 Good morning. Good afternoon, depending on where you're joining us from across the world. I'm Karen Cho, anchor for CNBC. Thank you so much for joining this conversation for the Sustainable Development Impact Summit. Now, we're going to pick up on one of the topics that is regularly in the headlines, cryptocurrencies. But we have a very specialized approach to it today. We're going to just really dig into the detail with this title towards sustainable cryptocurrencies. We have effectively seen huge change in the market capitalization, the dominance of these cryptocurrencies over the past year, growing from 250 billion to 1.5 trillion dollars. But with explosive growth, there's been increased attention on cryptocurrencies energy use and just how we can build a more sustainable ecosystem for cryptocurrencies. So we will be delving into this with our panelists shortly the next 40 minutes or so. But we do want to get you the audience involved straight from the outset as well. So for our top link audience, we will be using Slido to understand your knowledge on today's topic. We're going to incorporate your questions into this discussion towards the end of this as well. So please do get involved. If you are coming to us today on live stream, we'll also be able to view the results of the poll on your screens along with us. So let's dive in and let's get started. And I'm going to pitch this to our audience today to our top link audience. You've received a link in the poll on the Zoom chat. So the question today, can crypto help drive environmental sustainability or will it ultimately lead to climate calamity? So please fill in your responses now and get involved on that poll and we'll take a look at the responses shortly. In the meantime, I'm going to introduce you to our audience and to our panelists today. David Birch joins us. Premier of Bermuda, Bermuda government. Thank you very much for joining us today, Lucia Gallardo joins us. Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Emerge. Lucia has been a serial entrepreneur building socially impactful emerging technology solutions. Tamika Tillerman is global head of policy and partner at Andresa Horowitz, which is a big venture capital giant also has been one time aid to the then Senator Joe Biden. So huge background on policy. Milton Demires joins us as well. Chief Strategy Officer at Queen shares and joined the cryptocurrency industry back in 2015. So in some ways a veteran of this industry these days as well. Now later on, we are going to have some closing remarks from Sheila Warren, who is deputy head for the Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, member of the Executive Committee at the World Economic Forum. So we're looking forward to Sheila's comments a little bit later on. So let's just revisit that poll. There's hopefully many who've been involved in that poll. Let's see what those results look like. So we can just get a little bit of a test as to where the audience sits today, which is an overwhelming response. Look at that. The question again, can crypto help drive environmental sustainability or will it ultimately lead to climate calamity? And you can see 71% responding saying there's potential. And I'm interested to learn more about this today. Just 29% on the climate calamity page, but I'm open to learn of its potential. So that is fascinating about where the audience sits at this point. Well, first up, let's tackle this issue of sustainability. How do we ensure that crypto is more sustainable? Premier, let me come to you first. Bermuda has been described as a crypto friendly jurisdiction. Recently you issued a special license to an over-the-counter trading platform to roll out cryptocurrency trading. Is it right to roll out the red carpet to cryptocurrency players when there are huge environmental concerns about the energy consumption of crypto currencies? Thank you, Karen, for the question. From an economic development perspective for a country like ours, it absolutely is because innovation, when you're an island in the middle of the Atlantic 700 miles away from the nearest landmass, you have to be innovative in order to attract business and to make sure that you can continue to provide for the people inside of your country. But I think the broader question is, does it make sense recognize the climate implications? And I think that what we see inside of crypto is that it is changing, and we can certainly see that the markets will play out. And I think what we need to do is to make sure that people can understand what are the implications of the crypto currencies of which they may be using. How do we make sure that people can have choice? And how do we make sure that the crypto currencies that do not lead to severe energy consumption are the ones that can be preferred and used? So I think from that perspective, as the question that was posed, there are certainly a lot of options that it's not one size fits all when it comes to crypto. I just want to follow up with you. I am at a fintech event. I've been there a week, so I understand the need for financial innovation and embracing it. But as you issue these digital asset business licenses from the Bermuda Monetary Authority, to what extent should there be some sort of provision that weighs up sustainability when we're trying to hit the Paris targets? Well, I think that's a great question. And the type of business at which we do, the companies themselves aren't the ones actually issuing and creating crypto currencies. We're talking about people who are exchanges, persons who are custodians, persons who are holding it. But I think the broader question is what role does government have to play in so far as encouraging the future? We believe that crypto is going to be a massive role of the future and is going to be the future of the way in which we transfer value. And so I think from a government perspective, we certainly should be recognizing that with certain protocols, there can be extreme energy use and speaking about how we can go ahead and modernize or what's necessary to make sure that it can be sustainable in the future. Premier, thank you. Lucy, let me come to you. You've been conducting successful work in the socially impactful emerging technologies. Is there a way in your view that crypto is more sustainable in future so it has a positive impact on society? Yeah, thanks for the question. I think this question and this topic is interesting to me because it does presume that crypto is somehow not sustainable. And if we are looking at the definition of sustainability that the world recognizes as this notion of meeting our own needs without compromising the ability of future generations to be able to meet their own. And if that's the case, then we really need to make this distinction that sustainability is not just environmentalism. And we don't just need to worry about natural resources. We also need to worry about economic resources and about social resources. And so embedded into this notion of sustainability, we need to find more concern for social equity and for economic development. And if that's the case, then I think what is more sustainable than technology with a foundational premise to concern itself with both social and economic development? And so in this way, I think crypto is certainly more sustainable than the traditional banking sector. It's democratizing financial tools so that people can build economic resilience and sustainability. And if it's about making crypto even more sustainable, then I think continuing down this path of investing in open source development in leveraging the power of inclusive communities and in making sure that this innovation can continue to be exponential, then I think we can really say that the crypto community and the crypto space and the crypto sector, the decentralized sector really embodies the meaning of sustainability to me. And so a lot of our work reflects that very foundational premise. Lucy, I'm already off script because I want to follow up with you too because in the past, in terms of what you've been up to, you've been concerned about emerging markets and developing economies being left behind with technologies. But in this particular case, El Salvador has been one of the first countries to accept Bitcoin as legal tender, which is well in advance of the approach taken in Western countries. Is that wise to have this full throttle approach when there are concerns about systemic risk in society undermining the financial system as well as the environmental sustainability issues? I think this goes back to highlighting these other aspects of an interconnectedness between the different types of resources within sustainability. A country like El Salvador has not necessarily benefited from the economic system and structure that we have historically had and other countries in an emerging markets are going to have the same problem. And so when you look at the possibilities and the potential between using this technology and continuing with the status quo of traditional sectors, then I think it's really almost like a non-decision for leadership in these countries to try to leverage the new technology to suit and to build their own economic resilience and strength. Now, the rollout itself, I think there's a lot to be debated in terms of how they've gone about doing that. But I think at the very foundational premise of being a governor for El Salvador and trying to build El Salvador's economic resilience and strength and wealth and well-being for its citizens, I think looking toward innovation as a way to do that is a really intelligent move on their behalf. And we are not going to be surprised when more countries look at this technology and the space and say there is potential here to do things differently. And I know for certain that traditional mechanisms have not worked thus far. To my gut, plenty of people want to hear from you too, given your background and policy. And I want to get to what we're seeing in the United States, a huge push by the current administration to really turn the focus towards sustainability. That's an investment, reducing industry's carbon footprint in the government that is very much trying to give the green light to that. So, Tamika, as we talk about how crucial it is for the industry to try and tackle energy consumption, what can you say on that front? Well, what we're seeing is that Web 3, which is the broad family of technologies that include blockchain and consensus-based computing systems, really don't need to be, and in most cases, are not particularly energy intensive. Ethereum, which is the most commonly used protocol in Web 3 applications, is moving to a proof-of-stake form of establishing consensus. That system will be 1,000 times less energy intensive than proof-of-work models. The flow blockchain, which powers a number of games and applications like NBA Top Shots, uses a really negligible amount of energy. And we see some blockchains, like the cello blockchain, which is based on proof-of-stake, which is actually carbon negative and processes tens of thousands of transactions a day. So this is a very important conversation. I don't want to give the impression that it's not. But even in the realm of traditional proof-of-work blockchains, like the Bitcoin blockchain, we are seeing many of the operators and data centers that secure that network moving toward renewable power. 76% of them use renewable power as part of their mix. Many of those watching this broadcast will know that every 10 minutes or so, you have a number of Bitcoin that are released to the operators of those data centers as the incentive for securing that network. And we see the process of mining really less as a bug and more as a bounty on finding clean renewable energy. And that's what it should be if policymakers do their job going forward. If I could just bring up some other stats though, because I feel like you cherry picked the best from the industry and the stats around Bitcoin are abysmal at this point. The energy usage of TVs in the United States is equivalent to Bitcoin's energy footprint. If you look at the gap towards what you're seeing in the copper industry, almost equivalent to the copper industry in terms of the energy consumption, it's closing the gap on that. Elon Musk recently couldn't make Bitcoin work because of the ESG principles affected just cross the line for a lot of investors. It wasn't renewable enough in his view. What do you say on that front? Well, there's definitely a lot of work to be done as it relates to the Bitcoin blockchain. The Bitcoin blockchain is a relatively small piece of the much broader story that is occurring in the Web 3 landscape. So I think we need to continue working with the Bitcoin community to bring more renewables into the power mix for the Bitcoin blockchain. But we should also really keep our eye on the prize, which is fostering a new generation of computing that's going to be ideally much more resilient, much more secure, much more democratized, and frankly, much more sustainable than many of the legacy systems it replaces. Thank you. Let me get to Melton, because Melton, you're an investor, an advisor, an advocate for crypto. In your view, what does cryptocurrency need to do at this point across the sustainability hurdle? Yes, great to be here. At CoinShares, we managed $6 billion in assets, and we were the first to research Bitcoin's energy usage. In fact, the 76% number that Micah quoted comes from our research, which we conducted in 2019. Bitcoin is already one of the most sustainable industries in the world. The US power mix today is only 20% renewables. The Bitcoin industry's power mix today is 50% renewables in the United States of America, as published in Q2 by the North American Bitcoin Mining Council, and was over 70% globally. Cambridge Center for Alternative Financial Research has also studied the Bitcoin energy usage question. And again, one of the things that's really unique about Bitcoin is that it's fully transparent in its energy usage, unlike any other industry in the world. Really, the conversation we're having is a subjective conversation about uses of energy, but the bigger question is sources of energy. Today, the US government subsidizes the fossil fuel industry, which is a multi-trillion dollar very mature industry, to the tune of $20 billion per year. The European Union subsidizes the oil and gas industry to the tune of $30 billion per year. The Bitcoin industry has never received a single dollar of government subsidies or government funding, and has single handedly put more renewable energy on the grid and made it economically viable to invest in, develop and build out renewable energy power generation. And to me, that is really the profound opportunity here. The private sector in this instance, the Bitcoin sector can do a lot to solve problems the public sector has been unable and unwilling to solve without impacting taxpayers and burdening them with even more debt. Future generations, my generation is facing an unprecedented amount of fiscal liability in the form of all of these subsidies and all of these bailouts that are happening in multiple industries that are mature, well-developed industries, and crypto has none of that baggage. Furthermore, I think the point Lucia raised, ESG is not just about the E. You're focusing very much on the E. The SMG are far more important. Financial violence is the number one form of violence in our world today in the form of sanctions and economic access not being available. Crypto is equalizing that playing field. Bitcoin is by far the most widely utilized financial system, and it is not, it does not discriminate. It is unable to discriminate. New types of blockchains that are being launched, just to Micah, alluded to are enabling a wide variety of economic use cases that enable 24-7, 365 access to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. So, again, I think it's very important when we have this conversation to focus on not just the E, but also the SMG, but also to remember that this isn't a subjective story about who should or should not be allowed to use energy. We don't have energy police, and the fact is that the sources of energy are a big part of the issue, and I'd love to see the conversation shift to how public policy is influencing the mix of sources of energy. We're not using nuclear. We're shutting down nuclear power plants and putting more coal-fired plants on the grid. That's directly antithetical to the sustainability narrative that's being pushed, so we need to hold our leaders accountable for answering these questions about talking about sustainability, but actually doing the opposite by shutting down some of the most sustainable sources of energy that we have on the grid today. It simply does not add up. Meldon, just quickly, can I pick up on this point, to a thought-provoking point, about subsidizing the cryptocurrency industry so it can have renewable solutions? One of the stumbling blocks is that- That's not what I said. I did not say we need to subsidize it. I said it can create more renewable sources of energy requiring a single dollar of government funding. I'm not asking for it. So you don't think it should have access to subsidies? No, I don't. I actually think the cryptocurrency sector is using private market incentives of supply and demand in order to bootstrap these economic effects that make it financially sustainable to fund renewables. Instead of relying on trillions of dollars of infrastructure bills and more debt, we can create private market incentives to fund renewable energy yield. Again, I think for folks like myself who are facing down a tremendous mountain of debt, my generation has not built the wealth that prior generations have and are severely behind when it comes to wealth distribution. I think we're very concerned about the levels of spending we're seeing that are fundamentally unsustainable. Thank you very much for that. Let me come to Lucia again. I want to get to this next topic on metrics. How do we ensure that the crypto sector has an effective strategy for mitigating environment impact? How do you think about these metrics? Is there a way to bring that into the mix when we talk about a sector that's quite unregulated? I think this is interesting and it also taps into a lot of what Meltem is saying. The world has struggled with this question generally, not just within the crypto sector. We've been trying to figure out how to really measure the efficacy of impact across time. And we've seen a boost of investment once the ESG framework came into play and it allowed for incentives to play a role in how much attention the private sector and traditional industries were paying to these kinds of topics. And yet when we look at the crypto industry, as Meltem pointed out, it receives little to no subsidies across board. And it is still continuing to be a forceful way of changing the way that we think about these metrics. And there are specific components that are already in the fundamentals of the crypto sector. You already have a lot of community led innovation. You already have a lot of traceability and transparency of information. You have the ability for the public, the wide public, to hold the industry accountable. And you already have the global connectedness of this sector, which means that maybe right now we don't have the frameworks for DAO's and protocols specifically to be driving further investments into ESG like initiatives. But I think that in a few years time, the sector will actually be quite exemplary in driving the measuring and also sort of boosting community attention toward these kinds of issues specifically because at its core, the Bitcoin sector can actually use its own structure and its own organization to drive all of these factors. I think two things can be true at the same time, we can have a traditional sector that is incredibly behind on the kind of progress, energy consumption and otherwise that the Bitcoin sector has been driving for the short amount of years that it's been in existence. And we can also say that the crypto sector still has a long way to go. But only one of those is organized to specifically drive progress in a particular direction that is public benefit. And that is a very fundamental philosophy around financial sovereignty, around decentralization and around open sourced community led initiatives and development and innovation. Thank you very much. Premier, let me come back to you as we talk about metrics here. We're trying to embark upon a box ticking exercise in some ways for cryptocurrency. How sustainable are they, whether they sit on the various timeline? But if we think about it and we step back and we think about it more broadly, we have the same questions around ESG for a lot of corporations around the world that have been in business for many, many years. One of the criticisms from the investment community is that it's just really a self-assessment at this point. There's no genuine way of telling whether a lot of these companies tick ESG. There's no global standard. So how do we then stretch to a cryptocurrency sector that is un-regulated and at its infancy and then ask them to embark upon the same box ticking exercise? I think that one of the beauties of the cryptocurrency and crypto in general is the fact that those type of things can be programmed into it. The incentives can be created inside of the actual blockchain itself. And so it allows these incentives a place what Melton was speaking of is brilliant. And it makes sense that the fact that because it creates these incentives, it has seen an increase in renewable energy that is actually driving increased renewable energy adoption throughout the world. I mean, when it comes to crypto, you can say you can figure out where your crypto is being mined, how is it? And to make sure you can find out to make it traceable. And those things can be programmed into crypto, which you can't do on a broad level. You can't tell if a company is telling the truth in your self-assessment. But when it comes to the trust that is inherent inside of blockchain systems, that trust there makes it say it is verifiable that yes, this is coming from a clean source. You can't do that when it comes to companies and self-reported. Tomica, do you want to jump in on this as we talk about whether there is a natural advantage for crypto currencies to hit these metrics? Well, I certainly think the premier hit it on the head. The beauty of these systems and the potential of these systems is to design a data architecture in which there's far more accountability around the use of energy and a much higher degree of confidence on the part of both consumers and regulators in how sustainability is being brought to bear in business operations. That's true not only of the crypto industry itself, but really much more broadly. We see the potential for blockchain-based systems and Web3 systems to serve as the backbone for new generations of carbon markets and new generations of infrastructure that will be far better equipped to measure the real environmental impact of human activity than what we have today. Achieving that next generation of data architecture should be one of the highest priorities for policymakers. I'm encouraged by some of the initial steps that we're seeing in that regard. We have both within the community self-regulatory efforts that are moving toward greater sustainability and encouraging the use of sustainable energy in operation of blockchain networks. But beyond that, we're also seeing efforts to broaden governance of blockchain networks in ways that will be far more conducive to good long-term outcomes. At Andreessen Horowitz, we've started delegating some of the governance authority that we hold by virtue of our investment positions in firms to non-profit organizations and civil society organizations that have a keen interest in looking after the public as part of their agenda. So we see some very innovative models for multi-stakeholder governance that are being brought to bear that should, along with this new data architecture, enable far more effective mechanisms for stakeholder capitalism going forward. I want to push on to some of the volatility and use case for crypto currencies because as we talk about sustainability, there are massive issues in the room here at Melton. I'll come to you on this because we have seen a pretty volatile week again for crypto currencies. It's one thing whether we talk about them just being an asset class that is tradable and one that speculators are very heavy in. The other point is what do you use it for as a method of transacting and having spent your week at money 2020? I've spoken to a lot of fintech innovators and none of them can come up with a way to fold into a payment system at this point. The argument is that it's too slow to process if you have workarounds that the fintech industry are suggesting and then it takes away the decentralized legend nature and all the benefits that the cryptocurrency brings into the mix. So it simply is not workable at this point and that is big players, it is small fintech innovators. So we're back to the point where it is just something for the speculators on markets. That's not sustainable, is it? Those points you raised are fundamentally untrue. If we look at the actual facts and again, at CoinShares we focus on research and facts. Again blockchains are public ledgers. All of the information on a public ledger is visible to anyone and everyone. The Bitcoin network has over 300 million active wallets. These wallets facilitate trillions of dollars of economic activity per year and I myself am a user of these networks. Now the unique thing here is crypto currencies allow us to transact and interact in an environment where we can't interact through traditional financial intermediaries. I myself have not used the banking system to send a wire in over a year. I use crypto, I use stablecoins on top of the crypto ecosystem and in fact many of my peers including large funds are no longer using bank wires to send transactions which will take three to five days and cost anywhere from 25 to 50 dollars. We're using blockchains to transfer value. Not with the FinTech app. You can send that money instantly. Bank account to bank account and that is globally. That does not take that long. That is just picking information. How are we going to allow the other four billion people who live on this planet who don't have a bank account? How are they going to transact? To open a bank account today you need a government-issued identity. 25% of the world's population does not have a formal government-issued identity. How do you propose that they interact with the financial system? Should we just leave them out altogether because they don't have an identity or a bank account? I mean again the problems we're trying to solve. This is something that FinTech apps have also been targeting. There is a bunch of them across Africa for instance that have the same agenda that they see mobile apps as a way for a lot of these people that don't have bank accounts to get into the system. So they're highly exploitative. Yeah but they're highly exploitative and let's not forget the amount of discrimination that is applied through the financial system including mobile money markets in emerging economies. Again any time that you have a centralized financial application what you have is the ability to censor. And again there's a great study that's been done by the Human Rights Foundation about Bitcoin as freedom money. It's being used by political activists and dissidents in economies and totalitarian governments which by the way totalitarian governments are on the rise around the world financial freedom financial privacy is a critical tool to enable dissent in democratic societies. And so it's very important that there are options where users cannot be censored right. If we look at what's happening in China for example dissidents in China are being silenced. They're being banned from using social media. They're being banned from traveling. They're being banned from using the financial system. We could very well see situation here in the United States. The Biden administration has expressed its intent to censor people who do not agree with their consensus definition of certain things in society. So it's very important for a healthy free democratic society that people have the ability to transact financially with freedom. That's what cash is. Let's get to the sea. You haven't jumped in for a while. Let's see. Yeah I mean I think I agree with so much of what Malta was saying but also you know one of the ways in which I don't have financial freedom is I live nomadically and have an entirely remote workforce paying them has been a nightmare across borders. And on top of that well not anymore but you know it was a nightmare for a point in time. And there are controls around how much money I can send at any given time even in internal payment structures like Zell there's only so much money I can send. And that does not mean financial freedom to me. But I think taking a step back in in the narrow mindedness of a conversation of thinking that digital money cryptocurrency is going to act and behave and function in the exact same way that traditional money is going to operate. If we look at the functions of money money is a measure of value. It's a store of value. It's a unit of account. It's a standard for deferred payments. It's a medium of exchange. It's all of these things. Bitcoin at its core and super utility is a store of value. And it's an incredibly effective way to have value transfer happen across borders. And so I think if we take those two aspects of Bitcoin and assess it for what it is I think it's a superior method of money in those characteristics defy which by the way a lot of these conversations that are like hating on the cryptocurrency industry is looking at it as a blanket utility rather than the fact that defy is actually enabling so many of the other inherent uses of money that I mentioned within the crypto space. And if price volatility is driven in large part by the varying perceptions of the intrinsic value of money or cryptocurrency or any coin for that matter then what is really required is you know avoiding overly simplistic comparisons of the utility of each cryptocurrency and understanding the true fundamentals of its utility and then saying hey you know this is what Bitcoin really derives its value from because it is a superior form of transferring value and it is most certainly a better way to store value than other you know commodities and markets. So I think like really important to get back to the gist of it and not say you know we are comparing every cryptocurrency as a blanket directly to money and the functions of money. Tom I want to come to you so I can bring up the conversations I've had this week clada trustly molly nexie none of these companies can get cryptocurrencies to work in online payments at this point. One of the issues to the volatility in pricing and then just having settlement and something that is so volatile. These companies that are incentivized around financial innovation they want to seize every opportunity and that includes cryptocurrencies but practically they can't make it work at this point which again takes us back to speculation of an asset class on markets. What do you say about that? Is there too much speculation too much volatility you would like it to stop? And what do you say on the transaction side? Well I could give you a much longer list of companies that are finding ways to make these technologies work so it may be that they just aren't working with the right engineering teams. These are the biggest in tech giants in the world. These are the the fastest in tech companies in the world right now. Yeah what we're seeing is that few things. First this is a very new set of technologies so that's point number one and for practical purposes did not exist 12 years ago. Second point the velocity of innovation in this space is probably unlike anything ever witnessed in the digital economy and the speed at which we are seeing new solutions developed and implemented is really quite inspiring and hopeful if you're someone who believes in the power of innovation to solve human problems. And third the most exciting innovations both as it relates to payments and as it relates to other applications beyond payments in the financial sector are really still on the horizon and we should all be very clear about that. We're fortunate to see companies come in every day that are solving absolutely breathtaking problems using these tools and they're making it work and they are building solutions that are going to have a very profound impact on our lives. So certainly I don't know anyone who would argue that these are mature technologies today and we it's foolish to think that after a relatively short period of time if you think about the evolution of the internet if somebody had said in 1996 that we would all be watching all of our television over the internet and that you and I would be having this conversation over the internet. Folks would have said that that was an absurd statement in 1996 and yet here we are. So I think we should have a high degree of confidence in the direction of travel around how these technologies can be used to solve real world problems going forward. Michael thank you Premier let me come back to you I want to spend a little bit of time tapping into your thoughts too on the conversation we had around volatility. There's been further price volatility even this week we've had some market concerns around the story in China around ever grand market concerns around central bank activity and you know cryptocurrencies haven't exactly been a safe haven this week. Are you concerned about the volatility we've been seeing in cryptocurrencies? I'm not concerned because I like to like and like my panelists who we know very well and we've been studying and understanding the space it's it's the very beginning we are at the very beginning and the amounts of innovation which is taking place will change and the markets will work. Yes there is speculation. Yes there is people who are buying coins and thinking that they're going to rich and all the rest but that is no different than has happened in any type of I guess I would say speculative bubble that has happened in the past but that is not solely the story of what we are seeing here. There's a difference between the utility of Dutch tulips between the utility of bitcoin or some of these networks as smart contracts the types of networks and systems which are being built out right now. So I think that it is an unfair comparison which is made in large measures for persons who are looking at the traditional financial system and looking at ways protecting to sustain the amounts of rent extraction which comes out of the economy from there. I think one of the great points that were given of I will see at the very beginning is that you know this is about also economic sustainability. This is about making sure that people are able to live their lives in a free way without having to rely on intermediaries big banks and different things who can say no you can't do that. Why should the citizens be told that no you can't transfer value from one person other if they believe that value should be transferred. And so what is going to be a lot the additional accountability that is going to build not only to business but also to governments and people who sit in seats like I said will only help to make the world a better place. And so I think when we're talking about sustainability we have to look at it from a broader level. The energy climate crisis absolutely but I think that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as the systems are built will help us to be able to make incentives around making to make that better. Right now when we go to supermarket and choose eggs you can choose whether you're getting you know farm raised eggs or other types of eggs. The same thing can happen where you can go in the future and say you know I want to make sure that my cryptocurrency was mine. That's the way it can happen. And that's what we can see in the future with these type of technologies. I want to get in your thought to the use of cryptocurrencies to transact. I mean clearly where we're also a little bit in this conversation about where it's at and just how usable cryptocurrencies are at this point. But do you think it's a necessity that the cryptocurrency industry have that use case that can transact in it rather than just speculate in the price. Those use cases this right now currently I mean in the government in Burrida right now you can pay your taxes with USCC. I mean it happens right now. So it's not a question of an issue of the use case. The use cases are happening if you're going to go to purely from the perspective of Bitcoin. And yes the Bitcoin system the network itself may be challenging some aspects. And there are other level solutions which make it quicker. But there's multiple solutions which are being built which enable these transactions to happen real time. So I don't believe that we're looking for use cases. Problems are being solved every day more and more. Just finally before we close out a conversation. What do you say to regulators in some of the developed economies that are concerned about cryptocurrencies undermining the financial system. I think that that concern is valid because cryptocurrencies most likely will change the dynamic of the financial system which has been established. But the fact is that human nature cannot push against innovation of society and governments that have found themselves in attempting to try to push back on innovations which will happen naturally. Not often find themselves coming to I would say a peaceful conclusion. I mean thank you Melton. Just to you before we close out to what are your thoughts. Come back in on this. Yeah thank you so much. And I think Premier Burt you said it wonderfully. Look at the end of the day this is really about choice. Right. Choice is an incredibly powerful thing. And we're not sitting here demanding everyone in the world use cryptocurrencies. But for the first time so many people around the world have a choice. People who've never had a choice as to what currency they hold now have the ability the choice to participate in an alternative economic system that has different rules than the one issued by their government. And I think again choice is so incredibly powerful in America over 20 percent of American adults hold Bitcoin today. That's a recent study that was done by nighting fidelity in square. That's a fantastic statistic. And again it speaks to the fact that when given a choice right consumers businesses governments now are very keen to engage with this new technology the arc of progress again right. It's bending right now towards centralization and control. And we see this with COVID right governments are increasingly pushing for control for censorship for the ability to dictate who can do or say what based on whether or not their views support those of the government that's in power. And again throughout human history the ability to have freedom to have choice has been a really big accelerator for human freedom democracy and open societies. So again I believe what we're working on is just so foundational and so important to preserving the values that so many of us in the West have around the right to freedom the right to self expression and the ability to descend and to have peaceful protest and Bitcoin in its purest form is a form of monetary peaceful protest. We can choose for the first time to exit the petrodollar system which has caused so much economic damage so much social damage and frankly more environmental degradation and damage than any other technology. The war machine is the most polluting most damaging thing on our planet. And so again I'm just very excited about cryptocurrency as a tool and just one tool among many to help continue to preserve human dignity and human freedom. Nelson thank you for sharing that enthusiasm with us but I must also say thank you to the Premier, to Monsieur, to Micah. Thank you very much for joining us today and contributing to what has been I think for me my best crypto conversation I've had all week so thank you very much for that. Now as we wrap up this session just to remind you to our top link audience if you and those tune into live stream if you want to participate on social media get involved as well and get involved in the top link chat as well. I didn't take any questions in the end because we had a full conversation there and we didn't get a lot coming through so I didn't exclude you deliberately but please contribute to the conversation from here but before we wrap up I'd like to introduce Sheila Warren to you again Deputy Head of the Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution and member of the Executive Committee of the World Economic Forum for some closing remarks. Sheila over to you. Thank you Caroline and thank you so much to our fantastic panellists for such an engaging and formative passionate conversation as is obvious there's a tremendous amount of interest but also a tremendous amount remains to be done within and around the crypto ecosystem and to that end it's my great pleasure it's my honor to announce the forum is launching a global initiative called the crypto impact and sustainability accelerator which we call CISA. As Premier Burt noted in his early remarks crypto is going to play a massive role in the digital economy and we believe it behooves all of us to focus on ensuring that we're not just replicating the world that currently exists but actually improving the state of the financial system making it more inclusive, more equitable and of course sustainable. Now sustainability as our panellists noted is more than just the environment and in fact ESG metrics as discussed acknowledge this in their very name it's not EEE it's ESG and recognition of that fact our work is focusing on everything from decarbonization to exploration of decentralized autonomous organizations known as DAOS to ethnographic user research that focuses on what communities and users actually need in order to engage meaningfully in exchanges of value in ways that are empowering and provide them with agency. We agree the potential of blockchain based and web three systems to be more transparent and accountable which I'll note are very different things is unprecedented but this will require both courage and creativity in the face of mainstream conceptions of the realities of this rapidly emerging ecosystem. Our hope is that the crimp of crypto impact and sustainability accelerator will through global multi stakeholder collaboration chart a path forward to gather to ensure that we improve the state of the world and that financial services are accessible to all not just a few. So with that I want to again thank our panel and you Karen for an insightful discussion today and for our audience for joining us thank you so much for your time.