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Kevin JacksonWell, hello, everyone. It's Kevin Jackson from Digital Transformers. Welcome to the Buzz Digital Transformers edition. As you know, this is normally a live stream, but this edition has been pre recorded. So today's news is really centered around the intersection of our virtual and physical worlds as it applies to supply chain digital assets and real world assets. So when I was talking to Scott about doing all this, his eyes sort of glazed over and looked like he was going to have a bad day. So we stuffed him in the closet. So Scott is back there banging right now, and we have control. So for this edition, I've brought in a heavyweight leader in this merger of real world and virtual world. Doctor Chris Smith Meyer, the CEO of Black Wallet Limited. Hey, Chris, how you doing?
Dr. Chris SmithmyerHey, thanks for having me, Kevin.
Kevin JacksonFirst of all, that is so beautiful behind you there. Some people may say that's virtual. Where are you?
Dr. Chris SmithmyerThis is actually out in the yard right now. We have beautiful central Pennsylvania fall. The leaves are turning. And actually had some nice weather today. So came out here where we could have a nice little chat.
Kevin JacksonNo, thank you very much. But before we get into the news, can you tell me a little bit about what is black wallet and what do you do?
Dr. Chris SmithmyerOkay, well, black wallet is a stablecoin 2.0 ecosystem management company. And we do a lot of high value 5 million plus tokenizations that salivator pitch that I put out there to people. And like you said, with Scott's eyes glazing over, that usually gets me out of the conversation, if I can get out of it. One of the things when we first got into crypto that we realized is that if you start looking at the US dollar, its a dependent variable. So its not stable. It moves around. It does stuff. Thats the reason why we have money markets. And we said, where can we get stability? And the answer was in real world assets by using a mass scale project. And a lot of people have started to look into this now. Weve been doing it for about four years now. We were one of the first ones to come in. A lot of people are referencing us in their white papers because of how we brought this to the field. And we werent even the progenitors. There were people before us, too, but we took it to the stablecoin level and now were bringing it into tokenomics to help bring advanced tokenomics to the field where were not just giving people a meme coin and saying, hey, attach it to an asset, were saying, hey, you need to have a custodian, you need to have a tokenizer, and you need to have an owner. And that creates an ethical system where you can trust the assets that youre receiving and were really working to bring trust into the system and build a better crypto verse for everybody.
Kevin JacksonWow, this seems really important, especially if you're dealing with things in your supply chain. People are always wondering about where's my stuff?
Dr. Chris SmithmyerYeah, that's one of the things we really push for is because if you buy a government bond or a bill or something like that, you're basing it off of the desire of the government to pay you back, which means you hear the statement full faith and credit. Full faith and credit. Its basically youre giving the government a loan and hoping they pay you back. Whereas whenever you deal with real world tokenization, whether youre tokenizing a commodity, whether youre tokenizing a property or a company, that ownership, that valuable document, the title, the deed, whatever it is, is put into custody with a third party and that third party guarantees that it is there. Whereas the United States government cant say the money is there until they write you the check. You can always go on chain and make sure that your property in a real world asset backed system is there. And that really takes away that zero trust system where you just trust whatever the bank tells you, where you can actually prove what you're being told by a tokenizer. And that's one of the things that's really going to open this world up because you don't have to have faith to have credit anymore. Now you just have to have assets.
Kevin JacksonWow. So I think this is one of the things that our friends at Deloitte wanted to highlight in a recent article that they released on the rise of the digital supply network. The fact that supply chain is really about tracking the transfer of real world assets from one owner to another owner. And these are traditionally linear in nature with discrete progression of like design, plan, source. This has made supply chains sort of rigid and staged. But now with virtual assets and real world assets coming into the fore, you need to be more dynamic and more interconnected. So this article, Deloitte called this a digital supply network which integrate information from many different sources and locations to drive the physical act of production and distribution. And this is important because you're actually doing supply chain management in the virtual world. So these can really lead to a, as they put it, a virtual collapse in the supply chain. But most importantly, you have to support certain characteristics in your supply chain. You have to always be on and agile, need to be connected to the supply community. I always like to call it your supply mesh. You have to be really intelligent about where your goods are going, where they're being sourced and where they're being delivered. And you have to have end to end transparency across the entire supply chain so that you can support holistic decision making. So in your work, what does the supply chain and the digital supply network, how does that relate to real world assets?
Dr. Chris SmithmyerI think it's really important, whenever you look at that, one of the most common things you're going to hear from the fudsters that are attacking the digital asset world is if it's not your key, because it's not your wallet. And that's really a really weird, it's a nice little catchphrase, but realistically, can you walk into your bank right now and take all your money out and just not tell anybody you don't have the keys to the bank? So one of the things that you look at with supply chain is if you don't know where your product is, do you really own it? And if you don't have that bill of lading or that receipt, do you really own it? And there is a possibility of the supply chain infrastructure as we know it starting to collapse a little bit and change the very rapidly in how it operates. Because as you know, the supply chain boils down to Bill of lady. Where I get a piece of paper to a transporter, the transporter takes it, gives it to the person, and whenever they get the whatever they get that piece of paper, it gets the money gets sent back to me. That's what it is. It's just a whole bunch of those in a row. What the digital world lets you do is it allows you to make this process simple, that it is on chain, everybody can see the document, you don't have to trade it between hands. And where it really shines, where it really helps society, is as we move into the world, where drop shipping is more important, and breaking down parcels into smaller things that are shipped internationally to go to residential addresses becomes complicated. Because if you have one bill of lading, that means that whenever you break it down, you have to create a new bill of lading, and new bills of lading to send it to peoples houses. And you have thousands of pieces of paper that everybody has to keep track of. And if you lose track of it, you open yourself up to a loss. Whereas with a virtual bill of lading, with a tokenized asset, you can go on the blockchain, see it. If it's divisible, it can be broken down into pieces and seen where it's getting shipped and what wallets it's going to. And this can all be seen on the blockchain, whether it's through a permissionless or a permission system. So if you want it to be private, it can be private. If you want it to be public, it can be public. And that way there's no question where the goods are, who has them and even whether the person at the end received them. Because as we know, that's a major loss leader for Amazon and companies where people say they just didn't get their package when they actually got it and just won another one. So the digitization of it, Deloitte is absolutely right. It is going to change the face of the world and it's going to change it for the better because we're going to get more products delivered where they're supposed to go and we're going to cut out a lot of that extra fat in the middle.
Kevin JacksonBut if I'm dealing in how supply chains are now and I've made a big investment in tools and technologies and software, will this cause me to now have to reinvest and buy new tools and to link with things like blockchain and these real world asset organizations? What does that mean to me personally?
Dr. Chris SmithmyerIt shouldn't. It should actually save you a lot of money because right now your biggest costs are going to be paper or accounting to manage the amount of documents that you're dealing with. Because as much as it costs to ship goods, the transfer of documents back and forth with work hours for people reviewing those documents, dealing with those documents is much higher. And whenever we start taking those costs away, it's actually going to save money. Now, whatever you said about investing in the process for scanning in or recording, for doing all that, doing all the basic work that human beings and computers need to work together on, it becomes really effective because the computers you have, as long as you bought computers within the last five years, can run the portals to the blockchain. The scanners that you hold in your hand can send the data to the blockchain. They might need their software updated, but that system, it's not a high demand system. It's not a system that's going to require you to go out and buy an IBM supercomputer all it takes is the ability to access the block. And you can do that with something as simple as a cell phone. So it should reduce costs for companies around the world, even the ones that are really vested in the supply chain. The only people that it's going to hurt is mcas or that are used to going through all that paper because they're not going to get their hours for it.
Kevin JacksonWell, I think this is sort of borne out in the second article that we looked at this week where it talked about Vechain, who partnered with Boston Consulting Group, and they're looking at driving trillions, trillions of dollars in real world asset integration. I mean, Boston Consulting Group is one of the largest global consulting firms in the world. And they said that they expect the market for tokenized assets to hit $16 trillion. And in doing that, they put in place a strategic relationship with Vechain. According to the bank of America report, tokenization will really transform the existing financial infrastructure. It reduces costs and optimizes the supply chain to increase efficiencies. And this partnership includes names like Walmart, PwC, DNV, and BMW. So they're taking the BMW and tokenizing its entire supply chain. And this is leading to a significant reduction in carbon emissions in agriculture and strengthening our food supply chains. So, Chris, this is a big thing, it seems, as real world assets.
Dr. Chris SmithmyerYeah, I mean, its the biggest thing we know because its the world were on. Everything in the world can be tokenized. And when youre looking at this, youve got to applaud companies that are stepping forward in doing this because you mentioned agriculture. One of the big assets of tokenizing the real world assets and agriculture is you just saw the salmonella outbreak with eggs.
Kevin JacksonYes.
Dr. Chris SmithmyerBillions and billions of eggs are being recalled. Most people dont know about it. Theyve got salmonella. What are we going to do with them? If you have that supply chain tokenized the whole way from the chicken to the point of sale, you can have it set up where you know which batch of eggs went to which factory, which ones were infected, and then whenever it comes to buying them from Walmart or your local grocery store, when that SKU is scanned, because you know where those came from, people get those receipts emailed to them or texted to them. You could actually text people, please bring your eggs back. They may have been contaminated because you know where they went from and you know if they were or not. It doesn't just save money, it can save lives. And that is one of the big reasons that we're pushing it the different groups that are working on it. We work with Solana, we work with constellation. And the major blockchains are seeing the advantage for this, and they're seeing how if they allow themselves to integrate, it can become even more effective. And I think in the next couple of years, you're going to see more and more companies coming out and doing this, not because it the cheapest thing to do, which it is, but because it's the right thing to do, because they can protect themselves and they can protect their customers. And this is going to open a lot of doors, especially in medical, pharma, agricultural industries, because if you can trace product from point of creation to point of sale, we can get, like, the opioid crisis of the last 15 years. We could have kept that off the market because we would have known exactly where those drugs were.
Kevin JacksonYeah, well, Walmart, I mean, they are a giant when it comes to managing, you know, thousands of supply chains from, well, maybe millions of supply chains from tens of thousands of suppliers. So does that mean that they're going to actually push this down to their suppliers? With respect to this tokenization of real world assets, I really believe it will.
Dr. Chris SmithmyerWalmart is known for making its suppliers do what it's told. Basically, if you make a product, if you make Kevin flakes.
Kevin JacksonYeah.
Dr. Chris SmithmyerAnd you want to sell them to Walmart, Walmart will sell them for you. But the deal that they cut with you is if we buy a bunch of them and then they don't sell, you have to buy the product back. I mean, they'll put some on clearance, but they don't want to clear their whole inventory. They don't lose money on stuff. And they do this by making people's supply chains more efficient. This doesn't really. Like, when this first started back in the nineties and I was in grad school, and I remember them saying, walmart's evil. It's doing this horrible thing. And then we find out that now our supply chain is 100 times more efficient than it was back then, a lot of it, because of technological innovation. But whenever companies like Walmart do that, it really can help encourage a small farmer, because Walmart doesn't just say, hey, farmer, start recording your props. It says, hey, farmer. We will give you this system to help record your crops. So with the farmer, like, there's a, there's a bar. And that's why I'm looking off to the, right here, that if they went to my neighbor and said, hey, we can help you with this, it doesn't push the burden down onto that farmer. It actually helps the big companies, help the little companies get these products out there. So big groups like Walmart, whenever they do it, like a lot of people attack the big they're really doing it to help supply system, which means they're going to help the little guys too. Wow.
Kevin JacksonSo this is really critical. And I think it's actually driving multiple industries, not just selling the eggs and chicken. But this is highlighted in the third article that we saw in Techradar this week. And they were talking about industry 5.0 and how important data has become as artificial intelligence is sort of driving everything. And they highlighted that many industries are really relying on these physical assets, from construction to manufacturing, energy, utilities. And they're still trying to realize the benefits of industry 4.0. But the data that they're getting today is helping them build to industry 5.0. And this fifth industrial revolution is really going to be the foundation of it is digitalization and implementation of digital transformation. Things like you'd mentioned, these connected devices like your smartphones and your POS systems and data analytics as long and the automation of these process driven activities and these digital elements of actually how companies are going to the next step. And they're using artificial intelligence to integrate this data from physical assets to unlock new avenues for supply chain innovation and variation. And that for businesses that actually manage these physical assets, this will optimize capital allocation and manage risk and drive more precise data driven business decisions. And this calling it now industrial AI can provide a competitive edge by helping companies prioritize these high impact investments, adapt to changing regulatory and market conditions, and really align their business with sustainability. So making and saving the earth. So this real world, you know, asset stuff is driving improvements in our ecosystem. This is also part of your strategy there, Chris?
Dr. Chris SmithmyerYeah, most definitely. Whenever you start looking at the way industry 5.0 is building out, and it's really cool because industry 1.0 was the industrial revolution. That was a cotton gin. That was a couple hundred years ago, and it's only moved to industry five, which is the big data system. Well, if you look at the web system, we started with ARPANET back in the 1960s and now were already in web three and weve already got the door open to web four that were looking at and theyre starting to align. Its so amazing how the industry is starting to align because every moment in the world today, because of these cell phones that we hold in our hands, were producing more information than was created last year. So we're just, the phones are receiving so much more information. That data that's being used for rescue stuff, the pictures, the video, the voice recognition, your Google assistant that's recording a lot of your data, like, so whenever you ask questions, they can answer you. This data is going out there and it's going into the cloud, and there is so much big data out there. And the problem was, five years ago, we had no way to analyze it. People put it into spreadsheets, and you had thousands of people read over it. Now you can take that big data and you can run it through an AI processor and have readable sheets of the relevant data based on what youre searching for. And as we move into this more block matrix technology, moving like advancing the blockchain, advancing the big data concept, and integrating AI into the actual fabric of the Internet, were going to have the ability to access this data. And industrially, it is amazing. It is such the way that we can improve our industrial processes here in the United States are amazing. But where it really steps out is the amount of medical data we create each year is doubling. We can put that information into the AI, too, and we can start finding things that link cancers together. We can find things that start tracking diseases around the world that are causing problems, and the AI can do it, and they can see the things that humans miss, because if you have five AI's working on something, you can see hundreds of thousands of people's worth of work. Now, it's never going to eliminate the human factor because there are things that we can make transactions on that computers can't because we have intuition. But whenever it comes down to raw, crunching numbers, I'll take an AI over the MIT math lab every day, because it can do it faster and more efficiently. Now, if I want to take something that takes an innovative leap or needs to create something new, those guys from MIT or those guys from Dartmouth, those are going to be the guys I call. But on a regular day to day basis, AI's are going to get rid of that data job that's making people go blind around the world.
Kevin JacksonWow. I think you're scaring a lot of people saying that now AI is going to take over every industry, and really, the big brother or the big sister is AI in your supply chain? And it could be scary, because the fourth and last article is really about, they sort of describe this as the crypto frontier. And when you hear crypto, the only thing people think of is bitcoin. And all of the scams that cryptocurrency sort of has become, you know, sort of front of mind, they scared of it. But this crypto frontier is really changing. It's driving innovation and utility. This is from our friends over at UCW E and talking about how blockchain adoption is accelerating, how digital assets, the role that they're playing in the global economy, from transforming traditional industries to opening up new markets through asset tokenization. And that basically said that cryptocurrency is bright. And, you know, talking about this big brother, big sister, they talk about oracles over the network and they're saying how ethereum on the blockchain is really making it much easier to build what's known as decentralized apps, or Dapps, to foster innovation across finance, gaming and supply chains. They talk about Cardano, who has really been distinguished by the research that they've done and that they've been focused on security, sustainability and scalability through point of sale systems. And Chainlink, which is really a leading decentralized oracle network. And you say, well, what is an oracle? Well, this is a decentralized capability that enables the creation of hybrid smart contracts on the blockchain, where on chain code and off chain infrastructure are combined to support these Dapps as they react in real time to real world events. And this is really crucial for like insurance and supply chains and finances. And one important note is a major or leading oracle that's working today to support supply chains is the Pkunovas network, where they use proof of time consensus mechanisms with hundreds of active nodes around the world that work independently for security and immutability. They drive over 110,000 transactions per second. And in healthcare, they're ensuring data protection and compliance with strict regulatory standards. In finance, they're allowing for the digital representation of real, real world assets like real estate, commodities and intellectual property. And in an industrial world, in industries like manufacturing and logistics, Pikunovas has enhanced supply chain management that enables real time tracking of goods while ensuring data security and integrity. So this is not the future, is it? It's now, and it's been here.
Dr. Chris SmithmyerAnd you brought up a good point that people are, they tend to be afraid of change. And you mentioned Big Brother, like, yes, what I described, it does sound like big Brother. Until we add the last piece. The great thing that differentiates web three and four from what was there previously is the individual's ownership of their own data. And whenever they were writing 1984 and whenever people were getting scared about big Brother and talking about like communism and where we're going to have ministries of truth and fact checkers and stuff like that, that came true. We were just about 20 years slow. I mean, we saw the fact checkers on Facebook and Twitter where they said, man dies because car wrecked, and like, then it pops up. This may be false because the man died, but he could have died from a thousand things between when he drove off the bridge before it hit the water. And it's like, is that a fact checker or is that just beyond? And whenever you own your own data, though, it gives you the access for two things. One, it is the ability to control your own data, how it's used, who has access to it, and what it can be used. That's a really powerful thing. And that's really, if you get back the whole way to the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence, the life, liberty and happiness, the person's papers that they are protected in, that's your data. The founding fathers, there weren't even computers. There weren't anything like that. But they said in your data, the stuff you created, you have a right to privacy. And it's just taken us 250 years next year, right, about 250 years to get this right to where we can provide that digitally and protect people with so much to gain. The second piece that makes it even better is that you can monetize your data in web. Two, Facebook took your data and gave you a free social media price to waste your life on, right?
Kevin JacksonRight.
Dr. Chris SmithmyerNow, you can monetize that data, you can sell that data, and you can get paid back by the companies that are using that data, because when you have the power to control your data, you can also have the power to shut that data off. And that gives the power to the individual, that gives the power to the Kevin Jacksons of the world, to the Chris Smith Myers of the world, and lets them have a say in what theyre doing with it. So cryptocurrency, I believe it is the future. At least I hope it is the future, as I own a cryptocurrency company. So I hope its the future. But as we move away from the nation state, telling you what money you have and how you can use it to you having the ability to monetize yourself and monetize your information to gain money, it gives the people all around the world the ability to have a voice. And how they use that voice is really up to them. That's not something that those of us sitting behind a computer or sitting behind a camera can control. But it's the moment where we say, do we have faith in humanity? And do we want to give the choice to the individuals. And I hope we're to that point. I hope that we're ready to make the right choice of species.
Kevin JacksonWow, there's so much information. What you're saying is it's inspirational. It gives me faith in mankind and that maybe this technology is really lifting us all up. So if someone wanted to reach out to you, Chris, and to learn more about black Wallet and what you're doing and how this revolution in real world tokenization and I the supply chain will affect us all, how can I contact you?
Dr. Chris SmithmyerWell, if anybody that wants to get involved with tokenization or large scale real world asset tokenization or a country or anything like that, we deal with a bunch of those. Feel free to hit me up on LinkedIn. I love making new friends. It's just Christopher Smith Meyer on LinkedIn. I'm a guy. I believe I either got a cowboy hat or a beard that's a whole lot blacker than it is now because I haven't updated my picture. You can also email me@chrislackllackwalletgroup.com and we'll get back to you as soon as we can. I do get a lot of emails a day, so LinkedIn is your best bet. But I'd love to talk to new people. I love to help introduce people to this field. And as a college professor, I teach a whole lot of students about this stuff, too. So feel free to reach out to me. I love the connection.
Kevin JacksonNow, we really appreciate you joining us today on this special edition of the Buzz and audience. Thank you very much for joining us on the buzz. And make sure to join us next Monday where we will give you the latest news on the supply chain and the logistics industry. But you know, Scott is still banging on a door over there. But take a bit of the information that we've shared with you to make life better. And as God always says, do good, give forward, and be the change that's needed. Take action based upon what we've provided. So on that note, we'll see you next time on supply chain now. Thanks, everyone.
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