The following transcript was created using artificial intelligence. There will be some grammatical errors below.

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Richard Carthon: Hello, everyone, welcome to another episode of Crypto Current, your host here, Richard Carthon. And today I have a special guest that just dropped a really cool book that I’m excited to learn more about, and hopefully all of you will go and pick up

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Richard Carthon: after we have the writer, the

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Richard Carthon: amazing Brett King, who just wrote The Rise

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Richard Carthon: of Techno Socialism.

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Richard Carthon: How are you doing today?

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Brett King: I’m doing great, Richard. Thanks for having me on. Is it Richard or rich either?

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Brett King: Either way, know

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Brett King: and because Australians, we tend to either shorten the name or length, and that’s what we do, right?

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Brett King: But yeah, man like aluminium.

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Richard Carthon: But man, it’s awesome to have you on the show. Thanks so much for stopping by.

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Richard Carthon: But first, I just want to

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Richard Carthon: learn a little bit more about you. Can you just give us a little bit of background on yourself?

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Brett King: Sure. I started life, you know, in my career as a rapper, as a coder many moons ago, but found that I had this ability to communicate between business people and technologists. That was fairly unique. So I sort of carved out a career

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Brett King: and that

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Brett King: worked a lot in sort of technology infrastructure, in the utility space and financial services, but sort of worked through a lot of the banking and financial services space through the noughties with the emergence of crypto and all of those things.

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Brett King: And then

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Brett King: 2010, I wrote my first

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Brett King: book, which is called Bank 2.0, and

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Brett King: this is my sixth book I’m coming up to now. And, you know, just basically wrote about technology disruption, disruption of the finance industry and banking space,

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Brett King: and then a bit of

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Brett King: a frustrated sci fi guy. So 2015, I wrote a book called Augmented Life in the Smart Spotlight and that ended up on the bookshelf of President Xi of China during his national address in 2018. So that was sort of a big deal. But yeah, I’ve been really been focused on the banking and financial services space for the last decade or so in terms of technology disruption more broadly.

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Brett King: Wow. So very timely and a lot of different facets between different bubbles that I think

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Brett King: are in the

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Brett King: traditional markets and then, of course, the rise of cryptocurrency and blockchain. So I’m sure it’s been a lot of fun on this journey right in your six different books. But on that note, you know, what was your first introduction into the crypto blockchain space in the first place?

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Brett King: You know, I mean, I think probably around 2008, when you know, the the Bitcoin white paper released, you know, I definitely remember downloading that at some point and going, Wow, this is really interesting. You know, I think it also paralleled a lot of social media development. So a lot of the crowd that I was involved in that were keen on disrupting the banking sector. They were talking about crypto. But I moved to the US in October

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Brett King: of 2010,

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Brett King: not long after my first book came out and ended up down at Wall Street on Friday with Charlie Shrem and Roger Ver at some bitcoin meetups in those days. I got connected around that time as well with Pierce, who was at the time, you know, and some of the Bitcoin Foundation guys. And so, you know, I feel like I’ve been I’ve been, you know, for for a long time in that community. I will say that, you know, I the one rule of HODLing, you’re your bitcoin.

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Brett King: I cashed out,

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Brett King: you know, when I hit, you know, 20

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Brett King: K back in whatever it was in 18 regret that in 2018. But, you know, I could have done a lot better. But you know, I’ve still got some crypto, obviously, and I’m very interested in where crypto takes us from here. I think designing currencies for purposes is going to be a whole new arena,

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Richard Carthon: no doubt, man. And having that extensive

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Richard Carthon: background, being able to see the white paper back in 2008, having that exposure to it, even, I’m sure, getting in pretty early and cast on that 20 was still a solid come up. So congrats on that. And the purpose of like hodling and like why sometimes you just need things to develop to see that ROI. We like to really like I like to really

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Richard Carthon: reaffirm people that things take time.

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Richard Carthon: And when you’re really trying to disrupt an entire industry, you have to lay down foundations. You have to put things in place for four things to truly be disrupted. And you know, I’ll let you speak to this, but I’m sure that’s probably a talking point within your new book. So you just tell us a little bit about your new book that just came out the rise of techno socialism.

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Can you just

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give us some information on that?

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Sure. So, you know, the book started in terms of the work that we started doing on it. Dr. Richard Petty is my co-author on This is know, basically an economist, but it started with us looking at the problem of inequality and particularly during the pandemic, how inequality, you know, worsened significantly in the United States. And then looking at artificial intelligence and climate change and what they’re going to do to that same problem and realizing that capitalism in its current form really doesn’t have the tools to address this.

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So we sort of mapped out one of the possible futures that humanity has. Where are the inflection points in respect to how we adapt to these crises, these rolling crises, pandemic inequality and climate? And we came up with a way to sort of map that on a grid. So, you know, inclusive systems versus exclusionary systems, or, you might say, more focused on collective humanity versus individualism. And the US is very much, you know, focused on individual rights and ownership versus, say, Europe, which is more collective or collectively

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oriented, and then

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looking at chaotic futures versus planned or positive futures. So this was the grid we created and in that we mapped out for potential futures and that was led us then where there’s a broad rejection of science and technology. So that fits in the inclusive

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chaotic quadrant

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failed to stand where we just wait too long to address these big problems. Like, you know, the fact that Maldives and Bangladesh are basically going to disappear with sea rise in New York and Miami, Miami are going to be underwater. We wait too long and the effects are far worse and they have to be. So that’s the chaotic side

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than we have

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neo

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feudalism,

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which is essentially where the corporations get to set policy and inequality gets baked into these economies on a more permanent basis and the rich get the best tech they get to live live longer lives because they got longevity treatments and things like that. But the poor, you know, they left to their own resources. This is where we sort of try and create a more inclusive society where technology works the good for all people and gives us basic access to the sort of basic services we need, like health care, education, homelessness and so forth.

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And how, through automation, we can actually pay for all of those things

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at like

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a much lower cost than what we spend on government today. So think of like the US as

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a Dow, that’s

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effectively what we basically predict as one of the potential outcomes. So it’s sort of a,

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you know, these four

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choices where we mapped out

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and ultimately

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we came to the conclusion

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that in the upper right corner, the,

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you know, economically right wing, socially left wing sort of techno socialist approach is the optimal path for humanity to take.

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Very interesting. Wow. So plenty to unpack there. And the place that I want to start is that path to that techno techno socialist type of outset where we are building technology that is fast growing and is also for the community, for everyone to to share. I feel like in a lot of ways, innovation is starting to be. Where capitalism is good is that it provides for innovation and invites for people wanting to go and create the best because they’re then

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rewarded with with the capital. But on the flip

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side of it, with doing that, it also takes away from helping the collective.

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You look at the US health care

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system

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in how some drugs

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cost and absorbing an amount in the US, but overseas. So how do you think we continue to go into that idealistic path forward?

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Well, I think this sort of comes back to a basic question of economics

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is

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what is the purpose

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of an economy?

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Brett King: Economists would say, Well, you know, there’s GDP growth, there’s full employment market returns. They use these sort of terms to talk about the performance of an economy. But at the heart of it, an economy should meet the needs of its citizens. And if you use the former, you know, those economic metrics, then the you the post Second World War economy of the United States is the most successful economy we’ve ever seen in human history. But if you, you use the ladder that the economy serves the citizens, then you could argue that the US economy is a failure.

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Brett King: And because of the gap, you know, the top one percent of Americans own more than the bottom 90 percent of Americans today. So that’s not that. That’s not a situation that can continue to exist. Capitalism works very well, but one of the things it does is it creates competition. And one of the things that we we do as a result of the application of technology. Is we apply that to create more productive companies, and so nine of the top 10 companies in the world today are technology companies as a result of capitalism.

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Brett King: But those companies employ far less humans than companies of the 1950s and 1960s used to because we had a lot more manual labor involved in that process. So if you extend that analogy, add another 20 or 30 years without official intelligence. The workforce is going to be very small, but they’re going to have these massively profitable companies. And so in highly automated societies, we expect technology, unemployment and, you know, we have to figure out a way to address that rather than saying you just got to work harder or you’ve got to get a better education, because ultimately none of that will, you know, will provide you with a job because

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Richard Carthon: we’re we’re

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Richard Carthon: actively trying to take humans out of the workforce with technology. So we needed a different economic paradigm. How, you know, it’s no longer going to be your sole value in society is what you earn with your job that puts food on the table because that very mechanism around supply and demand is probably going to break down.

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Richard Carthon: It’s a really interesting and I’m glad I’m going to unpack this because I’ve kind of had sections of this conversation with different people as you look into the future and. We are all about maximizing efficiency and with maximizing efficiency, it takes the human element out because robots are faster, and therefore, if what used to take the job of, let’s call it, 10 people now takes one. OK, now I just heard that

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Richard Carthon: one person, because it’s maximize efficiency. And then what about those other nine?

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Richard Carthon: If technologies continue to evolve and evolve and evolve in everything around the other

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Richard Carthon: industries are keeping up, then

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Richard Carthon: more and more people are going to be without jobs. It’s not because they aren’t competent, are capable is that it’s more efficient and cheaper and faster for us to keep using this technology. So it’s like, how do they find their new value in society in the world? Be able to provide means for themselves to keep eating and surviving

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Richard Carthon: and like?

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Richard Carthon: I’ll say there, because the next paradigm of it immediately goes to my brain, is that OK?

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Richard Carthon: But we’re also with health care.

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Richard Carthon: People are surviving longer. So if people are staying alive longer, but they don’t necessarily have a job to then sustain themselves like we get into a really interesting paradigm pretty fast.

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Brett King: How do we pay for it? Right, that’s always the question. And so we wanted to address that. So I’m glad you raised health care because it’s one of those areas that, you know, we were sort of keenly interested in during the book. And so we came up with a model where we think we could reduce the total cost of the system of health care in the United States by 70 percent by 2040. So this involves a number of key technologies, first of all, the use of artificial intelligence in diagnosis. You know, we’re really bad at diagnosing, you know, conditions and health care issues.

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Brett King: In the U.S., we’re about 55 60 percent accurate at doing that. So that’s why you always ask for a second opinion. You’ve got about a 60 percent chance of getting the right diagnostic diagnosis. A.I. is much better at that one’s trained than humans. Robotic process automation 40 percent of health care costs in the United States are administrative costs middlemen dealing with in the system, so we can eliminate that with robotic process automation. Then you’ve got gene therapy, which can essentially, you know, eliminate your diseases from the genome, like fixing a bug in the software program.

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Brett King: And then finally, we get to things like personalized medicine, maybe nanobots and stuff like that in the future. We combine all of that and you have a health care system. We could deliver universal health care to every American at 30 percent of the cost of the current system. And so why wouldn’t you do that right? And so that that’s a large part of the sort of logic that we use throughout the book is that when we talk about, you know, capitalism versus socialism, we often compare the economics of those things and socialism comes out unfavorably.

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Richard Carthon: And it’s not the

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Brett King: workers owning the means of production that we’re talking about in the future, but the economy and self-serving citizens better. That’s our version of socialism, where autonomy or autonomous capability leads to government being much smaller and much more efficient from a resource allocation perspective. So that’s all we can do that in every field. We can design education, we can do that in housing. You know, some a homeless person on the streets of San Francisco, the policing costs around that is about $35000 a year.

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Brett King: We can build a we can 3D

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Brett King: print a

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Brett King: new one bedroom apartment or a small family home for about three or four thousand US dollars now. So the question is why would we ever have homelessness? So there they are. Some of the technologies we talk about it sort of shifting this paradigm.

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Richard Carthon: Yeah, man, there are so many different directions we can go in this conversation. I’m going to start with the first one which is going back to the idea of health care. So I have some background

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Richard Carthon: in it and in working

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Richard Carthon: with it. And the there’s a reason that is like, I believe this number to GDP in the country. And it’s because. That’s where a lot of the money is flowing into, and it’s because of a lot of inefficient processes in place. And it’s one of the slowest moving as it becomes into technology adjustments

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Richard Carthon: and moving with

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Richard Carthon: the latest and greatest because systematically it’s made to be almost like stressful. But there’s meant to

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Richard Carthon: be friction so that

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Richard Carthon: people can one keep their jobs and then two can continue to justify costs for doing certain things or, you know, even creating a brand new drug, right? Like when the COVID vaccine? Talk about the COVID

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Richard Carthon: vaccine

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Richard Carthon: in pharmacies. Make all the money that they’re making in like, Oh, you should share this so that the world can get back to when they’re like, no, because at the end of day, they’re trying to make as much money as possible. And it’s like, that’s a tough concept of where do you draw the line between trying to?

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Richard Carthon: Bring in capital and make money for your constituents and for your your stockholders.

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Richard Carthon: And actually just

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Richard Carthon: save not only, say, saving the world, but like helping people survive this pandemic.

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Richard Carthon: Right, right. So you know, this is where competition is really critical in terms of really pushing innovation in specific markets. But we don’t really, you know, we have a set of monopolies in the United States. We don’t have a really free market because those monopolies tend to dominate those industry sectors. And so when you look at, for example,

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Richard Carthon: crypto’s

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Richard Carthon: influence on banking and financial services

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Richard Carthon: or you look at, you know, health

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Richard Carthon: tech and its impact on the health care sector, you have a lot of resistance from the incumbents. These lobbying groups are able to put pressure on lawmakers to slow down, you know, regulatory reform around these industries and so forth. So you get lag. So when you look at health care, the US pays twice the OECD average for health care and often has poorer outcomes, you know, in the system when it comes to banking and finance. If you just look at, say, mobile payments as an example, you know, the US has probably seven, maybe 10 years behind China on that front right now because of those vested interests.

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Richard Carthon: And so one of the things we argue quite strongly about is removing vested interest from policymaking in government. And as increasingly as we start to automate government, you know, that’s possible because we translate it to code, but we

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Richard Carthon: don’t want the lobbying

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Richard Carthon: groups defining how that code of the autonomous government should be built either. You know, just just a case in point. We just had Scotland the COP26 gathering, you know, the largest group that was present in Scotland for those climate discussions with the fossil fuel industry lobbyists. And that’s that’s ridiculous, that they should be setting the tone of decisions on how we wind up coal, for example, in production of electricity.

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Richard Carthon: And it’s going to go back to when you’re in the process, potentially destroying an industry, they’re going to scratch and claw and spend every last time that they have to survive. Exactly.

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Richard Carthon: And you got that last bit of profit, right?

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Richard Carthon: Absolutely. And. You know, I genuinely believe that people intrinsically

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Richard Carthon: are good and do

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Richard Carthon: want

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Richard Carthon: to go out for others, but then

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Richard Carthon: there becomes a line between like, how do we get to a place where?

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Richard Carthon: People can make money. People can live comfortably, people can take care of others, but then also, but just like the concept of of of Americans is, we’re very individualistic, even though we say that, you know, we are about our country and the team

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Richard Carthon: and every everything else and like,

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Richard Carthon: we will go out of our way to we. The people like we are very individualistic compared to the rest of the world. I got it

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Richard Carthon: now that I’ve been more exposed

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Richard Carthon: to the rest of the world and like ideals, I’ve come to see that, like intrinsically, that’s what that’s what we have in. And I know a lot of eyes typically are on the US on the whole like we are conducting ourselves and how that translates to the rest of the world and. I think. As it relates to. Where we’re headed in the future and why I think like this is a very interesting topic with your book is foundationally we have identified

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Richard Carthon: quite a few challenges

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Richard Carthon: that the US needs to overcome, and it’s how do we start taking those first steps again, we

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Richard Carthon: have health care.

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Richard Carthon: We have a problem of homelessness is starting to increase. There’s the new wave of Gen

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Richard Carthon: Zers and Gen Xers who may never

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Richard Carthon: own property, ever. They may be long time renters, and I know that’s also a problem in Australia as well, because prices are getting more and more expensive.

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Richard Carthon: Hong Kong, the you know, the average home price is 28 times the average annual income. That’s the least affordable housing in the world and in Hong Kong. And that’s why we saw

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Richard Carthon: the umbrella

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Richard Carthon: of partially the umbrella protests we saw against the Chinese government there. But, you know, in the US and certain states, it’s 19 times, you know, average annual income. But if you’re working to throw our jobs on minimum wage in the United States, there’s not a single state where you can afford to rent a one bedroom home today. And so that disparity

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Richard Carthon: between

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Richard Carthon: wages and basic cost of living like housing has got to the point where it’s no longer

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Richard Carthon: functional at an economic

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Richard Carthon: level. You know, back in the 1960s, when we had the greatest economic activity the world had seen where the US accounted for 40 percent of total global output. It was three times average annual salary to buy a home. So that’s a very, very different world we live in.

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Richard Carthon: And to that extent, because the other element that I think of, as well as when we talk about minimum wages and we talk about cost of living, we also have to throw in the wrench of inflation. So, you know, now we’re starting to raise wages to $15 an hour minimum wage, which then means that, OK, when whenever we finally do that, that means we won’t start hiring less people because people are going be able to afford as many

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Richard Carthon: people going back to the

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Richard Carthon: age old question of like,

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Richard Carthon: OK, well, we have to be more efficient.

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Richard Carthon: We have to do x y z to

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Richard Carthon: mention, yeah, more automation.

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Richard Carthon: And then therefore it’s going to cause houses to go up even more. So we’re just going to keep

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Richard Carthon: pushing

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Richard Carthon: the the tracker down the road. And it’s just like, at what point do we get to? Base level, like where where’s the tipping point before all of this like pops in like, I don’t know if you addressed that, but like I also think that in the greater economy and not just the US, but the but the world, I think we’re in a bubble and like, I think there’s there’s got to be a reckoning coming eventually.

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Richard Carthon: Well, you know, even

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Richard Carthon: money and its role in

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Richard Carthon: society is bound to change. And what we consider assets, you know, we’re digitizing the world. So all of this is part of this new value system. But one of the key philosophical changes that we’re going to have to make is what’s the role of work in our economy? Because as we have highly automated societies, the amount of work that you do is going to reduce. In fact, you know, since the early 1800s, the number of hours worked in the United States has declined by about 30 per cent over the last 100 years.

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Richard Carthon: So naturally, the amount of time we spend in workers is already in decline because of productivity gains. But let’s say we have 40 per cent youth

00:23:53:22 – 00:23:55:05

Richard Carthon: unemployment in the mid

00:23:55:07 – 00:24:27:16

Richard Carthon: 2030s. This is what we think could happen. We’re also going to have labour shortages at the same time because the new jobs that artificial intelligence creates, we’re not teaching our children in school to have those skills to take those jobs of the future. The education mismatch with the the skills we need. This is where China frankly, is like whipping our arse right now because they really think about the structure of the economy very differently. But you’ve got a choice. You know, 40 per cent, 50 per cent youth unemployment in the mid 2030s.

00:24:28:08 – 00:24:36:13

Richard Carthon: Your choices, are you going to have social uprising? You know, social cohesion is going to fail much more division than we have today.

00:24:36:26 – 00:24:37:25

Richard Carthon: Or you

00:24:37:27 – 00:24:42:10

Richard Carthon: come up with something like universal basic income to be a social safety

00:24:42:12 – 00:24:42:27

Richard Carthon: net.

00:24:43:09 – 00:25:16:01

Richard Carthon: And if you hear Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Steve, you know, Steve Jobs talked about this when he was alive. You know, Jeff Bezos talking about this. All of these guys have talked about UBI being fairly inevitable because they understand that the drivers of corporate America in terms of corporations is increasingly eliminating human labor from the equation. At some point, you can’t just keep getting rid of human jobs and expect people to just sit there and go, Yeah, that’s fine. I don’t have any food to eat, you know? So it means a sort of structural change.

00:25:16:03 – 00:25:49:22

Richard Carthon: So the role of work in society is probably going to change from something that we get paid to do to put food on the table to now something that we’re passionate about or something that we feel that we where we can contribute to the greater good. And climate is going to be a very important generator of those types of jobs. They’re not jobs that capitalism will fund. So, for example, building sea wall defences around New York City so it doesn’t get flooded, making infrastructure climate resilience. These are things that we would call public works or infrastructure.

00:25:50:16 – 00:26:08:29

Richard Carthon: And someone’s going to have to pay for them at some point because flooding, you know, half of New York City, just because we can’t get capitalism to pay for those those changes in infrastructure, the economic costs of that are just unimaginable. So we have to at some point

00:26:09:01 – 00:26:10:10

Richard Carthon: say the money

00:26:10:18 – 00:26:20:16

Richard Carthon: doesn’t really matter. And so philosophically, we’re talking about some pretty deep changes to the way we think about economics and capitalism itself, no doubt.

00:26:20:18 – 00:26:35:28

Richard Carthon: And you know, one of the things that I do think within like the address as it becomes to our infrastructure. I mean, you brought up New York when the hurricane came up through there and they saw flash flooding and everything else like that. What happens when you have sea levels rise? Like there’s nothing in place to handle that.

00:26:36:00 – 00:26:38:15

Richard Carthon: And even you look at the at Texas when

00:26:38:17 – 00:26:46:28

Brett King: the when the ice storm happened the first time in 40 50 years and and unfounded and there’s nothing we could do about because it exposed all these.

00:26:47:18 – 00:27:10:28

Brett King: And then the challenges exposed the same. Our ability to respond to the coronavirus to have enough ICU beds with ventilators was a challenge. We. And you just can’t turn that stuff on in an instant. You know, and so if you’re looking at energy grid capacity, if you’re looking at preventing sea level rise, these are things you have to think very

00:27:11:00 – 00:27:11:29

Brett King: differently about

00:27:12:15 – 00:27:24:00

Brett King: solving rather than just letting the free market get to it. You know, there is certain elements you know that we need to think about for the collective good. So this is sort of the realignment we think that economies will

00:27:24:02 – 00:27:25:26

Brett King: have, both as a result

00:27:25:28 – 00:27:33:02

Brett King: of A.I. and and climate over, you know, some of the latter part of this, this first half of the century.

00:27:33:22 – 00:27:36:22

Brett King: So I just want to spend a couple more moments on universal basic income

00:27:36:24 – 00:27:37:24

Brett King: because obviously

00:27:37:26 – 00:27:48:16

Brett King: a lot of people push back on that pretty hard. How do you think that’s going to pan out? Like, how do you see like when we get to the point where that becomes a thing, like why would for some

00:27:48:18 – 00:27:50:01

Brett King: people be incentivized to try

00:27:50:03 – 00:27:50:28

Brett King: to do any work at all?

00:27:51:19 – 00:28:21:27

Brett King: Yeah. You know, we examined 70 to UBI trials globally in the book. And what’s interesting is that, as you know, this is a sample of the population in normal, you know? Economics versus those that receive UBI and the UBI rate varied from like $300 a month to like $2500 a month. But for example, more people created businesses when they receive UBI than in the standard sample of the population.

00:28:22:12 – 00:28:57:22

Brett King: More people get involved in community related causes and things like that because they didn’t any longer have the time or the pressure to put food on the table. So the assumption that if you give people UBI, they won’t work has not actually been borne out by the these trials that we’ve seen. But we also talk about in the book how we might pay for it. And so, you know, one arena that’s been suggested is that if a corporation gets rid of a human and replaces them with an algorithm or a robot, that that should be taxed and that that tax would provide some support for UBI.

00:28:58:07 – 00:29:34:04

Brett King: The other thing we talk about is maybe creating a central bank digital currencies as an additional monetary supply. So you could grant a CBDC, say that funds UBI and use that for purchase of goods and staples. You know that you need to live as an example, and the wealth that A.I. generates is another clear, you know, pool of capital that we could use to fund UBI. But one sort of radical suggestion we propose in the book is forgiveness of national debt, and we propose that all national debt is forgiven but put into a pool that’s committed towards these climate mitigation programs and so forth.

00:29:34:13 – 00:29:47:03

Brett King: And that to qualify for UBI, you have to do a couple of years of national service on this climate mitigation program, and that then qualifies you for UBI later on. So we get into this in quite some detail in the book.

00:29:47:24 – 00:30:01:01

Brett King: It’s very interesting. Um, and you know. I like the concept of once you have more freedom, people are able to start working on more things that their past about starting their own business and do whatever, I think intrinsically.

00:30:01:05 – 00:30:01:25

Brett King: People get bored.

00:30:01:27 – 00:30:07:23

Brett King: And if you just told somebody like, Oh yeah, just sit here and do nothing all day like, yeah, you might do that for a while, but you’re eventually going to want to

00:30:07:25 – 00:30:09:21

Brett King: do something just because we

00:30:10:04 – 00:30:28:20

Brett King: we like activity. We like these things. But we requested is, yeah, yeah, we need the purpose. But you brought up CBDCs, centralized banking, digital currencies and central banking digital currencies, and I want to tie it back to crypto just real quick. Where do you see crypto’s role as we head into this future?

00:30:29:19 – 00:31:37:14

Brett King: So part of what we’re also seeing right now is that corporations are coming increasingly under pressure on things like ESG and being good corporate citizens. So that’s why you see brands like Apple and Google and others talking about carbon neutrality and using sustainable goods in their products and so forth. And that’s because people are now starting to take notice about whether these corporate corporations or brands are good corporate citizens. And so we do expect some sort of pressure to come on this system in respect to some of those things and giving more visibility to, you know, what’s the purpose of your corporation? What is its contribution to society more more broadly rather than just the products you produce? And so I do see that cryptocurrencies could emerge around these value systems, for example, in carbon carbon neutral coins or, you know, sustainable coins and things like that where people start using these cryptocurrencies because their beliefs that aligns with the core utility that this crypto currency provides as an example.

00:31:38:05 – 00:31:57:28

Brett King: And obviously, CBDCs are already a response to the emergence of cryptocurrencies. But the whole digitization of money is largely happening because commerce itself is digitizing. It’s becoming global, it’s becoming real time. And so fiat currencies don’t make a lot of sense in that environment. We need something

00:31:58:00 – 00:31:58:29

Richard Carthon: that is more

00:31:59:01 – 00:32:17:09

Richard Carthon: virtual. So that’s part of the sort of pressure mechanism that’s coming. But China’s one to watch, obviously, the one is fairly advanced in respect to the trials. It’s being deployed in like a dozen cities. Now they’re going to be using BTC wallets for

00:32:17:25 – 00:32:18:20

Richard Carthon: the Beijing

00:32:18:29 – 00:32:45:18

Richard Carthon: Olympics next year, and they’re probably going to pin trading activity on the Belt and Road Initiative to the cryptocurrency, as well as an effort to sort of displace or reduce the power of the petro dollar. So ultimately, I think we’re on a trajectory here where digital currencies, both crypto and, you know, central bank digital currencies are going to be a very big part of the 21st century economy, no doubt.

00:32:45:25 – 00:32:56:27

Richard Carthon: And crypto and digital currency is here to stay. Just like you said, when we’re in a global economy and fiat doesn’t make a ton of sense, I mean, I personally don’t really care around cash. I don’t know a lot of people that do a lot of this on cards,

00:32:56:29 – 00:32:58:13

Richard Carthon: cash or even just

00:32:58:19 – 00:33:04:24

Richard Carthon: being able to pay from your phone, right? It’s everything like how much cash you actually touch on a regular basis now

00:33:04:26 – 00:33:05:16

Richard Carthon: doesn’t really happen.

00:33:05:21 – 00:33:14:26

Richard Carthon: So it just it just makes logical sense. But I think another piece of it, just like you said, governments are going to have to start looking at ways that they can

00:33:15:00 – 00:33:15:23

Richard Carthon: stay up to

00:33:15:25 – 00:33:21:18

Richard Carthon: date with what’s going on because cryptos here to stay and they have to be in the front of it.

00:33:21:29 – 00:33:37:14

Richard Carthon: Yeah, no doubt that resistance that we’ve seen to crypto in certain economies. You know, I’ll be like the decision in China around, you know, banning crypto was probably more about energy

00:33:37:25 – 00:33:38:21

Richard Carthon: and their

00:33:38:23 – 00:34:10:25

Richard Carthon: view that their CBDC should be the dominant currency than it was actually that they’ve got anything structurally opposed to crypto. But in the U.S., you know, we’ve sort of lagged. We’re pretty good on regulation supporting crypto and scc and so forth. That’s sort of evolved, you know, there. But you know, the the understanding of where crypto might fit in society and the concept of a wallet and how wallets are going to replace bank accounts, you know, and smart wallets are going to help you manage your money.

00:34:11:16 – 00:34:17:19

Richard Carthon: That is yet where we’re not seeing the sort of recognition of that in the US regulatory system, at least.

00:34:18:08 – 00:34:47:10

Richard Carthon: Yeah. And. There will be a reckoning at some point where. A lot of crypto companies do. Right now, we’re just a lot of the world is trying to see how is it going to be regulated ultimately. And once the parameters are truly put in place, we’re going to see this dynamic shift as it relates to crypto, where right now it’s not super sexy and reliable for these huge hedge fund managers and and CFOs

00:34:47:12 – 00:34:48:28

Richard Carthon: to have diversification

00:34:49:00 – 00:34:49:15

Richard Carthon: into

00:34:49:17 – 00:34:50:21

Richard Carthon: crypto. But then eventually

00:34:50:23 – 00:35:06:23

Richard Carthon: they’ll turn a page in like, it’s like, Oh, you don’t, you’re not exposed. What are you doing? And once that once that. Page turned. We’re going to see crypto tick off in a whole other direction that I’m pretty excited for, I would think it’s inevitable. But that’s a conversation for another day

00:35:06:25 – 00:35:07:18

Richard Carthon: with you on that front.

00:35:07:22 – 00:35:15:28

Richard Carthon: Yeah, yeah, man. And honestly, like this has been a super, really, really amazing conversation and there’s so much to unpack within.

00:35:16:00 – 00:35:16:24

Richard Carthon: And I think a great

00:35:16:26 – 00:35:18:26

Richard Carthon: way to do that would be able to get

00:35:18:28 – 00:35:20:09

Richard Carthon: your book. Could you tell us a little bit

00:35:20:11 – 00:35:20:27

Richard Carthon: more about that and

00:35:20:29 – 00:35:22:14

Richard Carthon: how people can find out more?

00:35:23:01 – 00:35:57:09

Richard Carthon: It’s called the rise of Techno Socialism, how inequality and climate will usher in a new world. It’s available, of course, on Amazon. But if you want to find about, you know, in Barnes Noble and so forth, you want to find out a little bit more information about the book. You can go to rise of techno socialism, dotcom or techno socialism. Com. And you know, we’ve got a video trailer there for the book on promotion, and we’ve got various sections of the booking and download the first chapter for free and check it out. And if you buy five copies of the book and show us your proof of purchase, you’ll get an NFT.

00:35:58:03 – 00:36:05:03

Richard Carthon: That’s cool. That’s pretty awesome, man. Well, I think that’s a great way to do it. As we wrap up your email, I always like to finish with a couple of fun

00:36:05:05 – 00:36:06:15

Richard Carthon: questions and

00:36:06:17 – 00:36:07:16

Richard Carthon: the one that I want to bring

00:36:07:18 – 00:36:09:06

Richard Carthon: to you. You’ve written six

00:36:09:08 – 00:36:11:23

Richard Carthon: books at this point. You’ve been in this industry for a long time.

00:36:12:13 – 00:36:13:12

Richard Carthon: What are one

00:36:13:14 – 00:36:17:08

Richard Carthon: the two pieces of wisdom you would give yourself when you first started this journey?

00:36:19:13 – 00:36:22:12

Richard Carthon: Well, buy Bitcoin and Tesla.

00:36:25:28 – 00:36:26:21

Richard Carthon: Yeah, that’s a good one.

00:36:27:02 – 00:36:37:05

Richard Carthon: Hold and hold. No, I think I’ve had an extraordinary career, actually, I’ve been very blessed and but I

00:36:37:07 – 00:36:38:11

Richard Carthon: think the

00:36:38:13 – 00:36:42:21

Brett King: advice I would give to my younger self is is don’t be afraid to

00:36:42:23 – 00:36:44:05

Brett King: just experiment

00:36:44:07 – 00:36:55:02

Brett King: and get out there and give it a shot because, you know, it was when I was more conservative and less, you know, more risk averse that I tended to sort of be back into sort of a dead

00:36:55:04 – 00:36:56:14

Brett King: end, you know, stream.

00:36:56:16 – 00:37:14:28

Brett King: But when I when I’ve let myself out there and taken on risk and it’s not always worked, but the the more risk I’ve allowed myself to expose to and the more learning I’ve done, the more personal advancement I’ve enjoyed. So if if I can take something away from, it is like, go for it.

00:37:15:22 – 00:37:18:03

Brett King: Absolutely. Now that’s seen as a germ of a thought.

00:37:18:05 – 00:37:23:15

Brett King: Thank you for sharing it. And as we wrap up here, man, what is the final thought that you want to leave with all the listeners here today?

00:37:25:04 – 00:37:30:15

Brett King: If you want to take one thing away from this conversation is a lot of talk about economics and politics and

00:37:31:17 – 00:37:32:05

Brett King: organizing

00:37:32:07 – 00:37:33:14

Brett King: principles for society.

00:37:34:06 – 00:37:35:12

Brett King: But the one thing

00:37:35:14 – 00:37:57:27

Brett King: that I’ve learned through all this research, one is technology’s advancement is inevitable. But when it comes to the future of the human species now up to move form of humanity, the very best that we can be as a species and therefore individually is when we will work together with purpose. And so that’s the one thing that I think humanity must really embrace in the future.

00:37:58:26 – 00:38:02:18

Brett King: Great final thought. Work with each other with purpose.

00:38:02:26 – 00:38:04:13

Brett King: And again, don’t be

00:38:04:15 – 00:38:08:29

Brett King: afraid to take some risk and especially bet on yourself because it allows a lot more opportunities

00:38:09:01 – 00:38:10:12

Brett King: to hedge your way. Brett, thank you

00:38:10:14 – 00:38:15:22

Brett King: so much for all the information. Everything that you dropped us today, this was extremely great conversation.

00:38:15:29 – 00:38:16:26

Brett King: Hopefully, I can bring

00:38:16:28 – 00:38:27:17

Brett King: you on for a part, too, just because there’s so much more to unpack. I’m sure after I read this book and we will definitely stay in touch with that. But again, one more time, what are ways that people can learn more about your book

00:38:28:07 – 00:38:48:12

Brett King: so you can go to my website breaking dot com or techno socialism, dotcom rise of techno socialism, or just such techno socialism on Google, and you’ll get the link to the book. So yeah, I’d please everyone go and order it. We’re trying for the New York Times, and you know, we hope to get there over the next few days. Any any of your orders will help. Thank you.

00:38:48:27 – 00:38:49:29

Brett King: Absolutely. Well, thank you

00:38:50:01 – 00:38:51:09

Brett King: again, Bret. And of course, for

00:38:51:11 – 00:39:29:20

Brett King: everyone listening, stay cryptocurrency. Hey, cryptocurrency crew, we want to give a quick shout out to all of our faithful listeners out there. It’s been an amazing journey and we really appreciate your support throughout the years as we’ve been growing as a community. Each episode, we decided that we would start sharing some of the reviews that you were leaving for us for today. We would like to share this review. Today’s review comes from Kassius Octavia’s 15. I had an awesome experience as a guest on the show, and Richard is a wonderful guy. Well-organized, great content. I highly recommend the show. We sincerely appreciate this review and all reviews and would like to ask that if you’re enjoying our show, please take a quick moment to go and leader of the Honor podcast so that hopefully we can be highlighting your review next.

00:39:30:07 – 00:40:00:12

Brett King: Simply go to our show notes or go to our website where we have a link, where you can share your review today. Hey, everyone, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. For more information on today’s episode and all of our episodes, please visit us at WW w that crypto dash current, not SEO. You can also find a link in the show notes. Want to stay up to date on the latest news in cryptocurrency? Sign up for our newsletter today. You’ll receive daily emails Monday through Friday that are personalized and curated content specific to you and your interest.

00:40:00:21 – 00:40:31:07

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00:40:31:09 – 00:40:33:26

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00:40:39:19 – 00:40:52:18

Brett King: Thanks for tuning into another episode of cryptocurrency with Richard Condon. We’ll be back with more exciting developments from the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency next week. But until then, stay cryptocurrency.

00:41:02:14 – 00:41:04:13

Brett King: He was citizens now.

00:41:09:05 – 00:41:43:25

Brett King: Thank you for joining us for another episode of cryptocurrency. Just one quick reminder cryptocurrency is a cryptocurrency and blockchain education platform that’s bridging the gap between the curious newcomers who are just discovering the space and the thought leaders who are shaping its future. All opinions expressed by Richard Carr, the cryptocurrency team, and their guests on this show are exclusively their own opinions. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Richard. The team and their guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or to follow his financial advice. This show and any other crypto current production is exclusively for informational purposes.