Colorado Blockchain FTW: Project Edition

so we heard a bit um kind of from the inside of government and now we're gonna hear uh from some projects that are outside of government so these are projects building in the space but they're related to things like identity and um you know gig work and uh basically just just getting open source funded and everybody just uh you know joining the public good in the public space so these are projects from the space that are contributing to that um but they're as i mentioned they're outside uh sort of the the inner sanctum of government so it's good that we we kind of represent both sides here at youth denver so uh coming up to the stage again um is thad as our moderator and i'm going to welcome uh john from shapeshift adam dill from opolis paul quickly from liberato angie gallagher from burst iq danny osario from near protocol and the one and only kevin owaki from git coin oh boy okay i'm gonna duck up now and let you take over awesome thank you guys so much for for being present for us andy i love your glasses today yeah great to see you all let's see um so today we're gonna talk about uh the business edition of uh the colorado jam and there were some questions earlier um about what colorado companies are doing in the blockchain space and so you know from from my perspective uh working working for the state i know that um in the past three or four years we've been pushing some legislation to get blockchain a little bit more on the front burner in in the public sector and to encourage blockchain technology development and innovation certainly in the private sector in order to sort of realize uh governor's dream of creating a real locus of blockchain innovation within the state of colorado so we've got some great guests this afternoon representing a big cross-section of businesses um that have been ideating and building and using blockchain blockchain-based tools within their organizations um and i'd like you each to give a quick introduction to yourself and your organization and then we can dive into some conversations job do you want to talk about shapeshift first sure yeah hi everybody glad to be here um so i'm uh john the co-founder and chief product officer at shapeshift um shapeshift has been in the crypto space for quite a while now we were founded in 2014 um originally as a kind of uh crypto to crypto digital asset exchange um and we've really evolved from there uh now to be a full-featured uh self-custodial uh wallet platform also interacting with the web3 wallet we also acquired portis last last year which is part of our big involvement here at east denver which is a web 3 wallet and sdk provider and yeah happy to be here thanks john adam hey i'm adam i'm a technology steward at opolis and we provide benefits for contractors self-sovereign employees and gig workers we really try to be the kind of bridge between the web 2 world and the web 3 world for all these individuals who need to do things like tax compliance and get health insurance and other benefits like that so we focus a whole lot on making sure people stay legal and compliant and make sure all their data stays private and safe and you know make sure they can get their payrolls paid on time and their health insurance paid for that kind of stuff and we're fully digitally uh crypto native so you can pay get paid and pay in uh crypto and pay for your insurance and crypto that kind of stuff and yeah we handle taxes and withholding and all that fun stuff too right on angie tell us about burst oh i mean hey we're based in denver colorado and burst um came together 2015 the co-founders are frank ricotta and brian jackson and our blockchain is built from scratch but it layers very nicely and the the end goal here is we are for healthcare data so we have hipaa compliance and gdpr compliance and um i oversee the community which is a global community in which developers can go in and and play with our apis but definitely a lot of features around digital profiling i saw that last panel talking about the consent of data and ultimately that's what our chain can do is you know basically consent a lot of highly secure data specifically in healthcare excellent danny hey everyone me i'm with the developer relations team over at near protocol and we are a layer one blockchain based on a proof-of-stake and charting um that also interoperates with ethereum so we just launched a uh grants fund that's designed to fund open source software and moved into a fully uh decentralized workforce and we're seeing a lot of interesting movements come through so really excited to be here um i remember this is my fourth eighth denver i remember the first one as things were getting organized and we were packing gift bags and warehouse the night before and just really excited to to be back in this virtual version right on thanks paul sure uh paul quigley uh i've been in the uh blockchain space since uh 2012 i had no gray hair at that time um and actually i had the the uh the great opportunity of working under governor hickenlooper as part of the blockchain task force which brought the money law the money license and the digital asset legislation into the state so all the things that we're working with in terms of digital assets and the legal regulatory framework was part of the work of a big group of people um equally uh committed crazy zealots um but what we're doing is we are actually building a digital asset custody platform um which is for people who are unfamiliar with it basically it's a digital vault similar to the way people would have stored uh money uh or gold but it's under your control so it's designed for cryptocurrency and digital assets um we're going through the regulatory process right now we're building uh we have we're working on bank partners our target markets are defy banks and merchants um happy to be here happy to we are we are hiring people so we can talk about that later i think um and we are distracted we are totally decentralized um our model originally had a small finance and customer service function uh prior to covid and then once we had once covet hit we distributed that as well so we're we're all over the country uh in terms of our resources happy to be here hang on thanks paul kevin would you like to introduce yourself hey i'm kevin milwaukee with i'm the founder of git coin which is a project that allows you to get coins in exchange for doing software development work we have funded 11 million dollars worth of software uh development in the ethereum space and i love open source i love public goods i love colorado and i'm happy to be here right on thanks guys so great we're uh basically here to talk today about um we're here to pump colorado a little bit talk about talk about what the opportunities are and even even equally important i think talk about what what maybe the roadblocks are in terms of how how the state can can help your business whether you feel like there's missing legislation that could that could make your lives easier that could create more jobs create more opportunities um also what what kinds of what kinds of skill sets do do you see that we've got plenty of in the state what kind of skill sets do we need to be teaching our future developers and our future product owners and our future digital marketers in order to help support this new web 3 internet 5.0 ecosystem um that we all really really love and and want to see succeed um so i think probably with that i think uh you know kevin has got his eyes on quite a few different projects that have been going on um obviously creating a tremendous amount of funding um do you wanna do you wanna talk about that a little bit yeah sure so i mean i guess joe lubin's uh 2020 2019 devcon talk comes to mind for me when it comes when we started talking about about this i think the quote from his talk was it's not about a killer app it's about a killer ecosystem and one of the things i say i think is super cool about the blockchain space is that you can walk into a hackathon and there's so much open source software available that you can create something that would have taken a bank five years ago uh 10 million dollars and 200 people in order to do and you can just pull it down from github and that's the really cool thing about innovation and the blockchain space and um you know the killer ecosystem in in colorado is is optimus it's near protocol it's it's all of the calls it's all of the the projects on this call and so i think it's about a kilo killer ecosystem and um you know i'm just excited to see the innovation continue to continue to to go to grow exponentially right on and i think that's that's a great uh great point about open source and and it's you know there's so much you can do with it off the shelf it's definitely a little bit of an uphill climb when you're when you're trying to convince your co-workers who are used to enterprise licensed software solutions um what the support mechanism is for those for those solutions but the argument is certainly there and certainly within state technology we're seeing more of more of an opening in order to be able to implement open source solutions and look at alternative licensing models that don't involve that don't involve the traditional methods so yeah paul what do you think oh you're muted buddy so um you asked me you asked us like five questions yeah pick and choose pick and choose paul i know you i know you've got something you want to talk about um you know i think for us it's um uh the ecosystem is incredibly enthusiastic and engaged i think for us what's happened is we've looked at a number of different things and the digital asset custody platform kind of was an evolution around having a digital having a the appropriate regulatory and uh legislative pieces in place i think for us now it's a development on the front end we certainly need uh front-end developers our platform is built built on an api framework um and our initial market is domestic um but what we're finding is we're getting an awful lot of pull which is a really good message for colorado um internationally um so we're having we're having correspondent banking relationships uh that's a new you know that's a new thing for a lot of folks so the fact that you can move your assets um internationally under kycml back to your earlier you know the session before this when you're talking about identity a lot of the efficiencies you guys are putting in place for um kyc will help um because part of our platform is using ai and we're looking at patterns and we're looking at cyber security patterns 24 7 because the markets never close so there's a lot of infrastructure here um i would you know welcome anyone who's looking at building uh coming into colorado was one of the things that i'm finding so exciting about the ecosystem um yeah i think that those in the fact you can work remote i mean kovitz accelerated that but we can uh we can work remote and get a lot of things done and still live here i think it's just phenomenal um yeah uh i happen to answer are there any other questions that's that's awesome i think that we all miss we all miss the good old days of having meetups blockchain related meetups in person there's a strong community here and it's you know it exists online now and it'll exist back back in person here hopefully in the not too distant future uh let's see so um move along move on to john you want to talk a little bit about what you're seeing what you're seeing in the space what you're saying sure yeah yeah so yeah back when shape shift was founded um in you know kind of early 2014 um i feel like we were one of the only crypto companies at that time in colorado and it's been really great to see so many projects since that time especially in the 2014 to 2017 timeline and since uh pop up and start planting roots here we've worked with and you know helped a lot of those projects and we we love being part of that community and i i think it's really great to see that develop i think colorado has been you know relatively friendly to these projects um and i want to see that keep being the case i mean i really want to see colorado lead that front and be one of the you know leaders in the entire country if not the world in terms of welcoming you know open source and decentralized projects uh in particular uh to really get these people to come here and i think you know we've honestly got a good amount to learn even from our neighbors uh to the north and wyoming who have been very progressive on this front in relation to uh you know crypto asset banking and how they deal with money transmission and even their state level securities laws and i would like to see colorado you know follow some of that lead and even go beyond it um to you know maybe even to the point of having you know a sort of regulatory sandbox especially when it comes to things like dexes and decentralized protocols and a lot of the things that uh getcoin and kevin are helping fund a lot of those projects kind of break the mold of what a traditional company quote-unquote even is a lot of the most interesting projects in the space are not companies they're they're protocols they're decentralized applications they're things that don't fit cleanly into any of these regulatory boxes and i want to see colorado be very welcoming to that and let this you know basically this experimentation happen i mean the best way to lead on that is to allow for that innovation don't have a you know a strict regulatory hammer and i think colorado's been good about this and we're lucky to have governor polis who's very progressive and understanding on on these aspects on this front and we just really need to lean into that i think colorado could become you know one of the leading places in the world uh to launch your project um part of that is there is a tension obviously with the federal laws and we can only do so much on a state level but we should be i think we should be looking to wyoming as an example and you know i know a lot of people in colorado never want to be behind wyoming on anything anyway so we should find a way to at least match that and and go beyond it um and really really be welcoming to these you know kind of unorthodox projects because i really think that they are the wave future yeah and i think i think that's certainly you know these are these are waters that that colorado state government has has been has been waiting through before in terms of certainly breaking ground on the legalization of marijuana you know something that still it today is not legal at the federal level but you know we've we've figured out a pretty good framework and path forward towards letting that industry blossom within the state um and i certainly am hoping that we can do the same it's really far outside the box a lot of the things that these decentralized protocols are doing um and the way that people get compensated for them and the way that then the states and the federal government collect taxes for them is is something that obelisk is is is on top of adam do you want to talk a little bit about that yeah absolutely so um all right answer a different question first uh i think something special about colorado is the culture that's built up here we have a real good history of uh both a rugged individualism on the western part of the state and this uh really strong collectivism on the eastern parts of the state on the front slope and i think that's a very special mix that we have here in colorado that we don't have in other places and generally we all get along pretty well around it right so there's there you can see this really heavily in the uh crypto world as well and our our inherent culture that colorado has really well supports that and i think that's something very special that most other places or i don't know of anywhere else has that colorado has and it's really good to see the government uh kind of the state government coming in and supporting them like john said it's good to see our neighbors to the north and wyoming pushing legislation further there i would love to see that as well done here uh and similar stuff done here but um yeah you know colorado's in a really special spot got a really good culture and a really good way to support it and we have an amazing tech scene here obviously and uh the tech scene goes well beyond just development right like it's we've got not we don't just have software developers we have project managers we have people with uh great experience scaling tech products uh both from a marketing perspective and a technology perspective so i really like what's going on in colorado and i feel like we've got a really special mix of people and talent here that isn't available to other communities and uh you know i think that's really at the heart of what colorado can push forward is that culture i think i think that's a that's a great point to make adam and i and i would i would sort of echo that within uh you know within our state government our our elected representatives from throughout the counties whether they're you know on the on the western slope or the eastern slope are are open to and listen to those sorts of new ideas that um that can help their constituents and you know certainly i've been in um some committee sessions within the state legislature to explain you know what blockchain is and how it deals with transactions and how that might be impactful for things like um you know water law um there are so many opportunities within within what the state government regulates where blockchain has a could potentially have a big impact um it's really a matter of understanding and explaining what that impact can be both from an economic perspective and from just a pure you know people's perspective so yeah absolutely and john made a good point too about putting upward pressure on the federal government to to uh to to get you know our federal laws in line and i i think colorado shows a lot of good leadership and the western states in general could show a lot of good leadership in that area and push push the federal government forward in the direction that we need to go yeah i think that's right i've certainly seen interest from the western western states governor's council around blockchain and i know that you know colorado is certainly certainly not the only state who's who's thinking about these issues and and and knows that there's some some definite future potential for uh for our people in our state so great angie you look like you might have something on your mind oh okay well first of all i want to say big shout out to everybody in comments i'm seeing some names that i recognize and you know i was thinking that um that before kavid you know the community that we have here in colorado again you know sort of highlighting of of what a great um place this is to be and then with when it comes to our neighbors up in wyoming you know i went up and volunteered at that amazing hackathon that they have and really i mean prior to covid we were all a little bit more connected um even kevin i went up to to boulder and have lunch with him and we had a lot of discussions of how can we continue working with each other and you know strengthening the community that we have in colorado and even with ethereum denver and opolis and all these entities here and then covet happened and we kind of went our own separate ways in so many different forms because we're just trying to to pull the ship together if you know what i mean and so what i'm hoping that would come out of this is that reconnecting with some of you and then also john you know would love to connect with you at shapeshift as well my question would be is how can we continue to come back together you know as colorado wins and um danny i think are you in are you in san francisco i think you guys are based out there right our headquarters in cisco and denver yeah but you know even whether colorado based or not what i love about the blockchain community is this sense of collaboration right and how we can you know the technology is set up to do it so seamlessly and so quickly um with that trust factor so um i think that you had also thrown out another question in terms of i and i remember when you had come to our office at burst iq talking about the future of colorado how do we equip you know the future students and the college students and the undergrads how do we wrap them into the fold of this new technology and help them continue moving forward as well and um i don't know i think if we can kind of get back to that joining forces prior to covet working together we can tackle some of that as well um i see taylor in the comments out there taken design i know that's a passion of his is the education part of blockchain and the future of colorado so that's where my mind is right now right on absolutely absolutely looking forward to everybody getting shots in their arms and and getting getting back out there danny let's let's hear from near protocol for a little while all right so colorado is awesome for a lot of reasons but here are a few i think that uh governments can choose to you know stick their heads in the sand and avoid all sorts of things that are different or new or maybe a little harder to understand or they can dive in and really like learn about taji and empower that technology and be on the cutting edge and i'm really excited to see colorado taking those strides governor paulus has been really leading the forefront with his office in terms of doing this um little known fact that one of the earliest general counsels for the ethereum foundation is now the securities commissioner for colorado so that really makes it you know it really makes it clear to blockchain companies that colorado is welcoming that it is focused on innovation technology and that uh they are they are creating a sandbox for these companies to thrive and explore in the second part is that the advent of remote work not just for um you know the companies that have that before but companies who are going to continue this as a ghost um near particle is an example of that everyone was based in san francisco for a while then they decided people were gonna go remote then the pandemic hit and then it just accelerated everything really really fast and now we're you know remote forever and that takes power back to uh people to make their own decisions about where they want to live and i think that colorado um you know places like denver and boulder and all the areas around have a really really high quality of life um for people who want some fresh air who on nature who want more space who want to still have a technology hub so maybe not being completely isolated but having that option to flow back and forth and then the third thing would be that so we just launched our pilot grants program we're going to disperse a million dollars in the next six months into open source software and projects and we hope that a lot of that will actually come from uh colorado interesting companies the colorado jam program we've been talking about with the governor's office it really comes down to giving these organizations and these people and these grantees uh a place that they could potentially anchor towards and so something you asked earlier was like what are some of the the regulatory issues you've come across and so we've seen a lot of interesting grants projects who like to identify themselves as dao's um you know which are decentralized autonomous organizations and uh you know the legal teams are always telling well that's nice that you want to run this through a dao but you're going to need a real company behind it that isn't some sort of you know pre-existing structure to be the backer of the data from which the dow executes and so it'd be really interesting to see the state of colorado delve into this and say well what could be some structures that were compatible with how these dows are being formed and i think that could be a really cool thing but yeah i mean to all the projects who are considering being around here who are interested in building alongside clarita jam you know we invite you to apply to our grants program it's just near.org grants um and we're really excited to see uh all the projects that are playing in the open source space and public goods that's awesome danny i think that um your your input would have been greatly appreciated on the uh on the blockchain council a few years ago we did not get around to talking about daos and and what that means in terms of the actual uh you know business organization or or any or any of those things and i think that those are all super important to address and you know there's there's another legislative uh session coming up coming up starting next january that we might be able to uh talk about getting some of those ideas into um because they're they're certainly important and uh the other thing that you talked about that i would like to at least get a little bit of input on as i know that you know for the most part our our colorado companies have been pretty uh pretty comfortable using um remote talent for for quite some time and so i think the switch over to the this post-covered post-covered world wasn't as dramatic as that for for those in our industries as it may have been for for quite a few others but um moving forward how does how does that how does that look do things become even even more decentralized do you look at recruiting your your workforce from from you know these the realm of digital nomads or are you still focusing on you know colorado based networks people who know people um you know we've got a pretty solid 20-plus year tradition of digital product development within the state we've got a lot of great great traditional web 2.0 developers out there we've got great mobile developers out there um moving moving those folks over and on boarding them into the into the rabbit hole of blockchain is not is not a super heavy lift for those who who are interested um in doing so so are you guys looking primarily on from the development side um recruiting blockchain expertise from from outside or are you looking at growing uh growing your teams from inside the state john do you want to take that one yeah sure yeah this has always been a uh a topic of debate ever since we started hiring uh you know engineers product managers marketing folk anyone that might touch any of these things i would say historically like you you kind of always have to focus on the primary skill set you're looking for like you know it's much easier to teach a good software engineer about uh you know blockchain blockchain-based protocols than it is to teach them software engineering um and the same kind of goes for most of these things um and early on you didn't really have a choice because there were so few people that had experience in this space um that's changing a little bit now um i think after 2017 and everything since then a lot of people building it's become a lot more popular and there there are people that have gotten experience in the space um i would say that we still generally hire though with the primary skill set first and then we are always making sure to look that they're actually interested um in the in you know in crypto um if they aren't they usually aren't going to last long because the space is just too crazy um if you don't have a real passion for it um so we want to make sure that they're at least interested or interested to learn more about it and if we find people with that already have experience in the space that's just a huge bonus and certainly you know it certainly is a competitive advantage if you're applying for these type of jobs and you've already worked at another crypto company but it's by no means necessary if you're interested in getting in the space i would definitely you know look for companies or projects hiring you know like like even things even open source protocols that are putting up bounties like what kevin does with bitcoin is great um and actually that's also a great thing is that you don't necessarily need uh company level experience if you've even contributed to open source protocols in the space that's great great experience that we're super interested in um so ultimately we always look for the primary skill first that's the most important thing and we want to make sure they're interested and that we will teach them the crypto side if necessary but you you will be ahead of the game if you've already got that crypto experience yeah for sure and adam see you know from from your perspective at opolis what's what's what's the landscape looking like so i think the answer is kind of both right like we uh we look at location second but if we can find somebody who fits the who who can fulfill uh the job role and they're semi-local or commutable you know like even now in covit uh like the latest tires starts in a couple weeks out of denver metro right like this is great because you know we're looking through a post-coveter era at some point we'd like to be able to get everybody around the table as much as reasonable but that being said we have people in like 12 states you know like we have people i'm guessing here but you know a lot and you know multiple countries as well so we uh we really look for people who are motivated first and uh if we can find those motivated people that are willing to dig in and learn and have that primary skill set like john was saying um then you know like location's not as big a deal to us be we were we were fully remote before coven so like now being fully remote it's not much difference to us it just means we don't have a central office we can go into as easily but we will again one day and uh for everybody that can get there easily that's that's just bonus points and you know we'd love to work with other people locally whenever possible right on well i know that um you know a lot of the uh a lot of economic analysts look towards sites like monster and dice for their for their employment numbers and and recruiting numbers hoping the same is going to be happening in the not too distant future with web3 and annapolis yeah sure we we certainly think we can help bridge that gap yeah let's see [Music] what next to discuss i think we could probably talk a little bit uh about what you guys are all seeing from um from the past from the past six months or so um as people have gotten used to being in in this pandemic and where productivity has gone and where where ideas have been being generated from that that revolve around blockchain because i know this was a big pivot for a lot of a lot of folks in terms of how they how they have not only how they did business but what business they did right um certainly my job within the state pivoted dramatically from being primarily focused on blockchain to ensuring that our mobile exposure notifications were were working and that as a state we were leading that effort and and getting uh getting people who had opted in notified and so um you know i feel like probably each of us has had to pivot to one degree or another and seen some new ideas bubble up within uh within the technosphere certainly around blockchain kevin have you seen have you seen anything new in your in your world best ideas something that is going to be going forward changing the world yeah i mean i think that you know there's that whole thing about like the the slingshot between building infrastructure and building the apps i i think that we're sort of going to go back and forth between building infrastructure and then building the apps that are on top of that infrastructure and so i would like to see actual consumer facing applications that are built on top of the infrastructure and then you get that mass adoption which is what's going to change the world but you know if you ask me what infrastructure i'm really excited about from a technology perspective it would definitely have to be actually scaling ethereum with youth 2 and with roll up technology i get coin integrated roll ups into bitcoin grants this last summer and i wish that other other dapps had done that because i think that l2 is the future of scaling transactions and uh you know there's some interesting stuff that nier and matic and others are doing with scaling as well um long term i'm really excited about homomorphic encryption which is a uh you know a way of encrypting data such that the service provider can't see your data but you and other people that you authorize can see your data but i think that that's probably like five years out something like that but uh yeah that's what i'm excited about right on danny awesome yeah so um what we're seeing now as a sort of a trend that's coming through is that with the freedom to work from anywhere people get to pick their own place and then uh since people are inherently social creatures we tend to huddle around like mines so it's it's really nice to have kind of like a beacon in place that says like there will be innovation related to blockchain here and that definitely like i'm a new york transplant right and i think there's a lot of other people who sort of like you know see the bat signal and like head towards that location and and hopefully you know once the vaccine process has gone a little bit further there will be like a really like even greater and thriving community here i think in terms of innovation as kevin mentioned we're really going down the route of accessibility so what's super cool about how we've kind of crafted this onboarding process from here is that you just need to be able to code in javascript which is like the most widely known language in the world uh for as far as programming goes it's actually pretty easy to pick up you want to go a little bit deeper and be more hardcore value you can go into rust but really you can be working on the front-end side you can work on the full blockchain sort of stack using just javascript you don't have to relearn anything which makes it really easy to you know upscale a lot of talent that's already working on other parts of the technology ecosystem and then from there making that accessibility layer also available to ask kevin mentioned you know regular people who want to use applications i think it's going to come down to what applications can capture real world value so something we've seen really thrive on on here are nfts so digital goods sold by artists and creators we're putting that out there um they mint it for a couple of cents put up a store for a couple dollars start selling they start making real money even though they're selling digital goods and there's there's artists that have reached out to talk about their stories like on you know platforms like mint base or peros where they like start making hundreds of dollars just like as a side income from their usual stuff and i think when you can get people like real world people to start making some real world you know income and dollars through their activities then you're creating new value and you're capturing another part of that economy and i think that's really really uh innovative yeah that's that's great i think that you're you're right on about getting people getting people on board by getting them vested and and you know the best the best way to best is definitely money in your pocket that peaks peaks people's interest angie has first seen any seen any pivots yeah absolutely you know i saw the panel prior to this about digital identities and um what our blockchain does which is it's slightly different than than some of the other blockchain world and that we have to follow hipaa compliance in order to get that exchange of highly secure data and you know we've been talking in the health care field for quite a while of you know what can we do about consenting data that if you're with one doctor and then you move to another state and they need tests you know blood tests pooled right they need to see what had happened to you know where were you at five years ago i just recently went through this with um testing myself and you know they needed to go find the records at a different lab just here in town so what we're seeing is um you know frank's passion around profiles and life grabs and a whole person and all the data that is around them we're seeing a lot more uh you know massively accelerated demand around health care because if you have a vaccine that falls under hipaa compliance and now we're talking about passports so that big corporations if you have your vaccine and you can prove that and you have a digital wallet that is your passport that says that you can then these are things that people are working towards so that we can come back together you know think about graduation for high school or colleges or even proms if you can prove that you've been vaccinated or that you took a covet test but when it comes to hipaa compliance you know that that compliance is no joke and so we're seeing a lot of people coming to us asking more about the the chain that we offer because we are hipaa compliant so a lot of acceleration there i think that's interesting because because of the fact that we have faced this national health pandemic there are a lot of sort of misrepresentations and assumptions about what hipaa is and what hipaa isn't um being able to be very clear about the fact that uh you know sending sending the uh sending the text message that that says please if you have tested positive click here to get your exposure notifications that you opted into um doesn't really fall within within that realm but some other things certainly do um you know is is super important and i think that what we're seeing is that there are a good number of startups who have come out of the gate dreamcoved with solutions that are very specifically pandemic related and getting uh getting the right guardrails in place and understanding that hipaa is no joke oh gosh the fines are enormous yeah is is a very important thing yeah yeah that's what we're looking forward to and john i know that shapeshift has done some some good product innovation certainly and i don't i don't think it was necessarily covid related but um definitely within the past six months shapeshift has been coming out with some new products talking about um talking about uh decentralizing the trading platform much to a much larger extent than it was before um can you talk a little bit about what the sort of impetus was behind that and and if yeah yeah so area has very little to do with uh the pandemic as much as it has to do with us just seeing where we think the puck is going you know for lack of a better term yeah um we you know we we started as you know but the ethos of shapeshift was always non-custodial let's empower users to hold their own keys they might have to trust shapeshift for a fraction of a second but we were always trying to minimize or eliminate trust wherever possible um what we've really been watching and i've been really impressed with is the development of amm specifically you know automated market makers things like uniswap and related products as well as the whole defy ecosystem and you know a few years ago it was very nascent and it was just starting to develop and there wasn't much liquidity on those projects and today and especially you know summer of last year these things really started to explode to the point where something like uniswap was doing more volume on a daily basis than coinbase so like we we've been very impressed with that and we we really think that that kind of model fits very well into our ecosystem in many ways i think i've even talked to some of the founders of these projects they were inspired to start some of these things you know from their use of shape shift and seeing what we did and so as we kind of look ahead um we just think that that's really the future of where things are going and in some ways these things have been our competitors over the last few years but we've really decided to embrace that fully and that we think that the innovation is happening faster than you know any centralized company can ever keep up with so we would rather integrate with these decentralized protocols and and offer that experience directly to our users um and that has some added benefits of we are no longer in the middle of the trade there's even less trust than what we originally created it creates a better ux for the users um and it just you know everyone is happier and we also get the benefit of all of this innovation that's happening in every direction so it's really kind of turned into a pivot for a shape shift that our primary goal is no longer going to be trading with customers um we think that there are protocols out there like una swap et cetera that do that better than we ever can anyway we would rather integrate directly with these things promote their innovation and and create a really nice ux for users to use it because even to what kevin was saying earlier um a lot of these things that are being built you know even though there are some very basic interfaces to use them they're basically infrastructure level and they really require good ux and good applications built on top of them in order to get you know mainstream or wide use cases for users to actually use these things so that's really kind of always been shapeshift's goal is make some of this complicated crypto stuff like self-custody and exchange as simple and easy as possible and so we we kind of you know we have a lot of experience in that area we really want to lean into that kind of product ux side of our company and do that to bring these kinds of decentralized exchanges and d5 products and all these various protocols being developed and make them super easy for users to reap the benefits of these and interact with them directly so that's been our focus and yeah we just launched this dex integration back in january we've gotten a great reception uh both in terms of use use people coming in to use the app and just you know the media and the crypto community so um that definitely we think that's the future and at shapeshift we're always trying to build to where the future will be not where it is right now hard to keep up thanks thanks for that john that definitely definitely gives some insight and we are almost up on time paul i'm gonna i'm gonna open it up for one quick last word from you and it looks like john is john is coming in yeah so you know it's interesting how john describes that because uh what we're doing is an infrastructure build as well and it's actually for banks because we recognize that banks aren't going to go away however they need to be able to support a customer with digital assets and so that integration is essential for the customer to be able to provide be able to bank fiat or digital assets and be able to touch the payment rails so that's actually what plugs into john um and so i really think that you know we talked about uh kevin mentioned infrastructure i think it's a hole right now on the market and we need to fill it and right now we've got the coin bases and the anchorages and you know other uh custody but they're really focused on institutional they're really not working for mass adoption um and we really feel that the custody fitting into the bank model and working with merchants is going to make the uh experience and adoption much faster so those are my comments right on paul i think it's a tough time to be tough time to be starting up but it's always a tough time to be starting up so it's right more powerful it's interesting you say that that because you know when covet hit we were actually in a funding model we're in the funding cycle and uh the market dropped out and you know people just vaporized um and it took a couple of months of kind of adjusting to what this is to then get back into it so um yeah we lost probably five months uh in the funding cycle uh with that so we're back in it so we're fine with it now but it was just a really interesting time because knowing a lot of our business model our operational model uh which was already decentralized had to be even more decentralized uh which changes your entire cost structure and your ability to uh recruit so all right all good all good all right well thank you wonderful panelists i loved i loved hearing all of the blockchain praise and the colorado praise we're gonna thanks all we're gonna turn back over to that