 Hey everyone, it's Rachel Wolfson here at Consensus 2022. Today I'm with a very special guest, Gary Kasparov. He is a Grand Master chess champion. Gary Kasparov is one of the greatest chess players of all time. At only 22 years old, he became the youngest ever world champion by defeating Anatoly Karpov in a legendary match. His games against IBM's supercomputer Deep Blue made history. After leaving professional chess, Kasparov dedicated his life to politics and has now embraced crypto as a tool to promote human rights across the world. Gary, in terms of financial freedom and digital assets, what are your thoughts there? It's very simple. I don't feel comfortable that central banks basically can downgrade my investments by pushing inflation, by doing whatever. So these bunch of unelected people decide how much money we have in our pocket. So while we cannot change things, but we can slowly push them, push back. And while you hear a lot of talks about, oh, but bad guys use it for money laundering, money laundering did exist from the day we invented money. But it was always privileged for big guys. Right now you have average person and just using this, using crypto just as the safe transaction. And let's not forget, it's well America. You have the free world, but you have unfree world and it's about 60% of people on the planet living in countries with oppressive regimes. And for them, it's just the only opportunity to survive. Whether it's in Iran or in Afghanistan or now you look at Ukrainian war, so much money is being now shifted to Ukraine in crypto. You have Nigeria, the Protestant Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Hong Kong. So again, overall balance tells us that the crypto is a big liberator. When what are your thoughts on the market today? I know a lot of people may think that we're in a bear market because the price of Bitcoin. We are, so what? But again, people complain about coins losing value. Let's separate two things. If you have eight or nine thousand coins in the world, 99% is crap, let's be honest. That's it, that's happened with all new assets in the market. But when you look at the Bitcoin and ETH, for instance, they fluctuate with the market. Yeah, okay, they lose a bit more, but they gain more. But that shows you they're already being integrated into the financial system. And you know, if you make an investment, yeah, you hire the benefits, hire the risk. So if you wanted to make tons of money and invest in terror and lunar, sorry. But is it new? No, this is the whole history of the stock market is about just up and down. It's about people making tons of money and losing a lot of money. But right now, again, it says even without recognizing it, the financial markets already incorporated Bitcoin and ETH and other related currencies into the system. That's why you can see the fluctuations are just coinciding with the market moves. Right. You launched an NFT collection last year. Yep, last December. Right, can you talk a little bit about that collection and why you decided to do that? It's, for me, it was just two things. One, I wanted to check how it works, but also I wanted just you to have my life there. I think it's pretty unique because people had many collections, but I think it's probably the first attempt to have entire life from early days, from my childhood, to my shift to my career from professional chess playing to the political and human rights activists. And again, it did work. So it probably was a little bit, you know, I mean, probably overaggressive. So just as maybe 32, it was probably too much. But still, you know, it's the company I worked with collected about 1.1 million. It was 2884 ETH at the time it was about four for dollars. We still had days where ETH was four. But most importantly, you know, I could see that again, it's people, you know, people had interest. I mean, for instance, the big item was my score sheet of my game against Anatoly Karpov, November 9, 1985, when I became world champion. And it's just that somebody paid 51 ETH for it. And when people say, how do you, what is the value of these NFTs? What's the value of the stamps? So I think it's important now was to see that it's the value is what we believe has value. So an NFT is, yeah, of course, these days market, NFT market, it's almost dead. Yeah, but it will rebound, rebound because again, we are moving, you know, every day into the digital world. And in digital world, we will have more aspects of the world, you know, turning into digital. And that's why you need digital transactions. So when I look at my son who's turning seven in July, I mean, this is, you know, he lives in digital world. Right. So that's why for him in 10 years, you know, it will be absolutely normal way of making transactions. Right. Is he doing anything in the metaverse or what are your thoughts on the metaverse, these virtual environments? Again, it's, no, I tried to, I'm sure he will be there soon because, you know, when he gets to my, to my, to my tablet. So that says, I have so many games there just, you know, and he's much faster, much faster. He's not just, he's faster than me. He's faster than his sister who's turning 16. Okay. So this is it. But it's, it's, again, I know things are inevitable when I see them. When I played the blue and I lost my second match, I said, okay, now Gary, learn a hard lesson. You know, you are the first knowledge worker who had his job threatened by a computer. You cannot beat them, join them. So that's the same, the same attitude now. So we cannot, and we should not try to beat, you know, to beat this, this, this new trend. We have to find a way to incorporate it in our lives. Right. What are your thoughts on the current chess landscape? Any innovations there that are happening? The game, the game. Chess and the metaverse. No, but yeah, it's not the chess and the metaverse, but the game has been changing because of computers. Because you, you know, you can study the openings, you know, you can just, you can learn much faster than, than before. So you, you have now young grandmasters, age 13, 14, that know much more than Bobby Fischer knew 50 years ago. Yeah, it's, it's chess as a part of, of our society. So, and it's actually our social life. And that's why every, every change, you know, that we see, you know, due to the machine's intervention. So chess also absorbs it. And actually it's, it's a pretty good, you know, indicator. So how to, how to cooperate with machines. So how to, how to update your style. So and the, and the new generation led by Magnus Carlson, current world champion, they are just different players. They're no better, no worse than, than myself and my generation or, or my great predecessors. But it's, it's, it's different. And it's, and again, I, I watch these games and I, I simply recognize the fact that is just, you know, it's environment has changed and, and game of, game of chess that survived for nearly 2000 years is also changing. Interesting. Gary, any final thoughts before we end the interview? Thoughts on consensus or thoughts on the blockchain and crypto space? Just what are your final thoughts? Oh my, it's a, I'm an optimist. I'm incorrigible optimist by nature. And I think we are, we are seeing the future and it's, it's in our hands how we shape it. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, Gary. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me. Thank you.