 Crypto is like this kid growing up the Bitcoin came out of a bit of a revolution right in China and India. We might actually hit them so Welcome to block show 2018 Europe. I'm here and we're speaking with one of the members of consensus So my first question to you a jeet is if you could just talk to us a little bit about what consensus is and what your role is there? Sure. So consensus is a is a venture production studio based in Based in Brooklyn now. We have offices in London in about 30 countries including London Paris South Africa Australia Singapore so we building teams all over the world To essentially develop blockchain based solutions And we create a lot of startups So we are technology builders and we are creating tools components infrastructure and solutions for a decentralized Ecosystem so in in in if I had to put this in one line we create Technology for inside at marketplaces, right? So what that means is that today? in the old world people everything was dominated by centralized platforms like banks or You know the likes of Facebook. They all dominate either data or assets and Start become rent-seeking participants in the economy We want to shift that to peer-to-peer Paradigm where the individual is empowered and we think technology especially blockchain technology has a big role to play in creating an ecosystem where we do not depend on These dominant intermediaries in every single market for information and assets So do you have any projects that consensus right now that you're really excited about that you're developing that are maybe close to mass adoption So it'd be very very difficult for me to not be excited about some of our projects. So Blockchain is early-stage technology, right? But at the same time in the enterprise space. We have seen a lot of progress so we are actually working on a project with Some very large financial institutions that we can't and I can't announce right now, but That that's tremendously exciting we are working on Infrastructure components like you know truffle is the most popular development tool in all of Ethereum a development community Then MetaMask has had one million downloads It's a it's a wallet In FURA support can support up to 12 billion transactions a day Which it's for read-only transactions and takes a lot of load off the Ethereum the public Ethereum blockchain So the so infrastructure tools like that are extremely exciting. My focus is on decentralized exchanges and regulation and policy so decentralized exchanges are peer-to-peer marketplaces For exchanging digital and digitized assets, right? So let's say and what that means is that historically we've had centralized exchanges for the most part, right? Things like NASDAQ or NYSE and so on so forth or Dutch abortion in next door that are very efficient in terms of providing liquidity, but then are not so great for low liquidity assets or for a wide range of digital assets that need Sort of this peer peer discovery For exchanging so this we are working on this next generation Decentralized exchange platforms. We are working on Crypto custody So trust ology is our platform for institutional great crypto custody. That'll be they'll go live into this year So if I mean we have 40 plus projects. We have a blockchain for social impact Project we have venture capital arm now. We are creating a lot of Ventures in partnership with enterprise customers. So we are We in some sense our role is to unleash this entrepreneurial Spirit or energy of the whole blockchain community, whether it's the enterprise community or the crypto community And these are all starting to converge. I come from the enterprise space. I worked for Goldman Barclays UBS PwC so some of the most established institutions and the kind of intermediaries I talked about and I sort of bring the whole power and This innovation in the crypto ecosystem to institutions and legacy So my role is to help some of these institutions understand what's going on in crypto and how they can leverage this technology To participate in this decentralization revolution, so to speak So my next question is two parts the first one is what made you leave working at these Intermediaries and go to the crypto space and the second thing is I notice that I cover a lot of news of this Wall Street exec now works for coin base this wall Street exec now works for ex crypto company Do you think that's like a theme? We're gonna keep seeing in the future with you kind of being one of the examples so I Can't speak for everybody's motivations, right? So on one hand some people are excited about the growth of the crypto ecosystem And and that's perfectly honorable and great and some people are excited by the sheer amount of wealth That's flowing into this ecosystem, and that's perfectly honorable as well. I'm an engineer I came from Technology and did some work in consulting and regulation In the process I met Joe Joe is the CEO of consensus and Joe has something about him So he you know Joe is a is an inspirational figure. He has this ability to excite people about This future like this decentralized internet and then this decentralized and cited marketplace idea that we're building in so many different sectors of the global economy and this whole Thing about being able to build something something that's futuristic and you know So a lot of large institutions want to innovate or companies want to innovate But they have the innovators dilemma they are tied to what exists today And they are scared of disrupting their own businesses with consensus. There is no such thing right consensus is exists to create New things consensus does a lot of experimentation consensus is purely focused on innovation and that's what made me really excited about consensus at this time because if you have an idea and if you have You know a team and you can actually make things happen then consensus is a great place For people to go and we are hiring right now The next question involves I've noticed on your Twitter You've been tweeting a lot about the new GDPR EU privacy bill Yeah I have strong views on that including a tweet of the of a refrigerator giving a family a privacy update notice What do you think about that because you expand on why you've been tweeting all so GDPR is well-intentioned, right? So I mean it was a partly our current privacy regime is outdated that we know right so So there that privacy regime needs an update, you know that as well because now we have Facebook and we have Google and we have lots of these data intermediaries right central monopolies that are taking everybody's data and selling ads back to them and Might even and and as we found out from Edward Snowden might be giving their data off to the governments for surveillance so and the NSA using public data for surveillance was a major political issue in various parts of Europe especially in Germany and To some extent the GDPR was a well-intentioned response to that But if you look at how the regulation has been written, then it's it has some significant flaws or at least you know that that regulation needs a little bit of Adaptation to the technology that's emerging because what we don't want to do is because of the need because privacy isn't the only need Right, so privacy is a very very important need and but then there is also The Europe needs to remain competitive against other jurisdictions We need to create great technology. We need to make sure that our economies are comparative against China and India and the US and so on so forth. We need a technology Ecosystem in this in this continent that's comparative So now GDPR runs the risk of being too restrictive, right and sort of decent incentivizing innovation Whether it's innovation in AI in a data analytics machine learning blockchain and so on so forth So the way the regulation is written is very confusing to a lot of technologies today And there is no legal precedent, right? So for example, we have a right to be forgotten now What does that mean in practice? So if I used to be a consultant for banks, right? so I did a lot of consulting for banks and At PWC and now if you try to actually delete Data customer data from bank because the GDPR there are ten other Regulator requirements that prevent you from doing that, right? So in practice in theory, it sounds fantastic But in practice GDP implementing GDPR is is really hard now and it can actually make people very concerned. So parity who have a KYC utility pickups, which is very popular with the ICOs is Had to stop the service because now they're really concerned about GDPR, right? Now on one hand you have KYC and AML regulations and you definitely want to have KYC and AML Regulations ICOs comply with all of that and now suddenly we have to stop a very useful service called pickups Because of GDPR concerns because there is a lot of legal and regulatory uncertainty These guys don't want to be in legal trouble because they're offering a great service, right? So so because right now there is a lot of uncertainty. There's no legal precedent for GDPR We don't know how the various courts will rule and GDPR doesn't protect you from governments So the UK government has cameras on every street and and there is no protection for that from GDPR There is a bunch of derogations, right? Or the you or they might governments might enforce a backdoor On encryption and there's no protection from that. There's no protection from surveillance by governments So GDPR has significant limitations It may actually not be able to protect privacy of individuals to the extent that it aspires to but it is definitely well-intentioned and it's a response to the So I think what will happen is that over a period of time policy makers and Regulators and Technology providers will all work together. So we are we are working on a project with the European Commission It's called the EU blockchain observatory and we invite Ecos you know all the blockchain ecosystem parts to engage in that process and at some point policy makers and regulators will adopt GDPR to this New and exciting technology that's coming up, but until then there is a lot of confusion in the and uncertainty in the marketplace So going off of that the regulatory uncertainty that exists has led to a lot of Confusing regulations that have you know in China? There's been a lot of bands that have caused companies to move to Hong Kong in India The central bank ended all crypto dealings and that's been sued and it's been going back and forth Could you comment on any of that? I mean you mentioned the blockchain observatory what other steps could be done to stop these kind of yeah, so so it's it's a Regulatory approaches around the world are rooted in their culture, right? So I wrote a little bit of a humorous article about this on on fin extra. So for example when we talk to kids On on the dinner table in the US we tell and they're not behaving in the US We tell them to go to their rooms in China in India. We might actually hit them. So So crypto is like this kid growing up and regulators are like these parents who behave in ways that are attuned to their culture, right? So I now what so some of these are knee jerk responses from regulators around the world because so for example in China There was a Communist Party Congress just before Bitcoin was banned right and the government's didn't want social instability And there was a very bullish market that could have caused a lot of problems for individual investors So a lot of these things that regulators are doing are well-intentioned But part of the challenge is that the crypto community hasn't really engaged with policymakers We haven't tried or invested in educating. So initially The Bitcoin came out of a bit of a revolution, right? We were rebelling the crypto community was rebelling against the Chancellor's bailout and and it came Occupy Wall Street was the theme so but now that kid rebellious teenager has grown up a little bit and it's time for us as technologists to engage with the other processes of the society such as regulation and policy and work collaboratively help Regulators understand what's going on help governments understand what's going on educate ourselves on why the rules are the way They are why the securities laws are set up the way they are and then maybe find this ground where we can The technology can develop and create the fairer world But at the same time without causing some of the issues that might occur if we are not responsible in using this technology Great. That was my last question. So thank you so much for coming. Thank you so much. Thank you Thank you so much for attending the show Like subscribe and hodl