In an exclusive interview with cryptonews.com, Ingo Rübe, CEO of KILT, talks about blockchain’s identity problem, digital identification in government and KILT, the infrastructure layer of web3 identity.
About Ingo Rübe
Ingo Rübe is the founder and CEO of KILT Protocol, a blockchain identity protocol for issuing self-sovereign and verifiable credentials. He leads a team in Berlin that develops enterprise and consumer services “built on KILT” which protect digital identity across financial services and accounting, health care, IoT, media, energy, and gaming. Earlier in his career, he was the CTO of Hubert Burda Media and also served on the Board of Directors of the Drupal Association.
Ingo Rübe gave a wide-ranging exclusive interview which you can see below, and we are happy for you to use it for publication provided there is a credit to www.cryptonews.com.
Highlights Of The Interview
- Digital identification in government – blockchain at scale
- Polkadot Alliance – a sign of stability in the current web3 community
- Blockchain’s identity problem and how we can fix it
- KILT – the infrastructure layer of web3 identity
- Ethereum Killers – do they really have a chance?
Full Transcript Of The Interview
Matt Zahab
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Cryptonews Podcast. We’re buzzing as always and today our guest is coming in hot from lovely Berlin, Germany on the bucket list, gotta go there. Today we have the founder and CEO of KILT Protocol, Mr. Ingo Rübe, a Blockchain Identity Protocol for issuing self-sovereign and verifiable credentials. Ingo and his team are in Berlin and develop enterprise and consumer services built on KILT which protect Digital Identity across financial services and accounting, healthcare, IoT, media, energy and gaming. You name it, they are there. Earlier in his career, he was the CTO of Hubert Burda Media, and also served on the Board of Directors of the Drupal Association. Been waiting for this one for a while we finally got him on, Ingo, welcome to the show man pumped to have you on.
Ingo Rübe
Thank you. Thanks for having us. Thank you.
Matt Zahab
Super pumped this is a while man. But this was a long time coming and comes out perfect time to it seems like the general population is the “Gen pop” as we like to call them is really finally hammered down and perhaps is finally a little horny for security and Digital Identification. And your team are moving and grooving in that what sort of made you such a fan? What got you so into this? Was there like an aha moment or light bulb moment? Or was it just a concession of different events? Like what got you into privacy in Digital Identification?
Ingo Rübe
Yeah, the thing was actually that we started this company, funded by industry by Hubert Burda Media where I worked before as a CTO, and I was going to go do something in Blockchain. I told them and they said, Oh, can we actually jump on the boat and have some shares in the company? We will give you some money for that? And I said, Yeah, why not? Because there was so much easier than raising money. And then, actually, we sat there with a team and some money. And the question came up, actually, what can we do now? So what would we do? What would you do if you have some money and you are supposed to do something or you want to do something in Blockchain? And coming from industry, I was thinking, Okay, what will actually be the first thing that is going to be adopted, from the Blockchain by the industry. So what is needed most? And then we were looking at different topics like advertising here, and you name it different things. And we always came around the problem. Okay, you should do that with a Blockchain. But actually, you can’t, because the identity problem on Blockchain isn’t solved. And then we say, okay, at one point, he said, Okay, probably we have to solve the identity problem. And then we sat down and said, Okay, this is what we do. So this is all about identity, and all the others can then use it and build beautiful things on top of that.
Matt Zahab
So what is the identity problem? You brought up a couple of times in your opener there, what exactly is that?
Ingo Rübe
So the identity problem is that in Blockchain, you normally can’t really identify people. And which is also actually meant to be like that, right. But if you want to work with industry, then you have to identify things, still keeping a bit of privacy and so, the Digital Identity in the internet as such is not solved, because it is solve in the physical world and the physical world, you have identity, you have the two types of things which together constitute identity. One is the identifier, which is for example, your face or your fingerprint or your signature. So these are things which you make yourself and which are not given to you by the government, which are not given to you by your company. So this is totally decentralized in the physical world. So you have for example, fingerprints, right? No one gave you the fingerprint, and it’s just identification. So this is how you identify people, this is still not identity, right? It’s just identification. And if you want to make an identity, then you have to add verifiable credentials to that. So what’s the verifiable credential that this is a for example, your passport, your driver’s license, your student card, many things, the keys to your office, all these things are verifiable credentials. And they are normally issued by trips and trusted entities, which also have an identity of course, so that you can actually find out which, which trusted entity this is. And they issue those credentials to identify us. So when I have, for example, a passport, there’s a picture of my face. And so this is how the identifier and the credential are linked together. And the cool thing about those physical verifiable credentials is that they’re actually in my pocket, right, I control them 100%. They’re not controlled by the government. They’re not controlled by the company or something. They’re just controlled by me, I decide who I show this thing to.
Matt Zahab
Interesting.
Ingo Rübe
And when I want to show the thing, this is actually what we call him identity transaction, then the issuer of the credential is not involved, which gives you a lot of privacy. If I use my driver’s license to buy a bottle of whiskey, then the government which gave me the driver’s license will never find out that I bought a bottle of whiskey, which is a great piece of privacy for me. And it’s also very scalable, and has lots of other nice features. And this thing was never built in the Internet. In the internet, we have very centralized identity, which is, in some big American companies like Google and Facebook, this is where your internet identity lives, they have your identifier, which is username, password, or an entry in the database. They also have your verifiable credentials, which is all the data that they collect about you. But they can decide at any given point that they’re just delete your identity, which is not possible with the physical identity, because no one’s going to delete your face or your fingerprint or your signature, right, it’s still there. So you, in the Internet, you don’t control your data. And in the physical world, you do control your data. So actually, with the internet, we made a huge step back in privacy, and also in functionality. And this is what we want to change with KILT Protocol. So this is possible. Now as we have decentralized technology, we have Blockchains. So in Blockchains, we can do these things. And we just use the technology, which is now invented since 2011, or something to solve the identity problem that the internet had from the beginning.
Matt Zahab
100 in almost 90 episodes, and this is easily one of the just most in your face, a no brainer Use Cases for a crypto company that I’ve ever heard of this is like, this is bananas. Ingo, how do you get? How do you get governments to say with this, right? Because without? I feel like that’s a huge piece of the puzzle. You need them on board in order to make this whole parade happen. How do you get them on board?
Ingo Rübe
Actually, you don’t meet them because they are. So the government’s are very much in the physical world still, right. So they still issue paper documents or plastic documents and stuff like that. And then we have a different layer on top of that, which is called the KYC companies. So there’s companies which actually have trust, and they can issue KYC credentials. So we’re just supplying a technology for companies, which are if you want to do so KYC is not the only Use Case for Digital Identity. Right? There’s many others. But KYC is, of course, an important one. So if you want to do KYC, there’s such a system, you use the government KYC, because this is normally accepted by banks and whoever you want to interact with. And you take your credentials, which you have in your pocket, right, like your driver’s license, your passport, whatever you need to do your KYC. And you record a little bit and all that stuff. And then from the KYC company, which did this process with you, you get a verifiable credential, which is a digital version of your driver’s license, your passport, or whatever you use. And you can store that on your computer. And then the question is, who’s going to and they are signing it, right? It’s not only that you have it into your DID is basically linked to your digital face. And then you can show it to someone. And if this someone is going to accept it very much depends on the trust of the company, which the KYC. So if you have a huge company in there, which is trusted by basically governments and all that, then these cables, just by anyone, if I issue you KYC credential, then probably no one’s going to trust that. So it’s just another it’s a question of how do we get the trusted companies in there and not a question of how do we get the government’s in there? Because the government’s if we try, we tried that actually, in the beginning of when we started the company, we’re very much into German and European policies, making and we basically got to know everyone from policymaking there and that was a huge waste of time.
Matt Zahab
Why?
Ingo Rübe
Because they are thinking in very different ways. If you tell a guy from the government, actually, it would be nice that people own their faces, right? And then they said, Yeah, that’s nice. And we recognize that this is the case in the physical world, but in the digital world, it’s so nice that Facebook has that can’t we be the Facebook? And then we say yeah, basically, maybe you can, but that wouldn’t solve the problem, right? Because then the government could actually delete your identity. And if government can delete your identity, this is something that should not happen. Not because we don’t trust the government, we’re living in a democratic world. And it’s totally nice that governments and data, they have a very special relationship. Because when I give data and the power to use the data, or even to delete the data to a government, I also automatically give it to all the future governments because the data doesn’t vanish. But governments do. So if I give to the German government, which is nice government, I say, yeah, you can control my DID, basically, my decentralized identifier, I would even trust them that they don’t do anything bad with it. But it could be that in four or eight years or so another government comes up, and they are looking for people with glasses, and they don’t like them, and they just shut them off, right. And then I lose my Digital Identity, which will be in 10 years or so much more than much more worth, much more valuable than the physical identity. So giving the power to use those things to government is very complicated. And but governments always think, Okay, we’ve seen this Facebook model, can we not do it like that? And then the conversation actually ends in nothing.
Matt Zahab
Can you imagine the gov trying to make a Facebook? Come on, you know, quick, they had to move? Do you know, what’s the classic? Motto move fast and break things? Yeah, that’s like, that’s the exact opposite of the gov, the gov is move, slow, and.
Ingo Rübe
Exactly. And so on the decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials, and we see some movements in this direction, also in Asia, which is much faster moving than Europe, for example. But in Europe, we don’t see that, unfortunately. So for us, it was a very big waste of time actually talking to those guys for years. And then we looked at it and said, Actually, identity is not going to come from top down, it’s going to come bottom up. Because who’s the first adopters, the first adopters are of course, the Blockchain people because it’s easiest for them. But then comes next then comes gamers, probably because they are interested in identity as well, because they want to basically know, not really which person they are playing with. But as they don’t need your street address, but they need your Twitter account, or your Discord account to find out who you actually are, which what’s your reputation around that. So and on top of that, probably some kind of e-commerce is emerging. And then there’s things which are happening in the industry, right? So industry is coming first. And then maybe there is Metaverse asvwe will see. But if we have something like that, then money is made in this virtual world. And when there’s money made, then the government comes in and says actually, where’s my taxes? And then this dropping it? So it’s not going the way that the government first says, Yeah, we all want the ideas we use KILT and then it trickles down. It’s more like it’s coming up from the grassroot movements, actually. And then at one point, it gets so important that governments have to jump on it.
Matt Zahab
Yeah, they want to have a choice. That’s very well said. I want to go back to Asia and more specifically China for a second. They are again, I haven’t been I’ve been to India, have not been to China, so I haven’t seen how far ahead they are. Obviously seeing the videos bunch from on YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, you name it. And I have friends who’ve gone and have sent me the videos firsthand. Ingo, it is scary, the amount of control over your identity that they have in China, can you tell any stories? Or can you speak to this? In any regard? Because from what I’ve seen, it is absolute bonkers. Based on your fingerprints, your facial ID everywhere, they got it all?
Ingo Rübe
Yeah this is exactly what I meant. So they basically control your identity, right? And if they control your identity, then they can also control all the verifiable credentials you have on top of that, and they can also self-issue them, basically. So this is the Facebook case. And what do you have for Facebook, what Facebook is doing as a business model, China is basically doing as a governance model. So it’s the same thing. So China is pretty successful in copying the Facebook idea of collecting all the data, computing it together, making AI on top of it, and so on. So they do exactly what Facebook does. But Facebook does that commercially, which is much less dangerous than if the government does that. Because right Facebook doesn’t control the police. The government does, right. That’s the big difference.
Matt Zahab
Have you been there? Have you seen it firsthand?
Ingo Rübe
No, I’ve not been there.
Matt Zahab
Any interest as a big ID guy.
Ingo Rübe
It’s, well, I don’t like it from here. And the problem probably wouldn’t like it when I’m there. So I won’t go there.
Matt Zahab
Sometimes you just gotta you know, you can’t knock it till you try it. You got to test it out.
Ingo Rübe
But we will first have to figure out the COVID situation there probably.
Matt Zahab
100%, before the show you and I were talking a little bit about EU’s Digital Identity Program. I had no clue about this until you brought it up. I’d love to throw the ball over to your court, if you just give us a little primer about what’s happening and how and how it most likely, realistically will not work out.
Ingo Rübe
Yeah. So what the Europeans call that eIDAS2. So eIDAS2 is a pretty old standard, which is a standard, now it’s regulation, which came from the EU, and which basically said, if you want to store any personal data, then you have to secure it, which is not the worst idea, right? So that you don’t, if you would be able to break into something, then it should be somehow secure. So data centers are not, per se, a bad thing. But then over the last 10 years, actually, the science actually went a little bit further down the road and noticed actually, if you want to have real security, you do this with do that with decentralization. This is what we have the Blockchain from. So in Blockchains, are much more secure, actually, than a centralized system, because a centralized system can always be broken into and the Blockchain is very hard to break into, because it’s decentralized. So actually, we know that for about 10 years now, eI wasn’t moving at all. And it was actually not allowing a lot of things. So if I want to build something in Germany, which is government related, it always has to be compatible with eI does. So it says, Okay, your Blockchain has to run in a data center, which is basically exactly what a Blockchain does not. So it’s very hard to get into governmental things with Blockchain. So that was always very disturbing. Now, of course, you can just do say, Well, you don’t work with those guys. And then you can make Blockchains no problem. But now, eI just was looked at a little bit. And then there’s this decentralization thing. And they thought about identity and identity sounds so much better when it’s decentralized. So they said, Okay, we make a new version of it, and say, personal data, which is actually shouldn’t be owned by the people, because the passport is owned by the person. That would be nice if it would be the same in the digital world, which is a great step actually. So very positive to see. So they say, okay, you can have a digital passport. And this digital passport is in your Digital Wallet, and you can show it to anyone, and we’re not going to track it. But then they say the identifier, unfortunately, which is your face, fingerprint, this is issued by the government. And so it basically also says, Okay, if we want to delete your identity, we can delete your identity, no matter how many credentials you actually collected. And of course, then the wallet where you have this stuff, it can be open source, it can be closed source, we don’t know. But it’s probably going to come from a big company, it’s probably being closed source. What do you use a wallet, which is closed source? I wouldn’t, because there can be some trapdoors in there, right? It could be that somehow they can manipulate the credential. So it’s all very half baked, and doesn’t make a very good impression. And it is actually moving in the wrong direction, because apparently, the government lobbyists have a very strong on. But we have to have those Facebook moments, right, we have to somehow control that identifier. And as long as they don’t understand that the identifier is not controlled by government, but it has to be controlled by the individual, this thing is miserably going to fail. But we’re going to see a lot of money being pumped into that in the next couple of years before it fails.
Matt Zahab
What can we do to let the government and more specifically the decision makers know that it is truly the people who will decide if this works or not, not them? Like, is there even a roadmap like is there a secret sauce? Or is it just they’re gonna have to figure it out for themselves?
Ingo Rübe
I would just say do good work on the grassroots level, get the industry in because industries understanding it. So industry is so much quicker in thinking than governments are. So industry in the end wins. So what we do is we make industrial corporations. So we cooperate with big industries, small industry, any type of industry, they’re always understand the case, they always understand that identity has to be decentralized. It’s very easy to get to them to start working with them. And then this is building an ecosystem. And at one point governments will understand and it’s I think it’s not the right way to actually go to your government and tell them you’re wrong because we tried that, and they will not listen probably because they just want to have this because they also have consultants right and they live from consultants and those consultants have been trained in the platform area of Facebook, and every consultant which every business consultant that you meet, will probably tell you when you are in a CEO or governmental high position, will tell you copy Facebook, you will be happy. And this is what they’re not last 10 years, we are not in the position to go there and say they were wrong. They will find out after a while, but they will find out by industry using a different way or going a different route. Because then they say actually what’s happening there, those people are pretty happy too. So maybe we should be like that. But it’s not going to happen because we have great ideas. There’s this beautiful technology, please use that that’s not going to happen.
Matt Zahab
Ingo, you’re on a roll here, folks here I got to take quick break, to give a massive shout out to the sponsor to the show PrimeXBT and when we get back, we’re going to take a deep dive into KILT what they’re doing with Polkadot, the Polkadot Alliance, and where other main benefits and Use Cases are for Digital Identification. But before we get to that, gotta give a huge shout out to our sponsor the show and that is PrimeXBT, we love PrimeXBT over here Cryptonews, longtime friend, longtime partner, and we’ve all been using it for an absolute Hot Minute as they offer a robust trading system for both beginners and professional traders. It doesn’t matter if you’re a rookie or a vet, you can easily design and customize your layouts and widgets to best fit your trading style. PrimeXBT is also offering an exclusive promotion for listeners of the Cryptonews Podcast, the promo code is CRYPTONEWS50. And then that is CRYPTONEWS50 all one word to receive 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. Again CRYPTONEWS50 all in word to receive 50% of your deposit credited to your trading account. Now back to show with Ingo. Ingo, let’s jump into KILT here. Let’s go for a nice old deep dive you started off and give us a lovely primer on the ins and outs of privacy, Digital Identity, identification 101 you name it, you’ve done it. Let’s get into KILT now. You started talking about why you started KILT, obviously, you’re a very front of mind and in your face Use Case that the general pop will need to use sooner rather than later. I want to know what KILT offers in terms of identity solutions, the actual products and services themselves? And how do they work? Balls in your court. What do you got for me?
Ingo Rübe
So first and foremost, we see ourselves as an infrastructure layer. So what we do so we are on the level where TCP/IP or HTTP or something like that. So use the stuff, build great things on it and become rich. This is our story, right? This is our narrative. So we are not primarily targeting the end user, we are primarily targeting the developer. So any cool development team can build great identity applications on top of KILT without of course paying because it’s all open source. So this is what we provide. So real infrastructure provider, of course, we have built a couple of applications with a subsidiary that you can already use so that you can see the power of DIDs and how that works. For example, there’s a beautiful application, I would say, which is called Social KYC, which is a service where you can get your social media accounts, credential, so it’s actually checking if you own this Twitter account, this Discord account and so on. And you get a credential for that. And then you can, for example, have services can use that. So that you can say you can log in with your Twitter credentials, or your Discord credential. And then you can send those credentials from your Digital Wallet, to the services and you have a nice login without passwords and all that stuff. So that would be that’s an interesting thing. Of course, I was mentioning the wallet, of course, we have an identity wallet, it’s called Sporran, which you can download where you can store your Digital Identity, it’s creating DIDs on your computer, because those DIDs have to be created on your computer, they’re not given to you by us or by a company or something, right? They are given to you by yourself. So you create them there. You can also receive credentials, for example, from Social KYC. And you can store them there. You can move them, you can package them up, you can send them to other applications. So Sporran, I think a very key thing that we built. There’s plenty of others actually. So if you look into how Web2 actually managed to do signing of documents, there’s one big company which comes to mind, I don’t want to say the name now. But it’s always a little bit strange if you work with those guys, right? And because the first thing that you do with your possibly secret document is you upload to server of a company. And then second thing is that you actually signed this with your email address and email addresses can actually be very easily spoofed. And so there’s actually not very much security in there but a lot of real estate things are happening exactly with this thing. So this is what we thought actually could be done much better with DIDs and could be, there should be a pre solution for that. And we also built this is called DIDSign. So didsign in one word .io, where you can actually use your DID to sign documents and also timestamp them for example, and add verifiable credentials to them so that the person who sees your signature actually can make sure that the signature is coming from you, and also knows who you are on the internet. So this is really a powerful system. And there’s some other things which we built there. But these are small applications, I think, what’s much bigger is the applications that other people built. And so this is going to be much more important. So these things just start this year. So there we you will see some big companies from the accounting world, from the publishing world, from the healthcare world, coming out with applications on top of KILT some early next year already, so these things are coming up, but they’re not coming from us, right, we are just the infrastructure provider. And other people on top of that, say, actually, this is a cool business model, or I have a great idea for a business model. Let’s do this KYC thing, for example. And then the company steps in says, actually, so many people need reusable KYC, which they don’t do for one thing, but for many different locations. So that can actually be charged with a lot of money. And there’s a lot of need for it. So it’s a huge business case, which technology that we build it on, of course KILT. So this is great for us because they’re using us but it’s also great for them because they’re getting rich.
Matt Zahab
That’s a massive play right there. They’re literally just like you said being the infrastructure level of Digital Identity that is absolutely massive. Ingo, you guys have been buzzing and obviously continuing to build in the bear market you in the team are battlers that hearts. There’s no doubt there. You guys are also one of the founding fellows of the recently announced Polkadot Alliance. I heard about this, I saw it on Twitter, I took a little small dive. I don’t know a whole lot about it. I’d love to know, why was it created? Who else is involved? What are your goals? What’s the whole deal with the Polkadot Alliance?
Ingo Rübe
So the idea of the of Polkadot Alliance was when you look at different ecosystems right now, in the Blockchain world, especially those around the so called Ethereum killers, right? And you’re looking at around that, you will find that not all of them are truly decentralized. And I think that what Polkadot is doing for quite a while is not putting too much money into marketing. But putting a lot of effort actually in decentralization. And this is what we very much believe in because it’s when we do Blockchain, we should actually do Blockchain in a really decentralized way. Otherwise, it doesn’t really make sense. Because anything which is not decentralized can also be done by a database. And databases are so much cheaper and so much easier than Blockchains. So probably, in the long run, Polkadot is going to be really important player. And I think it’s important already, but it’s going to get more important. And it’s getting more important because of the real decentralization because we have seen in recent months, we have seen what happens in Blockchain or in the Blockchain Ecosystem when they’re centralized players. Not saying any names, but sometimes it really goes wrong. So if you mix it with a little bit of greed, and irresponsibility. So being irresponsible, then actually, it’s bound to crash. And so as we see a lot of people moving out their funds, from centralized exchanges to decentralized exchanges. Now, actually, the same thing is probably going to happen in many different ways. So Polkadot always aims to be really decentralized and KILT does too. And we are thinking about many different things which can be decentralized on top of the system. So one of the issues that we had in basically last year in the in the bull market, was that the name Polkadot was actually misused by some projects, because you could just say, Polka or something, and then go to investors and just raise a lot of money even though you were not building anything or you were building something on Ethereum. And that is not nice, because it’s damaging the name. And then we also found some people who actually really don’t stick to the rules how open source software should be used, so people shouldn’t be credited. So of course, you can use the software from Sporran. Right? So software is Sporran. If you want to build an identity wallet, go ahead, use Sporran but it would be nice if you mentioned us If you do that, right, and some people just didn’t do that they were just and this is then stealing somehow, because they pretend that this was their idea. And these things were really a little bit annoying. And so what can you do against it when you are a decentralized system? So how can you do it in a decentralized way, and this is what we try, it with Polkadot Alliance, that we tried to put a decentralized on chain organization, to what were some projects are representative of the founders are now represented, but anyone else can join, which actually look at these things, and have black lists and white lists of projects and people and so on, so that people can easily do that more easily do the research on if a project is actually part of this ecosystem or not. So this is what we’re trying. And of course, you could do this as a legal entity, but we don’t want to, we want to have it on chain. And Polkadot has the possibility to build those things as a common good pair chain, which is a fantastic idea.
Matt Zahab
So all of the obviously your bias because you guys are working with them so closely. But all that aside your long term Polkadot, you think that it’s got a lot of a lot of growth ahead, potentially.
Ingo Rübe
I would say so yes, because the technology is really far for a heck of a lot of other things. I think everything else that we see in the space. And technology is not going to win off its own right, you also have to talk about it. But and Polkadot is definitely not best in talking about it. But what we have seen, or what we do see is that Polkadot attracts the biggest amount of developers in the whole ecosystem lead, of course, Ethereum is bigger. If you cut out.
Matt Zahab
After ETH.
Ingo Rübe
After Ethereum, it’s second biggest. And that means that a lot of people understood actually that this technology is great. And the ecosystem is worth as much as the projects which build on it, right? Because Polkadot itself was just an infrastructure for building projects. And so now it’s not only we that are here, there’s many others and they’re getting more every day. And if some of these projects actually do really valuable things, then Polkadot becomes more valuable. And then more developers come in, and then more Use Cases show up. And if projects that are going for industrial adoption, then also more and more industry actually comes in. And this has, I think a great chance because it is not driven by those who greed or something or shilling something. It’s driven by technologies. It’s just a bunch of technologists who want to build the perfect Blockchain infrastructure. And that I think that’s sometimes it’s a little bit annoying, because it’s not loud enough. Of course, we are also we would like to have it louder sometimes but, in the end, we understand it’s probably the right way because it’s good to go the right way is because you see that not in bull markets and the bull markets is everyone else looks maybe better from time to time. But in a bear market when these things like SPF and all that stuff happens, you see where centralization we’re not following the true rules of, of decentralization and of open source if you don’t, if you don’t follow those rules, where it actually ends up and I think in the long run, decentralization is going to win and this is what Polkadot is very much standing for.
Matt Zahab
Great points there. I love it too. It’s you the one thing you brought up that I find very interesting is their lack of marketing which is really true now and I’ve always it’s been sort of back of mine never front of mine but after you bring it up a couple of times you’re so right about that they really don’t hammer home a lot of the value props like a lot of the other chains after Ethereum on Chart do just very thought provoking there. I want to talk about CBDCs, Central Bank Digital Currency.
Ingo Rübe
Heard about that.
Matt Zahab
Yeah, Canada what was it I want to say was two days ago, two three days ago, where by the time is this episode will air mid to late December and we’re recording mid December here. But Canada even released something that early 2023 the gov in the in the Canadian Fed are going to test the consumer sentiment levels for a Digital Currency. It’s like one I feel like that is just beyond nonsensical because the gen pop probably doesn’t have a good enough idea of the pros and cons and the value props and the negative aspects of a CBDC and I feel like crypto people they’re not going to go ask it to me it’s just seems absolutely crazy. How quick do you think these will get rolled out? And how bad will it be when they get rolled up?
Ingo Rübe
I think that actually was the big difference between the CBDC and the money we have right now. Because actually, it is very digital. So I can use my plastic card to pay with it, it’s automatically deducted from my account, I get some I have internet access to my account and can see it how much was deducted, actually, it’s very digital already. So the difference between the CBDC and the currency we have right now is actually that you can make micro payments, that’s the only thing that come comes on top right, you can say we’re paying 100 part of a penny for something for and this is good for industry. So if they want to do that, they can do that. I think that has nothing to do with Blockchain because it is a Central Bank Digital Currency. So there’s nothing decentralized and there is not a cryptocurrency in a way, it’s more like a clone or avatar of the Canadian dollar, of the Euro, what you have. So it’s going to be the same thing. I’ve been in a working group on a group on CBDC for Europe. And that was a very lengthy discussion, especially with a of lots of people from science. And so pegging is a huge problem, who’s going to how secure is it going to be? Because if it’s issued by the Central Bank, then it’s even more centralized, than the Euros or whatever you have. Because those Euros are basically then they are in banks. And there’s more than one bank. So it’s partly decentralized, or distributed, at least, if you put this all on one account, basically, and then one computer in the end, then it’s a nice honeypot for hackers to actually steal all the money. So, there’s lots of issues with CBDC. I don’t see them in the next couple of years, because there’s definitely a need from industry because they want micropayments. But maybe we find another way to do micropayments without CBDC. Because I think that’s the only actual need for it. Because otherwise we have CBDC already.
Matt Zahab
I get where you’re coming from there. But I would I think the biggest difference with CBDC in our current sort of digital banking system with credit cards, and you know, electronic transfers, and the Venmo and Zelle and all that kind of stuff is sort of the one flick of a switch to gas, everything immediately. You know what I mean? Like right now if someone you know if Trudeau wanted to de platformed me for whatever reason, not social media, but net economic wise, you know, personal bank business paying more where that came from, blah, blah, blah, like credit card, you know, MasterCard, Visa, multiple AmEx, and so on, so forth. So I feel like it’s not just a one switch, right, whereas with the CBDC, it almost would be I feel like that’s where it gets scary.
Ingo Rübe
This is one of the there’s many points where the CBDC is not a good idea. One of them is the identity problem for at least your bank account, or somehow a credential which is linked to your DID through your decentralized identifier if this is centralized again, then you are in big trouble because someone can just take your money off and switch you off. And then you can’t pay anything anymore. So this is also very dangerous and centralized things are normally dangerous and if they are with the government, and it’s more than dangerous, but there’s also other people who are actually working against that so ask the banks if they like that idea, they hate it because they are basically losing their jobs then right so they have huge lobbies. So this is it’s going to be really complicated to have that I don’t think there’s a huge future and that I know that China made some kind of a CBDC but you’re not hearing a lot from that anymore over the last years as apparently the need for that is rather know the risk behind it is rather high in many different ways for the consumer but also technology wise and so maybe it’s not such a great idea.
Matt Zahab
Ingo you’ve been on fire all happy bro we are getting tight for time and this has been a treat last segment and then we will wrap up, hot take factory it’s put a shit kick boots on. Jump in give me an Ingo hot take I feel like you got a couple I feel like you’re more than a couple even buzzin something perhaps when the Ingo believes in that most people don’t can be food sports politics, geo space, AI crypto, you name it anything give me a couple Ingo hot takes.
Ingo Rübe
Actually if you mentioned it, I believe in food. Not only that, I like to eat food. But I think that food is one of probably one of the biggest topics that we will have in the next and upcoming years because people are very much concerned about what they eat and where it comes from. And this is something where technology is in this in the very baby steps, I would say. So there’s a lot of things to do in supply chain in fair trade in and stuff like that. And because people really are interested in what they actually consumed, and this wasn’t that way, like 30 years ago, when I was like 20, people, I wasn’t very much interested in what I ate was good if I wasn’t hungry after that, but now people are concerned and technology hasn’t and technology in food production and also in supply chains in food hasn’t picked that up. And I was just speaking this morning with a with a new I don’t know, it’s probably an accelerator for food companies, which is going to happen and which is going to happen was going to be built here in Berlin. And we are going to get involved there because I find this topic absolutely hot. And there’s hundreds so they bought a huge house actually, I don’t know how many square meters that is, but it’s really huge. And they want to have food startups in there producing foods and thinking about foods and making research and making trade ideas and so on. And it’s not even open but it’s already booked completely. So you see that there’s a huge mass of thinking in this direction and this is totally neglected in many ways. This is something I’m totally pumped for.
Matt Zahab
Love that, any good resources to learn about it like are there any thought leaders or podcasts about sort of the rejuvenation and new tech food industry?
Ingo Rübe
I would put something together if you like and sent you an email or then publish.
Matt Zahab
Okay and you got it Ingo what an epi man really appreciate it and you have an open invite for round two anytime you’d like truly a great episode and learned a ton and again you guys are building something that is not something oh you know we’ll use it when it’s ready. We need this shit now so love you and the team for doing that. Before we let you go can you please let our listeners know where they can find you, and KILT online and on socials.
Ingo Rübe
So very easy actually. It’s kilt.io. Find us at kilt.io and there you find all the social links that you need to find us to find me. Also on Twitter it’s @kiltprotocol on rod. So also easy to find and everything else you find on kilt.io.
Matt Zahab
Amazing. Ingo thanks for coming on man. Really fun, learned a ton and can’t wait for the next time.
Ingo Rübe
Thank you very much.
Matt Zahab
Folks with an episode with Ingo through bay from KILT Protocol these guys are creating the Blockchain Identity Protocol, a true identity infrastructure and they will change the game so pumped to have Ingo on. What an episode he was dropping knowledge bombs left right and center if you guys enjoyed this and I really hope you did. Please do subscribe. It would mean the world to my team and I love the team. Thank you so much for everything guys and to the listeners, we love you guys. Keep on growing those bags and keep on staying healthy, wealthy and happy. Bye for now. Enjoy your holidays and we’ll chat soon. God bless.
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