064. Paul Puey on Skin in the Game and Levelling the Pyramid of Power

When Paul Puey, CEO at Edge, first learned about Bitcoin, what got him hooked was our ability to use a phone, without any personal information to “create, basically what amounts to a bank account” and send any amount of currency to anyone anywhere in the world.

“You start digging further you realize that there's actually an economic policy behind Bitcoin and it actually has a certain issuance curve that is drastically different than what other currencies typically have or have had in the past” and that’s what triggered his ah-ha moment when he knew it would be revolutionary.

He explained that he’d already been becoming disillusioned by “the establishment” and what we were being taught in society. And one of those area’s we dive into is big pharma vs personal wellness. In the healthcare, pharmaceutical industry, there’s “more money going into what will sell than what will cure.” Similarly, society seems to be trying to patch up a financial system that’s not working, rather than fixing it altogether.

In regard to centralization, Paul believes we gravitate to more centralization for its efficiencies. Processes are set in place so when we want something done, like changing our address through the DMV or in Canada the Ministry of Transportation, the process is fairly automatic, even though it may take time for the process to be enacted.

He compared centralization vs decentralization with the example of licencing in Europe vs in the United States. With fintech laws in the US, a company needs to go to every single state in order to obtain licensing in each state, whereas in Europe, there’s one centralized authority that oversees regulation across countries in Europe.

But, despite the fact that decentralization is less efficient, Paul believes that the main advantage of decentralization is freedom. Currently the decentralization of the internet allows us to access to information all over the world or publish content from around the globe.

And decentralization levels the pyramid of power.

We talk about his decision to pay employees of Edge in crypto, even though logistically, it’s more difficult. Not only does he want to learn first-hand, what the challenges are, it also gives incentives for employees to have skin in the game.

“Not unlike giving someone some stock in your company. We're giving people a little bit of stock and industry.”

On stablecoins.

“I do think stable points will take will play a major part in the visibility of cryptocurrency, and if that puts private keys and a wallet in the hands of people, I'm all for it. I imagine it's actually the Trojan horse for crypto. It's not driving adoption of crypto, it's like the Trojan horse getting wallets in hands of people, and that way when they are interested in real crypto, they're most of the way there already. All the tooling is there. It's like instead of sending Dai, I will send you Bitcoin.

On a Facebook coin.

 “I ask myself the test of how cryptocurrency something is, and will someone be able to send Facebook coin to a sanctioned country?

… If they are able to do that, and Facebook can't stop them from doing that, that might pique my interest.” 

“I know how Facebook acts and how they make money and what they'd be most interested in. Unless they completely 180-degree shock me, then I'm not going to be excited until then.”

Paul Puey

https://twitter.com/paullinator?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Edge

https://edge.app