About this episode:

On this episode, our host Manseeb Khan sits down with Chris Naprawa the President of TAAL. They chat about what is Bitcoin SV, how crypto can save global warming, and how to stay true to Bitcoin. Enjoy! 

Subscribe and tune in each Friday to check out the latest movers and shakers in fintech. Listen to more podcasts here:

Season 1 | Season 2 | Season 3

Fintech Friday Transcript of Episode 53: Chris Naprawa of TAAL Distributed Information Technologies Inc.

Intro: Welcome to fintech Friday's a weekly podcast brought to you by the National Crowdfunding and Fintech Association of Canada and partners. Covering all things fintech, blockchain, AI and alternative finance.

Manseeb Khan: [00:00:00] Today I got Chris from TAAL. Chris,  Thank you so much for joining me today.

Chris Naprawa: [00:00:31] Great to be here. Happy Friday.

Manseeb Khan: [00:00:33] Happy Friday. I guess for the four or five people that may not know essentially who you are, what TAAL does?

Chris Naprawa: [00:00:45] All right. Well, I'll try to fit that into the next 45 minutes. So here's TAAL. Quite simply, we are a blockchain infrastructure player. So everybody understands infrastructure on the Internet, a whole bunch of computers and hosting, and all that sort of stuff in a data center. We're kind of like that, except for blockchain and blockchain right now, we believe is kind of like the Internet wasn't like nineteen ninety-six. You know, not a lot of people are using it right now, but I think everybody's going to be using it for absolutely everything and in the next three to five years. So, you know, our goal is to kind of be the the picks and shovels of this blockchain  . Klondyke that's coming our way.

Manseeb Khan: [00:01:25] Yeah, it's extremely exciting what's kind of happening in the space right now, like it's this past. I mean, as I guess in the course of this entire pandemic, there's been a lot of interest in the Crypto and Blockchain space, which has been exciting, especially for a guy like me that's been having the show for a little over three years, But now everybody's very familiar with the lingo. I mean, people are starting NFTs. Left, right, and center, we're living in a very interesting and really great time for it to be the space.

Chris Naprawa: [00:02:09] One hundred percent. And maybe, you know, a smart guy like you can explain this NFT phenomenon to me.

Manseeb Khan: [00:02:16] Yeah. okay I'd love to, So these are essentially just digital art. Right. So in the future, are you going to see is instead of hype, instead of people having an original Mona Lisa or if it's a Van Gogh, they'll have these digital frames where people can have what they can create their own pieces of art. They'll have a one on one. So later down the line and probably the next 10 to 15 years are going to see digital frameworks of people owning like their own art. So we kind of like a rotating screensaver in a sense of the kind of art pieces that, you know, which is pretty interesting because, you know, it's not only 2D, also 3D is also very interactive. So that's another place of value for up-and-coming artists and investors. I guess,

Chris Naprawa: [00:03:00] Hopefully, with the original I've heard you burn them like the NFTE is the only copy.

Manseeb Khan: [00:03:06] Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So it just it's just a one-to-one kind of video. Right. Sort of just like as soon as it gets transferred over the original gets burnt. Yeah.

Chris Naprawa: [00:03:13] That must be hard as an artist.

Manseeb Khan: [00:03:15] I mean. Yeah, I mean I think about like, you know, going for like just creating the art all the way. It's like auctioning it to like I don't know my own art. No, it's, it's definitely super difficult as an artist. But I mean it is adapting. It is changing. It is relatively extremely new. Saw the guidelines and regulations haven't really been set in place  for it to be, I guess, anything too crazy sense. Yeah.

Chris Naprawa: [00:03:41] Well, you know, I think that's, you know, that's thematic with kind of the tokenization of real-world things, you know, and not just money in art, but all kinds of other things and fractional ownership of things. And you know that tokenization when you start thinking about, you know, so many people using that in so many different ways and also an industry, what you really need is a robust platform or protocol that can handle all that traffic. And that's why, you know, that's why we're so dedicated to the Bitcoin S.V. protocol. Yeah. Because it scales up like crazy and it's super, super cheap. And I think they go for any protocol to work and going to go global. That's what it has to be. And, you know, as far as your imagination can take you on all these kinds of things where, you know, stock markets are going tokenized,  all kinds of things, are getting tokenized where you can have partial ownership of things and it is real. And the blockchain really is, you know, a consensus tool. Right? It's a public ledger of truth. And that, you know, it can't be changed, especially on something like Bitcoin, S.V., which is a proof of work. Like once is there, it's there. And that's what makes so many of these applications so exciting.

Manseeb Khan: [00:04:55] Yeah, of course. I mean, that's a great segway into what Bitcoin S.V. is and I guess the emphasis on it, because, you know, if anybody kind of jumps on your website if anybody's following anything that you guys are doing, you guys are very, very bullish on Bitcoin SV. And just give us a rundown of what it is, how I got started, and essentially why you guys are so passionate about Bitcoin SV.

Chris Naprawa: [00:05:16] Listen. This should really be what the whole show is because there's going to be people online here today. They're going to just be hearing about Bitcoin, asking for the very first time and for people that are kind of committed to blockchain and bitcoin. And if they're curious, we might just ruin their weekend because they're going to be reading all weekend again and digging in and rolling up their sleeves to this. Oh, and I'm quite passionate about it. You're absolutely right. I think that's a great word about it, you know, even religious about it. So in 2008, there was a white paper called the Bitcoin White Paper, and it's right here on my desk. I keep it on the top of the pile, a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. And it's very short. It's worth a read. I read it every week or so. And what it talks about there is this concept of electronic cash. And the word cash is really important to the whole central theme here. Right, because of cash, what is cash? Cash is a medium of trust. We trust each other. I can come and knock on your door and buy your bike for one hundred dollars you trust or I give you two redmen for that. You're good and we don't. So, so, so this whole DFI and decentralization. It has to be peer to peer for that to work, so you need this system of trust and the Bitcoin ASV is 100 percent true to the original white paper as it was designed. So the first papers written in 2008, the first block was mined in 2009. And then after that, things started to change on the BTC network. You know, I call that one the one that's trading at fifty-five or six thousand dollars. They call it BTC. I don't call it Bitcoin because it's not Bitcoin anymore. Something different.

Manseeb Khan: [00:06:56] Something different. Of course, it's something completely different, which is a So yeah.

Chris Naprawa: [00:07:01] It's not bitcoin. It's and they changed it and they change it for a whole bunch of reasons. Some of them were nefarious. Some of them are, you know, to get the node sizes down and all that sort of stuff. And then it started to morph into this kind of store of value and lost all its utility. It is functionally useless, that one. That's why they have exchanges and custodians and all these other things where it stopped being peer to peer. You know, what they really do is recreate a lot of the aspects of the financial system. And now all of a sudden we have intermediaries that we don't know and we shouldn't trust. And there are so many examples of why that doesn't work from Mt. Gox on forward, like there's just disaster after disaster, because people are buying things they don't understand for people that they don't trust. And sure enough, bad things happen. So if you restore to the original, which is which only happened a couple of years ago, now it's really working like it's really working. And we're seeing real adoption on this. There are all kinds of controversy around it. You know, the Ethereum group hates it. Why do they hate it so much? They hate it because it's a major threat to their network, because we can do everything, absolutely everything. Except it's faster and cheaper.

Manseeb Khan: [00:08:20] Everything and more, faster, cheaper. That's probably that's the main draw of it. Right. Is it's it's so much it's more versatile. It hasn't spun off to something that it's not of what Bitcoin is currently,

Chris Naprawa: [00:08:33] But it doesn't scale. Right. And they identify that. And now that's why they're working on 2.0 and they're moving away from proof of work into proof of stake. And they're trying to make all these compromises because the original design doesn't scale. And transaction costs on Ethereum are going last month average about sixteen, seventeen dollars this month like thirty dollars. Now, back it up just a second. If I'm if I am a young artist and I'm creating all kinds of art and I want to sell NFTs and I've got a blockchain that costs thirty dollars a transaction and I've got one that costs half a penny. Yeah, I might choose half a penny one hundred and not get all tied up in the politics of it. Of course. Of course. So, so. And we think millions of people are going to make that choice and certainly, lots of big industry are making that choice because so many of the great applications on blockchain, they don't work with high fees. They don't work. If it's really slow, it doesn't work. So we think, you know, the author under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, you know, it's now been realized that that guy is really a guy named Craig Wright. He's an Australian living in the UK. Craig's an advisor to our firm. He's a shareholder of our firm. He holds many, many patents on enterprise applications on Bitcoin. And he's an absolutely fascinating character. And it's really, really important that just like on the Internet, when the early days, you know, 96, 97, there was a whole bunch of industry leaders, of course, many of which don't exist today. So I just read that story about Sergey Brin walking into the offices of Excite and trying to sell Google for seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. They and they threw him to the sidewalk, you know, try on one point five trillion for science today.

Manseeb Khan: [00:10:20] Yeah, that's right.

Chris Naprawa: [00:10:22] And this is similar right now. Like this is like nineteen ninety six and the Internet, that's where we're at right now. And it's way too early for anyone to claim victory on anything.

Manseeb Khan: [00:10:33] Yeah, no, I completely agree. And it's and it's too late for people to kind of. I think that time's up and you know that they can't get into it like it's I've probably talked at nauseam, We're so early, like nothing. The applications that we're currently seeing right now are going to be absolutely like ten years from now, 20 years from now. Like, my little brother is like 14 right now, 15. Imagine he gets his hands on it. The technology that he's going to build, it's like it's it has such amazing potential. It's again, like you said, like we're the gold rush. Like you want to be the guy selling the pads. The shovels are going to be selling the maps of where to find all the gold that we're living in a really great time, dailing it back to finding. And just how did you get on as an adviser? That's my question of like, how did you find them? How did you get as an advisor or was the whole process like you said, he's a very fascinating character, I believe and I want to hear more about that whole story in that whole process.

Chris Naprawa: [00:11:38] Also, I'll send you some links later to some of stuff for you to look at. It's fascinating stuff. But Craig himself, you know, I'm not an expert authority on Craig, but I've certainly read volumes. I've watched hundreds of videos and interviews and feel like, you know, I need to understand this. If what we're doing is evangelizing the restoration of the original Bitcoin and we have the founder and inventor on the team, I better try to understand that as much as I possibly can. Yeah. So, you know, that whole story is a long one, but essentially we have another really amazing benefactor, a wonderful guy named Calvin Ayre, who's our largest shareholder. Calvin's a Canadian guy, and he became rich and famous because he had a company called Bodog. And Bodog was an online gaming website and ecosystem. And that's how we made his big dough. And if you think about that situation, that whole online gaming was you know, it was in the darkness, you know, and people were using it. There was a lot of controversy around it. Certainly, the authorities really pushed back on it. And now we've got DraftKings sponsoring NFL stadiums, and that's how that has changed.

Chris Naprawa: [00:12:53] Yeah, OK. And Bitcoin is the same. You know, in the beginning, you know, one of the side effects of making this incredible invention, it was also like the perfect money laundering tool. And people figured that out. You put a bunch a whole bunch of computers on one side and the other side comes money that you can put on a memory stick and put in your pocket and get on an airplane and fly to Malta. Or you can go to anywhere, anywhere. Yeah. So there's there's still a contingent of folks that really like that aspect of it and would like to keep it that way. But Bitcoin as it was designed, was always designed to be completely compliant. That's another big change that happened in the early years of Bitcoin. And in fact, Craig, right when I got a law degree, part of the process of getting Bitcoin so we could understand how to make it compliant because it would never be what it could possibly be if it was in the shadows. It has to be regulators, governments and everyone else for it to be for it to get to the vision of what was to be. Our CEO met Craig early on in his career, and I was going to do a lot of details. But there are lots of reasons that Stefan felt that Craig was on to something with this whole Bitcoin and way, way back when Craig was still an auditor. And they've been a passionate trio ever since. And we are just one company in Calvin's ecosystem that he's trying to build around Bitcoin. S.V. And even in the last six months, I would say there are now I think we have three investors now in this company that are running professionally, run funds that are only investing in Bitcoin, S.V. Wow, looking for opportunities. So for the young developers out there and people with dreams, I'm going to tell you right now there is money out there for you if you have a good idea and if you have something that has some economic worth.

Manseeb Khan: [00:14:45] Yeah, your ideas are worth something. So don't give up. You got to keep going. So this is actually a pretty great transition. So what was it like going public and just like having that ramp up going like what was that process like? You know, especially being the small, small percentage or of companies actually becoming public via like using crypto as a vehicle? Like what was that whole process like? Like just walk me through that, please.

Chris Naprawa: [00:15:12] Well, this company was very public when I became president. But, you know, this is the fourth time I've been president of a small company like this in public and one private. Yeah. And I will tell you and I think all entrepreneurs would probably agree if you can do it without going public, do that. Yeah.

Manseeb Khan: [00:15:32] Yeah.

Chris Naprawa: [00:15:34] Because this whole ecosystem, you know, all those big towers they build down. Oh, yes, mostly built from fees taken from public companies with lawyers and accountants and all these folks that have to get paid is extremely, extremely expensive to be a young, small public company. But in some new industries, Bitcoin being one of them. Another great example would be cannabis. You know, you can't find meaningful private investment. In the early days, it didn't exist. So you had to spread out and find all the other enthusiastic speculators out there that want to participate in this and form your capital that way. Yeah, but, you know, you can't be in the public markets without loving the markets. And I love the markets. I've always loved the markets from the very, very beginning. And I'm comfortable in this public setting. But it's not for everybody and it's not without an extreme amount of heartache. And everybody gets an opinion. Everybody gets oversight. And you're the only people that have to do all the work. There's only one group of people doing the work.

Manseeb Khan: [00:16:44] And it's you. Yeah, it's. Oh, yeah, I know you probably you know that if you don't have to go public, don't go public.

Chris Naprawa: [00:16:56] It's a graveyard. It is just a graveyard of broken souls that haven't made it. But like anything, if you have a dream and you want to and you want to do it, it's possible. And the other thing that most people find out when you are a public company is just how many people it takes to be successful, not only in your company but your advisors, your bankers, the salesmen, the traders, like the market makers. There are all kinds of people that are helping you every single day. And if I could give a shout-out to all those people today, I just say thank you very much, because I don't say thank you often enough and you can't do it by yourself. You can't.

Manseeb Khan: [00:17:36] Yeah, no, it definitely takes a village, especially building a company and building something that is a product primarily built on trust. And you're building a network that is a peer to peer. You're building out a network where you get people to talk to strangers from across the world, being able to just bond to be like, yeah, not hey, I'm going to send you this. I understand you this much this. Perfect. Here you go. I'm forty forty-four hundred kilometers away from a sec. Here you go. And then, you know, it takes quite a bit of trust, not only the product but internally the teams to make sure they're like, hey, like I got you. Like I have you, you got my back. Cool, because we're building something that's completely new in the dark and we're just, you know, we're learning how to build a shovel.

Chris Naprawa: [00:18:23] Yeah, yeah. But it's it's, you know, like any like any industry gets overregulated and then new things show up. Some of these new exchanges showing up and then the advent of the SPAC. And, you know, there's all kinds of different vehicles. And, you know, one thing that all the regulators and the governments forget is that capital is highly mobile. It'll go wherever it needs to go to seek out higher returns. So if things get overregulated or things get too complex or too expensive, yeah, capital will go elsewhere and, you know, postcode, that's one of the things I'm really interested to see is because all this money that's coming out, all this free money, something it's going to get paid for somehow. And yeah,

Manseeb Khan: [00:19:03] Yeah, that's there has to be a course correction. There has to be a course correction.

Chris Naprawa: [00:19:07] There's a lot of people to just kind of pick up their stuff and leave if it's too expensive. Yeah.

Manseeb Khan: [00:19:12] Yeah, it's that's definitely fear. I guess not. Which is it's so interesting because, you know, like up until like two years ago, if you had a conversation, a regulation, like we were just getting started, deregulation. Now people are like, honestly, everybody's just like whoever can, like, figure out the regulations, the sooner the better, because that's just money. Just waiting for them to kind of come through. Right. What is your take on regulations? And like, I guess in some cases, overregulation. What is what are your thoughts on that?

Chris Naprawa: [00:19:39] This and I think when it comes to something like the monetary system like this, thought of DEFI and we're all going to have this kind of magic money that has nothing to do with the government or anything like that forget it like that's not happening. It's a central pillar of every single government that they control the money system. They absolutely have to. And they're not going to get away from that. And so, you know, it's amazing to see a place like China, for instance, being one of the most progressive places on crypto because it is centralized, it is completely controlled. So so and this and this notion of money not already being digital, it already is like it already. Yeah. There's no such thing as money. There's not a vault somewhere with all this money in it. It is just an imaginary thing that we trust in, you know. Yeah. Like anything else. And so I think like most things. Here in this country in particular, will be a little bit too slow, will probably be a little bit too heavy-handed, and then we'll have to catch up. And, you know, Canadians will always do the right thing. But once they've tried everything else, once they tried everything else, then they'll do the right thing

Manseeb Khan: [00:20:53] And or just wait for other people to kind of see what's going on to I was going to let all the other countries kind of do the thing. We're just going to sit here and just have a coffee and just wait and see if they come back. If they come back if they don't. Although now we know we'll try something else. The Canadians, that's probably, I guess, one of the more frustrating aspects of having such a flourishing market of Canadian crypto is that Canada slow. It's very conservative. It takes time, the checks and balances, which makes us great. But equally, you know, we're definitely missing up on a lot of opportunities by not being the number one country.

Chris Naprawa: [00:21:27] Yeah, but on the flipside of that, like our exchanges, like the Canadian Venture Exchange and the Canadian Securities Exchange and the Neo, you know, these exchanges are actually very, very progressive on a global scale. And, you know, which is that's where the industry got funded. That's where it's been funded. Yeah. That's very hard to list a crypto company in the U.S. and you got to go through a lot of hoops. The auditors don't want to deal with you, all that kind of stuff. So, you know, credit where credit is due, we and, you know, Canada is kind of seen as this resource economy, you know, oil and gas and mining. And people will probably appreciate, like when there are investors investing in the mining and oil gas companies in Africa or somewhere in the middle of South America. It's like it creates real economy. There's real social benefits. Yeah. To to this money flowing into these places that otherwise would have nothing, of course. And it creates jobs and education and health care. And there's a lot of economic social good that comes from, you know, let's call it what it is. Speculators are speculators.

Manseeb Khan: [00:22:32] And yeah, like you mentioned before, right of money's mobile, especially, especially today, right, like, you know, if we have more Canadian crypto companies kind of just being in Canada, developing, building out, these are creating like smaller Microeconomics, which right now we can become to tokenization of economies were like, hey, you know, some kid gets an investment. This crypto company, he starts with something that does well. As far as another kid, I just kind of build it, grow from there. It's yeah. I mean, I guess to you, how important is Canadian crypto?

Chris Naprawa: [00:23:03] Yeah, I don't I don't think it's overly important. I think I think it's somebody is going to figure it out and we're going to adopt something, but we should be open enough to allow development. And you know, in the oil and gas business, the mining business we have, we have tax credits to incentivize investors to invest in those kind of businesses. And we should have the exact same for technology. We should have tax credits that allow investors to invest here at home and support young developers to create new things on a tax advantage basis, because that actually really, really works. And it creates jobs. It creates a lot of economic benefit. You know, is it important to us that we invented here? Maybe, maybe not, but we're going to use it. And that's for sure. One way or another, we're going to use it.

Manseeb Khan: [00:23:52] Gotcha. That's, it's very fair. So we should make

Chris Naprawa: [00:23:56]  we should make Canada mining-friendly like there's going to be a lot of pricing power. Yes. We'll talk about all the power involved in crypto mining and it is a lot.

Manseeb Khan: [00:24:05] Gotcha. Yeah, not

Chris Naprawa: [00:24:06] As much as, you know, we use every day in our cell phones and every is your computer that you're on right now, like the vast data centers, sprawling energy consumption, you know, places like Niagara Falls would be a great place to set up a big crypto hub right on right on all that that that green power that's sitting there.

Manseeb Khan: [00:24:27] Of course. Of course. I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, processing power is going to become a processing power, like as power outages is going to become one of the next interesting topics at issue to focus on, because, hey, it's great that we have all these people who are crypto. All right. Well, if my computer's firing, your computer's firing. My entire building's computer is computers firing. OK, well, that's a lot of energy, a lot of heat. That's a lot of it's going to, you know, what's the economics, the environmental impact of all this? Right. We're going to put this what are the solutions? It's we're coming. It's a very interesting problem with crypto is going to slowly now lead in more. It's like there's global warming and climate change as a general, like when I was right. Crypto right. Even crypto might even solve global warming if it becomes cold. You know,

Chris Naprawa: [00:25:11] So often there's a technology looking for a problem, you know, and that's kind of how I feel about the DFI stuff. It's like your kind of looking for a problem for most of the industrialized world. The banking system kind of works. You know, I can walk in pretty much anywhere I've ever gone and I can buy something with a credit card and it works and maybe it's too expensive for fees and all that stuff, but it kind of works. Yeah. So let's make sure we're actually addressing a problem. And that's where blockchain, you know, if you think about it outside the financial system, you know, in supply chain or in any kind of business process where there are third parties that introduce friction and cost, you know, the ones that get disintermediated, what people really want is things to be easier and cheaper. Yeah. And if you can make that happen, not only for people but for industries, then you've got a world-beater.

Manseeb Khan: [00:26:06] Yeah. Yeah. Which is the goal. The goal is speed and efficiency. Just to kind of like just trim the fat and be as productive and officials we possibly can because the world is getting faster and you know, it's not going away for us. So we had to we've got to catch up. We've got to run out eventually. So touchy about this topic just a little bit. But could you talk a little bit more about what blockchain processing power is? And essentially what does that mean to TAAL and why is it so important?

Chris Naprawa: [00:26:33] Yeah, it's important to us, you know, so, you know, the thing with blocking is decentralized, so you've got this decentralized consensus with all the mining companies and the miners out there. And for a company like us that is really focusing on commercial-industrial applications for blockchain, we need to be able to offer service level agreements and consistency and uptime that they're used to in other industries. So, you know, if you're if you are hosting your website with Amazon, for instance, your expectation is that thing is going to be working most of the time. Ninety-nine points nine percent of the time is up and running. And so the same thing as you're doing, you know, some sort of work for watching for corporations. They have that same expectation. So for us, we need to win a lot of blocks. So for us to put stuff on the blockchain, we have to win the blocks. And right now we're winning kind of 30 or 40 percent of the blocks every single day on Bitcoin ASV. And that gives us the ability to work with applications and work with developers to be able to put a whole bunch of information on those blocks and then also retrieve it. So it's very, very important that we have a lot of processing power. So we talk about that in the measurement is called peda hash . That's how we measure it all. And the good news is for the mining community and people that have to run mining machines is your costs are very predictable because the computers either on or off. Yeah. And when it's on. You know, whether it wins a block or not, the cost the same, it costs the same. So getting access to low-cost power in an environmentally sensitive way is really, really important. We're using a lot of, like stranded gas in Alberta. We could talk about our country's energy policy as much as you want another segment. But you know, that policy is stranded. A lot of jobs, a lot of gas, and a lot of people's jobs and livelihoods. But it's creating an opportunity for people like us that we can do this inexpensively and in an environmentally sensitive way because that gas is going to get flared one way or another whether we use it or not. So we'll use it. So that's really, really important to us, that we're able to continually win blocks on the BSP blockchain every single day, 24 hours a day.

Manseeb Khan: [00:29:06] T I want to talk with Canadian Energy. I love Clean Energy Fix me why I wake up in the morning. OK, so what is I guess the TAAL Console like. What is it like Why, why did you guys get that started. Like give the sermon that

Chris Naprawa: [00:29:27] The council is nothing more than it's just like an interface for our enterprise clients to be able to deal with that. So right now it's really, really simple. But the goal is that you add on more products and more services and people can do analytics and all kinds of things that they expect to do. Just just like if you're you know, the broader category that we fit into is cloud computing. So in that category, you would expect a whole bunch of services and analytics available. Even if you had a Shopify account, for instance, right here, you would expect to go into your account and you'd be able to see all kinds of things, what your transactions look like. The same kind of principle analytics upgrade your service. You know, I've got three point-of-sale servers. I want to go to ten. You know, I should be able to click, click and get that. That's the expectation of of of clients. And we got to live to that standard, even though it's a brand new industry.

Manseeb Khan: [00:30:18] Yeah, that's I get extremely frustrated but extremely exciting all at the same time because you're building you know, you're building a very high demand product for everything. I don't know if I can brand new market which

Chris Naprawa: [00:30:29] People want to do stuff on their own. You know, whether it's whether you're an individual consumer or you're a corporation, you want to beat your expectation as I can log in and go, bom, bom, bom, I just get what I need.

Manseeb Khan: [00:30:39] Yeah, of course. I mean, like, it's simple when you're a kid, you definitely you know, I wanted to help you out at the time. You sure you want to buy stuff?  You want to actually have at least the least amount of friction as you possibly can with the touchpoints.

Chris Naprawa: [00:30:59] There are so many exciting applications coming on a blockchain. And, you know, from social media, gaming supply chain, you know, health care, health care is a big one. You know, we've got some exciting clients in health care, for instance, you know, and you look young and healthy and ever been in the health care system. But like for a lot of people, it's a very frustrating experience if you're involved or get into it. So, yes, you imagine that you know, you're in some kind of accident, you're hurt. So you have your record with your family doctor. You have a record with the hospital in a pain clinic, the blood clinic, the MRI, all these things. They have all your information. If you flip it around and say, I own my own patient record. Yeah. And commission based and I can give permission to all these different groups on my phone to be able to put those records on-chain. So it's really important that it can't be hacked or disrupted. And that's what the blockchain does so beautifully because it's cryptographically secure.

Manseeb Khan: [00:31:56] Yeah, yeah.

Chris Naprawa: [00:31:57] And I own that patient record. All of a sudden I don't have to go back to the blood clinic again because the pain clinic needs it in the hospital with my blood works there. I'm going to give you permission to look at that. Yeah. And then you fast forward a few years from now. Now think about millions of people having their own patient record that they all actually own. And you get an of being on your phone and it's like Johnson and Johnson or Harvard Medical School wants to access your patient records. Would you like to allow them to do that for a study? Yeah, all that big data we talk about big data a lot like that's a really good source of big that's going

Manseeb Khan: [00:32:29]  Let's say fast forward it's not only going to be your health care information, but it's going to be everything.

Chris Naprawa: [00:32:48] A lot of big companies have figured it out. Right. They've figured out how to monetize our data and now we need to figure out how to monetize our own data because it's going to monetize one way or another.

Manseeb Khan: [00:32:58] We know exactly. I mean, like, hey, topping it off of how we kicked off this conversation with Google, I like, hey, you know what? Data is a massive, massive industry, you know, like, you know, like we oh none of we own none of our data. Like you know. I don't own my own health card number and my password, everything, everything should be on your phone, right? So I decide that is a very interesting and exciting space because now you get to own your data. You have companies like Brave and a few other companies out there. That is a great one that actually paying you for your actual data, for your information to get money off. And I mean, hey, why not? You know, like if you're going to target all these ads, you want to make a fraction of it.

Chris Naprawa: [00:33:36] Yeah, well, for the older people in the audience, they'll remember, like Canadian Tire, like we used to have Canadian tire money. Oh yeah. They had their own printing press and they made money and they gave it to you. I've still got all my Canadian tire money around here somewhere.

Manseeb Khan: [00:33:49] I think I think I have a ten cents like Bill somewhere in room. Like I definitely have one time I was from So yeah and now we're living in a digital digitized version of Canadian Tire Money, where not only Canadians, I can make their own money. Everyone can make their money at this point. Yeah.

Chris Naprawa: [00:34:05] Yeah. Which is right. And it should be fair and equal. And, you know, a few of the largest, most profitable companies in the world, they don't give us anything back.

Manseeb Khan: [00:34:16] No, exactly. I mean, like the data is powerful, right. Especially now with where we're making sure our data is encrypted with security breaches coming in every day. People are getting hacked every day. If you just people just losing passwords, having a more and more secure way to kind of not only protect your information, but be able to monetize from it's a phone almost like some sort of flip it on to you. I'm like, Chris, what are you most excited about in the industry? Like, I guess what keeps you up at night, either in a good way or in a bad way?

Chris Naprawa: [00:34:45] For me, there are only two enemies, and those enemies are time and money. And so go and get the money, make sure that we are properly stacked, and work against time. And there's a million time bandits out there every single day that wants to steal your time and take you off course. And, you know, I always say that discipline is one of those easy things to talk about. It's really easy to talk about being disciplined. It's actually hard to do it. It's really hard to do it. And being disciplined means saying no. It's like, no, we've already decided this. Here's where we're going, right or wrong, OK, we've picked our path and we're not going to hedge your bets. You know, we're going forward. We're 100 percent all-in on this plan and get everybody onside with that. So that's you know, and that's not just your people in the company. That's all your everyone around you, of course, don't want to derail or you, no doubt, or whatever. You know, you've got to have faith in yourself and be willing to move forward no matter what every single day. You know, for me, do I have a lot of worries? I don't have a ton of worries. I think worrying is, you know, that's a pretty big waste of time.

Chris Naprawa: [00:35:59] I've got a problem. So I'm going to sit here and feel badly about it for the next two hours. Yeah, I

Manseeb Khan: [00:36:03] Know it's a waste of time and energy. It's the two things that you're trying to not do. Yeah. All right. It's not going to help. Yeah, it's not going to help you,

Chris Naprawa: [00:36:12] You know, but I've been really lucky to be involved in emerging industries. You know, I was involved in the wireless business. You know, when Digital Wireless was just coming out, I was involved in the Internet just at the very beginnings and cannabis and now and blockchain. And, you know, it's you get to hang it with a certain kind of group of people that are like-minded and enthusiastic and entrepreneurial. And, you know, that's a great way to live your life if you're that way.

Manseeb Khan: [00:36:42] Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it's always exciting, you know, being able to kind of jump out of the industry, kind of like this is absolutely nothing like the industry. Before I would I was that was the door like, where do I go? I like how do we how about we jump in, let's get going like I'm fired up. Yeah.

Chris Naprawa: [00:36:58] Yeah. You know, there are other ways to live your life too and that's and that's fine too. And to each their own safety and security also means a lot to other people. And I know one thing is like none of us are getting out of here alive, that's for sure. So, you know, it's on you to find some happiness along the way and find some challenge and cause, you know, one of the things that were you know, we talk about focus a little bit like the information. We are pounded with information

Manseeb Khan: [00:37:29] And we talk about time thieves

Chris Naprawa: [00:37:31] And there's just no way you can consume it all. It's impossible. So you've got to be careful in what you consume. And, you know, the way things are set up these days, it's harder and harder to find, you know, unbiased, factual, you know, interesting, engaging stuff because everyone's got an angle. And I just going to take that TV set and throw it right out the window. Nothing to look at. Yeah.

Manseeb Khan: [00:37:57] I mean, I use my TV for Call of Duty. Well, that's kind of it, but. Yeah, no, it's I totally agree with you. I mean, you know, you're constantly bombarded with information left, right, center emails here. It has text messages here. You just say it's tough to say focus. I mean, I guess this is where kind of what you said about. You need to have that discipline, need to have that focus of like, you know, like we're doing the right thing, I'm you know, I see this vision. I see this dream. This is a goal I have perfect. I'm just going to just keep on marching until I hit it. And if I hit it, fantastic. If I don't, OK, why the fact that I got hit, it was can't keep going. Right. So, you know, it's exciting stuff. Chris, thank you so much for jumping on the show. I mean, we'll be the best way for people to either reach out to you, to reach out to TAAL.

Chris Naprawa: [00:38:44] But I think we've got an Instagram. We've got a Twitter of our investor page is great or just TAAL.com Is an easy way to get involved. And there are tons and tons of resources like I said at the top like there are lots for the people that are curious about this stuff and really want to learn about it. There's a pile of resources on the website for everybody. Tell Dotcom and, you know, interviews and videos and all that stuff. And that's how I like to learn as well. So we got to populate with those kinds of things that I like.

Manseeb Khan: [00:39:16] Ok, awesome. Thanks so much.

Chris Naprawa: [00:39:18] Thank you.

Outro : you've been listening to Fintech Fridays brought to you by NCFA and partners. Tune in weekly for the latest fintech Friday podcast by subscribing to this channel. The National crowdfunding and Fintech Association of Canada is a non-profit actively engaged with social and investment fintech sectors around the globe and provide education research industry stewardship services and networking opportunities to thousands of members and subscribers. For more information please visit ncfacanada.org. Oh yeah.

End of Podcast

Subscribe and Listen to more Fintech Fridays podcasts here

Join NCFA's weekly Podcast series 'FINTECH FRIDAYS' where we sit down with the incredible people in the Fintech community and talk about leading fintech products innovations developments and challenges!

Interested in getting involved as a partner or participant? info@ncfacanada.org

The National Crowdfunding & Fintech Association (NCFA Canada) is a financial innovation ecosystem that provides education, market intelligence, industry stewardship, networking and funding opportunities and services to thousands of community members and works closely with industry, government, partners and affiliates to create a vibrant and innovative fintech and funding industry in Canada. Decentralized and distributed, NCFA is engaged with global stakeholders and helps incubate projects and investment in fintech, alternative finance, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer finance, payments, digital assets and tokens, blockchain, cryptocurrency, regtech, and insurtech sectors. Join Canada's Fintech & Funding Community today FREE! Or become a contributing member and get perks. For more information, please visit: www.ncfacanada.org

Support NCFA by Following us on Twitter! Follow @NCFACanada

April 15, 2025

IRS Crypto Rollback Raises Questions for Canada

April 15, 2025

Insights from Jamie Dimon’s 2024 Letter to Shareholders

April 14, 2025

Plaid Raises $575M to Scale Fintech Infrastructure

April 14, 2025

Strengthening Resilience and Leading Through Uncertainty

April 14, 2025

Navigating SEO for Effective Crowdfunding

April 11, 2025

OneVest Closes $20M Series B to Lead Wealthtech

April 10, 2025

SEC Issues Covered Stablecoin Statement, Risks Remain

April 10, 2025

Data Shows Tariffs Are Threatening Early Stage Innovation

April 10, 2025

Trump’s Tariff Pause Leaves Canada in the Cold

April 9, 2025

Tailscale Raises $230M to Power Identity-First Networking

April 9, 2025

Waymo Plans to Train AI Using In-Car Camera Footage

April 9, 2025

The Intersection of Fintech and Real Estate: How Innovation is Rebuilding the Foundation of Property Transactions

April 8, 2025

Win Free Tickets to Consensus 2025! NCFA Pitch the Future Contest

April 7, 2025

OSFI Approves Santander for Canadian Banking License

April 7, 2025

Zelle App Shuts Down, Shift to Bank Integrations