Explore the roadmap to the future of the society, with Akshay Aggarwal, Co-founder of Blocumen Studios & Blockchained India & billionaire investor Tim Draper”. Tim is known for his sci-fi investments and also the founder of Draper University and Draper Associates. So here’s an extract of the podcast for and all the important points one can’t miss. Society 3.0 aims to understand the evolution of the current society into one that is happier, increasingly decentralized, and pillared on peer-to-peer commerce. This is from an interesting podcast by Akshay Aggarwal, you can listen to the whole conversation here.
- What are your thoughts on the Supreme Court quashing the prohibition on the banking services for cryptocurrency companies by the central banks?
I think India’s Supreme Court was very wise in their decision. They are thinking about the good of the country and also the good of the world in long terms. Bitcoin is so important for everyone, that this decentralized world is opening up all of its borders. It’s going to be much easier to do business, to communicate across borders, to pay people across borders. It’s opening up a whole new economy.
It is one of the best times in the world to be a change agent, to be an entrepreneur, venture capitalist or somebody who wants to move the world because this new technology is open, transparent and global and keeps perfect records and can start to turn the world into a much more automated, much simpler place to be. Economies are going to be exploding because of its open borders and it being frictionless. It allows human creativity to thrive as the machines can take on more of the day-to-day tasks that have to be done over and over. A lot of people fear this, but it should be embraced. After all, what’s better than having a machine that does all the tasks that have to be done repetitively.
- You are known for your investment in the future. So share your vision for the society in the future.
This kind of vision did start with Bitcoin because it’s a decentralized currency, which means that it is open, transparent, global, and interconnected. With Bitcoin came the blockchain which keeps track of money. The point to be noted is that Blockchain can also be used to keep a track of records. And with the blockchain came Smart Contract, which was the ability to create a contract in the cloud, thus reducing the number of people required to figure out the transaction. Now those transactions are often fully baked inside a smart contract. Now, Blockchain, Bitcoin, and Smart Contract are combined with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Collectively, these four technologies are going to transform the biggest industries in the world. There will be a transformation of banking and finance and commerce of all kinds. The government in every country is engaged in several insurances like healthcare, workman’s compensation, employment insurance, pensions, etc. If these are implemented using Bitcoin and Blockchain on a smart contract, we can have a perfect insurance model that will result in more efficient, effective, and fairer insurance that cannot be corrupted by an individual. The governments across the world have started to realize that the competition is for money, entrepreneurs, and the businesses of the world rather than physical borders that were back then. So the more efficient and effective the governments are, the more naturally people will gravitate toward using them because then most of the government’s governance will be virtual.
- How can the healthcare sector be benefited from Blockchain?
That part of the world is wide open for the transformation. Instead of using the traditional way of going to the doctor, medical data can now be captured. Medical records, genetic history, Fitbit results, blood results, travel history can now be up in the Cloud. This will create better diagnostics. That’s the diagnostics part of healthcare. For the therapeutic part, we can now actually design drugs on the screen that would work on the disease specifically designed for a person. Different drugs can be designed for different individuals based on their medical records, thus having bespoke medicine. This will result in better efficacy and safety.
- What was your thought points towards pushing this grand vision through Draper University?
What’s great that happened to Draper University was we became so global so quickly and one can build their network of people around the world. At Draper University, students are forcibly put in awkward situations and are forced to bond with other people and that forced bonding builds a good network of friends and one can learn a lot of things from the connections made. It’s very different from the normal schooling system where one needs to memorize everything to get good grades. We rather promote making mistakes. We want people to experiment with things. As the world is changing faster and faster, people need to be trained to not only adapt to change but to embrace it and to push for it. We try to put our students in the most difficult situations that they’ll ever face so that when they are trying to make a good change as an entrepreneur, artist or revolutionary and face difficult times, they can be like hey, we can survive this as we have seen worse of the things. We force students into a situation where they have to work in a team and that’s probably the strongest thing as it generates good leadership through the team. It encourages them to make some mistakes in their career so that later they can be very successful.
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You quoted, ” India is choosing one religion over another, it makes me seriously concerned about my plans in different businesses” when the Citizenship Amendment Act was enforced by the Indian government which got very controversial. Please share your context behind the tweet.
India is a great place to invest, with so many great entrepreneurs and ideas and hard-working people. But above all, if there exist rules that favor one group of people over another, it raises a lot of doubts. The country that favors one type of person over another, one religion over another, one race or look or sex over another, fail in one way or the other as they are more focused on the one being more privileged than the other, (the part of the society better privileged than the other/part of the society which is more ‘lucky’ than the other), which is not sustainable. Favoring one set of people over another never encourages a strong economy. An open society that is honest and works hard loves their neighbors, no matter who or what they are, tends to create amazing success. Economies boost off wherever there is freedom, openness, and transparency. Thus, the key to success is to create an environment where people are only focused on creating an impact.
- The three apps you are hooked to right now?
First is the Coinbase because it has a lot of good programs and interesting things. The caption comes second because it’s quite simple to use and the ideas can easily be penned down and mailed. And the third is the app which is currently under development which is for Draper University and it’s associates.
- Your favorite Indian entrepreneur.
It’s the creator of Hotmail, Sabeer Bhatia, as it did open the world in so many ways.
- An Indian VC that you admire the most for investment.
That would be Vivek Ranadive. The most admiring thing about him is that he always thinks about the betterment of the product for their customers.
- A Bollywood star that you follow the most.
I am not able to remember the name of the one that I like. Though, I can dance like a Bollywood star.
- Your favorite book for the entrepreneurs.
That’s the book I wrote. It is written in a way that makes the readers question what exactly is going on and by the end, they have a pretty good knowledge of how the business should look like.
- One interesting trend that you observe.
That has to be decentralization.
If you want to listen to such insightful conversation, you can follow Akshay Aggarwal on Anchor.
