In The Loop’s Post

Transcript

Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of In the Loop. Today we have Village Nemeti and he's a former Web Three founder. He has a background in digital identity and financial inclusion. He founded a very cool project called the Bank for Refugees and he's going to tell us a little bit more about his career and his projects. What was your dream job as a kid? Dream job as a kid? I guess I'm part of the General like it was the usual firefighter astronaut. And maybe later, there was a moment when I wanted to be a pianist. I wasn't, but I realized there's a very young child that I'm not going to be a pianist. Then it was related to science. I was studying physics from very long age in that sort of specialized school. And yeah, it was kind of let's go to science. Can you walk us kind of like how you got from being trying to be an astronaut, a pianist, right, going into science and like the current like job, the current projects that you're doing today. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and. And how you got through today? Wow. I mean that's a very long journey, but like maybe couple of highlights. So I have a very nontraditional study like path in the background. So as I mentioned, I was studying physics at A at a specialized high school and that was super fun because like we went into theories and like actually complex, more academic level ideas during high school already. But parallel to that I was. Training for the Olympics in sailing. So I was part of the Hungarian national sailing team and that gave me a lot of confidence in one side but also like a lot of strategy and and and of course like it's a sport. So I I did a lot of the sports part and then basically I ended up doing architecture like design, architecture and engineering so went into a more creative path. Then basically the first really entrepreneurial like startup approach was building an alarm. That you had to pay for snoozing. We built it, it got a lot of attention and it was really fun. And I think we made like 200 bucks, which is like free money. But you never really took it seriously. Like it was a joke, but it worked out then. Then basically I ended up in Norway. At the construction company, kind of due to my degree, even though I didn't want it to be an architect, I got an offer from Affirm there who wanted to hire me. And the Norwegian salary from Hungary is very sweet. So I moved there and then I was the Hungarian friend of every Norwegian when the European refugee crisis, let's call it crisis, was happening. And my lovely comes to be able to have fans against refugees. So everyone was asking me of like, what's happening, why is it happening? And it became clear that I had an interest in fintech. There were there were a million people who didn't have banking, let's make a bank for refugees. And so I signed up, I quit my job. My boss told me I'm crazy and I ended up moving to Switzerland for a bit with a with a Swiss accelerator program theme blockchain. That put me on the path of better blockchain understanding following that time off to Berlin, where like a lot of the early blockchain developments is happening with the Ethereum Foundation being there and also like the whole idea. Ohh on this system was historically part of the building culture, so there is a lot of things happening. I had the chance to learn from the smartest people at the time, who is who are many of them retired by now? And and basically like was trying to build a bank for refugees. Did a lot of policy, collaborated with many UN agencies, Amnesty International and and a handful of others. It worked a bit more as an as an agency than than a startup. And it was an amazing journey. Like second hand, we ended up helping the government to onboard a million people into the financial system in Germany. And so like it wasn't our product, it was more our help and kind of the deep understanding of technologies and what can be done. But it still happened and so kind of like that was a little bit the end. And so I ended up joining the Decentralized Identity Foundation, so the whole Banking for refugees project. Basically was an identity question of what is the identity these people are using to access finance. So I developed a pretty deep understanding at all and a lot of relationships in this space S digital identity and so I I joined as a kind of the only employee of the decentralized identity foundation. I learned about a lot more I I was involved with pretty much every working group and and sort of like have a pretty deep understanding of the whole BID BC or decentralized identifier. And verifiable credential space. Uh, I do believe that by the end I explained what the ideas and this is over 1000 time. So I'm trying to get a job where I don't need to do that and basically I that's when I started very labs or kind of the brand name that you were running under KYC though, which was a. Veteran native compliance election tooling business to basically build financial compliance tooling for crypto projects and creating primitives and enable battery developers to be able to build products. As Sofia mentioned like anyway I don't really have a job anymore because we were too early to the market. It's the FDX debacle kind of like created a timeline that we were no longer able to like guess when it's going to happen and understand we like investors were also. Fearful that how long run rate needs to last. So not blaming anyone but essentially like the company is currently not operating anymore So I'm pretty much exploring what's happening out there Sophie and I was I'm also exploring the whole generative AI space. So it's a it's right now we will see what happens next but. Short story. You can navigate those moments like through each of these different types of opportunities that you go through, whether it be starting or scaling down and finding that next thing. I think it has been. Improving how I'm approaching so I think. Like the the bank for refugees was a very reactionary move in terms of like it. The issue was already present and it kind of needed a solution. And I think as I'm getting maybe a bit wiser hopefully I'm I'm shifting this focus to like more long term strategic approach. So it's like it is very clear that like has been that like identity has been a very big problem on the Internet since its foundation. There is a lot of problems with identity like digital identity when we are specifically talking about you and identity like we are entering a new space and time where it's going to be even more important than before to be able to prove that you are human or not, as now we might not be the only intelligent life form here. Anyway. This kind of thinking has been leading me more and more towards the questions around AI and of course like as being a technologist, like I just of course like super interested in the whole. Uh, training in France, usage wrappers and uh and the whole space of what's happening. As it's also very exciting, we had Paige Lord on our podcast last week and she was telling us about the digital divide, right, and how maybe AI is making this digital divide worse, right? Do you think this is the case especially for people in developing countries? There is a divide and it's not gonna get better because pretty much every single AI companies in the US, Europe and China. Yes, there are attempts in like now there is like some startups in India, it kind of like everybody's focusing on every single local markets so that like data doesn't leave the country and that's kind of their main pitch. But generally the the entire movement is very, very like wealthy countries can afford to keep pushing the boundaries of technology, but it also means that their data centers are generally getting bigger and bigger. Um, which creates a value in this country where there is value in local countries in terms of like what would we could call shareholder value. Some of these countries are not that good at spreading that value among its citizens. Some of them are better. So I think centralization of power and centralization of money. Real equals a concept even more because there are very few players who can afford actually to play in this game because it's the the barrier to entry into at the low level is extremely expensive. I think the more interesting question is how can we actually do good video? Like how can we instead of like fearing that it's real clear humanity focus on like like how can we actually use it to help humanity? How can we deliver value to farmers who don't have access directly to AI? How can they still benefit? All of this technology that's happening, how can we help figure out questions around climate change, even though there is a lot more data but like. At least locally kind of create better policies, create better approaches to to economy in in localized levels and and how the trickle down effect of this amazing technology will take place where it's let's say most needed because it's amazing that you can code 30% faster, it's amazing but like if you can form 30% more as your individual farmer, that's awesome. What do you think people should like these? People were us are ourselves as well, who are working on these technologies, really ground ourselves and really think about and what you've kind of seen and experienced. To ensure that it's really like brought like we're thinking of everyone when we're building these tools. I think, you know the usual answer is education, but I think it's it's not the let's build a platform and educate the world because everyone wants to be smart. It's a lot more about like can we reduce the barrier for high quality information to and I think ALMS will do that Is that like even if you're living in rural area where just by nature the teachers cannot be as educated as if they were coming from. London Business School. But through having the teacher being able to access a low cost or no cost service that can make them very smart. Their ability to teach people just goes out. And if more people are more educated that's just creates economic trickle down effect across everywhere. Like there is there is the most powerful tool that's going to happen. But again there is climate change, it's going to be real, it's going to be really rough. I worked on refugees, you know like the numbers are going to be. Unbelievably staggering and like human suffering will be super real and then kind of like it. It will go back to the question of like that's amazing that we have like this super smart GPU run trillion dollar companies. While there are hundreds and hundreds of millions of people who think only about food and shelter and water, the economic reality of these decisions will not be directly felt on the people who make these decisions, but on people who actually have no power and circuit at the bottom of the economic scale. I think it's really important to bring consciousness to that, right. There's a ton of data centers being built across the globe. And I think like the environmental impact of that is is not talked about enough. And so thank you for bringing that to like the attention of the viewers. And I think that's a very important point for people to be aware of. And I guess like we wanted to ask you, is there any way that you would recommend to like the viewers to stay informed just like you are. So I I think it's literally happening on Twitter X. Uh, like this is by far the best and most like one time source of information and everything kind of that's interesting at that point on Twitter. So like if someone wants to read papers and they also enjoy do enjoy reading papers, even if I don't understand how the math that's happening, I do enjoy it. Hugging Face has some people posting the most interesting papers people post on LinkedIn. So so like I've been opening them, you know? You know if I trying to follow the people who are like. Are involved dog whose name so it shows up on like uh regulatory proposals and and what not because there there is a higher chance that LinkedIn will be a better source for for the for that part yeah I know it's not exactly clear I will give you some links that you can put into the podcast now it's that like these are the things village follows a couple of things we're always kind of think like what snacks or what's out there but like what what type of advice would like you give back to your younger self like what like just like taking a few steps back. And some of the things that you wish you heard earlier or even even right now too. The weather is changing. What's keeping it from changing is people not willing to change. It's less scary than it looks, especially when you're doing it and you believe in something you're you're creativity skyrocket because it's kind of like you have to solve it. Don't be afraid that it's not going to work. There is a really good chance it's not going to work, but there is a lot more goodwill out there. That you don't know about until you are trying to do it.