FINTECH FRIDAY$ (EP.19-Nov 23): Future of Business Tokenization – How Blockchain Challenges Concept of Money with Alan Wunsche, Founder and CEO, Token Funder

NCFA Canada | Nov 23, 2018

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Transcription of Interview

Intro: Welcome fintech Friday's a weekly podcast brought to you by the National Crowdfunding and Fintech Association of Canada and partners.Covering all things fintech block chain be AI and alternative finance.

Manseeb Khan: Hey Everybody. Hopefully you're having a fantastic day. Manseeb Khan and you were tuning into Fintech Fridays is brought to you by the National Fintech and Crowdfunding Association also known as the NCFA.  Today I have the absolute pleasure of having Alan Wunsche the CEO of Token Funder. Alan thank you so much for sitting down.

Alan Wunsche: It's a pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Manseeb Khan: No absolutely. I'd love to. Just for a second ,for I guess some of the audience members that may not know who you are and what your company is. Could you just for a minute tell us who you are and what Token Funder is?

Alan Wunsche: Sure thing. So, my name is Alan Wunsche and I am the CEO of Token Funder. Who I am. So, I started in blockchain four years ago having left the traditional banking space. So, I worked at it as an executive in a fairly large bank. But I left and who I am really is a leader of a company that is on the leading edge of a lot of this new era of funding and alternatives to what is currently our financial infrastructure and banking system. So Token Funder and we can talk about anything you want to in terms of your questions. So, I'm sure you'll have lots of them, but I'll just say Token Funder as a company. We started on this journey of two years ago. To build a platform for companies to use in a legal regulatory compliant way such that they could use the latest in blockchain technology and bring their company to the market and use it as a funding vehicle so that these companies that would go under the platform can raise funds and do that in a way that helps really drive a democratization of ownership. So, what drove Token Funder is not that we could just do something that was happening already, and you know crowdfunding existed for sure but that was a real eye opener that we could also do crowdfunding. But in really interesting ways on through blockchain. So, we took the approach that we were going to take a company keep it in Canada, build it in Canada use it initially as a service for Canadian companies and then go global. So, in a nutshell Token Funder is  building really an alternative funding mechanism and some additional services that now make us look like a funding and growth company for startup companies and scale ups. So, we're getting interest from not just your super early startups but also companies that are in market as well.

Manseeb Khan: That's very exciting. I can't wait to, I don't know if you can talk about that but maybe next time when you come on the show would love to dive a little bit deeper on like the growth stuff that you guys are interested in.

Alan Wunsche: Sure, we can talk, or we could talk a little bit about that today.

Manseeb Khan: Ok. Also, you mentioned you guys are actually going to help companies when it came to regulation. Could you talk a little bit more about that because when you think of raising tokens and raising Regulations definitely have been something that people have been concerned of. If not, there's been a lot of ambiguity when it came to regulations. When you talk about regulations what does that mean to you. And what is that coming from your end?

Alan Wunsche: Sure, we do have a fairly well-established securities regulations in Canada, the US, UK, Australia, and other places right. So, these regulations that we're referring to include securities regulations that also includes anti-money laundering regulations that the government is obviously concerned about. So, when you think about looking at the kind of journey we had. So when I talk about the regulatory route that we had, we started working with the Ontario Securities Commission launch pad when they first came out and we looked and said okay we looked around and there were some early indications that that at least one company essentially had to leave or decided to leave didn't have to but decided to leave and incorporate in another jurisdiction. And it could have been you know Barbados or Switzerland or one of these others. And the reason for that being that the regulators didn't have as much certainty for them or that very likely their particular business was going to result in the securities offering. So, these companies said to themselves well will establish ourselves in another authority. So that essentially, we don't have to worry about the regulatory concerns or restrictions that may be placed on the company here in Canada. And that actually worked really well in 2017 and into the mid part of 2018. So, they raised a lot of cash. Now where the story is important for your audience if you're going to go down this road. So those companies that raised on cash outside did not include a process that's referred to as KYC. And sometimes some little misunderstood. But I'm sure you've talked about that with the previous podcasts. I'll just repeat it. KYC meaning know your customer or your client and in the given the traditional kind of initial coin offering process that you could have undertaken outside of Canada, Us and as I said Australia or the UK you could go out and you can anonymously raise funds from pretty much anyone in the world because blockchain allows for that to happen fairly anonymously. So not purely anonymously but we will get into the technology around that. So, company could go to Switzerland, Barbados or the Caymans and these other jurisdictions say OK set up shop we've got a new business and you can invest in us quote unquote right. But we're not going to worry about who you are, we're not going to really worry about those things. Well if you're going to do that in Canada if you're going to do that as a Canadian company in Canada there's very clear guidance and regulations that you really have to understand who that person is that's investing. And the reason for that is because you have to also understand their risk profile. So, know your customer just doesn't mean you actually know what they're you know what their name is and where they live. But for the sake of investor protection and this is throughout Canada throughout the U.S. for the sake of investor protection you really have to understand the risk profile of the investor and whether your particular investment is a good suitable investment for your business or for them into your business. I should say so. So, I'm just and drawing some contrasts for you and any audience at this point because you know what's happened is that we've gone through kind of a two-year process here working with the regulators and we added KYC. So, I'll talk about maybe our token offering we added KYC is a process in terms of our Canadian offering. And that's in contrast to a company that didn't do that well. Now the OSC and the S.E.C. are coming back around to these do these coin offerings that happen over 2017 and 18 and saying well you were actually selling an unregistered security. And if you've not protected yourself and it was impossible to do so you've allowed Canadian residents to invest in your business.  Then we have a problem with that. So, when we did our token offering this the process we went through last year. So, we started last over the winter into the early part of 2018 and through the whole hype cycle of all these ICOs and here we are in Canada doing a token offering that has KYC understands the risk suitability of these potential investors. And we turned a lot of people away that we're interested in investing because we determined that it wasn't just suitable investment for some of them. So, it's essentially an online process that we installed, and  we know who the investor is, we white list them in a smart contract and then we also token it. We also issued a token which would probably end up being our token and that token also had some rights. So, we're going to continue a little bit more along the contrasting because many of those new projects that went out in 2017 and 2018 outside of our jurisdiction would have terms essentially that that included something like you're contributing to this particular project but frankly you have no rights whatsoever. And just hope and pray that our new protocol token will be appreciating in value and oh by the way you can go and trade it and pump and dump it on one of these new digital exchanges. Well that's what our regulators here refer to as the Wild West. We contrasted that with OK. So if you're going to invest to get a Canadian startup such as ours you're going to have to have some patient money and we won't issue our token on a digital exchange that you can go pump and dump in because if we just don't believe it's appropriate next to other regulators by the way in the Canadian context and as long as you have some patient capital and you're willing to consider at risk capital and then we think it's appropriate for a part of your portfolio. So just like any other kind of proper investment process we implemented  that kind of steps and we had an offering memorandum and we had an annual report attached to the offering memorandum I should say and audited financial report. And that's the kind of disclosure that investors expect. Now I'll just stop there because I'm sure you've heard of the whole speculation craze that happened with initial coin offerings and now it's kind of fallen apart and for good reason now that they are in  the broad world.

Manseeb Khan: You did mention a really good point of talking about how KYC it goes a little bit further than just other than the baseline surface level like first name, last name and where you're really from. I'm glad that you guys actually took a little bit more of initiative of understanding. Not only is it important to understand who you are but would this be a good enough investment for you. Right. Not even like oh hey yeah this is  money we're taking it. Its you guys have a more of a screening process, more a vetting process which hopefully more companies like yourself in the space to start to adopt and actually have these like set requirements that people have to kind of meet to either throw their money in like you mentioned patient money. People  don't think of patient money when you talk about blockchain or crypto because they think again, they think pump and dump  which makes sense because a lot of the news and a lot of the media out there is very much of oh look at this coin. It went from zero to 100 million and then the founders just disappeared, or they just shut everything down right.

Alan Wunsche: Yeah. I mean this is really important, and I hate the term pump and dump  but unfortunately, it's out there.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah, I'm not a fan of either.

Alan Wunsche: You know And I'll also. We didn't invent this. These are best practices that are already baked into our securities legislation. Not everyone appreciates this. So, when we started working with the launch pad you know it was it was a learning experience on both sides. So, we shared everything we knew about blockchain we came in and said this is how it all works. We're going to tokenize these businesses. Oh well what does that mean. And we can talk a little bit about that subsequently but ok sounds interesting sounds like something really novel. Now we'll also make sure that you're aware of how we expect companies to behave like good corporate citizens in the Canadian space. And you know it is very clear if you choose to look for it that it says when you accept investment into your business you need to understand a person's risk profile. In fact, that's what goes on in the online trading world today. And you know there are existing rules that say essentially, you're supposed to look at them every time anyone makes a trade and that it's a risk suitable trade for them. And there's other kinds of you know online verification that people have to do. So very similar. Just because we are in a new space doesn't mean that we have to create everything from scratch. And I want to make that point because we took the time to really understand what the big boys and let's call it, we're doing and then apply it to our particular case. So, you know we scaled it down to make it appropriate for us and we got some particular exemptions for our token offering such as being able to raise funds from our own platform which is something that traditionally you're not allowed to do. So, there were certain things that we essentially were allowed to experiment with. And this is part of trying to frankly do the right thing work with it, work with our regulators and use the latest innovative technology. Now for your benefit and others let's be clear that's a long process. So, it would have been and trust me in terms of temptation it would have been a one-month process for us to go to Barbados or Caymans or Switzerland or another place like that raised 20 million dollars. We ended up doing about a nine-month process. So not for the faint of heart to just stay here. There's a lot of regulatory discussions that ended up happening just to be super clear about that. But you know what. At the end of the day I think we're proving out that doing it for the right reasons and doing the right thing. Actually, let you sleep at night and hopefully let your kind of do right by everyone in the space. And I mean you know I've been in this space now for four years. When Ethereum  kind of hit the world. I saw it launch with a small group of folks here in Toronto and I was disappointed Ethereum had to leave the country for Switzerland. I understood how it was kind of regulatory uncertainty and other reasons that that drove that decision. But you know still you want to. You want to do it. You want to build a business for the right reasons and act accordingly. My background I didn't mention this as a CA now we're part of the new CPA organization. And you know there's ethics and guidelines and all of that good stuff that frankly went out the window in the ICO craze and it was disappointing to see all those ICOs that kind of tarnish the image of the blockchain industry. So yeah. Yes. So, I mean moving forward we're living in an environment now. I'll just add that you know while we're using the blockchain technology we're also that kind of company although we're called Token Funder, we're not saying to people you know we're somehow blockchain or bitcoin evangelists or ether evangelists if it makes sense for your business. We're going to we're going to help you out.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah like you've mentioned a couple of things. There's always going to be bad actors that make sense and I guess any new emerging industry just do again like you've said. Doing the right thing is always the right thing and helps to sleep at night right. It would have been a lot easier for. You're seeing a lot of these crypto companies going to the Cayman Islands or going to Switzerland or what have you and not really knowing that like okay cool like this. Okay. Awesome. The Cayman Islands is very right now. They're very willing to work with crypto companies and everything but this goes back down to KYC of knowing your customer and knowing. Okay cool. But What about everybody else. What about people in the rest of the world. What about Canada in the US and all the other markets that are very apprehensive when it comes to this new market. You can't really tackle them, and you can't really maximize or just sorry. If not anything you can capitalize on because they're restricted to the rules and regulations just because you're not. It's not as an even playing field as you might really think it's a temporary fix if anything.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah, it's really complex because as I said the temptation was there and the temptation was strong enough for a lot of companies to go and do it frankly. And you know just say well we're going to do this in another jurisdiction and will eventually come home and try to. Well let's just park that because there's tax reasons also that people make tax, or you know businesses tax decisions to go to these kind of tax havens and we get all that. Now ultimately, you're going to have to come back here. Ultimately if you're businesses here and you're interested in living and working in this great country then you have to come back around to our environment. Now so all of that going to make it clear that it's a process that I believe in and yet we're trying to make change within the regulatory regime. There are outdated regulations there and there's no question about it. There are regulations today that benefit the big players and the incumbents. So, you know a startup getting into this space for alternative funding and a startup like ours that is looking to do have a marketplace for these future tokens. That's great. Trust me that kind of system that's in place today makes it difficult. So, we're trying our level best to  get change and to get exemptions to make some of these existing regulations work for startups that want to innovate in the space.

Manseeb Khan: Which I mean it makes sense because like we talked in the past I mean if anything last episode we talked about how we had Charlene from Coinsquare. I like Charlene, she’s great. She is really! she mentioned she's like hey look people have to understand that the banks had 20 years at this and they're still I mean to this day they're still trying to figure out regulations and everything. So, it’s kind of make sense that especially in the startup community in Canada it's been very new, it's very new around the world. Entrepreneurship is finally getting the warm embrace that it's longing  for so many years now. And it makes sense that I guess for the time being that it is an uphill battle and hopefully within due time with  amazing players like you want amazing players like Her the regulators be the government or be it any other bodies understand where you guys are kind of coming from an understand that hey like having regulations that are not as rigid, a little bit more fluid it only benefits everybody in the long run.

Alan Wunsche: Yeah. I just add also to this point there are a lot of restrictions about  what investors can do. And you know there's a lot of good reasons historically for that. Now we're moving into a world where the millennial generation wants to manage their own portfolios. They want the kind of freedom that a decentralized place can offer them. They look around and you know we talk to many that you know they're in their 20s 30s and you know they're saying why. Why are these startups and innovative companies’ kind of limited to the accredited investors that are the really wealthy ones? So why did the really wealthy people get to continue to get first dibs if you will  on the really great next investment. And  that was really one of those kind of if you will big why's or big reasons for us pushing for the democratization we're where we said we could have easily have cut short our timeline for  our own token timeline and said yes are legal and others said this is easy just let accredited investors in and shut out all the retail investors and we said no we really believe deeply that this is a space now that let's say a startup is getting some traction it can go to the marketplace and wants to have you know a broad ownership pool of up its platform let's say. Like let's just say there's you know that the future Airbnb and wants a broad level of ownership through this new mechanism well you know is it limited to just accredited investors. We don't believe it necessarily needs to be. As long as again the retail investors aren't spending you know investing everything they know into a super high risk or everything they have into a super high-risk investment that kind of throws caution to the wind. But it's I want to get the point across here that we have the ability to make it easy for someone to go directly to a company and invest almost directly without traditional kind of financial intermediaries that that are the big names that you might see today and you won't describe them but  you can apply new technology in a way that that really reduces the friction between the investor and the company and want to open that up to the retail investor. And if you think it's like crowdfunding Well it's like crowdfunding on a new level. Yes, it's Yeah. Oh, for sure. And then and then we're looking at you know traditionally when you invest in a private company there are pretty strict rules for traditional reasons that are that are still good reasons about the liquidity and you know they were there so many of these ICOs that said you would get immediate liquidity and  then you can go. You know you don't have to believe in the company you can go get an immediate liquidity on you know X,Y or Z digital exchange. And that's great. Do whatever you want on the other end of the spectrum. We've traditionally been very restrictive about or quite restrictive about what the retail liquidity to look like in a private company and we believe that there's no changes that should happen. So, it's a bridge, right? We in effect to we as a company here are looking to  and have been you know I describe ourselves as kind of a bridge between the traditional way things for working and in the existing regulatory environment. But I mean we've got very clear regulations Yeah. we can change them.

Manseeb Khan: It is very important to again have companies like you, have amazing people like you in the space to make not only I guess the old traditional world but also the new world understand like millennials like me. I'm like Yeah. No why can't I invest in the next and Airbnb and become an accredited investor. But I'd love to. I'll be amazing.

Alan Wunsche: Today you wouldn't be able to.

Manseeb Khan: Exactly because there's so many rights now to become accredited investor. There’re so much more criteria you have to meet. And like you said for private companies it's even more so. Right there there's even more rules and even more red tape for just a 23-year-old college student like me to like to invest in next Airbnb like we're not there yet. But it's very exciting that it could be on track and that there is stuff put in place to make sure that one day everybody can potentially invest in the next Airbnb.

Alan Wunsche: That's the exciting part about this. And you know I talked to so many people. You know I  still feel young but I'm not as young as you are. No. You see you know 20 20 and 30-year old. I mean in terms of age but in terms of you know that the mindset is why can't we do this mindset right. Let me just be clear. There are very good reasons  why there's certain regulations in place essentially to prevent the scamming that happened all around the world in the ICO craze. OK. So, putting that aside if we can do this very in a safe manner it still looks after the investor protections then why can't a retail investor get in on the next really cool startup. Why does it have to be kind of limited or why should a retail investor be limited to you know twenty-five hundred dollars or something like that. You know when an accredited investor by the way who is typically very wealthy you know they have much higher limits but they're not always frankly more intelligent or aware of what this new technology is. So, we get a lot of people saying well I really understand this technology why I am limited. You know a small tiny little investment. What's the art of the possible and how can we get it. How can we get a safe environment? And it's not in or position and opened the door to a broad kind of democratization of investing opportunities.

Manseeb Khan: This bridge is very much it can be built like again all regulations are not there to like they're not out to get us right. Like the man isn't like putting us down or anything. Like you mentioned what we've pretty much started the show off with like Hey these rules and regulations are put in place so that we don't get any more scam. There's no pump and dumps and this whole potential market gets kind of blown to bits because there's no rules in place as the Wild, Wild West and everyone kind of gets screwed over which is terrible. Since you are working with startups and I'm myself in the startup world do you see ICOs taking over IPO's  in the future and I guess what the future of ICOs is look like to you given that your opinion is a little bit biased but still.

Alan Wunsche: Yeah, I mean for sure I'm biased in looking at what the art of the possible is. So, what is possible, and I don't  you know for the last couple of years since we started Token Funder,  I didn't use the word ICO whenever I talk to anyone in this space. I mean of course the ICO term was taken off, but I more can keep them in this initial token offerings and the token being the more generic form because not everything you put out there is a coin or a crypto currency. So that's kind of like where do you see the future right. I do think that token offerings and this democratization of investing opportunities  into innovation puts us into innovative startups will be very real and it's a very real outside alternative funding mechanism for companies. Now what that means is that. There's that there's going to be a transition period. So, it's yeah. Let's say and we all know what's going on with the broader crypto currency in quotes. Marketplace today. Right. So, the value of its down and it would seem that even know  some people that have lost some amount of value added and all that. But let's just in one sense if we put that aside it's quite efficient to move anything of value whether it be a share in a company or you can say I'll take this business and I'll put 10 percent of this business on to go into a token that people could buy into. And then there's a marketplace for it. It's very efficient and you don't need a large infrastructure when you already have a public blockchain. You don't need to use a traditional funding vehicle. So, people have also asked me if I could address this in other in other conference panels and whatnot. Whether this is the venture capital and ultimately the answer is not necessarily because some companies may want just one or two people investing in them and some companies might want thousands of people investing in for different reasons for different business reasons. So they'll be a hybrid but there's no question that the token offering model is a very efficient one and you can just imagine you know in the future you're going to have your wallet there and you're going to have a wallet that shows some Canadian cash or some other kind of currencies and then you'll have you know a share of. So, what your startup called? It's called Curexe. Ok. So Curexe. So, I'll have a share of Curexe alongside a share of Apple alongside you know some crypto in a wallet. And  if I want to sell that share of Curexe. So, you know I'll be able to do so with whatever is appropriate you can be in the marketplace. And this will be the new way of our next generation of investing. And it's going to be powered by public blockchains I believe.

Manseeb Khan: I'm very excited for it to be one of those many thousands of investors if anything this is just another leg that's going to be attached to the  be it VC's, be it any other investment funds out there right. Because it's just in a sense they're just diversifying. And if anything, it just can be a supplement. Right. Like it is an alternative way of funding. It's going to be a shift. Your absolutely right.

Alan Wunsche: So yeah. Where did and where do you want to take the conversation.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah. So, you did mention a little bit more of tokenization of businesses. Could you talk a little bit more of that? What is a tokenized  business? What does it mean? How do I get my start up to become a tokenized business?

Alan Wunsche: I won't give you the  fully comprehensive answer to it but just think about think about some example’s tokenization is this mechanism of enabling fractional ownership and then the fairly easy transferability of that fractional ownership. That's from person to person in a blockchain right through the blockchain. There's very recently an example where a company tokenized in an entire building. So, imagine an entire building. Thought of as you know a particular token. And then imagine being you know on one side of the country and you just want to invest in a you know in a fraction of a building that happens to be on the other side of the country. No problem. And then you know your circumstances change and you'd like to liquidate that and or the value of that building goes up. You can. You can basically sell your interests. This this is technically so easy to do on the blockchain now. Now we've just got to kind of connect with the real world. And the real-world documentation that says by the way this building is represented on a blockchain officially at this location. And now go now it's available for people to buy into and transfer. That's  really interesting. So, I took great interest in that. There’re other examples of. There's an example that I think is  intriguing and I'd be interested in your take on this. There's this company called rally road. So, they've now said we'll go out and on behalf of people will go out and buy this this antique car and this antique car is X and it's a named vehicle it's a real vehicle. Happens to have no value X today and we believe that if we hold onto it it'll have value Y tomorrow. So, we convert that into a token and allow for fractional ownership of that particular antique car. And it's called rally road. So, they're embarking on a tokenizing that kind of asset. And then at some point you know on a fairly regular basis the company will presumably say OK, so this asset is now worth X, worth Y and if you've got enough appreciation out of it you can now sell your interest.

Manseeb Khan: That sounds amazing. I'd love to own a piece of it like a 1969 Mustang or something like. that Ford Mustang would be. It would be exactly the kind of example that that I heard talked about it so. Oh wow.  All kinds of really interesting cars that they happen to be focused on so that's just that's just one model. So now cars, real estate, business, business shares you name it any essentially any assets. Just kind of marry up to the legality of it  and people are considering you know that the home or the condo that you own. You know if you want some help in owning that you have that house or condo down the road. I'm sure it will be quite possible that you'll say great I've got this this residence that is known in the world in you know as registered by the government and under this lot. And you know identity and oh by the way I'm willing to legally sell a fraction of it. Which is going to be pretty easy for you for that residence to be the tokenized.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah. No, I love it. I'm waiting for the day for a company to say like hey you want it we tokenize it.

Alan Wunsche: So, this is it so Token Funders vision here is to start with companies and you know doing it in a manner that allows them just to say let's call it equity, let's call it debt let's call it something like that and we'll do that right. But we have got a lot of other interesting thoughts around how we can take the token model and not just be about capital raise. Yeah. And so, some of those ideas I've just kind of touched on here. So you have the hope that these  other spaces certainly interest me  and then we become  so the other thing I mentioned at the top of this chat with you is we've said that and we're going to also build a network around these companies that we're currently helping and that's what I call this not just funding but actually involved in the growth of the company so identifying advisors and resources from wherever they might be and providing them with an incentive of a token. say to help that particular startup. So that you're not just then a startup that's only getting you know help and  guidance from those immediately around you but that that can come from anywhere in the world if you incentivize it through a token structure.

Manseeb Khan: Yeah. No that's wow I can't wait for that.  Yeah. No, I'm working on it. No that's wow. No that's  incredible. I can't wait for that. So, like I'd like a nice network or even. You can probably call a community of just advisors and just people like be it from actual customers that are willing to use it or be from actual like V.C.s that are willing to like oh yeah no I can totally see that like the actual implementation of this XYZ  product or service like you might have right.

Alan Wunsche: I'm just going to I'm just going to add a little reality to this right now. So, I just recently came from the global Ethereum developers conference called Dev Con in Europe it was  in Prague and there were thousands of developers and continue to work on the next big thing. And also, creative people. So, the UX is really important. The important thing that folks listening to this will probably want to understand this is that we're not quite there in this new infrastructure called you know in this case the Ethereum that it's scalable worldwide as we might want it to be. So, we expected that there was there was going to be some changes this year. And so there was a lot of kind of pent up hope and all the anticipation for upgrades to the public blockchain for scalability. And now it's being pushed into 2019 but it's not that far off. So while it's not a platform that's fully scalable such that you know you can put every single asset in the entire world on a public blockchain and know we can run a piece of network on the public blockchain those are still very visionary but 2019 is now the year that we can anticipate some upgrades to scalability and speed throughput on these blockchains. So that's kind of a dose of reality.

Manseeb Khan: I love it. I can't wait, so yeah everybody you heard it here first. Make sure 2019 you guys start earmarking for getting a piece of that Ford Mustang that I so badly want. There you go. I can't wait. I can't wait. So, can anything else that really excites you that's going on in the space other than owning a piece of a building and owning a piece of my dream car.

Alan Wunsche: I think it's generally really exciting that this is going to be a technology that will bring and has really kind of awakened. I'd say a vast number of people in the population around asking real big questions around Where's the power in today's society? Who's running our big financial systems? Are they running it the right way? Should we be decentralizing some of this power? I mean these are really big questions. I don't have all the answers to them, but I think it's been real. The technology itself has been a really good catalyst to asking these questions and to ask questions of governments that they currently manage are central banks and central currencies. When and if let's say in the coming years they'll start to suggest that we're going to have central bank digital currencies as they are looking at today. It will be really interesting and it's exciting to think about these things, but it also be interesting to think and important for people to think about you know Are they getting the privacy they need going forward? Are they getting investment opportunities? Is this technology decentralizing our power structures? What will happen if we have no central bank digital currency? I think it's actually opening up exciting conversations for  a lot more people to understand how money moves. Who manages. Are our societies. Who governs our societies and how money flows and those are so those are some really big socio-economic questions in in the context of you know things to think about. This is not just a blockchain, but this is a technological shift that we're going through with the impact on a lot of jobs too. Oh absolutely. So, what do I think. I think that you know opening up this dialogue about what is money? Is Bitcoin money? Is ether money? Should it be, or should it be something else? This is an exciting time to be challenging the status quo and in doing it and always doing it for the right reasons right. Yeah absolutely. But for decades had infrastructure that's been very centralized. And now people have the opportunity to rethink some of that with decentralizing technology. Rethink the fact that you know one or two or three very large companies own our social identity if you allow them to do so and we may have you know the decentralized version of Facebook that gives you your identity back. That's exciting.

Manseeb Khan: It really is because it's this is the first-time in. I kind of want to say first time in a long time where power is really going back to the people and the people actually have the power to fight back. And every everybody's kind of looking at the current way the world works. How do how money flows. Who actually runs and operates the money. Who and why they get to operate the money everyone is kind of looking at it as more. they're looking at it more skeptically if anything right and their take their second guessing it. And there's  again the technology is emerging where maybe not only fight back but maybe create a world where it's a little bit more of an even playing field and where everybody and anybody can hopefully one day participate, own a building, buy my dream car. You know and take it from there.

Alan Wunsche: You said it even playing field and that's the whole discussion around decentralization and is there. What playing fields are we evening. I think it'll be a bigger wake up call. Should there be a nobody wants this frankly, but should there be another recession. Because you know in 2008, 2009  we all lived through it. We kind of woke up and realized hey call your financial infrastructures really entangled in you know something that happened and see in Greece or in Italy or in you know or in the U.S. or somewhere reek contagion on the broader world and you know we had a liquidity crisis. That got people concerned that they understood where and how our financial world was managed and so nobody wants it. But you know think about the fact that this is a disintermediating excuse me technology. It's potentially decentralizing existing power structures. It's a could level the playing field, it could bring new opportunities for people to decentralized large. I can call them kind of large centralized web properties that exist today. There's that there's a there's a book that's out you know after Google may or may not have the title exactly right. But you know it's a discussion. It's a  book about how the blockchain will in fact decentralize what Google looks like today. And this is a new time. I mean it opens up a lot of new questions and maybe I'll just leave it there because you know I don't have all the answers.

Manseeb Khan: No, I just think it's early but it's an exciting time. Yeah. No, I think it's a great way to really end it like this is. I'm excited. I mean I get own my dream car a lot faster than I thought I could. Oh, I got to get to a real estate a lot faster. I'm very, I'm very fired.

Alan Wunsche: Maybe a thousandth of that dream car.

Manseeb Khan: I mean hey  I rather own a piece of it and none of it.

Alan Wunsche: Very good.

Manseeb Khan: All right. So, Alan thank you so much for again coming on the show. I can't wait to have you on again. And thanks for refiring the dream.

Alan Wunsche: I'm excited for you and it's a pleasure to be here with you today.

Manseeb Khan: Absolutely. All right Alan. So, thank you again. So, on behalf of the National Fintech and crowdfunding association I wish you an amazing Fintech Friday and weekend.

Outro : you've been listening to fintech Fridays brought to you by NCFA and partners. Tune in weekly for the latest fintech Friday podcast by subscribing to this channel. The National crowdfunding and FinTech Association of Canada is a non-profit actively engaged with social and investment fintech sectors around the globe and provide education research industry stewardship services and networking opportunities to thousands of members and subscribers. For more information please visit and see if a Canada dot org. Oh yea.

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