Vinny Lingham on digital identity and blockchain compliance

0:00I'm Ashlyn Addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and FinTech news network and today on blockchain interviews we have vinnie Lingam the co-founder and CEO of civic Vinnie welcome to the show it's a pleasure to have you here today thank you you're very welcome can we kick it off with a little bit on your background and how you first got involved in cryptocurrencies and how you

0:22started Civic yeah I'm one of those here entrepreneurs always doing the next big thing I always that's I kind of characterize myself and so I was in the search engine market back in 2000 and you know in white right there we just started I was doing search engine marketing side when can be 2003 sold in 2007 started a software service business in 2007 left that in 2011 started with

0:49mobile payments company 2012 which was gift you know raised a bunch of money like 5 million bucks sold the two years either for like 50 54 million bucks to first Data Corporation and you know and in that experience is interesting because we learned how to deal with credit card fraud and one of the ways we did that was using cryptocurrency which was at the time only Bitcoin and we were

1:11one of the biggest Bitcoin sellers online because gift cards at a high Ford rate online but but but coins all the credit card for problem so that's when I got into the space and then you know after that I decided to leave and start up the chemical Civic which was the idea you know putting out Danny on the blockchain using a couple graphic proofs and keys I mean working on that ever

1:34since so that's been nearly five years now and you know obviously spaces has been pretty chaotic but we're we're still standing we're making it work definitely yeah well let's dive a little bit deeper into civic you know you're providing private digital identities now there is a fundamental shift happening especially in these crazy times in the way that we are controlling and

1:55releasing our private information how exactly are you know is innovation through blockchain based digital identities helping protect our privacy more than ever now you know the innovation is there in in space I mean there's so much tip we can use not today the reality is that the incentives to do it are this very low I mean we're building consumer products like the

2:21wallet which seemed so cryptocurrency on and that has you had any tied to it but you know the bigger companies that need I didn't eat they want charge any they want to keep your information or a profile you and what I try to explain to people is I didn't ease one of those sad things we're individually your identity is worthless to a big company they don't

2:38care about you specifically they don't care what external vini or anyone else but collectively it's extremely valuable for them to have all these identities come together so it's difficult to say it's my doing it's worth money it's actually worthless it's like what are you guys but as a collective we're giving these guys the ability to use our ID information and basically make

2:59billions I love it so you know sure we get some free services out of it but at what point are we giving away too much of our privacy the reality is big companies are not going to change the way they do business because they just there's not a legal reason for them to and making it both services that consumers want and the majority of consumers don't care about

3:16the identity and how it's used it's a it's a real vocal minority of cares and therefore we don't change the path of privacy protection as a vocal minority that said I think with the evident of covert 19 there is more going on in the digital identity space now than you know then a year ago six months ago because touching you know an ID a driver's license you know Passport like now you

3:42have the covert 19 risk and so we oh let's see how it plays out in the next three to six months but III think that digital identities may have been accelerated as a result of this virus but you have to put different for biological reasons as opposed to you know regulatory ones mmm-hmm yeah definitely and it's interesting how a lot of people don't really care about their personal privacy

4:03or at least they don't really think about it when they just register for everything and it seems that every free application as long as you give your information to them you can access anything you want very conveniently so we often give up our information right away but interestingly enough in the blockchain industry it seems that or at least the perception from outsiders is

4:22that people are attracted to crypto currencies or at least some people are attracted to them because of the end surrounding that now do you feel that identity specifically tied to cryptocurrency transactions or platforms that use smart contracts and integrate with blockchain is identity a very important factor in growing the blockchain industry um yes it obviously

4:47is I think we're ready in the semantic weeds around how is it men is how the transferred how's it digitized etc and that's a difficult part how do you make it simple and trustworthy you're right now what happens is when you go to new service and you exchange and your website they want to fully verify you every single time there's no reusable digital identity credential that can be

5:07moved around and that's the problem right now is you have to go through these hoops every single time and there's no service out there that's made it really easy and simple to do it so so we're trying to do that we're trying to make it simple and easy but it's a challenge because I think most companies until there's a natural defect in one service most companies are like well

5:26integrated survey they only have X number 100,000 users it's not enough we're signing up millions a year we you know we kinda a rigid if we had a hundred million users they're different story but so so I think the question is like how do you how do you really get to the critical mass with digital identity so that other companies can just tap in to be attending ecosystem and you know

5:46there's a number of working groups out there with their number industry bodies the turf etc that are trying to create standards finding me but all the identity plate has a whole sub scale engage the scale is tough and there's a bit of a conundrum like the big players can't get to scale purely because the big players and you know Facebook something to give their data identity

6:06over to Google Google's not gonna give it an Apple Apple so how do you how do you get to critical mass without becoming a big player I don't know the answer I'm just saying this is this is the problem yeah well it's really interesting and the fact that you touched on you know the bio the the biological factor and the biometrics surrounding touching IDs

6:27and because of this covert 19 situation seems to likely be in your favor for private digital identities now do you see biometrics still being integrated at least you know with civic is there a plan to integrate biomed works as well into your digital identity so it actually has your physical DNA you know attached I wouldn't take the event but we do facial recognition right now and

6:50that's good enough yeah okay great and do you see that being enough for you know the time being um we think so I think obviously the space will evolve the technology will evolve and improve but for now that's good enough mm-hmm now what's interesting about Civic is you have the identity system but you also have the payment solution in the wallets where you can send and receive

7:13payments and you have an insurance policy as well which is great to see on the cryptocurrency side can you talk about the importance of combining the identity system with the wallet infrastructure sure so we think that what makes what makes us powerful is that we can offer something which previously wasn't available so it's a million dollars insurance policy that

7:33you get off it to store your kryptonian our wallet if you lose your if you lose your wallet your phone your you know whatever backups we can still recover that money for you and that's backed by our million-dollar insurance policy which is only possible because we can link your identity to your cryptic coins and we can help restore it knowing that we can revalidate your identity with you

7:52and get your coins back so it's it's but it's part and parcel of a bit us that are afraid for consumers we think yeah definitely and you know there's been a lot of people that have been not a lot of people but they're up in hacks where people have lost their crypto or they just lose their hard drive and you know it goes to the dumpster and how do you really prove that you were the one

8:11who owned those coins right exactly yeah so that's super interesting well right now the wallet is in private beta can you talk about when is the big launch and what does the upcoming roadmap look like leading into the launch Eileen would be a really public and launch the next 30 days so it'll be open to everyone it's in the wait list right now is like a hundred thousand people we

8:35were on boarding a couple thousand every day so we should be through that by the end of June so by the image initially publicly available to everyone which would be fantastic that's great and what would you say is the biggest obstacle or limitation in front of you in terms of getting that adoption into the millions and millions of users um I I think it's effective function of

8:57time and a bit of luck right like most startups need a bit of like like yeah good luck in the sense that you know all they needs like when you start a company you have this vision and this determination to build something but if you miss time the market or you know the company fails if you too early or you're too late the company doesn't it fails it doesn't work if you get it

9:21just right and that takes a little bit of skill or a lot of luck you have a explosive success so we don't know what that black factor is does the world go into a covert 19 postcode 19 crisis where digital ID becomes critical and everyone starts focusing on that you know in for restaurants to reopen do we need to have like we don't know what the impact of

9:40the vaccines gonna be right the vaccine comes up now are we gonna have a situation where only vaccinated people can go to certain places restaurants advance in cetera if that's the case then you need a digital identity to prove it you're the one to receive the vaccine like it's it's so hard to predict how this is gonna play out but if we're lucky it plays out in our favor

10:00and digital I there any wins definitely and I know you've done a lot more outside of cryptocurrency as well with entrepreneurship and learning from mentors in startups with entrepreneurs is especially important right now because of this crazy coronavirus pandemic and I know that you authored a book on advice for entrepreneurs and Nicole co-authored it okay great and I'm

10:28guessing that that probably didn't have you know the the chance of a pandemic and what to do during a pandemic in the book but if you had to make updates to that book what kind of advice would you give to entrepreneurs now that are looking to build their businesses throughout this pandemic so this two types are entrepreneurs startups where the company isn't profitable and you you

10:50you need to find part of market fit and scare the business and then existing businesses like restaurants tears take you take away his food businesses consol subdivision so there's talk about profitable business and startup businesses to separate businesses right okay so if you are profitable Treecko you could go back in time what would you have done differently

11:10and the answer probably is if you're in if you're in a tough spot right now you probably have put away 5% amount of your savings if you could cut your costs down and work towards you know profitability of and savings of around five percent of your monthly expenses or rather in a you know depends what – but let's say five to ten percent opinion on the scale of

11:32your business you want to have a war chest of 18 months cash in the bank at any point in time and that's personal and business wise and people want to know likewise Apple and Google and face why they so like powerful and strong during there's a downturn because they sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in cash they don't pay off the shareholders they

11:53don't like it's just cash on the balance sheet so we're in big companies are doing that and they and make it whether any storms result there's no reason why smaller copies should be doing the same thing on a smaller scale and I think having cash reserves is something that the if anything Kobe 9 teaches us that there are certain things that are just totally outside our control that can

12:13happen and if that happens you should be you should be totally putting down you know you have enough savings to back you up mm-hmm yeah that's really interesting and great advice and it's interesting because they we see from the stats that a lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck and don't really have that emergency fund or reserve fund but at

12:33the same time a lot of small and medium-sized businesses seemed like they were also doing the same you'd think that they would be you know running and be able to hold themselves for a few months but we saw most of them go out of business immediately right after the pandemic had started isn't that really interesting I'll still like a month well – yeah like imagine you had 18 months

12:54capital in the bank and you like well you know I can just I can just shut down the store for six months to take a break a shinai me come back and I slow heavier years or the capital in the bank like that's a powerful thing right and I think a lot of businesses probably would have needed that buffer more than others yeah well we're running out of time but

13:14what is the best way for viewers to learn more about the Civic update when the wallets coming out and get involved with civic Garvey calm follow us on Twitter at 7:00 key or myself at Vinnie Lingam and yeah the other website sign up for the waitlist will send your invite when it's opened up or your turn comes up sounds great Vinnie thank you so much

13:35I'll leave those links in the description box below all the best with the Civic launch and let's follow up in the near future thanks Ashley I'm taking all the risk