be just a customer there, I want to be an owner, $10. And you can start building that platform, and that innovative $10 entry point is not something that most firms offer.
Tarek Mansour, Kalshi
Wasim Ahmad:
That's great. So Tarek, you have upwards of 2 million downloads, billions of dollars in the market, and then you have partnered with Robinhood and Webull. Is that right?
Tarek Mansour:
Yeah. With more in the pipeline.
Wasim Ahmad:
Right, right. So what are you seeing as either challenges or just things that retail investors are overcoming in the rush to jump on top of prediction markets?
Tarek Mansour:
Yeah. I mean, I think, yeah, we now have, I would say one of the largest ecosystems in terms of retail presence in the US. I'll talk a little bit about the challenges because I do think it's an interesting question. I think of them as sort of two buckets. One of them is regulation and the second one is let's call it like short attention spans, which I think is a real problem in retail today. The thing with regulation, and I'm talking a bit more strictly about CFTC world, which is the world that we live in. I mean, historically retail has generally been a bit left off the conversation. They're kind of always lagging, generally they're underestimated. And I think the world has woken up now to like, yeah, actually retail can propel a stock to multi-trillion dollar market caps these days. That's something that was totally not possible 10 years ago. It is today. And I think there is a lot of work to do on creating...
One example is in our world in CFTC, there's actually no real consensus definition of what a retail investor is. When you're asking about retail, I'm thinking like, I actually don't really know what that is. Or a general definition, it's a dude trading, but like what is retail, and how do you think about that? Because there's sophisticated retail, there's extremely informed flow, there's less informed flow, and how do you differentiate between these? And I think so that's one challenge. I think there's a lot of work to do and I think it's been very encouraging over... In recent history, we're seeing a lot more willingness and discussion around retail in our world, in the CFTC world.
The second thing is, I think the world is short. Like we talk a lot about retail, sort of short attention span with people, but you're not seeing kind of changes that fit that. But the reality is like people can't really read anymore. The average 25-year-old cannot read a blog post. They just can't. They have to get something in 10 seconds, and if it's less than 10 seconds, they're gone. As we think about that, it's like you need to restructure the marketplace. You need to restructure education. You need to restructure the entire journey that a retail customer goes through when they experience any financial service with that core principle in mind. Like you cannot actually go force people to go read long blog posts or long terms and conditions and then tell them like, "Hey, it was there. You should have known." You have to kind of integrate that into your UX, and that's a lot of the work we do at Kalshi.
Wasim Ahmad:
Great. So Congressman, you touched on this. So how do you see crypto helping the average ordinary investor? You talked about it, you touched on it in your opening remarks, and I know Senator Cory Booker has talked about this, but it's not a general conversation that's out in the media or anywhere. So having seen poverty and all of those kinds of things, where do you see crypto helping the average person, the everyday person?
Shri Thanedar:
Well, look, the small businesses. Doing business across the world is so difficult through the current banking system, the long delays that are happening, the rejections of wires and transfer of money, the cost. As opposed to through crypto, transactions can happen in a matter of seconds. And to having that access, low cost or no cost access to be able to transact quickly, efficiently, without having to go through the bureaucracy of a bank or without having to go through the fee structure. I do a lot of business myself with India, and when it's sending small amounts of dollars to Indian vendor become so difficult because invariably, they get caught into the banking structure, and I get almost half of my wires get rejected when I go through the bank.
Whereas having that access to do business, it would mean a lot to have that access for a small business. It would mean a lot to have that access for person of low income transacting. And the blockchain just takes this further with all kinds of opportunities outside of crypto. That all need to be explored. And we in the United States, need to be the leader of the world in this. And this is where most of the innovation must happen. Unfortunately, currently, the crypto transaction, 90% of them are outside of the US, so that has to change. And that's what something I want to look at it from the Congress's perspective, how can we change regulations? How can we change things to make it easier for people to do business?
Wasim Ahmad:
Okay. So unlike a lot of Congresspeople, you are actually a businessperson, a scientist, and an entrepreneur prior to taking your place in Congress. So how are you working with your colleagues? Earlier today, there was a session with Representatives Sarah McBride, Don Davis and Sam Liccardo, talking about how they were working with Congress. So I'd love to hear from you, what are you doing to further your vision?
Shri Thanedar:
Well, currently, as we look at the voting on the first FIT21, only about 45 Democrats voted for it. The last resolution were about 72 Democrats. So a very small group of Democrats do support this at this time. I am a part of a Congressional Progressive Caucus, and there is a lot of suspicion in the Progressive Caucus about and crypto is looked at as a tool of the rich and the powerful. However, the Progressive Caucus and members of Progressive Caucus who care about access to financial markets, access to transactions, financial empowerment for people at low means, this is really the tool that [inaudible 00:19:03]. So it's going to take a long time to turn people around, but education is the key, education of members of Congress. They need to really understand about the powerful technology this is, and how this is going to help average everyday Americans.
Andrew McCormick, eToro
Wasim Ahmad:
Great. Now, let's hear from the other side. So both of you have platforms, target investors, everyday investors. How are you going to work with policymakers? What do you need the policymakers to do? How do you get better outcomes for your customers as far as working with people in Congress, people in the Senate, etc.?
Andrew McCormick:
I'd say clarity is helpful. It's interesting, in the United States and with our platform, we offer stocks and ETFs and options, but also crypto assets. And what that means, we have over a hundred different regulatory jurisdictions. 50 states all have different says on the security side, stocks, ETFs, as well as the SEC and FINRA. And on the crypto side, 50 different states have opinions on that and all different standards and rules. And when you're trying to run and build a lean, innovative FinTech, a startup that's trying to help empower customers, it's really, really hard when you have over a hundred different regulatory regimes you have to navigate. And we have operations in over 75 different countries, so we always have this very interesting AB test of like how things operate in other countries. And when we talk with our AML and compliance colleagues in the UK, for example, this all sounds crazy to them. They have one regulator, stocks, crypto-
Wasim Ahmad:
I've been working with them. It's insane what they're not doing.
Andrew McCormick:
Yeah. It's just much more efficient. And of course, there's Dubai and Singapore where they're breaking new ground and everything is very clear and certain and welcoming. I mean, this is the best place of capital markets in human history. And the money's here, the talent's here, the brilliance is here. We just need that regulatory clarity. It doesn't need to be perfect legislation, perfect regulations, but just something that's progressing and it's just clear, I think would be helpful.
Wasim Ahmad:
We're going to hear from Commissioner Peirce on the main stage, so hopefully we'll start to see some of that clarity. Tarek, what do you have to add?
Tarek Mansour:
I think we might be out of time.
Wasim Ahmad:
No, no. We have two minutes.
Tarek Mansour:
Okay. I'll do two minutes then. I'll do it fast. And it's pretty simple. I actually think my perspective is slightly different. So I think we're talking about the CFTC, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Obviously, CFTC is becoming more and more famous and popular these days. That's pretty cool to be CFTC-regulated because of crypto, which is awesome. I actually think the CFTC has structurally been a very... I mean, the difficulty is always kind of how do you balance sort of innovation and bringing things on shore and having the US capital markets or derivatives markets thrive, and then making sure that you don't let things explode, basically and be diligent and [inaudible 00:22:01]. Actually, my perspective after working with CFTC for I think close to five or six years now, I think that regulator has actually done a pretty good job at kind of towing that balance. And in some ways like, maybe it's one of those rarest things, like we don't have much to complain.
I mean, we have our disagreements with the CFTC. This guy from a company that has sued that regulator two years ago. And sometimes we disagree on certain issues. On that specific issue, we ended up winning. But on most issues, I think it's been a regulator that's been sort of very pro-listening to new entrants and innovation. And maybe the TLDR here is just kind of this sort of bi-directional dialogue. That's I think, pretty critical. It's for companies to actually educate regulators and vice versa for companies to listen to regulators. And so yeah, I think that's probably my perspective on this.
Wasim Ahmad:
Great. Thank you very much. I think we are now out of time. Thank you, panelists. Thank you so much for sharing your insights today.
DC Blockchain Summit
Crypto Inheritance Update: May 2025
- Regs Update.
- Vault12 Guard Product Updates.
- New to Crypto Inheritance? Start here.
Senator Bill Hagerty, author of the Stablecoin Bill, opens the Hill & Valley Forum, Washington D.C.
May Highlights:
- Hill & Valley Forum in D.C. was an impressive gathering of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, VCs combined with administration officials, Senators and other members of Congress. While the underlying theme was national security issues and ensuring that the U.S. is at the centre of momentum across a number of key initiatives, crypto was ever-present - especially the importance of shoring up our financial infrastructure and enabling innovation of financial products and services like stablecoins. Opening remarks were by Senator Bill Hagarty, the author of the GENIUS act which is now scheduled for a full hearing by the Senate in June.
- Canada Blockchain Week (CryptoMondays, Blockchain Futurist, Consensus): I got to speak at the beginning of the week at CryptoMondays and Blockchain Futurist. There was lots of great positive energy in the room as so many crypto people descended on Toronto.
- GENIUS Act, Stablecoin Bill: After the failed Senate procedural vote on the GENIUS Act, negotiations continued, led by a bipartisan group of negotiators, leading to a modified bill and a new vote on 19th of May.
Despite attempts by a disgruntled Senator who tried to browbeat her colleagues into voting against the GENIUS act, the vote succeeded (66-32) and a further vote to pass forward the GENIUS bill to a full session of the Senate succeeded with 69 bipartisan votes. The full bill will be presented to the Senate in June. - Upcoming legislative milestone: On June 10, the House Financial Services Committee will hold a markup on various bills, potentially including digital assets-related legislation - Market Structure bill.
*NEW* Promo Codes for Vault12 Guard
The iOS promo codes are good for a 1 year subscription at no cost, then will revert to standard price for the Inheritance plan. iOS codes can be redeemed in the Apple App Store.
Thanks for reading Vault12 Crypto Inheritance Newsletter! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
The Android codes are good for 90 days subscription at no cost, then will revert to standard price for the Inheritance plan. Android codes are redeemed when selecting and paying for the Inheritance plan in the app.
See instructions for how to redeem here.
Code: NL0525
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=1451596986&code=NL0525
Android: Enter code NL0525 when you select the Inheritance plan
Panels & Podcasts:
- Genzio: Canada Crypto Week
- Blockchain Futurist: The Real future of NFTs
- Digital Commonwealth Summit: How the shift in US policy and regulation is reshaping Digital Assets
- Stars Podcast/Growth Mindset: Crypto Inheritance
- Seeking Alpha Podcast
- Genzio Podcast: Crypto Inheritance and Quantum safe encryption
- Global CryptoMondays Podcast
Vault12 Guard Product Update
May 2025 - Version 2.6.3
Following Judge Rodriguez Rogers ruling in favour of Epic Games against Apple, we updated the Vault12 Guard app straight away to reference the new payment portal and highlight the “Epic Deal”, 50% off with VGT for a crypto subscription, for iOS.
Subsequently in mid-May, we added references for both iOS and Android to pay using crypto. This ruling addresses a major restriction on App Store economics: the ability to reference alternate payment methods in the app — including crypto payments — however, many, many restrictions remain in place. We are committed to fighting these overreaches on both platforms.
- Per Apple's new guidelines - we now can provide payments via crypto ($ETH and $VGT) available at the 'Manage my Vault" link on our website.
- This includes our Epic deal promotion - now use $VGT to buy a subscription and get 50% off when you use the native token of Vault12, $VGT. These payment options are now available for both iOS and Android.
- The Vault12 Guard Inheritance Plan cost has been updated to $1 per day on a monthly basis.
- Various bug fixes and performance improvements for the smoothest experience.
New to Crypto Inheritance? Start here.
- Stablecoins remain near the top of the news cycle this month as the “Guiding and Establishing National Innovation in U.S. Stablecoins” (GENIUS) Act winds its way through the U.S. Congress. Also this month, Circle, the company that issues the 2nd-largest stablecoin (USDC), filed paperwork in preparation for its IPO. Strengthen your understanding of why stablecoins are so hot by taking a spin through the Vault12 article “Stablecoins' momentum builds in bridging traditional and digital assets.”
- Are you feeling the Bitcoin energy this month, perhaps due to the Bitcoin 2025 conference in Vegas (our VP of Engineering is attending), or due to the all-time high price this month of nearly $112,000 USD? It’s been a long time coming. For some enlightening perspective, we suggest you peruse our short Blog post entitled “Bitcoin Billionaires and the Security of Money,” which reviews some of Bitcoin’s journey, and highlights all the people mentioned in the book who are part of Vault12.
- You may have read the terrifying story this month about a crypto crime wherein an Italian man was kidnapped in New York City and tortured in an attempt to force him to reveal the seed phrase to his Bitcoin crypto wallet. It is just the latest in a series of disturbing crimes against crypto owners, leading many to stop and consider the sensibility of maintaining a “dummy wallet” to offer thieves in case they find themselves in such an emergency situation. If you want to create a “dummy” wallet for yourself, please read the Vault12 article “How do Crypto Wallet Passphrases work?” to learn about how passphrases can make a single crypto wallet behave as multiple independent wallets. If you’re hesitant because you feel like you have a daunting number of wallets already, you should also check out the article “Managing Multiple Crypto Wallets with Vault12 Guard.”
Blockchain Futurist Conference 2025 | Beyond the JPEG: The Real Future of NFTs | Toronto
Presented at Blockchain Futurist Conference 2025 in Toronto – Canada’s Largest Web3 Event To learn more about Blockchain Futurist Conference and get tickets, visit futuristconference.com
Follow Blockchain Futurist Conference on Social:
Twitter: @futurist_conf
Instagram: @untraceableinc
LinkedIn: blockchain-futurist-conference*** 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: FUTURIST25
iOS: https://apps.apple.com/redeem?ctx=offercodes&id=1451596986&code=FUTURIST25
Android: Enter code FUTURIST25 when you select the Inheritance plan
Featured Panelists: Moderator: Julie Lamb, Founder, NFT VIP, Anwuli Okeke, Founder, Ilunafriq, Kenn Bosak, Host, #NotAnotherBitcoinPodcast, Wasim Ahmad, Vault12, Maheen Aqeel, Founder, Journey Studio
Transcript
MC:
And now the moment you've all been waiting for the absolute best panel besides the one that I was on, obviously the best panel here today. This is about NFTs and I'm excited to have Julie mod this one. Our next panel dives deep into what's really next for NFTs. I told you there's big things coming beyond the art, beyond the hype and JPEGs, beyond the jpeg, the real future of NFTs explores how this tech is evolving into something far more powerful. Moderated by my friend Julie Lamb, joined by Anne Wooley, my guy Ken Boza, Maheen, and Anthony. This group brings bold perspectives of where NFTs are headed next, please put your hands together for the NFT panel. Let's go. Let's go. Alright. Alright.
Julie Lamb:
Oh yeah. Oh, oh, look at this. Holy, I almost went by Maheen Wasim. Ken, great to see you. We have one more, one more panelist. I know she's heading up here soon we'll get her to come up on stage on Wally, are you close by? There she is. We'll bring her up on stage. Oh yeah, the best. Bringing up the best in the rest, coming up from the backside, you guys, I'm really excited to host this panel. I'm Julie Lamb. I am the founder of N-F-T-V-I-P. We're an immersive ticketing solution and I have been in the trenches for a while now, I would say almost 10 years. And I love the excitement that comes out of digital assets. So I was asked to moderate this panel. I'd love for everyone to go down the room and we'll start on the far side on Wally, will you say you are who you are and what your company is?
Anwuli Okeke:
Sure. Very nice. Can everybody hear me okay? I got you. I treat
Julie Lamb:
You. Let's see. Thank
Anwuli Okeke:
You. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear myself now.
Julie Lamb:
Nice.
Anwuli Okeke:
Well, very nice to be here. Thanks again for having me. My name is Am Yoki and I'm the founder of Eluna Freak. We're an NFT aggregation platform. In other words, what we do is we unify your entire NFT presence across the entire landscape, across multiple blockchains and marketplaces into one space, making it easy for fellow art enthusiasts, your fans, institutional investors, and even collectors to find you to discover and also trade NFTs directly.
Kenn Bosak:
Hi, how goes it? Oh, mic check. I'm Ken Boza. I got into crypto in 2015, started a podcast. Can we trade it again? All right, well just throw that one away. So yeah, how goes it? I'm Ken Boza. I got into Bitcoin in 2015 and I started a podcast in 2016 called not another Bitcoin podcast. Quit my day job, started traveling the world in 2017. Been to hundreds of conferences, interviewed, you name them, I've interviewed them. And right now I'm working with Bitcoin. Ben, does anybody here know who Bitcoin? Ben is? Bitcoin. Bitcoin. Ben Bitcoin, yeah, yeah, yeah. We're opening a club in Vegas. He has a bunch of crypto clubs around the country. So if you're in Vegas next week or so for the Bitcoin conference, just do a quick search. You'll find us near the Strat. We're opening up a Bitcoin Benz Crypto Club in Vegas, and I'll be working there throughout the years.
Wasim Ahmad:
Hi everyone, I'm Wasim Ahmad. I'm one of the co-founders of Vault 12. We are the pioneers in crypto inheritance. So we're going to talk about how amazing NFTs are and what does life look like beyond the jpeg. And so what we do is make sure that those same emotionally connected pieces of art and have a life beyond your own life.
Maheen Aqeel:
Hi everyone. My name is Mahe and my artist's name is Mahe Blues. So I started as an artist, very simple, and I was new in the space, but I kind of evolved into, I started building the community and then from there I started hosting events, spaces, a lot of those things that led me to kind of start my own studio, the Journey Studio and what we do different in the Journey studios, like we bring art and music together and create these immersive experiences and we host these events just to give a platform for emerging artists where they can showcase their art and also for people who are there to enjoy music and enjoy the event.
Julie Lamb:
Since our topic of the panel is beyond the jpeg, I'm going to start on the far side here. We had had this conversation earlier today about being an NFT aggregator. Can you share a little bit into the future on Wally, what beyond the JPEG means for you and your company and how you can let us know where you see the few?
Anwuli Okeke:
Yeah, definitely. So I think that million narratives have often oversimplified NFTs and what they represent. So for instance, today tokenized real world assets are the major driver of the NFT market. In other words, luxury collectibles and their tokenization are a major driver of NFTs. But beyond that though, definitely see a situation where blockchain technology becomes the backbone of the internet, similar to how TCP IP protocols are today. And then beyond that, NFTs also, they also have a use case beyond artwork. So when people hear NFTs, they're very synonymous with art. But NFTs have a use case in healthcare governance, digital identity and ownership education and so much more the ai, the metaverse, and so much more. For instance, NFTs are being used right now both in our industry and both as an aggregator. NFTs are being used as co-ownership for intellectual property and also in medical research to reward medical participants in supply chain.
They're being used for provenance of pharmaceuticals and medical devices and security. They're being used as access to digital or even physical assets, for instance, smart cars, smart homes, and more. So I can keep going on and on, but because we're an NFT aggregator, I almost feel as though we're on the forefront of that evolution of NFTs because different use cases keep popping up as to how NFTs can be used. For instance, in healthcare, they're being used for the secure provenance and transmission of patient health records. So I'll just stop there and just pass it over to my fellow.
Julie Lamb:
I think that's a really exciting thing to talk about. For me, the idea of these real world assets, right? Healthcare and NFTs or JPEGs. If we go past that, I think you said something important about your intellectual property rights. With our NFT immersive ticketing, we work with Beyonce and Santana with Poison, and Brett Michaels and a couple of celebrities are slipping my brain right now because I'm so mesmerized by the crowd here. But with Dee Snyder from Twisted Sister, they're doing a whole conference in Yellowstone, Wyoming. And as artists, they want to be able to keep these intellectual property rights within their fans and then pass that down to their heirs and their heritage. So I think we're all in this room as builders. Speaking of being in the room and being builders, can you and I have been in a lot of rooms, a lot of rooms all over the world, right?
Kenn Bosak:
Yeah. All over.
Julie Lamb:
So you've seen a lot in the past. I'm going to ask you to be a bit of a fortune teller right now. Tell me where you see where we are going to go beyond the jpeg, what you see as the future trends since you're digging in the dirt, you've been to hundreds of conferences
Kenn Bosak:
And I guess a little insight onto the NFC side of things or NFT side of things is why I'm here is I've actually sold over a million NFTs, but I did that for a dollar each. Everybody was selling NFTs for $10,000 or 69 million. And I was like, I bet I could sell a million of them for a dollar. And I did. It was only a dollar, you know what I mean? Who doesn't have a dollar? So coming from that perspective, I got into the NFT space a month after crypto kitties and stuff like that. So this is something I've always kind of thought like and would hope by this point we would've seen this, but the utility of it, some of the cool, I mean obviously things that come across my peer view is there's cannabis companies that are using NFTs as rewards, buying the packaging.
Packaging has become really big in the cannabis industry. The crazier the packaging, the more you can sell an eighth for, even though it's still 20 bucks in there, the packaging is now why you can sell it for 50. Well, they're adding an NFT to that packaging and now they're able to sell it for a hundred dollars for the same thing. That would only be 20 bucks without all that flare to it. And then there's a product out there called polka dot bars, those mushroom bars that everybody loves. They're using NFTs to verify that that's their product and not a knockoff. So if you go to a gas station and you're getting a polka.bar, they're using NFTs to verify and validate that you got a legit product, not some knockoff like yeah, you could copy their whole collection, make a knockoff of the product and mint NFTs to it.
But when you look at the blockchain, the issuer is in polka dot. It's just they really went out of their way to try and knock it off. But you can always go back to the blockchain to prove it's authentic. So for me, I think clothing brands are really going to get in on stuff like this. Like Supreme, if you want to take a white t-shirt and sell it for $500 more than you already are, put an NFT on it. You can prevent a lot of back alley bootlegging and stuff like that. And then the utility things, we're going to see people appreciate the Bob Ross art on their visa, but they value the utility that Visa gives them with that art on it. And I think that we have to start giving utility to bring value to the art that we appreciate. On the NFTs.
Julie Lamb:
One thing at N-F-T-V-I-P, we've developed a nap. It's like an NFT app. It allows you, as the owner, let's say, of a concert ticket, you're going to go see Beyonce. And Beyonce now allows in her VIP tickets, soul bound remixed albums that you can only listen to if you had been a ticket holder or an NFT holder of that current event. Now let's say that I have children and I'd like to pass that soul bound ticket onto my kids, but I'm not really quite sure how to do that. And so my next question is for Wasim. I think what's really interesting is with all of the amazing digital assets that we've collected, why do we need to worry about setting up a legacy and inheritance for our heirs or family members?
Wasim Ahmad:
Well, thank you for that question. I mean, it's really clear from what you've already heard on the panel that in just a few short years, NFTs are basically the most interesting thing on the blockchain. And I love have a Banksy fractional Banksy. I love it. I love it. I have an emotional attachment to this and you better believe that it's one of my nieces, or actually I have four, so each of my nieces and nephews are going to get one. And so I need to make sure that that can be passed on. And I'm not just talking about the print that goes with this, but the actual digital representation of it and the ownership of those pieces. So if you don't think about how you're going to pass on your digital assets, whether it's artwork, whether it's an access token, whatever it happens to be, it's going to get lost. So you need a way to record from your wallet how to access that wallet in the event that you have passed on. So it is something that people don't think about. 35% of men will sort out a will, 65% of women. So it's not necessarily something that everyone thinks about, but you have to do it upfront because no one is going to do it for you. Will you
Kenn Bosak:
Bring us, if I could add to that real quick though, is something that people don't think about as everything that he mentioned was for individuals, but this goes so much deeper for enterprise. If you want to see institutions getting into this, you're going to want to see acquisitions being able to hand off their NFT allocations in a way that's reasonable, not just, here's the private key. Trust me, I didn't back it up, bro. So this is really important for enterprise solutions as well. If the CEO dies and takes that private key with them, what's the company going to do?
Julie Lamb:
Yeah, you bring up a good point. This interesting. I don't have children that I'm passing on to, but I do have three family members that don't speak to each other. So in my untimely passing, they each have to come together one time to make a decision of what they're going to do with my digital assets, sell, hold, move on now being an artist, we met last year here on the stage at the Blockchain Futurist conference, and not only are you an amazing artist, you also did digital assets last year and this year you're doing so much more. So with the current shift in NFT space, how are you applying those skills and experiences that you gained from NFTs into your life or the work that you're doing today? I'm so excited to hear your answer.
Maheen Aqeel:
Yeah, that's a great question. Thank you for asking. So I feel like NFTs have given us this platform where we can foster real connection and build communities with artists, creators, developers, and everyone who's doing different things. And it has kind of given us this ecosystem where I feel like collaboration is more doable and it's more appreciated. And I take that knowledge, that experience, and that amazing sense of community that we had from those experiences and apply that today in the work that I do, building the Journey Studio where I know that I have the community that came from the NFT community. I know that we have the artists that came from the NFT art space, but they're also digital artists. So what we are trying to do is we host events where it's not only about digital art but also music and create this different immersive experience where I think everyone enjoys and is like jokingly.
I'm just saying that it's like web four because we are kind of like, I don't think we can ever forget what NFTs have done for us. And NFTs still exist, but we can also apply that same knowledge, same technology, and do something different depending on what's in demand and what people are liking and what's the hype. So that's what I try to do and I like to thank the community they're all here. Also, shout out to the futurist conference because I'm one of the curators for the arts that you see alongside the Gold Gallery and Shelly, my friend. So we are all curators and we brought art in the tech world. So that's like itself is an evolution for NFTs. And now we are doing more with these events that are with music because I feel like people enjoy that more. And I don't know, maybe there is something next, but we'll just find out with time.
Julie Lamb:
Well, speaking of something next, I want to dial it back in on Wally. When you mention NFT aggregator for someone like me, I understand the word, but will you give me a 1 0 1? What you mean by that? What is the use case for that, just so I can completely understand?
Anwuli Okeke:
Sure. Definitely.
Julie Lamb:
Oops. Well there goes that mic. If it wasn't dead yet, it's dead now.
Anwuli Okeke:
Yeah, sure. So I would say a synonym for aggregator is consolidator. So in other words, the ecosystem is quite fragmented. You have a myriad of blockchains. You have e Aram, Terra Solana base, and then you have marketplaces that are built on top of these blockchains. You have open sea blur and many times you have silos. They don't quite talk to each other. And as NFT artists, it's usually the case where you have your digital assets on more than one blockchain. In fact, it's encouraged. God forbid if one blockchain goes down, you still have access to some of your digital assets. However, it makes it quite difficult for anyone to find you or even get an understanding of your journey and evolution as an artist, it makes it very difficult to see your entire portfolio holistically. So let's say I'm a collector and I want your art or I want your art.
Where do you send me now if you're going to send me to 5, 6, 7 multiple places to find you, you're going to lose me and you're going to lose the sale. And then God forbid, your name on each platform is quite different. So I have to hop onto open, see, find you as goat, and then I have to hop onto X and find you as whatever, and then hop onto another platform and find you as whatever you're going to lose the sale. And so what we've done is we bring your entire presence across the entire blockchain. It doesn't matter the platform, it doesn't matter the blockchain, it doesn't matter the marketplace. We bring it all into unified space. That way people can discover you and then they can buy from you directly. It's as simple as that.
Julie Lamb:
I mean, you bring up a current people talk about the bull market, people talk about the bear market, and Ken, you touched on this and you're talking about on Wally bringing it down into one place. And then you mentioned Ken about enterprise solutions and taking it and casting the net wide. It's almost like we're talking about being builders here, right? We're building and we keep building. It's already been built and we keep building on top of it. So do we go wide or do we go narrow? Ken?
Kenn Bosak:
I think narrow is the solution. I think we're, this is like a paradigm shift for mom and pop solutions or businesses to become enterprise level competitive. The same opportunity that arose with the internet and website domains. There was mom and pop shops that run the world now because they were early to the internet. And same thing with diner club card. A lot of companies could credit their success to being status symbols because they were there for diner club card people to spend their diner club money. You know what I mean? We're the next diner club card. If you don't accept Bitcoin, you're just telling people with money, you don't want their money. So I think casting the net wide would be overshoot. We've been overshooting for a decade plus now it's not working. I think we need to dumb down the tech. And that's what's been happening.
That's why you've seen NFTs lose value. I say it's because it's been easier to do. NFTs had value when it was hard. The same thing with token launches. They were valuable when they were hard. Now it's so easy, your five-year-old can do it better than me, and I've been doing this forever, right? It's almost intuitive for them. You're seeing kids minting, nft. So it became so easy, it took that value, that sweat equity that went into the launch of an NFT. So I think narrowing it down and showing mom and pop businesses that are small pizza shops, coffee shops or even supply chain shipping and stuff like that, showing them how they could use this technology because it has become so easy. We're almost at GoDaddy esque domain building for this blockchain utilization for either iot tracking, RWAs, anything. So it's the narrowing it down and showing how that pizza store can make Papa John's sweat.
Julie Lamb:
Well, you actually brought up an interesting thing when you mentioned narrow it down when it comes to, I go back to the artists maim when I say this at Wild Bill days with Brett Michaels and D Snyder, we implemented a new policy with our tickets. If I were to give a couple of my friends tickets or give them a code to get a ticket, I can get a reward system much like Diners Club, much like traveling on an airplane or staying in a hotel. Why can't we be rewarded for sharing this information with our friends or our colleagues or fans? When I go to a concert, I don't want to go by myself. I go with at least one person, if not a few. So it really is an interesting way how artists can maintain their IP rights. Now, what was interesting, I want to go back to legacy and heritage because we don't always think about end of days for us, but what we're building now is going to last forever through generations and generations. So I want to know, I can ask you a whole lot of questions Wasim, but since we only have a few minutes left, what are some of the stories? Is there a story that really sticks out to you about legacy? And I know I put you on the spot here, but a legacy or an inheritance story. I don't want to throw you to the wolves.
Wasim Ahmad:
So there's the real life story of a trader who creates a new wallet, puts a digital asset in there and writes down the credentials for the wallet, the seed phrase or the crypto key on a post-it note and then proceeds to eat his hamburger or whatever it is that he was eating. And then his dog jumps up and eats the post-it note, which is now nicely covered in ketchup. And so that wallet is gone. He didn't back it up any other way. So you just want to make sure you back up, back up your wallets that have your NFTs and your other digital assets and then ultimately for inheritance. The other stories are too sad. I don't want to talk about
Kenn Bosak:
That. I would recommend your friend try hypnosis. I know I would.
Julie Lamb:
I mean this is literally a story about the dog ate your homework, right? I know we only have a few minutes left. I, I had a question for you. You tapped on this a little bit, but in what ways, how has being a part of the NFT ecosystem helped shape your current plan would?
Maheen Aqeel:
So the plan is basically to take the knowledge that I talked about, right? The experiences, the community and grow from there because everything keeps changing. So what I was doing last year is completely different from what I'm doing right now and I don't even know what I'm going to do next year. It's just that
With what we have today, we have the artists, we have the community, and not just artists from Toronto but artists from all around the world. We try, I'm trying to figure out a way where these artists get rewarded or paid in some sort of way for what they do because so many times we've used their work in our curations and they take time to make that art and they're happy that their work is on the screen and on the display and everything and they're very content with it. But I as an artist feel like there's more to it, there's more opportunity. So these days raves are hard. People want to go and a couple of my 3D artist friends who are doing really great work, they're getting paid. So I'm trying to find something where we can have their work that was once in NFT and a digital art to be displayed and played while there's a rave going on or there's a show going on and there is a concert going on because it does have value,
Anwuli Okeke:
But
Maheen Aqeel:
I'm still working on it. I'm still young and I'm still finding ways and open to collaborations, open to anything. But I think every day or every month we're moving forward. So that's great news.
Julie Lamb:
Well, I feel like you guys were just part of something. I feel like there could be something between Maheen and I when it comes to collaborating right now. I don't mean to use you guys as the potential of me. So use this as an example. If you are sitting next to someone and you don't know who they are, connect with them, get their socials, find out. And just to close out really quickly, how can we find each one of you? So on Wally, how can we find you? What's your favorite social
Anwuli Okeke:
X and on all social media platforms, our name is the same because we have a unique name. So it's a Luna Freak everywhere, LinkedIn, Instagram X and everywhere else. Telegram as well.
Julie Lamb:
Ken, I know you have a few pseudo names out there
Kenn Bosak:
Are yours. Just Google Ken with two Ns and then NFT or Bitcoin or whatever. I'll pop up. I guarantee it.
Julie Lamb:
Wasim,
Wasim Ahmad:
Oh, I'm was a pretty much everywhere, but X is pretty good.
Maheen Aqeel:
I'm mine Blues. So you can find me on X and Instagram, same name. I only use LinkedIn to update about these events, so don't judge me. I need some of it. So these are the two platforms.
Julie Lamb:
I know I'm old school too. Maybe that's why we like each other. I'm on LinkedIn, I'm on X, I'm on all of them, but you can find me, Julie Lamb on LinkedIn. Super easy to find. There aren't many redheaded. Julie Lambs, there's a few of us out there, but thank you so much. Blockchain futurist. I hope to see all of you guys in Miami in November, November 5th and sixth, the next conference that's going to happen. So we'll see you in the States. Thank you so much to our crew, our manager, our AB team. Big round of applause for my panelists here on stage. Thank you so much. Can we get a group picture? Will you take a group picture of us? Awesome.
MC:
Great job. And I feel like this is something we've had to do all day long. Y'all can do better than that with the applause. I know that you can. Thank you. Oh my God. See it's not that hard.
Julie Lamb:
Cool.
Maheen Aqeel:
Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you everyone.
MC:
Alright, well we're just going to go, we'll go wireless for the rest of the thing. Alright, that's it guys. Thank you so much. Blockchain, futurist, eat Toronto, eat Women. We did it all. How? What an amazing time we had. I want to say thank you. Not only to every single one of you in this space, I want to thank my AV team. I know Julie said it, but I got to do it too. My camera guys, my sound guys, thank you so much. My stage manager, the runners, everybody. Thank you for being here. Eat Toronto. We are closing out. Don't forget tonight. Here is the bit yet. Wallet mixer. You can find that here at the design exchange. So I believe seven o'clock is when that starts. So thank you that Thank you to all of our platinum sponsors. We got the big AT Wallet. We got Coin As you see the branding on the Chairs, secret Network and ZDKL. Thank you all so much and we got some gold sponsors. Let's go. Coinbase, DeLorean, polymath. Nexa Paper BVI Finance acronym Coin Bound, LTD. To can Silence Swap my guy, Rainmaker Youi, Kae, cryptocurrency, wire Gen ZO, blockchain North in Anvil. All right guys, we are signing out from Blockchain Futurist Conference here in Toronto. We'll see you in Miami.
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 to pay.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.
Seeking Alpha Podcast: Protecting Your Ass(ets) | New York
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.
Global Ripple Effects: How the shift in US policy and regulation is reshaping Digital Assets | London
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.
Growth Mindset podcast: Crypto Inheritance | New York
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.
