[00:00:00] Luke: From privacy concerns to limitless potential, AI is rapidly impacting our evolving society. In this new season of the Brave Technologist podcast, we’re demystifying artificial intelligence, challenging the status quo, and empowering everyday people to embrace the digital revolution. I’m your host, Luke Malks, VP of Business Operations at Brave Software, makers of the privacy respecting Brave browser, And search engine now powering AI with the Brave Search API.

[00:00:29] You’re listening to a new episode of The Brave Technologist, and this one features Paul Barron, who is the founder of the Paul Barron Network and Media Company. Paul started his career in Silicon Valley at Microsoft before moving into media. He’s an accomplished author, filmmaker, and thought leader in technology and blockchain.

[00:00:45] He’s published written works, a documentary on Amazon Prime, and innovated through his venture PBN3, exploring cutting edge tech and blockchain. In this episode we discussed why he thinks AI will have a negative impact on the blockchain and how AI and [00:01:00] crypto will converge over time. How people underestimate AI’s ability to scale despite its speed and the latest advancement in compute requirements.

[00:01:09] And why gaming is the gateway to web 3 growth, leading us to an adoption curve that’s even faster than the internet. Now for this week’s episode of the Brave Technologist. Paul, welcome to the Brave Technologist podcast. How are

[00:01:23] Paul: you doing today? Excellent. Great. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I know. Thanks for

[00:01:27] Luke: coming on.

[00:01:28] I’ve been looking forward to this one. You know, we haven’t had really a lot of episodes with people that are on the media side, but it looks like your background kind of, know, you’re a bit of a pioneer on the podcasting front, but also you did a whole bunch of other things too, leading up to that.

[00:01:40] Why don’t you help give us a little, set the table a bit for the audience? Like, how did you kind of find your way what you’re doing now? And was it just out of a keen interest or just a fortunate

[00:01:47] Paul: chain of events? It was kind of a very interesting story. My background, you know, coming out of college was getting into computer science, built a pretty good career there working with Microsoft and in the retail system sector.[00:02:00]

[00:02:00] So worked with huge fortune 500 brands, developing technology in the early stage of retail tech, and then eventually kind of fell into media kind of in a backwards way. And then, you know, decided I was bored with, computer science and running developers and traveling mostly in Asia at the time, moved back home to Austin and got into really consulting for technology in the retail sector.

[00:02:28] And there wasn’t a lot of media. Out there so we fell into kind of a media product we started building websites it was very natural for me because i was very tech savvy so it was easy enough to get dev teams and in that era of building websites it was a little bit more technical than it is today. And then, yeah, we started really kind of understanding how new media would work and started going into that direction, which launched, of course, our podcasting products, which date as far back as [00:03:00] 2007.

[00:03:00] We actually had a podcast at that time. Wow. Was kind of in that role. And, we built a network in various business sectors, mostly in the B2B space. And then we launched a tech Platform that is pbn our original goal was to cover all things innovative and one of the areas we touched on early was a robotics ev and blockchain was kind of the fourth leg of the stool and before you knew it man the channel and all of our podcast just started blowing up on crypto and blockchain.

[00:03:37] So we just put our heads down, you know, four or five years ago and started diving in and just learning everything we could and really getting into the media side of it. So that’s where we are today. That’s

[00:03:48] Luke: awesome. How has it been kind of seeing this boom in podcasting and just from your perspective of being there so early, you know, has it been interesting to

[00:03:57] Paul: watch it evolve?

[00:03:58] You know in the beginning when [00:04:00] we started first doing you know mixed media a lot of companies especially in the publishing world you know they didn’t understand it i actually ended up merging some media companies with old school publishers in the day and. They didn’t understand podcasting and they weren’t very keen on the fact that video would be the future.

[00:04:19] This is, you know, 2007 to 10, it got so bad in those companies that finally I just said, yeah, this isn’t working for me. So I separated from that group, which we had merged those media companies with. And started doing all my own gig. And I think, you know, the evolution, first of all, it’s much like any innovative technology.

[00:04:39] You have to believe in it and be very convicted that this is going to happen. And I had seen it, you know, I, I was kind of born and bred in Silicon Valley in the sense of, See in microsoft go through the antitrust lawsuits deal with what was the birth of the internet. Working with a lot of developers that were basically building the [00:05:00] backbone of what we know as web one and then eventually web two so when podcasting and rss came about.

[00:05:07] You know i had a chance to meet adam curry who’s the guy who pretty much created the rss concept and dave weiner who was the dev behind it. And I saw, oh my gosh, this is decentralized distribution. Nobody’s in control of this. This is the future. So it was a

[00:05:24] Luke: huge RSS fans.

[00:05:25] Paul: so I was like, I’m all in, let’s do it. The only problem was it took a decade for it to get going. Right, right, right.

[00:05:32] Luke: No, that’s great. I mean, sounds like you, you were early to the crypto space to the blockchain space or, or, you know, however we’re framing a web three, I guess nowadays, how has it been watching

[00:05:41] Paul: that evolve?

[00:05:42] You know, we’ve started really tracking crypto in 2013 and 14. Bitcoin, of course, was kind of came on the scene. And in the early days, I was a huge skeptic. In fact, I was not a believer. And, we continued to kind of punch holes in the concept. And [00:06:00] as it developed and eventually Ethereum launched, I started to read pace my theory of what decentralized finance would look like at the time that was very early on in the stage of crypto and cuz i was still looking at blockchain as being some sort of authenticity.

[00:06:17] Model that eventually enterprise would use and you know like a microsoft or a big food manufacturer things like that and then i realized oh no wait a minute there’s a lot more here when you uncover this hood. And before you knew it, then you realize, okay, this is defy. This is going to change the way we do everything in the next generation of the internet.

[00:06:40] That was really kind of what, uh, flicked the light on for us. And we just said, all right, we’re we’re in, let’s do it. How have you all

[00:06:46] Luke: tried to differentiate? Cause if you take five minutes of searching on YouTube, right, you see all sorts of bonkers, speculative videos about, you know, price predictions and whatnot, you got to see much more serious than that is that kind of how you [00:07:00] differentiate

[00:07:01] Paul: Well, I mean, we’re a real media company and we’re a real research team and we also have a SAS product.

[00:07:07] So we’re tech people at heart. We’re also media people at heart. We blend something that is quite a bit different than I think almost everybody in the crypto space that we outside of the big box publishers, like a coin desk or a Masari or someone like that, ours is quite a bit of a different angle.

[00:07:27] We’re here for the tech kind of thing, but we also want to have fun in the investing side. So we’ll, we’ll play with meme coins and, you know, we’re not huge believers in the infrastructure of what Bitcoin. Represents, but we’re a big believer in Bitcoin as a whole, as a market, you know, leader and as a store of value.

[00:07:46] But I think for us, the differentiation is we’re a two decade old media company. And it took us a long time to kind of get to where we are and it’s tech has become kind of the new frontier for us [00:08:00] in terms of how we’re focused, even though we still do have other B2B verticals. So I think that talent has been.

[00:08:07] One that has not existed in the crypto space of the block chain space and we’re kind of. I would say in a sweet spot right now we’re kind of across between you know a crypto channel and a bloomberg tv or cnbc and the difference is is that we go after the real underlying architecture of what’s changing this industry.

[00:08:30] And that’s including everything from all the different blockchains. They’re really making huge inroads right now, whether it’s Avalanche or what Solana has been able to do. You look at the Ethereum network, all the potentials there, and then you get outside that and you get into a lot of other tokens. We launched a SAS product, which is our market sentiment index.

[00:08:48] That’s a product we’ve been building for a decade. Basically it’s, very similar to a large language model for AI. We just suck in a lot of data from the crypto space and then we measure sentiment on it. [00:09:00] So that’s also been a big differentiator for us as well in the market. That’s awesome. What’s the most

[00:09:05] Luke: interesting thing from your point of view that you find yourself in a rabbit holing into with what’s going on in the space right

[00:09:11] Paul: now?

[00:09:12] I think, you know, from a regulatory standpoint and also you look at the moves that are happening on a global macro level, this is probably one of the biggest areas that I see, you know, understanding finance and understanding tech. Those are very rare things that companies and media companies can do.

[00:09:33] Usually it’s they’re one or the other, you know, they’re either a really heavy tech media company or they’re a really heavy finance. We’re kind of blessed to have both angles. So unfortunately, that’s kind of like a mark of the beast. I feel like, because we know what’s under the hood. And then at the same time, we understand the macro and the global economics of what’s happening to the fiat system.

[00:09:57] So that’s my biggest concern right [00:10:00] now is just the U S dollar, how it’s going to be represented, you know, in the next 20 years, as we continue to see a lot of. Very interesting things happening globally, especially in the digital asset space. So that’s really what we’re keeping a very close eye on is a unique transition between the struggle that is happening between the U S government and crypto.

[00:10:21] Really. I mean, if you look at what Gary Gensler is trying to do now with the SEC and, you know, claiming Ethereum as a security that in itself, if that comes to be real, if that becomes a reality, the impact on the crypto market, even though here in the U S. Is still I would say docile the greater impact on the market, I think would be significant.

[00:10:44] So these are things that we’re watching very, very closely.

[00:10:48] Luke: How much do you see Bitcoin as kind of a disruptive force in global

[00:10:52] Paul: economics? Yeah, I see it strictly as a lot of people give me flack for this, but you know, when you dive into the real, I mean, cause I [00:11:00] was a bit coiner when you first get into crypto Bitcoin is kind of your, I feel like the gateway drug.

[00:11:06] When you start going into it and understanding on chain transactions. And the limitations that lightning represented it started making me think through it differently it’s not that it’s bad bitcoin is still i think what the alpha asset in the class but i look at it more as a store of value i don’t see it as a replacement for money.

[00:11:27] First it doesn’t have the infrastructure, you know, from an on chain transaction standpoint to even get there. Now, could that change? Sure. Though that in itself is kind of a very political thing because of the devs that are involved in Bitcoin. So globally, I will say that nation states will continue to buy it.

[00:11:44] We’ll probably see a lot more activity in this just because of what’s happening with the BRICS nations. Who knows if Qatar is actually buying Bitcoin today. We just saw just today that the U. S. government just sold some of their Silk Road Bitcoin. So it’s clear that the value is [00:12:00] there. And I think, you know, the performance of the ETFs with BlackRock and ARK and just the unbelievable nine ETFs that are out there, there’s a place for it for sure in the world financial system.

[00:12:12] Luke: Are there any other areas? That are kind of concerning for you. I mean, I would imagine the next natural step that a lot of people go to with where crypto could go with nation states is around like CBDCs and other types of stable coin uses. What’s your take

[00:12:26] Paul: on that? You know, I’m, I’m very fearful of a controlled central bank.

[00:12:31] Currency you know when you look at a cbdc and the potential of you know kind of what’s happening with china on the social credit score where we could be going, you know in other western countries around cbc including the the you, which is already kind of moving in this direction with chris in the garden and what she’s been able to do both with regulation cuz obviously make a change to the kind of the format.

[00:12:54] Of, you know, the market infrastructure of the EU around crypto, they’re ahead of the United States. [00:13:00] So I look at it this way, is that Europe will probably be the first that really tests this model. And if you look at some of, you know, just the WEF countries and you go down the list, you’re probably going to see a handful of others that might try it.

[00:13:14] But I’m a little concerned with that at some point, I think this is going to eventually come to a head in terms of what true decentralized finance, but at the same time, you know, we had a little bit of a win in the coinbase trial where the judge said, okay, you know, self custody wallets. Are just that they’re not really governed under this, particular case with the sec around, you know, security tokens.

[00:13:39] So I think there’s still a positive, we believe there’s going to be a positive outcome here, but I think there’s just so many other directives from the industries that are surrounding blockchain as a whole, whether it’s gaming, what we’ll see in real world assets, tokenized securities. All of those are going to blow up [00:14:00] and some of the chains that benefit from that will be the ones I think that win interesting.

[00:14:05] The

[00:14:06] Luke: other thing I was really kind of eager to ask you about because your background that goes back into like AI early and crypto early like do you see the two of these things kind of converging over time and how do you see them kind of converging if that’s a factor or kind of having use cases around both of these things.

[00:14:22] Paul: Well unfortunately, I think that AI will probably introduce a lot more nefarious situations on the blockchain than, good, because of its power and its ability to do things. Remember, the blockchain is an open infrastructure that can somewhat be modeled, and we’ve already seen Projects out there if you look at zack xp t has use a crypto sleuth does a really good job understanding where wall movements are going then you look at arkham intelligence who studies the block chain and on change analytics all of those are great.

[00:14:54] But they’re infantile compared to what a i will be able to do i mean [00:15:00] we’ve played with it we have an ai large language model right now that we use for our sentiment analysis and i’m surprised almost every week. With the advancement of that language model and we’re dealing with you know if you could put a on a level of one to ten we’re on like a point two of where it could go just for us imagine if that was a nation state like russia china or someone else i ran you could go You know and then you could go to the western countries too you could look at israel you could look at the uk all of which.

[00:15:35] Even if you look at the five eyes, you know what the potential is there for AI generated wallet construction. And the ability that it can do to truly become kind of that, almost that tornado cash model that was shut down. That’s the concern I see with blockchain because blockchain, it’s like any technology, the, you know, what we’re doing right now today, you could [00:16:00] use this for nefarious means you could use the internet for nefarious means and ACH and the Fiat system, but AI is a different animal altogether.

[00:16:09] It’s going to be something very interesting to watch. I should say. What do you think

[00:16:13] Luke: people underestimate the most about the

[00:16:15] Paul: I ability to scale can you stand on that a little bit yeah i think the speed in which it’s moving if you look at all the models dalai just came out with now a function that i think is pretty interesting around.

[00:16:29] The ability to a self correct image creation on the fly rather than recreate that so that scaling and also minimizing the compute requirements so that in itself i think it’s gonna be. Probably the biggest area of advancements. And if you look at decentralized compute and you can go back into crypto and you could think about projects like render, or you look at projects that are like IO net that have the capacity to do decentralized compute power.

[00:16:57] And if you scale that and then you add [00:17:00] in AI, gosh, who knows? I mean, like I said, I grew up in the tech world. I grew up watching innovation that we thought at the time was Would never happen and you know of course it’s all happened you know whether it was the mobile device social media every innovation that has occurred the last twenty five years most developers when they first started to see it.

[00:17:23] Would not believe that it could scale at that level. And AI, I think is the ultimate innovation that we have in place right now. Do you have any concerns with,

[00:17:33] Luke: uh, the regulatory space with AI and how they’re kind of managing that or

[00:17:37] Paul: what you’re seeing there? I think the narrowness of again, nation state control, but innovation like this is eventually going to, just like any of, if you look at white hack or white hat hacking and the evolution of cybercrime.

[00:17:50] Things like that that have been going on all of this is eventually gonna make its way into bad hands and good hands you know so i’m a little concerned with [00:18:00] that only because you know. Ultimate power corrupts and it’s one of those things that i think will create some ultimate power centers and i think it’s gonna be a very interesting war of technology that we’re gonna be dealing with in the next twenty years the talent.

[00:18:17] Is no longer gonna be on the battlefield it’s gonna be in in the developer’s hands or in you know the designer’s hands of how these language models are developed into. Weather working for good or working for bad and i think blockchain is only gonna be one of the tool sets that it will use moving forward in the future

[00:18:35] Luke: yes really interesting.

[00:18:37] You know, where do you kind of see web three evolving to into the future? Where do you see the actual rubber meeting the road with adoption with web three,

[00:18:45] Paul: from your point of view? I think the gaming sector is going to be the gateway. You look at the game ecosystem that is developing right now.

[00:18:53] And we’ve been, I would say our channel is one of the few that tracks this very well in the sense of, you know, all the way back [00:19:00] to 21, when we started to see Axie infinity first breakout. And see, all right, there’s something here and very unique about these communities. Granted, Axie was not a great example, but these are early games.

[00:19:10] Yeah, it doesn’t matter if you go back and look at the early games within Zynga and what, you know, Pinkas was doing very similar in terms of functionality and the concept behind it, the gameplay and the game theory, very similar. Now, what we’re dealing with is real next generation game devs. And you’re seeing a lot of what are, you know, AAA studios that are starting to make their way into blockchain gaming.

[00:19:38] And I think it’s just a matter of time before Web3 gaming becomes gaming, you know, just like anything else. And, you know, the idea of, robux is no longer a fictional thing. It’s a real digital asset that you can visit, you know, trade. Both in game and maybe in a cross compatible ecosystem [00:20:00] that’s interoperable with other games, who knows where it’s going to go, but that’s going to set the stage.

[00:20:05] I think for web three growth be just because of the sheer numbers in terms of adoption, because the minute that it starts a true adoption cycle, what we know of adoption, even if you look at the internet adoption curve, I think for gaming and digital assets in game, the adoption curve is going to be.

[00:20:26] Probably faster than the internet. And Once that happens, the only next generation, you know, opportunity is to take it into real world use case. And that’s going to be retail, which most likely will be there. That’s everything from food to hospitality, all sorts of projects that are already building in that area.

[00:20:47] Then you’re going to get into something like what teleport is doing. On salada to replace decentralized drivers for a replacement for uber i’ve mapper you go down the [00:21:00] line that’s a google mapping system replacement that’s decentralized you go into projects like devour which is an online or i should say a blockchain ordering model that’s designed to use crypto and blockchain for rewards.

[00:21:15] There’s just so much there for web three and then digital ID, you know, is going to be, you know, the future of, of all of this, where you and I control how people use our information, which is a big deal. Fascinating.

[00:21:27] Luke: Um, let me switch gears a little bit. I was reading about this Amazon prime documentary that you worked on.

[00:21:33] Would you care to share a little bit about what that’s about for the audience and if it’s available for them to

[00:21:36] Paul: check out yeah it’s still there i mean we’ve left it up as availability so i launched a couple of websites in the early days of my media career and one of them was a sector that was just being birthed actually was credited as coining the term fast casual.

[00:21:52] And it was a sector of the restaurant industry. When I was working with Microsoft, I started to work with these restaurant brands and [00:22:00] was discovering kind of this next. Generation of consumer so we created a documentary i wrote a book on it and the concept was very simple it was that there is an evolution of consumer adoption on technology that would change the way consumers interface with retail just very simple and that has happened you know now all of the things that we highlighted in the documentary online ordering uber eats.

[00:22:28] A lot of the early stage of what we know now from postmates delivery to all the technology that’s being used and eventually a i that would limit which eventually would roll into robotics. All of that was put into a documentary that we created around the food industry that was called fast casual nation it was chronicling the birth of these brands.

[00:22:50] And why the consumer was so attracted. It was really why, you know, Chipotle actually became Chipotle. You know, one of the biggest reasons was the [00:23:00] consumer base. Awesome. And you said that’s still

[00:23:02] Luke: available for

[00:23:02] Paul: people to check out as casual nation over on Amazon prime. Excellent. Excellent.

[00:23:08] Luke: The user base of brave and our audience is kind of all over the place.

[00:23:11] And there might be some that are kind of new to the crypto space or this AI space. Like, are there any resources you’d recommend that they check out?

[00:23:20] Paul: Yeah, well, of course we, we always want to plug our show. Just PBN Paul Byron network is on YouTube is the best way you can find tech path crypto on pretty much any podcast player out there that you guys are using, whether it’s a podcast, two Oh player, like a podcasting guru or something like that.

[00:23:36] But yeah, it, all that’s available out there. We talk in our, our area is, is fairly wide because we cover crypto gaming. We cover a lot of the all coins and layer ones and layer twos. And then obviously we get into an in depth discussion around regulatory global. So we give you kind of a much better, broader [00:24:00] approach.

[00:24:00] But outside of that, I mean, you know, there’s a handful of podcasts out there in, in each discipline. You know that do a great job in the block chain area that do a good job in a i and robotics just all sorts of them out there you know what my buddies who runs to the idiots he’s running, one of i think you know one of the better youtube channels out there that does a really good job on really understanding what’s happening in the next generation technology space weather it’s climate or, you know innovation around plants and farming and what they’re doing with a i and all that kind of stuff so.

[00:24:34] A lot of innovation right now. We’re living in a very interesting time. Yeah,

[00:24:39] Luke: no, I mean, and you’ve been really gracious with your time it’s been really interesting conversation. Is there anything that we didn’t cover that you want to let our audience know about anything we, you know, topics or things that are top of mind?

[00:24:51] Paul: Man, I think we covered so much today. There’s a lot in that. Yeah, I think crypto blockchain are still going to be one of the leader technologies [00:25:00] that break out of this trio of, tech that’s starting to invade this next decade. AI will be there, but it’s still very early. Robotics is just now being touched on.

[00:25:09] I just heard today from our research team that Apple’s getting ready to, You know, launch an in home concept for a robot. So if you look at what Tesla has done with Titan and, you know, some of those things, I mean, there’s a lot of opportunity here, but I think blockchain is probably the one that’s here today.

[00:25:27] That probably is going to have the most impact in the next three to five years. And everything beyond that, I think is still a ways out, you know, before we start to see some real use case and tool sets starting to dominate, you know, Think about it. Almost like who’s going to come up with the Tesla robot that would be that efficient and that high quality, and then still be a company that someone could go out and invest in and, you know, really help it grow.

[00:25:55] Whoever that is, and maybe it is Tesla, maybe it’s Apple, maybe it’s somebody [00:26:00] else, you know, Boston Robotics does a good job and there’s a lot coming at us right now, I think in that, area.

[00:26:05] Luke: Awesome. where can people find you online and social if they want to follow what

[00:26:09] Paul: you all are up to?

[00:26:10] Yeah, so just on X at Paul Barron, you can of course catch us on YouTube, Paul Barron Network. It’s that simple. Perfect. Perfect.

[00:26:17] Luke: Well, thank you, Paul. I really appreciate you coming on today and love to have you back sometime too, to check back in on things as we go

[00:26:23] Paul: forward anytime. Awesome. And be

[00:26:24] Luke: sure to check out his site all their media that they’re putting out there.

[00:26:27] Thanks everybody. Have a good day. Thanks for listening to the Brave technologist podcast. To never miss an episode, make sure you hit follow in your podcast app. If you haven’t already made the switch to the Brave browser, you can download it for free today at brave. com and start using Brave search, which enables you to search the web privately, Brave also shields you from the ads, trackers, and other creepy stuff following you across the web.