This week’s episode comes to you all the way from the snowy peaks of Davos, Switzerland. Mark Leonard is joined by ECFR board member Alexander Stubb – who is director of the school of transnational governance at the European University Institute in Florence and a former prime minister of Finland – to give us their take on this year's World Economic Forum. What does cooperation in a fragmented world look like? Does the war in Ukraine still top the bill in every WEF session, and how do leaders discuss the energy crisis? Leonard and Stubb share their thoughts on all this and more, including the US Inflation Reduction Act, India’s role in the multipolar world, and Olaf Scholz’s speech.  

This podcast was recorded on 18 January 2023. 

Bookshelf:
• Personality and Power: Builders and Destroyers of Modern Europe by Ian Kershaw
• Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy by Henry Kissinger

Davos world: Alexander Stubb and Mark Leonard live from the WEF

Law firm DLA Piper operates in over 40 countries and is one of the three biggest law firms in the world. But just because it's an old-school company in an old-school industry doesn't mean that it (or any other similarly positioned organization) cannot leverage technology to seize a competitive advantage for itself and its customers. At World Economic Forum 2023, Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind met with DLA's Chief Innovation Officer Andy Gastwirth who explained why a global law firm needs a chief innovation officer as well as the significance of using blockchain to tokenize real-world assets; everything from office buildings to race horses. Two driving factors have to do with the idea of fractionalizing those assets and optimizing a multitude of complex and legal workflows to involve significantly fewer people, paper, and process-based friction than they do today (think "digital transformation"). As Gastwirth says in the interview, it just means you have to reimagine those old-school processes as digital processes. In the legal world, blockchain-based tokenization will be key to that reimagination.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/top-3-global-law-firm-seizes-first-mover-advantage-tokenize-almost-everything-blockchain/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zkz6ZEyCSlI

Top 3 Global Law Firm Seizes First Mover Advantage to Tokenize Almost Everything with Blockchain

Blockchain Journal's editor-in-chief David Berlind meets up with Casper Labs CTO Medha Parlikar at the World Economic Forum in Davos to find out more about how enterprises can outsource their distributed ledger deployments to the full-stack blockchain consultancy of which she is a co-founder. As Parlikar explains, full-stack blockchain consultancies like Casper Labs are good for enterprises that know they have a use case for public distributed ledger technology (DLT), but that do not have enough in-house expertise to deploy a solution themselves. In the interview, Parlikar also talks about why fine-grained tracking of permissions and smart contract versioning are two of several features that make Casper public DLT a good choice for enterprise deployments.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/fullstack-blockchain-consultancy-casper-labs-helps-enterprises-distributed-ledger/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twbhQ3_jpM0

Full-Stack Blockchain Consultancy Casper Labs Helps Enterprises With Distributed Ledger Deployments

There are two types of cryptocurrency exchanges in the cryptocurrency world; centralized exchanges (CEX) and decentralized exchanges (DEX). Both models have their pros and cons and while at World Economic Forum 2023 in Davos, Switzerland, Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind caught up with Dylan Peters and Michael Callahan, the Chief Business Development Officer and Vice President of Marketing at Deepwaters; an exchange that is neither fish nor foul. Deepwaters has some of the operational features of a centralized exchange but unlike most CEXes (and more in DEX-like fashion) never takes control of traders' currencies (fiat or crypto). This hybrid model, according to Peters and Callahan offers crypto traders the best of both worlds.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/wake-ftx-deepwaters-claims-its-hybrid-exchange-best-both-cex-and-dex-worlds/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG_rHdIU-64

In the Wake of FTX, Deepwaters Claims its Hybrid Exchange Is the Best of Both the CEX and DEX Worlds

The business of storing enterprise data has gone through several technological revolutions over the last two decades. After on-prem storage came cloud storage (which enterprises initially resisted) and now, thanks to Filecoin and its competitors, comes blockchain-driven storage. The big question however (as with any blockchain discussion) has to do with the enterprise use cases to which Filecoin's "commercial" offering of an InterPlanetary File System-based (IPFS) solution is suited. At World Economic Forum 2023, Blockchain Journal's editor-in-chief David Berlind interviewed Protocol Labs' Director of Growth Stefaan Vervaet to learn not only about Filecoin's current view on that question but the long-term outlook as well. Protocol Labs is the research arm of the coalition that's responsible for Filecoin's technology and adoption.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/filecoin-looks-move-upstack-just-archival-enterprise-data-database-functionality/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLMOhGAfFck

Filecoin Looks to Move Upstack From Just Archival of Enterprise Data to Database-Like Functionality

While at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind sat down with the leader of IBM Consulting's Blockchain and Web3 Practice Shyam Nagarajan to find out the extent to which IBM is invested in blockchain technology (hint: it has been all-in for the better part of the last decade). Nadarajan is practically a veteran with blockchain and he talks about when, in the course of providing its consultative services to its enterprise customers, IBM pulls blockchain into the mix of technologies it recommends to solve for specific business use cases.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/how-ibm-sprinkling-blockchain-solutions-it-builds-and-maintains-enterprise-customers/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyI3Vquvi1U

How IBM is Sprinkling Blockchain Into The Solutions It Builds and Maintains For Enterprise Customers

At World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind met with MobileCoin Head of Business Development Brady Forrest who talked about how MobileCoin's global mobile payment app makes it possible to send money to anyone for a fixed fee of 1/4th of a cent. The app is enabled by the MobileCoin blockchain and like other distributed ledger-based payment workflows, sends cryptocurrency from the originator of a transaction to the recipient. In the case of MobileCoin however, that cryptocurrency can be MOB (the native cryptocurrency of MobileCoin) or eUSD; an asset-backed stablecoin pegged to the value of US$1. Onboarding appears relatively friction-free since payments processor Moonpay will exchange fiat directly from Apple or Google Pay (or a debit card) into one of the two cryptocurrencies. Offboarding from one of the two cryptos to Fiat requires a centralized exchange such as Binance. MobileCoin functionality is also available directly from within the Signal app and, to ease the minds of those concerned about custodial wallets, relies on a non-custodial wallet called Moby.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/mobilecoin-looks-disrupt-venmo-cash-app-paypal-frictionless-blockchainenabled-payments/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irouMkDEVms

MobileCoin Looks to Disrupt Venmo, Cash App, Paypal with Frictionless Blockchain-Enabled Payments

Judging by the incredibly stoic demeanor of Yulia Parkhomenko, one of the directors within Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation, you would never guess that she and her colleagues are forging ahead with their plans to revolutionize Ukraine's government services while bombs are randomly falling around them and electricity is only available for four hours on a good day. But with an eye towards a fully digitally transformed country (a vision that comes straight from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky), and in a demonstration of true grit, that's exactly what she and her team are doing and they are moving at a lightning pace. Also, as Parkhomenko explains to Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Ukraine plans to run its first Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) pilot in 2024.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/amid-daily-bombings-ukraines-plans-transform-government-services-blockchain-surge-forward/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zJhVxtlxXQ

Amid Daily Bombings, Ukraine's Plans to Transform Government Services with Blockchain Surge Forward

Hub Culture presents: The Chronicle Discussions, Episode 82: Giving Nature a Seat on the Board with Julia Jackson, founder at Grounded, Bradley Palmer, Director at Project Drawdown, Alexandra Pimor, Director of Global Nature Governance at Earth Law Center, Helle Bank Jorgensen, CEO and founder of Competent Boards, and Jens Nielsen, founder and CEO of World Climate Foundation.

Stan Stalnaker of Hub Culture hosts live from the Hub Culture Pavilion in Davos, Switzerland, during World Economic Forum 2023. 

Produced by:
New Angel Productions

The Chronicle Discussions, Episode 82: Giving Nature a Seat on the Board

Hub Culture presents: The Chronicle Discussions, Episode 83: Social Impact at Scale with MasterCard and Polygon featuring Salah Goss, Head of Social Impact - North America Center for Inclusive Growth at MasterCard, and Antoni Martin, Enterprise Lead at Polygon.

Stan Stalnaker of Hub Culture hosts live from the Hub Culture Pavilion in Davos, Switzerland, during World Economic Forum 2023.

Produced by:
New Angel Productions

The Chronicle Discussions, Episode 83: Social Impact at Scale with MasterCard and Polygon

The world's leading source of information for enterprises and businesses looking to use blockchain as an application platform for digital transformation, business innovation, customer engagement, and industry disruption.

Weekly podcast on the events, policies and ideas that will shape the world.

World in 30 minutes is curated by Mark Leonard, Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), and features top-level speakers from across the EU and beyond to debate and discuss Europe’s role in the world. It was awarded “Best podcasts on EU politics” by PolicyLab in 2019.

Member of the EuroPod network.

Collaborate in a virtual state. Access a range of tools and services including our Pavilions, VR, Ven, Ultra exchange, and more at HubCulture.com and HubCulture.city

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