BlockTalks: Democratizing Tokenized Wealth, with Mamadou Kwidjim Toure

I love that story.

So in all of that, I mean, with your baggage on financial services and as you very well said, the old boys club, what were the things that in your early days knowing Bitcoin and then later expanding this to more kind of crypto programmability tokenization? What are the things that kind of locked in into this new opportunity? And I love that you were very specific about financial inclusion because we see this term being thrown around left and right.

And I hate that people who talk about it, they're all developed countries trying to, you know, colonize finance again.

So what were the things that really clicked for you at a personal level that you were like, oh, I need to do this? This is a calling.

Yeah, I think, you know, my background in finance helped me understand two things, right? After doing all those, you know, of course, with master's in finance and so many years in investment banking, I was led to understand that finance is based on two things, right? Asymmetry of information and collateral.

So what is asymmetry of information? I know something you don't know that leads me to make an investment because I'm expected And upside from it, that's one side, which is the gain side of the asymmetry of information, right? The other protective side of asymmetry of information is risk pricing, right? So the more uncertainty, right? The higher I'm going to price the risk and therefore the higher returns I'm going to expect.

Meaning, which has been the case for most emerging markets, Because people don't know much what's happening there, because the media is saying it's hopeless, because of this and that and those images with flies in the eyes and all those things, then you're going to think it's risky because you don't have enough information, right? Of course, people look at other fundamentals, but that's the question of asymmetry of information.

Now, blockchain solves that, right? Why? Because it provides an immutable ledger with tamper-proof information that can give you real-time reliable data on any particular fact, event, transaction that is happening.

And therefore, you can't blame the uncertainty of the data anymore, right? So it addresses that on the asymmetry of information side.

And also, blockchain creates a level playing field in many ways, right? Because the veracity of information is no longer sitting on a Bloomberg terminal that only a few can get.

but it's sitting publicly on chain, right? So that's one leg.

The second leg is the question of collateral, right? So point in finance, if you look at it, right, a banker is going to lend you money.

Historically, his point would be, what if you can repay? What guarantees do I have, right? And he's going to say, do you have a car? Do you have a house? Do you have cash flow somewhere that I can go and grab in case you default, right? Now, guess what? And the problem is, if then collateral is that second pillar, it means only those who have a collateral can play the finance game, right? That's why I said it's an all boys club.

Point is, with blockchain, right, you can fractionalize ownership.

Not everybody has a $5 million to get a Manhattan apartment, right? But you can have 5 million people to buy $1 token backed by that Manhattan apartment, right? And that's how we looked at it, right? What if we put gold on chain, right? And what if we could fractionalize ownership? Since gold has been the backbone of the financial system, let's bring it to everyone so that we have a level playing field.

And now you're going to ask me, okay, but why gold? Why not iron or copper or oil or whatever? Very simple.

Did you know that gold has gained 13,000% since it got decoupled from the dollar in 1971? Did you know that gold gained 1,400% since 2000, right? Over last year alone, gold gained 72% to the dollar and 150% over the past five years.

So it means that the man on the street, right? if they had bought an ounce of gold or even a fractionalized $100 of gold in 2000, right, they will literally be sitting today on $13,000, right? While the currency that they kept, let's say, you know, in Filipino peso, in Brazilian reals or Argentinian peso, whatever, has tanked completely, lost probably 80% of its value since, right? So why don't we fractionalize ownership? So that even if your economic environment and political background is unstable, gets messy, whatever, you have that one asset that would have made you actually, that would have put you in a much better shape.

And you don't have to own it below your mattress anymore.

right, under your pillow.

It's stored in a vault, right? It's insured.

It's full-level BMA.

It's tradable anytime, and it's audited and insured by Lords of London.

Then you give a true value proposition to people, right? So that was really the rationale for me.

And, you know, when I say the difference between financial inclusion and financial mobility, guess what? I've made you financially mobile without creating a bank account for you and without putting you in debt.