Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Bitcoin & Building Communities

[00:00:03] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: By 12, I realized, and I'm very fortunate about that, that my purpose in life was creating a more fair society where people could develop. Now I express it in those words, but help society become like a place where anybody, regardless of where they were born, could develop their full potential.

[00:00:26] Jarrad Hope: Hi, I'm Jarrad Hope, co-founder of Logos, a fully decentralized technology stack that's privacy preserving and politically neutral. Today we're talking to Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar. I'm bastardizing that. Please correct me, but.

[00:00:41] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: No, no, no, you do it perfect. It's a tough last name.

[00:00:46] Jarrad Hope: Yeah, I need to work on that. But you're the co-founder of IOV labs, Rootstock labs, Bitcoin Argentina and many, many more initiatives with an amazing background and history of how you got into this space. So yeah, thanks for joining me and pleasure to chat with you.

[00:01:02] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: My pleasure. My pleasure

[00:01:03] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:01:04] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: To be here.

[00:01:05] Jarrad Hope: Cool. So I'd love to hear, like, how you got into crypto. Like, where did this all start for you? And, you know, how did it lead to the initiatives that you're doing today?

[00:01:15] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Well, I think if if you trace back to the. The true origin is like there's two things that were always present in my life. One was the desire to transform society in a in a place where everybody could develop their true potential, their full potential. And the other thing was technology. It's like I started doing social work with my with my mother at nine, going to the slums in Buenos Aires. And I started programing at 11. And also because I was in touch with technology like very early also in the development cycle in the in the development process of technologies like when I started we had the first home computer. So so I saw the full evolution from home computers to PCs to networking, you know, VVS and then into the internet. And I was one of the pioneers of the, of the dotcom. I was the first webmaster for the main newspaper in Argentina in 1996. So,

[00:02:30] Jarrad Hope: Wow.

[00:02:31] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: So in a way, I live one one cycle of innovation around the web and the dotcom in full because I started 1996, I even was part of one IPO in in Nasdaq. In, in 2000. And then I saw the collapse. No. And then the, the rebirth of Of the web. You know, almost ten years after when social networks started to emerge, also mobile devices and and right at that, like new blossoming of of the web is when I got in touch with, with bitcoin, you know, first in 2011. And then I didn't realize its true potential right there. But

[00:03:23] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:03:23] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Then in 2012, a very good friend of mine, Wences Casares like, brought me back into it. It's like he, he shared and and in a way, I was always after the web days where we had a lot of when I started, I had a lot of hope put into the web. I thought the web was going to transform society to be a better place, a more like you know, egalitarian or, you know, like improve Opportunities, and I think it did, but but not in the full,

[00:03:59] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:03:59] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Dimension of the human development. No. And later, when I got in touch with Bitcoin, I had this experience with Wences around Bitcoin. I realized that what we were missing. Now I have words to put it. But in the web,

[00:04:15] Jarrad Hope: At the time.

[00:04:15] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: This is like in the web we were transforming communication information. But we were not touching how value was handled and managed in the society. So what we were missing was that dimension. And

[00:04:30] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:04:30] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: And when I saw Bitcoin at the beginning, the experience, I shared that many times. But it was like Wednesday. It was in San Francisco, in Silicon Valley. I was in Buenos Aires. We had capital controls in in Argentina, and it was impossible to get. Well, not impossible, but very expensive. Like it was taking me like one month, and I was losing 10% of the value that I was collecting from my customers. I had a software factory back in the day from Europe and the US because the payment

[00:05:05] Jarrad Hope: When

[00:05:05] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Systems.

[00:05:05] Jarrad Hope: Was this? Sorry. What year was this? Around. What decade?

[00:05:08] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: To 2012. So,

[00:05:10] Jarrad Hope: Gotcha. Yeah.

[00:05:11] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: So but I was doing it for a couple of years now. It was before Bitcoin.

[00:05:17] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:05:17] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: I was using a bunch of hopes hopes between, you know, banks in Europe to PayPal to banks in the US. So it

[00:05:28] Jarrad Hope: Right.

[00:05:28] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Was a mess. It was very cumbersome. And then we had the capital controls in Argentina. And when we we had this experience with Wences, he he made me open an account in Blockchain.info that was like a pioneer platform. It was a web wallet. And then he sent me 5000 bitcoins, which at the time were like SDK. No, it was still

[00:05:53] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:05:54] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Very relevant. I mean, it's now it's much more, but at that time was still a relevant amount of money

[00:06:00] Jarrad Hope: Sure.

[00:06:00] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: And, and and then I sent them back. He, he told me to keep one and and then when I checked my balance, I had 0.9995 instead of one. And then I said why? And then I realized I was paying for the transaction. So even the cost of the operation of the system was fully transparent, and the whole process didn't require authorization from anybody. It was, you know, the two of us, like thousands of miles away exchanging value. And then I that was the my moment where I said, yeah, this is how they I call it the internet of value now. But this is how a truly free financial system which embodies the same principles we were thinking for the web in terms of information and communication should look like. And then while I was like 15 days nonstop doing all sorts of like reading mostly about the financial aspects, because I come from a tech background. So, so I needed to read about the history of money Bretton Woods, how how the financial architecture of the world works and, and understanding all those dimensions. And I kept studying for two years more 2 or 3 years more like every day, taking a new concept from the financial system until I managed to understand the, the full picture. So yeah, that's that's how I started.

[00:07:37] Jarrad Hope: You're right. That's amazing. I mean, so I guess, like thank you for that. And like, obviously the journey is continued on from there, but rewinding back to, like, you know, these core desires of like transforming to society, like and helping people reach their full potential. Like, where do you think that comes from? Does that come from your your mother's work at all? Or like, is that something that you were

[00:08:00] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yes.

[00:08:00] Jarrad Hope: Born with? Do you think

[00:08:01] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yes.

[00:08:01] Jarrad Hope: Or.

[00:08:01] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: It comes from those experiences, I think. Of course. My mother like if you want, like expose me to to the realities and but there are certain experiences I had that were like instrumental in, in in who I am

[00:08:20] Jarrad Hope: Can you

[00:08:21] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: And.

[00:08:21] Jarrad Hope: Talk about them at all

[00:08:22] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yeah.

[00:08:22] Jarrad Hope: Or.

[00:08:22] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yeah, absolutely. It's like you know, I saw people like the person who was living in the slums, the you cannot get into the slums without somebody from the place that will help you and open the doors because, you know, they usually those are environments where people is they don't trust by definition, because they have been abused Multiple times by external

[00:08:48] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:08:49] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: People, foreigners, people who wants to take advantage of them. So usually they are very reserved and they have a if you want a web of trust, you know, in

[00:08:59] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:08:59] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Among them. And that's how it works, is somebody needs to open the and the leader in the slums, he he was like an amazing person from as a human being very smart. No, no education. But he was like like creating his own building methods, like creating panels with cement and and steel frames and things like that. He was creating from, from scratch out of his own inventive and and and and what I saw is like he, he could not prosper because basically he he didn't have the, the means to But he was a person that had all the attributes you would expect from a human being in terms of like ingenuity solidarity. He was helping always the community. He was an amazing person. And I think from his perspective, he he had a very fulfilled life. He's not that that this was you know, I don't think he was a victim. But at the same time, I felt that as an injustice. It's like

[00:10:13] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:10:13] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: You know, I said, why? We have a world where, you know, people with that is extremely valuable, cannot prosper just because they were born in the wrong

[00:10:23] Jarrad Hope: Wrong

[00:10:24] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Place,

[00:10:24] Jarrad Hope: Context. Yeah.

[00:10:25] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Wrong

[00:10:25] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:10:25] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Context. So. So that was. And I was very young. I think I started going with my mother without much thinking on my own at nine. But by 12 I realized, and I'm very fortunate about that, that my purpose in life was creating a more fair society where people could develop. Now I express it in those words, but help society become like a place where anybody, regardless of where they were born, could develop their full potential. No.

[00:10:59] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:11:00] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: So

[00:11:00] Jarrad Hope: Yeah. Right.

[00:11:01] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: The search I started in a way. No. And then I had technology on one side. I had, you know, the social aspects. I keep doing social work until my early 20s. And so I had that. And then I started, like, growing in the technological side. I was a node for a bbs's that were the precursors of, of the internet. Then I

[00:11:24] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:11:24] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Became.

[00:11:25] Jarrad Hope: I was on the myself. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:26] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yes. And you remember that it was like the first experience of like, packaging emails. But, you know, during the night we were sending them to another node and that or hope and that then he was packaging or her, she was packaging and following hope. And then you were having conference. I was having I was reading about Blue Ox and hacking. And so I had,

[00:11:50] Jarrad Hope: Same.

[00:11:50] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: You know, conversations

[00:11:50] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:11:51] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: With people in Finland that they were like sending me messages back. And it was like a round trip was two days, but it was the first like that experience

[00:12:00] Jarrad Hope: It was

[00:12:00] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Of.

[00:12:00] Jarrad Hope: Amazing. It was like one of the best experiences I had on the internet that I haven't

[00:12:04] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: It.

[00:12:04] Jarrad Hope: Been able to replicate in the same way. Right.

[00:12:06] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yeah. Because it was the first time that we were connected globally, you know. Now

[00:12:11] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:12:11] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: We give that for granted. But coming

[00:12:14] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:12:14] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: From not being connected into being connected. And then it's when when my two paths, like in a way come

[00:12:23] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:12:23] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Came together. Because then I saw that technology could be a tool for social transformation. So

[00:12:29] Jarrad Hope: Right.

[00:12:29] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: My focus on the web days was all around building communities. So so I attempted, you know, I didn't thought about Facebook, but I was thinking about like I created communities around, for example, agricultural industry. Communities around health industry like more industry oriented communities and using them on the education side, I created platforms to manage the relationship within the, the school schools, universities, like as part of different startups I was part of, but always with this concept that what the web was bringing to us was the ability to connect and create communities on a global scale of people who had like, shared interests, shared values. So that was what I was chasing back in the day, you know?

[00:13:22] Jarrad Hope: Gotcha.

[00:13:23] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: 

[00:13:23] Jarrad Hope: Yeah, yeah. So I guess, like you know, there's a few there's a lot of things that are super interesting to unpack here. You know, obviously, I'd be very curious to hear how, you know, this side of the social work has Combined with the technology and the vision that you have today and have been working on and in the future, like, what does that like, what does that look like? And then why is, you know, what's the vision? And then why is the technology the best way to do to do that vision, I guess. And then I'd love to talk about communities as well and like how you think about them.

[00:14:02] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Let me try to to gather my thoughts. But there's if you want, at the end of the 90s just before like 1999, I decided to step out of the of the social organization I was part of because I realized that power was a corrupting force, you know? So

[00:14:25] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:14:25] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Any hierarchical structure eventually was going depending on the size was going to corrupt people. And sometimes it was not the corruption of like the more raw Row or course correction that you can like, you know, say, okay, it's about money, about grabbing. Sometimes corruption is about like getting prestige. You know, there's other ways where power corrupts. But then I said, you know, I need to find a way to to search for, like, creating more horizontal organizations. And then I started, like, a phase of experimentation. Even with the startups I created, I tried to create them more in a cooperative way. Started like. And I failed. But. But back in the back

[00:15:14] Jarrad Hope: I did

[00:15:14] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Of my

[00:15:14] Jarrad Hope: Too.

[00:15:14] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Head, I.

[00:15:15] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:15:16] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yes,

[00:15:16] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:15:16] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Because I think there's values, there's dynamics. I think, you know even the organizational dynamics we have in society have evolved, I think agility, you know, the agile methodologies brought a lot of knowledge about how to organize the structures in a different way, in a more We are learning about that. But there's

[00:15:38] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:15:38] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: A lot of cultural elements that go against the the collaborative endeavors, and we are still very formatted for hierarchical models. So

[00:15:50] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:15:50] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Even if you I was bringing people into the projects and and taking the time to explain the view, my vision about how we could organize society in a more horizontal people still was acting based on their cultural backgrounds and biases. So it was very tough. But then what happened is that when I got in touch with Bitcoin, my as I didn't get into Bitcoin for the financial aspects, I got into Bitcoin because of the social aspects. What I, what I realized is, or I had the intuition, I would say that Bitcoin was that tool I was looking for to create, like to create power structures that were more fluid or liquid in a way. So because part of the problems of, of power structures is that they they crystallize and then people in power. Power. Power is always delegated. No, it's like when we receive power, it's somebody else delegating power in us because they feel we are worthy of handling that power. And we will do that for the mutual benefit. No, it's like for my benefit and the benefit of others. But as you get power and more and more power, what happens is like power starts. I mean, people start like thinking of their own interests instead of like thinking of the collective interest. So, so in in a way, I saw Bitcoin as a way of like managing those power relationships in a liquid way, in a more dynamic way and and avoiding this power

[00:17:24] Jarrad Hope: Yeah,

[00:17:24] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Corruption

[00:17:24] Jarrad Hope: I think that.

[00:17:25] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: And

[00:17:26] Jarrad Hope: Yeah. That's spot on, right. Like, I mean, that's how I conceptually hold it as well. Like I don't think you can get rid of like hierarchies entirely. And in fact, there are use cases for them, like, you know, you get some efficiencies, certainly in organizations and coordination. And when you have to deal with, you know, a division of labor, for example. But, you know, the issue is, is exactly as you said, when it crystallizes and it isn't fluid, then like the exit costs start becoming too high and or the, you know, the cost of moving out of that structure becomes too high. And so you need, you know, things like a revolution or something like that to break them. Whereas if you can make the the actual system itself a bit more capable of transferring or diffusing that power in a relatively quick way. Then, you know, you can start to ameliorate some of these issues that we have with corruption. That's how I view it, anyway.

[00:18:23] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Absolutely. You know. And then you have the element of transparency, you know, which

[00:18:27] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:18:28] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: I think, you know, we are like at the point in society where we need more transparency in the institutions, because

[00:18:37] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:18:37] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: What we have is like a lot of institutions. I mean, this power dynamic we were describing, like it's happening in politics. So, so you have, you know, you have the betrayal, the constant like or cyclic betrayal of, you know, the those in power of the, the people who elected them or selected. But, you know, with transparency you can improve in the organizations. You can, you know, make it tougher or at least leave a record of those betrayals. And then, you know, the cost of betraying would be much bigger. But at the same time, we are needing more privacy on the individual

[00:19:18] Jarrad Hope: I was just about to

[00:19:18] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Level,

[00:19:18] Jarrad Hope: Ask that.

[00:19:19] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: You know,

[00:19:19] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:19:19] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Because

[00:19:19] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:19:20] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Because it's like we you know, when you talk about privacy people, it's a little bit too abstract for people, but

[00:19:27] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:19:27] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Without privacy, there's no liberty and there's no freedom. No. It's like and in that, in that sense, it's like the fight for freedom is about like protecting individual privacy in the digital world.

[00:19:40] Jarrad Hope: Yes. Yes.

[00:19:42] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: But at the same time, in the social world, on the institutional level, we need to bring another level of transparency and accountability. And

[00:19:51] Jarrad Hope: Yes.

[00:19:51] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Although those two things might look opposite or at odds, it's interesting that the the technology that Bitcoin brought to the world can achieve both. It's like they can you know we now know I call it the internet of value that Bitcoin was the beginning of of something bigger. That is this I call it an internet of value. Because for me it's a network of networks, you know, to handle value. And I say value and not money. Because for me it goes beyond money. It's like it's this. It's like I'm transferring, you know, my political will or Value into somebody to handle it, you know, and I'm transferring other things that are not necessarily monetary but are valuable as well. So that's what we are building. We are building an internet to handle the value of the world, you know, and and as you say, that will enable I always think of innovation is an enabler. Innovation doesn't make the change. But innovation enables new behaviors, new ways of structuring society. And that's exactly what we are building. We are building tools to enable a new kind of society.

[00:21:02] Jarrad Hope: Absolutely.

[00:21:02] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: But then we as human beings need to, you know, need to to drive these technologies in a constructive direction, you know?

[00:21:13] Jarrad Hope: Absolutely. You know, I'm totally on board with the whole cypherpunk mantra of privacy for the weak and transparent transparency for the powerful. Absolutely. Our public institutions, or wherever capital is being deployed across an entire society, should be public and the

[00:21:27] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yes.

[00:21:28] Jarrad Hope: Recipients of that capital should be also public. And I think you make a really good point there. Like, you know, there's a technological aspect of it, but then there's also this cultural aspect, which I think has been kind of maybe more so outside of the well, as crypto as a market has gotten larger, right? Like the some of that cultural aspects of like what was very strong and certainly is strong in the Bitcoin ecosystem has kind of got somewhat diluted a little bit. And so I don't know how you think about that. And then I guess the other question is how does rootstock fit into all of this?

[00:22:08] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: I think, you know, the dilution is part of the process. It's like a if. I mean, we the same happened in the web. The early pioneers of the web. We had this dream. We were thinking we were like extremely excited about our impact in society and everything. As it got mainstream, you know, it was not so much about ideology. It was more about utility, you know. Because at the end, it's like if innovations don't provide utility to the society, they, they they won't prosper. No. Because if you in order to attract the capital, in order to attract the resources to grow, you need to provide utility in exchange. So so it's like the utility provisions like you can start with a dream and the utility is the driver of the growth. But but you know, in order for the dream to become true you need to create this value for society. You know, it's the same. It's like with the printer, like the with the press. When it started, it's like, okay before that the monks were like copying by hand, book by book. And then the knowledge was constrained to that institution that was doing that. Suddenly everybody could like. But there was a profit. There were business built around the press as well. It was not only about the ideology of sharing. You know, new ways, new narratives, or new ways of thinking or sharing knowledge. It was also a business around that, you know,

[00:23:36] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:23:37] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: In a way, it's a schumpeterian view of know where you have like innovation cycles, those innovation cycles that you have a micro cycle, and within that you have sub cycles. You know, and

[00:23:49] Jarrad Hope: Gotcha.

[00:23:50] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: And so, so I think we need to find that way. And part of finding that way to sustainability and growth of the ecosystem implies dilution of the

[00:24:01] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:24:01] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Original ideology or true spirit of the, of what we are building. But that is true for any movement

[00:24:11] Jarrad Hope: Yeah

[00:24:11] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: And anything to eat.

[00:24:12] Jarrad Hope: I

[00:24:12] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yeah.

[00:24:13] Jarrad Hope: Think what comes to mind is you know Alan Kay from you know is there a park labs. Right. He, he

[00:24:20] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: 

[00:24:20] Jarrad Hope: Even laments that the computer revolution hasn't happened yet, right? Because like their ideology and how they, you know, foresee the full potential of computer literacy and computation hasn't happened.

[00:24:34] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: No.

[00:24:34] Jarrad Hope: And, you know, this utility and business side of it is he would criticize Steve Jobs for, you know, turning applications into these stovepipes. Right. All these appliances rather than, like, liberating humans, you know, in their own personal selves. So, yeah. It's interesting.

[00:24:54] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yes. And I think in that dynamic, again, it's like you have the idea every revolution was an utopia first. No.

[00:25:04] Jarrad Hope: Sure.

[00:25:04] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: So you need to so you need to have utopia is the driver. The utopia is the North you are chasing. But it will never be. Because at the end, what happens is a collective construction. Because it's like everybody contributing their own thing. So it can never be your own utopia. It's like I always had a different utopia, more liberal. I keep working towards that utopia. But knowing that, you know, it's not going to be as I envision it. You know, it's like Sorry.

[00:25:38] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:25:39] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: 

[00:25:39] Jarrad Hope: That's a that's a very mature response. I think I'm kind of grappling with that myself still, and I haven't come to terms with it fully yet. But I like the idea of holding both of those concepts in mind at the same time. Right. You still work towards your utopia. Do your best to envision it. You know as much as realize it as much as possible, while also realizing it's not yours, and it requires the rest of humanity to to adopt it. However however, however it comes out which is

[00:26:07] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: 

[00:26:07] Jarrad Hope: Which

[00:26:07] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Adopt

[00:26:07] Jarrad Hope: Is great.

[00:26:07] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: It and transform it. No, it's

[00:26:09] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:26:09] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Like and maybe in a smaller scale, we can have our utopias

[00:26:14] Jarrad Hope: Sure. Yeah.

[00:26:14] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Realized.

[00:26:14] Jarrad Hope: That's it.

[00:26:15] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: No. Maybe

[00:26:15] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:26:15] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: I will. I will have my, like, small community where I will have those values like something closer to what I wanted. You know, but still it will be influenced by the others in the community. Otherwise they would be an extension of myself. No.

[00:26:30] Jarrad Hope: Right.

[00:26:30] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: So, so so in a way, I think it's that's a dynamic. It's like also there are other things like, like, you know, that that are at play that is like innovators disrupt. So there's the fight between innovators and the status quo. But

[00:26:48] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:26:48] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: In this utility game, you know, they need to prove that they can provide value for society. As they prove value and economies of scale start happening, you know, you will have a process of consolidation. So at the end, you the new status quo will be built out of the innovators know.

[00:27:07] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:27:07] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: And that's the dynamic. And then new innovations will enable new disruptors to come. But we need to accept that dynamic. It's like,

[00:27:15] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:27:15] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: You know, in the beginning everything was open in the web? No. And then. And Google's model was based on that openness? No. They were crawling and indexing all the available information. And then Facebook came and said no. Now I will create my walled garden. You will be able to pick at some of the information, but you need to log in. You need to register in order to see what's happening inside my garden. So

[00:27:40] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:27:40] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: They broke the the model that were the the early web was built and then okay, we need to play that new game and new you know it's like that's how it works. And then you know with Uber Airbnb what we have is people doing the same, but with the reputational traces like saying, okay, I will create my walled garden of reputational traces and, and basically, you know yeah, control the reputation of others because that's, that's the core of the business model of Amazon, MercadoLibre, Airbnb, Uber. It's like everything is trust building, but in a closed system? No. And

[00:28:27] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:28:27] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: That's another thing that for me is key is like these technologies will bring are bringing because we are already working on self-sovereign identity and models that will bring open reputational systems. So all my reputation should be under my command. And, you know, if I go to one place, you know, and build reputational traces in those interactions, those, those interactions need to come with me and, and I can port them to another environment because those traces belong to me, were built by me and of course, by the counterparty. So, you know, and and if a platform is enabler of those interactions also, you know, deserves to have, you know, a copy of those traces. But what you cannot do is appropriate the traces of others and the reputational traces of others. And so I think that's another, you know, disruption that is coming with this new technology. So we are disrupting so many things. It's like, you know, creating peer to peer monetary systems, creating peer to peer financial services, creating peer to peer reputational systems. So so I think it's it's well, you're talking about transforming how value is managed in the society. So it's that's the blood of of our of humanity. You know the

[00:29:50] Jarrad Hope: Right.

[00:29:50] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: The value.

[00:29:51] Jarrad Hope: And so they trust and reputation is like included within that set of value. Right. Like you're talking about when we. Yeah. Okay. And so you mentioned, you know, obviously there's we're doing peer to peer financial services, you know obviously currencies and, and we talked a bit, a little bit about reputation. What other sort of tools do you think are like necessary or required to kind of bring about this sort of social change that you're looking for.

[00:30:17] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Well then I will use this to connect with the with the original question. No,

[00:30:25] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:30:26] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: About how rootstock started. And, you know, it's like because actually that vision of what is needed to create a financial system that can serve anybody. I like to say I don't want to create an inclusive I mean, I don't want to create a to to do inclusion. What I, what I want is to build a financial system that is inclusive by design. So because the concept of including people into something that is already rejecting them, it's a it's a

[00:30:59] Jarrad Hope: See?

[00:30:59] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Bad concept. It's like what you need is to create a system that is inclusive by design, and you don't need to include anybody. Anybody can use it, and it's adapted to the context of everybody and will work for everybody, you know.

[00:31:11] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:31:11] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: And.

[00:31:12] Jarrad Hope: Saying, like, trying to include people implies that there's someone who is or some entity or agent that is doing or authority that is doing the including which is not what you want. Right.

[00:31:20] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: And

[00:31:20] Jarrad Hope: Like you

[00:31:21] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Also

[00:31:21] Jarrad Hope: Want.

[00:31:21] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: There is one right side and a wrong side

[00:31:24] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:31:24] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: In a way. You know, it's

[00:31:25] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:31:25] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Like and I think it's about I don't think in there are there is evil in the evil in the world. But but I don't think in general these human processes happen because of evilness. They happen mostly because of limitations of the technologies we have at our disposal

[00:31:42] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:31:43] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: And of course, of our mindsets as well. No, it's like I think we come from a world of scarcity. So our mindsets work for scarcity. In a scarcity, you need to work you know, in competition, you need to work in hierarchical structures, because when you don't have resources for everybody, you need to create a model to select who will receive the resources. No. So, so But I think since the industrial revolution and now with AI, robotics and all the new advancements we have, we are no longer in a context of scarcity. We are in a context of abundance, but our mindsets are still structured for scarcity model. No. So,

[00:32:28] Jarrad Hope: Gotcha.

[00:32:29] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: So in a way, going back of what you need to have a like a financial system that is inclusive by design. On one side, in very practical terms, you need a system that works. Transacting is very cheap. And I think in the in the case of the blockchain technology, we have achieved that. In terms of the word bank, the concept of cheap transactions is like $0.02, $0.03 or less. And I validated that on the ground in Latin America. And it's valid. It's like if you have two $0.03, people will transact even on the streets on like on the. So and now we have achieved that through the off chain networks? No. So?

[00:33:10] Jarrad Hope: Right.

[00:33:10] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: So if the rollouts, the the the payment channels like lightning and so so that's one thing like you need cheap transactions. That's one thing you need also a system that doesn't charge you maintenance fees. You need a system because people who live day by day, they don't have the foresight of knowing if they they will have the funding to pay for the monthly fees or something. So it needs to be something you pay as you use. And that's the beauty of blockchain systems. No, it's like a you only pay as you use it. So in a way the infrastructure cost is socialized among all the people using the infrastructure. So so those things have been sorted out. When I started, we we had that challenge. We didn't have clarity on how those challenges because we started with this work doing some experiences and pilots on the slums of Buenos Aires in 2014, and that's where all these ideas emerge. So that's one thing. The other thing is, like people who who is living day by day or week by week cannot be exposed to counterparty risk because if if a third party, you know yeah, steals the funds or stop working or whatever like that people it's a life risk situation. It's not just so for that, I started thinking how we create, you know, a peer to peer monetary system. But back in the day, I wanted that system to work in the safest infrastructure that that was and still is Bitcoin. So

[00:34:52] Jarrad Hope: Absolutely.

[00:34:52] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: The following the following question was like, how do we build a peer to peer monetary system on top of Bitcoin.

[00:35:01] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:35:01] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: And so that. That's when I had. In October I had a conversation with Nick Szabo. In October 2014, and we were discussing Ethereum was announced, was not functioning yet, but was was announced in January 2014. We were thinking like, you know, it's a pity that instead of like using the Bitcoin infrastructure and, and also the acceptance and popularity of the asset, you know, because it's like when you create a crypto, I mean, a decentralized blockchain, you not only need to build the infrastructure security infrastructure, but also because these are systems based on, on game theory and economics is like you need to build the, the economy around the native asset of the network because the security goes hand in hand with the economic element of it. So so we said okay instead of like, so my my thinking was like, why start a new network, start a new asset, and have to go through all those processes that would take many, many years instead of like leveraging on on Bitcoin. No, Bitcoin is tough to build on top. Now,

[00:36:24] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:36:24] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: After being many years building on Bitcoin, I can tell you that it's like it's very

[00:36:29] Jarrad Hope: I

[00:36:29] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Tough.

[00:36:29] Jarrad Hope: Get it. Like, I mean, I was around at the time and, like, you know, we were doing, like, name calling, color coin counter

[00:36:35] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yes,

[00:36:36] Jarrad Hope: Party mastercoin. Right. And we were all

[00:36:37] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Exactly.

[00:36:38] Jarrad Hope: Trying

[00:36:38] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: All

[00:36:38] Jarrad Hope: To basically.

[00:36:38] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: The early attempts.

[00:36:39] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:36:40] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: 

[00:36:40] Jarrad Hope: And generalize Bitcoin script. Right. And so there was a whole bunch of different approaches. And that's you know, I agree with you. Like I think well, especially for the context that you're in, like in Latin America, like there's a huge sort of informal economy around Bitcoin, right? Because of these capital controls, as I understand it, and a bunch of failing failings within the financial institutions. So it makes perfect sense to build something like rootstock and enable, you know, more functionality out of that.

[00:37:10] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yes,

[00:37:10] Jarrad Hope: I

[00:37:11] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Exactly.

[00:37:11] Jarrad Hope: Ended up

[00:37:12] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: So.

[00:37:12] Jarrad Hope: Going at the time I ended up going the Ethereum way. And like the, the early culture was really cool because it was a bunch of like, Bitcoiners essentially. Right. That's changed a lot since then. But yeah, I'm very curious. Like, why do you think that Bitcoin got adopted in like, say places like Argentina and Brazil or like Latin America in general?

[00:37:35] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Well, in the early days, because first, because it was only Bitcoin. No, there was no, no other. But why it got I think it has multiple dimensions I think. Argentina for example is a, it's a place where we suffer all the economic crisis you can imagine

[00:37:57] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:37:58] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: From Berlin's you know, hyperinflation, you name it, we had it. It's like and cyclically like every ten years we have a big meltdown. So. So what happens in, in, in a society like that is like, you know, everybody is hedging against government financial decisions. It's like, it's so crazy that, like, you know, the taxi driver like people that is not financial and doesn't come from a financial background. They will be hedging all the time, like saying, okay, yeah, if I have something to say I will put it in dollars. I'm not going to put it in or I will buy goods. Like buying goods is a way of preserving value. You know, things that in other economies doesn't make sense because you always think, okay, a car will depreciate. But maybe in Argentina a car will be a better store of value than than even having dollars depending on the situation. So people is always hedging and and so the awareness of the macroeconomic in the, in the regular population is so high that that's crazy. It's like,

[00:39:08] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:39:08] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: I don't think you have that anywhere else in the world.

[00:39:10] Jarrad Hope: No, I don't think so. Yeah.

[00:39:12] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: And the other thing is, like people is very touch friendly. It's like Argentina was one of the first like, movers in social networks. It's like we were pioneering. Indeed, Mercado Pago is the biggest marketplace in Latin America, comes from Argentinian. It's like we have so many, you know, technological developments and entrepreneurs. And so we are very tech friendly. And if you think about this is the crossroads of both economy and technology. So so we have we have like a population and, and you know, and a group of entrepreneurs that, that were ready to, to manage and to absorb this new thing already there. And the other thing is that we started creating communities very early on. And I think that's key. It's like with Rodolfo and and Franco Amati. We started the first meetups in Buenos Aires, and then we helped create meetups in all Latin America around Bitcoin. In February 2013 was where the first meetups and then around that, we started building a community where we were discussing the potential of the technology. And if you look at all the main startups in Latin America, they come from those meetups. It's like,

[00:40:33] Jarrad Hope: Right.

[00:40:34] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: You know, the

[00:40:34] Jarrad Hope: It's cool.

[00:40:35] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: All the big startups in the space in Latin America or most of them come from those meetups. Then we created the bitcoin, the Latin American Bitcoin conference at the end of 2013. And then we started like moving the Bitcoin through Latin America to start helping like the when we when we saw a community that was getting big enough, we were there. We went there with the bitcoins to support it, to increase it, to grow it. So we took it to Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil, then to Mexico, then to to I think we went back to Buenos Aires, then Colombia, then Chile, then Uruguay, then El Salvador, when, when they adopted Bitcoin. So it and that community around LA Bitcoin around the meetups is the community that has been building this phenomenon. So so I think the community element was was key as well. So bootstrapping

[00:41:34] Jarrad Hope: Gotcha.

[00:41:35] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: An ecosystem because you because you don't know exactly where the phenomenon will go. It's what we were talking at the beginning. You know, it's like you need to build this collective intelligence and analyze the and that sense of belonging and community is what, you know allowed us to dream and build without the boundaries of what was expected. No, it's like

[00:42:01] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:42:01] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: We,

[00:42:03] Jarrad Hope: Gotcha.

[00:42:03] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: 

[00:42:04] Jarrad Hope: So.

[00:42:05] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: So.

[00:42:05] Jarrad Hope: Okay. I mean, thanks for that. I I'm very curious. So from a technology standpoint, it sounds like you've validated or understood like some of the issues that people you know, need to need to have in the system. So, like, very cheap transaction costs, there's no maintenance fees. You know, you basically do like a prepaid or you pay as you go kind of system. You've got this in place now you can do, you know,

[00:42:34] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: And

[00:42:34] Jarrad Hope: Complex

[00:42:34] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: The

[00:42:34] Jarrad Hope: Finance.

[00:42:34] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Other important thing was reputational, because

[00:42:37] Jarrad Hope: Right.

[00:42:37] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: That's the

[00:42:37] Jarrad Hope: Reputation.

[00:42:37] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Test you need

[00:42:38] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:42:38] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: To validate. But the other important thing was because people who is excluded, they don't have a car, they don't have a house, they don't have you know, a formal paycheck. So, so reputation. That's the thesis. Now, we still need to to prove that thesis.

[00:42:56] Jarrad Hope: So.

[00:42:56] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: But the

[00:42:57] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:42:57] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Thesis

[00:42:57] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:42:57] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Is that over time, they can build enough reputation that that reputation will become their collateral. No.

[00:43:03] Jarrad Hope: Absolutely. I was about this is what I was about to ask as well. Right. So like you have and my question like broadly is like, how do you see this moving forward? Or how do you now take this technology that comes back to, to these people and like, what does that look like? You know, because when I, when I start thinking about this I think of like Grameen Bank or NGOs like Brac, you know, who do who started off with microcredit, for example. And or, you know, microfinance after that. And so I guess, like my question around that is, is like, do you think that's a viable like, is that something that's worth building out and viable? And for, you know, just sorry I messed up my thoughts here, but a lot

[00:43:46] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: No.

[00:43:46] Jarrad Hope: Of Grameen hypothesis use that social collateral, collateral or reputation for identifying who to give loans out to in the first place, as I understood it.

[00:43:55] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Absolutely,

[00:43:55] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:43:56] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Absolutely.

[00:43:56] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:43:57] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: I think it's like that's the model. If you go to the slums that exists, like in a non-technological way for example, they call it Ronda. So they have different names depending on where you go. But in the slums of Latin America, you can see that people do that. It's like they have trust groups. And within that trust group, everybody puts like an installment every week. And, you know, randomly one of them is selected. And that's like an auto loan that the the community creates for their own. So that's a way of social vouching. And, and what we can do is like add more technology to make that more efficient. More, more, you know? Yeah, more, more, even more secure. Because we have experimented with some models in the north of Argentina with a system called Aldao, where the idea is the community See also. The model we want to go is one where people will pay kind of an insurance fee, and then that goes to to a pot of money that if somebody defaults on their loans first, the the community fund will respond for the default. But that will increase the, the insurance. And if the community stays, you know, healthy and they honor their loans, then the insurance will go down maybe to almost zero, you know, so so or you can keep increasing the insurance as a way of enabling bigger credits, you know. So so in a way it's a self-regulated

[00:45:31] Jarrad Hope: That's very cool.

[00:45:32] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Loan system. So, so

[00:45:33] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:45:34] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Those things are things we can do with this technology. We are experimenting with it. And and you're asking me what is missing or what I mean, how I see this vision evolving. I think now we have all the elements. When, when, when I started, we didn't have the elements. Also,

[00:45:48] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:45:48] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Money was not digital. So one big challenge we had in these experiments we we did in 2014 were like we thought we were going to have to do the educational or yeah, the like forming people into what was digital money. I mean, we thought we had that challenge as well. Although the world Bank was estimating, I think it was the world Bank or one of those like

[00:46:15] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:46:16] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Big institutions, they were estimating that by 2020, half of the extruded population was going to have a smartphone in their hands, which actually happened. So in a way, that was another challenge. We had connectivity in the slums, access to to smartphones, because that was the thesis. It's like if we can

[00:46:33] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:46:33] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Provide all the financial services in in a smartphone, then people could like actually be included and have tools, financial tools right at their hands. So we were preparing for that. That was also the reason why we went for Bitcoin, because our expectation, although Ethereum did amazingly well. No, it's like they they for me, I didn't expect Ethereum to go to go so fast. I expected them to because of the setting, the new infrastructure, acceptance of the currency and everything. But but I'm happy that they did. I mean, I

[00:47:08] Jarrad Hope: Sure.

[00:47:08] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Think we

[00:47:08] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:47:09] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Are all pushing in the same direction. That is like creating

[00:47:11] Jarrad Hope: That's how I view it. Yeah.

[00:47:12] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: A better

[00:47:12] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:47:13] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: World. No. So, so so I'm happy. But my what I want is to capture that moment. No. Then

[00:47:19] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:47:19] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: The pandemic came so that, in a way, also was a big shift for the whole society in some sense for the good in terms of like digitalization became even stronger. But in a way, my fear is that we are doing digitalization, digitalization of money in centralized hands, so that

[00:47:38] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:47:38] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Can become a controlling system for society and not, you know, liberating or so. So that's I think is the the fight we need to give in the next in this decade is like how we make sure that the digitalization of money is not at the cost of freedom. And

[00:47:57] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:47:57] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: We do that. And I think crypto and, you know, decentralized blockchains are the only way you can ensure that we will digitalize money and value in a way that will protect people's freedom. No.

[00:48:09] Jarrad Hope: Agreed. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I guess like I mean, that's great that, you know, all of these people who are currently excluded did actually get a smartphone. I guess that also raises a question like how does like how does this work? Like because there's obviously in a subsistence economy, in an informal economy, such as like a slum like also, you know, they energy and data, right, are at a premium. And like that could be, you know, paying for your data versus paying for like the meal to like eat for today is like a real issue, right?

[00:48:49] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Absolutely.

[00:48:49] Jarrad Hope: Like, how do you view that? Or what's like, is

[00:48:53] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: And

[00:48:53] Jarrad Hope: It feasible

[00:48:53] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: There's

[00:48:53] Jarrad Hope: To.

[00:48:53] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Another problem that they they don't have. For example, if you think even if you had the money and you will, you were willing to pay for the, the the storage service, you don't have a credit card. You are not bank. You are a bank. So these people cannot like you even hire a cloud system. No. So so

[00:49:15] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:49:15] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: There's an impossibility. That's why in the process of building Roofstock I in 2017, I started with the idea of like. I mean, when I say I, it's the collective. No, because it's me and the other partners with whom we build Roofstock Sergio Lerner, Adrian Edelman, Gabriel Sherman, Ruben Allman, all of us, you know, collectively, I was the one driven by this social transformation, but all of them ended up embracing that. And you know, Sergio always. Sergio is one of the most brilliant minds in the crypto space. It's like he's like, he's not as well known as Vitalik. But when you look at his trajectory and the things he's like, for example, tangles the, the, the basis of avalanche, you know, the tangle that was created by Sergio at the end of 2015. So, so he has created so many things. He found nine critical bugs in Bitcoin. And instead of exposing them, he went to the core team and helped them sort them out. So so he has actually saved Bitcoin from from collapse many times. He's an amazing person and he's the, the the technical mind behind rust. But he always said that he loves that now he always was in love with technology, but he he loves that. Now he's contributing to a social transformation as well, you know? So,

[00:50:48] Jarrad Hope: All right.

[00:50:50] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: 

[00:50:51] Jarrad Hope: I

[00:50:51] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: So.

[00:50:51] Jarrad Hope: Guess, like, I mean, does that mean, like we're going to be running nodes inside, like internet cafes or mobile phone shops then or like, how do you view that?

[00:51:01] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: I think it's like, well, you know, the full vision to, to synthesize it is like Bitcoin as the infrastructure foundation, Bitcoin as the store of value asset. On top of that, the peer to peer monetary system backed by Bitcoin going back to Fort Knox but using smart contracts to custody the funding that exists today, money on chain is for me is the best stable asset protocol in the world, and it's fully automated. And then on top of that, the financial primitives, we also have that you have sovereign, you have tropicals, you have you know, different now. You have dexs all the alcohol that it's you know, so, so you have many, many indexes. Then on top of that, you need. And that's like the missing part, like these reputational profiles and scoring systems. That's that's where we are now in my original vision of like that's the missing piece. And in order to do that, you need to deploy at scale public private cryptography, you know, because that's that's the foundations of that. So that's where the work we are doing with the IOU Foundation that is different from IOU labs. It's a foundation in Switzerland. That's where with the foundation, we are working with governments in Latin America and with social impact, social and environmental impact organizations to start like building tools for them to to create trust. What we are describing now. So we are bringing, you know, now what trust frameworks, Works digital trust frameworks they can use to improve their transparency. Therefore, we think that will create you know, more trust in the institutions. Therefore, more funds will flow into those institutions that are doing the good work, both in the social and environmental and in governments. So so we are working on that because those organizations, governments and social impact and environmental impact organizations are the ones who who have the reach to the people on the ground. So

[00:53:06] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:53:07] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: If they embrace this infrastructure, this digital trust infrastructure, they will deploy it into the population. And once people have those tools, then they can use it freely, because this is all open networks with certain principles where, you know, you can choose where to store your data and everything. But going

[00:53:29] Jarrad Hope: Interesting.

[00:53:29] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Back to your question on on deciding to put the money in food or I think how it will work is not going to be. You will have service providers at the end. The main question, the main difference is like you will have facilitators because I don't expect people at the beginning, maybe in the future they can do it to have their own data storage

[00:53:53] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:53:53] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: For themselves. But you know, what I expect is like service providers to operate in a non-custodial way. So so still the person will be in command of their sources, resources. And the, the the service provider will be a facilitator and will only interact with the fans of the user when the user decides to do so. So in a way, you are reducing. You're not removing altogether the intermediation, but you are removing the power that inter mediators have and creating this sort of liquid flow where you say, okay, if this provider is not honoring the, you know, the agreement, I can move to another provider that will provide me more or less the same services. But I take my keys somewhere else and, you know, I keep operating somewhere else. So. So in a way, that's the vision we are chasing is like how we create infrastructure. So we have fintechs, the 2.0 fintechs, that's you know, where riff comes is like all the infrastructure services needed to build the fintech that operates in a decentralized environment. So it's not operating, you know, with traditional, you know, databases and seven firewalls and insurance, but it's operating on decentralized infrastructure and earning commissions on the transactions and interactions. The users willingly want to delegate on this service provider, you know.

[00:55:27] Jarrad Hope: You're right. Cool. I mean, I find that quite interesting because, like how you how you're thinking about doing this because like on one hand, you've done a lot of community building. You've kind of done it from like the grassroots, let's say.

[00:55:40] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yes.

[00:55:41] Jarrad Hope: Right. And then on the other hand, it's kind of like a two pronged not attack but implementation. You're then going to be working with, say, governments and NGOs to help facilitate deploy this into the real world. What is it about the governments or NGOs? And like the power that they have that couldn't be done from just grassroots organizing?

[00:56:06] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: I think it's a matter of reach and scale and

[00:56:09] Jarrad Hope: Okay,

[00:56:09] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Also of trust. Because

[00:56:11] Jarrad Hope: Okay.

[00:56:11] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: If you think about the, you know, institutions are the are the repositories, like yeah, the repositories of trust in a way. It's like, you know, individuals, we can accumulate a certain amount of trust, but institutions accumulate trust also in longer time frames. So, you know, you have institutions that might have 100 or 200 years. So in a way institutions and that may have its ifs and, and flows, you know, it's like it's not always up, but you know, institutions have a way of building trust. So, so

[00:56:49] Jarrad Hope: 

[00:56:49] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: That also transfer trust to new technologies, like if somebody if a citizen, regardless if it's included or excluded from the financial system, receives a tool from the government that will transfer trust into that tool. So that will accelerate the trust building, because everything at the end, I always say everything is like a a circuit of trust. No, it's like a we first there is a if you want a promise of something that will improve people's life, but then you know they need to do a leap of faith, embrace the technology, use it, and then the technology needs to fulfill that leap of faith, providing value to the person. And that enables like a retrofitting, like a bigger leap of faith, but in new things you need to I mean, bootstrapping that trust cycle is is very tough. So, so in a way, by working with NGOs, working with governments, you are transferring trust

[00:57:55] Jarrad Hope: Yeah,

[00:57:55] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: You know, from.

[00:57:56] Jarrad Hope: Yeah, yeah, I get it. I mean, I find that quite interesting. Like, I mean, I totally get that and see it. But I find that it also kind of interesting because you know, as we discussed a little bit earlier, there's people who are hedging into Bitcoin because the trust has been eroded in some ways in these

[00:58:15] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: 

[00:58:16] Jarrad Hope: Institutions. And that's actually what's, you know, helping drive the adoption of these technologies. Yeah. Fascinating. Cool.

[00:58:25] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: So, yeah, I think maybe in a little bit chaotic way. We went through everything. No, but

[00:58:31] Jarrad Hope: Yeah,

[00:58:32] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: I think

[00:58:32] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[00:58:32] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: We.

[00:58:33] Jarrad Hope: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I guess there's there's not much else from my side unless there's anything in particular you want to bring up or talk about.

[00:58:42] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Know. I think it's I mean, it's very exciting because after 12 years in the space, that thing that was an intuition. Now it's we have all the elements there. We need to connect the dots. You know, it's like we are. We still have everything, like separated. And we still need to bring that in in applications like consumer apps that that have, like a user experience that is akin of a mainstream service. And you know, that will, you know yeah, speak the language of regular people. Still, I think the tools are available for for the people with more. Yeah. More knowledge about technology or finance. And I think that's the challenge we have today. But we have sorted out the scaling challenges. I think what we have is good enough to be able to be serving a couple of billion people in the world. We have overcome, like, you know, functionality problems. We are working on the interoperability still early days, but more and more things like what Sergio is working now with with BMX will help interoperability not only in Bitcoin but also between other chains. I think that's a big breakthrough. So so we are very, very close to have something that is sturdy and that will survive the, the, you know, the pass of time and will become like the infrastructure of the future, the financial and value infrastructure of the future for society. So, so it's very exciting. It's like a 12 years might look a lot for people, for individuals, but it's not that much for society if you think about it. No.

[01:00:35] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[01:00:35] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: And.

[01:00:36] Jarrad Hope: I mean, and we were kind of born at the right time, right? Like we've

[01:00:39] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yeah.

[01:00:39] Jarrad Hope: Seen, you know, had an analog existence and seen the whole

[01:00:42] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yes.

[01:00:42] Jarrad Hope: Rise and fall and rise again of all of this. It's a very exciting time to be alive. And I'm very bullish on like, rootstock and what you're what you're doing there. And I'm very excited to see this roll out and into the real world. So I mean thank you for making that happen.

[01:00:58] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: No.

[01:00:58] Jarrad Hope: 

[01:00:59] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: My

[01:00:59] Jarrad Hope: Yeah.

[01:00:59] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: My pleasure. And as always said, it's a collective effort. No, it's like a I'm. I would say my role is as an enabler of enabling amazing people to manifest their true potential. It's like that happened in, in the Bitcoin community that happened in, in Rostock. It's like a I just created the context for amazing people like Sergio or Rodolfo and Franco to to manifest and and develop their, their full potential. So yeah, that that that's my role. So, so so it's a collective effort and success, you know. And so

[01:01:42] Jarrad Hope: Definitely,

[01:01:42] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: I'm very happy for that.

[01:01:43] Jarrad Hope: Definitely cool. And I guess, like before we go, I'd be very curious if there's any like books or reading that's influenced you that you would like to share or think anyone should read, or is there any other resources that people should go check out?

[01:01:58] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Good question. I think there are some like I see society as a rhizome. I inspire on the, the less and watery philosophy and concepts. What they that's the name rootstock comes from that because rootstock

[01:02:16] Jarrad Hope: 

[01:02:17] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Means rhizome. And, you know, it's this concept of plants creating a mesh network. So and the interesting thing is like the rootstock is multi it has multiplicity and multi dimensional in the sense that you know relationships in the human mesh or fabric are not linear or not hierarchical. You know, it's like that's in opposition to the hierarchical view on society. If you think about it like we have these interconnections that go in multiple levels from the human economic level, even connections that go that are intertemporal, you know, it's the connections of our ancestors between them. So so that mesh is what in terms of Jung Jung says, you know, the rootstock or the rhizome is the underlying fabric of society. And what you see in civilizations, it's just the, the flourishing of or the merging of that rootstock. But the the rootstock is the transient you know, nature of society. And then what we see is just some blossoming now and then here and there, you know, emerging from that, from that rootstock. So I think that from a philosophical perspective, that's something and also, you know, if we want to go back in the day, go to the digital divide of Negroponte, all the work of the MIT was part of my inspiration. Many, many things. I think I'm very eclectic.

[01:03:59] Jarrad Hope: Yeah. Me too. Yeah.

[01:04:00] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Yeah.

[01:04:01] Jarrad Hope: Yeah. I think you have to be really to really appreciate this sort of stuff. Cool. Well, I mean, thank you so much. Wishing you the best of luck in the in the journey forward. And very excited to see, see what comes out of your, out of your mission and your path. Thank you.

[01:04:16] Diego Gutierrez-Zaldivar: Thank you very much for inviting me. A great pleasure to be here.