 Okay, welcome back everyone. This is theCUBE's live coverage in Monaco. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here at the Monaco Crypto Summit getting all the action around what's going on around the platform, the NFTs, the metaverse. The role of society is going to be decentralized. It's coming fast for everybody and we're going to be covering like a blank as we always do. I've got a great guest, Beth Kaiser, who is the co-founder of Own Your Own Data Foundation among other great accolades. Pillar of the industry, thanks for coming on. Absolutely, thank you so much for having me. Love the Own Your Own Data sign on your body. You know, it's important to keep the message as obvious as possible for everyone every single day. Well, Beth, I'm really glad you're here. I first want to congratulate you on a great journey you've been on. It's been a roller coaster. I know you've done amazing pioneering work around Own Your Own Data in Wyoming days and then looking at decentralization as an opportunity as well. And now we've seen that play out years later. You're involved in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, being in there, seeing it and whistleblowing that out and sharing that, those exploits. Quite a thrust into the center of the conversations at that time has become very political. So you had, you're driving positive change over here and then you get caught over here and you're driving change over there. What's it been like? I mean, it's been an incredible journey over the past four and a half years. I suppose going full time into blockchain around 2017 but really moving to the state of Wyoming in January 2018 to begin what has been the most successful legislative initiative ever in the United States as well as the most successful legislative initiative for distributed ledger technology in the digital asset industry. From there, I really feel like it's been quite an incredible journey. It's always a roller coaster in different industries and especially when you become a whistleblower but I think what has been really the truth is trying to explain to people how data protection, how transparency and tracking and traceability that we don't get from legacy technology is actually enabled by crypto, enabled by a new form of cryptography that is decentralized and immutable and that really has been such an incredible transition that I think legislators and regulators around the world are finally starting to understand. Yeah, and again, I just can't just over amplify the work that you're doing and how important it is because one of the big societal changes right now is culture and the culture clash of how laws are made, how business is done are all collapsing and they're changing and so the generation of leaders that we need around the world got to step up because the people there now aren't that tech savvy, they're lawyers. So there's nuances around privacy and data protection governance by jurisdiction, by applications, by your presence. I mean, it could be complicated for someone who's like, in power, who doesn't even know what the internet is. Absolutely, I mean, some of the legislators and regulators that I've sat down with, they really start at the beginning. Can we define a database? What does data actually mean? What does it look like? What can you do with it before I can get to advanced predictive algorithms and quantum-resistant encryption? So obviously sometimes the understanding is at a 10,000-foot level, but if you can explain to people how these technologies will help improve their lives and improve the lives of their constituents, that's really how I found that we can connect on another level where they actually understand what the implementation can do and then when we show them case studies of exactly how this has been implemented successfully across agriculture and digital identity and land titles and all of these different things that are usually hard to solve for in government that we have been able to do this so successfully, that's when we really get to buy in. You know, before I flew into Monaco on Tuesday, I was in Boston covering the Amazon Web Services Reinforce, which is their security conference. Now, AWS is very popular, everyone knows what they are in cloud computing, but the security teams around the world have a different ethos and you can see they want to get your reaction to this comment because what I noticed in Missouri, you mentioned crypto-resistance. It's pretty well known that quantum is going to have powerful capability. I'm sorry, quantum resistance. Cryptography can be hacked, so there's all movements of foot around shared responsibility and this quantum resistance and encryption and people are generally afraid of it because of the keys and that's what I walked with the general public, but now you see the security professionals coming together and they're all kind of saying it out loud. Most of the times, but not saying it out loud enough that the future is really going to be decentralized. Okay, how far are we along in the mainstream, in your opinion, the tipping point where everyone gets it? Are we like way a miles away? Are we close? It feels like we're getting closer, but like not close enough and like, I get kind of frustrated, but like what's your reaction to that? I would say it really depends which part of the world you're in, but if you're just going to look at an average, I would say we're getting to at least 10 to 20% of people who can really understand how these technologies work and are actually starting to use them. Now, those numbers are not bad given how young these technologies are and how young the industry is in general and so I think we're going to see a really steep climb of how many people are getting involved over the next couple of years because it was only during the coronavirus shutdown when everyone started to lead a fully digital life where they realized, well, if I can't go into my bank or if I can't do this in person, then what am I supposed to do? And they started to think about, okay, well, some technologies are actually not even that convenient and some industries are not even very digital. And so the only way to actually live life in a more successful way is to have a comprehensive digital strategy that brings in decentralization to make sure that things can still function even when we're in crisis. And it's not just the coronavirus pandemic, it's also been shown in the recent war with Ukraine where all of a sudden nearly everyone in the country is using cryptocurrency because the banks don't work in a situation like this. You mentioned Ukraine is a quick plug for the work you're doing there real quick. I know you've done some things there. Can you share what you're working on? Because there's a lot of people leaving Ukraine looking for jobs, so folks out there, hire Ukraine engineers. I've been promoting this in Silicon Valley. If you've got openings, people look with their families have nothing. So they're looking for jobs. I know you've done some work there. Can you share a quick plug? Of course, so there's two main projects that I've been working on in Ukraine since the start of the war. One was to help launch Aid for Ukraine, which has been the largest humanitarian aid fund in Ukraine. It's all in cryptocurrencies. And that was really because in the beginning of the war we knew a lot of governments were going to hesitate to put money in Ukraine because they didn't want to escalate tensions with Russia. Now, individuals that don't represent sovereign nations all around the world giving in cryptocurrency doesn't escalate tensions because it's not money coming from a country. So. That's funny, isn't it? It's incredible. It's like, come on, just get the cash over there. Come on, some right help. But the European Union was first, and it took them nearly two and a half weeks to send any money, whereas all of the first money that was being used on medical kits and night vision goggles and food rations was being bought with Bitcoin and Tether. So Aid for Ukraine, which you can find at donate.thedigital.gov.ua is a place where you can use every cryptocurrency, including digital bits. It's 16 official cryptocurrencies right now with more being added in order to donate. And the second big project is called heritagehub.org. And Heritage Hub is basically a community of all these different top level technologies around the world that we're using in order to preserve cultural heritage. A lot of this includes everything from 3D drone scanning to robots, hand scanners, where we're documenting all of the national monuments, all of the historic grade listed buildings from UNESCO and the Ministry of Culture, as well as the antiquities, artifacts, and art inside of museums, so that one, the blockchain says that these things came from Ukraine. So if anything's destroyed or looted, we know where to get it back to. Secondly, in case anything is further destroyed, at least we have an exact digital blueprint in order to recreate it and rebuild. And of course, also we can use Metaverse and crypto-enabled business models in order to raise money to rebuild the physical buildings and the world heritage sites that have already been destroyed. That's, well, this is exactly why I love the conversation. What you just laid out, first of all, it should be mind blowing if people aren't in the weeds here with us, but that is exactly what community's all about. One, moving fast, no bottlenecks. So speed, besides all the other benefits of, you know, immutability, speed of movement, moving fast, no middleman, red tape, bullshit. Two, just the preservation of the assets is another new, you know, really kind of grows out of this where NFT is now and kind of the connected dots to the future. It's not just about the cartoon or whatever, that's an identity, it's cool and fun, art is art is great. But when you start getting to these practical purposes, you're having play, but this is reality. This is actually a societal impact. And I think that's what I'm getting out of this next wave is, yeah, there's some, you know, stuff's going to go under, bad ideas out of the way, but growth is growth, but there's still total viability. Absolutely, and I think during times of market downturns or bear markets is when you start to see the best ideas being implemented because it's something that has real world utility, something where governments or companies have not completely solved the problem yet. And so we have the ability to go in, find a problem that is really big and that not enough work or money has been invested into investigating it so far. And so we're able to actually use new technologies that didn't exist the last time this big problem arrived to solve it in new ways and really do it quickly and do it in a way where the entire world can participate and I think that's what's so exciting. Beth, you're an inspiration. I really love chatting with you. Great insights, great smarts and brains and you're getting down and dirty making things happen. Fantastic work and continue to do it. I have to ask you while you're here, what was it like to go through that Cambridge Analytica thing because they made a movie about it, right? And so, I mean, that's not something you wake up and you put on you think you want to do in your life is that that's going to happen, but that's a critical moment in history. It is super important note, it's a cautionary tale as well as an example of exploitation that you saw with others. So, whoa, what was it like? Tell me, take me through that real quick. I got into data science specifically because I believe that data science is going to be the quickest way and the most efficient way to solve a lot of global problems and also be able to run impact campaigns, human rights initiatives in a more transparent and effective manner. Now, when I joined Cambridge Analytica it was specifically to learn how we could use early warning systems to prevent war, prevent crisis, prevent famine even, but anything that can be detected that it's going to happen with data and enough behavioral data, enough social media data and you can tell something's going to happen before it does. Now, when I was there, I learned a lot more about data than I expected and a lot more about the fact that data can be used by anyone for any purposes, any technology can and so we didn't actually have enough protections in the industry to stop bad actors from abusing these technologies. So that's really where for me whistleblowing was not an easy decision to make but something where I felt like I needed to do it and that there was an entire industry behind me of people who were trying to solve the problems of legacy big tech. There were already so many privacy campaigners around the world. There were already a huge crypto industry where people were saying, okay, lack of transparency, centralization, abusive data, all of this is a huge problem and we're trying to fix it. So for me, I knew that I had other industries to go to after becoming a whistleblower and that I had people that would support me in what I was doing and relay the message by actually building technologies that solve the problems of legacy tech. Well, we thank you, we support you because and what you illustrated to the world was and we were yelling from our blog on SiliconANGLE about this is that when you have tech for good, there's tech for bad. Okay, and you made that publicly aware and that's a contribution, I think that'll be looked at as one of the major things in history. Thank you so much. Thanks for coming on theCUBE and great to see you in person. Again, love your own data, the users are in charge. Once the users get their data, good things can happen, right? Absolutely, and so if anyone wants to learn more, you can follow me at ownyourdata now on Twitter or reach out to me at info at ownyourdata.foundation. Where are you going to be next? Give a plug on your schedule, do you have any insight into what people can rendezvous with you? Yeah, I mean, if anyone's in Colorado, I'm heading to future shape 360 next then a United Nations conference in New York, then Burning Man, and then United Nations General Assembly week, we'll be doing a lot of work for the Ukraine projects when everyone around the world descends upon New York, so definitely see me there. Get involved, join Beth's mission and her team and community, a lot of great stuff happening and decentralization, like I said, it's coming everywhere, it's a force for good and you got to watch out on all the other sides as well. This CUBE's coverage here at the Crypto Conference, the Monaco Crypto Summit, I'm John Furrier, host. We'll be back with more live coverage after this short break.