00:00 We're talking about sustainability and the corporation is a unit in our society that plays a certain role.
00:07 You're the COO of a corporation that's very forward-thinking.
00:11 I feel like we could learn a little bit about you.
00:14 What are the priorities as a leader of a financial service company?
00:19 Are you stodgy, boring? Do you just help tech bros?
00:23 Do you know what a marginalized person looks like?
00:26 Tell me a little bit about, you're an important leader that has something to say.
00:31 What kind of leadership are you doing right now?
00:33 Just 10 seconds.
00:41 For those who don't know what Circle does, we created USDC five years ago.
00:46 It is the world's most trusted digital dollar.
00:48 The concept is very simple.
00:51 Money should move at the speed of the internet with the ease, cost, speed, efficiency, etc.
00:56 We have an email, text, security, etc.
01:00 That's what we've enabled. It's a digital dollar that flies around the world with the greatest of ease.
01:04 When you build something like that, yes, we do know what marginalized people look like.
01:10 To answer your question about the part about it boring, we actually like being boring
01:15 because the dollar is only ever worth a dollar.
01:18 No one will trust it if it's worth a little more some day or a little less another.
01:22 That's particularly important for people in marginalized communities
01:27 because I don't know how many people in the audience know,
01:29 but roughly 1.7 billion people in the world are unbanked or underbanked,
01:36 of which, believe it or not, even in America, we have about 6 million that are unbanked or underbanked.
01:41 The current financial system is just inherently exclusive.
01:46 If you even think about something like an immigrant in America sending money home,
01:50 they have to show up at a kiosk, there's probably half an hour of paperwork of some sort.
01:55 They're maybe sending $200 to their home country.
02:00 They're going to have to spend at least $11 in fees.
02:03 It doesn't necessarily get sent instantly.
02:05 The person on the other end sometimes has to pay to get it.
02:07 All of those are friction points, and friction is basically an equity killer.
02:13 Everything we do is based around enabling money to move at the speed of the Internet,
02:19 sound, secure, trustworthy, that will absolutely help those of us in the room here who are privileged,
02:27 but it absolutely has a massive impact and potential for helping the underserved,
02:34 which it's already doing, which I can get to in a minute, but I'll pause there.
02:37 I'm going to go off script here.
02:39 Oh, boy.
02:40 I have a question that occurred to me that is a very creative question, and feel free to pass.
02:47 Are you familiar with the movie The Wizard of Oz?
02:49 Yes.
02:50 In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy wears these ruby slippers.
02:53 They apparently, in Frank L. Baum's book, were silver.
02:57 Oh.
02:57 And the yellow brick road was the gold standard, and Oz is Emerald City, it's the greenback,
03:05 and the scarecrow's the farmer, the tin man's the factory worker,
03:10 and it was a political allegory about the gold standard, the silver standard.
03:15 I did not know that.
03:16 My mind is, that's amazing.
03:17 Now, where I'm going with that, I originally was going to ask you,
03:19 you're an amazing leader, and you're building a company that's a very special company,
03:25 but it occurs to me, if a movie were to be made about the global economy right now,
03:31 and kind of talked about where you think it should go so people aren't left out,
03:38 and, you know, have you heard of the internets?
03:41 I have, yeah.
03:42 Like, there's some new technologies that would never have been in Frank L. Baum's movie.
03:46 Yep.
03:46 I'm just curious, what are some elements of a movie that could, like, tell a story about this moment
03:52 and where we need to go, and AI is also going to play a role.
03:55 You have these people in Silicon Valley saying, I don't know, universal something, something.
04:00 Yep.
04:01 So, I'm sorry if I've gone off script, but feel free to pass.
04:04 You know, no, it's a really interesting question.
04:06 I think there's a couple ways of answering that, actually.
04:09 There's a lot in there, and we won't do it justice,
04:11 but I think on the one hand, all the colors you referenced,
04:16 The Wizard of Oz made today would be multicolored.
04:19 Yep.
04:20 Because, you know, the future, these are Web 3, the Internet of Value,
04:26 something like a digital currency like USDC, EURC, which is our Euro digital currency,
04:34 you know, these are equalizers.
04:36 Yep.
04:36 And so, they don't care what your skin color is, what your gender is,
04:41 doesn't matter, it will serve you just like the Internet did that for content.
04:47 And, you know, the role out of broadband across the world was certainly choppy,
04:49 but I don't think anyone can deny the fact that content has essentially been,
04:53 access to content and information has been democratized for all skin colors,
04:58 all socioeconomic groups, all demographics.
05:01 And if you have access to the Internet, which is an ongoing challenge
05:06 because the entire world is not connected with the Internet yet,
05:10 I think it's like 80% now is a stat I heard this morning,
05:13 but of that fewer are women, for example, so there's still a challenge there and roadblocks.
05:18 However, if you are connected to the Internet,
05:22 you can basically get access to economic freedom today,
05:29 and certainly over time as this kind of technology becomes more mainstream.
05:33 So, I don't know what color the road would be or the city,
05:36 but I would say that you could definitely explode the whole set with lots of colors
05:41 to represent just how inclusive what we're doing will be.
05:44 And I think where I was going with that is the times are changing.
05:48 Yeah.
05:48 And you guys are playing an important role in that.
05:50 Yeah.
05:51 And you're running a very thoughtful company that I think people can learn from,
05:56 and I applaud your leadership.
05:57 Just as a final question, if you could look into that nice camera over there
06:02 and say something that you know that other C-suites should know to run effective companies
06:08 that are inclusive, that are able to be effective at this time, what advice do you have?
06:15 I would say two things.
06:16 First, I'd repeat the stat I said earlier because it can't be repeated enough
06:19 because it's very much unknown, which is that 1.7 billion people in the world are unbanked or underbanked.
06:28 They're literally keeping their money under a mattress.
06:31 We need to change that.
06:33 And then the other is the other point I made, and I don't know if this stat is totally accurate,
06:37 but I did hear it from a very good source this morning in an event I was at,
06:40 which is that only 80% of the world is connected to the Internet,
06:44 and significantly fewer of those are women.
06:47 So if you think about inclusion for any industry on any level,
06:53 access to the Internet is obviously table stakes.
06:56 Yeah.
06:57 So I think leaders have to understand that, you know, we all talk about technology and access to the Internet
07:05 as if everyone has the access we all have, which is absolutely not the case.
07:08 So whatever we can do to help that.
07:10 And then once people do have access to the Internet, it is absolutely our responsibility
07:15 to enable them to be empowered by it and not excluded by it.
07:18 [ Silence ]
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