Hey, this is Ian and I’m here at the Capitol Hill grounds in Washington DC. This week’s episode is from DC. I’m here working with, a partner of mine, and we’re promoting blockchain city in my documentary and working within the credit union industry to help shape some thoughts that might change the future, that might create a different outcome that might push us in the right direction. I want to talk about a couple of things. First of all is the bigger transformation that’s taking place in the world. Lots of talk a little bit about the financial industry, banking and credit unions and the challenge and opportunity that they have, especially here in the United States. Now, if you look at it the top banks in the world, the top 10, 15, 20, 30 banks in the world are heavily investing in technology.
They’re, they’re acquiring companies that are future forward and they’re acquiring companies that have good products, that are, that are creating change that are creating waves that are blockchain based or AI based. So there’s definitely the journey of acquisitions has, has increased. Now banks are traditionally very rich. They’ve got a lot of money and so they can afford to do that. So that’s one side of the picture. The other side is a, a more global picture. But when banks globally and credit unions globally that credit unions are always working much closer to the customer, are credit unions are more agile, but they, they also need a little bit of push when it comes to technology adoption. And typically they’ll wait for banks to make the bigger moves and then follow suit, which is something that is changing now in in, in in parts of the world.
The biggest opportunity today for for the industry, if you, if you ask me from my perspective is, is to really lead to technology. Blockchain today is doing a lot. It’s it’s a big form of a trust creator, identity management, protecting your customer’s identities, giving them peace of mind, giving them that the guarantee that transactions they do are private or secure and have the highest level of security on them. And so that is a biggest takeaway that credit unions can take from from implementation of technology. Now that this doesn’t exist in industry today the industry is fragmented and not a lot of, let’s say credit unions have this forward-thinking attitude. Some places in Europe for sure, there’s definitely transformation that’s taking place. But not here in in Canada or in here in the United States.
With blockchain, there’s a, there’s there’s they say that we’re going to something called crypto winter and I really love these speculations when they come out. First they push people to go and buy stocks for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Then they say it’s a crypto winter. Then people sell this off. The, the problem is the average ordinary person puts their harder and four okays in there. They put their heart and investments, their money in there and it’s gone. It’s gone. And it’s managed because the, they bet on something that was a hype. And I am a not a friend of hype. I do not like hype. I really think that we as technologists need to have a stand and work against hype and work can reveal things, things that, that are actually changing the world, that are actually good solutions and products.
And so for that reason, I’m not a super big fan of cryptocurrencies of as they are touted right now from an investment point of view, but definitely from from a value creation point of view. I definitely love cryptocurrencies because the help us do something different. They are a new form of digital trust or digital cash. And I don’t want to go into the whole justification and explanation of what cash is and what Fiat currencies are, but the central differences that when you talk about one form of payment that works across the world that isn’t managed by a certain one monetary authority or there’s definitely good takes on that. But then there’s also challenges with it. There’s no backing. There’s a, there’s a, there’s a bit of disambiguating. There’s a bit of a big challenge there. If you recently heard about a story that was in the news the CEO of a Canadian cryptocurrency fund passed away and he died.
And he was the only one who had the password to the secure storage that is still storage where they had ’em stored all the details of the crypto currency. So all the investors money was trapped. And so after he passed away, there was no way to, to open that, that thing up. And investors thought that their money was gone, but something happened. Something changed. They were managed to, they managed to somehow secure the credentials to open that storage, but they found none of the investments, none of the cryptocurrencies or investment funds in, in, in places where they thought. So this is what we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with an industry that’s very immature, that’s being run by a few people who control things. And a, you end with companies and cryptocurrency providers of a certain CEO or a group of people or are trying to work with billions of dollars, which doesn’t make sense.
It doesn’t add up guys. So it you’ve got to be careful about this. I’m going back to credit unions and the, the global financial industry at large banks are facing this challenge right now off off digital currencies, off digital cash, becoming much bigger of a movement than they anticipated. Now, banks, any given day, we’ll say they don’t like cryptocurrencies. They don’t associate with them. They don’t think they will grow. But if you look at some market indicators, you look at what’s happening with the consumer today, are more people buying cryptocurrencies or are using them or using digital form of cash, then the answer is yes, there’s definitely a adoption that’s taken place. But is everybody across the world using it? No, not everybody across the world is using cryptocurrencies. That’s the reality. So we’ve got to separate hype from reality and based on that, we’ve got to make our decisions for banks, financial institutions, credit unions, they work with consumers, they work with customers.
And as part of that, it’s their responsibility to guide customers into what the future of money is because people are putting [inaudible] their hard earned money into banks. Saving the money. And working with credit unions to secure credit to secure funds. And I believe the opportunity for credit unions right now is to take a bigger stance on technology, especially here in the United States. You’ll typically find that the industry is watches the larger banks to create transformation. They’ll watch the bigger guys to make the moves. And adoption slowly happens not just in credit unions, but across the u s any industry. This is, this is the picture. The larger guys make the move. Everybody else watches them and then everybody else makes the move. And I think that is changing because of many industries are, or larger companies are going out of business.
The targets of the world are, you know, our or toys r us and all of the larger giants that we’ve seen traditionally are closing doors because the world is changing, economies are changing. Things such as e-commerce are taking over. And Amazon as an example is is crushing their competition. So you’ve got to figure out where the wave is going. I really believe there’s, there’s a few fundamentals to success. Whether you are a bank, you are a credit card company, a financial institution, a large bank, a regional bank. There’s some pivotal steps that you need to take in order to succeed.
Now, what’s, let’s talk about what these steps. I really believe that as an organization you need to recreate your purpose every single day, every single day. You’ve got to figure out why do you do what you do? What is the purpose that you’re serving? Who are the customers that you’re serving and why? What is the benefit for the customer? Are you creating any value or are you just looking to make money out of the enterprise that you have? And there’s nothing wrong with creating financial success and financial abundance, but you will not succeed for a long time because you’ve got to be able to connect that with creating value for other people. And so purpose creating purpose would be the first thing. I also believe that people are a fundamental building block to anything. So your people, the people you hire, the people you work with have to align with the purpose that you have as an industry.
If you are in a provider within the credit union space, you are a credit union. You are a bank and you’re looking at creating the future in a different way and serving your customers in a different way than the people who work with. You have to align with your vision and your goal. And that’s as real as it is. There’s no there’s no other alternative to it. Number three. Number three, you’ve got to do pilots. You’ve got to do some tests. You’ve got to take a risk and develop that to some kind of a partnership because you’re not going to succeed on your own. If you are looking at capitalizing on everything’s creating success for yourself down in your basement or in your own company, it’s not going to happen. So you’ve got to partner up. But other people who have the expertise that you can that you can benefit from, you can jump on board and, and somehow join them in creating this transformation.
Then do that and seek those partnerships. And last but not least, is creating some pilot projects. Start somewhere. Instead of being paralyzed to analysis, having the analysis paralysis. Don’t do that. Start somewhere. Do some pilot projects. And, and that’s where change starts in, on. Once you have success that replicated across the board, replicated wherever you can, and that’s the way you you can really succeed. I see many industries today struggling from manufacturing to banking healthcare education industries are really struggling because of competition. And Competition is moving faster because competition is technologically powered or they have a new business model. They have some kind of transformation that they’ve undergone. And this is the time for you to wake up and say, hey, how can I leverage technology to help me more, to do more for me or to do better for myself?
And a, the three pivotal technologies that you can use or it start exploring of, are either blockchain, artificial intelligence, or the Internet of things. I believe everything falls under these three core technologies, whether it’s smart smart cars. It’s a smart homes. It’s a, the aerospace industry, airlines, transportation, education, everything can potentially fall under these three industries. So if you want to have something dramatic, a breakthrough in the future, then definitely look at one of these three technologies, start exploring them, start learning about them. And if you’re not learning, then, then something is wrong. For sure. You’ve got to start learning right away. But these are some of my thoughts. I am, I’m going to be here in DC for the next couple of days and look forward to meeting other people and hopefully well our paths will cross again. Signing off for now. You take care and see you soon.
