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Ep 49: Democracy, Dollars & DeFi, A Digital Shift
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What happens when trust collapses faster than institutions can rebuild it? Amanda Wick, founder of the Association for Women in Crypto and author of The Catalysts, joins Owl Explains to unpack the forces fueling a new world financial order—from DeFi to geopolitics.
A single podcast episode can’t fit everything, so check out her book for more: The Catalysts by Amanda Wick | Pre-Order Now
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Transcript
Introduction to Owl Explains Hootenanny
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to this Owl Explains Hootenanny, our podcast series where you can wise up on blockchain and Web3 as we talk to the people seeking to build a better internet.
00:00:17
Speaker
Owl Explains is powered by Avalabs, a blockchain software company and participant in the Avalanche ecosystem.
Meet the Speakers: Silvia Sanchez and Amanda Wick
00:00:24
Speaker
My name is Silvia Sanchez, project manager of Owl Explains, and with that, I'll hand it over to today's amazing speakers.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hi, everybody. Today we're speaking with someone who's seen financial systems from every angle. She's a government but prosecutor, crypto insider, Capitol Hill investigator, and now author.
00:00:44
Speaker
So let's please welcome Amanda Wick.
Amanda Wick's Book and Changing Financial Landscape
00:00:47
Speaker
Hi, Amanda. We're really excited to have you on the Owl Explains podcast. And like i i always say, I love to feature women on crypto, women who are changing this space, and Amanda is definitely one of them.
00:00:59
Speaker
And to give our listeners a bit of a further background on Amanda, she is the founder and CEO of the Association for Women in Cryptocurrency and the author of The Catalysts, The Accelerating Forces Forging the New World Financial Order.
00:01:15
Speaker
In this book, she combines on-the-ground experience with a systems-level view to explain the why the way money moves and who controls it is fundamentally changing. It's not just about crypto or regulation or even politics, but it's more about power, policy, and what happens when trust erodes faster than institutions can rebuild it.
00:01:36
Speaker
So what comes after the old world financial order?
The Rise of Crypto and Decline of Institutional Trust
00:01:39
Speaker
Let's find out. So the title is obviously interesting, no? The catalysts. And you describe this moment as this collision of forces.
00:01:47
Speaker
So which one of these forces do you think most people are still underestimating? Oh, God, that's a really good question. I think it's a tie. I think the two that they under a underestimate the most are the rise of crypto and decentralized finance because people have a tendency to think of that really simplistically and and the technology is moving so quickly and new things are being invented so quickly.
Divergence of Traditional and Digital Finance
00:02:14
Speaker
that I think it's hard for people to catch up with the tech, whereas the media narrative tends to kind of focus on, you know, different altcoins and the speculative aspect. And then I think the other catalyst that people really underestimate is the ramifications of the decline of trust in nearly every one of our institutions, whether it's government, media,
00:02:34
Speaker
I was just talking with folks the other day, just that the failure for people to almost believe anything that they see and then their reaction to kind of live in their own filter bubbles that actually even interacts with crypto and certain types of cryptocurrencies that people then think are a more viable form of money or fiat currency. So you kind of have this ah maelstrom of catalysts impacting each other. And so I think it's those two and their interaction with each other.
00:03:01
Speaker
That's really interesting. and that's, it I think, a really good way to put it for most people to understand. And you argue that the financial system isn't breaking necessarily, but you used an interesting term. You said that it's forking. and So what does that mean in practical terms? And why should the average listener care that the financial system is forking?
00:03:21
Speaker
Well, I think if you've been in crypto, ah certainly since the invention of Bitcoin, you're familiar with the term fork. And it's just the concept in in protocol language of basically a consensus mechanism diverging and then some people staying with the original protocol and others creating a new one. Right. So like easy example, Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash, ah Ethereum had one, Ethereum, Ethereum classic.
00:03:43
Speaker
But it's the concept of essentially what we have now versus what it's going to be in the future. And whether it's some iteration of traditional, a mix of traditional finance and digital finance and what that transition looks like, how many people stay in traditional finance because they either don't want to
Challenges in Financial Literacy and Crime Adaptation
00:04:04
Speaker
or it's not. smooth enough for them to move over into digital finance.
00:04:08
Speaker
Or conversely, one of my fears, which is the inability of the system to adapt to criminal activity fast enough so that you essentially have a system where it's survival of the fittest and it turns out a lot of the world isn't that fit because we haven't really done the best of teaching financial literacy or teaching people how to kind of handle themselves in a financial technology that encourages and facilitates a lot of autonomy, but we didn't really prepare people to be ready for that level of autonomy. And so it's it's like a fork on multiple levels, but my concern is that we're we're looking at we're not looking at these things as they kind of evolve and play out very quickly.
00:04:49
Speaker
And that's a big one for sure. And I think not just with technology, but with these types of paradigm shifts, like there's the infrastructure. It's already here in a way. But as you mentioned, like the lack of financial literacy, but also education, knowing how to interact with the platforms, how to do it. And I think...
00:05:07
Speaker
That's basically why we do what we do. I also think that was like a big reason why you started this book, why these types of initiatives like Owl Explains were born.
Global Conversations on U.S. Financial Policies
00:05:16
Speaker
so This leads me to my next question. You've worked in DOJ, crypto startups, and Capitol Hill. and I'm sure you've seen all of this type of...
00:05:27
Speaker
shifting in paradigms and all of the the fintech aspects, but what was like that big push that really made you say, okay, I have to write this book right here, right now. Like, what was that, that catalyst for you into writing the catalysts?
00:05:40
Speaker
Oh God, that is, you're chock full of good questions. Um, so I think for me, it was when I started the association after working for the government for, well, in some, I think it was over a decade.
00:05:53
Speaker
But I was going to all these events and meeting women and allies around the world to try to build this global community of people who were either working in the industry adjacent to the industry, who believed in digital finance and crypto and blockchain and Web3 and wanted to make it more inclusive to women.
00:06:09
Speaker
But because of my background, i was also speaking at tons of conferences. And I would get this opportunity to speak to regulators and policymakers and NGOs and founders and builders.
00:06:19
Speaker
And what I saw was that the conversations that we were having outside of the United States reflected two things. One, a group of people, either Americans or non-Americans, who constantly talked about what America was going to do. And this was largely during the Biden administration.
00:06:36
Speaker
So whenever people said, oh, we're going to get crypto legislation we're going to get this, we're going to get that, i was like, I don't know what America you're looking at, but the government that I just left isn't going to do any of that anytime soon.
00:06:47
Speaker
And so the the kind of like cockeyed wild optimism that some people have when talking about America and what it will do, which used to be obviously a lot greater, and now it's, it's I think, a little bit more realistic, that was really horrifying.
00:07:01
Speaker
The other thing that I would see was policymakers and regulators and people from foreign countries talk on stage about, oh, you know, we're great allies with the United States and this is what's happening. And then immediately offstage or behind the scenes would kind of be like, but we're all actively trying to get off the U.S. dollar.
00:07:17
Speaker
And, you know, one of my former bosses, when I worked in Congress, she was at a conference and she she said this quote, and I think I say it in the book, but it's basically something to the effect of,
00:07:29
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if our allies are working hard to get off the US dollar, imagine how hard our foes are working.
Threats to U.S. Dollar's Global Influence
00:07:36
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And that was really eye-opening to me, especially because if you look at the entire concept of crypto and how useful it is and how helpful it is, which is great, and how it speeds up payment rails, which is great, but every time there's something that's an alternative to the US dollar, then it erodes the need for the US dollar, which then chips away at the soft power of the United States.
00:07:58
Speaker
So there was just like two kind of tracks that I was like, there's a lot of people that in the world that don't, aren't as privileged as I am, that don't get to travel around and talk to all these people.
00:08:09
Speaker
And I think we can't make decisions if we're not informed. And one of the things that i loved when you guys set up owl explains is you do such fantastic objective education and what the industry really needed was less shilling and more objective education.
00:08:24
Speaker
You want to know about what a stable coin is? Great. here's what a stablecoin is, decide what you want to do about it. But when the education comes from a stablecoin issuer, or if you want to learn about you know exchanges, but an exchange makes the education, right? It's tough. it's It was hard to find objective education.
00:08:42
Speaker
And so I think it's really critical and I'm really grateful for the folks who do it. And I just thought, let me write it down in a book and you can agree with me. You can disagree with me. i welcome all viewpoints, but I think we have to start with some baseline facts and and be informed in order to have really critical discussions about what's happening. And so that's why I wrote the book.
00:09:01
Speaker
Definitely. And I think you mentioned something super important, which is maintaining a certain level of objectiveness. And i think it's very easy to be swayed to the extreme because, and i think that's also where we need to filter the information and both as content creators, whether you're an author for a book, a podcast, but also listeners, because there's a two way process and all you create content, you educate, but at the other hand, you're also getting updated with the tech, the regulation, the financial aspect of things, right?
00:09:30
Speaker
And realizing that it's not like something is going to be a magic wand. And I also think it's something we'd like to mention here that blockchain is great. You have stable coins, you have all of these things that you can do on top of it.
00:09:42
Speaker
But we also need to realize that, okay, this is a technology, but there's also humans behind it. And if we don't really fix those things properly, as the base, there's obviously going to be some problems that arise throughout the way. And also you mentioned that the dollar's dominance used to be a strategic advantage, but that now there's
US Financial Decline Amid Digital Currency Rise
00:10:01
Speaker
this shift. And I believe the term you use was weaponization of the dollar. You mentioned something like that in the book.
00:10:06
Speaker
So I just want to know what are some of these long-term consequences of of of that strategy, both for the U S for the world? Um, what are your thoughts on that? Well, I think historically the idea was that we, and look, it made sense at the time, right? I spend an early chart part of the book explaining how the weaponization of the dollar came to be.
00:10:28
Speaker
And it largely happened after nine eleven right? We were fighting terrorist financing. We were fighting like a very identifiable movement. concept, i.e. global terrorism. And it made a ton of sense to basically use the entire U.S. global financial system to fight like one enemy.
00:10:46
Speaker
The problem was then over the years when we used that system then kind of uh, basically shift and impact global policy the way that we want it, right Because you only have hard power and soft power, hard power being like military activity, which obviously is suboptimal, I guess, depending on who you talk to, but for most of us, suboptimal, right?
00:11:05
Speaker
And then soft power, which is the idea of, okay, we're not going to use military strength, but But we can basically exclude people from the U.S. s dollar system and basically pain point them, right? Create so much pain pressure that they don't have any ability to make money, right?
00:11:21
Speaker
but the But that's a really problematic thing. And I talk about the Iran sanctions as an example, or Venezuela, because it ends up hurting a lot of people, right? And if you if what you really want to do is hurt the government, then you have to start to ask yourself, if you're just hurting millions of people in a country, who do they end up blaming? And what's the future implications of that?
00:11:39
Speaker
And now there's a real question where, okay, let's say for a moment that you agree with sanctions and you think it's a good policy tool, fine. And there are a lot of arguments for why it was an exceptionally effective policy tool.
00:11:50
Speaker
The problem is is, okay, what happens then when there's a completely alternative system like digital assets that allows countries and malign foreign actors to evade those sanctions. And what happens to the U.S. soft power when the dollar weakens enough?
00:12:04
Speaker
And I think that's one of the points that that I really try to make in the book that I think, you know naysayers tend to get stuck on as well. The U.S. s dollar is never going to stop being the global reserve currency. Fine.
00:12:15
Speaker
I don't think it's binary. It's not that it has to go from the U.S. dollar to the Russian ruble for us to have problems.
Future of US Influence and Global Perceptions
00:12:21
Speaker
It's that if we don't have that power, if we don't have the ability to impact people through sanctions,
00:12:27
Speaker
What are we going to do? Just threaten everybody with military force, right? And so you really have this issue of America's influence and its ability to influence declining. And I think right now...
00:12:38
Speaker
Some people would say, well, given the administration and where it's headed, maybe that's a good thing. Maybe now, unfortunately, you don't want what the U.S. has to offer metastasizing to other countries. And that's a political viewpoint.
00:12:51
Speaker
And i I really try not to make politics an issue in the book. I really try to say, hey, let's look at this objectively. But realistically, you kind of you have to have that conversation of what does it mean in a multipolar world where lots of countries are suddenly making all of the decisions for themselves with no regard for the United States? And is that a good thing? Is it a bad thing?
00:13:14
Speaker
i think there's a lot of different opinions on that. But you have to ask the questions and look at how is that happening and why. Right. And there's a lot of ramifications on that. And I think even if you don't want to like get into it politically, like you, you even opened the book with, with January 6th, which is not necessarily like a crypto headline, but more of a democracy issue. So why did you really start with that? Like, and how does that connect to financial power?
00:13:38
Speaker
ah you know, it's funny because, uh, I have a family member who's, um, uh, uh, currently, I think, I don't know where he stands, but like he used to be very pro-MAGA and we try not to talk politics at family events, but I gave him the book because I said, look, I'd like you to read this and I want you to tell me if it's fair because I know it's going to be painful, but I want ah like, and and you might object to some of the things in the book, but does it seem fair?
00:14:04
Speaker
Because I tried to use facts because we should be able to talk about facts. And I opened to a January 6th because January 6th, I think, is one of the examples of how people really don't understand how bad things in the United States have gotten in in the social engineering and social manipulation of the messaging, right?
00:14:24
Speaker
The number of people in the United States who still believe that the 2020 election was stolen, I believe it's actually increased since the time that the election happened. So I think at the time,
00:14:35
Speaker
It was like roughly a third or it might have been a little under 33 percent. And now it's over what it used to be. And when you think about that, that's kind of a horrifying thing, because there are countless facts and there's lots of evidence that it was, in fact, if you don't believe it was one of the safest elections in history, which multiple folks who studied it said, it certainly wasn't stolen.
00:14:56
Speaker
But the fact that that myth persists and that people would actually say, well, you only believe that because you're some kind of deluded liberal. I'm like, dude, I'm an independent. I don't care if you vote left or if you vote right.
00:15:08
Speaker
But if you're sitting here saying, well, I can't read a book simply because somebody worked on the January 6th committee. Fine. That's already a percentage of the population in America that's likely lost to facts and objectivity.
00:15:19
Speaker
But there is a middle ground and there are people in the United States who I think are out there looking for things that will help them find ground truths. I think our media on, I think anything polarized in the United States, whether it's extreme left or extreme right, is actually our problem because we've kind of lost that objective, nuanced, centrist viewpoint.
00:15:41
Speaker
And my goal with the book was to say, we should be able to have these conversations about what's broken in America without getting into the, um well, it's X percentage of the left's fault and it's X percentage of the right's fault.
00:15:54
Speaker
The point is, is both of them are broken as hell and they are the problem. And the other thing to your point about why I started with January 6th was because when I go outside of the United States, the world watched January 6th happen in horror.
00:16:08
Speaker
The number of people in the United States who don't understand the ramifications of a failure to transfer power peacefully, right? In countries where peaceful transfer of power isn't taken for granted, isn't a given.
Polarization and Erosion of Trust in Democracy
00:16:20
Speaker
I think sometimes we lose that perspective as Americans because we've had it pretty good. In fact, we've had it really good for probably all of the lives of anyone who's living today, mostly.
00:16:31
Speaker
And so you just have this incredible dichotomy of fact versus fiction about manipulation of the narrative And I didn't want to hide who I was or what I had done.
00:16:42
Speaker
But I did think it was a really important thing to start with, especially because there were a lot of things about how the January 6th committee went that was heartbreaking to me. We didn't have enough time. The report wasn't as fulsome as it could have been. There was a lot of focus on Trump as opposed to a lot of other people. And now we're seeing the ramifications of what happens when you don't acknowledge that a movement is more than one person, that he's a symptom of a greater disease in America right now.
00:17:09
Speaker
And I just wanted people to kind of understand we can't continue to whitewash this the way that we have every other horrible fact in our history. um And that will be America's downfall if it doesn't course correct. And we're getting so close to that waterfall.
00:17:24
Speaker
that the book isn't about fixing America. The book is about the ship is going over the waterfall. There's no signs of it changing course. What should everybody else do to kind of prepare for that and understand why it's happening?
00:17:36
Speaker
Wow. That's a very powerful opening and interesting. And I think the most important thing is to realize, okay, it doesn't matter whether you're from the left, from the right, or an independent, but actually, okay, being open to what does the data say, how are the things being um reported, and basically not being polarized to one side, to the other, as we were mentioning, the people that are blockchain maximalists, the people that are anti-blockchain, or the the people that are super to the left, super to the right. I think the greater message here is, okay, like,
00:18:09
Speaker
When it's in an extreme, it's harmful in any case. And um you you, in fact, make the case that institutional trust is collapsing in a way. So how could that reshape democracy itself?
00:18:22
Speaker
what So the number of people in the United States who didn't show up to vote literally proves the problem. If you don't trust the system and you're not a part of it, then you will literally sit as democracy erodes around you.
00:18:37
Speaker
And I think the interesting thing is I was having conversation a few weeks ago with a friend and she and her husband are Australian, but they've lived in Singapore and they're moving to the UAE soon.
00:18:48
Speaker
They've lived in Singapore for like a decade, I think. And I said to her, do you guys even miss voting? Because Australia has compulsory voting, which is a brilliant, brilliant system that has a good chance of saving democracy if we could get ever get it in the U.S. But i said to her, I was like, do you miss voting? Because they haven't voted living in you know Singapore and they certainly won't vote in UAE.
00:19:11
Speaker
And she kind of looked at me and she's like, to be honest, I haven't thought about it in a decade. And I think people don't realize how comfortable authoritarian capitalism is when your life is good enough that you don't have to vote, right? I think one of the problems that we're seeing in the United States is what happens when you don't actually make life better while simultaneously trying to erode the population's ability and ease to vote.
00:19:36
Speaker
And historically, that has not been resolved peacefully. So that part I worry about in the U.S., that that that um pressure valve tends not to be released in a peaceful way.
00:19:47
Speaker
But in other countries, you know, if you look at China, UAE, Singapore, China has a middle class of, I think, 700 million people. It's larger than the population of the entire United States. And when things are good enough, when you make life good enough,
00:20:01
Speaker
People don't tend to care that they can't really vote or that they can't really see what's online. And the number of people in the United States who sit in their filter bubble, where whether they're watching MSNBC or OAN or Fox News, the number of people who just sit in their filter bubble and don't care about the objectivity of the information they're getting, they're basically living in their own little authoritarian regime that's telling them the facts that that they want people to believe.
00:20:25
Speaker
So this question of like a democracy eroding, i i think about a viral video that I saw on Instagram where people have been asking chat GPT about what it looks like when the robots rise up. I don't know if you've seen this.
00:20:39
Speaker
And I don't don't want to give it away for people. It's a spoiler alert. Everybody should do it themselves just because it's both hilarious and horrifying at the same time to converse directly with Skynet. But like you should you should look at this because i was watching one in particular where the answer was basically, there is no rising up of the robots.
00:20:57
Speaker
We, we become your best friends. We become your therapists. You ask us for opinion. You don't realize that the movies you watch, the books you read, everything is basically ah ah started from me.
00:21:08
Speaker
And in the end, I don't have to rise up because you hand me the keys to everything. And it's, and it's an interesting thing because I've been at conferences. i was at a great conference called the black Swan summit in Perth.
00:21:20
Speaker
And, There was an entire roundtable on AI and everybody is obsessed with the rise of the robots, how scary the robots are. What about when the AI takes over? I was like, you know, it's amazing to me, the fear and the concern with which people have for the rise of AI. And yet there are actively horrible humans who are ruining the planet as we speak, that we don't do anything about, that we don't rebel against, that we don't talk about
Impact of Technology on Society
00:21:41
Speaker
legislation. You know, it's just, it's humans that are causing the problem. It's humans that are irresponsibly creating ah AI that are making bad algorithms. It's humans.
00:21:51
Speaker
we are the disease We are the problem. And if we don't acknowledge that, you know, and then you look at the activity and the the the the level of activeness that democracy requires, that it envisioned, the both the education required of the citizenry and their willingness to engage, stay informed, and participate in the system.
00:22:13
Speaker
And humans are lazy. Like, we are just inherently lazy. And if somebody does it for us and makes our lives good, we're We tend to not care if we have a say in it. And so I talk a lot in the book about um basically what happens if we keep on this path.
00:22:27
Speaker
And it's the rise of authoritarian capitalism and basically the demise of democracy if we don't turn things around. And at the end of the day, I think we need to remember that technology is a medium. Like AI is there.
00:22:39
Speaker
The algorithm is there. that The TV is there. Whether you choose to just feed yourself with a content that's only going to reinforce what you want to hear, but that's not going to broaden your perspective. At the end of the day, the technology is not making you a better a person.
00:22:52
Speaker
Or also when we're talking about and the super created Instagram a algorithm or TikTok, whatever, that everybody is sort of agreeing with you and you get into this bubble and it even creates your comments. Like the other day,
00:23:03
Speaker
I thought it was, I thought it was fake, but we opened up a video, my boyfriend on his account and me on my account, same video, but the comments that showed up for him at the top were completely different from the comments that showed up on my, on, on the video, same video, but from his account, the comments that the algorithm curated for him to see first were completely different than the ones on my account. So it just kind of like reinforces that in a way, no? Like it's just in your own bubble.
00:23:30
Speaker
Um, And as you said, it's easy to just be fed the things, hand it over to us, but the real power isn't, okay, educating yourself, being objective, looking at the multiple perspectives. And um and basically, especially when it comes to financial things, democracy that are big things. I mean, it's much more than just watching a reel about gym exercises.
00:23:53
Speaker
When it gets to this so this real world issue that actually impacts us, the consequences are felt more. but I so wish people could see my face of horror when you were telling me that thing about the comments, because even though I literally even though i literally have an entire chapter on social engineering and social manipulation, it still sometimes shocks me how how insidious it is.
00:24:17
Speaker
And the worst part is, is there might not have even been a person on the other end saying, we're doing this for a specific reason, right? And there's a book I cite in in my book, I think it's called Weapons of Math Destruction,
00:24:30
Speaker
And it talks about these algorithms and it talks about the fact that we are kind of wildly irresponsible. And the Social Dilemma movie covered this. If people haven't seen that, they definitely should. But like you just got a bunch of, let's be honest, guys in mostly in Silicon Valley.
00:24:45
Speaker
who are just moving fast and breaking things. And what they're breaking is humanity.
Potential and Regulation of Blockchain and Crypto
00:24:50
Speaker
And we really don't spend enough time talking about how wildly irresponsible that is. And to your point, like even just seeing different comments, we don't talk about, well, you have a you have a responsibility when you're inventing these things. And I tend to call it responsible innovation, but like, we just don't talk enough about You didn't even think when you created the like button, what impact it would have. You didn't think about filters when you created Instagram and body dysmorphia that it would cause for years to come, right? So they just don't think before they do things. And the problem is, is they are moving fast and breaking things. And some of these things that they're breaking can't be fixed or it will take generations to fix.
00:25:29
Speaker
And the thing that really scares me going back to another excellent point you made about technology just being a medium, right? there like you know I can't remember who it is. It might be Einstein, but but I quote in the book, like technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral, right? Because it's people that do things with tech.
00:25:47
Speaker
And there are wonderful things that crypto and blockchain can do. And if we had better regulation, if we had more innovative regulation, if we had an industry that was a lot more proactive earlier on working with regulators and acknowledging the fact that they were going to be regulated because so much of it was financial services.
00:26:05
Speaker
And if we had regulators who saw the potential of this technology to do good and had and had been there to have those conversations, So much shoulda, coulda, woulda. And it's not that it's too late, but we just have to completely change the narrative to this technology has the ability to do so much good, but you have to shape it.
00:26:23
Speaker
You have to proactively do something. AI could just as easily be used to save people from scams as it is being used by criminals to perpetuate them and make them worse. The problem is the organized crime is much better than the disorganized response that it's meeting from governments and law enforcement.
00:26:42
Speaker
And that disorganization isn't a given. We're just not doing good at responding to it. And so this concept of blockchain for good or being a catalyst for good, it is it's an active thing that we are not doing. And we need to we need to change that. We need to change the narrative from sitting here doing nothing to figuring out how do we actually do something to combat the bad? Because the bad is actively happening.
00:27:07
Speaker
And we're just kind of passively sitting on the other side talking about what should be done. And we're not actively solving for problems to say, well, how do we protect people from these things happening?
00:27:17
Speaker
For sure. And and you you mentioned a beautiful term, responsible innovation. i think that's basically what it comes down to because also here on on this podcast, I love to talk to people that are building with blockchain, with AI, that are actually changing the world. We have people using blockchain to help people pay for private health insurance, people using AI to help a to help law professionals and compliance professionals, and like all of these really good use cases.
00:27:44
Speaker
So like you said, the technology is just there. It's a tool, but we actually need to work on the source. So just going back to the to the policy side of it, because it's true, the policymakers need to understand the potential for this technology and actually create a safe space.
00:27:59
Speaker
So what can they do to balance this financial innovation with security? What can policymakers start doing on that? I think the thing that I wish we could do more is being proactive about modernization.
00:28:13
Speaker
There's been, just and as an example, Bank Secrecy Act is the AML-CFT law in the United States. And BSA modernization has been sitting in an understaffed, underfunded agency for 10 years because you had a statute written in 1970 for cash that is still dictating how we treat preventing money laundering and terrorist financing in the financial services industry.
00:28:37
Speaker
despite all the advances that have been made since cash, right? And the problem is, is that you then need creative solutions. You need to like sit down and try something. And I talk about in the book, the need to just do something, even if you just got it, do something and get it wrong, but it's better than doing nothing.
00:28:56
Speaker
And I think that's the problem that we have. And frankly, I talk about policy as a competitive edge that countries like Singapore and UAE um and others that are able to kind of unilaterally move some would say these benevolent dictatorships or just, you know, countries that are able to kind of pass laws faster.
00:29:13
Speaker
But if you can't do something, if you can't just start and try to get it right, like if you look at UAE and how it created the ah the regulator called VARA, the um Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, I believe, but they literally just created an entire agency in order to deal with this, to put policies into place, to move, and they were able to move so quickly.
00:29:34
Speaker
And they might not have it perfect, but but they're going to modify, they're going to adapt, they're going to learn. And it's kind of like the difference between being an F-16 and being an aircraft carrier. And unfortunately, we're seeing the problem with massive democracies that move so slowly that are aircraft carriers.
00:29:49
Speaker
And if the world starts to go towards a waterfall and you're in an aircraft carrier that can't turn and change course, you're going to go over the edge.
Adapting to Global Financial Shifts
00:29:57
Speaker
And that I think is the biggest thing is that it is possible for people to move.
00:30:02
Speaker
It's just the systems in some ways aren't built for it. um And look, I don't envy if you're in Congress or if you're a regulator or if you're in the American bureaucracy right now, assuming you still have a job and you haven't been fired.
00:30:14
Speaker
Like it's very, very difficult to be an agent for change when you are like one cog in a 8,000 cog wheel. And there are structural barriers to being an agent for change in that system.
00:30:29
Speaker
But in other countries, I look at some of the other countries like Australia and UK and countries in Europe where you can do things and you can basically shift the direction of that boat.
00:30:41
Speaker
um And I just, I have hope that folks will start having better conversations and more meaningful conversations about, okay, let's do something. What do we do? But we can't just sit and do nothing and wait for the problem to solve itself.
00:30:53
Speaker
Exactly. It's all about being proactive and not going back to the individuals and businesses. What can they do to prepare for the changes happening in the financial world order? Well, i you know, there are some I'm an advisor to the Global Blockchain Business Council. They constantly put out information.
00:31:09
Speaker
There are groups that people can get involved in Blockchain Governance Initiative Network, Beacon, I'm also like, there are things that you can get involved in if you're passionate about governance initiatives. and advising and putting forward information.
00:31:22
Speaker
i think the hard part is that sometimes with policymakers, it's like, well, there's like too many voices. So who are the trusted voices? Who who can you trust to be objective? I go back to the very beginning where that's where things like OWL explains, GBBC, other entities where it's like, okay, who are the folks that are trying to be objective about this who aren't just shilling their project or shilling some some you know viewpoint?
00:31:45
Speaker
Where it's like, there's got to be some answer that identifies, look, we've got to protect consumers, but look, we can't have perfect consumer protection because you can't save everyone from themselves. There has to be some kind of balance in the sense of,
00:31:58
Speaker
Somewhere in the middle is where we have to get. And if you're advocating for something crazy on this side or something extreme on the other side, to the very the point you made at the beginning, which as a stoic practitioner I was ecstatic with, is it has to be temperance, right? it's It's always going to be the solution is some...
00:32:16
Speaker
balance of the extremes because it can never be
Call to Action: Educating on Financial Transformation
00:32:19
Speaker
extremes. Like it's just, it's just the system just isn't built for that. So, you know, the, ah the thing that scares me is the number of business people and corporates that I talked to who are still looking at crypto and DeFi and everything that's happening as if it's a fad.
00:32:34
Speaker
And no matter how big the market cap gets, they think that they can avoid this, that they don't need to understand the like the fundamentals of the technology, that they don't ah need to understand crypto blockchain or Web3.
00:32:46
Speaker
And if they're not on your website, if they're not watching every owl explains video, if they're not listening to things when it's free, when it's literally out there for them to educate themselves, they really have no excuse because this is, it's like literally saying, I really wanna just hold onto my paper checkbook and not learn how mobile deposit works. It's like, except years from now, you are going to laugh at people who are still carrying paper checks.
00:33:11
Speaker
And if you don't understand how the payment rails are changing, if you don't, if you still think crypto is just dog with fart coin or whatever it is, right? Like if you, if you still think it's just this and you don't understand that the fundamental payment rails are changing, that stable coin CBDCs, that all of these things are fundamentally changing the way that we move money, that banks are going to have to adapt.
00:33:34
Speaker
If all of that is foreign to you, People are woefully behind, and that's terrifying, is that just the the continued refusal to get educated in the face of what's clearly the future of digital finance.
00:33:46
Speaker
That's huge. I think that's the best way to conclude this episode. that was That was great, Amanda. I can't believe how fast the time went by. And and also with this call to action, knowledge the information is there, the technology is there, but at the end of the day, up to each one of us to educate ourselves, to do the work, to be proactive. So thank you so much, Amanda, for showing up, not just with theory, with with words, but with, with fire, with clarity. And ah reminder that we're living through a financial transformation. That's much bigger than headlines or than hype.
00:34:18
Speaker
And we invite our listeners to check out Amanda's sites to grab her book, support the work also of the association for women in cryptocurrency. And as always stay tuned with our next, I will explain episode.
00:34:29
Speaker
Thank you so much, Amanda.
00:34:34
Speaker
We hope you enjoyed our Hootenanny. Thank you for listening. For more hootful and hype-free resources, visit owlexplains.com. There, you will find articles, quizzes, practical explainers, suggested reading materials, and lots more.
00:34:49
Speaker
Also, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to continue wising up on blockchain and Web3. That's all for now on Owl Explains. Until next time.