Colorado Governor, Jared Polis: The First Digital State

hello everybody eat denver [Applause] uh it is so exciting to be here as part of this community innovation festival and i really mean as part of it because we are doing several hackathons around some of our state purposes as we speak some of you might be involved with those as well it's great to be back at east denver in the web 3 castle this is without a doubt the most fun thing that i get to do this month and i wish i got to be here for this entire festival um it's really uh we're proud as coloradans and uh how many of you are from colorado so that's great yeah and of course we welcome our friends from across the country and across the world to a real center of ethereum innovation blockchain we see it as a critical part of colorado's overall innovation ecosystem and i want to thank core stewards meta stewards the volunteers the artisan creatives the mentors the judges the sponsors uh sport dao which is a colorado co-op which i'll talk more about later uh the concept and how we're a leader in that this really is all part of bringing this uh environment together that allows for collaboration and innovation with the platform and now the people and that's you that make the platform meaningful in colorado we've been laying the groundwork uh to be a uh center of uh crypto innovation and blockchain innovation for a number of years um and my own history with uh with blockchain and crypto goes back a number of years i uh founded uh the blockchain caucus when i served in united states congress and uh one of my very first experiences on the political side with crypto this was very early on there was a a senator that i won't name now that was trying to undertake an effort to ban bitcoin and cryptocurrencies trying to ban them saying they call they're for criminal transactions they're a drug dealers and all that and he wrote this letter trying to ban him and i basically took his letter and almost word for word i made it ban cash because i said cash is used by drug lords cash is untraceable it's passed around cash is used by criminals and so and uh obviously when i became governor i wanted to really bring that same enthusiasm about how colorado could really be a center of the blockchain economy a state that embraces technology to deliver better services to people an inclusive state i'm also very excited as a state and we are by the concept of employee ownership in many forms many of you know before i i went into public service i was an entrepreneur and in the tech startups i had we always had stock options that's one common form of employee ownership there's also co-ops esops and of course now uh with uh digital tokens new and even more innovative forms of technology we hired in 2019 our state was the very first date to hire a chief blockchain architect and you're going to hear from him thaddeus batt later today thad's a judge at 6 30. and so uh we hope that more states and cities and countries follow that lead i signed in my first year in office a digital token act which exempts use tokens from state securities laws just to really uh encourage that kind of innovation without having to fall into a system of rules and regulations that was built for a very different product and a very different purpose but still carries forward today we launched colorado digital services that assembles teams of developers around blockchain solutions including an ag and it's really exciting for colorado really to be known across the country as the delaware of cooperatives now for some of you i have to explain what the hell is why delaware so if you've ever had a c-corp a corporation like 90 of them are incorporated in delaware why because they have the most straightforward securities law you don't need to have a nexus there or rent anything and so it's almost expected if you're gonna raise venture capital or go public outside of that conventional side of the economy uh that you are a delaware corporation so when i started my companies i don't i mean i've probably been to delaware but all of my companies were delaware c corps but they were based in colorado and california in chicago and other that's where i've done my entrepreneurship so that's what we mean when we say we want colorado to be the delaware of co-ops we expect this new shared ownership model and entrepreneurial value cooperation to really be a key part of who we are as a culture and our set of laws that allow for it we also are excited to be really among the first digital states where we want to stay ahead of and incorporate community cooperatives like taos with legitimacy that they deserve as a participatory form of self-governance that we want to embrace this future is really about a new paradigm that create new opportunities for coloradans and also the communities that they serve which go well beyond the colorado borders right so when we're talking about being the delaware of cooperatives it's about of course hopefully the legal framework and the societal framework for them to be based here but their membership of course would presumably be global or whatever geographic area you may want to define it in this technology really represents a great tool for human advancement towards a more abundant and collaborative and distributed future that fundamentally empowers people with their own information um i'm not going to talk much about conventional politics tonight because it's not very interesting to most people but i want to talk about how the blockchain kind of provides a philosophical solution in that area there's two parties big parties in this country democrats and republicans and when it comes to privacy and information one of the main part is these parties basically says you can't trust government trust big corporations the other one says don't trust big corporations trust the government most people don't trust either big corporations or the government and that is what blockchain allows us to solve for we trust ourselves we uh we write and are part of the rules that we make about sharing of private information and how that's done and the verification so it can disintermediate both big corporations and the government to create a solution that meets the use case in so many ways and that's really what's so exciting about this uh the impact on the future for more and more residents uh we all the other great success stories in colorado in may of 2019 denver was the first american jurisdiction to use blockchain encryption to allow residents to vote uh overseas residents casting their ballot in denver municipal elections actually voted in a blockchain powered solution we're also seeing how this technology lends itself to employee ownership nature tech nexus is an accelerator for nature-based solutions that address biodiversity in the climate emergency of course sport dao which are we are participating in as we speak blockchain governed lca that of course funds and runs east denver which we're joined now along with colorado jam and buffa core and ventures and i know there's going to be so much more innovation coming out of the interactions over these few days ethereum is really a platform that enables uh so much more than just payments it enables cooperation and collaboration and digital autonomous organizations can literally code the rules for their own governance their own businesses and that has implications that are broad and profound for content creators of all types gamers artists brands with virtual products that can be tied to a physical good uh and of course um government can also utilize these concepts around fee baits or encouraging behaviors that are behi environmentally friendly or socially desirable at this year's colorado jam incubator we're excited to have four new bounties focused on key state challenges and those are going to be open to the general public very soon i think two already are the first is concerning the creation of a user-friendly state internet portal relating to state agency rules teams provide a way to validate identity provide feedback to agencies directly verifiable irrefutable the second is a theoretical rewrite of the department of agriculture brand registry system yes this is the brands they s you with the hot iron on cattle and we do it the same way that we did it a 100 years ago and we want to see what that might look like with the application of blockchain technology creating a viable product that allows ranchers to register their brands and search or confirm that a brand has an active registration now you wouldn't normally think about agriculture and blockchain together but that is a key economic driver here in colorado and if we can find a new and better and more distributed way to achieve this task which is a very simple one an account wanders off or gets stolen you want to know whose cow it is we can really have a big step forward for colorado ranchers right it also creates opportunities that might not even exist in the conventional brand system like shared brands or collaborative brands or distributed brands uh that could also potentially work and provide new business models for members of our ranching community we're also excited to host another colorado gem hackathon and innovation competition to submit solutions around clean energy protecting our environment and digital citizenship um these are just examples these are just in many ways case studies of what can happen with innovation some of you i hope are participating in those uh but we want to embrace what works for our residents uh that's why i was very excited to announce just last week and it's just a serendipitous that this conference is a week later that colorado will become the first state to accept cryptocurrencies for payment of state taxes and fees [Applause] now we we applauded it's excited but i don't want to make it sound like more than it is because we still budget and spend money in dollars that's still where the world is and where government is so we won't be holding uh any assets in that form but we will have a layer that allows for payment in those forms and then conversion uh into the with the units that we use which are dollars for budgeting and payments but as a matter of convenience for the public we will be accepting first of course for taxes but then for many different fees and services by this summer by this summer we expect that that will be completed and we'll be very excited to do that also important i think symbolically to show that we are a crypto forward state is something that we want to be able to tout as well in addition to the convenience it provides and of course the increased efficiency and payments that it can provide uh as well the state is uh currently looking at options for putting out the rfp to identify the third party company with the capacity to be that layer that makes those interactions possible um look it's exciting to take this moment of opportunity to really spur creativity around the greatest challenges that we face as a state and as a nation from education and housing to mental and behavioral health to the environment to economic recovery we don't have to rely on the old ways of doing things we have life-changing technology that enables new creative solutions at our fingertips and here in colorado we want to harness the power of that technology and use it to improve people's lives uh making governance and government in all of its forms as efficient as possible and to serve the people that are members so i want to thank all of you for bringing that innovative spirit here to eat denver and we look forward to working with you in new forms of collaboration and innovation for many years to come thank you eve denver [Applause] you