Ben Bartlett is a Berkeley City Councilmember, appointed member of the CA Blockchain Working Group and internationally recognized policy leader. Ben has passed more than 60 measures focused on innovation, opportunity, and inclusion, including:
- Prefabricated Housing for the Homeless
- Health Innovation Zone
- Electric Vehicle Infrastructure
- telemedical adoption
- Unionized Jobs in Robotics and Automation
- Ben is currently working to integrate government and Blockchain through public finance, Opportunity Zones, and new markets.
Ben is the architect of the Berkeley Tokenized Debt Offering — a first-of-its-kind effort to create Blockchain based municipal bonds. Professionally, Ben is a partner in the San Francisco offices of Tackett Bartlett LLP where he counsels Blockchain entrepreneurs, governments, funds and businesses.
This episode we talk about:
- Are ICOs Initial Coin Offerings dead?
- What is the future of Bitcoin?
- Digital Currencies?
We want to thank Wendy Xue who organized the delegation trip to Guiyang which is where I met Ben, allowing this interview to happen.
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Learn more about Ben Bartlett
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Pre Intro 00:00
You’re listening to the Silicon Valley podcast.
This is part two of the interview with Ben Bartlett. Ben Bartlett is the architect of the Berkeley tokenized debt offer, its first of its kind of creative blockchain based municipal bond. He’s a professional and a partner at the Sampson School Office of Tackett Bartlett LLP, where he counsels blockchain entrepreneurs, government, funds and more. Now, let’s jump right into this episode. We talk about the future of Bitcoin, ICO initial coin offerings, governments, digital currency and much, much more.
All right, let’s start.
Intro 00:36
Welcome to the Silicon Valley podcast with your host Shawn Flynn, who interviews famous entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and leaders in tech. Learn their secrets and see Tomorrow’s World Today.
Shawn Flynn 05:54
You’d mentioned blockchain being rolled out here in California and it’s possibly country wide. Are there any examples of kind of global efforts that long chain is being used?
Ben Bartlett 01:08
So blockchain is really advanced in Asia. So Vietnam, Korea and now China is really gone all in. China has and now its blockchain is part of its five-year economic plan. They are they have most of the day, what they call it, the nodes, these validation servers for some of the major currencies. You know, the currencies aren’t legal. They’re all in. They’re also using blockchain technology for other purposes involving like all aspects of government. And they’re about to unleash what could be the biggest game changer of this era in time. There state coin. I’ve heard it called the people’s coin, the People’s Republic of China. Right. People’s coin. Really amazing to think about that people’s coin to be a digital currency backed by I am told billions of billions and billions of pounds of gold and whatever else China has to back it with control to their central banking system and pushed out through their major e-commerce channels like WeChat, Alibaba, Tencent. WeChat, Alibaba and whatever else and straight to consumers we can use it to buy online and really just, I don’t know, just transform the speed of capital because it’s so fast. It’s frictionless. And then the next step by them, not next. At the same time. I know they will be applying it around their one belt or road initiative development goals. For your listeners, the one belt, one road initiative, I think is the largest capital expenditure in human history. This is a multitrillion dollar effort by China to create land-based trade routes around much of the world on multiple continents, recreating the Silk Road, if you will, the trade routes. So these are a network of high-speed rail lines, fuel transport, electrical transport, energy and telecom, transport, cables and pipes and whatnot, and high-speed rail and bridges all through Central Asia and North Africa, West Africa, Asia, North Africa, East Africa, India. And it’s meant to be that the land routes of trade for the next two generations or more or whoever long and so but as China is developing, is massive, massive projects and miles of development through these countries. They’re seeking to develop local economies. Local economies are important to China because they become markets for their goods. So when you come through town and build a bridge and for the rail project, you want this town right there to work on it a bit and participate and be able to become a partner in the growth is then that’s more sustainable. Long term economic growth for. For both parties. All parties since it’s trade. Right. Multinational trade, Well, what’s happening is as they’re paying local labor in the Chinese currency, local labor, because there’s no market for it outside of where they are, they’re having a turnaround. Flip it into U.S. dollars. So china obviously is not happy about that. This people’s coin can be issued to those individuals and those companies along the one belt road initiative for goods and labor etc. And then they can just redeem it and spend it in that ecosystem and then evade the primacy of the dollar. This hard-core geo strategy. That is tremendous. And I think the only thing comparable to it is the Facebook Libra coin, which is probably going to emerge as the United States competing digital currency. And this is a bit of a different setup. It’s Facebook led. And Facebook is it is advantage here because in much of the areas where the one belt, one road initiative is India, Africa, et cetera. Facebook is there. And Facebook is known as the Internet. They don’t say Internet. They say Facebook. So they’re already there and they’re already used to paying on their phones for stuff. And so a Facebook would set up this payment. This digital currency, a Libra coin. I think Libra. And it would be its if we were to pay each other around the world via this platform. And then also to put smart contracts on it so that we’ve subscribed. Right. And the kind of China’s talking about as well can be programmed on top of Libra. Another fundamental difference between the people’s coin and Libra coins is that the Libra coin is sort of backed by at this point, backed by a basket of currencies. So they’ve bit of yen, bit of francs, some dollars. You know, all bundled up here, held in a pot. And that money generates interest. So the people working on it who own them are big corporations like Visa. Although they’re dropping out. They’ll be back. I think that’s my prediction. They’ll be back soon as challenged as coin. They will be on board immediately. And so the big corporations there, they maintain the pots. And I guess share in this and receive the interest payments and bank accounts where they’re invested or something. So it’s people putting their five dollars in Libra and Libra collects interest on it. The people use five dollars. So it’s interesting dynamic. There’s probably a third version that maybe even a better deal for people where they get the interest.
Shawn Flynn 07:11
So, but hasn’t China kind of outlawed Bitcoin and some of these other crypto currencies?
Ben Bartlett 07:18
Yes, they have. They’ve outlawed them for sure. Which is smart if you’re going to have a digital currency, you want to dominate it. The people’s coin will be the one that’s recognized. And Bitcoin is not, however, the mining and the nodes of it are all in China, the major platforms that exist, the groups of people that have servers that traffic in them and validate them. And, you know, like when and just for your listeners, a node is like a small server array that processes things that are happening. So, like in the instance from earlier when I said I give you one dollar, you gave her three dollars, she gave me two dollars and it showed up on our screen the same time. Well, as it showed up, it showed up because these nodes got it. And did these weird computations to prove it. And so that’s why it’s there. Those nodes are the ones who sort of drive the utilization of all these blockchain coins, blockchain based coins, crypto currencies. So and they’re all in China. Not all. But, you know, many, many, many. I think the majority of the major ones are in China because they’re able to get it. They’re able to have cheap electricity. And they’re committed to it. So. It’s interesting to see how that’s going to play out.
Shawn Flynn 08:34
Talking about Bitcoin in that. In the past, ICO’s initial coin offerings were in the news all the time with your law degree background and your experience. Is that dead? What’s happening? What’s happening in that area?
Ben Bartlett 08:58
Yeah, so that’s interesting. You know, the ICO’s initial coin offerings. These are the crowdfunding events. Right? Your listeners probably now about IPOs, initial public offerings while IPOs are great if you’re rich. So, you know, Uber or whatever is going to go up, they can go on the stock market. They let people buy in ahead of time and then one day comes out, they can buy the shares and they’ve already gone up to 400 dollars a share or six thousand dollars a share, you name it. It’s funny, before the ICO revolution, if you looked at a map on the wall, the map of the globe, you would see that the overwhelming concentration of IPO. Dollars and companies all in one part of the world. Silicon Valley, Bay Area, right. San Francisco. And eight miles south. And so but then see ICOs happen because again. Right. There’s not much capital velocity. It was going straight from investment bank to the investor who lives in the same town where the Start-Up offices where the company is. Right. That’s three people getting the money and response to that that need for capital velocity. The people, the market, the innovators, the renegades, people I represent. They came up with a way to crowdfund themselves. So all of a sudden, the IPO map then corresponds to ICO map. And the ICOs map is completely decentralized. You see products all over the world getting funding from people all over the world. And that was amazing. That was an amazing moment, history. We’d be lucky if we could ever get produced, however, because it was just a bunch of bunch people just doing it. There weren’t that the safeguards in place. So many of the companies weren’t that Learjet or they couldn’t get it done or they were frauds or it was game time. And there isn’t a rigorous protocol to it for a company to do to prove its product. Right. To make investment. So many the companies, the coins lost value and went under. And so that was that was a bummer. But luckily, many the investments were small. These were ordinary people investing. So you don’t have the same impact. It’s important. Remember, you do not have the same impact from the ICO era as you do from the mortgage collapse and the securities, the savings and loans collapses of the 80s and 90s. Right. You don’t have that because you spent 40 bucks on some tokens for a fun experiment. Right. And then but merely companies did make it and are building out right now. And they’re doing some amazing things in every single field imaginable, from energy to health care to telecommunications to money which is amazing. So but ICOs themselves began to be prosecuted as violations of the laws that protect investors. Right. So but the problem is protecting investors. You protect them out of making money. The rules are sort of set up where only what they call qualified investors, these very wealthy people can engage the markets. And so they’re safe because they have money in the bank. And that’s kind of how the rules are planned. People who can afford take risk, can risk. But those who want to take risk are legally not allowed to. Oh, of course, after us ICOS came what they call STOs, right, security token offerings. And that’s where these are compliant with U.S. securities laws. And they are more their stated financial instruments like this token is like a stock. Therefore, you have to be one of these qualified investors to buy it. There was hope that that was going to be the next ICO wave. But you see, there’s so few people that are qualified investors that fill the need to experiment with crypto tokens. Right. They want to tokenized buildings, tokenize hotels. Right. Tokenize elements that market is definitely looming. And I’m a part of it. I advise companies tokenized and gold in Africa, in mines and funding mine development and letting these tokens represent piece of market stability, which is commodities like gold. So, it’s cool. I’m excited about it. I think the real growth will be when Marketplace on its own comes up with the new crowdfunding mechanism because they’re not going to start and the people will never sit by and watch your hands deal in the money again. It won’t. They won’t accept it. They don’t have to. Any smart kid on a laptop can create the next revolution. So you’ll see hints of this, right. Some of the exchanges embracing what they call initial exchange offerings, whereas we’re essentially in exchanges the markets, your token and pushes it out to its people to buy and the token should be I don’t get in the weeds here. The tokens should not be a securities B what they call a utility token, which is just a key lets you open the door and operate inside the system as opposed to a security token which is that you own a piece of something on the system, right? Like own a piece of a house or some gold right. In the IEOs, that’s kind of around the stranglehold of the exchanges. Right. Because they are the platforms that they can pick. And maybe that’s good because they can have they can have higher standards. They can pick good projects. Maybe that’s good. We’ll see, though. We’ll see. I think the renegades will design their own marketplace again anytime. The more the state embraces blockchain and takes it. Because that’s the that’s what’s happening next. The movement is institutions, governments and large companies. So Wal-Mart is doing a massive blockchain based supply chain system. IBM is leading, leading the way. Other companies embracing blockchain mission China. Right. And Facebook. JP Morgan, the large investment bank they have there. Their JPM coin that they use internally and internally for them is massive. Right for settlements. And more on the way. All the large banking institutions have all these patents filed, how to use blockchain technology and currencies. I think, you know, you’re going to see this merging of basically what is the Internet. And what is money to become. This new Internet of money, one hand you’ll see it replicate the old Internet, which is pretty much at this point. I think the consensus is that it’s helped consolidate wealth and power. I mean, that’s pretty much what’s what I think people agree on. And we’re going to have that, again, replay through the through the new crypto and blockchain, economies. But unlike the old Internet, the new Internet of money allows ordinary people to create money and create their own marketplaces where you couldn’t quite have that before. And the spirit of the blockchain is born from the Bitcoin White Paper, which I highly suggest your readers just read it short. It’s like a tactical overview of a project or a product or something, or in programming of a schema for technological product. But the Bitcoin White Paper reads more like a manifesto. It was born after the crash of 2008/2007. The Great Recession. And so the white paper comes right out, says it. This is about taking money back for the people. No more Wall Street control, people control. And that is a document. That designed blockchain, well, it existed, but this laid out the blockchain and the use of it. Use of currency distributed currency that cannot be controlled. That’s about shifting power back to people. And so that spirit is this runs through all of this and we hold our meetings. You know, I’m looking for ways to increase government interaction with blockchain and use cases that involve major infrastructure elements like agriculture and shipping and whatnot. And I am like we got to get the stuff certified that we can insure them. We can assure them we can’t go to scale. And the people in the room from the industry like certify. Screw you. You’re not certified nothing. We do our own thing. You don’t control us. We make this. And this is a high-level meetings.
Right. OK. So I’m really refreshed that the young people and the renegades that were born of this movement will never be contained. And so the ICO evolution is only stalled. It is not over.
Shawn Flynn 18:04
What is your opinion of Bitcoin now and in the future?
Ben Bartlett 18:08
You know, it’s just it’s fascinating. It’s a crypto occurrences. Well, Bitcoin, of course, is one of the purest ones because it’s a store of digital value. Now, the few ways to look at this. So on the one hand, cryptocurrency is a data packet. You can pack in all the instructions and background, like, for instance, I when I was running for a higher office, I had a campaign token called The Bingy Coin and the Bingy coin, if you possessed it inside of it. Where all my speeches, all my YouTube links, all my writings, a liquid democracy formula. You helped me vote on projects, but you looked at it just looked like a coin with my face on it. And so there are also instructions for you couldn’t you couldn’t do certain things that violate campaign laws with it because it was written into the length. So cryptographic coin is a data packet with instructions and sometimes instructions have value, sometimes not when they don’t have value. It’s like I said, a key. It’s meant to open up a door to you use a platform like with this you rent Airbnb and go rent a house in a car. But Bitcoin, the first one is meant to purely be a store of value. And there’s only 21 million of them allowed to exist. They’re invisible, though. Wanting me divided. I think I heard a dozen times on these photos she sets. Right. The Bitcoin element itself is something that fans agree is awesome. People believe in it. And that’s the alchemy of money right there. When people believe in a thing, it has value, whether it stamps or comic books or anything that we trade. Right. What’s interesting on this is that on a deeper level with Bitcoin and why it’s so important, why it’s so valuable besides facts. The first is the heaviest because each bitcoin in order to be validated or create has to be mined. Right. Whereas these computers to do these extensive mathematical formulas? You have to just do this crazy formula as it used to use a lot of electricity. It’s so much juice goes into one coin what it is. It’s step down electricity into one packet. It’s a ball of electricity and electricity. In this era, it is three things at once. It’s information. See, that with the Internet. It’s energy. Electric cars and solar panels and the lights we are now and is currency. That amount of electricity encapsulated in one form has a value. It’s just by its nature. That’s what people are missing. When they when they talk about Bitcoin, they’re missing the fact that it is. It encapsulates electricity. Which has a value in and of itself, because it is the main currency that people use to trade back and forth. When you buy one Bitcoin, whatever, you know, I don’t really speculate too much. I don’t I’m not into that part of the business. I’m more into the underlying technology and the blockchain part. But I think with its limited number that exist and with its brand name adoption and it’s the main one, everyone knows I’d say it’s its values without limit.
Shawn Flynn 21:43
Are there any companies that you’re currently working on or working with or companies you are advising or on the board that are tackling some interesting problems that you’d like to share?
Ben Bartlett 21:54
We try to focus on clients that are working on projects that address or human problems. Right. Wealth creation, poverty, environmental degradation and sort of just impact, if you will. We have one group working with really exciting. Like I mentioned before, their tokenized gold and the gold is mined by these artisan miners who are small mom and pop miners and, you know, small towns and getting them a fair price, a good price, helping them just capitalize on their on their assets that they own. And then, of course, bringing that out in communities that they live in to benefit from. That’s I’m excited about that. Another project to use the crowdfunding techniques that we came up with in Berkeley. One group I’m working with really excited about these guys. There are many ways to finance you salination and water generation plants around the world. By crowdfunding on a global scale HD salination plant causing a billion dollars. And we know that the world’s going to be out of water in about 35 years. Much of the world. That is total collapse. When the mature the world population is without fresh water at that point, it’s over. But nation states will they won’t be a building of walls because you’re not going to sit there and die thirst. You’re going to go to the water wherever it is. The goal is companies to build 12 hundred mega scale water production facilities around the world. And actually, we’re in it, we’re on a planet made of water, nobody should die thirst. They figure out to get the salt on the water and drink it out of the ocean and drink it figured out right. That’s a big one, too. Water access. Another one is tokenizing renewable Energy, basically allowing people to participate in the grid and to buy into electricity more readily through their phones for each other to create little personal energy markets. Another company I’m excited about is one that has a market around energy efficiency, making a building more efficient and you can install some new light bulbs and lower lectured like the electricity bill is such way that the savings can be captured by the people doing it. And this one company, they’re really adept at building up small, local and minority owned businesses to go out hit these millions of buildings that need to be retrofitted this way and made efficient, earning half of the savings. And so, they’re at their blockchain mechanism that they’re designing. They know that they have design in their smart contracts system that they’ve written. It’s just automates that process and allows for a token economy to occur in that world for these small businesses and the buildings and platform. So super exciting. I’m really, really excited about that.
Shawn Flynn 24:54
Ben, this has been amazing interview. If someone wants to find out more information about you or what you’re currently working on, what’s the best way to go about it? And in fact, could you give us a little snippet of what you’re currently working on?
Ben Bartlett 25:05
Thank you. Doing some interesting things and I’d love to get input from people in Berkeley were passing legislation to enable able crypto payments for cannabis because these local communities that sell cannabis are able to get the tax payments. It’s because the banks won’t work with them. There’s all these new apparatuses now to at the point of sale, automatically send taxpayers to the city and et cetera, et cetera. So that’s a big one. And say California, you know, working with these people to craft the rules or they call sandbox safe harbor rules. What should we allow companies to do in California? What should blockchain companies be allowed to do? How can we ease their way? And I’ve written a great framework around that called Calling for a California blockchain innovation zone. It’s on my medium page. BenBartlett @Medium. Check it out. It details, I think, a good public benefit framework for blockchain companies over on medium. BenBartlett @medium. And then, of course, as an advisor to companies, companies both large and small. About how to be sustainable to achieve market growth in these new territories and how to just how to be thoughtful and how to how to get it. And of course, my law firm partner, Shane Tackett and I, we work on some of the highest level operators in the boxing space. We help them achieve their goals. And that’s my law firm. Tackett Bartlett.com T a c k e t t B a r t l e t t .com.
Shawn Flynn 26:38
Great. We’ll have all those links in the show notes. So, if anyone out there is looking for an amazing advisor, some coach and someone that’s an expert in this domain, we’ll be able to reach out. So once again, Ben, I want to thank you for taking the time today to be on our show. I also want to thank Wendy Shray, who is the one that introduced me to Ben, actually when we were on a trip to Guiyang about a year ago. Ben, do you want to give a little speech about what you’re doing at Guiyang at that time?
Ben Bartlett 27:06
Oh, my God. That was amazing. Best trip ever. So I went to Guiyang to help set up a sister city with Berkeley, and Guiyang and the University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, Universal, UC Berkeley. And because Guiyang was committed to becoming a data center, a data city. And so, we went there to form an alliance. And I got to hang out. So many great people. And I made presentations and speeches. And at that time, you know, we think we had just passed the first iteration of this of the micro bonds, blockchain bonds. And so we’re talking about it. And that’s where I learned about the one road, one road initiative and how the micro-bonds could be used to facilitate infrastructure development on a global scale. And I was I fell in love with the place. The people were so amazing and the scale of the buildings that were so big and I can’t wait to go back. I had a great time and it was wonderful to meet you there. We were on a panel. That was a fun day. It was a good time.
Shawn Flynn 28:09
So I would tweet some of these pictures out when the show goes live. So, follow me at ShawnFlynn S H A W N F L Y N N S V
Ben Bartlett 28:20
and I’ll do it @BenBartlettUSA.
Shawn Flynn 28:21
Great. Also, if you enjoyed the show today, please share with your friends. Leave us a great review on iTunes or whatever podcast platform you use to listen to this episode. And once again, I want thank everyone out there for tuned in to Silicon Valley. And Ben, once again, thank you for your time today.
Ben Bartlett 28:36
Right on. Thank you. All doors open.
Outro 28:40
Thank you for listening to The Silicon Valley Podcast. To access our resources, visit us at TheSiliconValleyPodcast.com and follow our host on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn @ShawnFlynnSV. This show is for entertainment purposes only and is licensed by The Investors Podcast Network. Before making any decisions, consult a professional.
