Future of Fintech, Crypto and AI with Zach Anderson-Pettet of Money 20/20

Welcome to the Index Podcast hosted by Alex Kahaya. Plug in as we explore new frontiers with Web3 and the decentralized future.

Hey everyone and welcome to the Index brought to you by the Graph, where we talk with the entrepreneurs building the next wave of the internet. We do this because we believe that people are worth knowing and that you can benefit from knowing the why that's driving the future of the internet. I'm your host, Alex Kahaya, and today I'm excited to welcome Zach Anderson-Pettit, host of the FinTech Family Hour podcast and the US Content Director for Money 2020, the world's leading conference on payments and financial services innovation. Today, we're going to dive into the critical topic of reimagining the future of finance, exploring Web3 innovators, disrupting the industry and what's next for crypto, and getting a sneak peek at Money 2020 upcoming conference in Las Vegas next month. Zach, thanks for being on the show.

Alex, great to meet you man. Wonderful intro and excited to you tee it up in such a fun way. It makes me feel like I know something about the future of finance. I guess we're about to find out, yeah.

Let's start out with some of the basics, Walk everybody through who you are, some of your background and let's get the sort of genesis story that is your career.

Yeah, yeah, I would go honestly as far back as my childhood at least. To start quickly, I'm from Kansas City. Payday Loan Capital of I always say Payday Loan Capital of the world. I don't know how true that is. I don't know how much Payday Loans exist in that form outside of the US. I know there's probably somebody breaking somebody's knees somewhere but Kansas City really was formative in terms of that. It was very, very have and have not. The have nots is the area I grew up in between two check cashing places and a pop-eyes, basically Growing up in that experience. You just had this how does this money thing work? My dad went bankrupt when I was a kid. Fast forward and college, I ended up doing an internship at Merrill Lynch. I've just always had this money thing and actually not that driven by money, but just fascinated by how the system economy works and the underpinning incentives and all that. I've never been able to answer all my questions, so I just kept going deeper and deeper into it. Finally, in college, I just had this moment of good Lord, this industry's broken. I was doing an internship at a very specific investment bank and I figured out that we were not acting as a fiduciary. That felt wild, that that was even legal and I was kind of decided from there I want to spend the rest of my life in finance and hopefully leave it a little bit better than I found it sort of a thing. Since then I've worked in banks, worked in rubbo advisors, worked in banking as a service in San Francisco, all the way to now being at Money 2020. I can jump into very specific details on all of that, but basically my why is let's fix some of this and make it less painful than it is right now.

Yeah, so your why is we need a better financial system? What would you boil that down to? I know it's like let's fix some of this, but what are the top three things that are why you're here, dude being in payday lending? That is one of the most broken and negatively impactful spaces. I've actually done some research into that and how crypto could be leveraged there to create a more fair system. What are your top three things?

Top three things, just like off the top of my head. One is getting people paid when they make the damn money. There's this concept of earned wage access. I think that is like the beginning of it, this idea that, okay, I'm a Walmart employee, I work for a single day. I should be able to take that home with me, versus the idea of waiting every two weeks and happy to manage my cash flow around that two weeks and all that kind of thing. Moving even from the idea of earned wage access of every day into this idea of streaming pay or whatever it might be. Hypothetically, you're streaming this right now and four people jump on it and they're like Alex, you're doing a wonderful job. Could they just pay you as it's happening, if you're a Walmart employee, could you be making whatever that 14, I don't know how much it is an hour, but whatever that hourly is broken down, going directly into your account while you're actually working and be able to manage cash flow in an entirely different way. That, I think, is huge. You got to pay people Then from there, if you're going to be lending to them, you need to do it in a way where they actually have the ability to pay it back. I would say the payday lending thing is one of it. I think it's more just responsible lending. Part of responsible lending is actually the data and the underwriting and everything that goes into that. The reason that payday lenders are payday lenders is because of the gerrymandering and the way that we have actually built our financial system around these community banks that lend into certain areas and don't lend into others, and big banks that function here but don't function there. I'd say our industry basically understanding the data. That does matter when it comes to underwriting and then actually having the ability to use it, because that's one of the things that happens a lot, I think, especially in Treadfy, where we figure out this thing that oh man, if we do this, then the payback rate is going to be this much higher, or we're going to be able to lend into this group and we weren't able to before, but then you have to go get that through a legislative body or get it into a regulation where you can actually use that, and it's not against some sort of fair lending or anything along those lines. So those would be my two, and then my third is a really big overarching umbrella over Washington DC, and I think I kind of just hit on DC a little bit in terms of those first two pieces, but we as an industry need to engage with Washington DC, I think, in a way, that we are not right now, and I think that's especially true when you look at I'm kind of talking about some Web 3 stuff maybe. I think the industry has made a real effort to engage with the SEC. The SEC is maybe not making the same effort, especially from on high with Mr Gensler. It's stuff like that that we are trying to bring to the show. That's why we have Hester Pierce at the show. Basically, everything that we've talked about at the beginning of this is like that's the filter that I use to bring things on stage too. So I'd say, the Washington thing, though, is probably my biggest drum that I'm hitting over and over again right now. Regulation and legislation and rulemaking matters, and I think most of our industry doesn't take a ton of time to think about it or read it or engage in it.

Yeah, so what I'm hearing is like fair money, a fair financial system.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's a much more succinct version of it. Yeah, I mean, but that's the problem, right, man? It's like there's so many pieces to the unfairness that, like, how do you unpack the unfairness to make it fair? Like it's so broken that you just you kind of have to speak in generalities, or else it's a really slippery slope on specifics.

Well, it's like where do you start? Right? So you got to unpack it, but you also have to look for low hanging fruit right. Where can you make impact in the shortest amount of time, given the constraints? Right Like the regulatory environment is no joke. It's like impossible to navigate and it's a decades long effort that requires significant capital and time and energy and human resource.

Maybe. But the other side is like maybe more founders could just pick up a phone and call their senator. I agree with you. But I also think there is low hanging fruit to your earlier point that we could be doing more of that. I don't think we are.

That is a good point. So at this point in the podcast is where we say pick up the phone and call your senator. I think it's a great message, really like, if you believe in what we're trying to build together, pick up the phone and call your senator. Maybe call them like every month. And one thing I really care about about this show the index, my why is people are worth knowing and I want to share their why. Why are they here? Why are they here building this? Because I think we have tried to do a good job, but we need to do much better about explaining the why behind that drives every entrepreneur and innovator and investor and developer that's building in Web 3 and building the future of finance, and distribute that message as wide as possible, whether it's directly to your senator or just through like content marketing on all of your social media channels. Because I think that is one of the biggest things that has been lost and that they are missing because they're like you know they're looking at oh, it's scams, it's FTX, it's collapse, it's like unregulated money and they're missing the why that has so many of us passionately building.

Yeah, it's a storytelling endeavor, Like I think that there's this sense amongst especially Web 3 folks that I will even say like we, like I kind of put myself in portions of that bucket, you know, or else like I don't think I could really do the job, but I think there's the sense that Web 3 has been slighted by Washington or like never got that chance. And to me there's a disconnect there where like it's not as if the Treadfy people haven't worked their asses off to get those relationships and that there isn't some back and forth in terms of the ways those relationships get built. You know, and one thing that the movement of crypto or the movement of Web 3, from my perspective, is missing is like that person to stand at the helm of it and really be the storyteller and the one that develops the narrative around why it's important to your point. And I don't know if that person exists, like I mean, I think Brian Armstrong does an okay job of it, but he's trying to run a company. I think Naval kind of does it, but he's quiet now, like, and then like Bellagie comes out of left field and just freaks everybody out, like it's really hard to find the actual person to lead the charge on the narrative of Web 3. And you know, the SPFs of the world don't help to your point.

Yeah, I totally agree. We as a space need to own that narrative and have somewhat of a shared narrative. I mean, I can tell you from the entrepreneurs that I know our whys are slightly different, but there's a lot of overlap, right. Like, if you start looking at the patterns, there's maybe like five to 10 whys out there that drive people to be in this space, whether it's a passion around, like privacy, like you believe privacy and censorship, resistance, and like access are human rights. That's a why I happen to believe that too. One of my, like other personal whys for being in the space is I believe that the true power of Web 3 is in its ability to enable us to control our own destinies. How we do that is through open source software running on permissionless blockchain networks. That's one of my messages. I mean I agree with you Like we need more people and I want to figure out how to empower those people to tell that story, like that's the whole reason for this podcast to exist is literally to tell those stories. And one thing I'm really excited about with you is through Money 2020 and probably through your podcast too, like you have a really broad view. I didn't take that Money 2020 was all about blockchain. right, it's like it's fintech, and so you have like a broad view of what's happening, who's building what, what are the opportunities out there? And I'm like, just generally, what are the trends you're seeing coming out of there and how does that apply to the future of the internet? And just to be clear, I bucket the future of the internet. Web 3 is not just blockchain and crypto. It's like AR, ai, vr, it's like these fintech initiatives that are maybe not even using blockchain technology. So just what's your overview, what's the broad overview of the market, what are you seeing?

I don't want to be a broken record, but that Washington thing, like matters. I think that we're hitting a point. We're hitting a point where engaging in Washington is no longer an option. The background of this is basically forever the world has thought regulation was born right. This idea, like everything that we've ever programmed previous to this year, I would say that involved regulation. Most people are like mass news fest, right. All of a sudden like coinbase in the SEC, are in a lawsuit. All of a sudden the CFTC is making all these rules. All of a sudden. Washington is just fascinating and if you're not paying attention to it, you can't get through a bankless episode without talking about the SEC or without talking about some portion of Washington DC. So this year we actually have, like on Sunday we have a Washington explained thing that is literally just pulling apart what we were just talking about. Right, Like you write a letter to your senator, you call your senator, but where do you go from there? So that is a huge piece of it. Having Hester Pierce come as a huge piece of it. Having Michael Sue from the OCC come is like those are. The fact that people are excited about having regulators come to the show, I think says a ton about where we're at right now as a industry. From there, I would say that one of the more overarching like interesting pieces here is that the the boring stuff is becoming a little bit sexier, right To that point about Washington. The second piece is, I think that there's like a whole bunch of really important pieces in the world of fintech that we have not leaned into and solved, and this is true of fintech financial services, all of it right and, but it's the boring stuff that you probably aren't thinking about, right. So here's an example have you ever heard of a word called a sheetment?

No, okay, I don't know what that is.

Yes, I think it was two weeks ago that I found out what a sheetment was. Officially, educate me.

What are we doing? What is this?

So a sheetment is what happens when a financial institution, a chartered financial institution, has accounts that are dormant in the institution for a set period of time. I believe it's two years, if I remember correctly. So if you think about the Neobank wave, right, be that consumer, be that business, like all of these banks, stood up and then all of a sudden, there's going to be a lot of dormant accounts in those banks that are going to have to then be taken and given, either, like the funds either have to go to the state or to the federal government. There's, like this, all this paperwork that happens around the background, right? So if you're thinking about, like Chime or any of these Neobanks, they probably have a very significant percentage of their accounts that are dormant, that are now going to have to start going through this a sheetment process. No one has talked about a sheetment in the past five to seven years, right? I've heard this term come up a number of times in the last couple months and two weeks ago actually met a founder that is building an automated process for a sheetment. Right? I met a founder last or this week at TechCrunch that is building a company literally to help companies shut down and help venture back companies shut down. Specifically it's called Simple Closure. It's skating where the puck's going to be and maybe it's not all wildly positive. Some of it is, you know, building software for a easier death, in some ways right, or an easier kind of off-boarding. Death is probably too intensive a word, but it's a thing, right.

Yeah, you live to fight another day as an entrepreneur. Your company dies, but you can still live to fight another day.

Yeah, but I mean nine out of 10 companies fail. I think it's funny that we as an industry I mean Infintech and Tech in general have never really brought or built the tools to allow companies to shut down in a way that is straightforward. They know they're doing it right. You know there's not really a playbook there. So, anyways, I don't say this because the company's shutting down is the exciting part of what's happening, but it's this boring, like other stuff, that we haven't thought about for a long time. Right, like Plaid solved one of the biggest problems in FinTech, and like it's been solved. So now we're going to go, you know, like solve all these others. Those are two. The boring becoming sexy is really big. And then I think that there's just a really strong power law rule associated with AI. Right now, there's no funding, no funding, no funding. Data bricks raises $500 million, right, like that was just a very kind of sudden thing, and pretty much everything that we're seeing unfold is like that. Right, and it's all AI related. So that one's a little bit of a softball and like too obvious, but I can't not say it.

So yeah, I mean we have to talk about AI. Let's dig into that. I mean, what can people expect at Money 2020 related to AI and what's the coolest use case you've seen Like coolest actual use case?

Yeah, yeah, I'm going to be honest with you and I'm going to say that I don't know at this point. There's some cool customer service stuff happening, but, like, that's not cool, right. Like, the actual AI stuff that I think is going to be cool is, you know, real time payments software that's able to help you understand if a, you know if a purchase is likely fraudulent in the moment versus in retrospect, right, that kind of stuff's fascinating. But the reason that I started to answer the question the way I did was I don't think that we have any sense of what the cool use case is, what the killer use case in finance is, yet I don't know if we really even understand the difference between a lot of what we've been doing for a long time versus generative AI. Like, I don't know if we, as an industry, have taken the time to stop and think about what this could really mean versus just leaning all the way into the hype. And I've had a lot of people ask me you know, like, well, what's the biggest AI conversation at Money 2020 this year? Like, undoubtedly it is Oli Godzi, the CEO of Databricks, being interviewed by Sarah Guo, who's a large VC in the space, but every single conversation, I think probably in some way shape or form, will at least allude to it. There's been a lot of pressure on me internally to like turn it into a vertical but it's a horizontal, like it's going to touch everything, Right. So the idea that like verticalize it as just like, that's not as fun. So I candidly don't know. I think I will know at the end of the show and I will actually have an answer then, but I don't think a lot of these companies should do a recap episode.

We should do it, let's, do it, let's.

I'm happy to do that.

Yeah, I would love to do that and we can like see what we learned, one of the cool ideas that I've seen. It's not necessarily directly related to fintech, but I use chat TTP extensively. It helps me, I mean massively like market research type activities that used to take. Would it take me like a month to compile that data? I can just get good with creative with my prompts and I get information like instantly. The one limitation is data. Its model only has data. Now it's up to January 2022. That I'm amazed at actually how fast they caught up from 2021. They were used to be limited to 2021. But I think the data piece, the data pipelines, and feeding that into these different AI models is actually going to be the most interesting part of all of this. What the AI does with that is that is a big unknown to your point. I recently ran into a company called Uproc and I'm going to have them on the show and what they're doing is these guys are really good at acquiring users in emerging markets for like pennies. What they do is they're building like a proxy network where you get tokens for mining data on the internet when you're not using your phone. They like use your bandwidth and you get paid for that, and then they dump all this data into an API. Developer can use that and they can almost do it on demand. They can, like ask it questions, and it will feed data from the proxy network. I mean, it's not quite on demand, like that would be very hard to do. But the business model, though, is they get this token and then they can use that token to top off their minutes on their cellular device, so they earn like just enough to do this airtime top off thing, and there's all sorts of FinTech plays that can be tied into that. The economic model is about data for AI, but it's going to enable all these other FinTech fair FinTech, banking, the unbanked and then providing them access to things like defy lending and just basic banking services via the app like are possible. Right, like when you start building networks like this that are incentivized to do things like route packets or get data or do something that rewards the user for tokens, I think that that's going to bootstrap millions of users into a FinTech app that, like they're already kind of used to a lot of this stuff, but it's not permissionless and they don't actually own, like, their data or the money that's involved in these applications. So anyway, that's my two cents. It's the data and how it imports people to other use cases is thing that I think is like an unintended positive potential consequence.

It reminds me of a company that's going to be at the show, actually called Redeem. I would think of them as basically the single sign on layer, using your cell phone number to get exactly into what you're talking about, right, because I think there's this like, how are we going to onboard people into web three without them knowing that they're being onboarded into web three? Right, like nobody wants to, like not nobody, but you and I are happy to onboard into web three? Right, but like our moms are not on, they're not on the same page. So how do we actually get them there? Right, and like, using the phone number as that single sign on, as that single source, you know is a fascinating thing and, yeah, I agree with you. I mean, I also think, like, latent compute. Everything you're talking about is definitely things that we're kind of sort out. I mean, we have NVIDIA doing, you know, a big sponsor summit at the show and alongside AWS, and one of the reasons that I'm, you know, not really at this point, answering the question of, like, what's the most interesting use case is, like you know, they're going to be doing some demos, some conversations, things like that. Like, I think, inside of that summit, I will probably find out the answer to the thing, and I would just be actually shocked if I knew it right now. And I think that's the exciting part about this. Right Is like, if you're a person that feels like you need an answer, whoo shit, is this a hard time, right.

But go to money. 2020 is the, is the TL. They are there like show up, you'll probably get some answers. Can't promise you all the answers, but at least directionally you might catch some trends.

Exactly, yeah, but I think I think it's like swimming in the uncertainty right now is kind of how you find the magic and I think, just being okay, not knowing your exact answer to how we're going to leverage AI. You know, if you're a community bank, or I actually think it's. You know, a lot of people are probably taking their eye off of the actual ball of the business if they spend too much time on it right now versus thinking about, you know, just thinking about in the back of their head. Go to money 2020 experience, some, you know some demos, whatever, and then maybe you have you know your answer after that. But I think people are trying to get to that answer too fast and not taking in all of the potential inputs that could get them to the right answer.

I think you make a really good point, and we ran into this in the blockchain space the last like couple of years, where tons of funding poured in, unlimited capital resources basically, and a lot of things have been built that never had product market fit and we're never going to get it, and some things that have it in crypto, but it's all like it's not going to get past the early adopter phase, which might be okay for some of these protocols, like some of these DeFi things are big enough to sustain themselves, but it's not that many Like, whether it's crypto or building an AI, you just got it or whether you're like a local bank trying to figure out, like, what do we do with AI? Focus on real, what are your real problems, and then go to this event, do some research and the end and cross pollinate these ideas. Like that's where innovation comes from is when you have a real business problem that you're focused on that a lot of people have they all see it and there's some budget there that they want to like solve that problem and you can bring in something unique. That 10x is the solution there. But, like, the only way you get there is by being really, really focused on that problem that, like real business, need a chat. Gtp is a great example. Like I always had Google, I could search for stuff right and find the answers. It's just that it made it like so much easier for me to get that it's a no-brainer to spend $20 a month. But like it's just a no-brainer Because it's like magic.

It really is like magic you know, it's this co-pilot revolution. One thing that is going to happen I think we can all agree on is that that piece right like the idea that we're gonna have a co-pilot inside of our banking app, inside of this, inside of that, like I I mean the idea that we're actually even gonna really be driving. You know, that's not finance as much, but like this all Overlaps, right. Like all of this technology and all I mean shit, all the compute required and the expanding compute Requirement, like all of it is kind of leading in the same direction of like I mean, we're kind of finally getting the Peter teal thing. Of like you know how he complained about not getting the flying car. Well, I feel like we're kind of almost at the flying car right. Like you get on Instagram, you see people on jetpacks like we're in a different world now.

Yep, I couldn't agree more. I realized we haven't actually talked about your podcast, and I'm just curious to learn more about that. What is the show? What's it about? What's the format? Who are the guests that you've had on? Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Yeah. So I'll actually Hilariously give you the founding story, even because it relates to 2020. So we were, I Was at a bank called NBKC and we were like, really early into the FinTech space I would say, is because behind every chime, like we were talking about earlier, is a community bank, right, or a set of community banks. When I was at this bank, we were trying to kind of be that sponsor bank behind a number of chime s current s kinds of groups and we were going to a lot of different conferences. We were going to see a lot of companies. We're sitting in a lot of conference rooms outside of Kansas City and my CEO from the bank, brian Unruh, basically said, like what if we did something that didn't make it? So we had to get on a plane all the time. I don't know if it was actually in the Vegas airport or in the New York airport, but it was really close to money 2020 that he was like, hey, maybe you should do a podcast, because nobody wants to listen to a bank podcast and that's part of your job. Now I was like, oh Okay, and he decided to. You know, the bank took care of all my first audio equipment. Like I would not have the podcast if it wasn't for them and I wouldn't have the podcast if it wasn't for Brian being tired of traveling and for money 2020 Tiring and the hell out after four days of back to back to back meetings and him living on a plane. So I guess, at the end of the day, kind of it relates back to money 2020 hilariously, but since then it's kind of. I mean, I've maintained it through three jobs. Now it started for fintech's sake. Now it's fintech family hour. Recently, I would say it's taken on a life of its own like I've had. I was able to interview Vinod Kosla at money 2020 last year and, through the kindness and generosity of Kosla and money 2020, that was like the first episode that we did on the rebrand for Fintech family hour. And Since then we've had Zach Paray from plaid, my like name doppelganger on. Well, you know, we've had a lot of a lot of like sizable folks. Next episodes coming out are Ariel Cohen, ceo, and Navan he's gonna be the one actually doing the interview with Ben Horowitz at the show. So a lot of kind of overlap and a lot of, a lot of. I mean, fintech's not that big of a world, so you just kind of end up sitting in the rooms with these people. It's very similar to kind of what you run after. To be honest, alex, it's it's about the humanity, it's about why they do it. It's about, you know, a lot more like the emotional aspects and thinking about leadership strategies, things like that. Like how do you get humans to human things along those lines more than it is, you know, like let's talk about this API or that API, like I think people just get Plenty of that at work and there's people much smarter than me that are capable of having those conversations. I try to, you know, lean into the humanity of it for me at least, this is just more interesting.

It's the thing that I want to know. It's where I'm always naturally inclined to, just a normal conversation with people that I meet, and my show started very similarly like when the pandemic started. I was working for a company called Orchid and was the boots on the ground be de guy. I was like at every single conference in the cryptocurrency space and all of a sudden I couldn't talk to anybody. So I just invented a podcast and at the time that one was called follow the white rabbit and focused on the intersection of human rights, privacy, technology and democracy. You know it's still up. You can go look at and listen all the episodes. It was great, like my first guest was, like the former CIO of Department of Homeland, homeland Security under Trump really interesting conversation like episode one.

Okay, so, based on your interest in life, did you follow that whole Bellagie bet earlier in the year? Do you follow in all that stuff?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so that's hilarious. So I'm not a hundred percent sure if this is gonna happen yet, but a very close friend of mine wrote the almanac of Naval Ravikant and he's now writing and is about to release the almanac of Bellagie and I just can't pronounce his last name, or I would try to. It's releasing at the same time of the show. I think he's gonna be releasing it at the show. It's interesting the way that that kind of a person plays into this stuff. What did you think of the bet when, when it happened? What do you think of Bellagie in general?

remind me of the terms of the bet. He put up a million dollars and he said a million dollars, bitcoin's gonna hit like what like a million in 90 days, I think you said cuz of inflation right.

Yeah, it was 90 days or 30. It was some just outrageous.

Outrageous number. I think I was skeptical, like from the get-go, that it was actually gonna happen, like I didn't Really believe that was gonna happen. But I thought I mean, hey, it was an expensive and brilliant marketing tactic. And he said it himself like, hey, I just did this to make people aware of our economic situation. That's pretty genius. I don't have that kind of money to throw down on a bet like that, but Really entertaining, like at the very least. What did you think?

I don't know. I mean, I honestly the way that I feel about Bellagie kind of goes back and forth. Like being close to Eric Jorgensen, the book is like it's I don't know man. Part of me enjoys the drama of it. The other part of me is like good God, almighty Bellagie. Like Stop bringing this much doubt into the financial system. Like we have a fiat currency financial system here and like we kind of need to have that keep going and the world that he was like putting out there is like not a positive world. I don't think we want a lot of the things that you and I are talking about, right, but I think we also want our fiat dollar system to be able to function. At the same, like we don't want to displace the entire Economy as we have it today. Like stop that, but maybe some of the other web three stuff. I don't know him.

I know people who know him but I, so I can't speak for him on this one, but I would say that for me, I see a lot of the same problems in our economy and in our system, just like you do, and I think we need a mixed reality. You need to have both things. There should be like. I love USDC. I like having money on chain and being able to self-custody it. I like the option to move my USDC to Bitcoin or to whatever it says that I can be truly self-custodied and nobody has the ability to take it from me unless they force me to send them my seed phrase. I like that level of independence and control that crypto brings.

Yeah, I think any human would. There's a financial system that I think we have to accept the rational and logical constraints of, and then everything you're saying can happen inside of those logical constraints. It's just a matter of having the discussion and building the constraints and the system together. It makes reality.

I'm an optimist, I believe that's possible. I think what Bellagie does when he calls into question that reality that oh because I think what you're saying is more likely he wants to draw attention, capture attention. I think nobody, including him, wants to see the collapse of society in our financial system as it is, because of the damage that would probably come with that. I think more it's like making a point like hey, this system is so broken, we'd rather do it without you, without the existing system.

And that's where I struggle. That's the struggle.

Does he actually want to do that? I don't know.

I don't think either of us can really speak for him on that piece. To me, it's more just a matter of. I think there's so many great things that Web 3 and the concept of crypto and this wave have brought. I think it's very similar to AI. I think there's going to be a lot of negative to come out of it, but I think the good is going to outweigh the positive by a long shot. And the question is who let the dogs in or something? We have to get all of them into the system. We have to build the system in a way where, to your point, it can be a mixed reality. The idea of a financial system functioning outside of the financial system is really scary and as much as we hate regulation, there is a reason for regulation and, anyway, that's why I'm such a proponent of the engage with Washington. Don't run away from it.

It'd be interesting to get him on a call on the phone and do an interview and have that conversation. I would love to hear from him on that. Is your friend working with him on the book, or is it something that he did separately and then just produces? I'm not familiar with it.

It's an interesting process. He basically downloads everything they've ever said and then turns into the editor of everything they've ever said and I don't know if that's exactly how he would phrase it, but it's pretty much that so he gets their blessing beforehand. He's like, hey, I'm going to do a thing which I think in that case was actually Bellagio's idea, which is interesting. But I mean they go back and forth. He's been in contact with him, They've had some phone calls, but I don't know how close the relationship is. Necessarily, I will say I do know that Bellagio is very hard to get a hold of. He's in Singapore or somewhere, and I don't think he is a fan of being found. He probably doesn't even like the we're talking about him and he probably does know already.

He knows, he knows. Well, we're cutting to the top of the show and I always ask the same question, and if you like this question, you can feel free to use it on your show too. It's what if I had not asked you that I should have asked oh dude.

I use that question often and it is a good one. I mean, I think we've covered a lot of it. You haven't asked when money 2020 starts, which is October 22nd, through in and ends on the 26th, so I got to throw that ad in there. It's hard to take the tens of I don't even know how many hours of content, hundreds of speakers and, like you know, the hundreds of speakers are all speakers that probably could be keynotes at a lot of other conferences and you know they're just kind of walking around our show. It's a hard thing to encapsulate and a hard thing to like, kind of like really pull out specific things on. But I mean, I think we covered the big ones. The only other thing I would bring up is that there's a really cool trend and this is kind of maybe like an inspiring moment for everybody. There's a really cool trend where I think the technology upstarts of the world are really starting to work with the incumbents in a way that is actually a partnership and that is actually a creative to the actual American consumer, right, like one of the conversations we have with the show this year is I've brought up Zach from Plaid like four times. Sorry, but Zach from Plaid and the COO of Citi, and they have a big partnership together. The fact that you know I don't know how many years ago it was the Capital One said no, plaid is not allowed on my website, right To sitting up on stage with one of the top two banks top three banks in the world Like Plaid wasn't started that long ago. Y'all can do it too. You know, like, get out there, start fucking building. Like this is a really cool time to start something, and I think that everybody is a little scared and that makes it even cooler. So go start something, y'all.

So 2017, two beers and a coffee, or two coffees and a beer I think it was one beer and it totally, you know, totally started Solana with several co-founders and, just like a week ago, they announced that Visa will be using Solana for settlement with USDC. It's Visa, okay. I mean the dream is being realized, like blockchain at the speed of light, nasdaq at the speed of light, across, you know, a global network of individual operators running a blockchain with Visa. I mean, that's it's kind of it's chills at my spine, it's really cool.

Yeah, I got goosebumps right now. Man, it's awesome, it's 2023.

Guys Like that is light speed movement right there, because we're talking about billions and billions of dollars in transaction volume. That Visa is responsible. I mean trillions, probably right. That Visa that happens on Visa's network and not probably is is trillions, yeah, yeah, right. So it's just really a huge, a huge deal. So, on that note, get fucking building. Now is the best time Go to money 2020, october 22nd, right Till when 22nd through the uh.

Second is a Sunday, monday. Third, fourth, 25th To the 25th?

Yeah, where can they sign up? What's the website URL?

Just go to money2020.com and it should take you directly to whatever like geography you are actually in 2020.

The word or 2020?

The numbers uh the numbers money 2020.com.

Got it All right. You heard it here Money 2020.com. Go register.

Go see Zach and all the other brilliant people walking around.

You'll bump into some heavy hitters. It's worth it. Thanks, zach, for being on the show.

Thank you, alex, for having me man. It's a pleasure.

You just heard the index podcast with your host, Alex Kahaya. If you enjoyed this episode, please give the show a five star rating and subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Google or your favorite streaming platform. New episodes available every other Wednesday. Thanks for tuning in.