ETH Denver Fireside Chat With 2 of the Most Crypto-Friendly Governors in the Nation

In this fireside chat from ETH Denver, crypto-friendly governors Jared Polis of Colorado and Mark Gordon of Wyoming discuss how they each became interested in crypto and blockchain, how their states became friendly to the industry and how to resolve some of the thornier problems in crypto regulation, such as the state-by-state money transmission licensing regime. We also dive into the details on some of the regulations in their states, such as the regulations that make it possible to hold state-specific ICOs, what types of companies are taking advantage of those, and whether there’s a bipartisan attitude toward crypto regulation. 

Thank you to our sponsors! 

CipherTrace: https://ciphertrace.com

Crypto.com: https://crypto.com/

Kraken: https://www.kraken.com

Episode links: 

CO Governor Jared Polis: https://twitter.com/jaredpolis

WY Governor Mark Gordon: https://governor.wyo.gov/

CO Governor Jared Polis’s background: 

Governor Polis’s letter to SEC chairman Jay Clayton and then-CFTC chairman Christopher Giancarlo on crypto regulation: https://www.coindesk.com/lawmakers-renew-calls-us-lead-crypto-innovation

Colorado’s Digital Token Act: https://www.coindesk.com/colorado-could-be-next-in-the-race-to-bank-crypto-and-cannabis https://leg.colorado.gov/sites/default/files/2019a_023_signed.pdf https://thetokenist.io/colorado-signs-digital-token-act-into-law-some-digital-assets-exempt-from-securities-requirements/

Wyoming passes three crypto-friendly laws: https://www.coindesk.com/wyoming-lawmakers-pass-three-bills-in-boost-for-states-crypto-industry

Wyoming laws: https://www.wyoleg.gov/Legislation/2018/HB0070 https://www.forbes.com/sites/caitlinlong/2019/03/04/what-do-wyomings-new-blockchain-laws-mean/amp/

Transcript:

Laura Shin:

Hi, everyone. This week I have for you, a fireside chat I conducted at ETH Denver with two extremely crypto-friendly governors. Jared Polis of Colorado and Mark Gordon of Wyoming. This was a really great conversation. Governor Polis is a former entrepreneur and has been a crypto-friendly government official at both the federal and state levels, and Governor Gordon can probably claim the mantle of heading up the most crypto-friendly state in the nation. If you listened to last week’s episode of Unconfirmed with Caitlin Long, you’ll hear him talk a bit more about the special purpose depository institutional law that is enabling her new crypto bank Avanti. I think people really enjoyed this discussion because last week I happened to be talking to someone who had been to ETH Denver, and he randomly spouted off to me some of the facts he learned in this discussion, and when he had finished, I was like, did you learn that in the conversation I moderated at ETH Denver. And yes, folks, the answer is yes, but maybe he had forgotten that I was there just sitting on stage asking questions, but otherwise apparently not that memorable. Anyway, please enjoy this fun conversation from ETH Denver with Colorado Governor Jared Polis and Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon.

Laura Shin: 

So, hello, everybody. Thank you for coming to this panel. Here I have the Governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, and there we have the governor of Wyoming, Mark Gordon. All right, Governor Polis, let’s start with you. Before you got into politics, you had a very successful career in tech, and actually when I was reading your bio, I realized we’re like roughly the same age, and this reminded me of how for my fifth year college reunion, I showed up, I’d been working in journalism for a few years, I was probably making like fifty thousand a year or something, and in my class there were people who by then had already launched startups, sold them for millions of dollars and were like living the high life, and you have kind of a similar story. So, can you tell us a little bit about your time as a tech entrepreneur.

Governor Jared Polis:

Yeah. Those were the days. So, this was, I was class of ’96, is that what you were?

Laura Shin: 

’97.

Governor Jared Polis:

Yeah, so we’re close. I guess that means I’m a little bit older. So, yeah, this was sort of what we call Internet 1.0. That’s what we call it now. As you know, basically I started an internet access provider with two friends that I met through college. This was in the days of dial-up internet access of course. We had a T1 coming in and we had a server, and then we just got a bank started with 20 modems, grew it, people had dial-up access. Grew that company. We raised professional capital. We started it in ’93. We raised professional capital in ’96. We sold it in ’98. So, that was all happening during that timeframe. Started an online flower company, ProFlowers.com, and also online greeting cards, Blue Mountain.com. A few others along the way, but those are some of the ones people might know. 

Laura Shin: 

And you then spent 10 years in Congress as a representative, and while you were there, you were a member of the Congressional Blockchain Caucus and you even wrote letters to the SEC Chairman, Jay Clayton, and the CFDC Chairman, Christopher Giancarlo, you know, sort of requesting or advocating, I guess, very…what’s the word…advocating that there’s like loose regulation and regulation that isn’t too restrictive in the US around crypto. So, can you tell us like how you got into cryptocurrency and sort of what would be on your wish list for how it should be regulated.

Governor Jared Polis:

Well, I think my most famous moment there in Congress was when there was a senator that wrote a letter saying that Bitcoin should be banned because you know, used by criminals, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, and I basically took the letter and I just, everywhere he wrote Bitcoin, I said paper currency should be banned because it’s used by criminals, it’s untraceable, it’s sometimes used for tax evasion. So, I sent the same letter just using paper currency. So, that was fun. I also was the first candidate for congress, I was an incumbent, I was already there but running again, to accept donations in Bitcoin. Didn’t get too much, maybe 2 or 3 thousand dollars, but still it was fun to do, and then I sponsored some legislation with regard to creating the framework that allows for more innovation nationally with regard to blockchain technologies. On transitioning to the state level, I was just doing an interview with Coin Desk and they asked me the differences. Congress, you can do a lot because it’s the national government and a lot of stuff has to be regulated from the federal level, but it’s really slow, really, really, really, really slow. State level, really fast, but we can only do what we can do. So, both Mark and I in our states have done what we can to do be as opening and facilitating of blockchain currencies as we can. We passed a digital securities act to exempt tokens from you know, our states’ securities laws, but again, we’re still under federal law. Wyoming and Colorado are still part of the United States of America the last time I checked.

Laura Shin: 

And Governor Gordon, this is actually the perfect segue, because your state has launched probably more blockchain bills than any other state. So how did you become interested in cryptocurrency and become such an active state in this space?

Governor Mark Gordon:

Thank you. Thank you. It’s wonderful to be here. I think it really came about because we have a strong libertarian background in our state. We’re 588 thousand people. People expect to know everyone that’s in government. We don’t like government. We just never have liked government, and so, it’s been really important. So, you know, a number of our legislators, I mean Caitlin Long is going to be here tomorrow, Tyler Lindholm, you know, decided what can Wyoming do to do things like create the first utility token law in the country. What can we do to figure out how to build a logical onramp and offramp? How can we get ourselves under the UCC Code so that you don’t have to worry about SEC? How can we build reciprocity? These are all things that we kind of put together in about 13 bills that really stood up kind of a framework that it’s nice to see others are beginning to kind of copy and follow, but I think, really, Laura, what I’d like to say is that the coolest thing about Jared and me being here is that you know, this is the sort of part of the world where I think that libertarian spirit regardless of party, comes to the fore, and we really want to build you know, this kind of an environment here. 

Laura Shin: 

Well, so, one thing that I want to ask you about is you know, both of you have power at the state level, but this is you know, I think, something that’s actually kind of a burden to a lot of entrepreneurs in this space where especially around the money transmission licensing laws you know, all of these startups have to go state by state and you know, many of the most well-funded startups in this space actually still don’t even have all their state licenses. So, you know, what do you think should be done about that and what do you think can be done about that? 

Governor Mark Gordon:

Well, I think Wyoming really worked on that and built, I think we are the only state that has…all 50 states can do money transmission that’s exempted from any taxation or any other regulation under Wyoming law.

Laura Shin: 

And so, do you think basically every state should kind of adopt that stance?

Governor Mark Gordon:

Yeah. I think it’s probably a good idea. You know, I think what we’re really working on is trying to build a whole new ecosystem for these kinds of you know, call them currencies, call them different settlement regimes. You know, I think this is really what we’re looking at in the future.

Governor Jared Polis:

We have some experience in Colorado also around another industry that the federal regs are far behind on because it’s technically illegal. That’s the cannabis industry in Colorado. So, we’ve been doing workarounds. We announced our cannabis banking roadmap the other day. It’s been a priority for us to help make sure that our legal cannabis industry has access to legal banking and financial resources. Again, it’s a similar juxtaposition because technically none of that is allowed federally, and so we have to do what we can to create that safe haven for innovators and entrepreneurs to be successful in our state. 

Laura Shin: 

So, you know, I understand what you’re doing and yet at the same time I don’t know how much it like, resolves issues for the entrepreneurs like, you know, like you were saying that you thought other states should adopt a similar regulation, but like is there something that you can do to kind of get that going to make it so that there are more states that adopt that stance?

Governor Mark Gordon:

Well, so, in Wyoming we have a new what we call our speedy bank, special purpose depositories, and we created you know, basically three different classes of digital assets, and part of what we’re trying to do is to build that into a framework that is comfortable for the SEC and others, and so, we’ve really worked hard on that, we are banking regulated. The nice thing in Wyoming, again very small, so the banking administrator, the head of banking department, we’ve been able to work together. I used to be on the Federal Reserve Bank Board, and so we’ve been able to kind of craft banking laws around special purpose depositories and digital asset owning, both securitization and utility tokens, and I think if people see a first mover, and that first mover isn’t shot out of the saddle, then perhaps they start to follow and then perhaps you have to say, this space really is able to be opened up.

Laura Shin: 

And by that, do you mean it’s sort of like a competitive advantage and it kind of brings some startups in other states interested in attracting that industry will want to you know, get a piece of that business?

Governor Mark Gordon:

I don’t really know if it’s about a competitive advantage, it’s just about you know, actually forging the thing. I think you know, Jared and I often are in this sort of situation where we’re the Wild West and you have to have a framework that works, but you really can take the lead and hopefully others come along behind. We’re seeing you know, Puerto Rico do that and others.

Governor Jared Polis:

And hopefully the federal government. I mean, we went to push some of the thought leadership at the state level up when the federal government gets around to doing a thoughtful process around this.

Governor Mark Gordon:

Yeah. Exactly.

Laura Shin: 

Well, so, can you talk a little bit more like you know, other than sort of hoping that happens or is there anything kind of more concrete that the states can do to try to push more sensible federal regulation?

Governor Jared Polis:

Well, look, I mean, we also compete in a global economy, and for that very reason, there are absolutely blockchain companies today that are in Switzerland or in other countries because of more favorable legal landscape. I think we need to recognize that that’s part of the competitive landscape. It’s easy for a company to domicile wherever they chose to domicile, so we need to remove anything that inhibits that kind of innovation in our state. You know, again, things are not that dire. I mean last year alone, 50 million dollars was invested in blockchain companies here in Colorado. We have a Chief Blockchain Architect at our Office of Information Technology. We’ve passed several bills in the area. We’re doing a lot of work around Ag, blockchain and Ag, and of course, we did our digital tokens law exempting them from state securities law. I mean, stuff’s happening, but I totally get, and we hear, too, yes, this company is locating somewhere else because they’re not able to get by at the American regulatory landscape.

Governor Mark Gordon:

Well, and I think the other thing, too, is that when people look at you know, the United States, they tend to look at a place like, and God bless them, New York or California or you know, something you see, but really, when you come to this part of the country regardless of where it is, you really see a kind of culture that says we can handle it here at a local level, and my point is, and Jared knows this much more than I do you know, he’s served at a federal level, it takes a very big push to get things to move. So, I think if you start to get, I mean you saw this with some of the cannabis laws and others, if you start to see a body of work that starts to move forward, eventually the federal government has to respond. 

Laura Shin: 

And I was also wondering about the digital token acts that you guys have passed. You know, kind of enabling utility tokens to be launched here are basically like having ICOs here in the states. How popular has that been? How many token issuers have taken advantage of that in your states?

Governor Jared Polis:

I had a little trouble hearing your question.

Laura Shin: 

Oh. Just like how many ICOs have taken advantage of the Colorado…?

Governor Jared Polis:

So, we have you know, states have the ability to regulate securities and we do. We wanted to create a space where we could exempt digital tokens from our state’s securities laws. It doesn’t mean they’re not subject to federal securities laws if applicable. It’s a gray area, but we wanted to make sure that at the very least, the state of Colorado is doing nothing above and beyond that. That we’re simply monitoring and learning from what’s happening in the free market.

Governor Mark Gordon:

And just to answer your question, I think we’ve had about 40 ICOs that have incorporated in Wyoming over the last year. It’s kind of fun to see the mining operations that are setting up in various places, so that’s happening. As I say, we’ve had two charters for the SPDI banks, so things are starting to happen. When you start talking about utility tokens, to me, a whole new realm of things open up. Really cool stuff. Fractionalized ownership, ways to create carbon, actual carbon markets, not artifices of accounting, but actual carbon sequestration markets, that sort of thing.

Governor Jared Polis:

We have a very high profile on in Colorado…I don’t have a total number by the way. We have a high profile one, a new journalistic enterprise, Colorado Sun. I don’t know if Colorado Sun reporters are here. Anybody from Colorado Sun? So, I hoped we were covering this, because they were in fact largely funded through digital tokens. So, it’s an innovative model in sort of you know, citizen-funded journalism that is you know, it’s somewhat commercial. The goal isn’t to make a ton of money, but it’s the civic value of it, but that’s a very high-profile example here in Colorado.

Laura Shin: 

Now that I think about it, I actually think I know some journalists who work there, and they were telling me about it. I was also wondering, so let’s say that you know, I live in a different state, can I participate in these ICOs without any kind of risk to myself or how does that part work?

Governor Mark Gordon:

You certainly don’t run afoul of Colorado law or Wyoming law, but you have to check with whoever you check with to see in your state, but any issue, would not be ours. 

Laura Shin: 

So, it tends to, like the participants tend to be people who are like already residents of Colorado or Wyoming?

Governor Jared Polis:

I don’t think anybody’s going to, again, you have to seek legal advice wherever you are, but I don’t think there’s an actual issue there as far as actual prosecution.

Governor Mark Gordon:

No, I wouldn’t be…I don’t think there is either. You know, one of the things that Wyoming law is working on now is making sure that you have First Amendment rights for code. So, for example, if you’ve set up an ICO, there’s a coin, and somehow, it’s implicated in crime, you as the creator, cannot be prosecuted for that crime. So, those are the kinds of things we’re doing in Wyoming.

Governor Jared Polis:

It’s kind of like the equivalent of what we used to call common carrier laws in telecom, right. If you plan a crime over the telephone speaking to somebody and AT&Ts the carrier, they’re not liable. They were simply the medium of communication. So, same similar concept.

Laura Shin: 

So, there’s something I’m curious about. So everybody seems very excited about the fact that you can like launch a token in one of these states, and you know, not have any state consequences, but you know, I think like in general in the crypto community most people are excited about tokens that are utilized in like decentralized networks and those sort of like these you know, these global distributed decentralized networks, but I think you know, some of these examples that you’re talking about, if they’re kind of like a little bit more local or small like you know, I don’t think they’re really the crypto networks that a lot of people here are working on building, or maybe I’m wrong. How many of you would be interested in participating in you know, something like the Colorado Sun ICO or you know, something that’s like kind of specific to Wyoming? I’m curious. Oh, really? So, that seemed like maybe a quarter to a third or so. I guess, you know, and I’m not trying to say that your efforts are not important or useful, but I just wonder what impact they will have, really, for this group. You know, like, do you see that there is some kind of connection between what…?

Governor Jared Polis:

Well you know, if somebody can’t locate in the United States, they can’t locate in the United States. But if they can, what, you know, the Governor and I are both saying is we would love them to be in Wyoming or Colorado. I happen to prefer Colorado, he prefers Wyoming, but you know, we’re actually you know, contingent, we’re near each other, let’s just call it the you know, the Cheyenne to Denver corridor, how about that. But no, we’d love to have you here. 

Governor Mark Gordon:

Yeah. I mean, to me, it’s a different frame of reference, right? I mean, this is a time when it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, but you want to have a government that’s accessible, where you’re sort of incorporated. So, it’s a global environment, but you want very localized, very small and very precise government.

Governor Jared Polis:

And I would say, look, there’s an advantage to the stability that we all have, too. I mean, some entrepreneurs may say look, from a legal perspective, the best place for me to be is Nigeria, but then you go there, and then like armed raiders take over your headquarters at night or something, So, like, there’s something to be said for the stability that the United States of American offers. So, we have some value in that.

Governor Mark Gordon:

That’s exactly right. 

Laura Shin: 

All right. Well, I also actually want to bring up a recent proposal that came out from SEC Commissioner, Hester Pierce, where she proposed a three-year safe harbor period for token sales. I don’t know, did you hear about her proposal? It’s a three-year safe harbor period for token sales.

Governor Jared Polis:

Well, I would certainly be supportive of a safe harbor. Absolutely. I mean, that’s what we want to do under state law, but obviously, from our own securities, there’s an exemption, but we would love any kind of federal…I would welcome any kind of federal safe harbor.

Governor Mark Gordon:

Same.

Laura Shin: 

And how would that…

Governor Mark Gordon:

Your question was a little different though, I think.

Laura Shin: 

No, I just wanted to know what you thought of her proposal.

Governor Mark Gordon:

I have not looked at it in detail. So, thank you. 

Governor Jared Polis:

All I heard is a potential for a federal safe harbor, so I would be supportive of that.

Laura Shin: 

Okay. Okay. If that were to happen, I don’t know like how that affects your existing laws.

Governor Jared Polis:

Well, it certainly does because I don’t think you’d find a welcome reception in every state. You’d find some states that might even have an opposite attitude about it. So, they might say, oh, if there’s a federal safe harbor, we better get our own division of banking and other divisions to really start enforcing things more rigidly or whatever. I mean, there’s 50 states, they’re laboratories of democracy, they have all different perspectives. So, even under a federal safe harbor, you might find different states that interpret that differently. I think we would say, wow, let’s go, let’s do it. Other states might say, oh, that means we need to do more regulation at the state level because the federal government is not for a period of time. 

Governor Mark Gordon:

So, I think that’s a little bit of the difference where we find ourselves in the evolution of this. In Wyoming, we believe that we have created kind of a safe place. We feel that we’ve been working with the federal regulatory environment, and maybe it’s just because they want to see how far it goes or what it does, but at this point, we believe we’re about the only state that really has those kinds of relationships across the country.

Laura Shin: 

And amongst the other laws that Wyoming has passed regarding the blockchain industry, which of those are other ones that you think would you know, it would be beneficial for those to also be instituted at the federal level?

Governor Mark Gordon:

Well, I think the one that I’m particularly fascinated by is the special purpose depository. So, you know, we’ve defined what the legal certainty about what a digital asset is. We’ve classified them, we’ve created these banks, we’ve created the regulatory structure around them so that now you have ownership of that in that banking institution, and I think you know, people are saying, okay, you’ve really taken a long look at this and it seems like the regulatory framework is working. I guess we’ll see how that goes. It’s very young, but as I say, it’s up, and it’s running. We’ve had two banks that have dropped their charters here in the last month.

Laura Shin: 

And what about you? I mean, you have experience at the federal level. What’s on your wish…I asked you this before, but in the context of you know, what you’ve already passed.

Governor Jared Polis:

Well, I think they beat us in the number of bills. I maybe signed six that had to do with blockchain. You had 13. So, it also depends what they do, but again, we did establish a counsel around implementation and Ag. We’re focused on state level implantation. I think that you know, what distributed ledger technologies can offer in terms of you know, states are very information-intensive endeavors, and there’s just a lot information in society. Obviously, the distrust of centralized databases is something that exists on the political left and the political right. On the left, it might take the form of being more skeptical of corporate centralized databases. That’s on the left. On the right, it might take more of a form of being skeptical of government-centralized databases, but a distributed ledger solution solves both of those, right. Whether you distrust government or distrust corporations, or like most people probably distrust both. You are finally able to trust yourselves through distributed ledger technology.

Laura Shin: 

So, speaking of left and right, that was actually my next question. Governor Gordon, you’re a republican. Governor Polis, you’re a democrat. At the moment, this is just my take, but I don’t see this as being an obviously either partisan or even frankly bipartisan issue. It’s sort of…there are arguments I could make that it seems partisan and other arguments I could make where it seems bipartisan. I’m interested to know what your opinion is of you know, kind of attitudes in terms of partisanship over blockchain technology. 

Governor Jared Polis:

I don’t think it’s partisan here. I mean, I think many of the bills that I’ve signed were, we have a democratic majority in both chambers but they were sponsored by democrats and republicans. They reached my desk with democratic and republican votes. You know, I think there might be a few folks on both sides that might be curmudgeonly or not support things they don’t fully understand or be more law enforcement-oriented, and they might oppose things, but that can be democrats or republicans.

Governor Mark Gordon:

Yeah, and I guess I’d echo that. I don’t really think this is a partisan issue, and I hope it doesn’t become a partisan issue because we can screw up almost anything. You know, it’s just good business. It’s good business, and you know, the distributed nature of it is very democratic and offers tremendous opportunities, and if you love small government, as I think both of us probably do you know, what better mechanism to be able to create a smaller government than with you know, maybe a blockchain apparatus in place. 

Laura Shin: 

So, earlier when I said I could argue it both ways, I am going to now argue it one of the ways at least because when I watched the Congressional hearings about Libra and Facebook, there definitely was a lot of animosity towards Facebook, obviously, but then you even saw kind of like Congressman Sherman, I think you know, saying like these needed to be banned and stuff. So, there were definitely…it felt like if you were to pick one side that was like a little bit more negative toward blockchain technology, it would probably be the democratic side. So, I just wondered, like you know, if you are seeing that, how do you think you can overcome that and like what are the best arguments to make?

Governor Jared Polis:

I didn’t see the hearings you’re talking about. I’m sorry, were they about Facebook or were they about blockchain?

Laura Shin: 

They were about Libra.

Governor Jared Polis:

Oh. They were about Libra. No, I didn’t see…

Laura Shin: 

But all the issues with Facebook came up.

Governor Jared Polis:

Right. Yeah. So, I haven’t had the advantage of seeing what you’re talking about. So, no, I don’t see it being partisan. I mean, as I said, I think there are some that come out of the kind of you know, law enforcement side that are more skeptical of anything that’s decentralized. There’s some on the personal liberties side. Democrats and republicans that are more embracing of anything that can empower people rather than governments or corporations. So, again, I don’t think there’s much of a correlation to party. I think there’s just sort of…there are parts of the coalition that form the Democratic Party and parts of the coalition that form the Republican Party that are skeptical of these kinds of technologies, and there’s other parts of those coalitions for both parties that embrace both technology. 

Governor Mark Gordon:

Yeah, and I would tend to agree, but the other thing is, I think this is, you know, there’s a real kind of movement here, right. And as a movement, it’s just sort of overwhelms hopefully the partisanship and the negativity because, I mean, everybody knows we have challenges in things like insurance. Well, you know, now you can create an insurance company on the blockchain and you don’t have to have a whole crazy network of you know, administrators and everything else to make that work. Medical records, we have HIPAA requirement. Well, you know, now you can have on the blockchain, all your medical records and ain’t nobody anywhere gonna see what those are a unless you show it to them. So, I just think these good business things are going to overwhelm all of that stuff. This is where it’s starting.

Laura Shin: 

So, another perfect segue because I was also going to ask you, you guys both work in government, and as we all know, there are a lot of applications where you can use blockchain technology for governments. What would you like to see come out of the developments in this technology? Here we have a whole room of developers and there’s even a hackathon this weekend, so maybe one of them will take you up on your ideas.

Governor Mark Gordon:

Well, I’ll tell you, a couple of projects that we’re particularly interested in working on. I spoke here with some of your attendees a little bit earlier. Governor Polis’ Director of Revenue is a dear old friend of mine, and we’ve been talking about a couple of things. How can you build a budget for the state and make it truly democratic, make it realtime so that people, anyone, can get on and see what that budget’s going to do to them, and understand where the money’s going to go and how it’s going to be dealt with and what services are valuable and what services aren’t. You know, really just realtime government that is as close and accessible to the people. It’s something we can do, 588 thousand people. It may not work in other places, but we’d really like to try to get that started. 

Governor Jared Polis:

There’s so many applications, right? So, hopefully they’re here somewhere today, but Denver was recently, I think, the first jurisdiction in America to use blockchain technology for their overseas residents to participate in a recent election where they could vote online. Was that any of you guys that did that or nope, okay, well they’re not here, they’re probably busy getting ready for the next election. But yeah, there were, I think, a few thousand people that casts their ballots. It was a pilot, but it was all of the Denver residents in the municipal election that lived overseas didn’t have to worry about sending in a physical ballot through the mail you know, from Mongolia to Denver, and have it arrive in time. They were able to just vote online, but there’s a lot of great examples in the public sector. As you said, the public sector is very information intense. Whether it’s healthcare, whether it’s demographics, whether it’s property titles, you name it, all of those applications really stand to be disrupted by blockchain technologies. 

Laura Shin: 

The other one that I wanted to ask about was obviously money is created with this kind of technology and money, at least recently in human history, has been associated with the government. So, I was wondering you know, what wishes would you have for developers, maybe even here, when it comes to development of money, programmable money?

Male Speaker:

So, I think it’s, I don’t know if it’s money per se, it’s more just the ledger for a transaction, which money is a proxy for, and so you’re just sort of disintermediating money from the transaction ledger, and you can still call it something like Ethereum or Bitcoin, but it’s basically the ledger of transactions. Keep in mind that you know, in human history, even these nonredeemable currencies are relatively new. It used to be they were tied to gold or silver or commodity even in the United States of America until I think 1964 or something around then, our currency was pegged to gold and silver. But again, I think when you deconstruct why we have money and why that’s more efficient than barter, the next step is really to say why don’t we add for direct kind of crediting and debiting on a shared ledger through you know, a distributed technology like blockchain. 

Male Speaker:

Yeah, and I guess I would reference that a little bit by just saying, you know, as I said earlier, it’s a different form of settlement. So, you know, if you’re going to buy electricity on the utility but you’re also generating in a distributed fashion, why go through a money exchange, it’s really inefficient. Why don’t you just set up a tokenization, you can make that work. You know, I spoke earlier about the opportunity to really set up exchanges that are about important things like carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and sequestering that, how do you do that, and how can you, I mean, that’s something you can actually do without having an artifice. Our ranch sold some of the very first carbon credits ever and you know, 50 percent of that was brokerage fees. That was just ridiculous. The money that we were going to get, 50 percent reduced by a brokerage. The brokerage had nothing to do with it. It was between the consumer and us, the producer, and that’s where that exchange should occur.

Laura Shin: 

That’s interesting. Yeah, I also personally am very fascinated by how we could apply this technology to solving environmental kind of like comments, problems, issues. I used to cover that as a journalist. Anyway, okay, last question. Just a general question. What do you think of Ethereum?

Governor Jared Polis:

What do I think about it?

Laura Shin: 

Yeah, because this is an Ethereum hackathon.

Governor Jared Polis:

Well, you know, I always say, I am completely agnostic about all the wonderful new and wonderful technologies. Obviously, Ethereum is an important one. What now, you have the second or third biggest capitalization?

Laura Shin: 

Second.

Governor Jared Polis:

Second. Two hundred and fifty dollars or so for one Ethereum unit? Is that right?

Laura Shin: 

You know, I don’t even know. Can somebody…?

Governor Jared Polis:

Two sixty. Do I hear two sixty, two seventy?

Laura Shin: 

I do not know the price of Ethereum.

Governor Jared Polis:

Two eighty-eight? Two eighty-eight.

Laura Shin: 

Okay. Great. Two eighty-eight.

Governor Jared Polis:

Two-eighty-eight. Look. The way that value is conveyed, you have a stake in because you’re Ethereum developers. From our perspective, it doesn’t matter that much what the ultimate way the value is conveyed is. There can be many. I think that there is already, you know, significant value being conveyed through Ethereum, that’s why there’s a developer ecosystem around Ethereum. You wouldn’t be here if it had the 15th largest cap. You’d probably have a small group of maybe 12 of you here. So, it directly inspires the economic ecosystem around development, so that’s exciting and fun, but obviously, we’re completely, I’m agnostic about what happens, but it’s exciting to see that the value of Ethereum has driven such a large development community to develop innovations in this ecosystem. 

Governor Mark Gordon:

Yeah, and I guess what I’d say about Ethereum, you know, when we started seeing the ICOs and various things, Bitcoin and others coming along, it was easy to sort of say, well this is going to be speculative, with a lot of volatility, really don’t see the application, and it can start to grow, et cetera, et cetera. When Ethereum entered, you know, suddenly you’re saying, oh wait a minute, I understand where this really has practicality. Now you can back, you know, back test that against the other cryptos, but what’s really cool about Ethereum is it really did open the way you know, you were talking about title chains and things like that. It’s extraordinary what Ethereum sort of opened up in that respect. 

Laura Shin: 

Great. All right. So, I don’t have a watch on. Is that 30 minutes? Yes. Oh. I have like really good Spidey sense. I think it’s from doing the podcast so much. Thank you so much, Governor Polis and Governor Gordon.