Stephen: This is Stephen Sargent, the new host of the Around The Coin podcast. One of my first episodes, I was lucky enough to get Brett King on the podcast. He's a futurist, he's a best selling author, he's a globally recognized podcaster, and an award winning speaker. We talk everything about fintech and payments, we get into crypto, international regulations.

How he was able to be a first mover in the neobank revolution.We discussed technology and we even grabbed some of his supporting thoughts bysome of his, from his best books. Uh, we talk about some of the key conceptsaround AI, around blockchain and digital ID and the place it will play in thefuture of Web3 technology.

This is a must listen podcast. Great episode. Thank you somuch. And let me know how you enjoyed it.

Stephen: Heyeveryone, this is Stephen Sargent, you know, first inaugural episode of mehosting the Around The Coin podcast.

Stephen: And I'mlucky enough to have, you know, one of the people that mentored me virtuallyover the last decade Brett King. Brett, you're a futurist, you're everythingfintech. I would love to hear, you know, just give us a little bit aboutyourself.

Brett: Oh, great.Yeah, well, I'm author in the space, obviously in fintech, but I'm generallyregarded as a futurist. I, you know, you can see I've got some books there thatbanking or fintech and, and some that are you know, my, my claim to fame, Iguess, is that that Book Augmented you know, ended up on President Xi's desk orhis bookshelf during one of his national addresses.

So the writing has taken me to some unusual places. I formedthe first challenger bank in, in the world, mobile challenger bank in theworld, moving back in 2010. That's now a banking as a service propositiontoday. I also, you know, run the world's number one fintech podcast, BreakingBanks, and the number one futurist podcast called The Futurists.

And generally, you know,I'm working on you know a number of new books and you know, number of aventures at any point in time. So glad to be here.

Stephen: I appreciateyou. I appreciate you.

Stephen: I want tostart off, you know, I was listening to one of your early TED Talks. We talkedabout your daughter, who at the time was about 10 years old, and you had askedher, like, how did she think she could make a cross border payment?

And I think she said something about, you know, SMS, or sheshould just do it via email, yeah you know, 10 years later, what would you, howwould your daughter make a cross border payment now?

Brett: So, you know,I think you know, probably her answer's pretty much the same, which is youknow, she, she would use a platform like PayPal or something like that.

My daughter is actually, she's 22 now. When I told that story,she was 10, you know, so, a lot of time has passed. She lives in in Rockhamptonin Australia and in Central Queensland. So, yeah, I mean, you know, my kidsgrew up being very comfortable with electronic payments and so forth.

My daughter, you know, she was 16. We were living in the Statesat the time and you know, I asked her whether she should think about gettingher driver's license. And my daughter's response was, Dad, just give me an Uberaccount, you know, so that's how, that's how these kids grow up and this is howthey think about the world, you know.

Stephen: And you talka lot about modality in your talks and, you know, we've kind of gone from, youknow, being afraid to send our kids in anybody's car. To now feel uncomfortablesending them in strangers cars every day. Did this surprise you? Did you thinkwe would have autonomous cars earlier? What were your thoughts of where wewould be in 2023 going into 2024?

Brett: So in, inAugmented, I predicted that sometime around the end of this decade, because ofautonomous vehicles, that there would be cities like London who would ban humandrivers from city centers.

[] Because human drivers wouldbe deemed unsafe compared with autonomous vehicles. that may be a little bitoptimistic.

It may be, you know, mid 2030s, but that's the trajectory we'reon. You know, and, you know, it's funny because, you know, we, if you look backat the sixties. There was some depiction of autonomous vehicles, but they sortof treated vehicles more like other forms of public transport in terms, interms of its autonomy, like you'd get on the highway and you'd hook up to a youknow, a conveyor belt system or something, you know, and, and it would beautonomous for that.

But the bigger focus was on flying cars. And interestingly, weare seeing flying cars come to fruition today as well, but they're not how weenvisaged. It's not a car that we've made flyable. It's now drones that you cansit in, right? So, you know, we didn't necessarily see drone tech. In the wayit has.

Brett: So that'ssomething, you know, when you look at science fiction, science fiction is oftena predictor of the future in this respect, but in respect of flying cars andthe modality of that, we, we got it wrong, but you know, the, the point I'vemade in a number of my books is about this phenomenon we call technologyadoption diffusion, which you know, we've seen with the adoption of open AI,you know ChatGPT, rather recently and so forth but You know, if you, if youactually look at this from a cyclic perspective, what most people don'tunderstand is the march towards technology adoption is absolutely relentlessand it speeds up over time.

And when people say, Oh, I don't know if this technology isever going to really change or make a difference, they're not looking at thatcontextual piece of that. They're assuming that the progress will be linear, orthey're assuming that. You know, we will choose not to use these technologiesand the reality is we just don't do that as a human race, you know?

And you know, like the number of Industries, for example, overthe last 300 years that have successfully defended the status quo of theirindustry against technology disruption, zero, right? That was actually going tobe my next point.

Brett: It's theinevitability, right?

Stephen: You know,that was going to be my next point about autonomous cars.

You know, one of the things is, is that, you know, if you don'tpay your car note or make your car payment, you know, the government could justturn off your car. And that was one of the I think challenges. What are yourthoughts? Is that one of those things where we, you know, we cry about privacy,but then we give over all of our information to save 10 at Bed Bath Beyond?

What are your thoughts around that?

Brett: Well, youknow, I mean, I tend to take the Jack Ma view of privacy, which is you know,two fold. It's that I don't, I don't think privacy is that big a deal. Youknow, not in the way that we think about it today. And I don't think our kidsare concerned about privacy.

So I just think the privacy issue is going to become a nonissue in some respect. The issue will be whether or not it the Access to yourdata is invasive or it's beneficial. And so this is really what we'll have tograpple with, with the personal AI piece. But it's also the solution to that,which is when you have a personal AI that can basically act as a gateway forthese deals and offers and so forth, the personal AI can obviously filterthose, it can set the parameters of those, it can determine.

which data to share in real time. So there's some interestingconcepts emerging around that, such as data wallets you know, that you, thatwould control the release of your data under smart contract scenarios andthings like that. Drumwave D Wallet is one of those. So I do think there are mechanismsto ensure that you get value for your data and the, and the data you want tokeep private, you'll have some control over, but there is a misunderstanding ofthat to some extent in that.

The data that exists in the world today, things like yourmother's maiden name, your date of birth, your address, if you're in theStates, a social security number, you can never make this data private again.That horse is bolted, you know, you can never make that data securable everagain, which is why we need to move to things like biometric identity systems.

Stephen: I love it. Ilove it.

Stephen: You know,you started, as you said, you know, you went viral, I would say, with yourBanks 2. 0 book and just talking about the user experience at banks and prettymuch how fintechs and open banking would pretty much eat the bank's lunch overtime. What have you noticed? You know, now we've seen decades of banks probablynot changing much.

From your initial talks, have you seen anything? I know you,you know, you spend a lot of time in Asia. Are you seeing things out there thatjust is not transferring over here in North America, where banks seem verystagnant behind the times and just getting people to use ATM seems like a bigstep forward for them.

Brett: You know, thisis the thing is, If you look at this on a global basis, because if you'resitting here in the U. S. You know, there is some change, it's gradual change,but it's not significant. But if you look on a global basis, then the world hasalready changed in terms of what banking is. More people use a mobile walletfor daily banking, everyday banking today, than they use a bank debit card orcredit card.

You know, that's a massive change in, in a very short period oftime. When we talk about financial inclusion globally, the mobile phone hasdone more to create financial inclusion than bank branches ever did. You know,you, you look at disruption you know, if we look at Neobanks and challengerbanks, so like of NewBank and Latam, the UK challengers, you know, Monzo justdid a deal this week.

You know, for funding with Google the Revolut, obviously N26 inthe German market, WeBank in Shenzhen, 400 million customers in eight years.

Brett: I mean, thereality is all of the fastest growing financial institutions in the world todayare digital. Only businesses, pure play, digital businesses, and they aretaking market share from traditional banks.

So in the UK, we know that at least the big four banks havelost at least 23 percent market share in the last you know, 10 years because ofthe NEOs. So, that you, you know, you might say it doesn't look like anything'shappening. The reality is today, some of the biggest banks in the world aredigital pure plays.

Wallets are now more of a bank account than bank accounts are.The, the very definition of what it means to be a bank has fundamentallychanged and what we expect from the utility of a bank in a real time world hasobviously changed because of, you know, the app architecture is going tocontinue, that, that change is going to accelerate.

So.

Brett: If you'rethinking, you know, you're sitting in North America, thinking it's business asusual, then get ready for a shock because what's happening in the rest of theworld will definitely happen in the United States, despite all theprotectionism and the lobbying of industry here, it's, it's inevitable, justlike the internet disruption was.

Stephen: You, youknow, your book kind of set out the premise of what would happen. This, do youthink this would have been accelerated? If the banks haven't been build up,bailed out multiple times in the last, I would say 15, 18 years, we sawrecently with like SVP Bank, we saw back in 2008, the massive bailout of someof these banks.

Would your hypothesis already have been realized had there notbeen government intervention?

Brett: Well, youknow, in the States, the biggest reason why we haven't seen the level ofdisruption we've seen in markets like Europe and Latin America or Asia, andpretty much everywhere else in the world, is that the U.

S. is the only G20 country that doesn't have a fintech charteror license for digital banks. The reason for this is a little complicated, butit's because in the U. S. If you're a bank today, you have to comply with a lawthat's called the C. R. A. or the Community Reinvestment Act, which wasestablished in 77.

And that requires banks who operate branches in cities andtowns where they're the last branch, where they have to maintain that branchpresence, rather than you know, leave the, the citizens or inhabitants of thatcity or town without financial representation or access to financial services.

Because in 1977 We thought that financial inclusion wasdelivered through the branch. Now if you have a digital pure play that doesn'thave branches, they don't have that cost. So the argument from the industry,when trying to prevent the FinTech charter, has been it creates an unlevelplaying field.

That these digital pure plays don't have the legal That's theresponsibility under the CRA to deliver you know, services through, throughbranches, but that's a you know, that's a 20th century or 19th century or 14thcentury way of looking at banking. And so that has given the, the, the. Banksin the US a little bit of additional space to deal with this from a modalityshift perspective.

The biggest problem you've got is, is if, if we look all aroundthe world, person's bank account today is dominantly the phone. How are theygetting that? They're getting that as part of sort of integrated into theiroperating system of the use of the mobile through a wallet architecture. Thosewallet architectures differ, you know, vary, varyingly across differentgeographies and so forth, but there are some commonalities, right?

It is that you know, the, the most popular wallets. The mosttraction with the most traction are those that have their own value stores andhave very low friction and interchange. And so that changes the model of banksin terms of the way they make money. Credit cards, you know, it's just a bigearner for retail banking.

Yeah. Credit cards won't exist in, in. 10 or 15 years becauseyou'll just be able to get instantaneous credit. So banks aren't sort of tryingto prop up these traditional branch products rather than saying. What's theutility a credit card provides and how do we do that through the digital layer?That's the biggest risk because you know, when you don't understand that it'sabout that sort of embedded experience of the utility of the bank and you'retrying to protect a product, you can be easily circumvented in this new world,especially when AI starts to come in.

Stephen: Exactly.

Stephen: Youmentioned financial occlusion a lot. I believe in the U S we still have 5percent of people that are under bank or unbanked and you know, going acrossthe place.

Brett: It's a lothigher, brother. It's 20 percent of households.

Stephen: Is it 20%?

Yeah.

And going across the places like Africa, we've seen M Pesa comein.

What are your thoughts? Are we lowering this number? It doesn'tsound like we're lowering this number of, you know. Financial inclusion orthose being introduced to the banking system. I know that was a big push withcrypto, financial inclusion, bank the underbanked or unbanked, are we reducingthis number and what's stopping us from reducing this number?

Brett: you know, aswe know, the problem isn't access to financial services because anyone can walkinto a bank anywhere in the, in the States and, and theoretically. Open a bankaccount. But the problem is that the cost of banking as a lower incomehousehold is extraordinarily expensive. And so that's why people avoid youknow, that the bank fees, overdraft fees and so forth are, obviously punishing.

But the other aspect is that it's also a KYC issue. If you lookat financial inclusion, one of the biggest reasons for financial exclusion ispeople not being able to satisfy the identity or documentary requirements. Youknow, it's only 40 percent of Americans that have a passport. We have about youknow, 15 percent of the adult population doesn't have a driving license.

You know, so there are real roadblocks to identityverification. If you look at indian market as an example, India tried from the90s to put bank branches in these rural locations to try and kickstartfinancial inclusion for the poorer villages, you know, throughout India. And itjust failed because even if you had a branch, someone would walk in the branch,they can't meet the documentary requirements to open an account.

So what, what, you know, the two mechanisms we have for that iseither you create, you know, you make it accessibility to a government ID,very, very straightforward and, and low pressure and very simple. And, youknow, you obviously lower the, the fees for, for people at that end of the, thesegment. But the, the other element of this that we've seen you know, in, interms of financial inclusion in places like Africa is having a type of bankaccount that requires very low identity requirements, just a single identitydocument, and then you may have some restrictions in terms of operations onthat account, total number, you know, total amount of cash that you can store,the amount of transfers you can make each day.

But, You know, for lower income households, that's generallynot an issue. So if we wanted to fix it in the United States, the first thingwe'd have to do is essentially what we've done with prepaid cards, which arethe most widely used instrument for those that are financially excluded in theU.

S. today. Give, give them access to that same functionalitythrough a basic mobile wallet or basic mobile app. You know, with Limitedidentity requirements and certainly not needing to go into a branch and sign apiece of paper, right?

Stephen: You thinkdigital ID or decentralized ID? I know Circle was coming out with Verite Itlooks like they backed off that project, but you know some kind of attestationyou just have to Provide your kind of KYC identity information once and you canuse it.

And if you're buying a car, does it need all your ID to buy thecar? They just need to attest. This is the person buying the car and theyprovide certain amounts of information. Cause we see what happens when there'shoneypots of information. None of these organizations can keep it safe fromhackers and predators.

Do you think digital ID? And I know FATF has kind of touched onthis a little bit as well, that digital ID and decentralized ID. Is thatsomething that needs to be prioritized now?

Brett: Oh,absolutely. You know, the, the pandemic taught us this. The pandemic taught usthat we are entering a period where we will be reliant on the digital servicelayer, whether it is digital healthcare, remote health, whether it is digitaleducation, that in the 21st century, that if you want the best level of serviceand, you know, want immediacy.

You are going to have to have a digital service infrastructureand digital service infrastructure requires a digital identity ecosystem,right? And banks should not be in the data of collecting KYC information. Theyshould be only in the business of confirming your identity. And this is theproblem we have today is if you You know, move from one bank to another, youhave to start the process entirely from scratch, giving them all of yourinformation all over again, instead of just saying, why can't you query, youknow, the identity information I gave the, the previous bank.

And so having a centralized, you know, I think. Digitalidentity is, is national infrastructure for a smart economy of the future. Youcould have a privatized system for that, but as we've seen with things likeVenmo and other privatized, you know, PayPal, you know, P2P, you don't get Youdon't get broad 100 percent adoption from these privatized systems when itcomes to infrastructure requirements.

So, you know, you are going to really need at some point youknow, the, the government to step in and have, have that. I think you can haveelements of self sovereign control over identity. And I think that that'simportant to have that transparency control, such as what we've seen in Europewith, you know, you being able to tell an organization that they need to forgetyour details and things like that.

You know, I think that that. It is part of it, but I don'tthink you can have a 21st century economy based on paper identity documents. Ithink that those two ideas are not compatible.

Stephen: And talk alittle bit about moving, because you have to deal with these kind of regulatoryrequirements and challenges.

First of all, why start in the US with something like MoveIn,which seems like one of the striggest places. Was it one of those things, startin the hardest place, and then it should be easier everywhere else? And thenhow did you show the regulators that, hey, non face to face onboarding is theway of the future, and we can do it with less fraud than in the traditionalkind of financial institution?

Brett: Yeah, well, Ican talk about some of that but you know, I will say why the US.

Brett: The, theimmediate reason was that at the time, you know, with the success of socialmedia and so forth in, you know, 2010, 2011, there was generally you know,people were expecting that you could do the same. In terms of retail commerce,super apps, you know, Uber was coming out, you know, Amazon was on fire.

So people were thinking, why can't we do this with healthcare?Why can't we do this with banking? Who's going to be the Facebook of banking,you know? You know, and so there, there was an opportunity to raise funding offof that. And also, you know, there's a bit of, if you can make it in You know,we're based out of New York.

If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere. But,you know, New York was the financial capital of the world, so we wanted toprove it was, was possible. We were just too early. We were a few years tooearly. If you look at a lot of the design patterns we created, you know, as,you know, we were the first mobile app in the world to offer you the ability tosign up for a debit card in the app.

Now, as you rightly pointed out, the regulators wanted us toget a wet signature back in those days. That was still the dominant view. So wehad to prove that our identity verification process was as robust as someonewalking into the branch. And I can't talk about in detail exactly how we provedthat, because it involves the bank partner that we had at the time.

But just suffice to say that we were able to show that therewas a much higher abuse of synthetic identities in branch than there wasthrough our online identity verification process. And that was what enabled usto get the initial tests. That the regulator would allow us to bring on acertain number of customers and then after you know, we had successfully hadthe first 5, 000, then the next 5, 000, the next 10, 000 and so forth like thatuntil they were comfortable with it.

But, you know, we created a lot of design patterns that arestill in use by challenger banks today. Yeah, we were the first mobile bankingapp in the world that didn't have a list of accounts on the homepage when youfired up the banking app that had a we had this thing we called the spendingmeter, which was an artifact that showed you how much money you'd spent, acircular artifact on the homepage, and the app would turn red if you werespending above your typical spending, or the app would turn green if you'respending below your typical spending.

That sort of circular artifact to show you your money use isnow very common amongst the NEOs that became a design pattern. Our real timereceding you know, capability with instant categorization of your spend, yousee that in mobile wallets like Apple Pay and others now. So, you know, wereally pioneered a lot of you know, those features of sort of mobile banks.

So I feel like we made a, a, you know, a big contribution tothat movement as a whole.

Stephen: Why aren'tbanks adopting this technology more and kind of using you as the guinea pig andsaying, Hey, this is something that we can move towards. I believe in a talkyou talked about either Alipay or, you know, WeChat Pay.

I'm not sure exactly which one. Have been less than 1 percentworth of fraud where, you know, traditional banks in North America, it has tobe way more than that. Fraud has been plaguing. Organizations, anyone touchingany kind of e commerce or financial services have been plagued by fraud. Whyaren't we adopting more of what's being used in Asia and what you've seen foralmost decades?

And we're still kind of at the same point where they wantpeople to come into the branch.

Brett: No, I mean ifyou, if you are listening to this and you're in the States right now, I'm gonnagive you some truth that's a bit shocking, and that is that if you are using aChinese mobile wallet in China or, you know, elsewhere, you know, Alipay is in130 countries now, if you're using that wallet You are 10, 000 times lesslikely to suffer from fraud compared with using a credit card online in theUnited States, and I'll give you the hard numbers.

The fraud rates in for Alipay at their peak, you know, which isgenerally during Singles Day, November 11th, we don't have the numbers on,well, we do have the numbers on Singles Day, in terms of that, we don't havethe Alipay transaction numbers right now, but it's, it's sure to be over 500,000 transactions per second, which is about 10 times the combined power of allthe card schemes right now, and they get 0006 basis points of fraud, comparedwith 11.

2 basis points of fraud for card not present in the UnitedStates. Now, why is that? You know, the, the reality is you can't secure acredit card number anymore. I mean, that's the reality. You can tokenize andthat gives you some protection. But you know, the PAN, your 16 digit creditcard number is no longer secure really.

And there's other elements to this as well. The push featureversus pull, you know, so, you know, right now. The card schemes have a pullmechanism where they authorize from the bank. And the only authorization is,you know, is this card is requested to make a transaction. Is there enoughmoney in the account to support this transaction?

Secondarily, we now have some fraud systems coming in that arebehaviorally based and things like that. Whereas on the mobile wallets likeAlipay, it's a push system. So even if you are transacting with a merchant, youhave. To confirm the transaction in the app yourself. So it's not the bankconfirm or authorizing the transaction.

It's the, it's the card owner or. The account owner rather, youknow, confirming the transaction. But the biggest the biggest element isundoubtedly the fact that you know, Alipay uses digital identity. It usesbiometric identity mechanisms. You have you know, a number of those. You have afingerprint or voice recognition to get into.

The app, you use facial recognition for identity verification.This, you know, facial recognition system is broadly in use in China. It gets alot of grief over that in the States because of civil rights. But the realityis that that stuff works, the identity. And, and it's a new tech stack, youknow, they have they have.

You know, new rails, new tech stack built from the ground up,and they're not sort of trying to retrofit new mechanisms of fraud control andso forth on, on an older tech stack. So there's a number of reasons, but youknow, they're, they're the, the main ones.

Stephen: That's whatI was going to ask you about is, you know, what are your thoughts about China?

And now we're seeing a lot emerging out of India. Being the newleader, we're seeing BRICS come out, the de dollarization of the US dollar, themove away from the US dollar, the move away from US being a powerhouse, Ithink, globally now, from the last 20 years, we've always seen the US, peoplelooking towards the US, to be kind of like, be the mover and shaker amongst theworld, and we're now seeing that kind of move away, where People are kind of,you know, protesting the U.

S. every chance they get. What are your thoughts? And then whatare the, what's the downside of that? Where the U. S., you know, who maybe hasa little bit more about consumer protection and human rights, a little bit morethan the rest of those countries that are emerging. Do you have any thoughtsabout that?

Brett: Well, youknow, I mean, you have all the human rights you want in the U. S. unless you'repoor, you know, and then, you know, access to health care and education and soforth is, is obviously a struggle. So, you know, I, look, I think ideologicallythe U. S. has some real issues in terms of its identity right now.

We're going through a lot of you know, policy and politicsaround that in terms of, you know, and there's a, there's a very big effortright now for, for the U. S. not to make these progressive moves in terms ofpolicy and so forth as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, that sort oftranslates in the business arena and so forth, you know, particularly when itcomes to things like banking and also the, the way the government system workstoday, which is essentially bought and sold for by corporations who, you knowYou know, have the lobbying groups that can pay for laws to be shaped accordingto, to their criteria and so forth.

That, that, all of that is part of the complexity of the systemhere. Ironically, you have, you know, Silicon Valley, which is a massive engineof innovation. But, you know, that innovation has to be put within the culturethat's in the U. S. Whereas, if you look elsewhere around the world,particularly in respect to things like payments and you know, the, the growthof these fintechs, you know, it's clear China is 10 years ahead of the U.

S. on things like central bank digital currencies, you know,real time payments and, you know, you know, reform of, of the banking sector asa whole, even with the you know, the, the tech. Clamped down that they've hadin China. They're still making tremendous progress on those fronts. It, youknow, you know, the, the biggest answer I get you know, to that when I talkwith American CEOs of banks about that is, yeah, but that's communism.

Like, well, it's not really, it's technology. You know, and soif you look at like, look at Pixpay in Brazil, or look at Paytm in India, thesame is true of that. So everywhere else in the world is sort of making thismove towards these real time financial systems, low friction. Highlyaccessible, integrated financial services.

And the US is still saying you need to go to a bank and sign apiece of paper. You know, that's essentially where we're at. So the US willhave to change. The, the question will be whether that change is forced uponthem because of the way cross border trading and smart contracts and AI will beimplemented from a commerce perspective you know, or whether, you know, they,they have, have that.

Come to Jesus technology moment and see that this is, this,these are the building blocks of a modern, you know, 21st century economy. I'm,I'm not sure what will be the catalyst, but right now the U. S. is justcontinuing to fall further behind.

Stephen: Can you talka little bit about, you know, you talked about some of these progressivecountries, you mentioned Brazil India.

We just saw, you know, this week, Argentinian president talkingabout removing the central banks. And it seems like he's pro Bitcoin as well asthe El Salvador president creating or allowing Bitcoin to be legal tender.

Stephen: What areyour thoughts about Bitcoin as legal tender? It seems like there was a lot ofhype there.

I don't see or hear much usage. It seems like the El Salvador'shave maybe bigger problems to worry about. Then using their wallet seemed tokind of, if they wanted that money, they had to use the wallet. But I don't seeas much, I don't hear as much usage after the fact. What are your thoughtsabout Bitcoin being considered legal, tendered around the world?

Brett: I mean,Bitcoin as digital money was always, I think, you know, for, if you read theyou know, 2008 Satoshi White paper was always the stated goal. But, you know,Bitcoin is more than digital money, it's payments as a payments network, theblockchain concept and so forth you know, built into that.

The, the biggest problem is, with the limited amount ofBitcoins that will be created and in circulation, this has created speculationaround the future value of Bitcoin. So it has very low utility as a Currency interms of allowing people to pay for stuff because people don't want to spend itbecause they want to speculate on the future value of Bitcoin.

So the only way Bitcoin could really compete with say the USdollar as a currency would be to drop that constraint. It would be for peoplenot to consider it an asset class or a speculative instrument anymore and tosee it as a currency that can be spent. And that is a design flaw withinBitcoin.

There are other you know, digital currencies that you know, dobetter with that. But, you know, and in terms of Bitcoin becoming, you know,some sort of digital reserve currency, that, that's the problem that Bitcoinwould have to solve. And I'm not quite sure how, you know, that would happenwith the community and so forth.

So I don't know if Bitcoin is the solution. I'm not sure thatcentral bank digital currencies hold all of the solution as well. I think the,the ultimate way this goes is that the more and more automation we put inplace, the likelihood is that AIs will come up with better value exchangemechanisms.

That we haven't necessarily thought of, and that'll start withcross border trade you know, and then you know, evolve into sort of retail. SoI think that AIs will help us create better forms of digital money orintelligent money you know, moving forward. That's what we've seen happening inmedicine and other areas right now where AIs can sort of, fill in the gapsthere.

So I think but I do think central bank digital currencies willbe absolutely necessary for cross border trade. And smart contracts. And I wantto make clear that if you want to have a smart economy competing based on thelevel of autonomy that you have, you can't use smart contracts with US dollars.

It doesn't work because US dollars aren't programmable. Theycan't be rolled back. You know, they don't have the auditability of, of digitalcurrencies, all of those sorts of things. You would need to create such a biglayer of technology around the US dollar to make it machine readable, that it'sno longer the US dollar.

It's now a central bank digital currency. And this is what alot of people don't really understand, is that you can't use fiat currencies onmachine readable you know, trade and commerce, which is smart contracts. Itjust doesn't work. You

Stephen: touched ontwo things there, AI and blockchain. You have probably thousands of hours ofcontent.

Do you think going forward, blockchain, especially with whatwe've seen in the war and the propaganda and using the media outlets to, totell a story, do you think the blockchain will be needed for provenance, youknow?

Stephen: Otherwise,we, you know, AI can have you saying you're for this side, that side. They havehours of your content to pull from.

They could probably nail your voice and even your image,exactly. And as someone that has a media arm to your company, are you worriedabout that as a futurist? Do you think that, you know, the blockchain is theanswer to solve for some of the maybe AI deep fakes that we're going to beseeing come out over the next couple of years?

We're already seeing how How important it is for seeing thingslike the wars that are happening around the world?

Brett: Ironically, Ithink digital identity is part of that solution because I could attach mydigital identity signature or watermark to my content and it would be verydifficult for someone to, to attach my identity without my authorization to, tocontent.

So I think digital identity is part of Probably a bettersolution than, than blockchain. Having said that, I think we are you know,entering a period of radical transparency where you know, the, the, if you lookat the news cycles, you look at the fake news and all of this, we are coming toan informational crisis where we won't be able to trust anything unless we fixthis problem.

So, the solution to that is a form of radical transparency orclearly definable truths in certain areas. And, you know, this is when it comesto factual assertions rather than opinions, obviously. And right now we'reconfused between facts and opinions in many areas. But I do think that We, wewill need some form of, of truth to emerge in terms of just pure data.

And I think that the world is pushing towards that. I alsothink our kids, when they're setting policy in the 2030s, I think they're goingto have a very different view of the system. That'll be much more collectivelyoriented, that the system needs to fix problems for everybody, not just for asmall group of elite, you know, powerful people who control the purse strings,you know, and I think that that's going to result in some radically differentpolicy where, you You know, information and policy becomes a lot moreinclusive, particularly because of the effect of climate change, you know, anddisrupting people's lives around the world.

You know, we're, we're expecting by 2050 up to 1. 6, 1. 8billion eco refugees displaced by climate. And in terms of AI, technology basedunemployment and so forth requires much more socially oriented policy. Sothat's really from a long term sort of future view, what will be the underlyingdriver of changes around things like transparency.

That it's like, all right, you know, you don't You don't get tohave this level of inequality, poverty, and restrictions on, you know, cost ofaccess to healthcare and so forth, while you have, you know, this incrediblewealth being amassed by billionaires and so forth. And we already see that,that messaging coming out today.

That the purpose of the economy, first and foremost, should beto look after the need, basic needs of citizens. After that, you can, you know,the market can do its thing. But if the economy can't provide for the basicneeds of its citizens, You know, make sure you're hosed, housed, clothed, youknow, fed, have access to health care and so forth.

Then ultimately, you know, could you argue the economy issuccessful?

Stephen: You talk alot about basic income. You know, what I think is interesting is because thereseems to be a push for people not to want to do or be as ambitious as before.Even we saw in Canada during the pandemic, we had something called CERB, whereeveryone was getting 2, 000, which, you know, a month, which is a lot forpeople that are maybe working as a waitress.

Or in other professions where they have to work long hours toprobably make the same amount of money. Which led to a huge issue where it'stough to find workers these days in Canada and probably other places around theworld. Don't you think basic income or the implementation of a basic universalincome would kind of furthest drive us down?

The road of, you know, lack of ambition and maybe lack ofinnovation that we're seeing bright minds like yourself come up with.

Brett: Yeah,actually, exactly the opposite is true. There's been 70 at least 75 UBI trialsaround the world. And what we know from those UBI trials is quite amazing,actually.

Is that you know, suicide rates decline, depression and mentalhealth issues decline. And here's a direct answer to your proposition. Peoplereceiving UBI start their own businesses at 300 percent the rate of the generalpopulation. So there is just no evidence to suggest that people are uninspired,that sit on the couch all day and don't do any work when they receive UBI.

People want to work. So what we find with UBI is they eithercreate their own businesses at a much higher rate than the general population,or they get involved in community activities at a much higher rate than thegeneral population. But in terms You know, of you're saying, how do we get youknow, people to, to participate in the economy when, you know, you're payingthem UBI.

UBI will be a response to technology based unemployment createdby automation. And that's you know, since 1960, when we've been talking aboutrobotics and artificial intelligence, the, The market or industry has been veryclear that the number one purpose of AI, and we used to call it a labor savingdevice, you know, robots and AI, is to remove human capital or human labor fromthe workforce.

That has always been the intent of AI. The thinking being thatwith AI, we can live life of leisure because AI can do all this stuff for us.So we need, if you want people to stay, if you want to keep the capitalistsystem, you need people to consume. How do people consume if you don't get paida salary, right?

If you don't have wealth distribution through employment, wellyou need a UBI. That's why you hear Elon Musk and Bill Gates and MarkZuckerberg and, you know, all of these guys talk about UBI as the solutionbecause they know what's coming. They know that technology and employment fromAI is a side effect of the market pushing very, very hard to create artificialintelligence in this level of automation in the economy.

You know, alternatively, you have civil unrest, social collapseand revolution, because if you have 40 percent youth unemployment, and you'renot offering any solution to that, then crime rates go up and social unrestgoes up. So you really only got two choices. If the market is not going to stopimplementing AI and tech, so therefore the market is going to produce thiseffect.

So you either have a breakdown in society, or you have UBI, oryou come up with a new system. That isn't capitalism, but that's unlikely inthe short term.

Stephen: And we'reseeing a lot of the breakdown in society right now with a lot of unemployment,not a lot of hope. And as you said, not a lot of solutions coming from thegovernment.

I'd love to take the end of these shows to kind of talk aboutyou, your personal, what you're working on. I see you're working on theFuturist, which is honestly, that website is a thing of beauty. Was that yourthought was just to create like. AI generated art, just a visual masterpiece.Yeah, we

Brett: wanted, wewanted to demonstrate you know, generative AI, you know, sort of as part of theplatform.

But, you know, The Futurist is just about really creating acollection of People around the world that are focused on the future and tryingto take us into the future and giving them a platform for that. I've got threerecordings over the next two days for, for futurists that we, we have in the,in the can, you know, so, I would say the, the other element you know, in termsof what I'm continuing, obviously, to work in the banking space, I've got a newbook that's coming out hopefully in April called Branch Today Gone Tomorrow,which is looking at you know, the fact that we, we reached peak branch beforethe pandemic, actually, around 2017.

Globally. And that's the first time in 500 years that we haveseen globally the, the numbers of branches decline, and they're declining quiterapidly now. And so, the, the conclusion of, of this which is a reallyinteresting conclusion. And then it, you know, certainly going to beInteresting to see the reaction to this in the States is that if, if, if youthink branches are still your primary channel then you are going out ofbusiness.

Digital must be primacy from this point forward, which means ifyou do have branches, their primary role is to support digital, not the otherway around. And if you can't get your head around that, then you're going to begiving up market share to digital players. So, you know, this is really helpingCEOs of banks and credit unions and, and, and so forth really understand thatthis is a pivot and it has fundamentally changed you know, and you know, theseare the things you can do to, to guarantee you still have some relevance.

Stephen: And I thinkwe only get more digital, right? We never go backwards. We, you know, there aresome people that say, Hey, I want to put on the overalls and go nail in thefence. And feel like I'm doing something with my hands. That's never going tobe the overall society. We're only going to get more digital.

Brett: No, I getasked this all the time.

But couldn't there be a scenario which people come back to thebranch? And I was like, you know what? Yeah, sure, sure. Some people go back toa vinyl record store now. But how do people buy their music? Well, you know,most people buy their music digitally. So, if you are waiting For some sort ofrenaissance for people to come back to the branch to save your business.

I'm sorry, you're screwed, right? You know, by the time thatdoes maybe eventually happen in some way, you know, artisan based banking orsomething we could call it. You know, at that point, you're already out ofbusiness, you know. So, you know, if, if you're hoping against all hope thattechnology is not going to disrupt your business and you'll still be able todo, you know, what you have done always, then, you know, I'm afraid you'vealready bust

Stephen: I think as,you know, as a former DJ, I think what people fail to realize is the DJ, youknow, going to get a vinyl record at a store was fun.

Nobody talks about the bank. The bank is not a fun, it's likesaying, Hey, would you want to go to an airport? Yeah. If you remove all thestress, the pressure and the security agents patting me down. Over a stick ofgum and yelling at me to throw out my water. Like the bank has never been aplace that people enjoyed going to fruit in the first place.

So I don't see us going back to that.

Brett: This was myargument when there was this whole future of branch Apple store thing. Peoplecamp outside of Apple stores. If we could just make our branches look likeApple stores, they're going to camp outside of the branch as well, you know,and the reality is no, they're not camping out because of the, the Apple store,they're camping out because of the products that are inside the Apple store,namely the iPhone.

And no bank products are anything like an iPhone. They're allvirtual. They don't require a store to be sold. That, and we know that becauseall of the fastest growing financial institutions in the world don't havebranches, don't have stores. So this is not a design problem. You can't designpeople back into the branch.

This is a behavioral shift. The only way you're going to getpeople back in the branch is ban smartphones. That's not going to happen,right? Not

Stephen: anytimesoon.

Stephen: You mightbe, you might be able to attack TikTok. Last question for you Brett. You're atthe pinnacle of, I'd say, your career. You're just continuing to put out books,thought leadership, you're in media.

What drives you? You kind of, you know, get to travel all overthe world. What kind of sits, like, when you sit back and say, hey, you know,I've achieved so much. What motivates you to keep on going? Is it like, hey,like, playing out this theory across 20 years, 30 years, 40 years? What areyour thoughts on, when someone asks you what motivates you, what is the firstthing that comes to your mind?

Brett: yOu know, Ilook I mean, for me, it's, I just want to make a dent in the world. I just wantto make the world a better place. And part of my unique skillset that I'vedeveloped over the last couple of decades is that I can communicate thecomplexity of these disruptions and changes in, in quite simple terms.

So if that helps people get comfortable with. Change overalland you know, and focus more on adaptation than defending the status quo. Ithink that will make people's lives easier, but also there are some bigchallenges coming. We have to be prepared to talk about this. The more wedebate. Things like climate change, whether it's real or whatever, instead ofgetting on with actually adapting to higher temperatures and sea level rise andfood scarcity and so forth, the better off the survivability of the human racewill be, but we need to take collective action.

Ultimately, my message is about this, is that you know, we cansolve any problem that comes up you know, for the, for the species, but only ifwe work together.

Stephen: Brett King,the futurist of all futurists thank you so much for your time. My inauguralepisode if I thought about this six years ago, I'd be laughing right now.

Thank you so much for your time. And I can't wait to get thisepisode posted. Thanks so much. Take care.