Blockchain in the (Trad-Fi) Insurance Industry w/ Brendan Picha (RiskStream Collaborative)

**Speaker A:** Hello and welcome back to the Strange Water podcast. Thank you so much for joining us for another great conversation. A few days ago, I was listening to a crypto news show when I heard one of the guests say it is hard to overstate just how much of a bubble crypto Twitter is. That comment really spoke to me, not only because I think it really captures some of the incredibly myopic and sometimes extremist views that we take for granted, but also because I often find myself lost in the same echo chamber. So, taking that comment as a prompt, I decided to call up on an old friend from my time at Anheuser Busch, Brendan Pica. And although that was long before I had any interest or understanding of crypto, you'll hear that he was already advocating hard for bitcoin and digital currency at the world's largest beer company. In 2013, after leaving Anheuser Busch, Brendan moved on to Liberty Mutual, the insurance company, to continue with corporate innovation and blockchain evangelism. Today, Brendan is one of the senior leaders of the Institute's Riskstream Collaborative. The Riskstream Collaborative is a nonprofit organization that sits between the world's largest insurance companies to educate, build products and integrate blockchain based solutions. Today's conversation is about reaching across filter bubbles, if for no other reason than to gain perspective on what we are building. For me, understanding how the insurance industry thinks about the purpose of blockchain or the challenges of implementing cutting edge technology and even collaboration across a competitive industry answers a lot of the questions that we on crypto Twitter rarely think to ask. But what I found most interesting was how Brendan, and really the insurance industry view what they are building as completely separate from Ethereum despite using similar technologies. And so in this conversation, I give him my pitch on how it's all part of the same story that Ethereum is inevitable. One more thing before we begin. Please do not take financial advice from this or any other podcast. Ethereum will change the world one day, but you can easily lose all of your money in the process. All right, let's get started. Brendan, thank you so much for joining us. **Speaker B:** Nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me, Rex. **Speaker A:** No, man, of course. And as we'll obviously get to over the next hour, like, this one's special for me, man, because this is a relationship that existed long before, probably before I knew what crypto was, but definitely before I thought crypto was relevant. And so I think in this, like, industry where. Well, and we'll talk about in a second, but on my side of the industry where we're all, like, kind of brought together through, like, the magic of the Internet. It's. You get different conversations when you talk to, like, adults that have, like, been in the trenches together for, you know, real, real business, for sure. Cool, man. So I guess with that is like a good little preface. Like, would you. Can we start this conversation off by just like, giving a little bit about, like, who you are and, you know, not necessarily where you're at today, but, like, how did you originally find blockchain in the first place? **Speaker B:** Yeah. So I'd have to go back to 2010. There was a website, and actually, I think it still exists. Slash dot dot org. Have you ever heard of it? It was kind of a very. **Speaker A:** I remember/dot is it. Is Slashdot the same as. Yeah, okay. **Speaker B:** Yeah, yeah. It's, it's. It's. I don't know if it's still a popular website or not, but I used to go on there every day and just kind of read what the latest and greatest was on tech. It's very, you know, tech focused, nerd centric. And the. The title of post was the most dangerous project in the World. Of course, who's not going to read that clickbaity title, right? I was like, this is super interesting. So I started reading it and it was about bitcoin and it was about this Satoshi Nakamoto and whatever and a link to the white paper. And I read the white paper and I'm just like, you know, that's just one of those moments that a lot of people have had in the early days of crypto and bitcoin were just like, oh, my God. The implications for this are scary and fascinating and. And I want to learn more. So that's when it first kind of dropped on my radar. And then I just kind of, you know, didn't really pay much attention to it. Over time, like, you kept on seeing more and more things in the news about bitcoin and, and crypto and Bitcoin ATMs and, you know, different things people were trying to do with it. And so after business school in 2013, we worked for Anheuser Bush InBev together, and we were hired right around the same time. And that's when I started mining bitcoin. So at the time, the best hardware you could get for these ASICs and the speed of the ASIC was 333 MHz, which was pretty good for the time I got them off of ebay somewhere or something like that. And. And I set up multiple Rigs and was mining and I was part of a pool, a mining pool. And it was just depositing into my. You know, at the time I didn't have a separate wallet set up, so I just deposited straight into the exchange, which you're not allowed to do anymore. But that's what I was doing then. It was fin then and, and that was fantastic. That that's how I kind of got into it and started, you know, really kind of diving in, just figuring out how this, this stuff was working. And, and at the time like Coinbase was still very new and so people could either in order to get bitcoin, they could go to an exchange and buy it or they could mine it. And, and a lot of people just still didn't know how to get it if they weren't mining it because the exchange wasn't really that prevalent. But yeah, then I said, you know, there's an opportunity here for the enterprise and you know, the company should really be looking at this. You know, who knows what it could lead to. And at the time, you know, there was a lot of hype that was being generated around bitcoin and crypto and unfortunately for more nefarious reasons like Silk Road and stuff like that. But, but I actually partnered with Budweiser while at Anheuser Busch and Bev and we did this little, you know, Budweiser Made in America pre party event where if anybody who registered for that event, this one was I think in Utah somewh, where they could also register for a Coinbase account and if they did, they'd get $10 worth of Bitcoin that they can then use towards the purchase of a Budweiser at the event. Do you remember that? **Speaker A:** No, dude, I for sure do. And I'm just trying to jump in here because like I think this is a conversation worth like picking apart because so just like for, for brief context for our back for our viewers. Brendan and I met again at 2013. I think we started within the same month or two months at Anheuser Busch in this like brand new technology innovation group. And I was immediately taking under the wing of, I think it was one of Brendan's peers. I'm younger and more junior than him. And so I was immediately working on these like Internet of things like putting accelerometers in the top handles, that kind of stuff. But Brendan, like I so vividly remember at the time was like already bitcoin pilled. And I remember going to your apartment and seeing like your, your bitcoin farms, man, like I literally have a picture of it that I snuck while you weren't looking to, like, show all my, like, Stanford, like, oh, look, this guy's mining bitcoin. And now I look at that picture and like, cry myself to sleep at night. But I guess, like, like, just if you. So, so the activation that you're talking about is essentially like, we created these, like, you working with external technology partners, created these vending machines that would accept Bitcoin and then separately created this, like, promotional thing with Coinbase where if you sign up during this event, and I think the event was a concert, right? So, like, if you sign up during the concert, you get the $10 that is supposed to be used for beer. So it's like, sign up for this, get a free beer. Right. So with that being like, that was supposed to be the pilot to show the company that, like, you know, bitcoin or digital currency could be, like, an important technology for the business. And, like, spoiler alert, like, I think you did the pilot and, like, nobody would ever talk to anyone about bitcoin ever again until the NFT craze of 2021. **Speaker B:** Right, exactly. Yeah. It wasn't. You know, this is how innovation goes. Oftentimes, you know, people who are, you know, exploring emerging technologies and want to do something with it and sometimes do, it's not relevant for, like, another 10 years. You know, you're just. You're just so ahead of the curve that it doesn't mean anything to anybody. Right? But there's potential there and you see it and you want to do something about it and you want to help the organization, you know, embrace it in some way or at least explore it and start to, you know, be aware of it. So there was. I can't remember what the numbers were, but there was a subset of individuals who. Who registered for the event and registered for a Coinbase account. They received that $10 worth of Bitcoin and there were only like three or four people who use the bitcoin at the event to buy a Budweiser. And I think the event was around the. The attendance was around 2,000 people, so it wasn't a very big one. But that said a few things to me. It said that, you know, either A, people just wanted to keep the bitcoin because, hey, bitcoin. And B, at the time, in order to purchase something with bitcoin, you'd have to present your QR code, have it scanned in the attraction that was new for people like that, you know, that was a totally new thing. And it was a little confusing. You'd had to have the Coinbase account on your, your smartphone and you know, so it was a new user behavior type of thing that just so. But it was a great experimentation. And you know, if you look at AB InBev, I can't remember how long ago this was, maybe like two or three years ago, you know, they started jumping on the, the blockchain crypto NFT bandwagon, if you remember all the stuff that came out about that, you know. **Speaker A:** Yeah. And honestly, look, man, like, let's, let's not kid ourselves. Like the stuff they're doing now is not, has nothing to do with blockchain. They're literally just like jumping on a fad that happens to be in our space. And like throw, you know, again, my. When I was director of finance for Bud Light, my yearly marketing budget was like over $1 billion. So like, you know, they see something go viral, they're going to do it. Like that's just how big brands work. But I guess like to drill in on this, like you introduced this company that is like, I believe one of the most like perfect examples for like the power of crypto just in terms of like multinational, like cross border, like you know, super, super capital efficient, like super low cash balances. And yet like when you introduce this technology to them in 2014, like literally the message to you I remember I was there was like, brendan, shut the fuck up. And so like, I guess like my question to you now that like, you know, as much as I like probably was contributing to that, now I'm like, holy shit, I was wrong and I wish I was listening. Like, what is your takeaway from that experience? Was it like companies need to be more forward thinking or is it that it doesn't matter how good the technology is if the world's not ready for, doesn't matter. Where do you kind of fall on that experience? **Speaker B:** Well, having worked in innovation for multiple Fortune 500 companies, I know that no matter how good a solution is, even if the business case is solid and you're saving millions of dollars making millions of dollars, if the, if senior leadership isn't bought into it, it's not going anywhere. And if, and when I say senior leadership, I mean senior leadership of both, you know, the organization overall and also the function that you're trying to help. So if not, if they're not sold into it, then it's just, it's not going to go anywhere. And this is actually a problem for a lot of innovators out there. It's just, you know, you, you'll put the business model together, you'll create a proof of concept, you'll run a pilot, you'll, you'll prove that it's viable and you'll, you'll pitch that. And still it's like, well, we don't really want to disrupt the business, right? Like, we have our current operating procedure, we have our, you know, and, and any small, if you move a small lever in one of those business processes, it could equate to millions of dollars in cost or millions of dollars in profit, depending on if it's a top line or bottom line type of approach. But little differences in that process makes a big, big difference, especially when you're interacting with millions of customers or clients. So there's a big hesitancy to change process, especially if the process is new, hasn't been totally proven out. So it's just one of the many challenges of being an innovator in corporate America. **Speaker A:** And I guess, you know, like, there's no real generic takeaways that you can walk away with, right? I mean, I guess it depends on the company and the industry that that company is or something. But I mean, like, if I just made you like King Brendan of all CEOs, like, and you just like had an opportunity to change the way American business was done, like, do you think that we're too conservative or do you think that, like, the innovators might actually be like a little too aggressive and like the conservatism in the CEOs has a point. **Speaker B:** It's a, it's on a case by case basis. You'll see some organizations that are all over innovation. The CEO is, you know, he's making sure that his people are failing fast, that it's okay to fail, that you've got to try new things, you got to get out there and you've got to have a budget for it in order to try these things. Other companies, they, you know, they have a budget for innovation. Maybe they have a small group or a function and they want them to go off and kind of explore new things and test the waters. But at the end of the day, they're more conservative and they don't really want to disrupt the business or change it for the better. So it's all different flavors. You know, it just depends on the appetite, the budget, you know, what kind of impact it might have. And, and, you know, whether you, you're interested in exploring new and different approaches to business. **Speaker A:** For sure, I don't know. This, this conversation is Probably a dead end. And like unless you specifically want to talk about Anheuser Busch and I think like their problems are much more about the culture war than it is about technology right now. Anyway, so. All right, so we like our careers like split off in like 2015ish. And then I know that like just like kind of fast forward through background. So you found yourself first in the insurance industry, like believing still in this technology and evangelizing blockchain and then eventually you found your way to the risk collective which is where you are today. So you know, just can you like help us understand that journey and then like what are, yeah, what are just like the key important parts we should know as we enter this. **Speaker B:** Yeah, no, you know, throughout my journey I've always tried to bring blockchain into the enterprise in some ways. And so I worked in the same function but different industries, so innovation for insurance. And there was a brainstorming session one day how we could use blockchain for personal insurance, specifically personal auto. And I came up with the subrogation idea and basically carriers are sending billions of dollars to each other on a claim by claim basis or sometimes even a line item basis in a claim. And so they're in some cases literally printing a check or writing a check, putting it in the mail and sending it out. Other processes involve, you know, like a central bank or a clearinghouse that is managing some of that for them, but they're still doing it on a claim by claim by basis and sometimes on a line item basis. So the overhead for this is very expensive. So what if you just batch to settle, you know, so what if, you know, Liberty Mutual and Geico decided every month we're going to settle up and we're going to put everything, all those claims, all those line items into one and either I'm going to owe you something or you're going to owe me something and we'll be done with it and we'll be square. So basically we built a proof of concept using a private Ethereum network and put a little front end in front of it, a UI and shopped it around to various carriers, State Farm, Allstate, maybe even usa, I can't remember. And they all thought it was a really, really cool idea and so much so that eventually State Farm and USA would go on to build their own subrogation application together. But at the time I was liaising with, with Riskstream, which you referenced, which is the insurance industry's largest non profit blockchain consortium and I was working, I was in the working group for RiskStream on subrogation because we had as Liberty Mutual, we had given over the idea and the concept to Restream to carry forward. And the reason we did that is because even though we showed this to other carriers, nobody wanted to work with us because we were competitors. And so it wasn't going to go anywhere. It's a network based technology, you got to work collaboratively on it and any one carrier can't bring an idea and own the idea and expect people to work with them on it. And so that was brought forward within Restream, worked on for a while and eventually there was an opening there and they wanted me to come over as their head of product to start, you know, working on basically more insurance ideas on blockchain for the industry and not just one carrier. So I did that for a couple of years and prior actually at Liberty it wasn't just the segregation stuff that I worked on, but also worked on digital auto tiling. So putting basically it was before NFTs, but basically putting an auto title onto like inside of an Ethereum smart contract. **Speaker A:** Auto, like automobile. **Speaker B:** Sorry, yeah, automobile, Right, yeah, auto insurance, yeah. So basically putting the identity of the vehicle onto a smart contract. This was 2016, 2017. And also there was one another idea that we were working on for homeowners insurance and being able to, you know, not only have the property title on blockchain or on a smart contract, but also also the entire history of anything that happened with the home. So if repairs updates. And so this was an implication for title insurance. So when you buy a home you have to get title insurance, making sure that the title is the record that it's it is supposed to be before transfer ownership to the new owner. So there were a lot of implications for, for insurance. And so then went over to Restream as their head of product for a couple of years, stood up the product management function and you know, worked on exploring a bunch of different opportunities across different product lines for insurance industry using, using blockchain. So commercial, personal. We're now working on some stuff for inland marine, some stuff for parametric insurance for homeowners. So there's a lot of different applications out there. **Speaker A:** Cool. So okay, just a couple like clarification questions. So first and foremost, dum dum here sub subjugation is essentially settlement but for insurance. Right, Got it clear. And then so okay, what you're saying is first when you're at Liberty you were in this innovation role and you were saying like okay, here's a Ton of different interesting applications. Like, we can put auto titles on there, we can do home repairs and home titles on there. We can, like, do all this, like, crazy stuff. And one idea is we can do, like, essentially, I'll say it for my audience, we will do settlement. Right? And like the. That actually became like, super interesting, like, because it sounds like there's a lot of business problems behind it, but the problem with somebody like Liberty Mutual being like, hey, why don't you just, like, trust us to like, keep track of everything and then at the end of the month, like, we'll tell you how much money you owe us or we'll let you know we owe you money. But, like, we'll see. **Speaker B:** Yeah, you can see the problems with that. Right? **Speaker A:** Yeah, it's a trust problem. Right. And so, like, what is the product of, like, blockchain? It is block space. But, like, that's a little esoteric for this conversation. Like, the product of blockchain is block space. That is credibly neutral. Right. And so, like, it is like, if you know anything about the point of crypto, like, it totally makes sense that, that this, like, this is what it's for. But I guess my question to you is, like, before we talk about your time at Riskstream, like, why was that the idea that Liberty Mutual saw, like, merit in and decided to like, see if there was like, interest in as opposed to like, any of the other ideas that like, to me make just as much sense for insurance to start looking in the blockchain? **Speaker B:** I mean, why do we focus on subrogation to start. **Speaker A:** Yeah, yeah. As opposed to titling, as opposed to like repair tracking, as opposed to like any of the other things that it. **Speaker B:** Was a sheer, it was a sheer opportunity of potentially reducing the cost associated with that. And that number was very large. So out of everything that we looked at that, at first blush, subrogation seemed like a really good opportunity. **Speaker A:** Got it. And so when you're like shopping around this prototype that you made at Liberty Mutual before, it's like third party credibly neutral and it's. It's this like kind of skin on top of a. Sounds like probably like the JP Morgan. Like now it's called Onyx. At some point it was quorum. Right. But like, it was the skin behind that. When you're talking to, let's say, Geico, are you shilling them on what blockchain is and what proof of stake is and how any of this consensus algorithm works, or is this really about subjugation? Sucks. This is a Subjugation platform. That's what you need to know. **Speaker B:** Probably both. They know that subrogation sucks and that it's a big cost driver. So I would say that the conversation opens with, you know, obviously this is a, this is a subrogation application. This is why we're doing it, this is what we think the potential is for it. And because we're working with other carriers, you know, we know what the debits and credits are with that particular carrier is in relationship to Liberty Mutual. So we know it's a problem for them as well. But then, you know, if they're not up to speed on blockchain, and at the time many people weren't, we would have to go into the nuances and the technicality of why this was important, why this is trustless, why it'll work and why it won't cost very much to run it. So you get into the business case modeling a little bit deeper, especially when you're talking to people and trying to ask them to work with you on blockchain based product. **Speaker A:** Yeah, well, and I really like, we'll move on with the narrative, but I really just like want to hover over this point of like, okay, you can approach building companies or products in blockchain like from two ways. One, that this can be a blockchain company and like you do something on the blockchain. Right. Or you can have a blockchain company where you do something on the blockchain. Right. And I think the further away you get from crypto Twitter, the further away you get from Djens, the more it becomes about what are you actually trying to do here and why and less about like, hey, we have included these features that are really trendy right now and not really thinking further than everyone else is locking their tokens. We should have lock tokens, right? **Speaker B:** Yeah. I think first and foremost it's the utility of what the product can do regardless of what the technology is. Forget about the technology, forget about how the black box works. Just say this can do X and to this degree and if that degree is enough, then it's going to peak people's interests. I think at the end of the day, when it comes to enterprise, blockchain, blockchain is just going to be another type of backend infrastructure for organizations to use and leverage and work together on. I think most notably it's network based. So you're going to have collaborators typically, which is kind of how we're set up. We've got this canopy network and every member on the Network has a node and the applications that they're using interface with those nodes over the canopy network to communicate with each other and share data. So any, if you're looking across the insurance industry, any opportunity where there's a high volume of transactions and where multiple parties are sharing data, that's always a good opportunity for blockchain. **Speaker A:** Yeah, it makes a lot of sense and like, the way you just phrase it right now made this, this thought pop into my head. But like, as you're selling to people who don't give a shit about tokens and about like technology, like the way to kind of frame this is like, look, today you have your stuff on the cloud, right? Like, think about what it is. It's like the Amazon cloud, the Google cloud, the Azure cloud. Like they're all the same to you, but like, maybe in the future, like they're not the same. And like the difference is like you have the credibly neutral cloud or you have the company cloud and like different people will opt into that for different reasons. Like, that's not a judgment thing. I just think that when you use the cloud today, like, you don't think about the technology, you don't even think about the companies, you just think about the cloud. **Speaker B:** Right? Right. I think, I think one of the bigger or one of the additional concerns there is security and where am I, where's my data being housed? Is it on premise or is it in the cloud somewhere? And if it is in the cloud somewhere, where are those servers located? Hopefully, you know, in our situation they're in the United States, but if they're in other countries, we're going to need to, you know, do a thorough security analysis on that and see what the risks are and, and how much risk we can tolerate. So, you know, I think the cloud is a good comparison because it's, it's pretty similar, however, with that, you know, if you are truly using something that's decentralized, like, you know, Ethereum, if you will, you know, it's not going to the question of where does the server exist? That question doesn't exist. It doesn't, it doesn't work with. Right. Because it's everywhere, it's all over the place. And I don't think companies are okay with that. Like, they wouldn't put claim data on Ethereum. Right. They would have to keep that house somewhere. So there's different risks tolerances based upon whatever technology it is you're using. And I think the furthest, the most I've seen in terms of insurance Companies being okay with data being on in a decentralized infrastructure is like Oracle data, weather data, stuff they can use for a smart contract, parametric type insurance, that kind of thing. And I also think maybe driving conditions. Right. I have seen some instances where cars are reporting driving conditions if there's a pothole or something or if it's slippery and aggregating that data in mass. So the insurance company can say, all right, you know, you've just logged into Google Maps. You need to go from point A to point B. There are three ways you can go to point A or to point B. A has numerous potholes and it could affect your car. B is wet, there's a main break, so you need to avoid that. C is the safest route. And as our insurance company, we recommend you take route C even though it might be a little bit longer than a, you know, something like that. So you can lower your risk in terms of, you know, your insurance premiums and costs and loss costs and stuff like that by, you know, getting clever and recommending safer routes to travel or something like that. **Speaker A:** Yeah, I mean that's like a super cool concept that I've like never like pondered. Yeah, and like, I definitely hear you how the insurance industry is not comfortable with the idea. I mean, God, if I, if I like actually sit down and try to explain like what Ethereum is and like where it is, like, then you get into like, well, it's called Ethereum because it's everywhere and it's nowhere and like, you know, it does get like real meta real quick. But yeah, I do wonder how much changes just like because of the technology capabilities of ZK cryptography. And if we can like make products that guarantee that like stuff that gets stored on chain is not accessible, like maybe that changes, changes like calculus on the insurance side. But in the meantime, like, yeah, at the very least like it is a totally like incredible powerful technology just to do the financial settlement of it of like you can do all the invoicing, you can do all of the claims, you can do all the legal stuff off chain and then once everyone agrees, you just pop it into the system. And I don't know how much you had to deal with the real international wire system, but when I moved over to finance and Anheuser Busch I did and dude, it's fucking nightmare moving money. It's unbelievable. **Speaker B:** Do you see the recent news about FedNow? **Speaker A:** Yeah, I mean the most interesting thing I saw on that is that apparently it's based off of a fork of avalanche which like Blew my mind on like. Yeah, I read that in one article, so take that with a grain of salt. **Speaker B:** But, yeah, yeah, I mean, Canada has Interact, right. So I think they're probably trying to do something very similar. Just creating a massive clearinghouse for everybody to use, which is a threat to PayPal and Venmo, those companies. Right. Like, see you later if Fed down takes off. **Speaker A:** Yeah, well, and I've talked to a few people about, talk a lot of people about crypto, but some of the more interesting takes is that crypto and Ethereum are not necessarily a threat to the financial world. They're a partner and they may grow together. But a lot of people are not looking at this ethereum threat to TradFi. What they're looking at is a huge threat to offshore finance. Yeah. Because the whole point of offshore finance is how do we use sleight of hand to make things happen within the realm of tradfi? And what crypto is essentially doing is we can just do that with a button. **Speaker B:** Right? Yeah, I can see how that might be an issue for sure. **Speaker A:** Yeah. And so, I don't know, I mean, I think those are fun questions to ponder, but they basically result in whatever your prior biases already are and then a story you fill around that. So whatever. Anyway, going back to insurance, so let's transition you over from Liberty Mutual to the Risk Dream Collective. And like, on that change, my biggest question for you is like, look, you're moving from a, like, principal actor in that space to a, again, like what is supposed to be a credibly neutral one. And like the, the good part about that is that you can talk to all these people like on the same field and they like, they, they, you know, whatever, like all the trust implications of that. Right. The bad part of that is like, you're no longer a player. Right? Like, you no longer. It's one thing to like, talk about like innovation budgets and like product management budgets, but like, you don't have like the billions of dollars of funds that need to be cleared every day to like, make like you're not a customer anymore. And so like, I would love if you could just talk a little bit about like how the frame of innovation changes when you go from these larger institutions than the world has ever known, ever, and a tiny little innovation nugget into that to this space where you have a lot more intellectual freedom and an intellectual weight, but infinitely less financial or maybe even real world weight. **Speaker B:** Yeah, that's a good question. Well, I would start by saying the, our parent organization The Institutes, they've been around for over 100 years. They're very well respected in the industry. They have very deep networks in the industry. A lot of CEOs of various insurance carriers are on the board for the Institutes. So the institute has a lot of clout despite the fact that it's not the one that's playing on the network. Right. It's not, doesn't have the, the billions of dollars that you know, to transact with. But you know, we have found that, you know, this non biased entity is needed to facilitate the collaborators on the network because they can't trust one another. And so they need somebody that they can trust, that's neutral, who can facilitate and explore these technologies with them together. So it just, you know, the, the, the, I guess the power dynamics change from, you know, being someone who is in need of managing this process more efficiently to being a company that says, you know, hey, let us help you try and figure out how to do this collaboratively and together. So it's just a different, a different channel, I guess, if that makes sense. **Speaker A:** No, it makes a lot of sense. And I wonder, do you have any reflections on the state of the insurance industry? And like, what you just said is essentially like you have all of these like massive goliaths that are like so competitive and so cutthroat that like they need a third party facilitator in order to function. Do you, do you see that as like a symptom of like where corporate America or corporate global, like the world is and maybe like because insurance is so old and experienced they figured this out? Or do you think that there's something like especially like hostile and weird about insurance that requires like, like literally an adult to come in? **Speaker B:** No, I think it's like just about with any other industry. I mean the beer industry is hugely competitive, massively competitive. It's, it's a, basically if you're in the beer industry, you're in a sales, marketing and entertainment industry, right? Like that's what function, that's what you do. So I just think, you know, whenever you have a very, very old and very saturated market, you're going to get high levels of competition. And whenever you have lots of competition, there's low trust. And I, I think it's just as simple as that. I, I don't think, you know, the insurance industry is also very regulated, so you've got to be very careful about how, and what you do and, and make sure there's no, you know, collusion on pricing or anything like that. Because you know, the, the regulators are looking out for the, the end user, the consumer and making sure that everybody's by the rules. **Speaker A:** The regulator is looking out for no one at all except for themselves if something goes wrong. So that's a different conversation. But I do think, yeah, like the reason why. **Speaker B:** Sorry to cut you off, dude. But you see the ruling in the ripple case. **Speaker A:** Yeah, I mean, I mean like I guess I'm happy but it's just like more like chaos, you know, and so, you know, whatever. I don't know, I don't know how to take away from that other than like, like I've been in crypto industry for like three years now and very often I've woken up to like world shattering news. It's just like nice to like wake up one day, experience that and then be like, wait, did the world just shatter in a good way? Like. **Speaker B:** So. **Speaker A:** Yeah, so yeah, I, yeah. Anyway, back to our conversation. Like, I very much like, I think that the reason why we don't see this in most industries is because like it the temptation to collude and to like monopolize and to like do like all the bad stuff that you do when you have like market concentration is like there. And it's like particularly sketchy if you have like a coordinating body. But I wonder if like what's specific about insurance? Like look, in the Beer industry, like we had the Beer Institute, right? But like that was literally a lobbying group. That was nothing about coordination, that was just about lobbying. And I wonder if the reason that we never had a coordination group in the way that the insurance industry does is because like insurance is by nature like a collaborative thing. Like the whole point of it is we're all pooling our money together to absorb risk. And so maybe there's something profound about like insurance doesn't work unless like money can flow or something. I don't. But then why, why doesn't anything work? **Speaker B:** Well, I mean, so the insurance industry, it's really the first digital project or product, right? It's, it's a promise, you know, it's, it's you pay me first virtual product. Yeah. You pay me X amount per month and if your ship ever sinks, I'll be sure to, to re, you know, reimburse you for it. But you know, oftentimes these contracts are multi party. You know, with surety bonds there's, there's often three or more players that need to coordinate on a contract with auto claims. I mean depending upon how many different cars get into an accident, what if It's a multi pile up. There could be 10 or more insurance companies that need to coordinate on, you know, the claims payouts, you know, property insurance. Sometimes they're layered. Sometimes you have five or six companies on a commercial property and then you've got reinsurance. Right. And border row reporting. There's, there's multiple players that need to collaborate on, on border reporting. So anytime when there's a product that requires collaboration in any way, that's going to require some sort of need to facilitate that collaboration and coordinate and make sure you get from multiple parties that have ideas about how they want to do business together to a finalized contract and having that be a done deal. **Speaker A:** Yeah, maybe there's something about, if there's a zero sum business transaction that is required for the industry to function, maybe you need to have mediating like ties between them. Like for example, like if we never bought like excess aluminum from Miller Coors, like the industry would be fine, you know. **Speaker B:** Yeah, because I can't think of in the beer industry, I mean, other than the fact that the US has a weird setup where it's like manufactured to distributor to consumer. Like there's no need for really Anheuser Busch and Bev to coordinate with Lagunitas or, or Miller or, you know, it's just like there's no, there's no need there. And if there's no need there, then I don't know if blockchain would have any implications there or not. I mean the only thing I can think about is in shipping and logistics. Right. If a truck has just dropped off a major truckload of beer to the distributor and it needs to go back to the manufacturing facility and it's empty. Right. Like maybe there is someplace where it could pick up some cargo somewhere kind of like an uber type of thing and that could be blockchain based, you know, where you need to coordinate with external parties or something like that. But yeah, but for the most part it doesn't seem like the industry is, is you know, hinged on, on coordinating with your competitors. **Speaker A:** Yeah, yeah. I mean I'm like a huge, like one of the like the biggest reasons I'm like here in this space is because I was in like Anheuser Busch Finance and I realized like, oh like, oh my God, like finance is just like old and slow and stupid. Right. And I've told this story on this pod before. So sorry audience. But for you, you'll appreciate this even more. So in 2017, I believe was, it was the year after Anheuser Busch inbev had bought Modelo, but we had to divest the U.S. operations. And so that divestment resulted in like, it was more than a billion. I think it was $1.7 billion tax bill. And so I, as the treasury manager, was like, the one responsible for getting that money to the federal government. And so one day, when we're going to send it, CFO walks up behind me, puts his chair behind me, goes, hex. I am going to sit here until the wire clears. And I'm like, okay, that started like, the banks open at 8:30. So he sat up behind me at 8 because we were in New York, right? And at 3:30, the wire cleared. And like, every like 30 to 45 minutes, the CFO would like, tap on my shoulder and be like, hex, Hex, where is it? And I would be like, I don't know. And be like, you can't say that. Like, go figure out where it is. So I pick up my phone call bank of America. And they. And I'd be like, hey, like, CFO is asking where's the money? And they'd be like, literally, we just told you this. The way it works is you push the button, the money goes to the settlement banks that have the money. Like, it's in a black box. We cannot tell you where it is. This is the federal wire system. It will clear, but it'll clear when it clears. And then I would hang up and be like, it's honest away. And then I would go back to making shit up that, like, looking up the price of wheat on Bloomberg or like, making decks that were for, like, for meetings two weeks ago, you know, like, just making up work, right? And like, I'm a huge believer that if not like that kind of stuff, just like any multinational organization needs to move money across borders because, like, in order to pay taxes, in order to pay employees. Like, basically like any business that touches money, like, which is all of them will like, be like, drastically, drastically improved by this technology. I do think that you have like, a good point on, like, these use cases that we look at past, like, money and transfer and settlement. Like, really do we need to, like, target situations, like, where coordination is like, essential and not like a risk of basically like, corporate takeover of the economy. But yeah, I don't know. My only pitch back to what you said is Anheuser Bush can definitely use crypto, right? **Speaker B:** Yeah. One of the other things that's interesting too is like, you know, why use kind of one of these commercially available services to transfer money from country a to country B. Like a transfer wise, right? Like, why would I use that if there's crypto? Well, you'll. You'll find that in most cases, depending upon the day, you know, if you're, if you're transacting in Ethereum, your gas fees for that transfer might be outrageous, right? And a lot of the protocols out there, at least the popular ones, have some sort of transfer fee that oftentimes are more expensive or is more expensive than using something like a wise to transfer funds from country to country B. You know, so even though it's very fast and it's there, it exists, you can use it. It still might be more expensive to use that over something like just wise something. A traditional type of insuretech or fintech type of application. **Speaker A:** Yeah, well, the one that really blew my mind and just made me realize that literally no one gives a shit about the tech except for us that have, like, dedicated our careers and like, our personal lives and our, like, interests and everything to it is sometime last year, Vitalik was on Bankless, there's another podcast. But so he made a comment where he was just like, so Latin America, especially, like Argentina, like, countries devastated by inflation, like, you know, blah, blah, blah, like, it's horrible, horrible, horrible. And so people are actually like, using crypto. They're like, using crypto to protect their savings. And, and so he goes like, whatever, David or Ryan, like the coast, he goes, can you guess the number one way that Argentinians use crypto and that? Like, they're like, I don't know, like metamask, like, like that. And, and the answer is that, like, all of these Argentinians and like South Americans apparently just hold balances in binance and then they transfer to other people's Binance wallet. So, like, you go to a coffee shop, you'll pay from your Binance wallet to their Binance wallet. But because it's all within Binance, there's no transfer fees. And so, like, think about this, man. It's like, it's all the risks of crypto with none of the benefits. It's all of the worst parts of Tradfi with none of the benefits. And yet still this is how, like, all the people that are opting into crypto for real use cases and not like, financial speculation, that's how they choose to use it. Like, that is wild to me. **Speaker B:** That's crazy. That's crazy. And they're all using just bnb, right? The Binance native coin. **Speaker A:** No, I mean, again, I didn't look into this I'm under the impression that like, you know, when you go into Coinbase, there's no, you're not like on a chain you just like buy ETH and then you have ETH in your account. **Speaker B:** Right, right. And they're using it like that. Okay, gotcha. **Speaker A:** Yeah, like they're, they're buying tether and like sending tether to each other. **Speaker B:** Right, right. That's crazy. That's crazy. Well, if it's working, you know, it's great. **Speaker A:** Yeah, yeah. And again, like, I love that story just because it blows my minds about like how people work and why and technology works and whatever. But I think like just drawing us back into the conversation. I think like it's so easy to get locked in like consensus and proof of whatever and like blockchains and like, but like no one cares about technology except for the people building it and like, unfortunately the people funding it. Right. But like what people actually care about is like their day to day lives and, or, or insurance companies care about is like their day to day operations. And like that's really what we need to be building towards. Like use cases. **Speaker B:** Absolutely. I mean, yeah, I mean it means it needs to be useful for the end user and if it's not, then it's not, it's not going anywhere. It's never going to get adopted. And not only that, the utility has to be there, but it has to be better than current utility. Right? It has to be. Why? Why is this better than my current process? You know, if that's just. If it's more of the same, it's also not going to get adopted. It's just, you know. **Speaker A:** Yeah. And I, I'll use this word utility to like pivot into like the last part of this conversation here because like in my crypto broken brain, and I know who my audience is, when you hear utility, what that word means is, okay, is your token just a token or can you do something with it on chain? Right. And what I know that you're saying when you say utility is no, not use case within the very stunted broken EVM context. Use case within the world, like humans and people and air and food, like that, that kind of utility. And so one of the reasons, like I was so excited to have this podcast with you is because like about a month ago I invited you on to like just kind of like a daily news stream. And like that was the first moment that it hit me that like all of us on crypto Twitter who like believe in this and are pushing it forward and think that we're like the bleeding heart center of crypto. Like, everything that we were talking about was just like, not even relevant or like not even known to you, who is the product manager of a real product for the largest industry on the planet using this technology. And so I guess my first just kind of question or thought to you is based on that experience and what you know about the more degen side of crypto. Like, how would you kind of describe the divide between the types of people that are using private blockchains and blockchains as a technology to build products and kind of like the degen defi revolutionary community? **Speaker B:** So the difference between the defi community and the people who are really in the weeds with all the defi that's going on and the people who are kind of the general population in terms of crypto use retail. **Speaker A:** I guess, like, this question might be too broad. I guess, like, what I'm like trying to like, hone in on is that there's like the entire world of building that exists is like super, super segregated. And like the people that are working on like private blockchains and like real enterprise applications and like, like you, Brendan, like, could change the world with blockchain. Like, don't even touch the Venn diagram of like, the people who I'm talking to who believe that they're going to replace JP Morgan with like a combination of like, Curve and aave. And so I, I guess I don't know if I have a question there, but, like, there's something like, really, really remarkable to me in that. **Speaker B:** Yeah, I think, I think this is pretty normal for, for, I think traditional product functions where you have to kind of straddle the business and the technology, right? You have to know enough to be dangerous on the tech side and know it, how it works and, and you know, the processes that are involved. But you also have to understand the voice of the customer and what it is that they truly need. You know, I don't want to be building something and spending money and development resources on something that the end user is never going to even look at. Right? So it's really just balancing those two worlds, understanding them, because you have to understand them in order to balance them, but making sure you have a really good idea about what the customer truly needs and so that you can go and build the capability on the back end in order to fulfill that need. Because you could have an assumption that is, oh, well, ZK is going to solve everything. Well, is it how, you know, have people adopted, you know, ZK you know, I understand the implications of it and what it could, could do, but companies are still not going to be comfortable with putting their, their information on a decentralized protocol, even if they're using zk, especially if that information is ppi, you know, personal information or medical information. So it's just being able to accommodate your end user so that there's not enough desirability for them to want to adopt your product, while also being realistic about the expectations of the organization that you're working for and working within their risk profile in order to deliver that value to the customer. **Speaker A:** Yeah, for sure. And man, everything you're saying is literally giving me PTSD flashbacks to having to deal with that. So I totally hear you. I guess philosophically, when you think of the was it subjugation, the product that you're building for risk stream that. Let's fast forward to a world in 10 years where literally hundreds of billions of dollars per day is flowing through the system because the entire insurance industry has bought into it. In that world, how much do you think like Ethereum, like the core Ethereum protocol, and then whatever is built on top of that is part of the same story of what you're building? Or do you think that those are just like two separate things that happen to be using like similar technology principles? **Speaker B:** They are separate things that are using similar principles, I'd say, you know, we have used Quorum in the past for some of our applications, but that's a derivation of Ethereum. So, I mean. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I'm not sure how to answer that question. **Speaker A:** Well, here, let me answer how, like, because what I see, like, what I imagine if like you're building in blockchain, the. I believe that the inevitable conclusion is like, either you're going to realize that blockchain is like an incredibly stupid, incredibly slow, incredibly hostile environment. And you don't need any of this trustless stuff, you don't need any of this credible neutrality. Go to Amazon or you're going to realize that what you're trying to do here is create what I have deemed trustless trust. I think that we are not, in 10 years, in 20 years, whatever, there's not going to be a world where there's a bunch of different chains that each have a different amount of trustless trust. And I believe that Ethereum eth is the asset of trustless trust. And anybody who cares about this will ultimately derive that trustless trust from Ethereum. And what that means for financial stuff is you'll become A roll up. You'll settle to Ethereum. **Speaker B:** Yeah. I feel like with any new technologies there's a lot of different players to start and then as time goes on, things kind of get merged or there's consolidation, you know, less variability and more standardization. I don't feel like that's happening with Blockchain. I feel like there are so many different protocols out there and there continue to be more protocols developed that there really isn't kind of like a standard. There isn't, you know, like there how there have been some standardizations in terms of how value transfers, how other kind of Digital property transfers, NFTs or digital property, whatever. There's some standard processes and protocols and timelines around transferring from one wallet to another. But overall I feel like most organizations are going to lean towards AWS instead of trying to adopt whatever standard they think there might be in the blockchain space. I apologize. Whatever standard there might be in the blockchain space. **Speaker A:** I don't know. **Speaker B:** I feel like there are some protocols that have risen to the top, obviously Ethereum being one of them. Bitcoin for, for value transfer. Of course there's the whole sidechain thing and you know, and then you know, Polygon is obviously very popular. Quorum has been popular for the enterprise. So there are a few out there that you know, hyperledger that are geared towards the enterprise and that some organizations are using. So yeah, I don't know. So I guess over time there is less variability and there are some, some best practices there, but it still feels pretty diversified. **Speaker A:** Yeah, no, and I think like this is like kind of a whole different conversation about like the crypto thesis and like if you believe like in a future that has like a bunch of different independent chains that provide like different substrates on which like different kinds of applications can be built or which is like, you know, again, that's just like not what I believe. Like I believe that like we're not developing technology here so that everyone can create their own technology. Like I think that what's special about Bitcoin and then Bitcoin fucked it up and handed it off to Ethereum is like there's something special. And the special is that there's one credibly neutral space and then everything flows from that. **Speaker B:** No, you're totally right. Yeah. **Speaker A:** Yeah. And so like again my, my long term vision and like why I've been willing to like dedicate my career and like too much of my net worth to ETH. Not crypto, not projects, not tokens, not NFTs. But ETH is because, like, I do believe that no matter what you're building today and what every industry is building on, blockchain, people are going to realize either this is a fad and we jumped on it just like we were building.com 25 years ago and we're going to throw it away or we're going to realize if we care about the blockchain properties, we need to find a way to borrow that from eth. **Speaker B:** Yeah, no, I mean, ETH really did set a precedent. I mean, I felt like blockchain was very limited to what it could do. And then ETH came around and came up with the virtual. **Speaker A:** Yeah. And look, in 2015, while this was just an idea, I would not be saying this Ethereum was just like any other one back then. Right. But the way the world works and it is what it Ethereum is like the core untouchable protocol. And then the goal. I really just believe that Ethereum first is Bitcoin. Bitcoin got super political and so crazy about what they believe money is and 21 million and blah, blah, blah, and gave up what Satoshi was trying to give us, which was Internet native property. Right. And money is just one part of property. And what Ethereum does is, hey, we're just going to give you the platform that has property and then you can build whatever you want on it. **Speaker B:** You can do whatever else. Yeah. You know where I thought this was going back in 2015? It started with Bitcoin transfer of value. Then it came Ethereum, virtual computing and whatever else. NFT smart contracts. Then I thought it was going to Iota. I was actually really sold on iota. It was the tangle. Right. I used tertiary protocol and it was fearless and instantaneous and I felt like the transaction fees were the main problem and that IOTA was going to be successful. Of course, there were rumors about proof of stake with Ethereum for a very long time and, and a lot of people, you know, some people thought it was going to happen, some people didn't, and it eventually did. So, you know, it's a game changer now that, you know, you don't have the excessive fees that you normally would or that you had in the past with Ethereum today, which is. **Speaker A:** Yeah, no, and look, I think that like you're, you're, you're totally right to pick up on the fees. It goes back to like two conversations ago. We were just having, like, no one cares about this technology. Like they care about the uses. And if, like for me to send you a jpeg costs, first of all, the jpeg costs 10 grand and then sending it to you cost 200 bucks. Like nobody's interested in that? **Speaker B:** No, not at all. When, what is it? What's the NFT marketplace that OpenSea. So I remember Gemini did something with OpenSea where they were making NFTs and they gave me an NFT and I was like, what am I going to do with this? And so I turned around and I put it on OpenSea and it sold for $400. Like, this makes no sense. Like, what is going on here? It's just, it's, you know, in some cases, like with, you know, the artist Beeple, who, you know, did very well with the NFTs, I find that fascinating that there can be a place for artists to make, you know, their product and sell it and people can have exclusive ownership of that, of that artwork. I find that interesting and I also find the opportunity for Ristream. We're actually using NFTs for surety bonds. So the surety contracting process is all NFT based and it works really well. So, you know, you do see it evolving from, you know, the original, which is what I think people, you know, had thought was going to happen. Like, yeah, it's for this really unimpressive artwork to start, but then it's going to evolve into something more important, which I think it is, is happening. **Speaker A:** Yeah, Well, I definitely think we experience all these things and like manic waves that like produce some like, inane bullshit, right? Like whether it's NFTs almost entirely or like On Defi, right, Like Olympus Dao or Do Kwon, right, Like any of that shit, right? But like, what's left in the wake? And it's like a violent, destructive wake, but what's left are these like primitives that are actually like, interesting. And like, you can take ERC 721 as like a concept and say like, okay, this is how we should represent home deeds, you know. And so like, I'm a big believer in. That's just like how innovation happens and. Yeah, man, but, but it's. I don't know, I. Like in these moments, like when we're talking about bored apes for, like, literally, like for the, for the cost of a bored ape. We could house a family for gener, like for perpetuity. We could feed like a village for a month. Like, I mean, it's so crazy. It's so crazy. And like, I don't know what to say other than like, I don't believe in moral judgments, number one. Like, I believe Things happen and like, you learn what you can from them and then you move on. And to like, all I can think of is like, I spent my whole life, like, wondering how like, that Dutch tulip craze could have happened. Like, how people were like, selling their entire home for one tulip bulb. And like, I don't wonder that anymore. **Speaker B:** Right, right. What do you think? You know, with the advent of AI chat, GPT, all that stuff that's happening right now, what do you, where do you think that there's. There's probably going to be an intersection with AI and blockchain? What do you, what do you see happening? Do you do. Is there something that's on your radar, something you're thinking about in terms of. **Speaker A:** So I don't know where it's going. I'll say first, first, like, the conversation around AI right now reminds me so, so, so much of the conversation around spying during the Edward Snowden Leaks. Excuse me. And like, I. My experience of that, I remember it so vividly because I was at Stanford studying computer science at the time. And I just remember when that happened. My reaction being like, why the fuck is anyone surprised? Like, this is how the Internet works. Like, and, and like, yes, like the scale and this, this, this. But like, just the way people talk about, like, okay, now that we know about this, like, what's going to. Like, that's exactly what I feel like AI is, is hap. Is happening with AI right now. And like, again, going back to Stanford, when I was Studying there in 2009, I took the Intro to Computer Science course. Or, sorry, this is two years later, my junior year, I took the computer, the Probability Statistics for Computer Scientist course. And so my teacher is this guy named Mehron, and he's super weird, like, eccentric guy. But we get through the whole course and on the last day he's explaining to us, like, okay, everything we learn, we can actually use these Bayesian probability nets to do like, really interesting things. For example, to filter spam. He hits the next slide, pulls up on the thing behind us. It's a paper by him in, like, 1996 when he was working at Google. How to use spam, how to use probability to filter spam in Gmail, something like that, right? And like, so all to say is that, like, the way people talk about AI right now is just like, hey, welcome to the conversation. This is how Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, like, Amazon is how everything works right now. There's just too much data for humans to understand and suck it up. We're here and so to answer your original question, I don't know where AI and blockchain intercede, but I've never been more confident that they will, because AI is essentially about creating intelligence and sentience in the virtual world that has no parameters and no guardrails and no rules and no property. And what does blockchain do? Provides a framework for all of that. **Speaker B:** Yeah, right, right. And vast amounts of it. **Speaker A:** Right, yeah. And so I don't know where this ends up, but I can totally imagine in the same way that let's say fucking soda and cans are different technologies, but they wouldn't have had happened if like they didn't come together. And now they're both used for so many more different things and different containers. But like, that's what I see with crypto and AI. **Speaker B:** Yeah, yeah, for sure. Totally makes sense to me. One of the things I, I see happening is for, because you, if you are using the blockchain and you have these transactions going on with the blockchain, and some of those transactions are different than most. Okay. And so it starts, the AI enters the picture and it starts to record and monitor these patterns. Right. And some patterns, A, B and C are fraudulent patterns, and the rest of them are normal, common patterns. Right. You could aggregate all of the data for a particular industry. So, you know, in our case, we're looking again at, you know, personal auto claims. Some of those claims are fraudulent, and the fraudulent claims have specific patterns that are associated with them. And so if you've got this AI black box that is just sucking up all the data from all the insurance companies in the, in the industry and making this massive database of recognizable, you know, fraud insurance patterns, then that can be a benefit to the entire industry to be able to, you know, check every claim against that black box and have it come back to you saying, oh, this is totally normal, or you should probably dig a little bit deeper on this. This looks a little bit suspicious. So there's some implications. Those are some of the things I'm seeing in terms of the intersection of blockchain and AI. **Speaker A:** Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think this is a great kind of thought to go out on, but I was just thinking about this the other day, that AI is first of all, it's just such a dumb name because it puts us in the context of, of like, are we like replacing ourselves or creating something more or less than ourselves? And like, it, it puts humans in this situation of like, who are we? And like, really what this technology is, is like what happened first is that like we as humans figured out how to use technology to gather data and then we realized like, we don't know how to deal with this much data. And so what AI is, is how do we find patterns in the noise? And then the question, that's how I see AI. I don't care about ChatGPT turning into Skynet or I don't care, I don't know. I mean it's just like those are literally works of fiction. **Speaker B:** Yeah, right. No, but you're totally right. Being able to detect significant signals among an ocean of data is exactly what AI is, is good at. And we're starting to see some interesting things happen there. I, I can't remember what the article or where I saw this, but some chemists were trying to come up with some compounds and you know, traditionally you just, it's kind of trial and error and you have a database, but they were able to kind of feed it all of its, you know, they had 20 years of trial and error history data. They gave it to the AI and it came up with like three of the compounds they were looking for or something like that. You know, you start hearing about this stuff all the time. What's great is you can like, you can download, you know, a local version of say ChatGPT, feed it all your data and then just start asking it questions and you'll, you'll be able to, you know, pick up those patterns, which is just, you know, it's kind of mind blowing. **Speaker A:** Yeah. Well actually I've got a suggestion for you and for the audience if you're interested. Ezra Klein, New York Times. Like I don't know, journalist, but he has a podcast called the Ezra Klein show and he just had the head of Google's like they have a new like company that Google, it's like a wholly owned subsidiary. But essentially he came on and explained all of the drug stuff that you're talking about and like how. Yeah, so super Good just came out like last week. I will make sure to send that to you Brendan, directly and then put in the show notes for this. But man, like I just, every single day I wake up more excited about like technology and like the capabilities of like what, what we're going to be able to do and like what's happening. And the reality is it's like it's inevitable. Ethereum is inevitable. AI is inevitable. All this is inevitable. And like I encourage all of you, like if you're doom scrolling like get off the news, nobody knows what they're talking about. Like the people Writing these articles have no idea. The investors writing these thought pieces have no idea. Like, stop thinking about, like, what could go wrong and start thinking about why people are building this. **Speaker B:** Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of ethical concerns right now around AI and for good reason. But I think, you know, the people who are on the sidelines having the ethical discussions are probably going to be left in the dust by the people who are out in the field who are actually doing things with AI and moving that forward, maturing the technology and figuring ways. Figuring out ways to use it, both beneficial in various ways, I would say. **Speaker A:** You couldn't be more correct. And like, yeah, the people who are going to write the story are out there doing it, not, like, trying to debate about it. And if anybody wants to debate, I would. I'm not willing to debate crypto or AI until we debate healthcare. Like, things that matter. **Speaker B:** Yeah. There you go. Perfect. **Speaker A:** Yeah. All right, Brendan, thank you so much. This is an honor and a pleasure. Before I let you go, can you just shout out, like, any socials that you're on or any. Anything you want to shout out? **Speaker B:** Yeah, yeah, no, thanks for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. If you need to get in touch, I'm on LinkedIn. I don't really use Twitter. I don't use Thread. I don't use Bluesky. So LinkedIn's kind of my primary go to. **Speaker A:** Yeah, I used to use Twitter. Like that's where my name came from. But I don't anymore because it's like a right wing, like, scam. Scam fest. **Speaker B:** Apparently they're calling it. Calling it X now. So what? **Speaker A:** That's worth whatever. Anyway, Brendan, I'll see you in the real world. We'll have a real beer. Like, that's how business is done. That's how friends are done. **Speaker B:** Exactly. Thanks, Rex. I'll talk to you soon. **Speaker A:** Have a good one. **Speaker B:** You too. Bye. Bye.