The Wolf Of All Streets - Taking Back Your Data From Big Tech with Charles Silver, CEO of Permission.io

Episode Date: November 12, 2020

According to Charles Silver, the CEO of Permission.io, every click on the internet is carefully tracked and packaged into a data gold mine that mega-companies use for their own gain. His company has found an ethical way to give its users the ability to profit off of their own digital footprint rather than having it sold to the highest bidder by multi-billion dollar companies. Scott Melker and Charles Silver further discuss living in an Orwellian society, the history of big data, working under Reagan, the debt death spiral, web 3.0, Permission.io, click farms and click fraud, crony capitalism, property rights issues, privacy as a false concept, ASK token, the data economy, the confusion of fiat currency and more. --- VOYAGER This episode is brought to you by Voyager, your new favorite crypto broker. Trade crypto fast and commission-free the easy way. Earn up to 9.5% interest on top coins with no lockups and no limits. Download the Voyager app and use code “SCOTT25” to get $25 in free Bitcoin when you create your account. --- ELECTRONEUM Electroneum, has gained widespread adoption providing a mobile-first payment solution to the world's unbanked, attracting more than 4M users worldwide in less than three years. They have since launched a new freelance marketplace, AnyTask.com, which is providing thousands of freelancers the opportunity to sell their services to buyers globally, without the need of a bank account. Learn more at Electroneum.com. --- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe.This podcast is presented by BlockWorks Group. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworksgroup.io

I'd like to thank my sponsors, Voyager and Electroneum, for making this episode possible. Stay tuned for more info on them later. What is up, everybody? I am Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast. Today's guest is a thought leader in finance, digital advertising, big data, and blockchain. Having successfully founded multiple companies over a span of 30 years, Charles has stayed on the cutting edge of trends and markets, which led him to the blockchain space. As the CEO of Permission.io, he's reshaping how everyday people interact with their data, something I plan to dig into in this interview. Hopefully, we can better express how serious of an issue we are currently facing in

the digital age. So, Charles Silver, thank you so much for coming on and taking the time. Well, thanks so much for having me. So before we get into the questions, once again, you're listening to the Wolf of All Streets podcast, where twice a week we talk to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin, finance, trading, art, music, sports, and politics. This show is powered by BlockWorks Group, a media company with over 20 podcasts in their network, and you can check them out at blockworksgroup.io. If you like the podcast and follow me on Twitter, then you should check out my website and join my newsletter, where I share all my trades, charts, analysis, market thoughts, lessons on improving your trading and investing. You can find all that at thewolfofallstreets.io. So now to get back to what's important, and that is our wonderful guest today. So to get right into it, how pervasive do you think these mega companies are? Are they really always listening? Absolutely. I mean, Google, Facebook are amongst the most successful companies of all time. And they've created that success

by their ability to collect data in multiple, multiple, multiple ways. So we're in the data economy, and these guys have been the best at collecting data. And what risks does that pose to us? Obviously, I mean, they would argue that they collect data so that they can better target ads to us and sell us what we want and make the shopping process more efficient. But I doubt that's the truth. No, it's very dangerous having these massive central companies collect all this data on us. And we can see it, you know, we hear a little bit about it in the political season that we're in, about how they shut down certain ads and certain tweets and certain posts. And you can just see,

it's in the news every day, how powerful they are when they want to shut down a certain voice. Well, you just mentioned the news and how that's in the news every day. How much are they playing a part in what news we actually see or whether we're seeing real or fake news in general. Absolutely. And, you know, I hope many of your audience have read 1984 by George Orwell. But so much of what Orwell wrote about 50, 60, whatever, 70 years ago is actually happening with these incredibly powerful companies. That's interesting. In 1984, we were talking about Big Brother, obviously, and Big Brother was more of a government entity and less a corporate entity, right? So, conceptually

similar, but not the same thing. Now, one could argue that we have more to fear from these large companies than we actually do from our governments. Well, absolutely. And they're very tied together. Trust me, the CIA, the NSA has a total window into Google and Facebook's data. They absolutely do. And what do they use that data for? Well, I believe they, you know, just looking for bad actors, but it can lead to much more. Right. I mean, the argument that they're looking for bad actors seems like it would be a positive,

but I fear that obviously it sort of could entrap good actors or put other people at risk and not just be, it reminds me of like the movie Minority Report. Remember when they could identify a criminal before they actually did the crime or something like that. So, I mean, it's not really just for looking for bad actors, right? Correct. It's a very slippery slope. Once the government has a window, they don't slow down. I mean, it just expands and expands and expands what they're capable of doing. So what is permission.io? Let's dig into what you're doing and what you're doing about it. has one mission, which is to allow individuals to be compensated for all this data that's collected about us everywhere. And it's not just our browsing online or our profiles online, but it's any linkable data set. In the data economy that we're in, people don't realize that whether it's the Department of Motor Vehicle records, our voting records, our mortgage records, our credit scores, data about us has been sold

and resold and repackaged over and over and over again, way before Google and Facebook came on the scene. So what we're about is allowing individuals to get control of that data, take ownership control, and then be compensated for that data. And how do we do that? How do you do that is by first become a member on permission.io, which allows you to link to outside databases. And then advertisers who want to reach you, they ask permission. And if you want to see an ad or you want to volunteer to view an ad, you get compensated via our crypto that we've created, ASK, to make it all happen. So how do we recapture all of the data that's already out there or already being sold? Is there a solution for that? Well, over time, and that's a big part of our roadmap, is allowing individuals to link to these outside databases and give permission to use that data for, you know, for the purpose of getting appropriate offers for us as an individual.

So, you touched on something really interesting a minute ago that I had never really considered. You said that they've been gathering and selling and repackaging our data long before the Googles and the Facebooks of the world. Can you talk about, I guess, the history and how we got here then? Well, it's interesting. Think about financial records. I mean, we're all aware of credit scores. Our credit card history, our mortgage history, our loan history, that's all been, you know,

for the last, you know, 40, 50 years, been a huge, huge business. I mean, we've heard of Experian. You know, this is a company that just creates our FICA score and that they serve all the banks subscribe to that so that, you know, what the whole financial world long before Facebook and Google had been working on individuals data. Magazine subscriptions. Same thing. Whether you're a subscriber to Forbes or a primary, how often you vote, that's sold and repackaged. The car that you own, your motor vehicle registration. The state of California made $50 million last year selling motor vehicle records. So, data fuels so much of the economy and the collectors of the data have been the ones that benefit. The individuals who actually own the data, who I believe, I mean, this whole idea is a property rights issue, is that's my property, but I'm not getting any benefit from it. It's interesting. It seems I'm not getting any benefit from it. It's interesting. It seems like there's almost two sides to it. There's either A,

you attempt to go off the grid completely and erase your data or recapture it from all these companies, or you accept that the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, and there's nothing we can do about it, but we should get paid. That's exactly right. And the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, and there's nothing we can do about it, but we should get paid. That's exactly right. And the cat is out of the bag. There's no way to keep your data private. Privacy is almost a false concept. It is because your data is out there. I mean, unless you live off the grid, you don't have a bank account, you don't have a credit card, you don't have an electric bill, your data is out there and out there and repackaged and resold. And that's why the issue is about ownership of data and compensation, not about privacy. And, I mean, privacy is an important issue, but in reality, it doesn't exist. Right. So maybe there's levels of privacy. We accept a certain level of intrusion that the government was watching you through your webcam, that would maybe

be a whole other level of privacy violation. Or, I mean, we talk about central bank digital currencies now, you know, and obviously you're well informed on crypto. You have one for your company. But, you know, Bitcoin has a certain level of privacy. And if the dollar becomes digital, you'll no longer have privacy in your transactions, right? Well, that's exactly right. I mean, you nailed it.

There are levels. But still, in general, the concept of privacy is not, if you live in a modern world, is not a real concept. It's about ownership and compensation in our view. Okay. So, tell me how it looks practically when you go to permission.io. What happens? What's the compensation levels look like? Who can I choose to serve me ads? All of that. Our focus is e-commerce, advertising for e-commerce. You sign up on permission.io. It's very easy to set up an account. Username, password, 2FA

allows you to participate. You then can watch product videos that you can then purchase items in our store. But the key on permission.io is to prove the model. Our goal is to get ASK out there in the world of e-commerce where other merchants are offering ASK as a reward to watch product videos, to check out, to open emails, etc. So that's our platform is about you set up, you get a wallet. Now you can earn ASK and hopefully hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of places down the road. I love the ticker ASK ask. That's it's really It really is perfect. So I'm curious, why did you choose to use a cryptocurrency

as the reward system? What drove you in that direction versus rebates or US dollars or some other sort of reward for using the platform? Well, crypto is a perfect use case for rewards. Think about it. The average American has over 12 rewards accounts. But you really only care maybe about one. Like I love my Marriott Bonvoy points. But I'm signed up for dozens of programs. But I don't care about them because I may just visit that retailer once a year. Crypto, it's a perfect use case because it's liquid, it's tradable, compoundable.

Versus Microsoft rewards points, you get rewarded to use the Bing search engine. But what am I going to buy on Microsoft? I mean, what good is a Microsoft point? I'm not buying an Xbox or anything. So, you know, rewards are siloed and they're not liquid. So that's why crypto is the perfect use case for a rewards program. And so specifically, what are the use cases and rewards tied to ASK? Do you stake?

I mean, you talked about compounding. Is there a way to compound your gains, things like that? Absolutely. I mean, we don't have it on our site now, but you'll be able to compound and stake on our site. There's all kinds of other things in the works that we just launched literally just a few weeks ago. So, we have a very long roadmap. Yeah. So, if individuals take ownership of their data, what happens to the people that used to get

paid for your data? Well, they're still going to get paid. I mean, Google and Facebook aren't going away anytime soon, although I can make the argument that they've peaked. And so much a part of why digital advertising, in particular for e-commerce, is so ripe for change is people aren't really aware of the fraud in the system. I mean, half of the money that Google gets paid by big advertisers goes to hackers and fraudsters. Organized crime, click fraud is the second biggest business in the world in organized crime. It's a $50 billion business. So I'm Procter & Gamble. I'm paying Google hundreds of millions of dollars a year. I know half my money is going to criminals.

It's easy. The Google system, you know, you can create a website very easily. You put in the pixel, you start running Google ads, and then you could just keep clicking on it with bots and algorithms. And half the money that Google gets is fraudulent. I had never heard that stat before. That's really interesting. So you're saying basically they create a fake landing page, then they basically manipulate the algorithm to get their ad to the front by clicking on it with bots. And then they direct someone who thinks they're going to Procter & Gamble, for example, to a fake website to steal your money. Absolutely. Yeah. Research at click fraud is a huge business. I mean, one of the reasons why Facebook got rid of their likes, it's all fraud. All fraud. I mean,

you know, click farms in the Philippines and Indonesia all day long just banging away on these things. So scary. I mean, there's been a huge, obviously, that's a big issue in crypto, you know, fake advertising thing. But Uniswap for a very long time, apparently, when it was really getting popular, there was someone who was running fake Google ads and they had gotten them to the top of the algorithm. So it was the first thing you saw and people would click on it thinking they were going to the normal Uniswap site, attach their MetaMask wallet and see their MetaMask wallet be drained. Exactly. And we've learned firsthand, this is one of the big problems that we've been facing and we've solved is how to verify users and make sure they're a real user. We've been working on this for a couple of years and it's a huge problem.

So is Google held accountable in any way, shape or manner for those fraudulent clicks? It's their algorithm that's being exploited. No. And they have no incentive to shut it down, even though they say they do, but they don't. Because, you know, as a massive public company, you know, all the pressure is on them to grow their revenues. If they cut out, if they put a massive effort into shutting down click fraud, it would be a huge hit to their revenue. Huge. And that's why Google, I mean, you've seen peak Google. Not that it's going away, but their ad business, their dominance in the ad business is, in my view, peaked. Is that a result of Facebook or do you think that they've collectively peaked

and there's something better out there? Yeah, they've collectively peaked. I mean, you know, companies like ourselves, I mean, there's hundreds and hundreds of startups that are working to allow individuals to take control and earn from their data. And, you know, these massive, just like how all of crypto is about decentralization, right? I mean, think about each individual as their own platform. That's really where we're working towards. The next generation of the internet is about you and me and everybody having their own ad platform.

And if an advertiser wants to reach us, well, here it is. You can reach me and there's going to be all kinds of ways to do that. And that's really what Web 3.0 is. Does Facebook have as big of a problem with click fraud as Google? They have a big problem. They have other problems. It's a different problem. I mean, Google's the most easily understood, but Facebook has the same problem.

Twitter does too. I mean, they all do. What are the other big problems that a Facebook or Twitter might have besides click fraud? Obviously, we know about fake news and the ability to reach people en masse with things that aren't true. But what other, I guess, threats to us as individuals do they pose? Well, besides just being able to control the dialogue in the newsfeed and take advantage of our data, they don't really pose a threat. And by the way, these are great companies. I mean, I'm an entrepreneur and I admire these companies tremendously in many ways. I don't like the way

they run their businesses, but they still created massively successful enterprises. And so you have to admire them for that. I grew up actually with one of the first, like he was like, might've been employee number one at Google, Craig Silverstein. I grew up actually with one of the first, like he was like, might've been employee number one at Google, Craig Silverstein. I think he was the CTO. And he, I mean, he basically built the entire thing with them in Stanford, but he left years ago because he didn't like the direction that they were headed with regard to these things. And he went to work at a Khan Academy. It's like, I'm just going to go educate children instead, you know, actually with a mission. But I think that, you know, there's probably a lot of people who worked at these companies early and had a different vision

for what they would be from what they became. I don't think that most people, you know, I think Google probably when they started, they wanted to build the best search engine in the world. Right. And it's interesting. I mean, it's such an interesting case. Sergey and Larry Page recognized the power that they potentially had controlling the gateway to the Internet. And that's where they came up with their great line, do no evil. You know, that we're here to do good and we are not going to let our technology and tools do evil. Guess what? Do no evil is erased from the Google culture. They don't talk about it anymore.

And they couldn't control it if they tried, like you said. I mean, they put together a system that's easily exploited. Right, right. And that's why I think they've peaked. And I think they also recognize that, you know, with Alphabet and all their divisions, et cetera. And now they have their antitrust lawsuit, which is going to, you know, slow them down for years. And not that I'm in favor of government, you know, coming in and breaking up companies. By no means am I in favor of that, but

it's just another box that says we've seen peak Google. Yeah, it's not like we trust the government to be doing these things in our best interest, right? They're not going after Google for you and me. No, markets do wonderful things. They just have to be free to operate. Interesting you touch on that because I would argue, and I do often with people on this show, that we have nothing even remotely like a free market in this country anymore. No, we have a crony capitalist system. And no, free markets, you know, that's a hundred years. You know, when the Federal Reserve was

created in 1913, the notion of free markets went out the window. I think Bitcoin is a free market. It is. For the closest thing that we can find to one, I should say. Yeah, crypto is so inspiring to me because it really solves so many fundamental problems in our economy. It's a wonderful, wonderful thing. And it inspires me. Bitcoin obviously started the whole industry, but the industry is growing. And, you know, fiat currency, if you really examine what it is, you know, it makes no sense. I mean, it's like

talking to my kids and playing Monopoly. You see this Monopoly money? That's what fiat currency is. It has no foundation. It has no controls. It has no limits. It's hands down my favorite place to buy and trade crypto and it's 100% commission free. Voyager gives you easy access to more than 40 top crypto assets and you can instantly transfer cash from your bank account so you never miss a trading opportunity. Even better, you can now automatically earn interest on your crypto holdings. Currently, they're offering 6.5% interest on Bitcoin and 9.5% on USDC. Yes, you heard that correctly. 9.5% interest. And there's no limits or lockups, which means your funds always stay liquid. Find out why so many people are making the switch to Voyager. Visit investvoyager.com or search for Voyager on the iTunes or Google Play Store and get $25 in free Bitcoin when you

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inspired by crypto and you created Ask ASK as a cryptocurrency. So how did you discover Bitcoin and crypto in the first place? Great question. I built a company called Real Age, which was a permission marketing company in the early dot-com era. You may be familiar with it because my partner, Dr. Mehmet Oz, was our spokesperson and gave us all of the visibility. We sold the company to Hearst in 2007. And that's when Dr. Oz went on television and became, you know, America's doctor. I started investing in tech companies. And there was this company called Algebraics, which was all about turning data into mathematics. I became chairman, but unfortunately it was exactly how not to do a startup. Focus on a technology, not a business problem.

It's an incredible technology and I invested an enormous amount of money into it and raised a lot of money. But it was academics, again, building a technology, not solving a business problem. I came in as a CEO, and that's where I'm taking this permission model to the next level. Along the way, a pundit named Robin Bloor, a mathematician, a PhD in mathematician, he's the one who got me. Everybody has somebody who got you into crypto. And he was the guy, Robin's a very prominent, you know, technology pundit. He said, you should take this into crypto. And that's when it started three or four years ago. Yeah, that's what I mean. That's effectively when I discovered it as well, like late 2016,

early 2017. That seems when a lot of us kind of discovered it. That's the hump, the tipping point sort of from the people who are really early to the mainstream, I think. That's about when I found it too. It's interesting though, you talk about, clearly you created a company and built a company in the dot-com era, but that means that you survived the dot-com bubble and pop and were able to sell your company afterwards, correct? What was that like? Correct. I mean, it was brutal. I mean, we all know, you know, what happened in 2017 in crypto, you know, the ICO boom leading to $20,000 Bitcoin at the end of 2017, January 2018. It was almost like identical to the NASDAQ boom and bust in 99, you know, going into 2000. I mean, the NASDAQ bubble was much bigger, frankly, I mean, much, much bigger. But I remember raising money at $125 million pre-money valuation, we had no revenue. And I'm like, this is crazy. And, but everybody took it because it was there. But, you know, it was very similar. People had real businesses, fought through it. Most people went away because they were able to raise money, but they didn't have a real business. The real believers and the real business builders stayed at it and created enormous wealth. But you had to fight through it. It was a huge grind. And the 2018 bust in crypto,

it's the same thing. Yeah, most people were the pets.com and not the Amazon, I guess. Yeah, that's when I graduated college in 1999. So I kind of came out of school. Everybody was, I went to University of Pennsylvania, everybody was headed to Wall Street, and then there was this huge bubble pop. And then funny, so for my generation, all the people who went back to business school then came out of business school in the 2008 crisis and couldn't find jobs. It's kind of funny to think back to those times. But you touch obviously on the ICO boom and we did see a lot of the same things.

What was it like for you then building this company through a crypto winter, much like that, you know, tech boom pop? It was, again, it was tough. And, you know, the only message, I've been building companies for 30 years, and there's only one real formula. And that's grit. You know, you just got to fight through it. You got to have the grit and the commitment to work your way through grit you know you just gotta fight through it you gotta have the grit and the commitment to work your way through you know market swings and uh it was tough you know a lot of people thought crypto was over and you know in the winter of 2018 early 2019 yeah so what do you make of companies, what we're seeing with tech companies now,

the Teslas and such with the same kind of ludicrous valuations, you know, history repeating itself? Absolutely. Markets repeat, repeat, repeat. It's been the same for thousands of years, you know, whether it was the South Sea bubble in the early 1700s or the tulips in the 1600s. I mean, history is just loaded with manias. And we are living in a mania right now around FANG. And it's going to correct. There's just no question, you know, that the leading tech companies and their valuations have no basis in reality. And it's a little scarier this time, I would argue, because there's such a large percentage of the market now. Correct.

And people are going to get really hurt. And it's unfortunate. There would be no market if people didn't get hurt. Unfortunately, it's kind of the unfortunate nature of the beast, as you said. So you also touched on something else. Obviously, you've had some great successes, but it sounds like you've also had some hard times, right? You've started companies that were not successful and have committed large amounts of your own capital and raised money. What is the experience like? I don't want to say failing because there's always something on the horizon, but seeing something that you were so passionate about invested in not come to fruition.

Well, I haven't had that happen and we started really building this in 2017. You know, going into the fall of 2017, you know, it was just like incredibly positive. But then when Bitcoin peaked and crypto peaked in 2018 and 2019 were tough years, really tough. Raising money, recruiting great employees. But I never lost a second of commitment or belief that we had the right product market fit. And now things are coming back and it's very exciting did I read correctly that your first business was effectively a Jiffy Lube competitor oil changes correct I actually worked in Washington DC right out of I went I

graduated from the University of Michigan I got a job with the senator from Michigan Carl Levin. And then I subsequently worked for his brother, Sander Levin, who was in the House. And I spent a few years in Washington. And luckily for me, I had Ronald Reagan was the president then. And I became a libertarian. I mean, there was just no question. Reagan had a huge influence on me. And I wanted to go into business. And I started, I was able to gather some money together, got a quick oil change store going, and it was a big success. And it led to 17 more stores. And I actually sold it to Jiffy Lube. That's incredible. So how many times have you

started and exited businesses? Three. And I've also started a company that, a financial services company that has seven publicly traded ETFs, including the first blockchain equity ETF, BLCN. Of course. I don't know if you've heard of that. Of course. Yeah, that was my creation, the BLCN. And that company is still going and hasn't exited yet, but I have high hopes. Well, do you believe that we'll see an actual Bitcoin ETF? Absolutely.

I mean, in essence, we already do. The grayscale trusts and there will be, you know, there'll be multiple Bitcoin ETFs like there are for gold and silver and other, you know, assets. There will absolutely be a Bitcoin ETF and crypto ETFs. I hope so. Those trusts are inefficient, obviously. They trade with such a tremendous premium and they're just not great products. Although I'm sure that we will see more efficient and better products in that arena too, even before we actually see an approved ETF. But I think that an ETF would be a huge, huge benefit to the market for, you know, A, for just mainstream adoption and trust, but also just for institutional

investment to be able to, you know, park their money in a product like that. I totally agree. And the company I mentioned, RealityShares, applied, you know, like the Winklevoss twins and, you know, dozens of Vanguard. I mean, I think everybody in the ETF business has applied to the SEC to get a ETF, a Bitcoin ETF approved. I think it's going to happen. It has to happen. And when Bitcoin really starts moving, you know, when it hits 20,000 again, the pressure on the SEC will be there to make it happen. Talking about the SEC and regulation in the United States, how do you navigate that owning a cryptocurrency in this country? Because we all know that the regulatory environment here is

murky at best and difficult to navigate. So what does that look like for you as the, you know, effectively the owner of a cryptocurrency? Yeah, it's ambiguous, to put it mildly. We have a foundation out of Panama that issues all of our crypto. We are really crazy about compliance. We've done everything possible, humanly possible, to be compliant, but we still all of our crypto comes out of Panama. But it's unfortunate. And I think you're seeing a lot of companies move to Switzerland and

Singapore or Cayman because of that. And I think the US will soon start creating clear, unambiguous crypto regulations. What happened with the controller of the currency a few months ago, allowing banks to be custodians, that was huge. It was huge. Can you talk about why that's so big? I agree, but it sort of floated by as a bit of a non-event compared to the significance, I believe. I agree. Allowing banks to be custodians of crypto is basically putting the checkbox that

this is a real asset, consumers want to own it, and they should be able to have custodians hold it that are not just Coinbase, allowing the banking system to participate. I mean, the banking system is an anachronism in many ways. It's kind of a bailout of the banking system, because more and more assets are going to be leaving the banking system into crypto. And so it was kind of a savior for the banking system to allow them to keep growing their asset base. And they'll be able to loan against it.

Exactly. Exactly. I mean, just another asset for them to, you know, make probably bad loans on. But yes, that's a topic for another. So, I mean, navigating that regulatory environment when it's such a gray area. Do you think that that I mean, do you think that they have to become more clear with the regulation? Or do you think that literally everyone's just going to leave the United States and it's going to fall completely behind in crypto? I'm hopeful that the U.S. becomes unambiguous and starts to come out with clear regulations.

Heather Pierce on the SEC is a huge advocate for crypto. The fact that Fidelity, JP Morgan, I mean, every major Wall Street bank recognizes where the world monetary system is going. So it's just a matter of time. Yeah, but I still have to pay taxes on my Bitcoin sale if I buy a cup of coffee. That's correct. If I buy a cup of coffee, I've now sold my Bitcoin and I need to somehow account for that in my taxes on this ledger of 4,000, 5,000 transactions a year. I mean, it's so absurd. It is absurd. Hopefully, it will get better and clear. And I think the wider adoption, the next cycle,

I mean, and it doesn't matter who gets elected because it's all baked into the cake. I mean, the trillions of dollars of stimulus and money printing is going to make crypto prices go really sky high. I believe it. And same with gold and everything that's non-dollar denominated. So, so much of the financial system is moving in this direction. They have to create... I tweeted something to this effect very recently where I said, obviously, so you were in Washington under Reagan, and fiscal conservatism was a real thing.

People generally voted Republican because of the way that they viewed the economy or how the economy should be managed. Right. Then obviously, Clinton balanced the budget or, you know, eliminated the deficit, passed that on to Bush. And from there, it's just all completely exploded. And now I don't think, as you just touched on, either political party can make the case to being fiscally responsible, right? So now we're so far out of control that there's really no way to fix it, in my opinion, or no party can claim that they're the better one to do it, considering the last decade. Yeah, no, the momentum is there. I mean, when you add up not just the reported treasury debt of $28 trillion, you throw in contingent liabilities, it adds up to another $150 to $200 trillion. The numbers are so mind-boggling

that there's just the interest on the federal debt is almost going to take up the whole federal budget. It's a death spiral, a debt death spiral. There's no way out. And I believe in history, there's only one way it's ever ended, right? It's never ended well for any country that's had this level of debt to GDP and any of the obvious metrics. I mean, it's sad, but I guess we can get back less on the macro and more back to what you were doing. So I'm very curious with permission.io, how much money can I theoretically make on my own data? Well, it's a great question. We anticipate we've modeled, you know, several hundred dollars a year,

depending on who you are. Obviously, the more shopping you do, the more purchases you make online, you can earn much more. It all depends on how much shopping and how much you participate in online commerce. A big participant can earn significant money. And for many people in the world, it can be very meaningful. Very meaningful. Do those numbers go up as you gain more customers and more people sign up to the site and you're able to pool more influence?

I mean, is that sort of how it works? Exactly. The bigger the network, the more valuable the network. I mean, network effects, I mean, like a phone, the more people who have a phone, the more valuable a phone becomes. And that's the same with us. We are trying to build a massive network of participants. It's not just about bringing people to permission.io.

It's about getting retailers to adopt ASK as a reward system. That's really our goal. The more retailers, the more users, the more valuable ASK becomes. So, I mean, this is really a legitimate potential path to mainstream adoption for cryptocurrency. Correct. It's all about, have you read the book Crossing the Chasm? I never have. It's actually like number four on my list at the moment. It's a great book. It's a universal, there's a set of universal principles, even though it was written by Jeffrey Moore in the 80s. All technology products have the same life cycle. It starts with the early adopters, the geeky people who love complexity.

And it's about how do you get from early adopters to mainstream? That's the chasm. I believe we're a project that can really, truly cross the chasm. And that's what we're trying to do is to make crypto super easy for mainstream users. But in order to do that, you got to bring the early adopters with you. You got to have the support of the early adopters who love complexity and technology. And they're not, you know, and that's exactly what the early Bitcoin adopters are.

But it's interesting. I was going to say with Bitcoin, there's this sort of battle between the early adopters are. But it's interesting. I was going to say with Bitcoin, there's this sort of battle between the early adopters and everyone else because they almost want it to remain theirs. You know, I don't begrudge them for that at all. I totally get it. But like we talk about things like it being really bullish that the OCC is going to allow custodying crypto. If you're an early adopter of crypto and its use case of Bitcoin, you say, I hate banks. Get them out of here. Right. So with what you're doing, I think there's a much

more like sort of natural path there. But, you know, with Bitcoin itself, there really is, I think, a battle between the early adopters and mainstream because maybe the early adopters don't want it to get there. Totally correct. And the early adopters, the really early adopters, they love complexity. They love being in this club that, hey, I understand this. I can work with it. I can use it. But Joe on the street can't. And so that creates some exclusivity for me.

But we see ourselves as the company who bridges that chasm between the early adopters to anybody on the street to use it. So how do you get to the point where every vendor is utilizing ASK as their rewards program? What does that path look like? It's extremely ambitious. It's a lot of hard work is what it is. It's a lot of out there convincing people why ASK will serve them better to build loyalty and trust with their consumers. A lot of it is the market has to evolve and has to catch up. You have to see companies like really big players. And the biggest announcement

of 2020 was when PayPal announced they're going to start accepting crypto and work towards, they have 26 million retailers that use PayPal. It's funny because we all get fixated on the 325 million number, whatever it is, you know, how many users there are in PayPal. But just what you just said to me, the real story is the merchants on the other side. It's the ability for them to take it, not the ability for them to accept it, not as much the ability, which is still huge, of those other people to buy it. Right. And our roadmap is all about creating plugins

for Shopify, Magento, BigCommerce, Volusion, WooCommerce. So any e-commerce retailer that uses one of those platforms can easily install a plugin and then offer ASK through the shopping journey. Start with watching a product video. You earn ASK. Put your product in the cart. You can earn ASK. Check out. You can earn ASK.

Get an email. Open your email. Earn ASK. That's our vision. That's where we're going. It's really so interesting. So you're looking to integrate with existing networks, not reinvent the wheel. Yeah, there's no you don't want to compete with Shopify. You just want to be a layer on top of it where people can earn their rewards by participating in the activities they're doing anyways.

Because we all watch those videos anyways. right? And we all open our emails. Exactly. I mean, it's very much, I mean, the brilliance of Google, by the way, was, I mean, obviously their search engine is the foundation of it. But when they bought DoubleClick and created AdSense to make it easy for any publisher, big or small, to run Google ads and get paid. That's what made Google, Google. And we're thinking similarly, create a plugin, easy to install, and allow any retailer to offer ASK. I mean, I read the book, The 4-Hour Workweek years ago. I'm sure you know it by Tim Ferriss, and if you don't, but basically it was a map to quitting your job by just running Google ads. And if you run $10 of ads and you know that you can make $12 on that $10 ad, scale up and do that

infinitely until you're rich and don't have to have a job, right? I mean, it's absolutely brilliant if you know how to use the system. Right. And that's what hackers have done, by the way. I mean, hackers have created massive networks that run Google ads. Run bots. So scary. So scary, though. I mean, bots are everywhere. In trading, we see, I'm a trader. I see it, I mean, all the time. You can watch an order book and see the bots just having added in there and you're a human trying to compete with that. It's nearly impossible. I would assume it's basically that way in every industry. Correct. Absolutely correct.

So what happens when everything becomes automated and bots and they don't need any of us anymore? I'm a believer in progress and humanity. I think ultimately all this technology works to our benefit. I agree. But there are certainly challenges for sure. So you guys, you mentioned you just launched, right? I mean, this is fairly new, what you're doing. Yeah. We've been trading just for less than barely 30 days. The platform has just launched where you can sign up and earn ASK, go shopping, watch product videos. But permission.io is a place where you can set up a wallet that allows you to earn ASK anywhere. We're not a destination.

I mean, you need to sign up on permission.io, but the idea is you can earn ASK throughout the Internet. And so all those integrations will come back to your own wallet? Correct. I mean, earning ASK will flow to your wallet if someone has adopted the plugin is is the wallet uh is it on is it on a browser is it on your phone how's the wallet work it's on the browser it's just uh uh it doesn't really have unique characteristics other you know well it's got a whole whole right and so what what other uh big things can we look for on the roadmap? Like, you know, in the next six months, in the next six years, what can we look for from you?

Well, besides the plugin that allows any retailer to offer ASK, the key to us is using our data algebra technology to allow you to connect to any linkable database. So there's Google. You can log into Google through permission, and now advertisers can have access to that Google data. But you're benefiting from it. LinkedIn, Twitter, anybody. And that includes overtime health records, financial records, anything that's linkable. We're creating the ability for you to be your own ad platform. And that's a big, big picture. And that's where we're working, spending an enormous amount of money building that infrastructure. It's interesting because there's people who argue, you know, delete all of your social media, try to reduce your imprint online. And it sounds like actually in your model, the more places that you are online and the more data you have out there, the more you can potentially monetize it.

Exactly. So it's kind of the flip side of that coin to some degree. Exactly. It's allowing you to earn from all this data that's collected about you all over the place. Now you can earn from it. I love it. So I know we're kind of up against it here with time. So where can everybody follow you, sign up, make sure that they follow along with your progress, both you and the company? Well, I'm on Twitter, Permission CEO. Go to permission.io. We have a very vigorous blog. You know, we're doing podcasts and trade shows, and we're trying to get out there as much as possible,

show the world that we're here. And now they can start earning from what they do ordinarily anyway. I'm looking forward to signing up myself for sure. It's definitely something that I would use. I never believed that I could just delete all my social media and all of a sudden everything would be okay, honestly. So I'd rather get paid. This is what makes the last touch. Well, thank you so much for your time and for being here. I really, really do appreciate it. And I look forward to seeing what progress you guys make in the coming months and years. Well, thanks so much for having me.

I really appreciate it. Thanks, Charles. Bye.