Epicenter - Learn about Crypto, Blockchain, Ethereum, Bitcoin and Distributed Technologies - Anthony di Iorio: Jaxx – Ethereum and Why Community Matters

Episode Date: April 18, 2016

We were joined by repeat guest Anthony di Iorio, a definite contender for having (co-)founded the most projects in the blockchain space including Ethereum, Kryptokit, Decentral and Jaxx. We got an update on the vibrant Toronto blockchain scene and Decentral. The main discussion revolved around the new wallet Jaxx that is simultaneously a Bitcoin and Ethereum wallet and takes a significant step towards a more unified and accessible cryptocurrency experience. Finally, we discussed his recent appointment as Chief Digital Officer at the Toronto Stock Exchange / TMX Group and the upcoming trade show Blockchain World Expo. Topics covered in this episode: Update on Decentral and Kryptokit How the Jaxx wallet Unique UI challenges of Ethereum wallets The role of community in bringing innovation to corporates His role as Chief Digital Officer at the TMX Group The upcoming Blockchain World Expo in Toronto Episode links: Jaxx Bitcoin and Ethereum wallet Decentral Decentral.tv Blockchain World Expo This episode is hosted by Brian Fabian Crain and Sébastien Couture. Show notes and listening options: epicenter.tv/127

This is Epicenter Bitcoin episode 127 with guest Anthony DiOrio. Hey, welcome to Episodeer Bitcoin, the show which talks about the technologies, projects, and people driving decentralization and the global cryptocurrency revolution. My name is Sebastian Quirju. And my name is Brian Fabian Crane. We're here today with Anthony DiOrio. He's a return guest. And the great thing about Anthony is every time you talk to him,

he's going to tell you about three new projects. He's starting right now. He started an insane amount of projects. in the space. So he's known for, which is where we recorded the last episode with him, DeCentio, which was kind of a cryptocurrency space, blockchain space in Toronto.

He also started Cryptokit. He's the founder of Crypta Kit. And then he's a co-founder of Ethereum. And he's also a chief digital offer for if the Toronto Stock Exchange. And it's kind of exploring blockchains in that context. So lots of activities. And of course, he's going to also do some other things.

that we'll be talking about. So, yeah, thanks for coming on, Anthony. Brian, thanks for having me again. Nice to meet you, Sebastian. Yeah, so last time we talked, I was actually in Toronto, and I got, came to your space. You guys had a really nice space, which was sort of a big house in the middle of the financial district,

and we recorded an episode with you and a few other people there that were part of, I think, what was it, the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada? Yeah, well, people, people, people who worked at a DeCentral at the time. Yeah. So can you give us an update? What's, what's been going on with DeCentral? Sure. So we opened DeCentral in January 2014. It was literally a month after we jumped into Ethereum. And that became the first hub for Ethereum. If we had co-working space there and we were doing our meetups out of there, it was basically a hub that we set up because I'd been involved in the space for a while doing meetups in Toronto. And as a local Bitcoin seller, we would meet at coffee shops and do things. And then, if Like, I got to get a space put together. We got to have some place that everybody can kind of gather around and get that community

form and do our meetups and that. So I opened up DeCentral in January 2014. The same day, we opened up Toronto's first Bitcoin ATM. It was a bid access machine. It was they'd approach me a couple weeks earlier and said, hey, we're starting to make ATM. Would you like to be our first customer? So we opened that up there.

And it's really morphed into many, many different things, DeCentral. We had 5,000 square feet initially. We would do all our meetups and events there. We had co-working space. We had a bunch of our projects there. We had, we had, you know, it was again, the first Ethereum hub. We were hiring people for the initial team out of there. And it's morphed into a bunch into, you know, we moved last year.

We moved because we started doing our events in a much larger space. We have a development center called Mars in Toronto. It's a massive, massive, like, million square foot facility. And we do our events at their auditorium so we can fit 600 people there. So it just didn't make sense to have event space at Decentral anymore. when we were doing much larger events elsewhere. So we downsized. We governed the co-working space.

And basically, as my projects grew, we just realized having everybody working on my projects there seemed to make the most amount of sense and a lot less distractions from other things going on. So Decentrals, it's a hub. We still do our events out of here for smaller ones. We've got our Bitcoin ATM, a very active Bitcoin ATM. We've got 40, 50 people every day coming in, purchasing and buying and selling Bitcoin. We do all our projects operator here. So CryptoKid operator operates out of here.

Our consultancy services out of here. DeCentral TV, which we're going to start pushing a little bit more. Yeah, so everything revolves around DeCentral. It's kind of the parent company to all our activities. That's fascinating. And also, I hadn't really realized how the sort of Ethereum community had started there in Toronto, which is obvious because, you know, the Vitalik is from the Toronto area.

I'm originally from Canada, but I've been in France for the last 10 years or so. And from a distance hadn't realized that it had all sort of started there. Yeah, well, it's an interesting story. I can get into a little bit of how that whole thing emerged. Yeah, sure. So the first meetup I did, it was in 2012. It was, I literally heard about Bitcoin summer of 2012. That day I went out seeking a Bitcoin.

And I went out and found someone on local Bitcoin. I met up with them, bought my first Bitcoin. I think it was like $9.75. And I looked for a community in Toronto. I looked on Meetup.com. There's nothing here. There's absolutely nothing. So that month after learning about Bitcoin, I started, I said, like, I'm going to start

this community. So I held the first Toronto Bitcoin meetup group and event. And at that event, there was 10 people. And there was Peter Todd was there. Vitalik Buterum was there. And that's where I first met those two. guys and then consistently doing events after that's how i got to know them that's how um just as we as we grew we started doing like weekly events and we just grew and grew we moved from

different different different bars and and then when we launched crypto kit in 2014 in november uh i'd invited uh vatelic roger verre and eriforhe used to be part of the team basically there were three guys that i really respected in the space and i said you know I'd love to have you guys. Here's our product. We think it's really cool. You know, it's a Chrome extension, the first of its kind, wallet, no logins or passwords, grabs addresses from the page, you open it when you want.

We'd really try to remove the friction. And they all love the product. It was actually in Argentina when I approached Roger and Eric to join Crypto Kit. So there's literally five of us that move forward on the project with it. And even though they've been at the distance, and this was Vitalik, you know, was crucial in some of the things that we did with Crypto Kit. It was literally a month after that when he, He showed me the white paper and said, hey, this is what I've been putting together. I was the first person he showed it to.

And that was a month after launching CryptoKit. And then it was like full on Ethereum. We dropped, I did not drop CryptoKid. It's been going ever since. And we just focused headlong onto Ethereum. And I brought in Charles Hoskinson of the project. And he brought in Mihai, who was his partner with Bitcoin Magazine. And Amir Chetrich, who he'd been working with,

on color coins and it was the five of us. So we were the five initial founders of the project and it started just developing mostly out of Toronto and we started hiring people and out of Toronto and that's where we started the initial needups. And then in January, it was the, we really came out. That was at the Miami Bitcoin Conference. So that was the where things really started taking off. The community started expanding and then Jeffrey and Gavin came in afterwards and Joseph Lubin,

who actually was at the very first. first DeCentral Opening Day on New Year's Day of 2014, Joseph Lubin showed up. And Joseph, of course, from consensus, he had been traveling, he was living in Jamaica at the time, and he traveled to Toronto visiting some family over the Christmas holidays. And he came to the event, and that's where we connected. We invited him to Miami to the conference. And that basically was the initial eight, that, you know, the initial five. And then a few months later, we added three more founders to the team.

And that was the core eight that that formed out of that. So that was literally a lot of the action and activity out of Toronto. And then we started setting up things in Switzerland and other hubs formed. And then it just grew into that massive project we you guys are very well familiar with. Yeah. And then from there, some of the, what's the community like now in Toronto? Oh, it's so diverse. There's tons of meetup groups here.

There's two Ethereum meetup groups here. There's just, I mean, since opening the first one in 2012, there's probably dozens now. Like, I don't know. There's so many events that are going. It's such a major thing. And it's really cool. It's like DeCentral's kind of been that center of gravity where everybody and everybody in the space now has kind of come through DeCentral in some way or another and off doing projects in the space. And it's been really interesting as the community has developed.

And I've kind of always been on a year basis of things that I do. the first year in 2012, 2013 was kind of building out that community. It's like there's nothing here. If I want to be part of this and I'm really passionate about I'm going to, you know, I want to be the center. I want to build out the community. And I think that's what's needed. And that's how you start learning about cool projects.

Community is like a key word for me and building out things like that. I think companies need to build communities around themselves. And I'll get more into that when I talk about the Toronto Stock Exchange. But it's, that's what 2012 and 2013 about was, was building out the community. 2014 was, was big push on. onto Ethereum. 2015, for me, with DeCentral, was a lot more getting businesses involved.

It was the start of NASDAX announcements that really kind of drove the business community to start investigating blockchain. And, you know, this was three years down the road after I've already gotten into it, many other people. And I got in kind of relatively late, you could say. But it takes businesses that amount of time to get involved in these disruptive technologies.

You first get the communities and the passionate people working on it. And then years later, you seem to get that the businesses that start looking into it. So 2015 was about, for me, businesses, and we saw the growth in Toronto of a lot of activity from Deloitte, Canada, from the banks all starting to get their projects together and start thinking about it. And then for me, 2016 now is focused on expanding that and getting out to policymakers in Canada and really tie-ins with educating on these disruptive technologies and the benefits that they can offer to our country and how jobs we can eventually be created and how we can really push ourselves forward. So that's kind of been the progression and communities grown along the way. We had in 2014, we put on the Bitcoin Expo in Toronto.

We had, I think, 800 attendees to that, 40 exhibitors. So, yeah, it's been a real growth in the community and a lot of excitement and a lot of diversity now. Many different meetups, many different people organizing events. And it's really great to see the change and people starting to take initiatives and leaders starting to grow and form here. It's been really cool. Can you talk about some of the positions? So in Canada there has been quite a few reports and positions from either the government or the Senate. Can you talk about the sort of general position of the Canadian government on digital currencies and blockchains?

Sure. So they've, I think, done a great job so far and not rushing into any decisions. There's still very little regulations around crypto right now, for example. example, if you're selling or buying or selling, you really don't have any regulations or rules right now. So you can, there's no limitations. There will be some in the future that come on. So I guess, you know, money services, business license will probably be needed in the future,

but they're not right now. You can literally sell from a Bitcoin ATM without taking customer information right now. It's been really good. And I think it's the smartest move is that taking that time to really understand these technologies. The governments are, are, seem to be wanting to learn and wanted to educate them. themselves and understanding that rash decisions probably aren't the best thing to do. And they can really hinder the growth of technologies and industries that your country can be leaders in.

And I've been very happy with the progress. And by them taking their time, I mean, we had Andreas come up and speak at a Senate committee hearing. And I think he really was able to bring across that message of wait, see, educate yourselves, and don't jump to anything rash, just kind of really understand. And that's what we've gone through the, again, the cycle for me is community learning, and getting into it, businesses learning, and then the next stage is governments and regulators and policymakers.

And it's really our goal and our challenge to educate them and to bring about that, the passion for these technologies and how Canada can be at the forefront of these technologies and lead it if we are embracive to the technologies, if we are encouraging entrepreneurs, encouraging startups, encouraging fintech, companies to come in and making sure that there's nothing that's stopping them. I mean, I look at what the UK has done, and I think it's done a really good model of promoting fintech. And I think even just the last couple days that they've announced a sandboxing system

where they can actually have gray area companies that are involved in disruptive tech, feel comfortable investigating what they're getting involved in and that they're not going to be challenged on the regulatory side where they can actually have a sandbox that they can work within so they can start investing. And I think that's really important. In a global marketplace, governments really need to understand that they have the opportunity to embrace rather than be scared of these technologies and that,

as we've seen with the Internet and many other things, it's the 99% of the amazing things that are going to come out of it that they should be focusing on. And again, new sectors that emerge and new jobs that will be created. And I think it's the not having a fear system in saying, we've got to be really worrisome about what the negative things could come out. But it's, it has to be brought to, it has to be brought to light. And they need passionate leaders and people that can present the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the vision of where Canada can be and where your country can potentially be in a global economy.

And I think it's, it's something that the leaders and the advocates and passionate people in the space have to really be pushing and getting in front of those stages in order to present that, that idea. That has been one of the exciting things to see just how much has been going on in Canada, given, you know, it's not a huge. country, but in terms of activity, it has definitely been at the forefront with startups and community activity, especially in Toronto. Sorry, I just want to say it's not a huge country. It's the second largest country in the world. I think we know what Brian means, though. It's not a huge population, but it's a mass of... There's true Canadians on this call, Brian. You're a minority here. Yeah, that's true. It is great not only in its size, but also in its spirit.

Yeah, and there's been a lot of good companies and a lot of good activity that, It's come out of such a small populist country. We've had bid access and what they've done in the ATM space. Coin Kite, who unfortunately shut down their wallet recently, but they've always done a good job. And there's a lot of number of exchanges and a lot of good things that, I mean, heck, you can say Ethereum came out of here too. And a lot of good things.

And it's been really cool to see the progression in Canada. Absolutely. So one of the projects you've been working on is CryptoKit, which was a browser extension. You mentioned it briefly. And now a new thing you guys have launched is called Jacks, right? So J-A-X-X. It's a wallet that both handles Bitcoin and Ethereum and Ether.

And it was just downloading it before, saying it off, you know, on my phone, on the computer. Really nice. What made you start or launch that wallet? Sure, so I'll give you the whole, I can give you the whole progression here. Cryptoket came about because of a gaming site that we had previously where basically we were almost a wallet at the time and we decided to, we wanted to create a wallet that just didn't have any friction. Didn't have usernames, didn't have passwords, weren't needed, didn't have to log into websites.

So that was the Chrome extension that we developed. And then a long break because of Ethereum. And then after the crowd sale, when the funding, you know, I'm more on the business side and a lot of the initial founders basically went other ways because of the, you know, the funding came in. It was going for developers. So I had a chance to get back to my other projects. And we created rushwallet.com, which is our HTML5 Bitcoin wallet, the CryptoKit Design. And then we spent about a year because we have a lot of customers coming into the ATM. and it's always been, you know, what wallet should we download?

And the first question, after they ask that is, what we have to ask them is, well, what kind of device do you have? Well, if you're on Android, you want to download this wallet, or if you're on iPhone, you want to download this wallet, but you can't get that wallet on iPhone because it's only on Android, and you can't get that one on Android that's only on iPhone. If you want to use it on your desktop, well, you can't use either of those two, so you have to use a different wallet. So we've really got to learn what the customer or what new users would want, and the goal was set to develop, a cross-platform unified wallet that look the same on every device and the way we've done this is by creating a single code base we create everything we do is JavaScript and HTML and instead of having to keep update on one app and then

develop the other one counter to that which you see everybody is kind of doing they'll develop the Android app and they don't do the iPhone because it's a separate code base and they can't keep up production of different features and things so they design it differently and then has to look differently what we want to do is really come up with that one user experience that you can use on your desktop, on your laptop, on your iPhone, on your Android, on your Chrome extension, your Firefox extension, on your desktop, Linux, Android, sorry, Linux Windows and Apple. So we created this platform that was developed around a single code base.

And the single code base allows us to wrap the app, wrap it up on a different platforms and deploy in a matter of like an hour. We can put out to our nine different platforms. And we can put new features in in one code base and deploy so rapidly. and we just take advantage of the onboard cameras or data or local storage, which is the only things that you really need to do differently, and the rest is all the single code base. So what you end up getting is a unified experience, no matter which device you're using.

We've got three desktop versions. We have two extensions, Firefox and Chrome. We have Android tablet, Android mobile. We have iPhone tablet, iPhone mobile. And then to be able to push out new fixes that go across them all without needing to worry about separate code bases allows us to be very flexible, very agile, and rapidly deploy. So we've had, I think we launched about a month and two weeks ago, our betas for ether and Bitcoin. And I think, yeah, they were the first Ethereum wallets, the first Ethereum mobile

wallets, the first extensions. And we now can, we put out our 18 versions so far. So we've got 18 beta versions that we put out. And we can literally put them a day apart if we want. We can, People ask us for a feature, no problem. We got that single code base. We pop the feature in. We wrap them up and deploy them across all the devices. You can sync between all devices. So by scanning a QR code, you can sync your extension or you can sync your Android, your iPhone.

It's got a single page experience. So everything you need is on one page. You're not flipping the different pages. We've designed it in such a way that it doesn't look like it's cluttered. We use animations really well. And we have that experience that, you know, with some wallets you have to kind of find where your QR code is, you've got to find where your address is, or you have to find how to send and receive. We really want to simplify the process. We want to make it very easy

for people to use, and we wanted our customers coming in to use the ATM to go, which wallet should I download, and we can tell them no matter what they're using it for, they can download jacks. So that's really what we tried to do is we wanted to unify the experience across devices. We wanted to offer Ethereum and Bitcoin. We want to bring those communities together. There's no reason for a lot of the, you know, the negativity between people that don't like Ethereum and the big, really, this is, this, they complement each other. I think they're both extremely useful. I'm a big fan for Bitcoin and Ethereum. And we're going to be adding a lot of other coins as well. Our plan is to be adding the next stages. We're launching the 1.0 version,

so we've got the audits done. We had Sergio Larner's team from Coinspect do the audits, which I think is really important. We also are very passionate about customer service. My cell number is literally everywhere if you want to call me, talk about the wallet, I'm here. That's a very important thing for the space as well to show transparency and to show that we're accessible and that I'm putting my name behind this. I'm putting a name behind what we do. We never hold or have access to customer funds. Everything's store client side. We don't require any information from the users.

You know, it's things that I've learned across the last few years and things that you can't really learn by just getting into the space new. You have to kind of understand where the false. are with other wallets, understand where the issues were with people holding onto other people's keys and coins, that's something I don't want to ever have to take responsibility for. Our code is not open source right now, but our code is fully auditable and available on our site for inspecting. So it's a business that I run with CryptoCit. It's something that I've been doing for three years. We put hundreds of thousands of dollars into the project. It's been funded by myself, and it's a project that we think can be the default wallet in the space.

matter which coin you're dealing with, no matter which country you're in. So internationalization is a big play for us down the road is really making this the, on all app stores across China. I was just in Shanghai last week and understanding that there are completely different culture out there. Well, culture, yeah, but a completely different animal in terms of the way that they treat wallets or the way that they download apps. And I think the community in North America and Europe hasn't done a very good job of reaching out to China. So that's one thing we really want to push.

And I want to get them out to India. All these different app stores around. the world. We want this to be that default wallet, the easiest one to use, the one you can use on multiple devices. And now we're going to start popping in integration. So we've got shape shift coming in. We've got all these integration ways to buy Bitcoin now. Because we don't take custodianship of customer funds, we don't have to worry about regulations with our wallet. We can then partner with localized companies and countries that are already offering services to buy Bitcoin. For example, we're going to be having Glidera in there. We're going to be

having shape shift. We're going to work probably with Uno Coin in India. We're going to work with places in China. So depending wherever you are, it's going to say, hey, this is a service you can use to buy Bitcoin and you can do it directly into Jax. So default wallet that can use across all devices on all app stores around the world, multiple coins, integrations. We really think we have a good opportunity in play to become that default wallet in the space. Yeah, awesome. I agree. I think that's needed. And you guys have definitely already at the certain stage, nailed a lot of things like with well. Now, one thing I'm curious about here, most listeners are probably somewhat familiar,

at least with SPV wallets and Bitcoin, so wallets that don't have a full node, but they still have a pretty good level of security. How does that work on the Ethereum side here? Is this also an SPV wallet, or is it more some? Yeah. So we're using EtherScan.I.O. right now to push transactions and show balances. Okay? We are a light wallet.

We've always used other people's APIs in order to push transactions and show balances. So for the longest time with Cryptokit in our extension, we always just use blockchain.info. Okay, that was their way that we were using to push transactions and show balances. Right now, we're using Blocker.com. On the Bitcoin side for Jacks, when Blocker went down a few weeks ago, we realized, and we've always known we need to add redundancy. So we've been working and we now have three, we have a system in place that back, that basically is a, if one goes down, we've got two others in place on the Bitcoin side. So we've working with blocker.io, we're working with BlockCyfer and we're working with blockchain. Info and we can actually pop in other ones as we want to add redundancy. So we use them to basically just push the transactions and to show balances.

The keys are stored locally on the client device, never leave the client device. So there's no security issues in that sense. We've got on the ether side, we only had the option of etherscan.io right now. And that doesn't, it's not where we'd like it to be. So we've actually got the coin fabric team right now, the guys from Argentina, and that's Sebastian and Sergio Lerner, part of these teams.

They're guys that work with us on larger projects. So we've got our in-house developers, and we also outsource larger projects to those guys, and they're doing right now, they're getting a full node set up for us and server, because we realized a lot of the libraries and a lot of the APIs and things in Ethereum really weren't up to where we needed them to be,

and we've realized that we need to create a lot of our own stuff. So we had been working on some of the JavaScript stuff that Ethereum had come out with. We had found some bugs and issues with it. We had presented to the community, which is great, And then we realize that we need to tailor some of this to our own needs. So our eventual goal is to have the backups of these third-party services, but to have our own full nodes that are going to be running it.

So we are getting it set up on the Ethereum side. We're not doing it as of yet on the Bitcoin side because there's enough redundancy in some of the other providers right now that we don't need to really focus on that. And then we're going to be setting up our system for dealing with all of the other coins that we're going to be integrating. And the path for the other coins is basically, if it's on ShapeShift, we're going to offer that coin. That's our judgment call for for adding new coins to jacks. It's, we're like, we're going to push that off to them. We're not going to decide which ones people might think are not coins. We should be getting into and we'll use them as that litmus test.

Where if ShapeShift offers it, you're going to be able to get that into jacks. So we're going to have to figure out those services as well and how we're going to be doing those because companies like block blocker.io, they don't offer, they only offer a few different coins. So we're going to have our own, we're going to probably be setting up our own servers for a lot of them, but we're getting that worked out now. So for now we're using third-party services. The goal is to use our own down the road and have the third parties as backups. So one of the major hurdles to wallet adoption, I think, is security and just having keys stored on your local machine or on your local phone.

Even for small amounts, I don't think it's particularly a good practice. and what has emerged as, I guess, a better practice, and this is, you know, our sponsor ledger that does this, is that, you know, you sign on a separate device, having a hardware device that does a signing. I think that's a pretty good solution for having a wallet that's functional and being able to have security at the same time.

Do you plan to integrate that sort of thing into jacks? And how will you, implement, if you, if you are implementing hardware security, how will you do that on all of these different coins? Sure. So, you know what, I disagree that I think that you, for small amounts or amounts on user might be comfortable with that, I disagree that having keys on your local device is some type of security issue or that it might not suffice for a person who wants to keep 50

bucks or 100 bucks on their device and not have to have a separate device in order to send those type of transactions. So it all comes down to choice. and it all comes down to usability and customer experience and what we've learned in the space is that people want all kinds of options. So they want the option of having a device like I do where I don't even want a password on my phone.

I don't want a password to send Bitcoin. I'll decide how much Bitcoin I want to keep on that device and I'll take responsibility that if something were to happen or someone gets my phone, that they could do it. Now, I could add a pin on my phone if I want. That'll help me. I can add a pin into jacks if I want on top of that as well, so that'll help me even further if I want.

It all comes back to users and what the user wants to do and it comes down to choice. Our model has always been, we want to offer the least amount of friction in the system. Okay, so we don't force passwords. We will put a notice there saying, hey, you might be able to, you might want to add a pin to your account. That's your choice. And then we want to take it all the way up to, hey, if you want to be securing large amounts, hardware device, we've got that coming out.

We actually have had a prototype done last year. And this is something that we're going to be implementing. So I believe there's a full range. And it's not about saying it's not secure. It's saying whatever the customer or the user feels, they should have that choice and option. And then they should have different levels that they can add security

or add different ways of doing it right up to that cold storage system. So I like flexibility. I like being given that choice. I don't like being forced into things no matter what it is. So that's what we've always tried to do with CryptoKip. Passwords are always been optional. We want to have a great user experience. And we still believe that since everything is client's side,

and you have an option on your phone, if you can put a pin on there and then you add a pin onto cryptic onto jacks that's kind of you know i'm i'm pretty comfortable with that system and i would be pretty comfortable telling people that i think that that's a good system and if you want you can use the desktop versions you can eventually we'll be having where you can add a hardware device to it we are talking to treasur but we're also coming up with our own system cool now one of the interesting things is that if you compare you know bitcoin to ethereum of course with ethereum and all this other things like contract and and taps, which add a whole level of complexity, right, because maybe you're not

just sending a simple transaction, but, you know, you're doing something more involved. How do you plan to handle that in Jax? Is there some kind of unified way you can handle that, or would you have to do something kind of anew for every single DAP, and then, you know, sort of add DAPs, the same way you add different coins? Well, the first start for us was, I'm not sure if you've seen, but we've got an advanced send feature on the Ethereum side that enables custom gas and adding data. So you can send to contracts through jacks now.

So we've got a little drop-down menu that comes up that says here's the recommended gas price that you should be sending to this contract. So it actually identifies first that it is a contract. So you put the address in, it identifies whether it's a contract or it's a payment address. If it's a contract, it pops open the advanced features and says, okay, here's some things that you can do differently. You can change your gas price. We recommend putting 100,000 gas.

You can change that to whatever you want. And here's a field where you can add custom data that you can send to the contract. So that's our first stage in actually differentiating between the Bitcoin and Ethereum sides is the ability to send to contracts. The way that we're going to be handling DAPs and the way that we're going to be handling, I don't want to get into too much because we have some big ideas on the hardware side that we're working on right now and the way that we're going to be offering a browser similar to what MIST is trying to achieve.

Our goal is to basically have that DAP Explorer that we're going to be building in. And we'll be announcing some of those things in the near future. But yes, it is a main thing for just not to be a wallet. Ethereum is not just not about being a wallet. It's about contracts. It's about sending contracts. It's about being able to access your deset of your apps. So that is definitely something that we're going to be focusing on.

The last thing we want to do is just to be this wallet that you're sending transactions for for Bitcoin or for, sorry, for Ethereum. It's much more beyond that, and we're planning to really push forward with that. Everything we do is about user experience, and I think it's been sorely missing in the Ethereum community so far. What we do is we're doing products for the masses. Our wallet is for the masses,

being made for the person who doesn't want to sit behind, behind the command line. That's what we do. Education-wise, we focus on, and I focus on things that my dad would be able to use, that things that, and we do it in language that that eight graders can actually achieve. So we put out infographics explaining what Ethereum is. We do it in a way that really breaks down what it is.

So there's a lot of devs that are focusing on it on Ethereum, and that's great. We need to build out that community. My focus is how is this going to get beyond the developers and how are we going to create things that the everyday person are going to be, other people are going to be able to use. So that's our focus. And for me, it starts with design. It starts with user experiences, user displays. And through that, we're going to start.

getting this message out to the general populace about the power of Ethereum and how it'll be being used in the next few years. So it's not just for us about a wallet or even sending a contract. It's going to be about how are you exploring your Ethereum contract? How are you exploring your decentralized applications? How is that store that we're planning on developing for your DAPS going to be done? And how will that be experienced by users? How will it be used in your entertainment system at home, on your TV? These are kinds of things that we're focusing on with our hardware devices,

and that'll tie into the wallet. It'll offer cold storage and a bunch of other things and excited to announce those first pictures in the next week or so. Is there a unified way that you can do sort of HD wallets across all of these different coins with only one seed where you can do like one seed backup and basically your whole Jack's wallet just pops up? Funny you ask and I'm wondering if you already knew that that's what it does.

So we've developed Jacks specifically to do that. So we have a single seed system, mnemonic, 12 words, that basically will allow you to derive any keys for any coin, anything in the future. Okay, that one backup, you write down those 12 words, you keep it somewhere safe.

That's all you'll ever need for your HD Ethereum, for your Bitcoin Ethereum. So I'm not sure if you're aware, we were the first to launch HD Ethereum. It just went out on our most recent beta launch. We developed it with, with some interaction with the Ethereum community, but we basically came up with it. We decided how it should be.

We're the first ones to launch it. It's working really well right now. And that single seed that you have from your initial install, you write it down, put it away somewhere safe, and that's all you'll ever need. Any other coin that we're adding in the future, that one seed will derive in an HD fashion, all the coins and your keys for every single thing that you'll ever need, including PGP. We actually put PGP into the Bitcoin curve. So what we did is we took the PGP curve and we put it into the Open PGP JS library,

which means that now you can, with your single C that you're getting with your Bitcoin keys, you're getting your Ethereum keys, you can also get out get your PGP keys. So communications for us, identity and payments is the three pillars that we do our products on. The payment side is obvious. That was the initial, when we'd even do CryptoKit in 2013. we had the payment side. We also integrated PGP in CryptoKit, where you could then send encrypted messages

through the system as well. We actually made PGP very easy in 2013. We were the first to really simplify the experience for PGP. We then will realize that you're still having issues with having to send your public keys to people, and it wasn't very efficient. So we wanted to bring the one seed, and we commissioned, again, the guys from coin fabric

to put the curve into Bitcoin and basically put the PGP key curve into Open PGPJS Library. So our goal is in the future to have, and we have one name integration in Jax. So you can actually send to one names. The goal in the future is also to be able to send messages again by just typing in somebody's name. And potentially through the one name system,

potentially on our own system that we're developing for Ethereum, we believe when you have payments, identity, and messaging, those are the three cornerstones that you need for any application. And all done in a decentralized fashion. is the way to go. We're literally, I think, a few years ahead of where the fintech industry is in terms of, again, not collecting user data, not holding on the customer funds, not having access to customer identities, customer use.

All these things that we've been developing for a few years now is where I think the future is and where it's going, and hence our name, Decentral. We only create things that are decentralized, things that can live on their own, things that if we ever go down, they can be imported into other systems with the standards that we use. So, and that all comes back to, again, that single seed. It's the way we design things.

It's a way that we can now add coins in the future, and everything can be derived from that individual single seed. Is that something that could also be implemented in other wallets? Or is that specific to Jacks? Like, if I, could I use that seed on, like, let's say the Ethereum wallet or, like, standard of Bitcoin wallet? What's going on now is kind of standards are being developed, and we feel we've come up now with the standards for how Ethereum is handling HD.

So that kind of is going to be pushing other people to be integrating those standards on the HD side for Ethereum. If we get there first and people agree that that's the way that it should be done, that then becomes a standard. And then Ethereum wallets that get developed will be using that standard, which with it again, yes, can tie into our seed system. It doesn't matter if you are just a Bitcoin wallet, that you can take our seed and you can put it into Mycelium. You're then going to get your Bitcoin wallet. If they were to integrate Ethereum, now that single seed that you've taken from our wallet put it into MySyllium, Mycelium would also generate and derive your Ethereum keys if mycelium decides to derive that. We basically created that standard that we think is going to be used for Ethereum.

And it's still to be to get there, I guess. It's been had great response so far from the community. We think that we've done it in a proper fashion. We coordinated and we did get, you know, we asked if this was the way that we think this, we think that this should be done. Do people agree? And it seems to be the way people think it should work. So yeah, that single seed can be used in other devices. And that again, that's how we always do things.

We don't want to be creating things that can only be used for us. And in case, God forbid, we ever go down, you take that seed, you put in another wall, you then have access to your funds. Cool, excellent. Well, I'm certainly looking forward to seeing the continued development of Jax. Today's magic word is Canada. C-A-N-A-D-A. Head over to letstock bitcoin.com to sign in, enter the magic word,

and claim your part of the listener award. Now, among your other projects, let's briefly talk about your conference. So you put on a conference before, which was the... Big Catar Expo in 2014. The Expo. And now you're doing the World Blockchain Expo this fall. What's different about this one and what will be the focus here? Okay, so yeah.

So the Blockchain World Expo is a... It's an event that I'm contemplating. I had planned to do one last year. And then, you know, and we talked about this, Brian, before we started recording here, things are changing all the time. You have to be so agile and fluid and pivoting. And as the industry develops, you have to completely be changing all the time. So 2014, we did a Bitcoin Expo.

This was for the community. It was really about bringing in the community from around the world, the speakers. You know, we had Andreas there. and we had Jeffrey Tucker, and we had, we had, like, 50 speakers of basically the who's who. We had, you know, Adam Levine was there. It was great. And it really, I had people coming away from that saying, you know, this is probably one of the best events that have been put on. It really was that community focus and that community feel.

It was something that I had seen in Argentina that I really enjoyed when I was at the conference there. And that's what we really wanted to bring to Toronto. We had multiple tracks there. We had a fireside chat lounge. We had a banquet dinner the night before it kicked off. It was a really great event. What's different about this one is now the focus is turning more towards. We've got the community.

There's a ton of events going on in Toronto and in Canada. This is now really about getting more businesses understanding and demystifying blockchain. Looking at the use cases, really trying to understand and break through that 95% of garbage that we're seeing out there and the press releases and really trying to dig down and say, okay, People need to understand what it's good for, what it's not good for. Stop trying to put things into blockchain that were never made for blockchain. Start taking a holistic technology approach rather than we need to blockchainify this, we need to blockchainify that. It's not made for that.

And you're going to be companies that we're realizing, and we've been consulting in the space for a while now. After the NASDAQ announcement, in Canada, we were the ones that people started calling and say, okay, we're behind now, we need to get caught up. What should we do? We need to blockchain this. we need a blockchain that. It's like, okay, slow down. You've got problems is what you have. You've got problems that need solutions. And you don't understand what technology is that might be out there in order to help you solve the problems. So what we want to do with this conference is kind of learning from our clients, the banks, stock exchanges that we've taken on in the central here.

It's really we want to demystify blockchain. We really want to get across what the power is of this technology. The power of this technology, I like to say very simply, is that with the internet you had communications, open up communications line globally. You could do it now without needing third parties involved, the mail system, media companies. We now can exchange value. We can exchange value globally. We can do it without third parties being in between. This is going to be a massive paradigm shift than what we've been used to.

You can now remove all of these unnecessary non-value-added people from the equation, and you can be replaced by automation and systems coming out. And that's the massive shift that people need to really realize. And that's this disintermediation that's going to be occurring down the road. This is why clearing and settlements are going to get completely changed. And these are easy, low-hanging things that are going to be done in the future. If you're not adding extreme levels of value between human interaction, you're going to get wiped out.

If you don't adapt and if you don't figure out new ways to monetize and new ways to add value between individuals, you're going to be gone. That's basically what I'm trying to get across in this. conference. That's what this technology is going to enable. It's also going to, you're going to understand what the specific use cases are now, what's going to be available in a couple years, what technology is ready now and what will be available in a few years, what's the noise and garbage and how do you really identify the ideas that people put onto a website and put a press release out and say, this is what we're doing. How do you break that down and say, yeah, that's,

that's garbage. You know, I can tell by looking at that website that that idea is not going to fly. You don't have the people behind it. You have an idea. but the idea doesn't have any substance. It's really demystifying and breaking down. And I want this event to be the event that people go and come away from and say, okay, I understand what blockchain is. I understand what it can be used for, what it can't be used for. We want to have a massive, we're going to have a massive expo hall there

where people can actually show the products that they're actually working on. There's nothing worse than companies that don't have any substance and don't have anything tangible before they make their announcements or they come up with their ideas. With Ethereum, you know, that was one of the main reasons we waited so long before the crowd sales, let's get those proof of concepts up. Let's get people working with it. Let's get them touching and feeling it before we actually ask them to contribute and buy something. It's what I've always done with my products. It's CryptoKate and Jacks. We don't say this is what

we're doing. We put it out and we say, here's what we've done. Use it, try it out, test it. There's a lot of noise, and I'm sure you guys are aware, a lot of noise and a lot of fluff and garbage out there. And it's really, it's really has to be broken down and it has to be simplified because these businesses really don't get it and they haven't been in the space long enough to really get enough talent and get enough developers and people who do do it starting to work on their projects. So I'm hoping this event is going to kind of bring everybody together in a way that we can demystify blockchain, show what where the use and value is going to be in the next few years. And that that's what we're trying to collaborate, gather with this global event. Our focus is

not just on Bitcoin, it's on blockchain, it's on other ones. We want everybody to come together and rally, but it's mostly a business and finance event where we're trying to gather and say, listen, guys, this is where you should be focusing your attention, this is where you should be focusing your proof of concepts. Great. And this is going to be on September 1921st, blockchain worldexpo.com. Of course, we'll link to that and also link to Jacks. So, people are interested in going to demand to trying it out. that you'll be able to find that in the show notes.

Now, with you, so you mentioned a little bit of consulting that you guys have been doing. In particular, I think you're very involved with the Toronto Stock Exchange. How did that come about and what's your role there? So again, 2015 was the influx of businesses and enterprise starting to look at blockchain. Again, it came after the NASDAQ announcement. So we started getting inundated by calls. We were getting called by, you know, Deloitte was one of our first clients, the guys that eventually became the Rubik's team.

And we just started getting calls from banks and from exchanges and basically, okay, we're behind, we don't know what we should be doing. Can you help us to identify our strategies to move forward? So we started working and we started setting up a consultancy business in early 2015. And one of our maybe third or fourth, fifth clients ended up being a company that was part of what's called the TMX group. The TMX group is the group that basically owns many companies in Canada, including brokerage and clearing and settlement. So we started working for them.

And we basically, through that relationship and engagement, it was asked of me to become more of a permanent member of the team. And as of January 1st, I became the chief digital officer. It was a position that was created for me at the Toronto Stock Exchange. It's not just the Toronto Stock Exchange. It's the TMX group. It's like we have a number of companies. And that's the umbrella company that owns the Toronto Stock Exchange. It owns the Montreal Exchange.

It owns the natural gas exchange. It owns brokerage firms. It owns clearing settlements. It's basically we have the whole system. So what I'm working with them on is digital capabilities and not just in the blockchain space, but basically how do you take these digital capabilities and disruptive technologies and how do you become a disruptor? That's kind of the focus for me is how do you work with organizations who really maybe haven't done companies like things like banks and things who maybe haven't done a great job of being flexible and agile and be able to really adapt new technologies. And how do you turn them into disruptors?

How do you turn them into and how do you transform their transform culture, transform processes, so that they can embrace these new technologies. So I work there, Chief Digital Officer. As you can imagine, it's another thing that I'm doing in my different projects. And I have very long days, so I do 16-hour days. So I'm between DeCentral and there, I'm back and forth all the time. But I love it, and I enjoy what I do. And it's kind of, it's my life right now, and it's planned to be for the next few years, and keep building out these ecosystems and infrastructures,

and especially with Ethereum, there's a big play there now, to just build out all the tools that people need to start developing on it. So this was kind of an add-on position. I'm enjoying it, and it's my goal to really help them. them, this organization that's so part of the Canadian culture that helped to move Canada forward as a whole. So I have a vision of where I want to take Canada, and TMX is supporting that vision and helping me carry out different initiatives, and they're the main sponsor for the Expo that we're putting on, and then there's a couple other initiatives that I'm going to be announcing, actually,

within the next week as well. It's really going to help move Canada forward in terms of fintech and innovation and bringing everybody together and collaboration and community. So that's what my strengths are, I think, is the community building and having people rally around and build up, get passionate people together and sectors growing. And so that's what we're going to do. And the TMX is kind of helping me to carry that out. And I'm in turn, I have a strategic partnership with them through both my consultancy firm and as chief digital officer.

And when you talk about this, you know, this emergence of fintech ecosystem in Canada, are you finding that it's mostly concentrated in Toronto and perhaps Montreal? Or, I mean, I'm so far detached from that now since I haven't lived there a long time. But are we seeing sort of other startup hubs and fintech innovation happening in some smaller centers as well? Or is it mostly focused on big cities? Yeah, I'd say it's mostly focused on big cities. cities. I mean, FinTech is still a relatively new term and something that, I mean, many people don't quite understand what it means. It's, you know, it's finance and technology coming together.

Since 2008, we want, we have, since the crisis, you have, you have users who want more choice. They don't have as much faith and trust in a lot of the institutions. And you've seen, you know, the technology companies, the apples, and companies coming in and starting to get involved in finance. As I said, I was in Shanghai about a week ago, and more than half of the traditional transactions of payments and things are now not going through their traditional banking sector. More than half of transactions and financial links are going through apps now, we're going through social media apps, things like WhatsApp and WeChat and actually I don't know if WhatsApp's part of the Wii chat and some of the other ones, basically, they're their whole payment networks now.

It's been completely in China because of the real. regulatory burden is really low, that these companies can go and start disrupting things. So when Canada's been slower, UK, it's much further ahead. And it's my goal to really bring, I've got this, this vision to kind of bring together the community of both FinTech, sorry, startups, and institutions around this common play to work together to build out the infrastructure in Canada. We've seen difficulties with Bitcoin companies getting bank accounts in Canada. At the same time, you're seeing banks who want to get involved in blockchain in these

technologies and asking these same companies to start doing work for them. And they're like, well, you can't even get those bank accounts. How do you want us to get going on this when we're struggling to do? So how do we get the environment better so that startups in disruptive text can start using the systems that everybody else can in order to help them grow? The big guys need little guys, little guys need big guys. Little guys need bank accounts. The big guys need strategic partnerships.

They need talent. It's really time for everybody to work together to build up the infrastructure on a common play. So it's still very small in Canada. The fintech community is definitely growing. I have some initiatives that I'm announcing that's going to help bring everybody together around that common goal to get out to policymakers, start educating them, giving them a plan of saying,

here, we all got together and said, think that this is where Canada should go if they want to be a global leader. If they want to be at par with UK and at par with, let's say, Singapore and some other places in China, we need to set up the infrastructure in a way that's going to encourage entrepreneurs,

encourage startups, encourage people to take risks, encourage people to get involved in these disruptive technologies and start forming communities around them and growing. We have an opportunity to create more jobs, create new sectors, and really figure out that when these massive disintermediation technologies really take hold, how are people going to make money down the road? That needs to be determined,

and that's the million-dollar question that nobody can answer right now is, as you're disintermediating people, where will these money be, where will money be made down the road, where will these new monetization strategies come out? And they will get figured out. And the countries that start tackling and understanding these technologies will be the ones that get the edge, start realizing it, and start succeeding. And that's my goal of what we can do in Canada.

And I'm really confident with the way that the regulators have kind of taken this weight back and see approach, that if we get to them and educate them and show them the positives that are going to come out of this, the different benefits that Canada is going to achieve from this, I think we can actually do that. So it's growing. I think we need to accelerate it, though. We need to expedite it. And there's many plans and things that we can do in order to do that. And that's what my focus of really my thought goes into is strategizing on how A, the TMX can get ahead. B, how the country and whole can get ahead by everybody working together in facilitating community growth, facilitating collaboration,

facilitating education, showing passion for the things that we're doing and showing how we can really come ahead in this global economy. So we're almost at the end of our show, but there's one interesting topic we can explore, perhaps a little bit, before we wrap up, which is sort of at the intersection, right? So at the moment, there's a lot of interest in blockchains and this sort of work you do with the Toronto stock exchange. There's lots of that stuff going on. At the same time, you're very involved in Ethereum community. Like, how do you see that playing out? where do you think it's going to be kind of will these

develop in sort of in isolation and there will be a lot of impact on both sides or do you think there's going to be a kind of an emerging of those two worlds down the line I think we're still we're waiting for those standards to be developed we're waiting for the HTML we're waiting for the HTTP

we're waiting for those common elements and this is like the biggest term I'm hearing you know meeting with with with R3 and meeting with the guys from Hyperledger, meeting with IBM, and it's really given me the opportunity to really see what everybody's worked for. And I think interoperability is like the key term now

that's being used. It's how are all these things, all these different projects are going to be interoperable? And that's the most important thing because if you want to exist down the road, you have to be interoperable. So for example, with Jacks,

if we created something that was proprietary that wasn't being used by other people, why is someone going to want to use us? So I think the key is, until that those standards get defined and developed, and we'll probably get there. I'm a little bit, you know, some of these consortiums and the way that they're bringing in so many different, you know,

banks and so. I don't know how the efficiencies are in place that they're going to be able to come up with something. I do believe it's the, it's the, it's the, these people that are, that are passionate and trying to solve these really complex problems that are being the ones that are going to be doing. I don't think it's going to be the banks.

I don't think it's going to be the banks. think it's going to be some of these larger companies. We really need to embrace and start forming partnerships and alliances with these, these organizations, these people, these technologies like Ethereum, that yes, are open. They're open systems that anybody can participate in. And that scares a lot of people because to me it's either a, you're putting up more walled gardens, which is what we're trying to see with some of these consortiums, I think. And they're saying they say the open source and they say this, but, or they say that the, you know, they've got the Linux project. really anything that's got wall gardens that's really slowing down

participation is not going to be something in the future I think is going to succeed I believe it's going to be the things like Ethereum the open systems that anybody can participate in are the ones that are going to have a trajectory and excel so much faster in terms of development so much faster in terms of solving problems because they can just

appeal to so many more people to be the one solving the problem if you look at the community around Ethereum if you look at the amount of people that are flooding into the developers the the problem solvers, the mathematicians that have taken hold and understand, you know, they're so passionate about the way Ethereum is going, those will give me the ones that are going to solve the scalability issues, the problems that are going to enable the globe and the global

population to start using these systems. So that's my personal belief. I believe that it's going to be the open systems that will win out, the ones that don't have the barriers for people participating in and being involved in. And I think the other ones are just going to take so long, potentially these wild gardens, are just going to take so long for everybody to kind of figure out what they're doing with it. By the time they do, the open ones are going to just take off. Those are the ones I think that we need to start preparing for. There's going to be, I think, in the future, that this technology, it's here. It still has limitations. It has scalability problems. But I believe it's going to be solved in the next few years. I think that's the thing that we need to

start focusing on, that these are the ones that everybody's going to be embracing. So that also doesn't have a very good business model behind it. And I don't know where some of these companies are going to be, they got to figure new ways to add value, new ways to monetize, and I don't have the answer to that. But if you stay ahead of the technology, understand where it's going to be five years from now and then work backwards, that's probably the best play rather than saying we're going to have to try to abide by the current financial systems and we have to do things this way. So we're limited with technology. So I don't know, that's my rant on that. Well, Anthony, thanks so much for coming on today. It was great talking to you, as always.

to hear about all your projects. And we'll certainly be watching out for the developments that come, both on your wallet side, but also hopefully we'll hear some announcements to it some point about what the effects are of your engagement with Toronto Stock Exchange, and, of course, the event that you're going to be putting on in September as well. So thanks so much for coming on. Thank you very much.

Just let everybody know with the Jax 1.0, We're expecting out very soon, the audited version, the official release is coming out. Yeah, that's at jacks.io. And then the blockchain world expo to September 19th to 21st in Toronto. Hope to see everybody there. Thanks a lot, guys. Yeah, indeed. And of course, we'll have links to all of this in our show notes.

So, for listening as well. Thanks so much for joining us. As always, we're part of the Lesteropiqon Network. So you can check out this show and lots of other shows on Lesterfibn.com. And of course, you can subscribe to this on any podcast application or also on YouTube. com slash epicenter on YouTube.com. slash epicenter at Bitcoin. And if you would like to, you can participate in our T-shirt contest, which basically means you've got to submit a review on iTunes and then we'll send you a T-shirt.

And soon we'll also be able to send you new stickers, which Sebastian has been producing, but still has to ship to mine. They're right here Okay That's backwards But Yeah Anyway You can imagine

If you can see it So soon we'll be We'll be adding that to the shit So anyway The next ones will all Go out with some stickers as well So thanks so much And we look forward to being back next to me

Thank you.