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Welcome to One Civil Affairs 
Podcast. 

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I'm Lieutenant Colonel Brian 
Hancock, and I will be your host

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for this session. 
Today we have with us Lee 

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Bratcher to discuss the 
importance of blockchain 

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technology and cryptocurrency. 
For those of you who don't know 

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Lee Bratcher, he's the president
and founder of the Texas 

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Blockchain Council, an 
industrial association with more

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than 100 member companies and 
hundreds of individuals that 

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seek to make Texas the 
jurisdiction of choice for 

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Bitcoin and blockchain 
innovation. 

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Formerly, Lee was a political 
science professor teaching the 

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international relations with a 
research emphasis on property 

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rights. 
Lee also served as an ROTC 

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instructor and civil affairs 
officer during his time in the 

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US Army Reserves. 
Mr. Bratcher, welcome to the 

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show. 
Thanks for having me, Brian. 

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Looking forward to the 
conversation. 

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Quick disclaimer, a reminder to 
the audience that our remarks 

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are solely those of the 
presenters and do not 

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necessarily represent the views 
of the United States Army or the

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Department of Defense. 
Now, Lee, I want to thank our 

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mutual frame, Major Giancarlo 
Newsome, for introducing us. 

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He is a very interesting 
individual. 

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I've gotten to work with him on 
a couple projects. 

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Have you been able to work with 
Major Newsome on anything 

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recently? 
I sure have. 

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Several years ago, he encouraged
me to join the 75th Innovation 

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Command, which is an Army 
Reserve unit supporting Army 

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Futures Command. 
And so I got to serve on his 

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team as innovation officers in 
in Austin. 

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Now, what was this? 
One of the defense innovation 

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units? 
I know we have one in Silicon 

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Valley. 
Was this a branch that was out 

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there? 
You know, we're building kind of

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an equivalent of Silicon Valley,
I think in Austin. 

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That's what I'm seeing unfold. 
It was that one of these defense

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innovation units. 
I think not directly affiliated,

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but certainly in the same line 
of effort. 

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OK, super. 
Well, we're here to talk about 

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another important future of the 
world, which also has military 

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implications, and that's 
blockchain technology. 

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Now, how does 1 become an expert
in blockchain technology? 

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There are no degree plans 
necessary that there's no major 

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in cryptocurrency. 
It is interdisciplinary by its 

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very nature. 
So there's a bit of economics in

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blockchain and Bitcoin crypto. 
There's certainly computer 

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science and cryptography, and 
there's a little bit of 

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philosophy in there as well. 
So you're going from the 

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humanities, from business and 
from computer science, which 

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makes it so interesting, makes 
it very difficult for anyone to 

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be an expert in all facets of 
the technology. 

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I would say I'm more attuned to 
the policy side, to the 

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Economics and Business side. 
I'd understand. 

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And the way technology and 
programming languages move, I'm 

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not sure anyone is an expert to 
for long Now when we think of 

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blockchain technology, we have 
words like Merkel trees and 

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things like that popping up. 
It's all kind of mysterious to 

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me. 
So I'm going to read on the air 

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a basic definition of blockchain
technology for the audience. 

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A blockchain is a distributed 
Ledger with growing lists of 

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records that are securely linked
together via cryptographic 

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hashes. 
Now I'll be honest, after 

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reading this definition I have 
no idea what blockchain is. 

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In your own words, can you 
simplify this and explain it to 

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the audience? 
What is a blockchain and why do 

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blockchains matter? 
Yeah, that's a great question. 

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It's a decentralized distributed
Ledger, as the definition said. 

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But the way that I look at it, 
it's the next iteration of 

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double entry accounting. 
And we've had double entry 

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accounting for 500 years, 
developed by Luca Pacioli 

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Renaissance, so that the Medicis
could trade across time and 

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space and with actors that they 
didn't necessarily trust. 

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And that served us really well 
as a society for many centuries.

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Block chains are the next 
iteration of that. 

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They are triple entry counting, 
if you will, and they're really 

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triple entry counting. 
There are nodes running the 

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Ledger of value transfer all 
over. 

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So the Bitcoin block chain, 
there are thousands of nodes 

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across the world. 
They're decentralized. 

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There's no central authority or 
honeypot of data. 

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The transactions all live 
updated every 10 minutes on the 

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Bitcoin blockchain. 
And there's other blockchains, 

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there's the Etherium blockchain.
But the most important thing to 

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know is that any blockchain is 
securing a Ledger of who owns 

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what and the what is dependent 
on what the chain is. 

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So in the Bitcoin blockchain, 
it's Bitcoin, you're securing 

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the Ledger of who owns what 
Bitcoin. 

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And there's other ledgers that 
are, there's people that are 

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tokenizing real estate and they 
may do that on the Etherium 

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blockchain or on other 
blockchains. 

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And it's really tokenizing the 
ownership of an asset like real 

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estate and allowing that to 
trade in a liquid fashion rather

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than sort of a syndicated 
fashion like a private equity, 

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general partner, limited partner
structure like most real estate 

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is consumed and traded today. 
So it's just a more efficient 

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version of value transfer, and 
it uses the rails of the 

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Internet, and it avoids 
expensive intermediaries. 

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One of the things that 
immediately strikes me is that 

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it's less inflationary. 
Since governments can't just 

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turn on the printing presses and
make a whole bunch more of these

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tokenized assets. 
I would imagine they hold their 

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value a little bit better. 
Well, not all crypto is created 

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equal. 
There are some meme coins out 

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there that are just kind of 
crazy and founder can just mint 

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more of them. 
And the reason why they don't 

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have as much value as Bitcoin or
Ethereum or some of the more 

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prominent ones is because the 
very reason the founder can mint

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more and generate inflation 
causes them to be nearly 

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worthless. 
So I'd say 90% of crypto assets,

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digital assets or 
cryptocurrencies will trim 

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towards 0 and 5% of them will 
trend towards massive market 

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caps in the many trillions of 
dollars. 

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So very much a divergent that's 
going to happen there. 

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OK, that makes sense. 
Let's go back to your statement 

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earlier that blockchain 
technology for securing finance 

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is like triple entry books as 
opposed to double entry 

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accounting. 
Now, in double entry accounting,

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you separate intentionally your 
payables from your receivables 

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to prevent collusion and 
conflict of interest. 

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That can lead to cooking the 
books. 

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Right now, in triple entry 
accounting through a blockchain,

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what happens if, say, a group of
hackers get together and they're

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able to suborn roughly 51% of 
the chain for an asset? 

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Right. 
So if they're able to take 

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control of 51% of the network 
and order the mining compute 

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that is forming the next blocks,
they can create false 

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transactions or what I'll call 
fraudulent transactions in that 

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they can devil splint. 
You have a physical asset. 

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You can't devil spin it because 
it's physical. 

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If you give it to someone in a 
broader system, you can also 

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give it to someone else because 
it's physical. 

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They don't have it right. 
Conservation of masks. 

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Got it. 
In digital assets, you can 

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replicate things that are 
digital. 

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Napster showed that pretty 
quickly. 

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The thing against that is you're
not allowed to devil spin. 

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So I'll have one Bitcoin in my 
wallet and I try to send you one

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Bitcoin, but simultaneously I 
also try to send that Bitcoin to

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someone else. 
But first transaction will go 

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through, the second one will be 
cancelled. 

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The nodes will not verify the 
second transaction because I 

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don't have enough unspent 
transaction output to make 2 

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transactions of one Bitcoin each
because I just had one Bitcoin. 

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That is fantastic. 
I think we saw an example of 

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some hacking groups in South 
America actually take control of

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51% of the entries for one type 
of crypto coin. 

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And the coins didn't get spent 
multiple times, but they changed

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the ownership registry. 
So an enormous number of them 

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were no longer owned by their 
owners, they were owned by these

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hacking groups. 
How do we protect against 

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something like that? 
Yeah. 

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So the smaller the blockchain 
recommendation is to just kind 

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of avoid the long tail of 
smaller assets. 

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You're not yet mature. 
And there's a lot of education 

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to be done on self custody as 
well. 

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Because when we hear about like 
the Lazarus Group, which is the 

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North Korean hacking group 
stealing a billion dollars of 

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Etherium from buy bits, if I 
remember correctly, that 

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happened just a few months ago. 
That was not the Etherium 

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blockchain getting hacked. 
Those hackers didn't change the 

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Ethereum Ledger. 
They were able to fishing and 

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social engineering, get into the
exchange and change the address 

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to their own. 
That was moving a billion 

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dollars worth of Ethereum 
internally. 

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It's incredibly impressive what 
those hackers did. 

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Obviously tragic as well. 
They were able to steal that 

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much. 
So very, very important to 

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educate folks on the importance 
of custody and key management 

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and things of that nature. 
Yeah, but the same is true of 

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our electronic front systems 
today, right? 

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So hishing and hacking to get 
folks access and verification 

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information can be used to drain
accounts. 

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So it sounds to me the Bitcoin 
isn't more susceptible to any of

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those types of human engineering
ploys and the actual validation 

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of the asset is actually more 
secure. 

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So I think that might address 
one set of fears that some folks

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have that somehow these 
blockchain based assets are more

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susceptible to electronic theft.
That does not seem to be the 

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case. 
That's accurate. 

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I mean, there's a lot of wire 
fraud out there and ACH fraud 

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and and other kinds of fraud. 
It's really tragic. 

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What I will say though, is 
irreversible. 

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Once you send crypto to a 
wallet, that transaction is on 

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the blockchain and I'll be 
reversed, which is kind of part 

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of the beauty of it. 
It's not censorable. 

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I think that's important for the
CA world to know is you guys 

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operate internationally and 
sending transactions across 

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borders seamlessly and with no 
fees. 

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Pretty interesting, except, and 
we understand it so that we can 

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use it to the strategic 
advantage of the West and also 

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be able to stymie bad actors. 
Firms like Chain Analysis and 

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TRM and some of these other 
really, really adept digital 

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forensics firms. 
Their biggest customers are the 

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DODIRS and the Justice 
Department and FBI doing digital

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forensics for the US government 
all the time. 

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And I think we got to lean into 
that level of knowledge the same

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way we leaned into the era of 
sanctions where the United 

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States was able to kind of 
control global monetary policy 

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in that way. 
Yeah, and many things are are 

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changing. 
It seems to me that digital 

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currencies are inevitable. 
Printing hard currencies is kind

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of like dropping leaflets for 
SIOP. 

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Great. 
At one point in time still has 

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some applications, but the 
future's moved on. 

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And I think most transactions 
today already digital, whether 

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it's through a credit card, 
through a bank, through an EFT, 

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a Zell, whatever. 
I suspect that people have 

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become more and more comfortable
with digital transactions. 

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I suspect, you know, probably 
over 90% of all of our 

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transactions are digital today. 
So it seems inevitable that at 

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some point before the Star Trek 
era, we're going to have digital

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currency. 
What needs to happen for us to 

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effectively replace cash with 
digital currency? 

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And what are the implications 
when that happens? 

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Right. 
I would not be in favor of 

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eliminating cash altogether, but
I think what we will see is most

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transactions will move to stable
coins. 

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And stable coins, we haven't 
really talked about yet, but 

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those are just U.S. dollars that
run on blockchain rails. 

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So it's an asset that represents
$1.00. 

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And that dollar is held in a 
bank like Bank of New York now 

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and holds a lot of the stable 
coin dollars, and it's always 

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redeemable for a dollar. 
So a dollar's worth of stable 

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coin is always redeemable for 
U.S. dollar. 

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It doesn't change in value. 
It's always worth $1.00. 

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Just out of curiosity, are there
cryptocurrencies like stable 

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dollar that if you wanted to buy
a basket of currencies crypto 

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format, are there investments 
like that? 

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Not that I'm aware of. 99% of 
stable coins are denominated in 

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U.S. dollars, which is actually 
really good for U.S. dollar 

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dominance and the dollar 
remaining the world reserve 

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currency because you know, 
that's the asset that backs most

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00:12:33,920 --> 00:12:35,800
of these is like short term T 
Bros. 

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00:12:36,200 --> 00:12:39,720
There are a few like gold backed
stable coins and make a very, 

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very small percentage of euro 
backed stable coins, but I'm not

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really aware of one that's like 
a basket currencies. 

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00:12:45,200 --> 00:12:48,000
But what I would say is Paul 
Ryan, the former speaker of the 

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00:12:48,000 --> 00:12:51,040
House ruble good op-ed in the 
Wall Street Journal about a year

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00:12:51,040 --> 00:12:55,320
ago about how dollars backed 
stable coins are being used all 

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00:12:55,320 --> 00:12:58,080
around the world. 
And it's a very good thing for 

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00:12:58,080 --> 00:13:01,080
AUS dollar dominance, the dollar
and the world reserve currency. 

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00:13:01,280 --> 00:13:04,400
There's about 200 Durham dollars
worth of stable coins that are 

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00:13:04,400 --> 00:13:08,080
currently circulating globally. 
Why don't we hear about that? 

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I'll admit, I feel like I'm a 
reasonably educated person, but 

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this is the first time I'm 
hearing about that. 

246
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That is a lot of money we're 
talking about right there. 

247
00:13:17,040 --> 00:13:20,840
No, it would, but it's not in 
terms of like the amount of M2 

248
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money supply. 
It's not huge. 

249
00:13:22,520 --> 00:13:24,040
I think there's a lot of room to
grow. 

250
00:13:24,040 --> 00:13:28,520
I think 200 billion sounds like 
a lot, but I think stable coins 

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will eventually be a trillion, 
multiple trillions. 

252
00:13:31,960 --> 00:13:36,080
And most of the stable coin 
activity is actually demand from

253
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everyone outside the US who 
wants dollars. 

254
00:13:39,280 --> 00:13:42,400
In most developing nations, 
there are more stable coin 

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00:13:42,400 --> 00:13:44,520
volume than there is like credit
card volume. 

256
00:13:44,800 --> 00:13:48,160
And even including the United 
States, stablecoins cleared 

257
00:13:48,160 --> 00:13:51,680
value last month than Visa 
actually then then Visa and 

258
00:13:51,680 --> 00:13:54,320
MasterCard combined. 
And so if they're really 

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00:13:54,320 --> 00:13:56,920
quickly, but you know, a lot of 
Americans don't hear about it 

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00:13:56,920 --> 00:14:00,840
because we don't necessarily 
need it because we had the 

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luxury of using the US dollar 
and having really sophisticated 

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00:14:04,600 --> 00:14:07,240
payment rails already. 
And so I don't necessarily use 

263
00:14:07,240 --> 00:14:11,560
stablecoins, groceries or buy a 
a meal in a restaurant, but 

264
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people all around the world are 
and that's because of the US 

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00:14:14,800 --> 00:14:16,600
dollar. 
They won dollar back stablecoins

266
00:14:16,600 --> 00:14:19,040
and it's the best way to get it.
And that makes sense. 

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00:14:19,040 --> 00:14:21,880
We've heard politically the 
current administration 

268
00:14:21,880 --> 00:14:26,800
discussing potentially backing 
some of the US dollar with 

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00:14:26,800 --> 00:14:30,880
digital assets along this 
futuristic view that we've been 

270
00:14:30,880 --> 00:14:32,880
describing. 
What I just heard you say, 

271
00:14:32,880 --> 00:14:35,240
though, is that, well, that kind
of has already happened, at 

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00:14:35,240 --> 00:14:37,320
least to the tune of $200 
billion. 

273
00:14:37,320 --> 00:14:40,720
So maybe this isn't such a 
radical departure from what's 

274
00:14:40,720 --> 00:14:42,280
already happening in the 
economy. 

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00:14:42,920 --> 00:14:46,680
Yeah, I think that's right. 
The stable coin piece is very 

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00:14:46,680 --> 00:14:50,240
important because stable coins 
were the 7th largest buyer of 

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00:14:50,360 --> 00:14:51,720
U.S. 
Treasuries last year if it was a

278
00:14:51,720 --> 00:14:53,200
sovereign. 
So they bought more Treasuries 

279
00:14:53,200 --> 00:14:55,720
in Saudi Arabia and more 
Treasuries in France. 

280
00:14:56,000 --> 00:14:58,760
There's only a few countries in 
the world that bought more U.S. 

281
00:14:58,760 --> 00:15:01,520
Treasuries than stable coin 
issuers. 

282
00:15:01,520 --> 00:15:03,720
And stable coin issuers are 
private companies, by the way. 

283
00:15:04,080 --> 00:15:07,320
So as that grows, essentially 
that's going to be financing our

284
00:15:07,320 --> 00:15:09,400
debt. 
And then the debt is of course 

285
00:15:09,400 --> 00:15:11,760
in U.S. dollars. 
So it directly addresses that. 

286
00:15:12,040 --> 00:15:16,160
Now you recently co-authored a 
book, I believe the title was 

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00:15:16,200 --> 00:15:18,840
National Security in the Digital
Age. 

288
00:15:19,040 --> 00:15:23,040
And in this book you advance a 
thesis that Bitcoin is in fact 

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00:15:23,040 --> 00:15:25,600
or should be a tool for modern 
statecraft. 

290
00:15:25,760 --> 00:15:29,040
Can you walk us through your 
thesis there and what the 

291
00:15:29,040 --> 00:15:35,440
evidence is to present that as a
viable way forward for modern 

292
00:15:35,440 --> 00:15:37,400
statecraft? 
Absolutely. 

293
00:15:37,760 --> 00:15:41,360
So I would never submit that it 
would be the primary tool of 

294
00:15:41,360 --> 00:15:43,720
modern statecraft. 
I just that it would be 1 of 

295
00:15:43,720 --> 00:15:47,240
many kind of a basket of tools, 
most of which we already 

296
00:15:47,240 --> 00:15:50,160
possessed, which is economic 
might leading to technological 

297
00:15:50,160 --> 00:15:51,680
might leading the military 
might. 

298
00:15:51,880 --> 00:15:54,400
The whole of Dime is driven. 
Around energy as well. 

299
00:15:54,560 --> 00:15:57,840
And so Bitcoin is interesting 
because it touches on two of 

300
00:15:57,840 --> 00:15:59,920
those things. 
It touches on economic might and

301
00:15:59,920 --> 00:16:02,600
energy. 
Bitcoin mining is the energy 

302
00:16:02,600 --> 00:16:06,000
intensive process as everyone 
has heard about in the news and 

303
00:16:06,280 --> 00:16:10,200
essentially allows you to create
value with this computational 

304
00:16:10,200 --> 00:16:13,040
process with these data centers.
And a lot of these data centers 

305
00:16:13,040 --> 00:16:17,800
also house AIGPUS as well. 
And so see that when someone 

306
00:16:17,800 --> 00:16:21,240
says what is Bitcoin maxed by, I
usually say it's backed by two 

307
00:16:21,240 --> 00:16:23,920
things. 
One, it's backed by energy and 

308
00:16:23,920 --> 00:16:27,360
thankfully 4% of Bitcoin mining 
and the energy used to consume 

309
00:16:27,360 --> 00:16:29,920
it is in the US. 
The second thing that bitcoins 

310
00:16:29,920 --> 00:16:32,600
backed by is scarcity. 
That's principles like we talked

311
00:16:32,600 --> 00:16:34,520
about earlier in Austrian 
economics. 

312
00:16:34,880 --> 00:16:37,840
And so as a tool for modern 
statecraft, you have two things.

313
00:16:37,840 --> 00:16:42,320
You have the energy component 
where AI and Bitcoin mining and 

314
00:16:42,320 --> 00:16:45,120
having those resources and those
data centers. 

315
00:16:45,400 --> 00:16:48,360
You know, data is the new oil 
certainly. 

316
00:16:48,360 --> 00:16:52,480
And so compute is also kind of 
the new oil and that's at the 

317
00:16:52,480 --> 00:16:55,920
intersection of turning 
hydrocarbons in the energy and 

318
00:16:55,920 --> 00:16:59,120
electricity or renewable sources
into electricity. 

319
00:16:59,120 --> 00:17:01,120
I don't really care. 
Move a little grade 2, right, 

320
00:17:01,360 --> 00:17:03,880
All the above. 
We just need more energy and and

321
00:17:03,880 --> 00:17:06,000
that's one piece of national 
security. 

322
00:17:06,000 --> 00:17:09,599
The other is to do kind of the 
lowest bet in the woods world. 

323
00:17:09,839 --> 00:17:13,480
It would be nice if the wet in 
the woods era lasted for another

324
00:17:13,480 --> 00:17:15,400
century. 
But that's not going to. 

325
00:17:15,400 --> 00:17:16,920
Happen. 
It's unlikely you and I both 

326
00:17:16,920 --> 00:17:19,800
agree. 
So in that post Bretton Woods 

327
00:17:19,800 --> 00:17:23,000
world, we want the dollar to be 
the reserve currency for several

328
00:17:23,000 --> 00:17:24,480
more decades. 
We've already talked about that 

329
00:17:24,480 --> 00:17:27,440
quite a bit. 
Bitcoin is going to overtake 

330
00:17:27,440 --> 00:17:30,680
gold by market cap. 
The nation that has the most 

331
00:17:30,680 --> 00:17:34,400
Bitcoin on their balance sheet 
will be that central bank. 

332
00:17:34,720 --> 00:17:39,440
The other central banks will 
want to hold that currency and 

333
00:17:39,640 --> 00:17:43,720
it will prove to be as 
influential for us as the Petro 

334
00:17:43,720 --> 00:17:48,640
dollar has been in the last 
50-60 years is to say massively 

335
00:17:48,640 --> 00:17:53,040
influential on the global stage.
Talking about civil affairs, 

336
00:17:53,240 --> 00:17:56,480
even though you're in the IRR, 
you're still in our branch, so 

337
00:17:56,480 --> 00:18:00,440
you're still a civil affairs 
officer and we have a very 

338
00:18:00,440 --> 00:18:03,280
important mission both at home 
and abroad. 

339
00:18:03,560 --> 00:18:06,920
You've mentioned throughout the 
show a couple of examples where 

340
00:18:06,920 --> 00:18:10,960
blockchain could be used for 
civil affairs application. 

341
00:18:11,240 --> 00:18:15,080
What other use cases, 
particularly perhaps novel or 

342
00:18:15,080 --> 00:18:19,400
exotic use cases, can you think 
of where our civil affairs 

343
00:18:19,400 --> 00:18:24,200
professionals could utilize 
blockchain technologies to to 

344
00:18:24,200 --> 00:18:28,080
make the world a better place? 
Yeah, I'll shout out my 75th 

345
00:18:28,080 --> 00:18:32,000
Innovation Command colleagues 
because there was recently a 

346
00:18:32,000 --> 00:18:35,560
press release from the 75th 
Innovation Command related to 

347
00:18:35,880 --> 00:18:39,800
blockchain based tracking for 
sensitive items and foreign 

348
00:18:39,800 --> 00:18:42,240
military sales. 
And this is all public 

349
00:18:42,240 --> 00:18:45,360
information out of the live 
pilot sounds like. 

350
00:18:45,360 --> 00:18:47,440
I mean, a couple years ago when 
I was working with them, they 

351
00:18:47,440 --> 00:18:51,200
were really doing good work on 
the foreign military sales front

352
00:18:51,200 --> 00:18:53,280
and excited. 
They're tracking sensitive 

353
00:18:53,280 --> 00:18:57,920
items, tracking things from 
through the logistics process, 

354
00:18:57,920 --> 00:19:00,640
through the handover process to 
foreign militaries. 

355
00:19:00,800 --> 00:19:04,200
That is a really, really cool 
use case and you can't do it 

356
00:19:04,200 --> 00:19:07,680
with like every piece of 
munition, but you can prioritize

357
00:19:07,680 --> 00:19:10,800
certain items that are quite 
sensitive. 

358
00:19:11,520 --> 00:19:14,080
Yeah, absolutely. 
Or a certain price point. 

359
00:19:14,320 --> 00:19:19,080
I think about some of the 
concerns as we deliver munitions

360
00:19:19,080 --> 00:19:22,600
to struggling countries, using 
Ukraine as an example. 

361
00:19:22,680 --> 00:19:24,720
Where there's concerns, well, 
maybe they're not always being 

362
00:19:24,720 --> 00:19:28,080
handled in the way that we 
intend as as the giver. 

363
00:19:28,320 --> 00:19:32,040
But with these zero knowledge 
capabilities you're describing, 

364
00:19:32,320 --> 00:19:37,040
it seems like we could have some
extra low cost checks on the 

365
00:19:37,040 --> 00:19:40,160
system that will inspire 
confidence for everyone 

366
00:19:40,160 --> 00:19:41,760
involved. 
I agree. 

367
00:19:41,760 --> 00:19:46,440
And and just to shout out, Major
Gaudiat of the 75th was the one 

368
00:19:46,440 --> 00:19:48,760
who really spearheaded that 
program. 

369
00:19:48,760 --> 00:19:52,760
And you can look at the press 
release, the headline of 75th 

370
00:19:53,000 --> 00:19:55,440
Usurrex Serger develops a 
blockchain solution to 

371
00:19:55,440 --> 00:19:57,480
revolutionize the military 
supply chain. 

372
00:19:57,480 --> 00:19:59,120
So. 
Wow, brilliant. 

373
00:19:59,760 --> 00:20:02,000
Pretty cool stuff. 
That is very cool. 

374
00:20:02,360 --> 00:20:04,280
Let me ask you one final 
question. 

375
00:20:04,640 --> 00:20:08,760
We've talked about a couple of 
hypothetical future scenarios 

376
00:20:09,120 --> 00:20:11,440
kind of led that process. 
I'm going to turn it over to 

377
00:20:11,440 --> 00:20:14,520
you. 
What do you, as an expert in 

378
00:20:14,520 --> 00:20:17,600
this field see as the future of 
blockchain technology? 

379
00:20:17,680 --> 00:20:21,520
Where do we go from here? 
I think it's so broad that 

380
00:20:21,520 --> 00:20:24,600
there's different categories, if
you will, buckets that I put 

381
00:20:24,600 --> 00:20:27,280
this in. 
You've got Bitcoin, which we 

382
00:20:27,280 --> 00:20:29,840
talked about quite a bit on the 
show, which is the most 

383
00:20:29,840 --> 00:20:34,000
important of stable coins, which
is another extremely important 

384
00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:36,240
bucket from the national 
security perspective with 

385
00:20:36,240 --> 00:20:39,600
maintaining dollar dominance. 
And then you've got business 

386
00:20:39,600 --> 00:20:43,000
applications for blockchain. 
You've got people building 

387
00:20:43,000 --> 00:20:46,880
decentralized applications and 
all sorts of innovative 

388
00:20:46,880 --> 00:20:50,800
financial services products, 
tokenizing money market funds 

389
00:20:50,800 --> 00:20:54,960
and real estate and all kinds of
business operations. 

390
00:20:55,320 --> 00:20:57,480
And then you have kind of what 
I'll call like the enterprise 

391
00:20:57,480 --> 00:21:00,800
blockchain side where you're 
tracking sensitive supply chain 

392
00:21:00,800 --> 00:21:04,320
items or proving the provenance 
of different maybe carbon 

393
00:21:04,320 --> 00:21:08,040
credits or something like that. 
There's four buckets just in 

394
00:21:08,040 --> 00:21:10,680
that alone where I could see 
each one of them taking out a 

395
00:21:10,680 --> 00:21:13,520
life of their own and really 
transforming the world. 

396
00:21:14,000 --> 00:21:16,920
That's that's really exciting. 
I'm going to have to think about

397
00:21:16,920 --> 00:21:20,440
this quite a bit and probably 
listen to our own podcast a few 

398
00:21:20,440 --> 00:21:23,560
times to absorb it all. 
I really appreciate you coming 

399
00:21:23,560 --> 00:21:27,840
on the show, Lee. 
This was fantastic and I know 

400
00:21:27,840 --> 00:21:29,760
the listeners are going to 
appreciate it as well. 

401
00:21:30,120 --> 00:21:33,320
Any final parting thoughts? 
Just so I appreciate your 

402
00:21:33,320 --> 00:21:36,640
service Brian and and all of 
those who are are listening and 

403
00:21:37,200 --> 00:21:39,640
just hoping and praying that 
they're are safe. 

404
00:21:39,640 --> 00:21:43,840
And yeah, just wanted to make 
sure that they can know happy to

405
00:21:43,840 --> 00:21:48,000
for them to reach out to me. 
I can be connected to them to 

406
00:21:48,000 --> 00:21:49,960
answer any questions about 
blockchain that they have them. 

407
00:21:50,320 --> 00:21:52,240
Thank you, Lee. 
I really appreciate your time. 

408
00:21:54,160 --> 00:21:56,600
Thanks for listening. 
If you get a chance, please like

409
00:21:56,600 --> 00:21:59,800
and subscribe and rate the show 
on your favorite podcast 

410
00:21:59,800 --> 00:22:02,560
platform. 
Also, if you're interested in 

411
00:22:02,560 --> 00:22:05,800
coming on the show or hosting an
episode, e-mail us at 

412
00:22:05,800 --> 00:22:09,920
ca.podcasting@gmail.com. 
I'll have the e-mail and CA 

413
00:22:09,920 --> 00:22:11,960
Association website in the show 
notes. 

414
00:22:12,560 --> 00:22:15,280
And now, most importantly, to 
those currently out in the 

415
00:22:15,280 --> 00:22:18,600
field, working with a partner 
nation's people or leadership to

416
00:22:18,600 --> 00:22:21,640
forward US relations. 
Thank you all for what you're 

417
00:22:21,640 --> 00:22:24,320
doing. 
This is Jack, your host. 

418
00:22:24,960 --> 00:22:28,520
Stay tuned for more great 
episodes. 1 California podcast.

