Decentralized Economy

Thank you for inviting me to your podcast. It's a big pleasure.

I'm Satya. I'm a digital economist and an engineer who loves to innovate in digital assets, and also a digital strategist. As you can see, there's a lot of digital world happening here.

Actually, my background is as a hardware and software engineer, and my whole work experience was just doing consulting or development.

But then, back in 2008, I had the experience of finding out what a financial crisis actually means: when the company that hired you lets you go. I was fired too, because of the economics. So since that day I learned: okay, it's not enough to have a job. You always have to be three steps ahead.

That gave me the kick when I was a developer back at Kapsch TrafficCom. We had idle time, even though it's a very stable company, and I just said: hey, let me do something. Why wait for the next project? Let me try to do something that could be meaningful for the company and for the customers. Because I always have a triangle kind of scenario for most of the things I do in my life. I always think: if a company does well, the customers are happy, the employees are happy and all the stakeholders are happy.

So as a developer, even though it was not my job, I just took the initiative and said: hey, why not improve the hardware of our company? Even though back then I was only employed for the GUI, the graphical user interface of the software. I said: hey, I could improve the hardware, which was part of an ecosystem, the onboard unit. Kapsch was always in the onboard unit [business], where it tracks your tolling. Whenever you cross a tolling plaza, the plaza recognizes your car. It is because of the small onboard unit that is always attached to your car or your truck.

Back then, it's almost 10 years ago, I was thinking: hey, why do the truck drivers and the car users have to go to one place to personalize this unit? Why not use your smartphone? Back then the smartphone was coming, with Bluetooth 4.0, back then it was fancy, to personalize it just sitting on the sofa. So that's how the idea was born: the smart onboard unit.

Naturally it was not an easy job, because no one had asked me, it was not my job, and I was touching someone else's territory. But back then I had this huge idea: I never want this 2008 experience to happen to us, to the employees, and I tried to push so that we could get more additional revenue. That was the only intention. But the people [saw it] differently. They said: who are you? Why are you trying to do this project? No one asked you. Stick to your boring GUI. And the GUI was something which was not what I studied for, but I took it because it was the job I got after the financial crisis. So I was trying to do something which involves everything.

Long story short: it took me one and a half years from the idea's inception until I got an opportunity to pitch my idea to the CEO of the company, and he just said: hey, it's brilliant. He just liked the idea, and I got the first funding for my project.

I also tried to innovate on the business model, not only on the product. What I did is, I said: okay, try to imagine your car is paying your toll automatically, your parking, your McDonald's drive-through, your gas, everything, and whenever the car passes, you just have to confirm it if you want that payment to go through. The idea was called Wallet on Wheels. That was my second big idea.

I also learned a lot about payment services, like when you need a banking license, because I wanted our company to be a payment service provider. So this was a parallel thing going on in my head. I could see the reason why I pushed the whole idea: for me, with a transaction-based business model, if you earn from each transaction, even if it's a little bit, you earn more than with a chunk once in a while. So I was very clear: if you make more transactions and get anywhere from 0.3% to 3%, depending on which vertical you are in, you are able to add a lot for the company itself, because you are doing a transaction-based business model.

The centralized approach, monopoly. This is what I think. In the digital world, we need to be more decentralized and more distributed, which is again a definition of blockchain.

But I also believe one company earning all the revenue will not make mankind happier or make it progress. I believe if a hundred billion is distributed, not to 10,000 but to a hundred million people, it will make more [people] prosperous. [The value] has to be [distributed] more equally.

And society is about participation. Right now there's only producer and consumer. We have to go away from one producer and a million consumers, to have a hundred million consumers but also a hundred million creators. It's more of a creator economy, a different kind of value. Each of us has a value. We have a value, that's the variety. That's the reason why we are here on this earth.

So instead of everyone running after the same value, the competition is like everyone is trying to follow the same [thing]: if you have a hundred million followers, or you're Amazon, or you are Google, you are valuable in this economy, otherwise you're not. That is not a very distributed and decentralized, value-centric solution. If you and me and a third person each are creating value and exchanging it, it's a live, live, live and thrive, thrive, thrive situation.

Instead of producer and consumer, we have to have a triangle nowadays, a triangle solution where each node is connected with another two nodes: producer, creator, distributor, aggregator, curation, a lot of things.

So I think we need a more strategic approach to the place where we are. As you can see, in the pandemic only the people who were already building it [thrived], and the others became more diminished. That is what the pandemic actually did to people. The small businesses disappeared. The people who were able to thrive in the digital world, or had some money to hire freelancers to make something for them, they were able to thrive.

This is not the way you can accommodate 7.7 billion people. Everyone wants to have a family. Everyone wants to do everything. Then you have to ask: what kind of job, what kind of engagement do you want to give your child?

And if you try to understand that: if you're a creator, like on Spotify, the sad thing is that on Spotify not every artist is equally paid. Even if your song is played, if I listen to your song, sadly Drake is getting that money. We cannot just go to this number-based economy: the more numbers, the better.

I was reading that in Switzerland, out of a hundred people, 8.8 are millionaires. Can you imagine that? Crazy. And in China the ratio is about one person. But if you look at the number of people having more than a hundred million, first is the US, then it's China, and so on. And what do they want to do? They want to give it on, generation after generation. They will have fewer kids and more money accumulated. And the more money you have, the more money you can make out of it.

And the great thing is when rich people say: oh, we did it from nothing. I say: you don't know what nothing is. Even for me, with sometimes 400 euros, it would be wrong if I said I'm from nothing, when I know people in India who couldn't eat anything.

I'm not saying let's go economic communist, but distributed, decentralized. It's actually more intellectual. If you transmit value between many points, you have more revenue, and all of us will stay well, and all of us can build up after the pandemic.

It's still a very fear-oriented economy at the moment. A show-off economy, a greed economy. We have to remove all the greed economy and create value which is authentic value and doesn't have to be attached to: okay, how many people liked it?

Yes. Whether it's blockchain or a different technology: it doesn't have to be just blockchain, it could be DAG technology. Still distributed and decentralized: any network that allows you to be decentralized and distributed. I think that is the economy, and even more the mindset.

I think the economy will not work if the mindset is not there to value each other, to recognize: with one brain, I cannot produce everything. You need more. But you don't have to tell the brain what to think. The brain can think on its own. That is what we are talking about with the hierarchy of the boss telling everyone else [what to do]. Give them the freedom to do the thing. The people who do want to do the work, they will find their work, which will make them happy, if they are in the wrong place. But give the space to people who really want to create more meaningful value in society than just earning money or earning status through a promotion.

Yes. For example, back when Bitcoin mining started, independent people who just had a laptop could mine it. Right now, with cryptocurrencies, greed is entering again, a lot of fear is entering, [mining] farms are entering. But the pure intention back then was really to transmit value peer to peer: digital cash. Just stick to the original value. We can make an amazing future for the present and the future generations.

It depends. It's a good question. To be honest, it's very hard to answer at the moment, but what I can say is this.

There's some percentage of people who are just into it because of money. They say Dogecoin, and they are jumping in. They want to make money, and if you're not making money, they think you are a fool. They are not interested in whether it's decentralized, as long as they can convert it back to fiat money.

Then there are some people who really want to make money by creating value. There are some projects, or companies, that want their project to really be successful, and they want to invest in that project. There are a lot of layer two applications coming up in the Ethereum ecosystem, even in Bitcoin right now, trying to create value and also be prominent in that area.

Then the people who really believe, like the maximalists for each coin, are like preachers, like a religion. Cryptocurrency has become a religion on its own.

But if you ask me: very few people, one out of a hundred, will enter the technology for the philosophy. Ten out of a hundred people will enter for the technology. The rest, 89% of the people, are entering for money.

Ownership. It is revolutionizing ownership verification. For example, before, when you wanted to know who owned a home, you had to go to a centralized authority.

But the beauty of blockchain is that it is trustless. You or me or my grandmother, grandfather, no one: we don't have to trust anyone, not even God, to make it valid. And why can it be valid? Because it is mathematically proven whether this document or this transaction is valid or not. Two plus two is always four, no matter which language you speak, which religion you follow, which hemisphere you go to. Mathematics is called the universal language.

So the moment we understand it is trustless: I don't need someone else's recommendation. I don't need some highest supreme power, be it a bank, be it an organization, PayPal. I don't need any trust. I don't have to have trust in something. I know mathematically this transaction has been validated and proven.

People don't see it because people don't know how to trust the trustless network. They don't know how to trust [something] trustless, they need a reputation. This is called the halo effect.

But God is also abstract, and people like it.

But it is math. I'm not using the word technology. That's the reason I'm very aware of not using that word. I'm asking: do you trust that two plus two is four? Do you trust it?

Let's create new stories.

Cloud computing. Cloud computing 10 years ago: everyone said, no, I don't trust my data to be there. And now you cannot progress without cloud computing.

True. Like the internet.

Yes. I can tell you the day I jumped in, and the time I read the white paper: November 14th, 2016. I was invited to pitch my innovation in Berlin, and I heard people talking about blockchain. Since I was doing so much innovation back then for Kapsch, for my own thing, I was so busy in this world, I did not see anything beyond that. I missed the whole thing until November 14, 2016.

And then I read the white paper, and this guy wrote with such commitment. He had such a vision. And I said: wow. Because he did not do it to make profit, he wanted to do it for values. I could identify with him so much, even though he's a more brilliant expert in everything: in language, in cryptography, in computers. Amazing.

And I was thinking: wow, 2008. Because it did hit me. It was a really, really hard experience. And I could understand what he said. And then he brought up this amazing solution with payments. Since I had done my innovation on payment service providers, I said: what was I doing my whole life? When I saw it, it was 2016, and he had done it in 2008. I was eight years behind.

And I came back and talked to my friends, and everyone said: oh, I checked back then, it was 600, 700. Beyond my capacity, because I was already an entrepreneur. Paying every bill was a big thing.

And I understand what you're saying, but I love the values. He just dropped out of the project because people, WikiLeaks for example, started accepting Bitcoin, and one of his teammates started talking to the CIA. He did not like any of that. He wanted to do peer-to-peer digital cash: you and me, without a central middleman, can transmit perceived value.

Before, it was like the post. 50 years ago, if I wanted to send you a letter, I was dependent on a post office. Now I can send you an email. This is what I see: Bitcoin is sending money like email. You need a wallet address. You don't need anything else. And you get the money or you send the money like sending emails. This is what is amazing. That is the power.

But people obviously [trust] the bank, which is charging them for the trust, and they see something which is trustless as unsafe, because it's something new. But I tell people: it's the first time in the world that you can own gold without oppression. And this is like the old money-making process versus a value-creating process. Until now, society told us: this is how value is created, and we have to accept that and navigate through it. This is where you can all take part.

And I always say to people: don't put your money into cat, dog, pig coin. See beyond that. Because the moment you invest your energy... now we are talking about spirituality and not finance. I can understand: I would also really want to invest 1,000 and get 10 million. I say: no, this is not what it is. For me, it's a very, very philosophical thing.

Because it's solving some problems in the blockchain space. Blockchain has a trilemma problem. You can see the blockchain space as a triangle, again a triangle: decentralization, speed or scalability, and security. You can always satisfy two, and you have to compromise on the third.

Bitcoin is very decentralized and secure. Come on: 12 years and not hacked one time. It's public, not private, no firewall or something. Come on, it is amazing. But it is compromising on speed.

And right now there is proof of work. Proof of work, as it says: you need to have put some work in, your honesty, integrity. It recognizes the human greed factor. That's the reason the way he designed it was amazing: [he was a] psychology person, philosophy person, engineer, economist. He introduced game theory. This is amazing.

That's the reason why, even though I am not earning a single cent in the crypto space at the moment, I'm still trying to stick in that space, because I think it has a long-term future. I want to integrate this whole innovation idea I had. I said: if I navigate anywhere else, I would miss the train.

That's the reason I don't just focus on Bitcoin. I'm not only into Bitcoin, because I missed my train back then: I was doing innovation in my own little room, and I missed Bitcoin, or blockchain, when it happened. So that's the reason I look into all the projects in the blockchain space and see: okay, what can I learn? What is it solving? What are the use cases? How do you do tokenomics?

The whole thing I did through legal, business and technology, I now try to navigate for the client. When someone asks me if this coin is good or bad, I give them proof of why it is good or bad. This is what I decided to do right now in the decentralized world.

The paradigm of what a woman has to be, what's pleasant, preferable.

It's always both men and women who tell me that if you're confident... That's the reason, when someone says "introduce yourself", I say: I'm an arrogant, bold and courageous person. So before you judge me, I tell you what you would think, because it comes across [that way]. Most people always asked me: who do you think you are? That was always the question when I came up with those [ideas]. Who do you think you are?

So that's the reason I say: if I were a male, preferably white, I think I would have a different kind of life. Even my approach, the way I am, the aggressiveness, would be charming if I were a male person. But now it is like: oh, you're very emotional, and you have to be this and that.

No. As a woman, I can say: I don't want to have children, because I want to make a company that will employ future children. And there were men who attacked me and said: oh, Mother Earth needs more children. I said: no, Mother Earth needs more trees, by the way. But okay, we can talk about it.

This is the challenge, especially when a woman tries to live a very different life than society expects. Anything that disrupts the picture of being a woman, and a foreign woman, and a rebel, like a kind of feminist, but on your own terms.

Honestly, I don't see people thinking about me in a hundred years. Maybe some family members.

I wish that a person, any person who is like me... At the moment I'm talking as Satya, I'm talking as a personality. People can remember: this person lived life on her terms, even though it was not a successful life in terms of the usual success. But it is different, and different can sometimes be tastier than being successful. And if people will accept them and remember them, that would be amazing.

Same here. And thank you very much for inviting me on your podcast. Thank you.