Georgia Fintech Academy
Laura Gibson-Lamothe and Georgia Fintech Academy students discussing various Fintech related topics with special fintech executive guests.
Georgia Fintech Academy
Episode 18: Digital Assets, DeFi and the story of Verady's Success - Kell Canty, Verady and Tariq Waseem, Georgia State
Kell Canty, Co-Founder of Verady joins Tariq Waseem a rising senior at Georgia State and founder of BlockchainGSU. This conversation dives into the expanding relevance of digital assets and distributed ledger technology.
Georgia Fintech Academy
https://www.georgiafintechacademy.org/
LinkedIn (Georgia Fintech Academy)
https://www.linkedin.com/company/georgia-fintech-academy/
Welcome to the Georgia FinTech Academy podcast. The Georgia FinTech Academy is a collaboration between Georgia's FinTech industry and the university system of Georgia. This talent development initiative addresses a massive demand for FinTech professionals and give learners the specialized education experiences needed to enter the FinTech side.
Speaker 2:Hello everybody. This is Tommy Marshall. Well, welcome to episode 18 of the Georgia FinTech Academy podcast. Today is July 30th, 2020. It is great to have you back and I'm excited for today's show. We have Cal Kanti, the founder and CEO of Verity, as well as Tarik Wassim of Georgia state. Welcome to you both.
Speaker 3:Okay. Glad to be here, Tom. Thanks for having me
Speaker 2:Cal could, could we start with you in terms of intros, um, listeners we'd love to hear, well, I know we'd love to hear, um, your story about, uh, becoming a FinTech founder and FinTech. Uh, tell us about that.
Speaker 3:Sure. Uh, just a one, a slight note. I want to make a that's important to us is that, uh, I'm, uh, actually co-founder a Verity and my, uh, my co-founder Nathan Eppinger is, is a huge key part of what we do. So I wanted to mention that and didn't get that, uh, record straight on that. Um, uh, just a little bit of history on, on my background in FinTech and my kind of trajectory through the years, uh, uh, have been around for a while. Uh, my basic training, uh, and, uh, my kind of heritage is in computer science out of Georgia tech. So pretty hardcore technical stuff, uh, ended up, uh, working while I was in school with a company that did global cash management or a lot of tier one banks, such as ABN AMRO, Barclays Mitsubishi bank. Um, I spent, uh, months over in Scotland and in Brussels and in Tokyo doing wire transfer systems, Fedwire systems, uh, ACH is, uh, all kinds of things of that nature. So I kind of grew up on technology, uh, in payments, uh, and, uh, cash management and systems of that nature, uh, that company got acquired. And I moved on and did a couple of startups, uh, after that, one of the, one of the ones that I think of the most, uh, that was probably the most successful was one where end we, uh, built a platform for doing credit decisioning. Uh, we ended up, uh, having a great success with that, having T-Mobile as a client, as well as American express and Citibank, and ended up, uh, exiting that company, um, to a publicly traded company called agency software that merged with phyco horizons corporation in case you've ever heard of your, uh, FICO score when you're applying for a loan or something of that nature. And so that, that, that went very well. And then, um, you know, given my, my in payment methodologies and technologies, uh, later on, um, around 2012, um, I became interested in this new phenomenon called Bitcoin. And, uh, at that time, the only cryptocurrency around and, uh, a mutual friend of mine, uh, introduced me to Steven pear the co-founder of day. Uh, at that time, I think there were about five people and, uh, they had, uh, recently made offices, uh, here in Atlanta at the, um, Atlanta technology village. So, uh, we ended up talking and, uh, given some of my background in, in, uh, payments as well as in, uh, regulatory things, uh, ended up founding a company, 12.5 coin clients, and one of the first companies in reg tech in cryptocurrency ever. And, uh, we built out a system that did a worldwide know your customer and anti money laundering focused on big one. Uh, our anchor client was buffet and they still use that system today. Uh, but at the time there, wasn't a huge demand for regulatory software in Bitcoin. If you can imagine that, um, I was able to, uh, work with the EcoSys. Someone was one of the founding members of the regulatory affairs committee of the Bitcoin foundation, um, and really proud of some of the work that we did there while that was still, um, you know, a strong organization when it was Bitcoin only. Um, and one thing that happened that was pretty interesting as while we were there is that BitPay due to regulatory reasons, a bit licensed in New York and others, as well as, uh, a variety of, uh, financial reasons, uh, in terms of reporting, uh, required a financial statement audit. So they're a accounting firm came to them and said, okay, give us your bank statements on the Bitcoin. And obviously there aren't any bank statements. So, uh, they said, well, how do you figure out everything around that? And, uh, and Steven said, well, it's all on the blockchain. And the accountants don't know nothing about blockchain though. You know, they've learned quite a bit since then. And, uh, uh, Steven mentioned that we did work and we were in the regulatory space as well. And we ended up, uh, talking to the accounting for command, assisting them with the audit in terms of doing confirmation of balances, ownership, uh, enter wallet, transactions, things of that nature, and actually have, uh, helped, uh, with the audit of that pay for, uh, over five fiscal years. Um, you know, they're the premier blockchain payment company here in Atlanta and they're global. Um, and they've done about, I think 1.1,$1.3 billion in payments a year. So they are a, uh, one of the OGs in the Bitcoin space and cryptocurrency, and are a great, uh, company to have here in our ecosystem. So from there, we've had a Verity to be, uh, focusing on bridging that gap between, uh, the world and the financial assurance world, you know, the world of accountants and banks and regulators and institutions that, you know, need, uh, some way of verifying ownership and accounting for these assets. Um, we then moved on to create an accounting sub-ledger that integrates with, uh, great programs like QuickBooks, zero net suite for general ledger accounting. And, uh, we've moved on from there to actually expand into tax, which is, you know, a huge point that a lot of people don't realize that you do get taxed on cryptocurrency and the RMS is starting to make a, a great deal about that. So, um, we have, uh, the confirmation of audit, uh, we've got the accounting sub-ledger and now we have cats. And, uh, just recently we've, uh, we've acquired some great customers. Uh, I'll mention blockchain.com is a company of ours that has a 49 million wallets worldwide. They're actually based out of Luxembourg. And, uh, also, uh, uh, one of the newest, hottest, uh, blockchains around Al grand, uh, which has extremely fast confirmation solves a lot of issues traditional blockchains have. And, um, just interesting to note that one of the world's first central bank, digital currencies, uh, it's going to be issued on, on their chains. So, uh, um, that's kind of what we do. We bridge the gap between cryptocurrencies and, uh, the traditional financial reporting that needs to be done and, uh, we're moving on and accelerating even more from there. Awesome. Thanks. Uh, thanks for that description, um, Cal of your background, uh, and I want to come back to there in a minute. Um, thank you so much for being on and, um, representing, uh, our student audience today. Tell us, uh, tell us a bit about you. I know we've just met, uh, for the first time about a month ago, but I was just immediately impressed by your passion for digital assets and blockchain and how involved you've gotten in this, uh, in your, um, in your student career. Tell us more.
Speaker 4:Yeah, thanks for helping me. So, um, I'm a rising senior at Georgia state. I'm studying in a program called media entrepreneurship that lets me, um, maintain my passion as an entrepreneur, but also remain technically sound in the field of blockchain while I'm here. I started shortly after the 2017 Bitcoin bull run. Um, and while most of my periods were focused on gaining capital and getting a profit, I was more so focused on the technology and what his potential could be in the future. So instead of thinking about what it could do for me now, when I went back then I was thinking about what could it do for me in the future? Um, I knew that there would come a time when the space would need the younger generation to step up and lead the movement. So I wanted to be available to my peers for when that came to light. So from 2017 to 2020, um, presently I founded the blockchain GSE organization at GSU, which is a student collective at GSU that provides the resources and opportunities for the younger generation to dive headfirst into this space, um, while also guiding them on how blockchain technology can be applied to their career of their choice. Like what they're working towards in college, our goal ultimately is to become the go-to resource for any college student, regardless of them being at GSU or not interested in blockchain and the underlying aspects behind this technology such as privacy, security and decentralization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's fantastic. The, uh, I think there's some great, um, you know, consideration there for the possibilities of this technology, uh, and capability and, um, I'm, I'm imagining you've had some really, uh, kind of positive outreach from students, uh, today. Has that been the case? I mean, have you seen some good engagement from, uh, peers and others across the community? Yeah, we've definitely
Speaker 4:Like the people who have reached out, um, and just from us going out there and not working there is definitely an interest in this being a very new space, something that they can get into early, before the ball starts rolling. Um, kinda like some of us, we were too young to really catch the internet. Boom. Um, this is kind of our chance to catch this new way of like web 3.0. Um, so we really want to emphasize the need for us as young individuals to really propel the innovation and the work that's going to be done in the future in this space.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And it's been an important, um, I know topic area in several of our, our, uh, Georgia FinTech Academy courses that we're delivering currently. I know in the foundations of FinTech course, there's two sections that spin get, get into quite a bit of depth around blockchain technology and digital currency. Uh, and then they also run a simulation, um, where the students create a, uh, a digital currency within the context of the class to begin to understand it better. Uh, so that's, um, that's been cool. And then also, just recently we, uh, the students that are in that class foundations of fintechs in the summer semester, which is in session right now, um, we had an, uh, one of the largest captive auto finance companies in the country, um, reached out to us and wanted to do a set of student projects. And the, and the challenge was around, um, potential ideas around, uh, engagement of blockchain technology in auto finance. And so the students really came up with, uh, we had 10 teams of five, so 50 total students working on the challenge statement, uh, and we had a winning group, um, that we're going to announce, uh, we chose last Friday. We had kind of final demos that we're gonna announce on social media, um, later this week. And I'm excited to get that out there, but they had some really, uh, I mean, some of the ideas were really tremendous. So, um, we're continuing to find additional ways to make sure, uh, we're providing opportunities for students to explore in greater depth, um, the, uh, this technology, um, yeah,
Speaker 4:That's really awesome. I think it's very important for them to get their hands on this technology and to use it for themselves either whether it be like an experimental basis or an actual use case basis,
Speaker 2:The, um, Cal let's talk some more too about Verity. I mean, just as you were going through your intro, a few things kind of grabbed my attention immediately. One was, you know, we just remembering that, um, Bitcoin, uh, was first born in, um, 2009. Uh, and there, you know, for those of you that don't know the history of Kellogg rock and he tells it better than me, but there was a, we don't know exactly who created it. There was a, there's a nonsmoker Satoshi Nakamoto who was, uh, this, uh, we don't know if that's a single person or multiple per people, but Satoshi was the creator of Bitcoin, but just that, that happened in 2009. And then you think when you were getting involved with Steven in 2012, um, they, the currency was, you know, really only three years old or maybe even less, uh, I think bit pay at that point was maybe just a year old or a little bit more. And, uh, I guess the point I'm trying to make is that you all really began engaging with this capability in the very beginning. And it just there's been really tremendous was there. Of course, there's tremendous adoption that occurred through, um, uh, people kind of aggressively investing in digital currencies, Bitcoin, Ethereum, uh, primarily in 20, uh, up through that big run-up in 20 2017 that began to fall in 2018. And then, but we just continue to see really significant kind of institutional, uh, financial services engagement with, uh, the Bitcoin, not just Bitcoin, but, uh, the technology and all a variety of different currencies overall. But, um, can you say some more about that just as kind of what, uh, can be you been the big moments, uh, uh, since you started engaging with this in, in 2012?
Speaker 3:Well, it's, it's been, uh, an interesting history, uh, to say the least and everybody, you know, to me, the first run-up in Bitcoin was, uh, in 2013. So, um, I think I bought my first good point at 35 or$50 and that as a reference
Speaker 2:It's trading at 10,000 something. Okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I don't really track the price that much. Um, but it goes, you know, it, it zoomed up, uh, in 2013 to, uh, a little over a thousand dollars. So from, you know, 35 bucks or so to, to a thousand dollars, um, and then, you know, kind of went down and, uh, stayed, you know, people talk about the winter, I guess this is the back is the first winter, right? So there's a lot of people who are newer to the space that don't know some of the, the history on it, one thing. And I don't know if you want to get into the philosophy too much, but one of the things that triggered that, or, you know, there's multiple factors, right. But, uh, at that time, I believe it was Cyprus. Uh, the government of Cyprus was running a deficit and a was having a financial crisis and they decided to go into every bank account of everybody in the country, companies and individuals, I believe. And I think they took like a haircut of 15, 20% and just said, you know what, here's a sudden immediate tax. We're going to go into everybody's bank account and compensate 15% of it. And at that point in time, people around there and people in general were like, wait a minute. I do, I actually own my money, you know, which is a funny thought. Right. Um, and they said, well, uh, is there one that's not associated with perhaps a centralized entity that has the power to take that away? Like, you know, if your MasterCard, you know, let's say you've got a bank account, a MasterCard Amex, something like that, three centralized entities can shut you down and you could have no financial transaction capability whatsoever. So a little bit of the attraction is that, you know, the digital aspect of it, and the fact that the code is open source, anybody can verify what the monetary policy of it is, and the fact that there is no centralized control, and that has a certain appeal in terms of having independence and guarantees freedom around it. And that's kind of more the, the philosophical side of that as well as, uh, there's a branch of economics called Austrian economics, which a lot of people haven't heard of that. Um, if anybody listening is interested, they should look into that from a philosophical standpoint. Most people today are, are more interested in how do I make money out of crypto and, and that's great, and that's a very legitimate use case, right. Um, but there are some philosophical and some, uh, actually academic things to think about in terms of both computer wise, uh, the double spend problem. And how do you solve that? It's also the Byzantine generals problem and blockchain helps solve that as well from a computer science standpoint. And then there's an economic standpoint around Austrian economics. And, uh, what's really interesting is that Bitcoin has a fixed supply that will never be exceeded. So it's almost deflationary in nature. So there's interesting topics there. Um, and then, you know, the aspect of freedom and everything else now, um, I'm sure everybody would probably much rather talk about, you know, how they can put in$35 and get 10,000 hours or something. Uh, but these other aspects are equally important that I think, and what we've seen over the history is people dipping their toe in and then, then gradually getting more and more comfortable. I think some of the, some of the trigger points, if you will, um, have been areas where regulation has come in and people say that people that own crypto or are involved don't want regulation. Uh, the majority of that is faults, right. They would prefer to have good regulation. Um, but it's like playing baseball or another game. If you don't know the rules to the game, it's hard to get people to play it. Right. If all of a sudden I said, Oh, that's one strike you're out. And you're like, wait a minute. I thought it was three strikes. Nah, we just had one. We decided that, right. So if you have regulations in place that goes with that. So at, at the point in time that, um, you know, major institutions that are involved with regulatory activities, um, such as hearing it will have to, uh, the back subsidiary of ice, the Intercontinental exchange company that actually knows the New York stock exchange, uh, doing work there with Bitcoin and features, uh, the CME, Chicago mercantile exchange and other, uh, areas where they're actually trading either futures options, or the actual assets themselves, um, New York stock exchange. Um, there's a lot of entities now to the point to where, uh, you know, it's, like I mentioned to a chief investment officer of a major entity the other day it's I used to argue a lot of different points around crypto to try to convince people who weren't sure about its provenance or where it was going. And I ended up boiling it down to two questions and, uh, it was one isn't going away and he like looked at me. He went, nah, it's not going away. I said is in bigger because yeah, it's getting bigger. And that's it. Those are my two questions. So, um, I think the legitimization is great. I also think that the, the entrance of[inaudible] centralized finance as a way to, uh, enable financial inclusion and to kind of break log jams in terms of access to capital and other financial products is also extremely interesting. That's gone from not really existing two and a half years ago to being a$3.6 billion today.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Can we let's, can we unpack that a little bit defy? Cause I first I heard the term from, for the first time, probably just a little over a year ago and I'm, I'm still not a hundred percent clear, like when I hear defier, when I say at one, I'm talking about it and uh, and it's, I've interpreted, I know I've been learning, but I've also been interpreting it in different ways. Um let's can we talk some more about that and just put a bit more definition about it? I know Mark, you've been thinking some about this. Like how do you, I'd be curious to kind of hear how you look at it and then kale get your response to that
Speaker 4:On how I see it. Um, mostly I think it's giving people with less capital, more of an opportunity to, um, grow it on a scale. They weren't able to grow it before I went traditional finance. I'm not really sure exactly how it works, um, on the technical level, but I have dabbled, um, in the past couple of years with various protocols, like a given compound. Um, but I'm, I'm sure Cal, can you have a better explanation of what exactly is DPI, but that's just my understanding at the time. No, that's helpful.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And you know, like you say, it's, it's a, it's a way of putting finance on the blockchain and there's a couple of different areas of it. Um, there's just, uh, there's ending, they're staking. So newer chains that are coming out, um, CSOs algorithm and others, uh, will actually, if you're holding and transacting in their currency, we'll give you rewards, uh, based on you holding that currency and, and helping be part of that ecosystem. So, um, technically there's a lot of different little facets around decentralized finance. Um, uh, that's, that's a couple, there's also the ability to do loans and to be able to lend out your crypto in a fully decentralized manner. Um, so one of the things about that in the financial inclusion is can you imagine perhaps maybe not in the us or maybe being in the underbanked population of the U S which a lot of people don't think about it. I think we have over 20 million, um, you know, people in the United States that are underbanked, meaning they don't have a bank account or a bank won't give it to them because of their stringent policies in terms of, you know, you have to have so much documented income and you gotta have so much identity and, you know, here's our opening charges. You can't open that account without a couple of hundred dollars as a minimum deposit. And for some of us, we don't think about that because, you know, we've got five credit cards, a debit card, a mortgage, a car loan, whatever. Right. But there is a healthy, and then outside of the United States and, you know, underdeveloped nations that don't have the financial system, they have, it's, it's even more prevalent to have that lack of financial inclusion. So, um, a friend of mine actually worked on a project in Africa wherein they analyzed, uh, ATM transactions for very small amounts. Uh, in order like somebody made$10 a month in order to be able to give you some way to get a loan for like$25 to buy a goat and to change their life. Right. And that, by looking at the transactions that they took out, um, that were very small microtransaction baselines, and that's not crypto, that was regular. And that was leading the world, you know, 15 years ago. But now you can do that similar sort of activity in a way using decentralized finance, by being able to either establish your identity electronically on a blockchain, or maybe you don't even need to establish your identity. You just want to make a loan or do staking or something of that nature. And you can do that with a blockchain wallet and being able to get tokens and to be able to then get access to financial instruments that we all take advantage of and take for granted here in the U S and there's a huge aspect of that, that the other part of that, that some people in the financial industry may not immediately see the benefit too, is that it, it, it tends to disintermediate the middleman so that you can have better rates, better efficiency in the markets, because you're not looking at where you hypothecation, if you know that term, it means kind of lending and re lending and relending, and then you're not having a chain of people in the financial system, take a cut as it goes through each broker, um, or entity involved. So there's greater efficiencies or disintermediation, and there's greater access to financial products that are all coming about as part of this. So, I mean, I have an account I blocked by that's turning 6% right now. Uh, I talked to my mom the other day and she's struggling to find a CD that pays more than one and a half. So yeah, I mean, even if you're talking about just from like, what do I do with X, well, you convert it into crypto and then put it at a, at a, either at a decentralized, uh, site where you're lending that crypto and you're, you're earning 6% on it. Uh, you know, and they were up to 20% about a year ago. Um, so there's a lot of efficiencies to be had. There's a little bit more risk and need. You have to be careful now what you're doing, but, um, like I said, uh, there's a lot of advantages to the buy from a financial inclusion, disintermediation and greater efficiency. I really think it's going to be one of the killer apps for cryptocurrency.
Speaker 2:It was a, it was Chris Maurice of yellow card here in Atlanta that had first introduced me to the term whenever you're a year and a half or so ago. And, um, you know, Chris, that, that yellow car business, to me, it's kind of really interesting in this regard because you know, what he's doing is, uh, he's very focused on Nigeria. And then he's has like 15,000 plus merchants that they've gotten on their platform in Nigeria. And that allows for Nigerians to go con take Niara, which is that local currency and convert it to Bitcoin, um, through this yellow card platform. And then that then provides that on ramp to this D these defy possibilities that we're talking about. And so I know Chris was beginning to figure out what the right partnerships are and whatnot. And then I know, uh, PayPal has got, or square square PayPal square, not PayPal square has gotten really interested in this space, mainly Jack Dorsey, who's the founder of square and Twitter. Um, he in particular, I think he's been, was indicates, spent a lot of time in Africa and Jeewan, and was really indicating that he was really seeing some great, interesting possibilities, uh, in those markets, um, from the engagement of these defy models,
Speaker 3:Right? The, I believe it's square, but the cash app, uh, actually enables you to transact them to a point and get big points. But I will say that you were right the first time as well, PayPal, uh, is just recently been known that they will be entering the cryptocurrency markets as well. So, uh, uh, a lot of users,
Speaker 2:That's a good point. And, and let's pivot to that in terms of just, there's been some remarkable news just in the last week or two, um, around this entire space of digital assets. Um, Cal kick us off on that. I mean, tell us, tell us what some of these big, uh, big announcements have been.
Speaker 3:I'll just mentioned the, the, the biggest one to my mind is that, um, there's a, there's a federal agency called the OCC. I believe it's the office of comptroller of currency, and most people have never heard about it, um, because its job is to regulate banks. So they talked to the bank sports and, and to the banks compliance division, and they kind of set the rules of the game for banks. And recently, um, an interesting thing happened in that one of the senior management at Coinbase, that's a major cryptocurrency exchange. Um, uh, Brian, I can't recall his last name came over to be a temporary or interim head of the OCC. So we thought there might be some good things coming out, but, uh, out of the, out of the gate, uh, pretty quickly, very rapidly given our federal agency moves. Uh, I think it was last week. I can't remember the exact time, but they came out with a, um, a guiding letter in terms of, uh, talking about banking institutions, federally licensed banking institutions, and how they can interact with cryptocurrency. And it pretty much green-lighted any federally regulated institution to be able to hold crypto for their clients, meaning, uh, some people in custody, uh, also to participate in trading on behalf of their clients, as well as a variety of services. And to me, that legitimization from a, a standpoint of the banking industry, you know, the federal reserve, the OCC, the banks, they are kind of the, the slowest, most conservatives, most safe, um, you know, acting institutions around. And to me, this is a clear indication of a bear hug, um, by those entities and a clear vindication of, you know, the fact that this is a valid asset class, a valid currency, and, uh, everyone gets to play at the highest level. And it's, it's almost a stamp of approval.
Speaker 2:Yeah. When I, I, the custody point to me is just been just so kind of critical or obvious when it's come to the banks, because you look at, I mean, to me, I think about custody of, of cryptocurrency. It's a key part is these keys, right? The keys that, uh, were granted when we, um, that's our, our private keys that were granted when we, um, acquire these digital assets. And, you know, right now, I know for me, for my credit by currency, I custody all of that, those keys with Coinbase. And, but I really would prefer to have them custody with my bank because I know I've had a very long relationship with them. I trust them. Uh, and it just feels like an obvious place for me to want to custody this important, uh, uh, access to this, this asset. So the fact that, that we're getting closer to that, being a possibility, um, a you're absolutely right. Critically huge kind of statement of helping with legitimization. Um, but then I think it's just another really great step where we're going to see further, uh, opportunities for really this, um, digital asset capability to become part of our mainstream financial institutional base.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And just real quick on that note, um, uh, people may not realize this, but, uh, JP Morgan has been in the cryptocurrency blockchain business for a couple of years now. They actually have global private blockchain that does payments. Um, signature bank of New York, um, is huge. They, uh, they actually announced last quarter that they, um, brought in over a billion dollars of deposits by dealing with cryptocurrency clients. They also have a payment mechanism, silver gate that just went public, uh, out of California is a federally licensed bank, uh, that is involved metropolitan bank, uh, actively works within the cryptocurrency space. So, uh, there are a large handful or more of banks that are either right now, transacting in crypto. And we'll use this OCC statement to even go further into the crypto world. And there's been a lot of conversations from the others that are watching this. And quite frankly, I think they're a little envious of the headstart that people at JP Morgan and signature happened there. They're definitely envious of the revenue that they're getting. And I think you'll see a lot of catch up being played. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I don't know a question. As far as the Greenlight for, um, custody, like banks custody, what methods do you think they'll use to facilitate, um, custody? Because, um, like Tommy was saying, um, if you had a private key, he would give it to his trusted bank, but that private key isn't really giving the assets. It's more so giving the access to such assets. And you would still, even though putting your private keys in the bank, you would still have access on your end. So I'm asking how, how do you think they'll really, um, be true to crypto custody rather than just being another place to put your private key?
Speaker 3:Well, actually there's a variety of custody mechanisms. There's probably 15 to 20 pure custody solutions right now, um, from fire blocks to kingdom trust to others. Um, back here in Atlanta just bought one last year called DACC, but, um, the majority of those custodial solutions actually require transfer of your clients. So either bill issue, new keys or the thing that's dangerous about, well, not dangerous, but you need to be careful about working with exchanges, particularly non U S exchanges is that if you transfer it to them, it's really their crypto, because the way the confirmations is that, uh, we talk about there's an address and a blockchain that assets reside in and the private key that controls the address and transmission of, of that, uh, asset is really what constitutes ownership. So if the exchange has a large number of, uh, of Bitcoin and they just have a side ledger that tells you how much have each one has, it's a little different than being able to access your private keys. And most of the good solutions have that either through there's some very technical stuff called either a multisig or there's also a multi-party computation, which is the newest kid on the block. Um, and those enable the distribution of keys as well as the security of the keys. And, uh, y'all can read more about that, but, uh, that's kind of an in-depth technical, uh, subject as, as that technology continues to get even better.
Speaker 4:Okay. So like the same way we would send coins to an exchange, it would be like the same way with these banks. We would send our coins to the banks, given that none of the banks
Speaker 3:We're doing it yet. I don't know, but I suspect there'll be partnering with or acquiring some of the existing custody solutions. And like I said, there's a variety of different technical mechanisms. So, you know, as an analogy, you could take cash show bank, you could wire to a bank, you could ACH to a bank and the details will depend on the solution. Okay. Thank you. There's no standard for it, right? Yeah.
Speaker 4:We're just thinking theoretically, thank you though. I've made
Speaker 2:One moment for me is just a recognition that Georgia I think is really establishing itself globally is an important, uh, center of thought and innovation with regards to digital assets. There's of course, your company, Cal, um, BitPay, which is certainly one of the, the first, um, digital asset related FinTech companies in the world. Uh, bat, as we've mentioned, a few times in this conversation, uh, is, uh, is been funded heavily by Intercontinental exchange. Um, and along with multiple other parties, including, uh, I know Microsoft Boston consulting group, um, and, and has done, I think they've raised their, the recent data recent series B round, which was, I think, well over$200 million, uh, in the rays in a day,
Speaker 3:Well, it's about 800 million, so it's a nice seed round.
Speaker 2:Oh, they have, they there's a lot of capital at work. And, uh, so, uh, and then, and then Cal, you had helped me do a, uh, just a survey of, uh, and this was well over a year ago of, of digital asset, blockchain related blockchain technology related companies, just in the Atlanta Metro area. And we came up with, uh, well over, I think, 20 or 25 and Georgia, Georgia tech had helped us with that survey, which worked by no, we need to it's time for us to refresh. So I wouldn't be surprised if that number may have even doubled, uh, since we, since we did that last survey inventory,
Speaker 3:Actually, I have a quick question for Tarik. Um, one of the things I've seen one or two different organizations kind of come and go at Georgia tech, um, you know, I, they, uh, and I don't know what the state is now. Maybe there's a good organization now, but, um, you know, we've seen a couple of cycles where, uh, an innovative, you know, a motivated person like yourself as created an organization. And, and then when they move on that somehow, you know, the organization kind of, kind of doesn't stay around or at be as active as possible. And I'm wondering if, if you'd thought about, a little bit about, um, you know, you'd mentioned other universities and colleges, I, I suspect particularly within the state of Georgia system, um, are, are welcome, but, uh, have you, have you thought about, you know, maybe making a little bit of a move forward, you know, with Georgia state being downtown, you know, a couple of miles away from Georgia tech and, and maybe even Emery, um, that's, you know, a little bit separate, uh, but you know, that would be a kind of neat thing to coordinate those three together. Um, and, and once you have more than one institution, I think it's a little more durable in terms of, you know, uh, having staying power because, you know, you're an entrepreneur and you may move on, you know, end up in Singapore or wherever doing your thing. And, uh, I was just curious if you thought about doing that with Georgia tech and Emory and kind of creating kind of a three legged stool. So it remains a little bit more durable for advancing blockchain that's in Atlanta. Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4:I thought about that. I knew that when I graduate, I either have to leave something behind or I can continue to build off of it. So especially when, um, Corona hit, I realized that in order to, for us to stay community like activist community, um, we needed to be in communication. And so I started looking more into what is everybody else doing around me, what's there to do. And yes, I've definitely thought about maybe right now, um, we're kind of competing with organizations that have like charters and like, they have big like community bases. So what if I'm working on like a base plate? What if we created a base plate for like a charter, which we can then send to open up different branches at different schools, so they could do the same thing we kind of started doing. So I've definitely taken that into consideration cause I definitely don't want to see the community die out. I want to see it keep going and we could definitely leverage all the other universities to make this one big ecosystem for college or university students.
Speaker 3:I know there's a lot of support, um, for this idea, Cal, I mean, beyond, I know you're supportive, but also a real moringa and who is the managing principal of borderless capital, uh, and has been very involved with Alvarez that we've mentioned earlier. I know a rule, um, has it as a priority to begin to figure out ways to help in a rules part of Atlanta. So like how to, how to further expand engagement. Um, we have distribute ledger technology, digital assets, et cetera, and, uh, within our university system. So, um, it's, it's great to have supporters like that. And, and then of course engaged students that, uh, we can start to build on. Thanks so much for this time. Both of you, uh, it's been great to have this conversation and it's wonderful to have you both involved with the Georgia FinTech Academy and, uh,
Speaker 2:Will I hope we can gather again before too long. Sounds great. Thank you, Tom. You,
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