Introduction Voiceover: Welcome to The Story of Money by YAP Cast where we explore the past, present, and future of money. I’m Samantha Yap. Intro CTA - Spotify Follow The Story of Money by YAP Cast to learn more about where money is heading. Intro CTA - YouTube Subscribe to The Story of Money by YAP Cast to learn more about where money is heading. The utopian idea of a universal basic income has been around since the 16th century.  Universal Basic Income or UBI is often a government policy that regularly provides every citizen a fixed sum of money with no strings attached.  Today it is seen as a social welfare proposal with the aim of providing a basic standard of living for all members of society and addressing poverty and income inequality. In Kenya, there is a charity called GiveDirectly running a 12-year pilot basic income program in some of the poorest parts of Kenya, Malawi and Liberia.  It is the world’s largest and longest-term test of a universal basic income program and has proven to have benefited public health in the villages  Similarly, in Finland, a two-year UBI trial was conducted where unemployed people were given a monthly stipend. Although the program did not significantly increase employment rates, participants reported feeling less stressed and having greater trust in social institutions. This makes me wonder, what would UBI look like with digital currency?  In this episode, we have the pleasure of speaking with Anna Stone, Co-Founder of GoodDollar, a crypto-based UBI project. Anna is an expert in the field of technology and social welfare, with a focus on building a sustainable and effective model for a crypto-based Universal Basic Income. She'll share her insights on the impact of technology on social and environmental issues and the potential of UBI to address inequality, poverty, and economic instability. Pioneering Financial Inclusion Through Crypto Samantha Yap  00:00 Hey, Anna, thank you so much for joining me on YAP Cast. Really excited to talk to you today. Anna Stone  00:05 Sam, I can't wait to be here. And thank you for inviting me. And we'll get into all things crypto, emerging markets and mass adoption. Samantha Yap  00:14 Yeah, let's do it. So, I like to start this podcast by asking my guests. What is money? So, what is money to you? Anna Stone  00:25 What a great question to kick off your podcast with. So, you know, one of the definitions of money that I like to use, or at least resonates with me is that money is actually a technology that enables us to collaborate with each other. Right? So, money, in many ways is like, it's a technology that we use, that enables us as humans to be able to do things productively, right? And with alignment, and with a sense of, let's say, shared vision around and a shared language around facilitating that collaboration, right? And so I think, you know, there are obviously, the technical definitions of money in terms of store of value or unit of account, medium of exchange, etc. But I think that when I think of money, I really think of it as a technology that enables people to collaborate and do things together. This is actually very true to the origin, I think of like why money came to be? Right? And we know that in ancient societies, well before, there were countries in nation states, people used all different sorts of, let's say, natural resources, or, you know, non-traditional money - what we don't think of today as money, as money, right? So, people would use shells, they would use materials, they would use spices, they would use all different sorts of valuable assets that would enable people to like collaborate. I'll give you this shell, you give me a ride on your wagon? Right. And this is the origin story of money. And I think, you know, as we think about what role do we hope like an alternative money system is going to play, right? So crypto, it's actually, I think a lot of it is like, what are the tools that are going to enable us to do more interactions with one another rather than any one of the formal definitions, but how actually, can this technology change and improve and increase how we collaborate as people? Samantha Yap  02:46 Yeah. Right. I like that. So, a technology. That's a great response and great start to what we're going to delve into. Before we do that, can you tell us a little bit about your background? You know, your experience in Big Data to AI, and then what led you to start GoodDollar. So, do share a bit about your background. From Economic Development to Blockchain Revolution Anna Stone  03:10 Yeah, so I have to say, I've always been on a mission. I've always, I described myself as a recovering idealist and which means that, you know, doing stuff with mission has always been a part of who I am in my professional journey in a way, which is that I actually started off working in nonprofits. This is like, you know, many, many years ago now, but specifically in the areas of economic development, and seeing how economic development and access to money and access to some sort of financial security is really the ground to stand on for so many other issues when it comes to health outcomes or security or even gender rights, like money is, money and financial security is something that underpins almost all of the other social issues, right? And so I've always come to, you know, like my early career and working in economic development in some of the big nonprofits like that, that has stuck with me, if you will, throughout my entire life is that like, if you financial security and people being able to feel like their basic needs are covered for is actually what enables on those second, third quarter, you know, level benefits that enable people to achieve their dreams and live better lives, right? My, funny enough, I actually, like went to graduate school, and this was a time where microfinance was really at the front and center of, I want to say, the economic development in the impact conversation, right? So microfinance is this concept of how are we actually going to get credit and get capital to kind of like last mile communities that are suffering from inabili- like a lack of access to capital, which we, you know, see as really critical to producing productive economies, Capital Credit, etc. And so, I originally was really, I got interested in microfinance. And that actually led to my interest in FinTech in general. So, this was a period of time when around 2012 Visa and MasterCard were, you know, doing a lot of research and thinking a lot about how are we actually going to bank the unbanked, right? And so, I was always fascinated with this area, wanted to work in this area, had some opportunities to but actually decided to move abroad. And I moved to Israel, which is the startup nation, and there was a lot of different types of tech happening there. But one area where there was not, you know, so, so much happening, at least at that moment in time was in terms of retail, consumer finance. And so, I kind of went in a different direction. I started working in an enterprise tech firm, I, we were selling enterprise level Big Data and AI solutions to executive decision makers at the Fortune 500. And you know, that was a great, great school, if you will, in terms of working in tech, it definitely created a really strong business development, and marketing communications background was really, really useful. But in 2017, I had an opportunity to, you know, kind of like a moment where I was looking off at my career, and I'm thinking like, what am I going to do next? And I started, that was the beginning of my crypto journey. So, it was at this period of time that I started to learn about what blockchain was, I started to understand what is this ecosystem? What is Bitcoin? What is an Ethereum? What are all of these projects that are trying to build on top of Ethereum? And for me, I was, you know, it was like instant love, right? So, I was like, oh my god, this is the technology that is going to enable the financial inclusion that I've been thinking about for the past 10 years of my life and wanting to work on and like, this is the thing that has, actually has the potential to take our existing financial services industry, and not revolutionize it. Okay, but actually begin the evolution of solving for some of these big, big problems we have around how do we actually provide financial services to people? And how do we provide financial services to people in an open model where they're actually enabled by their mobile connectivity and their cell phones, right? Samantha Yap  08:06 Yeah. Anna Stone  08:07 And so, for me like working in and I'll talk about my first jobs in crypto, because it's also fascinating, but I discovered blockchain and crypto in 2017. And it was, I was totally, totally fell in love with the potential and the transformational potential of the technology. And it's been a heart, you know, working in crypto pulls at your heartstrings which we can also talk about in terms of the journey there. But for me, I was hooked. And I knew that this was going to be, this was going to be what I did for like, 20 years, if not longer. And it's been there... Samantha Yap  08:49 Yeah. Yeah, I love that. I love that you, the way you shared that, that you were totally hooked. I think I had a similar journey as well and it was in 2017 as well. And so yeah, you're telling me that what really got you hooked into crypto is the potential for it shaping the way money is being used and also deployed. Right? It's all about the transformation of how money is being used. I think that's what's exciting. Anna Stone  09:23 Exactly. And what is money, right? To the original question of what you started about, like what is money- Samantha Yap  09:28 Yep. Anna Stone  09:28 Right? And I didn't mention this as part of my origin story, but like my graduate degree was the first time I really got into unders- like macroeconomics, right? And really started to look into and dig into this question of like, how is money created? Like, who controls money? What is money? Right? And I have to tell you, that my experience of like I want to, it's almost like the, a deflowering in a way of like understanding or like the peeling back of the layers. And understanding that not only, you know, because I was coming to this from a position of inequality, right? Like, coming from an economic development background and trying to, you know, enable people who are living on $5 a day or $10 a day, right? And the realization to me that, like our current economy and the way capital flows, and the fact that there are winners and losers is a feature and not a bug of the existing money supply, for me was something that I could never unlearn. Right? Once I understood what interest-bearing money was, and that this was something that actually was money that was created by banks to charge us the ability to use, right? I, for me, that was like a really pivotal moment of understanding around why in the existing, in the existing modern monetary theory, and with the existing financial services structure, you would never meaningfully solve for inequality, because actually, capital collating in places where it's not used efficiently is how, it's a feature. It's not a bug, right? So, this is something that has very much both motivated me to understand the like, to really appreciate, what does it mean to separate money from state? What does it mean for there to be a user owned network? What is the role of an asset in terms of incentivizing the setup and operations of such a network? And how could we actually design that in such a way that individual people benefit, and the individual people that benefit are those that are most in need of basic financial services and new assets? Right. And so this, that was very, very critical to my journey, was actually understanding what money, money is learning about economics in a traditional setting, then coming to cryp, then, you know, blockchain, learning about it from that lens. And understanding that both at the access level and the asset level, blockchain represented a whole new world of what's possible. UBI: Promoting Financial Security and Inclusion Samantha Yap  12:55 Yeah. Well, if we're gonna, you know, touch on a area that you have built a project in, it's on Universal Basic Income. So, could you explain what is Universal Basic Income? Anna Stone  13:12 Yeah, so Universal Basic Income is actually not a new concept. It's an idea that's been around since the 1600s actually, and the idea is, how do you actually provide like a baseline level of, standard level of income to any person in society, so that they can support you know, like, live their lives, right? Um, and there have been over, let's say, the past few centuries, many, many different experiments done with basic income, very many different proposed programs. Probably the most well-known or the most popular, or that really brought like, awareness to this was actually in the, wow, was it 2016? The, wow, that's a long time ago, like Andrew Yang running for president in 2016. He was popularizing the UBI program that was $1,000 a month for every single American. Right? And that's a long time ago. But there's also been some really interesting in the US, some really interesting pilots in Stockton, California with the mayor's coalition. There's a run, there's a range of different UBI experimenting, experiments running off in American cities that are focused off of like, getting money to people, right? And so, the premise of UBI is that just for being a human who's alive on this earth, you will receive an unconditional income that will enable you, you know, that essentially is designed to cover for some amount of basic needs. And there are many, many different UBI experiments that have been run from rich countries to poor countries and every level in between. And what those studies have found every single one of them is that UBI having some sense of financial security, whether you're in Kinshasa or in Stockton, you know, has a positive outcome and brings positive externalities for the people who participate in this program. People feel, you know, they have health, positive health outcomes, positive mental health outcomes, positive outcomes regarding their own career development, right? And so, you know, there's, one of the big criticisms of UBI is like, oh, well, you give people money, and they're not going to work anymore. Right? Samantha Yap  15:44 Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna ask about that. Anna Stone  15:46 So, this is like, one of the criticisms that UBI comes under is like, oh, what you're gonna give people money. And then they're just gonna, like, sit around and you know, basically live off of the state, right? Samantha Yap  15:55 Yeah, like, what if they spend it on drugs or like alcohol? Yeah. Anna Stone  16:00 And I think one of the things that UBI, that was well-established, before our work started, was that UBI, at any level, in rich and poor society is like, actually, is not used on drugs, and it's not used on gambling, it's actually used to facilitate people leading better lives and actually provides the, some amount of security upon which they can begin to dream and scheme, if you will. And so Universal Basic Income is a long-standing concept. It also has traditionally been proposed on like a per country and a governmental level. Right? So, as I mentioned, I brought up Andrew Yang, I brought up in his campaign in the US, there's been some popular campaigns for UBI programs from the Labour Party in the UK. And, you know, UBI is not a new concept. But there's some real challenges with it, particularly when you think of administering it in a government setting, which is first and foremost, like, you need a, you need an advocate that is going to have the political will and influence to take on reshaping the entire social services of a particular country, because like, there are existing social services and UBI is often proposed as a replacement to that. And so, from our perspective, or from my perspective, and the team that we've worked with, it's like, waiting for a government UBI was waiting for Godot, right. Like you're never it's not gonna happen. Because if you look at what's happening in politics, at least in the United States, or, you know, any country really, like, very few, we're just not set up to institute that sort of like large scale change. But, um, you know, Yoni Assia and the team at Ian, who's the founder and CEO of eToro, that has really sponsored a lot of the work behind GoodDollar. He was the first person to be like, let's think of what a non-governmental UBI could look like that's actually global and owned by its members. And I think that's a great reason why we at least started to explore this mash up of blockchain in and Universal Basic Income. Samantha Yap  18:22 Yeah, that's so fascinating, because, yeah, when you're explaining that to me on a maybe a governmental level, to sounds like there's a lot of bureaucracy even to just get laws passed and things done. So Universal Basic Income would be, it sounds very utopian to me and ideal. So yeah. So like, yeah, can you just, you know, share how did you come about? Like you said, one of the co-founders of eToro? How did you come about, like thinking about how crypto and blockchain technology could enable this and leading you to start GoodDollar and share a bit about GoodDollar? About GoodDollar Anna Stone  19:00 Sure. So, as I mentioned, like myself, personally, I was already at this point, like a converted believer that blockchain was the transformational technology that was going to enable us to like rethink financial services and open finance and who benefits from those, and who those serve, right? Again, I was far from, I'm far from the only person who like has landed at that same point, right? And good. And so that, and those are the people that we tried to bring in to build the GoodDollar. And certainly the team, the team that we brought together to kick off GoodDollar, I think represents people who believe that The original concept behind GoodDollar or a global UBI system, as I mentioned, was the idea of actually Yoni Assia, who is the founder and CEO of eToro, and a long standing idea that he had around, how could you actually use public networks for public goods, right? So, Yoni was an early Bitcoiner and a true believer. And I think the power of creating a public network that would be public infrastructure that anyone could tap into, and ultimately was a huge wealth generator for many, many people around the globe and spurred a tremendous amount of goods and services. All of the crypto industry today is built off of was in many ways like kickstarted by the Bitcoin network, and this concept of public networks for a public good. And I think the design principle that Yoni really wanted to test or to challenge was, how can you create a network that actually, you know, the Bitcoin network rewards its miners, right? Those are the people that it rewards, the people who are contributing value to creating Bitcoin and securing the network, right? And Yoni really challenged himself and I think, and us who work with him, by extension, to think about how could we create a network where actually the value is generated by individuals or communities that, you know, build around this currency? And not just the people who are able to set up mining fields, right? So, what would that actually look like for individuals in the way that they use the money to create the trust in the network, to create the sense of consensus and value in the network. And Yoni also was a big believer in this concept of Universal Basic Income. And so, he actually with this idea, with this like, with this crazy kind of like idea, he committed real resources to actually advance this research. So, like, could we actually create a scalable, sustainable, Universal Basic Income system that rewards the people who use it, if you will, like using blockchain? And what would that public network look like? And, um, how would we do it? Right? So, Yoni like, brought in a team of professionals, of which I was lucky enough to be, you know, one of the core members there, we also have an excellent technical partner, Hadar Rottenberg, and we had a great protocol partner, Tomer Bariach. And he came and we came in and took this challenge and said, okay, like, there's this thing called Decentralized Finance that has been created over the, this is in 2018, right? So, there's this space of 20, in DeFi, there's all this money that's happening on chain, there's all of this different innovation around wallets and how people actually can interact directly with the blockchain, how people can receive assets on the blockchain. And that research and that thinking around where there were opportunities to 1) get money to people at scale. And I think most critically solve for that really critical economic question of like, how do you pay for UBI, right? Because it's a great idea, in theory, like free money is a great idea in theory, but actually, how do you pay for it, right? And so, there's, we tried to be really creative and creating a GoodDollar protocol and saying that there's all of this money out there on Blockchain, there's all different sorts of sources of money and funding, etc. What we need to do is channel all of these little microtransactions, towards a productive Universal Basic Income. And so that's actually what the GoodDollar protocol is, it's a new standard for free money as a public good, that is distributed every single day to members that are signed up to receive it. Anyone can sign up and become a member, and anyone can integrate their token or their protocol to actually help fund the UBI. And so, it's designed to both, you know, to be a really powerful use case of both how can we use crypto for good, how can we use blockchain to, and decentralized currencies and economies, to empower people who otherwise don't have other onramps and actually advance this question of people using UBI at scale? GoodDollar: Exploring Blockchain-Based UBI Samantha Yap  24:34 Yeah, no, thanks for explaining all that if you could paint us a better picture - who is using it right now like who are some of the adopters of GoodDollar and can you give us, I don't know, I know in crypto, prices fluctuate but what's the dollar figure? What are people getting every day? And how are they receiving it? Just, yeah, you can shed more light into that. Anna Stone  25:03 Sure. So, we originally launched the, we launched the project, the first like iteration of the project in the spring of 2020. And what we laun, or summer of 2020, deep COVID. And one of, and when we launched, we launched with a few components. The first was a very, very basic wallet that people could use, where people could basically very simply and easily create a noncustodial wallet, they could do so through using web2 credentials. So, you could create a web3 wallet that was linked to your Facebook, your Google account, etc. And that was your Good Wallet. And that was the smart contract account within which you could be, you could receive GoodDollars, okay? We also launched the protocol, which was actually the minting or the issuance of the GoodDollar token, which again, we distribute a certain amount of GoodDollars divided equally across all members of the ecosystem, or all members every single day. And so those are the core, we figure those are the core components of like, let's say, a UBI system. You need a wallet within which you could receive it, and you need the money that's coming every day, which is the protocol layer. And since we launched that, we've on boarded over half a million people into the Good wallet, which makes them all GoodDollar members or people around the world who have GoodDollars in their wallet. Samantha Yap  26:34 Where are they from? Like, where are these people from? Anna Stone  26:37 Over 181 countries. So, we actually have users - Samantha Yap  26:42 Wow. Anna Stone  26:42 Yeah, we have members who come from almost every single corner of the globe. And what's fascinating is actually seeing where are the countries where, where retention happens, where users come and they stay and they continue to claim every day. And on top of that, now, two, three years down the line, people are starting to build amazing things based off of the GoodDollar system, right? And so, you know, our top countries in terms of where our strongest global communities are definitely in Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon on the African continent. We have really strong communities in Southeast Asia. So, throughout Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, we have, you know, 30,000 users a day, in each one of those countries sometimes, and then throughout Latin America. So, Brazil, and then alternating Spanish speaking countries throughout Latin America have been popular in Argentina, Venezuela, in Cuba. And so these are places where, you know, for the most part, you have people who, first and foremost, everyone is very digitally connected, because everyone has a smartphone. Right? And they're primarily, you know, they have relatively high degrees of education, right? People are really well educated in these countries. And what's missing is not motivation, or ambition, or talent, what's missing is money, right? And so, what you see is that people are unbelievably creative around creating real value around the GoodDollar and creating these use cases, that actually serves the needs of their own communities. And I'm gonna give you like, a few different examples here. Because I know people are so hungry for the use cases in crypto. Outro Voiceover: It excites me to hear of communities scattered around the world not just experimenting with crypto-UBI but also creating use cases that can serve the needs of their own communities. We often talk about money and crypto in abstract and hypothetical cases but I appreciate that Anna had tangible, real stories to share about how crypto is being adopted in places like Nigeria, Bangladesh and Cuba. In our next episode, we'll delve deeper into the use cases and real-life examples of how GoodDollar has been adopted as well as the challenges that come with implementing it at scale. Outro Spotify Thanks for listening to this episode of YAP Cast. I’m Samantha Yap. Rate and follow this podcast to join us for another thought-provoking episode of The Story of Money by YAP Cast. Outro YouTube Thanks for listening to this episode of YAP Cast. I’m Samantha Yap. Share this episode and subscribe to this channel to join us for another thought-provoking episode of The Story of Money by YAP Cast.