{"id":1575801,"date":"2021-11-09T06:00:56","date_gmt":"2021-11-09T11:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress-1016567-4521551.cloudwaysapps.com\/?post_type=station&p=1575801"},"modified":"2022-07-15T23:55:23","modified_gmt":"2022-07-16T03:55:23","slug":"bringing-iot-and-blockchain-together-a-glimpse-into-the-future-with-larry-pang-of-iotex","status":"publish","type":"station","link":"https:\/\/platodata.io\/plato-data\/bringing-iot-and-blockchain-together-a-glimpse-into-the-future-with-larry-pang-of-iotex\/","title":{"rendered":"Bringing IoT And Blockchain Together: A Glimpse Into The Future With Larry Pang of IoTeX"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

Blockchain and crypto isn\u2019t usually associated with the Internet of things. IoTeX<\/a> aims to change all of that with their vision of a borderless ecosystem. In this episode, Monika Proffitt sits down for an interview with Larry Pang<\/a>, Head of Business Development at IoTeX as they talk about integrating the IoT with cryptocurrency and blockchain. Larry shares his insights on the current blockchain and crypto space and where he thinks it\u2019s going. For more crypto and blockchain news and discussions, tune in today.<\/p>\n

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Watch the episode here:<\/h3>\n

[embedded content]<\/p>\n

Listen to the podcast here<\/h3>\n

Bringing IoT And Blockchain Together: A Glimpse Into The Future With Larry Pang of IoTeX<\/h2>\n

I\u2019m here with Larry Pang, the Head of Business Development and Founding Member of <\/strong>IoTeX<\/strong><\/a>. Larry, thank you so much for joining us. <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s great to be here, Monika. I\u2019ll share a little bit about what we\u2019re doing here at IoTeX and give some broader views about the crypto ecosystem.<\/p>\n

I was confused when I even saw you come into my inbox. I was like, \u201cIoT and blockchain? That doesn\u2019t happen a lot.\u201d It hasn\u2019t caught on. It\u2019s not like we\u2019re having smartwatches that are enabled by blockchain yet. When I heard that you had devices, it\u2019s such an interesting intersection that frankly was only confusing at first. I\u2019m glad you explained it to me before we got on this. Anybody who sees IoTeX like IoT and blockchain, they would be as confused. Can you talk a little bit about the two main products that you have and how the blockchain component makes them so different? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I would text at the core of what it is. It\u2019s a layer one blockchain, EVM compatible, cheaper, faster, more decentralized than Ethereum, like all other layer one blockchain. What differentiates IoTeX from the other layer ones out there is we have a big focus on adding IoT oriented middleware and these sub protocols to allow devices to have identities, stream data directly to smart contracts and benefit from this ultra-security that blockchain provides. We have two devices live on the network. One is called Ucam<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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IoT And Blockchain: Private data, especially for things like your wearables, your healthcare devices, your smart home cameras and locks, all of that<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ucam is a home security camera that\u2019s been on sale on Amazon since September of 2020, about 8,000 units globally across 60 plus countries. It\u2019s an own your data camera. It uses decentralized identity as a login mechanism, removing the email password traditionally. We take the user\u2019s private key that only they own and have access to. We use it to end-to-end encrypt all the videos. They are the only ones that have the decryption key, so only they can view their videos. They have authorization controls and things like this. It\u2019s the first use case of blockchain as an identity layer for the camera.<\/p>\n

We also have other devices that do a little bit more than just provide ownership. This is called Pebble Tracker<\/a>. This is an asset tracker. It reads data like GPS, temperature, humidity, air quality, air pressure, motion, vibration and light. It gives you a full 360 view of whatever asset this is meant to be tracking, whether it\u2019s a person, dog, vehicle, container or truck. It provides unbiased 360 view of what is going on with this asset.<\/p>\n

More importantly, it signs this data as it\u2019s being captured so you know that it\u2019s authentic and whoever owns this device also owns that data. That\u2019s the ownership aspect like Ucam but this device is allowing people to grab data from the real world, plug it into smart contracts and generate responses off of it. I\u2019m sure we\u2019ll dive down a lot into the use cases that these devices can enable. At the core of what we\u2019re doing, we\u2019re bringing Web 3.0 to IoT and we\u2019re also bringing IoT to Web 3.0. These billions and billions of devices out there generating 80 zettabytes of data, which is 1 zettabyte are 1 trillion gigabytes by 2025.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s such a huge opportunity between the devices that we interact with every day and this blockchain infrastructure that\u2019s budding. Until this point, IoT and blockchain have been pretty nascent but Iowa, Texas is driving a lot of innovation in the space. I\u2019m happy to dive into all the different opportunities.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the video camera. The video holder is a camera but as well as a storage device. <\/strong><\/p>\n

With this camera, we worked with a company called TENVIS<\/a>. They\u2019re a security camera manufacturer since 2005. They\u2019ve sold millions of cameras to governments, retail and enterprise in the past. They came to us looking for privacy as the next big feature for the cameras. You go on Amazon, filter for Prime and filter for four-stars, you\u2019re still going to have 10,000 plus results. In such a saturated market, they felt privacy was going to be a big feature, so we worked on this camera together. Back in late 2019 is when we unveiled the first prototype. We went to CES and won the CES Innovation Award for cybersecurity and personal privacy with this camera in 2020, which was great.<\/p>\n

As a user, I want to own all of the videos of everything that happens in surveillance with my house. I\u2019m going to stick one of my backyard and front yard. My neighbors might hate me but whatever. I\u2019m going put these up. From my experience with normal video cameras, which were all some of the cheapest ones on Amazon, I don\u2019t need much but I would have cameras up at my place when I used to run an artist residency in New Mexico. <\/strong><\/p>\n

There are all these cameras around and I would be able to check it on my phone, see things that move and catch people doing whatever. That was saved to my phone and if I wanted to save it to a place, I could download it and keep it, otherwise what\u2019s out there? I never thought about where it was stored. I only thought about in terms of my access to it. What would my user experience be if I had put up your cameras instead of the ones I chose on Amazon, other than being a lot more out of pocket with much higher quality? <\/strong><\/p>\n

We focused on the user experience side of things. This is a problem in crypto generally, how you get people to set up a wallet and experience crypto. We masked a lot of that in the background. When someone opens up the Ucam app, private key account is created for them. All they have to do is back up the key. The difference between a ring camera and a Ucam is it follows the trend of what\u2019s going on in Web 3.0 and crypto a lot.<\/p>\n

There’s a popular saying that data is the new gold or data is new oil. If data is the new gold, then our machines and our devices are the gold mines. <\/a><\/span>Click To Tweet<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

All of these traditional Web 2.0 applications from big tech, they manage the central server. They own the keys to the server. They have full visibility into everything in the server and they based their business off of these promises that, \u201cWe care about your security and privacy.\u201d With cameras like Ucam, you can make claims or make definitive statements that no one can see your videos except you.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re never going to hear that from a big tech company. They\u2019re going to dance around it and make it seem like so. We\u2019ve seen this so many times that these servers are vulnerable and not the top priority for these companies to invest in protecting your data in all of these breaches. What\u2019s funny is when we went to CES and we won this award for Ucam, this was at a time when all those ring cameras were being hacked around Christmas time, the traditional email password type things.<\/p>\n

Some people call it user error but this is how people operate. Having someone talk to your kid through your camera is nothing that people had anticipated in their days. Those kinds of shock factors of headlines push people to look towards more private products. Even earlier in 2021, we saw a mass migration from WhatsApp over to Signal. As people start to think about private finances, messaging, private data, especially for things like your wearables, healthcare devices, smart home cameras and locks, all of that needs to be privatized as well.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been an interesting journey. The desire for privacy from users is growing but it\u2019s not necessarily just privacy cameras. It\u2019s also an own your data camera. A lot of people need to understand that owning something means you have full control of it. If you don\u2019t own it, you don\u2019t control it. That\u2019s what we have to think about when we think about all these facets of devices that we strap onto our bodies, put it in our homes and give to our loved ones. What kind of things are going on in the backend, mostly invisible but this is the opportunity that blockchain provides, a better backend that one day can achieve the same user experience and features as traditional product.<\/p>\n

I can imagine how video is one thing that we can make sure it\u2019s privatized in that data. The GPS piece is new to me. When I think of GPS, Google says, \u201cWe\u2019d like to use your location, allow or don\u2019t allow.\u201d That\u2019s as much of an opt in or opt out as I imagined but then suddenly, I\u2019ll see stuff that if I say don\u2019t use my location and I type in Home Depot, it\u2019ll give me stuff from Manhattan when I\u2019m in San Juan, Puerto Rico or vice versa. <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not able to stay up to date necessarily without GPS like a search query history but it seems to be haphazard. That\u2019s my only context for understanding where my data about my location has any applicability and I would either want to restrict it further or make sure it was consistently given with a certain permission to the right entities. Can you talk a little bit about how your second product addresses GPS and how that data interacts with the blockchain? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I also have another version that\u2019s a clear case. This is what it looks like from the inside gut perspective. The ton of sensors jammed into it. There\u2019s a GPS sensor, climate sensor that does temperature, humidity, air quality, air pressure, six axis accelerometer, gyroscope that does motion vibration and a light sensor.<\/p>\n

A lot of this data is raw data but that\u2019s not what we\u2019re interested in. We\u2019re interested about the insights that these data can tell us. You think about what a light sensor can tell us. It can tell you whether a package was opened or not. You think about what an accelerometer gyroscope can tell us. If something is meant to be moving, it can tell you this thing is moving because it senses some velocity or acceleration. If something is not meant to be moving, that can identify it too for temperature or humidity.<\/p>\n

These are all important factors when we ship perishables, vaccines or any type of things that are sensitive to climate. GPS can not only tell you where the location of important assets are but you can even abstract that to say, \u201cThis asset is five miles from the destination. You guys can go ahead and continue the workflow.\u201d All of these kinds of things depend on the use case that you\u2019re trying to do like attaching a Pebble Tracker to a vehicle is very different than attaching a Pebble Tracker to a dog where you\u2019re trying to control and make sure your dog doesn\u2019t leave a certain geo-fence.<\/p>\n

Whereas with the vehicle, you could be submitting your GPS data to a contract. Think about a decentralized Waze app. All these people are annotating and adding value to the map. It\u2019s like this play to earn things a little bit, contributing to a digital public utility but you can also get rewards. You have to have a verifiable GPS location in order to gain these monetary benefits, otherwise a honeypot. The design space that we\u2019re creating with this is connecting things that we do in the real world to things related to digital assets and digital reputation.<\/p>\n

Play to earn all of these, like Axie Infinity style games, have told us that people can do things in the digital world to earn digital assets and digital reputation. This is taking off from Dow\u2019s perspective, from a gaming perspective. What IoTeX is trying to do is open up that footprint even more so people can do things in the real world and also earn digital assets and digital reputation. There\u2019s a common thing around proof of blank in crypto.<\/p>\n

A lot of people understand proof-of-work and proof-of-stake. These are proofs that you\u2019re giving to the blockchain. I\u2019m proving to the blockchain that I\u2019ve solved this computationally intensive puzzle so that I can be a Bitcoin block producer. I proved to the Ethereum blockchain I have 32 ETH, so I can be a staker or a validator. What other things can we prove to the blockchain?<\/p>\n

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IoT And Blockchain: Blockchain itself is an amazing value transfer value exchange mechanism and great orchestration tool.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It\u2019s like if I could prove that I played Pok\u00e9mon Go on blockchain Steroids, then I went to that corner of that room, stood there for three seconds and took a picture. I can prove that happened and then I will get a reward for that. In a sense, it almost could enable more like a distributed Oracle perspective on things. Is this something that could be used in a real estate sense? I\u2019ve had people say, \u201cHow would you make sure that the real estate assets are taken care of?\u201d I\u2019m like, \u201cWe\u2019d have appraisers go.\u201d That\u2019s a centralized approach. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Why wouldn\u2019t you incentivize the crowd to be like, \u201cLet\u2019s go to St. Louis. We\u2019re going to go on a road trip.\u201d Also, there are five different Dows involved in that I\u2019m going to go and do some work on each, so it\u2019s going to pay for the trip. I\u2019ll take pictures and validate that this house is in that condition. I can put myself to work and get these rewards for having plugged in to where these bounties exist and use this technology that can verify that I did what I said I would do. Is that how this piece works together? <\/strong><\/p>\n

From that perspective, we talked to a lot of interesting companies that have pitched us use cases very similar to that.<\/p>\n

What are your favorite companies that had pitched to you? What are your favorite use cases that you\u2019re like, \u201cThat will be good?\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s something called geocaching. It\u2019s an interesting game in traditional Web 2.0 world. People will put challenges out in public areas in these kinds of container boxes. There\u2019s a map where people can go, \u201cThere\u2019s a challenge I can still solve in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco or in Central Park in New York.\u201d They go and open these boxes, solve a puzzle and write down the answer into the app. It\u2019s like a game in that respect. It\u2019s a two-sided marketplace. People can create or solve the challenges.<\/p>\n

If you think about disintermediating that, allowing peer to peer challenges to be created, some of my favorite use cases for Pebble Tracker have been around scavenger hunts in new countries. Imagine you\u2019re going to Australia or New Zealand for the first time. When I did that, before I started IoTeX, I was looking at all these different itineraries like, \u201cI have seven days on the South Island. I have ten days on the South Island.\u201d The itineraries are completely different.<\/p>\n

What was fascinating to me was the itinerary creators. This is the start of the creator economy. They are creating experiences for other people to experience. It\u2019s not like, \u201cI only have an itinerary for New Zealand.\u201d A lot of these people are global. \u201cIf you go to Thailand, this is what I would do. This is what I would do if I was in this country or this country.\u201d They have a fan base that appreciate the itineraries.<\/p>\n

The creator themselves can create a token. \u201cProve to me you\u2019ve completed my itinerary and I\u2019m going to give you some rewards that will unlock premium itineraries in the future, redeemable for travel credits or things like this.\u201d The proof is where machines come in. Not just any machine but unbiased tamper-proof machines that do serve as real-world data oracles. They tell the blockchain something about a person or a thing and what they\u2019ve done in the real world and using that as the if statement part of the if then a business logic.<\/p>\n

If I can prove something to the blockchain about what something I\u2019ve done, whether it\u2019s run 5 miles, completed this itinerary or lowered my blood pressure from a trusted wearable, then I can do any number of things. The then part is very expressive. I can mend NFTs, settle payments, send notifications or lower my insurance rates.<\/p>\n

I lower my blood pressure. I do such a good job where my glucose levels get better. I\u2019m no longer pre-diabetic. Maybe a blockchain enabled insurance company would say, \u201cAs we get this, we adjust your rate. You\u2019re as low as we can get it because you\u2019re so much healthier.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

It can even be real time. Everyone knows the Discount Double Check Aaron Rodgers, like Allstate Insurance where if you don\u2019t get in an accident for entire year, they\u2019re going to lower your insurance rate. Not getting into an accident doesn\u2019t tell them that you\u2019re a good driver. Maybe you\u2019re very lucky. Maybe you drive so fast that everyone gets out of the way if you have all this data from your vehicle.<\/p>\n

In the future, there’s going to be primary, secondary, even tertiary uses of our data. <\/a><\/span>Click To Tweet<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Every vehicle has up to twenty plus electronic control units. Everything from your seat belt on to our hands on the wheel, to once we have cameras and dash cams that point inside and outside of the vehicle. These are all data points that can tell your insurance company how well you drive and whether you\u2019d like driving under the speed limit or not.<\/p>\n

If you want to leave it opaque and be like, \u201cThanks for getting an accident. That\u2019s enough. That\u2019s why you get to know, keeping the rest of this is mine.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s that concept of owning the data from your vehicle. If you are at fault for an accident, you don\u2019t have to give up that information because you own it exclusively. There\u2019s no way the government can subpoena an organization that holds your data in their server because it\u2019s owned by you and protected by the blockchain.<\/p>\n

When you get into an accident, if you have a signed unbiased video from a trusted device that proves that my eyes are on the road, that this guy was swerving into my lane and I have it all on video, all the data of my vehicle of that snapshot in time, what kind of legal proceedings need to be done? They don\u2019t need to deploy an auditor or go through this process to see who\u2019s at fault because I have the data and I can prove it to you, proof of safety or proof of non-accident.<\/p>\n

This almost means that he or she with the most data wins. Once we solve who owns it, the person who has the most data about themselves at their disposal wins. If the guy that swerves into your lane doesn\u2019t have anything in his car and you have tons in your car, you have all of the proof. They can bitch them on all they want but there\u2019s nothing they can do. If you have more data, you have more opportunity to prove or disprove what you want. <\/strong><\/p>\n

That might be interesting to see that there are pieces of data you would want to present and other pieces that you would not. It would become an issue of either you give it all up or don\u2019t if you don\u2019t want to get a partial picture where you manipulate the truth to certain omissions, that still is something that you can algorithmically solve for. <\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s where the legal side of things comes into play. One thing I\u2019m very interested in is in a court of law, how do you prove to someone that the video that I captured has a cryptographic signature on it to prove the authenticity and the ownership of this video? Cryptographic proofs are going to fly in a court of law. That\u2019s an interesting aspect of it. How do we get this to be the standard that people trust? We live in the information era already. There\u2019s a popular saying that data is the new gold or oil. If data is the new gold, then our machines and devices are the gold mines. What kind of data do we write down ourselves?<\/p>\n

With a data company and being so steeped in data on all sides, I have to wonder about a digital goal, this whole Bitcoin thing. Do you have a coin? Are you focused on the coin? Has that made a big impact on some of your business development decisions? Are you like, \u201cWe do crypto but we are working on strategic partnerships? We are a real company. You can speculate on it all you want. We have a vehicle too that\u2019s Dogecoin but we\u2019re going to be doing this,\u201d or have you been like, \u201cWe\u2019re not even going to bother tokenizing. The data itself is its own token in a way?\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

IoTeX itself is a vast ecosystem. We\u2019re growing very fast. We have about 50,000 staking users about 25 dApps on the chain. IoTeX is a layer one blockchain. We have our own token and the token is meant to maintain consensus and trust on this foundational platform of ours.<\/p>\n

What is the token?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s called IOTX<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Where could people find that token? <\/strong><\/p>\n

You can find it on Coinbase, Binance, WellBe, everywhere except FTX, which is sad because I love FTX.<\/p>\n

I interviewed one of the FTX\u2019s key people for this show a couple of years ago. I love them. <\/strong><\/p>\n

If you think about what Ethereum does with its native token, it\u2019s meant to establish incentives for validators to maintain consensus. It\u2019s meant to serve as a utility token for users. It\u2019s the same thing with IoTeX. We have our own platform. It\u2019s built from scratch, no forks. On top of this layer one platform, we have all these dApps, services and tools that have their tokens that are meant to drive incentives for usage of their specific applications. Everything from DeFi to GameFi to this new concept that we call MachineFi.<\/p>\n

Tell me what MachineFi is. DeFi is Decentralized Finance. GameFi, I get it but MachineFi? That sounds cybernetic. <\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s metaphysical in a way. Everything in crypto has a Fi element to it. Blockchain itself is an amazing value transfer, value exchange mechanism and great orchestration tool but it\u2019s the predominant understanding. Blockchain is not a great compute engine but for trust and for these kinds of things, blockchains are very solid in that respect.<\/p>\n

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IoT And Blockchain: A token is just a digital representation of value. Data is also a digital representation of value.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Even with gaming, we\u2019re seeing a lot of financialization. You do this in the game. You get that in your wallet. MachineFi is how we use the data and the services that machines can provide. Some machines like Hello Tracker are bringing data to the blockchain. Other machines in the future are starting to get a little fancy here. You think about these autonomous devices and machines that are going to be popping up in the future.<\/p>\n

Everything from drones that are going to be monitoring our cities to satellites that take aerial imagery, to autonomous vehicles, to vending machines, to airport lockers, all these kinds of unmanned, autonomous machines like those Boston Dynamics robots. Who\u2019s going to own them? Machines are going to represent the entire workforce of the future. It\u2019s going to be a real big disaster if we get to the 0.5 years down the road. All of these autonomous machines, all the data\u2019s owned by AWS, Amazon and Google is a massive gold mine of data. It\u2019s going to belong to big tech and the proceeds are going to continue not to be spread to users.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve used a cost-based economic model. You could end up incentivizing users to switch and do something different in the same way that people got disenchanted with WhatsApp and went to Signal. Once people know, for sure things are a peer to peer. They\u2019re different and separate. If there\u2019s an economic incentive there, the crowd will move where the money flows. Even Malcolm X said, \u201cIf you want to change things, you have to change the economics of it.\u201d You can\u2019t hold your sign and protest about the moral plea. You have to make it more beneficial economically. <\/strong><\/p>\n

That movement is getting started. Speaking about the alternatives, it\u2019s this whole concept of using your data for purposes outside as a metadata out of sight and out of mind type of thing. The concept of ownership of digital assets is still very confusing to people. NFTs are starting to get this into people\u2019s heads that, \u201cThis is exclusive. Only I own this.\u201d It\u2019s very understandable from a non-fungible perspective. When you think about data that\u2019s almost invisible, it\u2019s not represented as a JPEG. It\u2019s ones and zeros.<\/p>\n

You are leaving NFT, ultimately. If you think about this, you boil it down, each person owning their data but autonomy is a living non-fungible representation of data.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Every device is going to be a non-fungible device as well. All of these things that are being generated by humans and devices, if we can bring all of that understanding to the blockchain, this is where these if then statements come from. All these smart contracts are from basic to highly complex and nested if then statements. If this thing happens, then I\u2019m going to do this. The good thing is because smart contracts are all open source, you know for a fact that if I do this, it\u2019s going to do this and only this.<\/p>\n

The model we\u2019re living under is if I do this and give this to Google, then I\u2019m going to get these results but there\u2019s also all of these black box things that we know are happening but we have no control to stop. In the future, there are going to be primary, secondary, even tertiary uses of our data. The data we can use to serve as a primary purpose. If I share my GPS location, then I\u2019m going to get this result, be able to pay a toll or unlock some type of permission.<\/p>\n

The secondary use of data is how do I sell this data to earn value. If I am driving the same route every single day for a year to and from work, that dataset is super valuable to the Ubers, DoorDashes and even urban planners of the world. Maybe it\u2019s not going to be worth thousands and thousands of dollars but it\u2019s going to be worth something and that\u2019s a secondary usage of it.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the foundation where you can say, \u201cI\u2019m going to make a donation of this data and has a monetary value.\u201d If I donated my car, I get $500 at minimum. If I donate my data, I can be incentivized by someone who wants to purchase it and then it becomes part of an open source opportunity for others in the same way LexisNexis is like a legal database that lawyers can have exclusive access to because they pay every year. If somebody wants to say, \u201cWe\u2019ll make it open source,\u201d then make it open source. <\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s also tertiary and whatever the fourth use is. I don\u2019t know what the terminology but those are still to be discovered. That\u2019s an exciting part about all of this. Once we get this data on chain, it\u2019s going to be exciting to see what people come up with like the scavenger hunt thing. A lot of the primitives that DeFi and GameFi are showing us, play to earn and pooling together liquidity, lending and borrowing, all of these things are the subject is a token. A token and even data is also a digital representation of value.<\/p>\n

All of these primitives that are booming in DeFi, crowdsourcing liquidity for decks and giving 0.3% of all transaction fees to liquidity providers. What if in the future, LexisNexis was decentralized? Everyone that\u2019s contributing to this legal database, anytime someone queries something within that database, then the proceeds are shared across the people that have crowdfunded this database. Maybe it\u2019s not even going to be 0.3%.<\/p>\n

Another example is these Shutterstock or Getty images. They aggregate all the stock imagery and they\u2019ll take 30% or 40% off of every sale, which is crazy. It\u2019s starving the photographers and content creators. If you can decentralize that and even give a group access to a repository of images, the more useful images you contribute to the repository, the more ownership you get of the future proceeds. It\u2019s exactly like decks, like a liquidity pool except using different types of assets.<\/p>\n

Instead of having these big tech companies glean who we are based on these sketchy behind the scenes activities, what if we could prove to people who we are or tell people who we are? <\/a><\/span>Click To Tweet<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just a direct representation of value in the form of a token. It can be indirectly, \u201cHow much does this photograph and stock image worth?\u201d We\u2019re talking about zero marginal cost products where you could sell these over and over. It\u2019s interesting to think about it, especially GameFi telling us to do things to serve the digital public good and earn digital reputation.<\/p>\n

Play-to-earn is one of those catch phrases you threw out there. I was like, \u201cUser-centric play-to-earn. That\u2019s incredible.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s even drive-to-earn, run-to-earn or live-to-earn. It\u2019s that two-sided marketplace. On the demand side, someone wants you to do something and they\u2019re going to pay you X amount to do it. On this side, you have the chance to opt in to do it. It\u2019s not a requirement but if you decide to take this incentive and do what they say, it could be an insurance provider, insurance customer, a restaurant and their patrons or any two-sided marketplace, you can start to build these intensives.<\/p>\n

Machines are the ones that are going to prove rather than having an intermediary that\u2019s human, error prone and manipulable in the middle. You can have an unbiased machine that proves that whatever this person is trying to incentivize you to do, you have done it. That\u2019s a very clean peer to peer type of contract. Blockchain and machines are a big part of it.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the example of having lots of data of you driving your car and then someone\u2019s swerved into your lane and they didn\u2019t happen to have that surveillance data in their cars. You can prove what they did and they can\u2019t counter prove that you had negligence because your proof happens to be the only proof available. She with the most data wins as long as she owns her own data. <\/strong><\/p>\n

The thing I love about crypto is say you were in a coma and had amnesia. You forgot everything, with no understanding of how the real world works. If we had to redesign these things to be fairer, this is how we would design them. A lot of the change management, the conversion from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 is going to be very interesting to see which things sprout up first.<\/p>\n

Everything is economically driven in crypto. Even outside of the US, people are starting to think about, \u201cIf my bank or my government can do this with my funds, then what can they do digitally?\u201d China is a great example of this. All these machines are tracking everything. The proof of walking across the crosswalk or where you are during the day, there is already proofs of that everywhere. If you take that model, think about what we could gravitate towards, not from a government perspective but more from a corporation perspective. Do we want Amazon, Google and Facebook knowing where we are at every single second? That\u2019s what we\u2019re gravitating towards.<\/p>\n

Would it be more interesting if there was a hack of all that data in China because they have so much data? There\u2019s a half and it was thrown on chain and has to catch up because it takes so long to update that much data. Then you come in, validate with facial recognition that\u2019s mine and select your data back. <\/strong><\/p>\n

If Anonymous happens to be reading this show and wanted a nice idea, I was wondering what that might look like if we were to see a massive recapturing of data redistribution of it. There are not enough people who would know the power of getting on that one thing but I can see this eventually being the case. <\/strong><\/p>\n

If the individuals were not happy with the way decentralized system is, we\u2019re able to see more and more opportunities to re-tweak it and use that one thing. We\u2019re living in very interesting times. By the end of our lifetimes, we\u2019re going to see this kind of empowerment take hold and have lots of opportunities for it to be seen and manifest in the world in lots of places, whether it\u2019s legally or governmentally. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Everyone looks at Web 2.0, Google, Facebooks and Amazons of the world. There\u2019s this documentary, The Social Dilemma. It explains to you how these businesses make money. These are advertising engines. They will grab all the data that they have from all these apps that we do and they\u2019ll make a very accurate guess about who is this person? What are they interested in? Sometimes, it\u2019s scanning what websites we visit. Sometimes, it\u2019s listening to us through our microphones and you\u2019ll see it on your Instagram feed.<\/p>\n

My friend got dinner with Henry Golding\u2019s wife. I saw a post of that and I commented on it on Instagram. I was watching YouTube on my TV and there was an ad with Henry Golding in it. I didn\u2019t type Henry Golding. This is his wife but there\u2019s some weird stuff going on. It\u2019s not like, \u201cI talked about Lake Tahoe and then I see a Lake Tahoe ad.\u201d There\u2019s some very deep learning stuff going on there. How do we flip that model around?<\/p>\n

Instead of having these big tech companies glean who we are based on these sketchy behind the scenes activities, what if we could prove or tell people who we are? If we have our blockchain wallets and it tells someone all of the smart contracts we\u2019ve ever engaged with or all the transactions we\u2019ve ever made, if there is an advertising model, this is the two-sided marketplace.<\/p>\n

This is where I choose how much of that I sell to. You can sell to me as a White woman whose name is Monika or you can sell to me and I can check more and more boxes. <\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent money on this flight on travel which takes crypto. These are all proofs of something. I proved that I\u2019m a camper and a traveler. Advertisers without knowing your name or demographic because they know that you are a customer of their products can send you offers and discounts. All of the money they\u2019re saving from playing this Google ads game, take that out and drive it towards creating more pure customer relationships.<\/p>\n

\"NTE
IoT And Blockchain: You see a lot of companies like Visa settling contracts on Ethereum, but once a government entity uses blockchain for something, CBDC may be that, but it\u2019s not really the decentralized version of crypto, but it\u2019s a start.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That\u2019s what\u2019s starting to form with these real-world activities. It\u2019s going to be hard to say, \u201cI saw you traded $100 million on FTX over the weekend. Do you want to buy a camera?\u201d There\u2019s not much real-world understanding that you can glean from DeFi but from GameFi, MachineFi and all these other concepts where we\u2019re teaching the blockchain things about the people and the things that are going on in the world, you\u2019re going to be able to flip a lot of these models and disintermediate some of the biggest industries in the world. It\u2019s a $1 trillion opportunity.<\/p>\n

There are so many round holes we can continue to go down. Once you release the next device at some point in the future, we\u2019re going to have to bring you back on and do part two because this is so good. I do want to make sure I asked you a couple of fundamental questions that I usually try to ask people. You\u2019re brilliant. I don\u2019t think I\u2019m saying anything surprising. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Clearly, you\u2019ve thought this through and you\u2019re doing amazing work in the world but that is not abracadabra shows up. I hesitate to shine people on and be like, \u201cLet\u2019s step it up,\u201d without putting some context. \u201cWhere did you come from? How long were you confused about stuff before you were like, \u2018I\u2019m doing that?\u2019\u201d I used to give talks about my artwork back when I was in the arts years ago. <\/strong><\/p>\n

I would always try to pepper in paintings of mine that I hated. I\u2019d be like, \u201cI hate this painting. Here\u2019s why it never worked. It bothered me forever.\u201d Then I went somewhere else and it shows like, \u201cThis is why I liked the new stuff, why I come back this up and why it has meaning to me.\u201d I\u2019m not going to ask you to tell me a time in your life where you hated it or suffered your loss, but can you talk a little bit about what did you study in school? Everybody pivoted into this space because nobody was born into it. How did you find your way? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I was going with the flow for a long time. I grew up in LA and had a very chill, relaxed childhood. I went to MIT and studied Econ and Finance there and a little bit of visual arts and stuff. Throughout college, I tried a lot of different things. I gravitate towards business a little bit. I know I didn\u2019t want to do anything too deep in engineering. I tried internships, trading, banking and investment research. I was, \u201cI don\u2019t like any of this stuff.\u201d They say, \u201cIf you don\u2019t know what you want to do, you go into consulting.\u201d That\u2019s what I did. I worked at Oliver Wyman, which is considered to be top five global consulting firm, strategy side.<\/p>\n

Usually, people do consulting for two years. They\u2019ll go to business school, jump ship to a PE firm or something like that. I did consulting for five years, which is also a signal that I had no idea what I wanted to do after that. I was climbing fast. I was good at the job but five years is a long time. Consulting works in a way where you\u2019re promoted almost every 1 or 2 years into more senior roles. I got to see that entire stack.<\/p>\n

All the way from the entry-level consultant, doing the nitty-gritty formulas and those Excel spreadsheets, writing docs and PowerPoints, all the way to the point where I was managing larger teams and down the funnel, coordinating with the partners that lead the project. First job, I would consider it to be a grad school for real business, which is great.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, consulting is a tough lifestyle. I wasn\u2019t 21 anymore. I was 25 or26. It doesn\u2019t sound too old but being on flights every single week for 4 or 5 years will take its toll eventually. During some of my last two projects was when I started to hear more about Bitcoin. We did a project for the World Economic Forum on the future of payments.<\/p>\n

What year was that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That was around 2015. It was commissioned by the Queen of the Netherlands. It was presented at the Davos Summit. One of the topics we touched on included mobile payments with M-Pesa in Kenya and cross border remittances. Bitcoin was starting to come into the fold there. That\u2019s the first time I heard about Bitcoin. I thought it was interesting but it was at a point when no one understood or even believed in that technology. I was like, \u201cThis is interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

IOT and blockchain has been pretty nascent, and IoTeX is really driving a lot of innovation in the space. <\/a><\/span>Click To Tweet<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

I started reading more about it. It was around the time of the ICO. I didn\u2019t participate but I wish I did. The last project I did was the one that was like, \u201cThis stuff has some value.\u201d Not from a crypto perspective but from a blockchain perspective. I was consulting for the OCC. It\u2019s called the Options Clearing Corporation. They clear and settle pretty much 98% of all derivatives contracts in the United States. It\u2019s a nonprofit owned by a bunch of these banks running dinosaur technology. What they do is they aggregate information from all these exchanges, clear and settle the transactions. That\u2019s the service.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very easy to encode this. We pitched them, \u201cYou should consider this blockchain based system, build your way and decentralize your way out of this.\u201d It was still a little too early even to consider these things but that\u2019s when the intersection of my tiredness from consulting and my interest in blockchain merged. That\u2019s when I decided to jump ship over to IoTeX. It\u2019s been years of crypto rabbit wholeness and it\u2019s been fun.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s much more engaging than having one million different projects in consulting too. I\u2019m amazed that there\u2019s always more to get out of the blockchain space. Blockchain, crypto, DeFi and all the way to MachineFi. It\u2019s going to be spirit of Fi. It keeps going. I have not been bored for a second since I moved into this space. It sounds like even though you usually have an expiration date of 4 to 5 years or 5 or 6 years, I don\u2019t think you\u2019re going anywhere either. You\u2019re stuck. <\/strong><\/p>\n

I feel very lucky to have been given the opportunities I had in consulting. There\u2019s a lot of different practices within these consulting firms, things that are doing things related to financial risk, eCommerce strategy or these things. I was in the digital group. This was at a time when cloud infrastructure wasn\u2019t like what it was now. A lot of the projects we were doing were like, \u201cHow do we move these big companies from on premises, data centers over to the cloud?\u201d In 2015 and 2016, this was pulling teeth because no one was confident about the cloud. There\u2019s only until FINRA, who\u2019s a government entity, decided to put their data on the cloud.<\/p>\n

We can do that because FINRA does it. We\u2019re not going to get audited and they go, \u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d It\u2019s always this chicken and egg thing with them. They determine so much more than they should because they\u2019re so far behind the burbs so often. You have to make sure you don\u2019t do something that goes counter to what their intuition says because they could turn around and make your life a living hell. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Crypto is waiting for that moment. You see a lot of big companies like Visa settling contracts on Ethereum but once a government entity uses blockchain for something like CBDC, it\u2019s not the decentralized version of crypto but it\u2019s a start, that\u2019s going to give people the green light to start looking into this a little bit more. I was sitting at the intersection of tech, business and operations.<\/p>\n

Sitting in between helped me out in crypto because I spoke the languages of multiple groups. I\u2019m not a dev but I can chat and understand the concepts around why these things happen. That\u2019s because I\u2019ve written requirements and documents that have been 80 pages long. I know what these systems are meant to do and what they can do. I\u2019m not going to build them myself from a high-level perspective.<\/p>\n

What helps me in crypto is like, \u201cThis system is meant to do that for this business purpose and this is how the governance and the operations that connect all these things happen together.\u201d It\u2019s been a journey but we\u2019re getting started. I\u2019m interested in how all of these different primitives are going to intersect between NFT or DeFi.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an insane time, especially with the DeFi world itself. This is published in late 2021 and it\u2019s a crazy time. It comes and goes as long as you\u2019ve been around for long enough. You\u2019re there for the 2017 craze. You know how it goes. You have the next one. We\u2019re in a craze. It\u2019s going to be getting worse, meaning better. It\u2019s going to drop off another crypto winter that\u2019s going to come but it\u2019s nice. You\u2019re like, \u201cThis is the cadence at which we breathe.\u201d Their market is going to be okay. <\/strong><\/p>\n

If we had this conversation one year ago, there would still be some doubt whether blockchain and crypto would survive. DeFis and NFTs are here, so these are movements. There\u2019s no going back. It\u2019s not a matter of if. It\u2019s when. What\u2019s the next thing would be? Whether it\u2019s next quarter, next year or hopefully, not the following year but IoTs, smart devices and real-world data, you see a lot of people starting to talk about it but it hasn\u2019t reached fandom.<\/p>\n

It is not reached a conversation, which is why it\u2019s so important that you get as much exposure around real world objects that are there on Amazon. If you want to do this, try this thing. It will walk you through it. Get on Amazon and check these products out there. There aren\u2019t a lot of them out there yet. They will be picking up. There\u2019s going to be more and <\/strong>IoTeX<\/strong> is leading the charge. It\u2019s pretty incredible.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"NTE
IoT And Blockchain: Once we get this data on-chain, it\u2019s going to be really exciting to see what people come up with.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If you\u2019re a crypto investor, you should check out their token. This is not financial advice but when you learn about a company and you want to remember that company, you\u2019re keeping a finger on that pulse, one way is to buy a teeny tiny bit of their cap point. It\u2019s putting your psychological skin in the game. I have to get myself a bookmark always to be watching that. It\u2019s always like, \u201cGet it spoken here or there.\u201d It does keep me going. Even it\u2019s $5, I\u2019m invested in what\u2019s going to happen. I can have a reason to watch it rather than consume information. I\u2019m not sure what I\u2019m going to do with it. It\u2019s like an active source of information that is actionable as well. <\/strong><\/p>\n

I hope readers check out your products and get a sense of what you\u2019re bringing to the market. People can dive into your IoTeX website and learn more about what you\u2019re doing. It\u2019s a very exciting time. Bringing hardware and IoT to this space is commendable. It\u2019s a heavy lift to be doing manufacturing as well as all of the abstracting of a blockchain. I love the work you guys are doing. I\u2019m so glad we could bring you onto the show. Thank you so much, Larry. It\u2019s been a total pleasure. <\/strong><\/p>\n

I had a great time. If anything we chatted about piques the interest of any readers, feel free to reach out. Always get a chat whatever crazy use cases you have or very immediate impactful use cases that we can start using. I have Permissionless. It\u2019s an open network global community, so all are welcome. I\u2019m happy to chat with anyone. I appreciate you having me on, Monika. We\u2019ll do it again.<\/p>\n

Thank you so much, Larry. I\u2019m here with Larry Pang, Head of Business Development and Founding Member of <\/strong>IoTeX<\/strong>, a wonderful IoT company bringing the best of blockchain to actual wearable and usable devices. It\u2019s totally brilliant. Check it out. I\u2019ll catch you on the next episode. Thanks a lot.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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