UNDERSTANDING TRANSFORMATIONAL TECHNOLOGY AND THE FUTURE OF DEFI

Ash Bennington, senior crypto editor for Real Vision, sits down with James Bianco, president of Bianco Research, to discuss his view of the financial markets, DAOs, macro strategies, regulation, and the role of government in the economy. When he began looking into Bitcoin and Ethereum in 2017, Bianco did not see much utility for these new assets. However, during the crypto winter of 2018-2019, Bianco noticed the rise of DeFi and saw last summer how these new emerging rails were being built as a parallel financial system. Bianco sees this new system as 1.0, “the Wild West,” but more innovation will come. To him, DeFi is headed toward the creation of a whole new financial system. Filmed May 17th, 2021. Key Insights: Bianco states that volatility is part of any emerging technology—investors, regardless of experience, should understand that high-growth, tech companies go through “boom and bust” cycles all the time. For crypto, Bianco advises that it’s critical to separate the concept from the protocol. When choosing what to invest in, he urges investors to consider, “Is this concept too early? Does the system have longevity? What research has been done?” This will be paramount to understanding the future of the space and, by extension, will open the door for users from all generations and technical prowess to enter.

Their world doesn’t benefit from it because they are at the top of the heap (6 min remaining)
I can see that this isn’t ready yet for the whole world but I can see how useful it could be.

BRAVE BROWSER: TAKING BACK CONTROL OF YOUR DATA

Brendan Eich, founder and CEO of Brave, joins Ash Bennington, Real Vision senior editor, to discuss the Brave browser, basic attention token (BAT), and controlling your own data. Eich explains that Brave was created as a way for users to control the ads and cookies in their browser, noting that simply blocking ads and removing data hurts publishers. He wanted to allow both Brave users and publishers to benefit, so the basic attention token was created to allow users to pay publishers while still coordinating their own ad preferences. Describing Brave as leading the way in implementing data privacy for browsers, Eich states that their mission is to increase accessibility to privacy tools for the masses, putting the control of user data back into the users’ hands while also supporting publishers. Filmed on January 29, 2021.

Key Learnings: Brave is a browser aimed at supporting privacy and user-controlled data while supporting publishers and content creators. Privacy tools are becoming increasingly accessible to average users, and Brave pushes this to the next level by embedding user control in the browser. Regulators and users are demanding more user control and privacy of data, pointing to the fact that society is moving towards a user-centric era of data.