Shaping the Future of Money: Insights from Gerard Dache on Blockchain and Governance

In this episode of The Edge of Show, host Josh Kriger welcomes Gerard Dache, Founder and Executive Director of the Government Blockchain Association (GBA), to unpack the groundbreaking event — The Future of Money, Governance, and the Law — happening at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. Gerard shares the riveting story of how his experience uncovering global corruption in defense contracting inspired him to create a trusted network between governments, innovators, and blockchain leaders.

From fraud prevention and trust frameworks to AI regulation and the evolution of digital money, this episode reveals how the Future of Money Governance and Law summit is shaping real-world blockchain adoption at the highest levels of policy. Together, Josh and Gerard explore how the Government Blockchain Association is setting global standards for blockchain maturity, building trust for enterprise and government adoption, and hosting an unforgettable 1920s-themed Cryptopoly Gala to connect policymakers and pioneers in an immersive way.

If you’re passionate about blockchain regulation, policy innovation, and the intersection of governance and Web3, this episode is your front-row seat to the conversations defining our digital future.

Key Topics Covered

• The Origin of the Government Blockchain Association:
  Gerard Dache reveals how his background in evaluating global defense systems and uncovering corruption led him to create the GBA — an organization connecting governments with blockchain innovators to restore trust and transparency.
  
  
• The Future of Money Governance and Law Event:
  Hosted at the U.S. Capitol, this event brings together global leaders, policymakers, and innovators to define the regulatory and economic future of blockchain, digital assets, and stablecoins.
  
  
• Blockchain Trust and Certification Framework:
  The GBA’s Blockchain Maturity Model introduces global standards to evaluate blockchain trustworthiness, enabling governments and enterprises to adopt verified solutions confidently.
  
  
• AI, Blockchain, and Privacy Regulation:
  Gerard explains the importance of balancing privacy with accountability in the age of AI, and how blockchain’s trust protocols can safeguard data integrity and identity.
  
  
• Cryptopoly Gala Experience:
  Inspired by the roaring 1920s, the Cryptopoly Gala combines fun, fashion, and networking — where policymakers and technologists bond over decentralized innovation in a game-themed immersive experience.
  
  
• Blockchain in Healthcare:
  Gerard discusses how blockchain can solve healthcare’s biggest problems — from fraud and consent management to clinical trial traceability and patient data protection.
  
  

Episode Highlights

“Blockchain is a trust protocol — it exists because we need to fix systems where power and money have corrupted transparency.” — Gerard Dache

“The Future of Money Governance and Law is an epic event in an iconic city where real blockchain policy gets made.” — Gerard Dache

“Governments are not just regulators — they’re one of the biggest consumers of blockchain innovation.” — Josh Kriger

“AI succeeded because it was usable; crypto didn’t — until now we connect AI and blockchain for trust.” — Gerard Dache

“Networking isn’t about transactions — it’s about shared experiences that spark billion-dollar ideas.” — Josh Kriger

People and Resources Mentioned

• Gerard Dache — Founder & Executive Director, Government Blockchain Association
  
  
• Government Blockchain Association (GBA)
  
  
• Josh Kriger — Co-Founder, Edge of Company
  
  
• Zuber Lawler LLP
  
  
• Outer Edge Innovation Festival
  
  
• Animoca Brands
  
  
• Coinbase
  
  
• Grayscale
  
  
• AI Mind Systems
  
  

About Our Guest

Gerard Dache is the Founder and Executive Director of the Government Blockchain Association (GBA) — a global network bridging policymakers, innovators, and technologists to foster transparency and trust through blockchain adoption. With a background in military intelligence and IT system evaluation, Gerard has worked across defense, intelligence, and public administration sectors. Under his leadership, the GBA has grown to over 5,000 members across 500 government offices worldwide, developing the Blockchain Maturity Model (BMM) — a framework now recognized by the United Nations and ISO as a benchmark for blockchain trust. His mission: to ensure that blockchain and digital assets serve as tools for integrity, governance, and global collaboration.

Guest Contacts:

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/gerarddache
  
  
• Twitter: x.com/gbaglobal
  
  
• Website: gbaglobal.org

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Transcript:

Gerard Dache: Hi, I'm Gerard Dachet, founder of the Government Blockchain Association, and we're here on The Edge's show. We'll be talking about an event that we're doing at the U.S. Capitol called The Future of Money Governs the Law, where we're bringing government leaders, innovators from around the world to really shape the future of digital assets and this technology. We hope that you join us on the show, and we hope that you join us in D.C. to be part of an epic event in an iconic city. Thanks.

Josh Kriger: Hey, Web3 Pioneers. Today, we're diving in with Gerard Deshaies, Founder and Executive Director of the Government Blockchain Association and a global leader connecting innovators with policymakers. We'll explore how the edge of company and GBA is shaping the conversation around the future of money, governance, and the law on Capitol Hill. We also talk about the importance of immersive and fun experiences like the 1920s themed Cryptopoly Gala that we'll be doing together the day prior. Gerard also shares his perspective on the evolution of money, the role of blockchain in healthcare, and the tension between privacy and policy. How GBA is influencing these conversations and how you can get involved. All this and more on the end of the show where we spotlight the boldest ideas shaping the future of Web3 and beyond. Cue the intro.

Intrp/Outro: Welcome to The Edge of Show, your gateway to the Web3 revolution. We explore the cutting edge of blockchain, cryptocurrency, NFTs, ordinals, DeFi, gaming and entertainment, plus how AI is reshaping our digital future. Join us as we bring you visionaries and disruptors pushing boundaries in this digital renaissance. This show is for the dreamers, disruptors, and doers that are pumped about where innovation meets culture. This is where the future begins.

Josh Kriger: Hello and welcome to the Edge of Show. I'm your host today, Josh Krieger, and we feature a variety of top-notch guests and other hosts as well. It's another production of the Edge of Company, a quickly growing media ecosystem empowering the pioneers of Web3 tech and culture, and responsible for other groundbreaking endeavors like the Outer Edge Innovation Festival in LA and Riyadh, another exciting event we'll talk about on this show. Today's show features our partner from the Government Blockchain Association, Gerard Deshaies, founder and executive director. He's a global connector on policymaking, technology and innovation, working to solve public sector challenges through blockchain and emerging technologies. Gerard's leadership is helping bridge innovation with governance in powerful new ways. Gerard, it's been great working with you. It's great to have you on the show.

Gerard Dache: Thanks, Josh. And I need to bring you around to introduce me everywhere I go. That was awesome.

Josh Kriger: First time was a charm right? Just a little bit of practice there. It's a little bit rainy here in D.C. I know where we're both at today. What a great sort of event that we've been able to cook up together. Coming up in just around 6 weeks from the time of this recording.

Gerard Dache: Yeah, and it's amazing how quickly it's coming together because you and I have both had a really great ecosystem. And when we plugged everything together, honestly, I think most people would not believe it was possible to pull off the event that we have. But it's an incredible event that's coming together really well.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, every once in a while when I'm like, is this really happening? I just look at the website speaker page. I'm like, yeah, it's come together. But before we get into that, let's talk about your background a little bit and what drew you into the world of blockchain. How did all of that evolve to you creating the Government Blockchain Association? I've heard bits and pieces of this story, but I'm curious sort of If there was like a moment, per se, where you knew blockchain would be more than just another tech trend.

Gerard Dache: Yeah, you know, it was actually a couple moments and blockchain was a piece in the puzzle. But there are other pieces that make blockchain really important, right? Blockchain is really a trust protocol. And the question is, why do we need it, right? So I had led a career for many years where I was going around, I was evaluating very complex, large IT systems for government, right? So I had a government contracting background in militaries and defense and intelligence in the United States military. And at one point I got invited to China and they said, would you come to China and evaluate Chinese defense contractors for the Chinese government? I said, you do realize I'm a former United States intelligence professional. They said, no, we know that about you. We actually know quite a bit. And I said, that's comforting. But they said, we have it on good account that you can't be bribed. And when we send our own Chinese officers into these situations, these $500 million to $1 billion contracts, they're right. To make a long story short, I got some clearances. It was very complex, but I ended up going to China 20 times. And at first, everything was great. They would show me the stuff. I would sign the certificates. They would run the contracts. But I started uncovering a lot of fraud and corruption. in China. And it wasn't just in China, it was globally. There were very, very large entities. And what I started realizing about in government is there's a lot of good people trying to do a lot of things, but there's a huge concentration of power and money. And that, you know, they say power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've experienced that in my days of public sector work. There's a lot of folks that are so mission oriented and passionate about what they're doing and committed to great things for government, great things for the public. And then unfortunately, there are folks that just, you know, can't pass up temptation.

Gerard Dache: Yeah. You know, it's a huge money pot. Right. And when we talk about all the fraud, corruption, they go to where the money is and there's a lot of money in government. So that was sort of the backdrop. I was dealing with those issues. And then I went to my son bought a little bit of Bitcoin, a couple of dollars. And when he sold it, he paid for a car, a motorcycle, his college tuition and living expenses. And I said, Harket. There's something here. So I started going to some meetups and then I saw that blockchain was the secret sauce. I actually went to a digital chamber meetup. Carrie Ann Boring was speaking. She's sort of a rock star in the industry. And when it was over, I walked up to her and I said, look, I don't know much about blockchain or anything like that, but I know something about government. Can I volunteer to lead a government track within your organization? So she said, send me your resume. And I did never heard back from her. So I just decided to have a meetup. So in August of 2016, we held our first meetup. In this fall of 2017, it turned into an association. And today we have We have over 5,000 members in our database. They work in about 500 government offices around the world. I got 30,000 followers on LinkedIn. We've got about 12 to 15,000 on Meetup. So it's really turned into a global organization. of people in government that are pro-blockchain, pro-digital assets, pro-cryptocurrencies, that have programs and budgets. And our goal of the organization and of the event is to find people that have solutions and get them connected with people in government that have funding and requirements to use this technology to root out some of the corruption that we see in the world. So that's kind of how the whole thing came together. Very cool. So I was looking for a way to get involved with blockchain. And one of the things that I realized is a lot of people were focusing on money, on the cryptocurrency aspect. And all of the activity was happening basically in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street. But there wasn't anything in the government sector. And I thought, If I, nobody's there, right? I don't have resources, connections, anything like that. And I can't compete with the Deloittes and the IBMs and all those folks. But if I plant my flag in government, government will eventually be one of the largest consumers of blockchain and nobody's there yet. So if I plant my flag there, I'll have first mover advantage so that by the time the other big players come, we actually will be able to be competitive.

Josh Kriger: And I love that. And now we're at a point where the regulations are wide open and there's unlimited potential. So that's really great. Yeah, Gerard, really cool story. Thanks for sharing all those details. And definitely you're ahead of the times. It's great to see what's now possible in an open regulatory environment where government can not only look at this technology for how it benefits citizens, but what they can do with it to innovate. So, nice work there. Thanks. Let's take a pause to shout out one of our favorite partners. For tech innovators facing legal challenges, Zuba Lawler is your go-to law firm. They focus on understanding your technology and business model before addressing legal requirements. Specializing in blockchain, AI, VR, AR, quantum computing, and more, ZuberLawler offers expert guidance in capital raising, IP transactions, M&A, litigation, and compliance. Visit ZuberLawler.com, that's Z-U-B-E-R-L-A-W-L-E-R.com for cutting edge legal solutions. So let's talk about the core mission of this upcoming event that we're doing together and why there's this critical moment for shaping public understanding of blockchain and educating policymakers. What are your thoughts on this particular year and this event we have coming up and why it's important?

Gerard Dache: Well, the first thing that I think is important is to understand that the spotlight on blockchain and digital assets and cryptocurrency isn't static. It wasn't here in the U.S. a couple of years ago. It was in other places like Estonia and Dubai and different places like that, Singapore, right? And so we talk about this event in terms of here at the U.S. Capitol because it's important to the United States now. But a couple of years ago, it was extremely important in El Salvador, right, when they made Bitcoin a national currency. So the answer to your question is why is it important here now? It's really because the last administration was driving this technology outside of the U.S. with various sort of hostile policies. And the current Trump administration is very pro-digital assets, but they're pro-U.S. digital assets. So they want to make the United States the crypto capital of the world. And there's a tremendous amount of enthusiasm to build it here now, which is really what makes this event important right now.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, so for me, I think people are just generally curious about what's going on in D.C. at this point. There's been enough stories, enough coverage globally that many people have never been to Washington, D.C. before want to go. And it's a beautiful city, incredible museums, great restaurants, great live music, a lot of new development. But it's also sort of a place where a lot of conversations are happening about the potential of blockchain and there's events every day, right? There's one today and one tomorrow. So I think it's really important for people to touch grass and come over here and see what's going on. And I also think it's important for the conversations here in DC to broaden and include international government leaders and international perspectives on these matters. So I want to emphasize to the listeners at home, this is not a U.S. policy event. This is a global blockchain government enterprise event where we can talk about what's possible here. And it just so happens that we're in Washington, D.C., which is, you know, at this important moment in time.

Gerard Dache: Yeah, I completely agree. I like to say that this is an epic event in an iconic city. And there's really, I can't tell you, because I've been in these halls before, what it's like to be in the halls of power at a time when really global policy and global initiatives are being framed and being able to be in the room where it happens. It's really an incredible opportunity.

Josh Kriger: Absolutely. And I love that we both like to create magical experiences that are immersive and leave people with memories and deep connections. I feel like when the vibrations are correct in the room, the networking amplifies that much more. And it takes sort of some unique Genesee choir to do that. And so in our case, what we've put together is this really special gala which is going to be the the day prior to the main event on October 29th. And there's this fun sort of theme to the gala, which I'll let you go into more since it was it was your organization that came up with this concept before. And I was like, yes, sign me up. This sounds great.

Gerard Dache: Well, the event was really born out of my wife's understanding. She's gone to a lot of networking events and recognizes a lot of tech people struggle with networking. And so we have a lot of tech people in our community. So she focused on how do we make this thing fun and engaging for both the high level people and the tech people. So she came up with this game called Cryptopoly. It's a Monopoly themed game that really focuses on sort of the 1920s and 1930s. So that the women are wearing flapper dresses, the guys are wearing top hats. It's a great opportunity for people to just have a lot of fun. And when you arrive there, you receive digital assets that are Monopoly type cards for Bitcoin, Ethereum, you know, different crypto assets. And through the evening, you get to buy, sell, and trade these digital assets. And whoever has the highest portfolio value at the end, you also get a stack of movie money, which looks absolutely real on film. And we have a picture of, and again, we have very high-level people that attend this thing, the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations sitting at a table with stacks and stacks of cash, right, movie money, and these digital assets trading back and forth. And so it's really an opportunity where people at all levels get to have a lot of fun, but yet at the same time, they're talking about things that they relate to professionally. So all kinds of connections are made, business opportunities, contracts proposed. It is an incredible way of getting people to get together to have fun, but have incredible business results come out of it. It's a stroke of genius.

Josh Kriger: I love that. One of my favorite stories from when we started NFTLA back in 2022 was we did this unique 360 immersive theater performance by Steve Aoki, a really famous DJ. And someone said, you know, it was at that performance that I met my first investor and they're writing a million dollar check for my company. So Networking is often misunderstood as this sort of transactional quick fire, what do you do, what do you do sort of thing. But it's really bonding over experiences that builds relationships, which is, I think, the heart of business itself. So it's really important to have these types of fun experiences built into events. So that was one thing that we aligned on very early. Yeah, I can't wait for folks to check this event out. You can go to the GBA Global website. We'll share all the details on the show notes below the show. You can just click on it and get involved. And just another reminder that if you use the code EDGEVIP, you'll get 20% off these gala tickets, which are selling very fast. So definitely, now's a great time to be part of this once in a lifetime event. Moving a little bit more broadly, Gerard, into what the GBA is all about, you're focused on AI, blockchain, even quantum computing. And it was great to sort of work on the agenda with you and have that be part of the conversation. Tell us a little bit more about how GBA is helping government leaders understand and prepare for this technology convergence that we talk about so much on the show.

Gerard Dache: Sure. So there's a couple of things. One of the things that we saw as a big impediment to blockchain adoption globally is the fact that folks in government and enterprise, they can't trust blockchain. And they can't trust it because they've heard about San Diego and Freed and Celsius and Terraluna and all of this, even going back to Mt. Gox. And when they said to us, we can't seem to make traction in government, I said, the problem is they don't have a box to check. In every other industry, there are certifications. These acquisition officials, they don't know anything about blockchain and technology. They need a box to check because if it goes wrong, they need some way to be able to say, look, it was independently checked. So we looked around and we started developing these standards so that people that were building solutions, they could have their solutions independently verified so acquisition people could essentially trust them. Well, we started working on these standards and then the United Nations had built a blockchain solution for identity. And it was for a $90 billion pension fund. But before they implemented it, they had to have it independently evaluated. So they went to ISO, they went to ANAPA, they went to IEEE. Nobody had a framework for evaluating it until they came to the GBA. And when they saw the work that we have 50 working groups working on standards for blockchain, They said this is exactly what we needed. So they then essentially became our partners in developing these global standards. So one of the things that the GBA does in addition to getting people together is we help solution providers be able to prove and demonstrate that their solutions can be trusted so that they can be acquired by governments.

Josh Kriger: So is that like publishing use cases, putting out templates or frameworks? How do you sort of convince skeptical folks that this stuff is for real and can really make an impact in these businesses and organizations?

Gerard Dache: So the first thing is, we took two, almost three years to study every blockchain solution we could to find out what is the criteria that makes a blockchain solution trustworthy. And we developed a model that has 11 elements, right, distribution, identity, infrastructure sustainability, and we came up with five levels of maturity. Is it mature enough for investment funding, for due diligence? Is it mature enough to be a proof of concept? Is it mature enough to be rolled into production? Is it mature enough to be rolled out at the enterprise level or the global public level? And the standards are technology agnostic, so they work for both permissioned and permissionless blockchains, and they're industry agnostic. But then what we realized is that different industries had different requirements. So for example, if you're building a blockchain solution in banking financial services, you've got to do AML, KYC, right? Anti-money laundering to your customer. But if you're going to build a blockchain solution in voting and elections, you have to have permanent separability between the voter and the vote. In other words, anonymity is a legal requirement. If you're building a blockchain solution in healthcare, let's say for clinical trials, you have to have traceability between the patient and the data. You might need to know their blood type, their family history, their race, age, things like that, but you're not allowed to know who they are, their name, address, and phone number. So our 50 working groups then started working on independent standards for every different industry. And then what we did is we started training people around the world to perform these assessments. And then we started performing the assessments and publishing the results. So when a potential government or enterprise customer is looking at a solution, they can see an independent verification that a group of professionals using a defined standard and defined criteria developed by global leaders in the space have attested that the solution can be trustworthy.

Josh Kriger: Very cool. So have you been able to evaluate the newest blockchains that have come out in the last few years? Aptos, Sui, Supra, Hyper, Pulse. Have these all been evaluated as well?

Gerard Dache: So to perform an assessment typically takes about two weeks. It's done with a team of a minimum of four people, right? Four experts. So there's a domain expert. So whether you're doing voting or healthcare or whatever, there's a blockchain technology expert. There's a digital asset and a legal compliance expert. And so these four people, over the period of about two weeks, perform a very, very in-depth assessment. They're looking at documentation, they're reviewing all kinds of stuff, conducting interviews. And so it costs to do that. We've now completed about 11 assessments. We've done the Oracle blockchain, but we only do it for organizations that essentially pay to get it done. It's not like a... You know, it's not like a hobby kind of thing. It's a professional assessment.

Josh Kriger: So I guess that model makes sense. I mean, I appreciate as having a consulting background, work with all these agencies, the labor intensive nature of it. And of course, you know, you want to be thorough here, not just, you know, just check boxes. But how do you, does it stress you out at all to know that there's good blockchains out there that are government friendly, that haven't gone through this assessment process yet?

Gerard Dache: No, for two reasons. The first reason is it's a relatively new process. Right. Secondly, is like, for example, with Bitcoin, I don't think we need to do an assessment of Bitcoin. People know what Bitcoin is. Right. So so some. I think that this process is really needed in areas where you don't know. Let me give you the best example. We had a government agency come to us and this government agency is very progressive in blockchain. They've built multiple blockchain solutions in public sectors. They've spoken all over the world. They're real leaders in blockchain. And they said, listen, we would like you to do an assessment for us so that we can prove what we've been saying all around. So we said, great. Okay, so here's the first question. How many nodes do you have? And they said, we don't know. And I said, wait, what do you mean you don't know? And they said, well, we just write our data to an API, the vendor takes care. And we said, okay, well, who's your contact to the vendor? They said, we don't know. This is a government agency that's been writing critical data, right, to a blockchain for years. And I said, who's your contact there? They said, we don't know. The person who set up the contract did it before we got here. So we said, okay, great. Can we see the contract? We saw the contract. It was a two page service agreement. And it said, you write your data to our system. When you stop paying us, you have to take your data off of our system. I said, this doesn't even sound like a blockchain. So we eventually got in touch with the person and we said, how many nodes do you have? And they said, we'll get back to you in six weeks. But you got a slow block explorer, right? So here's what we found out. The person who set up the contract did it before these people got there. But the contracts department didn't know how to write the contract from blockchain. So they use the standard service reboot template. When the price of Ethereum went up, the gas fees went up, the contractor looked at the contract and they said, huh, there's nothing in this contract that says we have to write to the blockchain. So why don't we write all of this confidential government data to that unmanaged server under Ernie's desk? And for two years, while this government agency was traveling all around the world, bragging about how they were using blockchain, the reality was they had government data being written to an unmanaged server. And it's those kinds of scenarios and situations that the BMM has just literally shown the light on all of the scam and all the fraud. We've had people come up to us thinking that they had stuff on blockchain and the reality was they just had it on a distributed database.

Josh Kriger: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I'm not surprised by that story, even though that story is really scary and I'm sure it scares a lot of folks listening in terms of data integrity, data privacy. It's a battle out there and we're still in the middle of the war. With that said, there is some really exciting progress being made in various agencies and various sort of themes I want to sort of hit on before we close out this show. And one of those is what the Department of Commerce recently announced, which is they're moving to put GDP and budget data on on blockchain. I thought this was really fascinating news. What does this tell you about where public data transparency is heading?

Gerard Dache: Well, that's a great piece of news right now. Right. But I want to kind of put that in context. There have been several other blockchain projects over the last couple of years that had tremendous promise, but a lot of them didn't make it. Right. Some of them did. Right. There's an army project where they're looking at.

Josh Kriger: I mean, I think most blockchain projects don't make it, to be fair.

Gerard Dache: Yeah, I will tell you in government, there's a reason why, right? I had the opportunity of being with the ICT minister of Cameroon, right? This is internet communications and technology. She reports directly to the president. He had just won his election for his 38th year in democratic elections. Right. And she said to me, she said, we're interested in blockchain in all of its use cases, except for elections. Our voting system works just the way we like it. Right. And what what I would say is there have been a lot of projects where good people have an influence in many blockchain and because they want to demonstrate their their their their integrity. We've got a lot of forces that are pushing against it. They don't they don't want the integrity. There is at the U.S. federal level and Department of Treasury, no, yeah, Department of Treasury and Health and Human Services, there was a grand project that they were putting in their blockchain. And the challenge was it was revealing too much. And for that reason, it didn't continue, right? Now, the good news is we have a current administration, Department of Commerce, that, in fact, it's not just Department of Commerce. Let me go back a little bit. When RFK was running for president, He basically made it a campaign commitment. I think he did this at, maybe it was Bitcoin Nashville. And he said that if he won the election, he would put the US federal budget on a blockchain. He didn't win the federal budget, the federal election, but he did get an HHS. So then we thought, let's go to them and talk about putting the HHS budget on a blockchain. Right. And then we realized, well, that's the pretty big thing. So let's go to a county health department. So a number of GBA members are working with a county at the county level trying to implement blockchain. So what you're seeing is this bubbling up from the top. You've got an administration that is pushing this in a big way, wants to be a global leader. And but turning a battleship is a lot harder than turning a canoe. And so what we really need and what we're seeing is smaller level projects, figuring out the technology, getting the battle scars, improving the processes, developing the confidence, and we're going to see that meet in the middle. And that's the next two or three years is going to be the most pivotal time in the US for blockchain, because we're going to see both of those amps come together.

Josh Kriger: Uh, do you do the last part again? I think something. Did you hear that noise right now?

Gerard Dache: I did not.

Josh Kriger: OK. All right, then we're OK. Something happened with my notifications, which are normally always off. Hold on one second. I think we're OK, though. They didn't it didn't appear for you. So we're good. All right. Keep going.

Gerard Dache: I just rubbed that in.

Josh Kriger: You wrapped it up. I'm gonna keep going. Yeah, I think that we are at a really interesting time where there's been some signals of potential and promise here that people are taking notice of. One of my favorite stories I covered recently was the California DMV putting titles on the blockchain, which was a great use case of blockchain that I've been thinking about and various guests have talked about on the show for years. We're seeing those sort of the trail of pebbles come together here and lots of good stuff coming. And I think there's this broader sort of question or conversation around how money is evolving into digital assets. Certainly some countries have converted to a digital currency in a more profound way than others. And we're now mixing in stable coins with digital currency. How do you see this transformation into digital assets impact in sovereign wealth and national economies?

Gerard Dache: That's a great question. So there's a power struggle going on right now, right? The United States wants to remain the global reserve because the advantage of being the global reserve is people are going to continue to buy your debt. So you can print as much money as you want to essentially without repercussions. The problem is that people in the other parts of the world don't like that, right? They don't like being beholden to not just the US, but any central authority. And what we're seeing happening right now with digital assets is we're fractionalizing value and we're releasing value by You know, there are people that are tokenizing properties, right? So that instead of owning a whole house, you can own a fraction of a house or a fraction of a car or a fraction of a piece of art. And what we're creating is these all new monetary instruments so we can exchange value. And I'll tell you what I see happening. I don't see that there will be one cryptocurrency or one digital asset to rule them all. I think that we might one day see everything denominated in Bitcoin, right? Once the price stabilizes a bit, because Bitcoin is sort of a common denominator, but it doesn't have the technical capability to be the one transaction mechanism for everything. So I can see counties. having their own digital coin, I can see businesses having their coin, I can see fractionalized assets. A good friend of mine is fractionalizing a sports stadium. Right. Because an entertainment sports thing, because the members of that community want to own that property. So rather than us giving taxpayer dollars to to a government and that government then using public money to buy to buy this. Right. The community itself can self-funded in a decentralized governance fashion, as opposed to a centralized government. Right. So I see a lot of different value digital assets. And what I think is gonna happen is when you go to go pay for something at a local grocery store, you'll have all these digital assets on your phone. Your phone will probably pick which digital asset based on gas fees, based on transaction prices, performance, right? If you're gonna buy a Starbucks, a coffee at Starbucks, it's a very different type of transaction than if you're gonna buy a new car. Right? You don't need that new car transaction to process within 10 seconds or one second. So I think technologically, we're going to see a fractionalization of money, and that's going to create a direct threat to sovereign economies. Right? And right now, for example, if you look at the Stablecoin Act, they want to make sure that stablecoins are only backed by U.S. dollars. Great. Because that protects sovereign wealth. We're gonna see essentially a tug-of-war on centralization versus decentralization, and I don't know where it's gonna go. I mean, I hope it goes towards decentralization, but the other aspect that, and I'll stop here, Tony, or your input on it, the other aspect where this becomes really important is identity, right? Because people have a right to privacy, But at the same time, the government needs to essentially know certain things to protect societies against bad actors. And the decentralization of money and the decentralization of identity, those two things are coupled and they're in conflict with the government's ability to maintain order. So, you know, who knows where it goes, but that's the tug of war that we're facing.

Josh Kriger: I see. I see. Well, I really appreciate your perspective on this sort of these macro issues and where things are at this current moment. So I'm actually curious if you think the United States is truly on a path to becoming the crypto capital of the world or is centralization still holding it back? Where does it stack up to some of these other countries that are sort of pushing pro-blockchain policies?

Gerard Dache: Well, the question has a bit of an oxymoron component to it, right? Because if you talk about cryptocurrency, and we use Bitcoin as sort of the standard, right? It is by nature decentralized. And by nature, it can't be controlled by a single entity or a single country. I don't think that it's possible for any one country to become the crypto capital of the world. I think that they could become sort of a global reserve, right? But it by its very nature would have to be centralized, which is by its very nature opposed to decentralization. What I would like to see is a world where everybody was playing by the same rules. It was a level playing field, and no one country had control over another, right? I mean, the way the world works right now, and look, I served in the military. I love my country. There's a lot of good things about our country. It's not perfect, but it's, from my perspective, I'm glad I live here. It's a great country. But a lot of people in the world doesn't want to have one country that's in control of another, right? So the banking system is controlled by the United States. And while I think the U.S. is good and by and large that's good, I think globally we need to get to a place where no one country controls the global economic system. I think it should be decentralized.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, this is an important conversation we'll continue to have in DC on Capitol Hill, October 30th. So definitely encourage folks to be part of the conversation. And another key topic is how much regulation is enough in your opinion? And when do we start to sort of crush innovation in the blockchain space? Are we sort of going into the world of over-regulation right now in the United States, or do you think the policies that are coming out are shaping innovation?

Gerard Dache: The whole issue here is identity, identity and privacy, right? The question is like wallets, right? From a regulation standpoint, The way it works right now in the Web2 world is the government controls the banks, the banks control the money, right? And so the banks require us to identify who we are. They know every transaction that we have. And the government can require the banks to disclose that information and can seize funds, can, if we go to a, you know, to central bank digital currency, we've got the same thing. We have essentially centralized governance controlling people. We need some of that, right? At the same time, the thing that is great about the United States is that we have checks and balances and the government can't just arbitrarily do things because it wants to. But that's not true in all countries, and that may not always be true here in the US. It's a hard question to answer, but we've got to find that balance between giving people their privacy and not allowing governments to unduly suppress the rights of people, and yet at the same time protect people against bad actors. It's not an easy question to answer, but that's, when we talk about regulation, honestly, it all comes down to identity and what control can the government, should the government extend over people.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, I think what's important right now is I do feel like there's this greater sense of openness in terms of folks in the government wanting to understand what is possible to support innovation relative to even a few years ago. And I think events like the one we're doing where we can educate government policy makers on the positive use cases for blockchain. I think every legislator wants their local country to thrive, to be able to bring the most additional economic development to create the most ambitious and productive tools for society, right? So it's just how do we do that in a way that, you know, provides a basic level of protection that's consistent with other types of technology that's being introduced into the world, right? I think it's about not over-regulating or under-regulating. And my concern with the policymaking process is that we have this elastic band situation where we often pull too tight and then it snaps back the other direction. So how do you balance that pendulum? And I think that's why conversations, dialogues like the ones that we're sort of encouraging folks to have is so important.

Gerard Dache: You know, you and I were on an X space yesterday, and the conversation came up about how do you engage with policymakers, right? And if you may remember, I made a comment about, you got to figure out what their, you know, what hits their button. Right now, the identity thing, I think, is tough. We haven't figured that out. But I think the one place where we ought to charge into is AI. Everybody's talking about AI. Everybody's worried about AI, right? Everybody's excited about AI. And the real threat with AI is that you can't trust it. Well, blockchain is a trust protocol. If we can connect blockchain to AI and say, hey, listen, blockchain gives us an opportunity to be able to trust our training data and our training models. SAS Networks, which is one of the sponsors of our events, built a decentralized infrastructure where they allowed the AI training data and training models to be separated. It's solutions like theirs Right. It will allow us to really see a use, a need for blockchain. Not just that it's cool, but we need it in AI. Right. The GBA has built an artificial intelligence supplement to the blockchain maturity model. Right. Which we're working on right now. It needs some work right now. I think the requirements are a little too stringent. I don't think anybody can actually meet it. But this is an area where we've got to put time and attention into. And it's one of the topics that we'll be covering at our event at the U.S. Capitol.

Josh Kriger: Yeah. And, you know, all of these different aspects of the industry, we could spend a whole show sort of unpacking and getting into. But I did want to at least cover on some level health care, because that's come up in conversations between us and I met the head of your steering committee on this in this area. I think it's a really interesting opportunity and potentially a new economic model for an industry that has its challenges. Benefit costs keep going up and the actual amount of benefits people are getting is decreasing. There's a focus on, you know, addressing acute issues and not preventative health. And this is in the United States but also globally. I spent a lot of time in Europe this summer and sort of felt like there's a similar trend going on. So I guess the question is, you know, is the GBA looking at healthcare as an area of exploration and advocating and what are the barriers to sort of a new economic model for healthcare using blockchain?

Gerard Dache: So last week, I was speaking to a group of 200 physicians and health care administrators. And I asked them how many of them could explain blockchain to somebody at a reception or in a casual conversation. And two people raised their hands, my wife and the person who invited me to the event. There's a serious lack of knowledge in the healthcare space about blockchain. Blockchain offers literally in every aspect of healthcare. I'll just inventory here in a second. But back in 2016, HealthCoin was one of the first coins that came out in blockchain, and it was really focused on diabetes care. It has then morphed, it was then taken by consensus for a while. And then the person you're talking about, Heather Flannery, she now runs an ecosystem called AI Mind Systems. I think it's an evolution of that very first healthcare token and ecosystem. But in every area, so we mentioned clinical trials, so consent management, participation, clinical trials in case management, there are blockchain solutions that are currently in place. This is eventually going to be, I think, a $25 billion industry in the next five years, I think is the numbers that I saw.

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Gerard Dache: One of the biggest problems that I saw at the conference that I attended was the incredible amount of lack of trust between the healthcare payers and the patients, the patients and the providers. In fact, we just had somebody murdered not too long ago. I remember the president of UnitedHealthcare was just murdered because People were concerned that because of profit motives, they were denying claims. Right. I can't I can't speak to that. I don't have any insider information into that. But blockchain solves all those problems. Blockchain allows us to do this on smart contracts. They allow the rules to be clear. Right. The is health care is one six of the national economy and the fraud, waste, abuse and health care is staggering. Right. So anyway, this is a huge subject. I could spend hours talking about it. Josh, you hit the nail on the head. This is a super important topic and we need good people. And so I would say anybody who's interested in working on this issue, send an email to events at gbaglobal.org and we'll get you connected with people in the healthcare space that are really working on this subject.

Josh Kriger: Yeah, I appreciate you creating this type of a forum for knowledge sharing and moving these important areas along. There's organizations like the Blockchain Gaming Alliance that we're a part of, focused on getting all the gaming folks together. And what you're doing with government is just as important, if not more important, Government is one of the biggest consumers in terms of services in the world and there's a huge opportunity for folks to build up this sector. It's not so much about You know, shiny coins going up or down really fast. It's about actually contributing to society and using this technology where it's full. We'll be talking about all these topics in more depth at our event, The Future of Money, Governance, and the Law. which will be in Capitol Hill October 30th. There's going to be conversations about AI, about healthcare, about stablecoins, about national security, and we've just kind of touched on some of these areas and really encourage folks to see the lineup of speakers, which includes folks from Congress, leaders in this sector. We have Grayscale coming as well as Coinbase, Animoca Brands, so many important folks in this conversation. So Gerard, I'll let you sort of tell folks how they can participate in the event.

Gerard Dache: Sure. Well, if you have any questions about the event, send an email to events at gbaglobal.org and we'll get your questions answered. We'll get your links to all the stuff about everything. If you go to gbaglobal.org, you should see there's a slider with the event right there. Click on that. It'll take you right to it. If you don't see it, you can go underneath events. There's a link that says FOMGL, F-O-M-G-L, Future of Money Governance and Law. Or you go to gbaglobal.org slash FOMGL. That's how you can find out about the event. And like I said, if you have any questions, shoot us an email. We'll answer your questions. And we look forward to seeing it.

Josh Kriger: Yep. And Gerard, are you on X as well? Do you have an X handle we can share with the folks?

Gerard Dache: I do. I'm not on there frequently. So, GBA Global is probably the best one. My personal one is probably G-A or GR-A. I don't have it memorized.

Josh Kriger: Okay, so GBA Global. And yeah, again, just a friendly reminder that there's this secret hack here with the event where obviously there's a limited amount of access to the actual daytime event. While it's free, there is quite a queue at this point. You can fast track and bypass that queue if you get a ticket to the gala, which is currently on sale for $275 as we're recording this podcast. The price will go up. This is the advanced ticket price and get yourself 20% off with the code EDGEVIP. and enjoy this really amazing experience. Come to the gala and then come to the main event the next day. Maybe stay for the weekend. Catch some good museums, a show, some good restaurants. Zatenia. Shout out to Zatenia. One of my favorite spots. One of the Jose Andres additions to to D.C. and a great spot, but definitely lots of great places to go and hope to see you there with Gerard and I. And that's it for today. Thanks for joining us on the show, Gerard.

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