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In the mean time, here's a quick transcription from episode two:
"You've done a lot of stuff in the entrepreneurial community, as well as some legislation and state-level stuff. You're an influencer on a couple of levels including the Carolina Blockchain Initiative. What are those and what prompted the involvement there?"
"So I got into blockchain as a technology and part of a technology stack that would solve a lot of the existing problems we have, especially in the financial markets, but also in a lot of areas. Privacy, any type of consumer information, advertising – it was always on my periphery until I met a couple of guys who were doing a Bitcoin conference in 2014 in North Carolina, which was one of the first conferences in the space. Through that, I started to go down this path of what blockchain means and how it has influence over various Industries. We took that conference, scaled it out, had a pretty big conference in 2018, got to talk with a 2018 lieutenant governor, and he expressed a lot of interest in seeing how we can educate legislators in the state so the state doesn't fall behind in adopting technologies. It's all about Economic development and how emerging technologies will enable a lot of opportunities from a financial perspective, investor perspective, and employment perspective in the state, which is what they want to see. So we put together the Carolina Blockchain Initiative with the intent of education through the development of a report and eventually turning it into a more legislatively focused venture. The goal is to drive these types of technologies and eventually extend beyond blockchain. We've been here in North Carolina, up in DC before a lot of this happened, and we met with a couple of Senators and every other entity that we can pack into two days. We learned a lot about what they're doing at the federal level so that we can bring it back to the state and put it in our report for legislators."
"Sounds like, in your mind, one good way to impact the future of economic development in our state will be getting to legislators and making sure they're not clogging the wheels of progress. Can you elaborate a little bit on that?"
"Yeah – so states have a lot of influence on the types of entrepreneurial endeavors that happen within the state. It's based on how they view industries and how they write things into law. It's really simple. Regarding things like blockchain, or any other developments at the federal and state level, we need to make sure they're adopting policies to help explore what these things can do. Typically politicians are nervous about any change to the status quo, and most new technologies will be a change to the status quo, blockchain notwithstanding. So there should be a legislative sandbox where people can go for 2 years, report on how it's working, and report on the type of legislation that needs to happen based on what's really happening in the real world. Blockchain is going to enable new healthcare industries or new ways to do commerce. It's already happening. That's all because of blockchain. Our goal is to ensure that we don't adopt legislation today that will restrict the growth of the technology industry. We want to adopt small, smart policies so that we can be honed in on what the new industries that we are creating will surface up."
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