Podcasts about Mastercard

Thema heute:    Mit einem Lächeln oder einem Winken im Laden bezahlen     Nie mehr nach dem Handy oder dem Portemonnaie suchen, wenn man alle Hände voll zu tun hat - die nächste Generation des Bezahlens im Geschäft braucht nur noch ein kurzes Lächeln oder ein Winken mit der Hand. Die bewährte Technologie, bei der das Gesicht oder der Fingerabdruck zum Entsperren des Smartphones genutzt wird, kann jetzt auch an der Kasse eingesetzt werden, um den Einkauf noch schneller zu machen. Mit dem neuen biometrischen Checkout-Programm von Mastercard braucht man nur noch sich selbst. Das Programm, dessen weltweite Markteinführung jetzt angekündigt wurde, stellt erstmals einen technologischen Rahmen zu Verfügung, der dazu beitragen soll, Standards für neue Bezahlverfahren in Geschäften jeglicher Größe zu etablieren - von großen Einzelhandelsketten bis hin zu Tante-Emma-Läden. Das Programm umfasst eine Reihe von Standards, die von Banken, Handelsunternehmen und Technologieanbietern eingehalten werden müssen und dazu beitragen, die Sicherheit und den Schutz persönlicher Daten bei biometrischen Zahlungen zu gewährleisten. Weltweit stehen 74 Prozent der biometrischen Technologie positiv gegenüber und Prognosen gehen davon aus, dass der Markt für kontaktlose biometrische Technologien bis 2026 voraussichtlich auf 17,84 Milliarden Euro ansteigen wird. Ein völlig neues Kassenerlebnis Wer am biometrischen Checkout-Programm von Mastercard teilnehmen möchten, kann sich bequem im Geschäft oder zu Hause über die App eines Händlers oder Identitätsanbieters anmelden. Nach der Registrierung kann man die biometrischen Kassenservices nutzen, man muss nicht mehr an der Kasse warten und die Taschen durchsuchen. Man muss nur noch die Rechnung prüfen und in eine Kamera lächeln oder die Hand über ein Lesegerät bewegen, um zu bezahlen. Die neue Technologie gewährleistet einen schnellen und sicheren Bezahlvorgang und lässt die freie Wahl, selbst zu entscheiden, wie man bezahlen möchte. Auch der Handel profitiert von schnelleren Transaktionszeiten und kürzeren Warteschlangen bis hin zu mehr Hygiene und erhöhter Sicherheit. Das Zahlungssystem lässt sich in Kundenbindungsprogramme integrieren und mit personalisierten Empfehlungen verknüpfen, die helfen, Produkte zu finden, die auf der Grundlage früherer Einkäufe interessieren könnten. Mastercard arbeitet mit Partnern wie NEC, Payface, Aurus, PaybyFace, PopID und Fujitsu Limited zusammen, um die Einführung und die Verbreitung dieser neuartigen Checkout-Funktionen weltweit sicherzustellen.   Diesen Beitrag können Sie nachhören oder downloaden unter:

Mastercard will schon bald ein Zahlungssystem einführen, bei dem Kunden auf keinerlei Gerätschaften wie das Smartphone mehr angewiesen sein werden. Auch Bank- und Kreditkarten könnten schon bald überflüssig sein. Stattdessen will man auf Gesichtserkennung setzen. Neu ist das System aber nicht.

The team discusses rumours of new Apple devices, and a controversial change in policy for app subscriptions. We also ask whether playing video games could be good for young brains, and welcome Mastercard's new fully biometric payment system. Our Hot Hardware candidate is the Huawei MateStation X, an all-in-one PC with a huge, high-quality touchscreen.

On this week's episode, we are traveling back to November 2021 for Brandweek Sports Marketing Summit where this baseball legend has quickly established himself as a leading marketer through his Miami-based investment firm that includes dozens of investments in brands like Presidente USA, GoPuff, and Wheels Up and as well as partnerships with MasterCard, Hims & Hers, and Goli. Join Adweek's Chief Brand Officer, Danny Wright, as you hear from this week's guest about how he builds his portfolio and helps elevate brands through authentic collaborations. So, grab your peanuts and Cracker Jacks and head to the virtual dugout as Adweek Presents... Alex Rodriguez. Follow Al on Twitter: @almannarinoSubscribe to Adweek Presents... on your favorite podcast platform!You can listen and subscribe to all of Adweek's podcasts by visiting adweek.com/podcasts.Stay updated on all things Adweek Podcast Network by following us on Twitter: @adweekpodcasts.And if you have a question or suggestions for the show, send us an email at podcast@adweek.com. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

If you're a business owner or entrepreneur who wants to start being intentional with your time and money, now is the time to start thinking about generational wealth. At the end of it all, you get to create something larger than yourself that leaves a legacy behind for future generations—whether that be in your lifetime or beyond. Are you ready, but not sure how to get started? Well, I have Nicole Lapin here—she's a best selling author and podcast host, and is the only finance expert you don't need a dictionary to understand. She disrupted the traditionally male-dominated and boring finance space by offering actionable advice. Today we're covering how you can begin building and preserving your generational wealth. Nicole got her start in the business world at age eighteen, reporting for First Business Network and went on to become the youngest anchor ever at CNN and CNBC. She's contributed financial reports to MSNBC, Today, and Entertainment Tonight. She's also the New York Times best selling author of Rich Bitch. Needless to say she has a lot of knowledge to share.   Sponsors: • Mastercard | When women-owned small businesses thrive, we all thrive. Learn more about the tools and resources Mastercard is offering, from moving your biz online to best practices on digital security, at mastercard.com/smallbiz. Together, let's Start Something Priceless.   Resources: • To join the WorkParty click HERE • To connect with Nicole Lapin click HERE • To connect with Jaclyn Johnson click HERE • To follow along with Create & Cultivate click HERE • To learn more about Money Rehab Podcast click HERE • To submit your questions call the WorkParty Hotline: 1-(833)-57-PARTY (577-2789) Produced by Dear Media

Günaydın. Yöneylem Araştırma'nın ilk defa oy kullanacak genç seçmenlere yönelik yaptığı ankette ortaya şaşırtıcı sonuçlar çıktı. TÜİK'te enflasyon hesaplamalarını yapan dairenin başkanı istifa etti. Bursa Ticaret ve Sanayi Odası Başkanı, ihracatçıların döviz gelirlerinin yüzde 40'ının TCMB'ye satışını zorunlu kılan kararı eleştirdi. Bugünün bülteni Mastercard destekleriyle ulaşıyor. Fotoğraf: Ali Balıkçı / AA

While some of the $50+ billion promised to Ukraine is for economic and humanitarian aid, most of it will go to the weapons industry. 5) US spending more in Ukraine over three months than annual budget for war in Afghanistan; 4) FDA approves booster for kids 5-11; 3) Congress holds first hearings on UFOs in decades; 2) McDonalds offer deal and tarot card readings for last week's Mercury retrograde event; 1) MasterCard tests new tech to let customers pay with just their hand or face.

Kelly speaks to Ann Cavoukian, Executive Director at Global Privacy & Security by Design Centre. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Una proposta azzardata ma fattibile tecnicamente. Le implicazioni civilistiche, oltre che privacy sono tali da far riflettere progetti del genere, come ogni progetto che parte dal riconoscimento facciale. Il GDPR parla chiaro e le aziende italiane sono state gia' sanzionate duramente.Link in linkografia

Sherry Madera, senior vice president, public policy and government affairs at Mastercard and co-chair of the Future of Sustainable Data Alliance, Matthew Blake, head of financial and monetary system initiatives at the World Economic Forum, and Haleh Nazeri, platform curator, financial services, WEF, join Emma McGarthy, head of OMFIF's Sustainable Policy Institute. They explore the need to drive environmental, social and governance talent development and acquisition in financial services and the skills required to meet net zero. They discuss how companies can fill the gaps identified in ESG talent and the tools, data strategies and policies required to create sustainability roles.  View the World Economic Forum and Future of Sustainable Data Alliance Talent Development Tool here. Download the report 'Future of Sustainable Data Alliance (FoSDA): towards consistent, comprehensive and coherent data' here. 

Stai ascoltando un estratto gratuito di Ninja PRO, la selezione quotidiana di notizie per i professionisti del digital business. Con Ninja PRO puoi avere ogni giorno marketing insight, social media update, tech news, business events e una selezione di articoli di approfondimento dagli esperti della Redazione Ninja. Vai su www.ninja.it/ninjapro per abbonarti al servizio.Elon Musk potrebbe tirarsi indietro dall'accordo con Twitter. Secondo la società di investimento Wedbush, il CEO di Tesla e SpaceX starebbe utilizzando la scusa del numero di bot presenti sulla piattaforma di social media per fare dietro-front sull'acquisto da 44 miliardi di dollari. "Riteniamo che l'accordo abbia meno del 50% di possibilità di essere concluso", ha dichiarato Wedbush. Samsung: prezzi di produzione dei chip più costosi del 20%. Mentre la carenza di semiconduttori non sembra poter rientrare a breve, Samsung sta valutando la possibilità di aumentare i costi di produzione per i chip che realizza in casa tramite la divisione Foundry. Lo afferma Bloomberg, spiegando che tale mossa potrebbe avere un forte impatto sui prodotti finali acquistati dai consumatori, sia a marchio della coreana che dei partner, clienti dell'hardware fornito dal colosso di Seul. Mastercard, pagamenti attraverso il riconoscimento facciale. Un nuovo programma consentirà ai consumatori di pagare i propri acquisti attraverso facial recognition e scansione delle impronte digitali. Basterà caricare una foto o scansionare la propria impronta e aggiungerla a un'app, che sarà collegata a una carta di credito. Mastercard sta attualmente testando il programma in Brasile, ma lo estenderà ad altri mercati, tra cui Stati Uniti e Asia, nel corso dell'anno. Per risolvere i problemi legati alla privacy, tutti i dati saranno criptati.

Real kissing is finally possible in Virtual Reality. FBI wants you to please not hire any North Korean hackers. Mastercard is about to let you pay using your own face. // Weird AF News is the only daily weird news podcast hosted by a comedian and recorded in a closet. Show your SUPPORT by joining the Weird AF News Patreon where you'll get bonus episodes and other weird af news stuff http://patreon.com/weirdafnews  - WATCH Weird AF News on Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/weirdafnews - check out the official website https://WeirdAFnews.com and FOLLOW host Jonesy at http://instagram.com/funnyjones or http://twitter.com/funnyjones or http://facebook.com/comedianjonesy or http://Jonesy.com

In this episode of the Future of America podcast, McKinsey senior partner Andre Dua talks with Michael Froman, Mastercard's vice chairman and president for strategic growth, about the challenges of financial inclusion and the opportunities to build “financial health and wellness” for all Americans, as well as how businesses can follow through on their commitments to sustainable, inclusive growth. Read more > Listen to the podcast (duration: 31:02) >

Candy recalls...  New staircase in NYC on time and under budget…  Do we care more about Depp-Heard trial?  Harrison Ford & Helen Mirren in new series by Taylor Sheridan…  Product placement could take over shows…  Disney ad supported tier won't allow some clients…  Facebook claims I violated “community standards”  Subscribe to the YouTube Channel…  Subscribe www.blazetv.com/jeffy / Promo code jeffy…  Email Chewingthefat@theblaze.com  Headlines: FDA clears Booster for kids / More “free” PCR tests from government available / New variant undetected by PCR tests / Gas prices up / Mastercard begins facial recognition / Chinese plane crash in March was not technical failure…  Who Died Today: Maggie Peterson-81… Stranger Things Store coming to Dallas… Dinosaur bones at a record price… Jurassic World / Park / number six Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

En el programa de hoy... los pagos con tecnología biométrica que anda probando la gente de Mastercard, el reto que les puso el ministerio de defensa británico a un grupo de programadores, el próximo vuelo de Blue Origin al espacio despegará el viernes, buena música y mucho más!!

Scott Wapner and the Investment Committee debate whether the retail blow-up just crushed the bear market bounce in its tracks. Plus, the Mega Cap Tech Trade under pressure, how should you trade this sector. And later, Visa and Mastercard initiated as buys, the payment stocks are our Call of the Day.

How should you approach money given most of it either collapses or loses its purchasing power due to inflation.Get our free six-day email course on how to beat inflation.Topics covered include:How supposedly safe savings apps collapsed, wiping out their users' savingsWhy algorithmic stablecoins keep failing and why they are not black swansWhat it takes for money to be successfulHow money differs from investmentsFor more information on this episode click here.SponsorsComposer automated traded platformWealthfront - get your first $5,000 managed for free for lifeShow NotesIntellabridgePower Women: Maria Eagleton, Mastercard-incubated Blockchain Company, is setting An Example For Women in Cryptocurrency by Shruti Sood—Morning Lazziness@kashdefi, Twitter post, May 7th, 2022 7:54 AM@kashdefi, Twitter post, May 8th, 2022 10:42 AMTerraCryptocurrency TerraUSD Plunges as Investors Bail by Caitlin Ostroff, Elaine Yu, and Paul Kiernan—The Wall Street JournalCryptocurrency TerraUSD Falls to 11 Cents, Creator Announces Rescue Plan by Paul Vigna—The Wall Street Journal@kashdefi, Twitter post, May 9th, 2022 8:57 PM@kashdefi, Twitter post, May 9th, 2022 9:07 PM@kashdefi, Twitter post, May 12th, 2022 11:01 PMIntellabridge Announces Kash 2.0 and Kash Treasury Product Update—IntellabridgeThere are 99 problems and Tether ain't $1 by Bryce Elder—Financial TimesTether cuts holdings of commercial paper, says majority of exposure in Treasuries -CTO—ReutersInvestors withdraw over $7 billion from tether, raising fresh fears about stablecoin's backing by Ryan Browne—CNBCRelated Episodes333: How The Covid Shock Nearly Destroyed The Financial System373: Are Stablecoins Safe? Should You Own Them?384 Plus: Survey Follow Up, A Stablecoin Collapse, and Trying to Analyze Ripple (unlocked for non Plus members)See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Mastering Cyber with Host Alissa (Dr Jay) Abdullah, PhD, SVP & Deputy CSO at Mastercard, and former White House technology executive. Listen to this weekly one-minute podcast to help you maneuver cybersecurity industry tips, terms, and topics. Buckle up, your 60 seconds of cyber starts now! Sponsored by Mastercard. https://mastercard.us/en-us.html

Gmail con dominio propio gratis / Cohetes chinos caen en India / Rusia no se desconectará de Internet / Cambios en las suscripciones de Apple / La Primera Web como Patrimonio de la Humanidad Patrocinador: El CTO Summit de GeeksHub vuelve con más fuerza que nunca. El evento clave para todos los responsables de equipos de IT se celebra el 24 y 25 de junio en Valencia, y este año va a ser impresionante por la calidad de las ponencias, las charlas y en general un programa lleno de cosas interesantes. — Con el código MIXX45 consigue tu entrada con un 45% de descuento. Gmail con dominio propio gratis / Cohetes chinos caen en India / Rusia no se desconectará de Internet / Cambios en las suscripciones de Apple / La Primera Web como Patrimonio de la Humanidad

First we cover the news of Ex-Meta crypto chief David Marcus launching a Bitcoin payments startup backed by a16z & Paradigm (02:05). Then, Jack Mallers, the CEO of Strike joins (8:13) to discuss the lightning network & the history of payment networks (12:10), why companies use the Strike API (24:42), why he thinks Visa and Mastercard can't compete (31:24), Strike unlocking Bitcoin's potential (34:40) and more!

The COVID-19 pandemic sent advanced and developing economies into starkly divergent paths—with advanced economies expected to recover fully by 2023 and developing economies expected to lag for years to come. Developing economies have nevertheless embraced innovative digital solutions that are enabling economic transformation and putting them on a path toward green, resilient, and inclusive growth. Private and public investment in digital solutions is bringing critical services to the poorest, creating jobs, strengthening small and medium businesses, enabling trade and services, and building resilience to shocks. At the same time, more than half the developing world remains digitally unconnected, and risks around privacy and cybersecurity are growing worldwide. During the http://wrld.bg/QZSm50IvcLg (2022 World Bank Group-IMF Spring Meetings), we explored how countries can boost growth, productivity, inclusion and resilience as they recover by embracing private sector innovation coupled with enabling government policy. World leaders came together to discuss how to best build resilience & manage uncertainty. Listen to the Spring Meetings highlights in a special series of https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/series/the-development-podcast (The Development Podcast). Timestamps[00:00] Welcome and introduction of the topic [02:48] The progress in Rwanda's digital journey [12:45] Addressing the divides and opening digital opportunities [26:04] Closure and thanks for tuning! Featured voicesPaul Kagame, President of the Republic of Rwanda: "A major challenge continues to be the insufficient reach of fibre optic cables in rural areas. This means that the majority of Africa's population does not have access to high-speed internet." Michael Miebach, Chief Executive Officer, Mastercard: "Where is my data? Is my data safe? Where's my money? Is my money safe? If I have it under the mattress, I can see it, I can feel it. If it's somewhere in an app, I'm not quite sure." Omobola Johnson, Senior Partner, TLcom Capital: "Most of these tabletop entrepreneurs, most of these businesses are women, and they have been largely excluded from this digital economy. But there is one way of including them." David R. Malpass, President of the World Bank Group: "There are now so many services being provided across the internet, that it pays for the investments that countries are making." ABOUT THE DEVELOPMENT PODCASTThis international development podcast brings together the data, research—and solutions—that can pave the way to a sustainable future. Through conversations focused on revealing the latest data, the best research, and cutting-edge solutions, let us introduce you to the folks working to make the world a better place. Don't miss an episode! https://world-bank-development-podcast.captivate.fm/listen (Listen and subscribe for free) on your favorite platform. ABOUT THE WBG-IMF SPRING MEETINGS 2022Preparing for future crises and strengthening international cooperation are essential to deliver a resilient recovery and a better future for those most in need. At these http://wrld.bg/QZSm50IvcLg (Spring Meetings), the World Bank Group convened leaders, experts and activists to discuss the impact of these global shocks on the most vulnerable communities. ABOUT THE WORLD BANK GROUPThe http://www.worldbank.org (World Bank Group) is one of the world's largest sources of funding and knowledge for low-income countries. Its five institutions share a commitment to reducing poverty, increasing shared prosperity, and promoting sustainable development.

Chewing glass is what Solana developers do. Introducing the fifth episode in a new series on the Solana Podcast, Chewing Glass. Chase Barker (Developer Relations Lead at Solana Labs) talks shop with the most interesting builders in the Solana ecosystem. It's for devs, by devs.Today's guest is T.J. Littlejohn, the founder of MtnPay, which won 1st Prize in the Payments Track of the recent Riptide Hackathon. 01:30 - Origin Story and Background05:12 - MntDAO08:42 - Building with Solana12:04 - MntPay13:25 - The APIs15:43 - Winning at Riptide17:37 - From starting in Solana to winning 20:41 - Starting to build in Solana23:38 - Improving onboarding on Solana25:26 - The Developer ecosystem27:07 - Missing Tooling29:30 - Advice for newcomers DISCLAIMERThe information on this podcast is provided for educational, informational, and entertainment purposes only, without any express or implied warranty of any kind, including warranties of accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose.The information contained in or provided from or through this podcast is not intended to be and does not constitute financial advice, investment advice, trading advice, or any other advice.The information on this podcast is general in nature and is not specific to you, the user or anyone else. You should not make any decision, financial, investment, trading or otherwise, based on any of the information presented on this podcast without undertaking independent due diligence and consultation with a professional broker or financial advisor. Chase (00:29):Hey everybody and welcome to Chewing Glass, the show where we talk to developers building in the Solana Ecosystem. Today we have with us, TJ LittleJohn. He is the founder of mtnPay, winner of the most recent Solana Hackathon Payments Track for Riptide. TJ, how's it going, man?TJ (00:55):Dude, it's going good. We're stoked to be here. Thanks for having me on.Chase (01:00):Yeah, man. You and I basically met, I feel like a few months ago when you were building some stuff for iOS. Basically some IDL stuff with Anchor and we were talking about potentially getting you some work going on and then next thing you know, a couple of things happen and here we are. But before we dive too much into that, let's hear a little introduction. I know a lot of people probably don't know a ton about you. Where'd you start your journey and how'd you end up here, building in the Solana Ecosystem?TJ (01:31):Yeah. Wow. For sure. Abridged version. So, I'm from Florida originally born and raised. Grew up in South Florida, went to school in Tallahassee, Florida State Granoles. Originally I was a big Math guy. Always wanted to do pure Math and trying to see how I could make a career out of that. Finance was an option. And so I was exploring that and someone told me I should learn to code. So, I started learning to code, from that found Hackathons, from that found iOS development. And just down the rabbit hole there. At a hackathon, I ended up securing an internship at Apple, which turned into a job. And then I spent four years there doing research and development and experience prototyping. And then about a year ago I decided I was done with that and I wanted to be in startups. And so I left, joined a startup. Five months after that I found Solana through some friends and I just noticed the point in time we were at. And I was just stoked. And so I quit and I just immediately started building.Chase (02:36):Wow. So you don't have a CS degree, you're self-taught programmer and landed an internship at Apple dealing on the development side of things?TJ (02:44):No, I do have a CS degree.Chase (02:46):Oh, you do?TJ (02:46):So, I did both. I did Math and CS, but the CS portion to me was the less interesting one. I loved pure Math. I thought it was so cool. CS was more of the necessity one. And then I thought it was cool when I started doing it. But I think I learned a lot more through just the apps I built outside of class. So, partially self-taught. Because that was the more important part, but my education was super important too.Chase (03:13):You have a CS degree, you ended up interning for Apple. You did that for how long was it again?TJ (03:20):It was four years.Chase (03:22):Four years. And you said research, were you actually doing development while you were there?TJ (03:26):Yeah, so we did data collection for new products. So think how face ID was trained on millions of images. We built the software to facilitate those user studies that captured the data to train the models, to enable face ID. So we were brought in super early product.Chase (03:44):Oh, so I mean, I guess that's a little more interesting, like somebody who's into Math, you're dealing with lots of data and information, or opposed to just writing a high level code or something like that.TJ (03:55):Not exactly. The Math thing, it's like pure Math. I don't do with data and numbers and processing. I just think pure Math is fucking cool. And when I have an itch about something, I just want to dive. And so, that was the Math thing for me. That was just pure. I love it and I think it taught me how to understand stuff, which I think I still, every now and then, I'll see, I have the power to do that, which is really cool. The thing with Apple was that it let me just hack on shit. I had month long projects and software efforts that, because I get bored really quick, which is a blessing and a curse. Historically. Apple just let me work on a project and then a month later I was working on something else.Chase (04:41):Yeah, we've had some conversations, like you said, you get bored really quick, it comes through a little bit in your personality. You get super excited about things and bounce around and that's why I like your energy, it's super crazy and incredible. So it's nice to have people so excited about these things and especially considering the fact of some of the more recent, great things that have happened. I want to really start this whole conversation outside of your past on where it all truly, truly began, which from what I understand was really mtnDAO. That's like, lit this whole fire off. I don't know if everybody knows about it and if they do, maybe not how great of a thing that it turned out to be. Maybe about Barrett and Edgar and what they set up and how it was and then how that whole month went for you, that led to this moment.TJ (05:31):So yeah, mtnDAO, for people that don't know was a month long hacker house in Salt Lake City, Utah, where people from all over just congregated and we spent a month working on whatever it is you want to work on, in this co-working space called The Shop. And like you said, Edgar and Barrett, they're actually the ones that got me into Solana. They were the first people to introduce me and they just threw this hack house to grow the ecosystem out of the kindness of their own hearts and love for co-working and developing and hacking. And so yeah, a bunch of us came through and we just were chilling in Utah. We'd go snowboarding on the weekends. We'd throw parties on Fridays and bring in people from around the City and just strips, just get after it.And that was the best part. We'd be working from like 10:00, 11:00 AM was when I would roll in till like 1:00, 2:00 in the morning, most days. And a good crew of people were always there doing that too. Maybe if you wanted to go grab dinner, you could and people would come back. But yeah, it was just a lot of incredibly focused work and a nice little crew formed out of that. And so I've seen a lot of the same mtnDAO folks at the next hacker houses and stuff, and that's always fun. And you just become friends with these people.Chase (06:51):Yeah, it seems like there was a lot of building going on. I'm not going to lie, I saw that notion that Edgar and Barrett, or I think it might have been Edgar, correct me if I'm wrong, put together this notion. And I was like, a Dev did this? Just because it was so organized and well put together. And then, those guys pretty much put this thing, from start to finish, got this thing going.TJ (07:09):Yeah. There was a lot of people that participated in the setup of it. I know Sam had a big part, Edgar and Barrett had a big part. A lot of those core Salt Lake City people were doing this stuff. But yeah. I mean, they took out the trash. There was, under the tables the first day, taping extension cords. So they, I mean, yeah, they did the stuff.Chase (07:28):Yeah. I talked to him in Miami and he was like, yeah, I have a room and an office that's filled with about a hundred monitors. I can't remember what it is at some point, but it looked like there was tons of building going on there. Whenever I see the community, they didn't really ask for permission. And a lot of people would say, why don't you bring a hacker house to our city or this or that? And the reality is, you don't need that. You have an idea, you execute, you make it known. And people are going to come there and you're probably going to likely get some sponsors to help you put it on because this is like an incubator. And obviously mtnPay came out of this, which is incredible. Let's talk a little bit about that. I'm pretty sure, maybe I'm wrong, is that Solana Pay, was it announced before you got to mtnDAO? Or was it announced while you were there?TJ (08:13):It was actually the same day. February 1st is when I rolled through.Chase (08:19):I was on a phone call with you actually, whenever you showed up, you remember that?TJ (08:22):Really?Chase (08:23):Yeah, you were like, I just got to mtnDAO. Yeah. We were...TJ (08:27):I probably called you from the airport. Yeah. I've been like--Chase (08:29):You did.TJ (08:30):Probably over-committing myself. And I remember we were talking about doing a possible grant or something for that IDL stuff. And I was like, just trying to not lose that. Not doing my end of it. You were like, TJ, if you just write a notion page on your idea, I can move it through. And I was like, ah, I don't know. I'm building. And yeah. So we never got through there, but yeah.Chase (08:55):Well, I think it worked out pretty well. So, you got there, Solana Pay's announced, and you were just like, okay, well I'm just going to build something with this.TJ (09:04):No, not at all.Chase (09:06):Okay.TJ (09:07):There was two funny touch points with Solana Pay that got me rolling. The first one was, I hopped out of mtnDAO to go to the LA hacker house for a two day stint, because I was working with these people. And then as I was about to leave, I remember my friend Greg from Solana News was like, I missed the news cycle on Solana Pay. They must have had insider information, that was a couple of days after it was announced. And I was like, what do you mean, dude? It's been going on. He's like, what? I'm like, yeah. Are you not on Twitter? Do you not see this stuff? So, that was funny.And so, that had top of mind a little bit, but the idea for mtnPay, it was Friday night, it was the night of the first party we were having, we had parties every Friday or Saturday. And I was grabbing a Red Bull from, they had this self-service checkout kiosk, as I do. I just consume just stupid amounts of Red Bull. And I was buying another one and you pay through square, tap your phone. I don't know. I just had a random idea that it was like, yo, wouldn't it be hilarious if we rebuilt this self checkout experience and then just added the Solana Pay stuff, because we're all Solana people here for a month, this the first week and that would just be funny.And I told him, I was like, I'm just going to do it. And they're like, that's hilarious. Do it. And then so on Sunday, my boy Scott was in town and we were at the hacker house just trying to think of things to work on for Riptide. And we were skating through all these different ideas on creator tokens or I don't remember all the different things. And it was like, what if we do that Point of Sale thing? That'd be cool. And whatever, we could probably build this in a two day stint. Not a big deal and yeah, that's why we built it.Chase (11:00):Yeah, I remember starting to see a couple of days after Solana Pay launched, I started to see all these videos of people filming themselves and you guys paying with Solana Pay. I was like, this is crazy. This just came out. I can't believe, well, I could believe that you had put that together already. And then from there, Solana Pay's really gained a ton of traction, but you were really the first person to come out and be like, look, hey guys, I did it. And it's actually live in this place right now. And it's still there to this day? They keep that?TJ (11:32):Yeah. As far as I know. Our customer success could use some work. And so I haven't followed up with them in a couple weeks. But we got them set up on our new version, which was a more self-service thing. So as far as I know, it's still running there. There's even a week where it wasn't working and Barrett was texting me nonstop. Like, bro, you need to get this working again because I need this. And so, that's that classic, build something, people would be upset if it goes away. And so we did that.Chase (12:01):Yeah. So you did this in a short amount of time and since then, there was a lot left in the hackathon to go. So, since that first day or that you got that live, I guess you've been doing a ton of work up until the point where you made your final submission, tell us a little bit about mtnPay and what work was involved and what are the features and maybe what's the future of mtnPay.TJ (12:30):Yeah, for sure. So the first half the gate was just, it's an iOS Point of Sale app that enables users to use Solana Pay to pay. And then the second thing is a square integration. So, we use the square APIs to tie it into your current Point of Sale System. So the transactions show up in line. Chase bought a Red Bull here for $3 with his MasterCard and then he bought a cookie for a dollar using Solana Pay. And so that was the core thing. And we had built it specifically for The Shop. We got a bunch of inbound of like, how can I set this up? How can I do it? So we had to take a step back and use a couple weeks to make it more robust and actually usable in self-service. Which was our base for what we wanted to submit to the hackathon, was just like a usable Point of Sale by everyone, it's still in test flight.And then Solana Pay evolved to a new spec while we were there. And then immediately became gas on that. And ever since the wheels have been turning there and then that initial spec change is what led us to where we are today, which is honestly, and not a lot of people know this, but we're more of an API company now. We're more like SaaS APIs and stuff like that.Chase (13:43):I guess, doing the API side makes it a little more versatile so that anybody can use it and they don't have to use a specific device or framework or anything like that.TJ (13:55):Yeah. I think the APIs, to be honest, they came more out of this idea of defensibility, because with a lot of the attention we got, it was like, what's the opportunity here? Is there something worth building out? And in that, there's a lot of things that could make you super existential, like just square adding Solana pay themselves. And so how do we actually build a moat in this industry or something. And so we were like, this transaction request thing came up, which enables you to use APIs in Solana Pay, what if we open that up to people and then let that be our defensibility and our moat. And so we spent a lot of time thinking about what that API suite would look like and then realize that, that's the bigger opportunity from our point of view, but probably more importantly, it's what we want to build in this space.I think there's a lot of opportunities for a lot of people to participate and building out the client that people would use. There's also a lot of stuff that we weren't interested in building. Like inventory management and tax reporting and accounting. Like, nah. I want to do the Solana stuff. And the APIs is the Solana stuff. And so that's where we're at now.Chase (15:08):Now. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense. Here's the thing, you build a project and you don't want to start taking on things that you don't enjoy because then you probably stop enjoying your job. So you do what excites you and then you offload or allow connection points for other people to build that stuff who see that opportunity. But it makes a lot of sense. I've talked to people who have created businesses and then they pull in, maybe not this specifically, but like the tax stuff and all these different sort of inventory management. And then it becomes like, I don't really like this anymore. This is not what I signed up for.TJ (15:42):That's what was happening. And so it was like, really I had to focus on something specifically in there and that's, we picked the APIs and it's been cool. We've been working with different protocols to add their functionality to our APIs. And yeah, it's been fun since we started focusing there.Chase (16:04):So obviously it was the right move because you, just to circle back to this is, you won the Payments Track of the Riptide Hackathon. There was a lot of competition. There was a lot of good stuff in there. So I'm just curious, how did that feel when you saw that?TJ (16:18):I'm dumb competitive. And so it was so funny because it was like, it started off as people are, oh, you going to submit this to Riptide? And it was like, yeah, probably, but we're not really focused on that. And the closer we got to Riptide, we're like, we want to win. And then so we had been paying a lot of attention to other people that were building in this space, seeing where people's attention was. The whole time we were like, I don't know, fairly confident we would do well to some extent, but then I think it was up to, what did the judges value? You don't know. But we were super proud of what we built and we're hoping other people saw what we saw and seeing that we won the Payments Track, it was just like a pat on the back. It was like, we agree.Chase (17:07):We agree.TJ (17:09):Yeah. That's what it was. And there was some chest pounding, there was something like, yes. But I also think the part I was more stoked on was just the attention that would follow and knowing that we could leverage that to build something. Because I think the attention is just like, it's fuel. And you can't do it with only attention you have to follow it up. But we knew it would empower a lot of the things that we wanted to do.Chase (17:37):Yeah, for sure. And I think these aren't necessarily your classic typical hackathon, where you hack on some little thing for a week or a month. These sorts of events are actually catalysts to build real businesses. And this is meant to be inspirational to developers that are watching this, that may or may not have dipped their toes into Solana. Maybe they have, but they haven't gotten anywhere. These stories are super inspirational. So I want to put it in context. What is the timeframe from the day that TJ wrote his first piece or read his first Solana doc to winning Riptide Payments Track? What's that timeframe?TJ (18:13):September, August. I was reading, I was staying up late. I was still working at the startup and I was staying up till like 3:00, 4:00 in the morning, reading that classic, Paul article on doing an escrow. It was partly that it was partly that Packy podcast.Chase (18:30):Oh yeah.TJ (18:30):On Solana Summer. That was super dope. I remember I was at the gym and I was listening to him talk about the DJ Apes Mint and two weeks prior I was at Miami hack week, it was like, I remember I was chilling with Barrett, I met him for the first time, we had met through our friend Eve, shoutout Eve. And it was just me, Barrett, Edgar and Eve in this apartment and they were just talking about crypto and I knew nothing. So I wanted to fit in and I was like, oh, I bought some Ethereum lately.I thought I would impress him. And he is like, nah, and he's looking at me, he's like, fuck Ethereum. And I was like, what? And just turns around and he goes, Solana. And I was like, what is Solana? I thought it was like some shit coin. And that was just when it got on my map. And then I saw the Packy thing. I did that. And then all these NFT things were popping up and I'm like, all right, what's going on? And then Candy Machine pops up. So I'm like reading that contract and I'm reading the Levi's thing and trying to set one up for myself and it feels like explosions all around me. And I'm like, what is this world? And people are just shipping and I can't keep up. And it was like overwhelming. And then I quit.Chase (19:41):So it's been about, from zero to hero in seven months, basically. Is what I'm hearing right here. Seven or eight months.TJ (19:49):Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. I feel like I got onboarded fairly quick. I feel like I was doing stuff to me that felt like mattered, immediately. All that iOS stuff that I was doing, to me felt groundbreaking.Chase (20:04):Yeah.TJ (20:05):And I felt like a hero then, honestly. That stuff made me feel more of a hero than what I felt like with Riptide.Chase (20:11):Really?TJ (20:12):To be totally honest.Chase (20:12):So it was more so just that you win Riptide, like, wow, I got this thing, but the more part for you was the personal win of actually just starting on this new journey and figuring out how to build on Solana.TJ (20:26):Like I said, I'm dummy competitive. So winning Riptide was great. It was a good job power, but with mtnPay, I don't feel like I've done anything yet. I think there's opportunities too. And we're on a path to actually really contribute to the Solana Ecosystem. But I don't feel like I've had a major accomplishment there yet. But with the iOS stuff, I totally did. I, from native iOS code, minted an NFT through Candy Machine. I figured out how to talk to Anchor programs from native iOS code. And that to me was like, that gave me so much energy.Chase (21:05):So tell me about that. You started building on Solana, did you start messing around with Rust? Did you start messing around with Anchor? Or did you go straight to those SWIFT SDKs that existed? What was your process for getting rolling on Solana?TJ (21:18):Totally. Yeah. That's a great thing to preface here is, I've done barely any Rust. I haven't shipped a smart contract to Mainnet. Mostly client work. So there's massive opportunities in this space to really participate and have impact just doing client work. That being said, the way I really learned it was just wanting to write an iOS app that would work with Solana. And so I found a couple of open source SWIFT packages that was doing iOS transaction stuff. And so, that's how I learned what a transaction object looked like and where you serialize it and how you add accounts to that. And what's an account. And what's [inaudible 00:22:02] coding. All of that stuff I just learned because I had to, to make an iOS app that talked to Anchor. And so me and my friend, Michael, we went to college together, and so we were up till like 4:00 in the morning for weeks just printing out transaction objects in JavaScript, on the Anchor thing and figuring out how do we bridge that to iOS? And that was the coolest.Chase (22:30):And then this is exactly the point we've talked about a couple times on this show. And I say it on my Twitter all the time. You just won Riptide Payments Track and you'd never shipped a smart contract. How? Well it's because not everybody needs to be this guy who writes the smart contracts. You just need to know how to talk to them, using these different APIs, SWIFT, JavaScript. There's a C# SDK, there's a Unity One built on top of that. There's a [inaudible 00:22:57] one, they're all out there and you can learn Solana, and in a way you're comfortable, which is in your native language. And you're talking about just doing print lines and printing out and just reading, what is this object? And now I get it.TJ (23:10):Yeah. That was the process. And it was great. And I think we have a long way to go before developers can step in and build incredibly easily and efficiently, but the process is still fun. And there's a lot of toys you get to use when building this up, a lot of exposure, you feel super low level. And yet, they encourage everyone to just dig in and start building shit.Chase (23:38):In your opinion, what are some of those things that need to improve to make this easier for the new guys or the old guys? It doesn't really matter. What needs to happen? And what do we need?TJ (23:47):Error messages.Chase (23:49):Error messages.TJ (23:52):It is like, you will get like, Error A4, and there's nowhere to go. And you're digging around. I'm like, dude, you literally got to clone the repo and go line by line and figure out what's that error? What are we doing? It's fun. And from when I got into it to like what Armani's done with Anchor now and the Anchor books, that's there, the Solana Cookbook, that's all there now. So it's easier to do it now. And even when I try to do more on-chain stuff or build out stuff that I'm not comfortable with, I'm able to go reference those materials, but they weren't there in September.Chase (24:30):Yeah.TJ (24:31):And that was kind of fun though. It was like a point in time. And I was always envious of people that got to code in machine code, because they had to and what a point in time that must have been to get to be a part of that. And that's why I started building in Solana, I saw that point in time again, I thought Solana was going to pop and I was like, I'm not missing it.Chase (24:53):You were basically like, I see Solana, I see that not everything's been created and there's massive opportunities and I'm going to carve myself out a slice of that and just do it. So it's pretty crazy to be talking about this now.TJ (25:05):Yeah, it's been a journey.Chase (25:07):Yeah. And a lot of this was all Discord Support. It was a huge pain in the ass. You answer the same questions 5,000 times a day. Shoutout to the [inaudible 00:25:16] team at Solana labs that really just spent way too much time in Discord and the core engineers that shouldn't be there all.TJ (25:22):Shoutout Alan.Chase (25:23):Yeah. Alan has actually been obviously incredible.TJ (25:26):Fun story, in that with Alan, we were working on that iOS stuff till dumb hours at night, I think it might have been 2:00 in the morning. And we were having these errors we could not figure out. And so we posted in Discord and Alan answered and we're going back and forth with this guy. Didn't know him at all. This is our first thing. He's like, I'm happy to hop on a call with you to help you sort it out. And we were on that call for three hours. But that to me is such a story of people in Solana. There is so many people that just are cool with just helping you. And they're in the weeds with you and it's that developer ecosystem that attracted me and I think is going to attract so many people after me.):Which to your credit, I think you've set up a lot of it. Being the dev relations at Solana, just creating the environment for those developers to thrive and giving them the resources. I think that's where this has come from, but yeah, that was just a monster classic Solana moment for me that I wanted to highlight.Chase (26:31):Yeah, for sure. And there's a lot of people. It started with Toly and Raj and then that attitude and welcomeness humor came down to me and Armani and so many different people that feels like you can approach anybody in the ecosystem. And I agree, I think this side of tone and vibe is what will attract a lot of younger developers.TJ (26:56):Yeah.Chase (26:57):There's lots of different complaints out there. One of the biggest ones we've been hearing a lot is about tooling. If you agree with that, what web tooling or blockchain tooling are we missing right now at Solana? Do you have anything personally that you would like to see?TJ (27:12):No, I don't have the most robust engineering background. When I was at Apple, we used Apple internal tools. So that was all I really knew. And so, even now, I'll be coding on something with someone at a hackathon and they're like, wait, you're not using this plugin. You're not using the Anchor plugin for VS code. I'm like, no, what is that?Chase (27:34):Here's the old-school.TJ (27:36):Yeah. They're like, baby come here. They would set me up with some stuff. So, that's so cool. I think examples are going to be great. I think just like getting examples out there for people so that they could learn that they can do it too is going to be really cool.Chase (27:48):And self-onboard.TJ (27:48):Yeah. Self-onboarding's massive. And that's one of the ways we want to go with mtnPay, because we're just like a set of APIs. I think we can open up these APIs to iOS native developers to be able to build apps, they don't need to do the exact transaction building. We can have just a normal API that lets them build the transaction themselves. So that's one of the directions we definitely want to go into and we feel like can bring native developers to Solana, hopefully.Chase (28:16):Yeah. It's about giving the tools, the education to onboard people like mtnPay and the rest of the ecosystem who then drives in the users and then that it just spreads outwardly from there. So it's pretty incredible to watch right now, I'm not going to say, like I started last May about, next month will be my one year. And the difference in one year has made, like you said, even in September, you didn't have half the things that are available now. It's happening at the speed of light and it's, who knows? In one year from now it's going to be, again, unrecognizable. So I mean, it'll be unrecognizable in like six months, most likely or less. We'll see.TJ (28:57):Yeah. Just being along for the journey, I feel grateful.Chase (29:00):Yeah.TJ (29:01):Just what a point in time that we're in. I was talking with Edgar the other day, I was like, we got to remember, we're in the good old days right now.Chase (29:08):I guess, to round this off and you kind of already touched on this and I always do this at the end of every single episode of the show is, to just give some advice to whoever you want to give to advice to, maybe it's the new devs looking to come into blockchain that might be scared or intimidated by just the name, blockchain, scares some people.TJ (29:30):I mean, just start. Just start and just build. There's so many opportunities within yourself to push things off and it's so easy to complain or give yourself reasons to not build stuff. Even within myself every day I'd catch myself either complaining or giving excuses or whatever. But reality is, just build because when you just start building, you'll figure it out. You can ask the questions, you'll get there. And then that building really gives you momentum to keep going.Chase (30:09):Yeah man.TJ (30:10):Yeah. And it attracts people to you and then those people are going to give you energy and it just, it all cycles. But you have to be the one to start.Chase (30:21):Yeah. I mean, I don't think anybody's really given that advice and it is, like, we're all engineers, we've all just put things off. We all have 200 projects that we started one night and then never got back to. So it's really just getting started and just following through.TJ (30:35):Yeah. And don't be afraid to chase the energy. There's so many things I've tried doing in Solana that I would work on for a week and then stop. But even now I go back to them and they're just tools in the belt. And you'll be able to leverage learnings later on.Chase (30:51):Yeah. For sure. Well, TJ, congratulations for winning the Riptide Payments Track with mtnPay. Glad to get you on the show. Glad to have a conversation. Love the energy. Just keep it up, man. And thanks again for doing what you do. And thanks for being here.TJ (31:09):Yeah, no, I appreciate the opportunity. I feel there's definitely the longest we've been able to chat for how long we've known each other. It's funny. I feel like we kept missing each other in Miami. So, I'm glad we got this opportunity and hopefully I'll see you in The Bahamas.Chase (31:23):Thanks for coming on. 

Drop 1: MakerDAO funds ConsolFreight shipment over Mastercard's Provenance solution https://forum.makerdao.com/t/consolfreight-update-may-2022-consolfreight-helps-mastercard-to-test-defi/15081 .. Drop 2: Nubank + XP go crypto https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/05/11/nubank-brazils-largest-digital-bank-launches-bitcoin-and-ether-trading/ https://www.blocknews.com.br/criptoativos/xp-voltara-a-ter-plataforma-de-cripto-mas-desta-vez-com-a-nasdaq/ .. Drop 3: 11:FS how web3 is shaping the future of finance https://11fs.com/web3report .. And more: Terra UST stablecoin disaster https://thedefiant.io/ust-terra-stablecoin-analysis/ https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/05/11/the-luna-and-ust-crash-explained-in-5-charts/ Madonna / Beeple NFT https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/09/arts/design/madonna-beeple-nft-videos.html Near Foundation Kenya hub https://blockchain.news/news/near-foundation-sets-up-a-regional-hub-in-kenya-boosting-blockchain-innovation-in-africa A16Z seeds Co:Create open NFT protocol https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1524049345548623875?t=erqCynNhNlttE0KB0ao6_w&s=19 Pixelynx https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisakocay/2022/05/09/deadmau5-and-richie-hawtin-talk-new-gaming-venture-pixelynx/?sh=1f78a08776b5&s=08 EY's reconciler open for business https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ey-announces-general-availability-of-ey-blockchain-analyzer-reconciler-301544701.html Nigeria emphasizes CBDC over crypto https://cointelegraph.com/news/nigeria-upgrades-cbdc-as-crypto-restrictions-cripple-fintech-industry/ FASB to review accounting for digital assets on balance sheet https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/05/11/fasb-to-review-accounting-rules-for-digital-assets-held-on-balance-sheets-report/ Roland Garros NFT - with utility https://www.sportbusiness.com/news/french-open-enters-the-metaverse-with-roland-garros-virtual-seat-nfts/ Emirates embraces digital currencies and metaverse to attract new customers https://www.arabnews.com/node/2079876/business-economy Barbados Stock Exchange partners with Blockstation for tokenized securities https://bse.com.bb/news/21251 FTX buys 7.6% stake on Robinhood https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/05/12/ftx-ceo-sam-bankman-fried-buys-56m-position-in-robinhood/ Chainalisys round valued at 8.6B https://cointelegraph.com/news/chainalysis-announces-170m-funding-round-platform-now-valued-at-8-6-billion BLP available to Itaú clients https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6930866297429725185?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28V2%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A6930866297429725185%29 iColab new BRI member https://www.blocknews.com.br/corporativo/icolab-e-blockchain-research-institute-brasil-fecham-parceria/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/blockdropspodcast/message

Drop 1: MakerDAO funds ConsolFreight shipment over Mastercard's Provenance solution https://forum.makerdao.com/t/consolfreight-update-may-2022-consolfreight-helps-mastercard-to-test-defi/15081 .. Drop 2: Nubank + XP go crypto https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/05/11/nubank-brazils-largest-digital-bank-launches-bitcoin-and-ether-trading/ https://www.blocknews.com.br/criptoativos/xp-voltara-a-ter-plataforma-de-cripto-mas-desta-vez-com-a-nasdaq/ .. Drop 3: 11:FS how web3 is shaping the future of finance https://11fs.com/web3report .. And more: Terra UST stablecoin disaster https://thedefiant.io/ust-terra-stablecoin-analysis/ https://www.coindesk.com/layer2/2022/05/11/the-luna-and-ust-crash-explained-in-5-charts/ Madonna / Beeple NFT https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/09/arts/design/madonna-beeple-nft-videos.html Near Foundation Kenya hub https://blockchain.news/news/near-foundation-sets-up-a-regional-hub-in-kenya-boosting-blockchain-innovation-in-africa A16Z seeds Co:Create open NFT protocol https://twitter.com/cdixon/status/1524049345548623875?t=erqCynNhNlttE0KB0ao6_w&s=19 Pixelynx https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisakocay/2022/05/09/deadmau5-and-richie-hawtin-talk-new-gaming-venture-pixelynx/?sh=1f78a08776b5&s=08 EY's reconciler open for business https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ey-announces-general-availability-of-ey-blockchain-analyzer-reconciler-301544701.html Nigeria emphasizes CBDC over crypto https://cointelegraph.com/news/nigeria-upgrades-cbdc-as-crypto-restrictions-cripple-fintech-industry/ FASB to review accounting for digital assets on balance sheet https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/05/11/fasb-to-review-accounting-rules-for-digital-assets-held-on-balance-sheets-report/ Roland Garros NFT - with utility https://www.sportbusiness.com/news/french-open-enters-the-metaverse-with-roland-garros-virtual-seat-nfts/ Emirates embraces digital currencies and metaverse to attract new customers https://www.arabnews.com/node/2079876/business-economy Barbados Stock Exchange partners with Blockstation for tokenized securities https://bse.com.bb/news/21251 FTX buys 7.6% stake on Robinhood https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/05/12/ftx-ceo-sam-bankman-fried-buys-56m-position-in-robinhood/ Chainalisys round valued at 8.6B https://cointelegraph.com/news/chainalysis-announces-170m-funding-round-platform-now-valued-at-8-6-billion BLP available to Itaú clients https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6930866297429725185?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28V2%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A6930866297429725185%29 iColab new BRI member https://www.blocknews.com.br/corporativo/icolab-e-blockchain-research-institute-brasil-fecham-parceria/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/blockdropspodcast/message

Christopher McGregor is CEO and co-founder of Vesto, a multi-token protocol for decentralized services.Prior to co-founding Vesto, Christopher was the Vice President of Engineering for Telemac Corporation, where he developed and launched Pay & Go with O2. With more than 20 million mobile handsets sold, Telemac became the most successful pre-paid mobile solutions in the UK. In 2004, he became the co-founder and Vice President of Engineering for Validus Technologies Corporation, where he developed the biometric technology that powered the VALIDcard™. Christopher conceptualized and developed multiple technologies including BT Cellnet's (O2) original Pay & Go, QoS (sold to Root Metrics)/ QoE solutions for 3G / 4G LTE mobile, mobile authentication for the U.S. Federal Government, the first pre-production prototypes of the world's first ISO biometric powered card (now being offered by MasterCard internationally).A full stack engineer and serial entrepreneur who has held various other CTO and Senior Software Engineer roles, he is a named inventor on numerous issued patents and patents pending in the areas of biometric authentication, QoS (Quality of Service) for 3G, OIS (Open Internet Security) for 3G, mobile payments, social commerce, and dynamic marketing automation. Jamil Hasan is a crypto and blockchain focused podcast host at the Irish Tech News and spearheads our weekend content “The Crypto Corner” where he interviews founders, entrepreneurs and global thought leaders. Prior to his endeavors into the crypto-verse in July 2017, Jamil built an impressive career as a data, operations, financial, technology and business analyst and manager in Corporate America, including twelve years at American International Group and its related companies. Since entering the crypto universe, Jamil has been an advisor, entrepreneur, investor and author. His books “Blockchain Ethics: A Bridge to Abundance” (2018) and “Re-Generation X” (2020) not only discuss the benefits of blockchain technology, but also capture Jamil's experience on how he has transitioned from being a loyal yet downsized former corporate employee to a self sovereign individual. With over one hundred podcasts under his belt since he joined our team in February 2021, and with four years of experience both managing his own crypto portfolio and providing crypto guidance and counsel to select clients, Jamil continues to seek opportunities to help others navigate this still nascent industry. Jamil's primary focus outside of podcast hosting is helping former corporate employees gain the necessary skills and vision to build their own crypto portfolios and create wealth for the long-term.

Bear Market, Market Headlines, Stocks Drop, Tesla, Twitter, Elon Musk, Visa, Mastercard, Acorns, Robinhood, Protecting Your Money 

Name: Steve FaktorCurrent title : Managing DirectorCurrent organisation: IdeaFaktorySteve Faktor is an innovator, futurist and digital commerce expert. He is Managing Director of IdeaFaktory, which helps companies accelerate growth by partnering with top startups, developing new innovations, and restructuring for growth. As a senior executive at American Express, Citi and MasterCard, Steve has created several $100M+ businesses and deployed multiple enterprise innovation programs. He is author of Econovation, which critics describe as “a fascinating, erudite, bitingly funny, well researched, and…important book“ about capitalizing on the end of consumerism and rise of 'producerism'. Steve is a top-ranked global keynote speaker, who has keynoted major events for CFO Magazine, New York University, Harvard, PDMA, Frost & Sullivan, Rocketspace, New Media Expo and numerous corporations. He also leads workshops, ideation and training sessions based on his proprietary 4C's of Innovation(TM) methodology. Steve writes provocative articles on innovation and entrepreneurship for Forbes and Harvard Business Review and is one of 160 original Linkedin Influencers (along with luminaries like Richard Branson). Steve graduated from the NYU Stern School of Business and lives in New York City. He actively supports Junior Achievement and several Thai restaurants in his neighborhood.Resources mentioned in this episode:Free Download of The Leadership Survival Guide (10 World-Class Leaders Reveal Their Secrets)https://store.consultclarity.org/leadership-survival-guide-10-world-class-leaders-reveal-their-secrets1625572748028The Leadership Conversations Podcasthttps://open.spotify.com/show/4IB6V41kr4GVJ98XLHMPeCThe Jonno White Leadership Podcasthttps://open.spotify.com/show/2p8rvWrYW2XNLl9Z8m3pTsThe Leadership Question of the Day Podcasthttps://open.spotify.com/show/6eZ4lZ2bgA8aczPKY4Oqw6Clarity Websitehttps://www.consultclarity.org/7 Questions on Leadership Serieshttps://www.consultclarity.org/large-enterprises-leadershipWe'd Love To Interview YOU In Our 7 Questions On Leadership Series!https://www.consultclarity.org/7-questions-interestSubscribe To Clarity's Mailing Listhttps://www.consultclarity.org/subscribeJonno White's eBook Step Up or Step Outhttps://store.consultclarity.org/step-up-or-step-out-sales-page1640131063671Jonno White's Book Step Up or Step Out (Amazon)https://www.amazon.com/Step-Up-Out-Difficult-Conflict-ebook/dp/B0925MB4SR

On this episode of Money Moves we have special guest Dr. Roshawnna Novellus, Founder and CEO of EnrichHER, a FinTech lending platform that's making it easy for retail and institutional funders to deploy capital to  businesses led by women and people of color. A nationally recognized financial inclusion advocate and champion of mindfulness, Dr. Novellus is dedicated to deploying working capital to women and people of color to help them grow their businesses. She's also one of the few Black women ever to have raised over $1M in venture capital. EnrichHER has Deployed $14M in capital to diverse-owned businesses from 47 states. EnrichHER fuels the fastest-growing demographics of business owners -- Black women and diverse-led companies -- by providing capital, coaching, and connections. Today we're talking about all things fundraising—from overcoming the gender funding gap to securing the bag and finding the right funds for your business.   Sponsors: • Mastercard | When women-owned small businesses thrive, we all thrive. Learn more about the tools and resources Mastercard is offering, from moving your biz online to best practices on digital security, at mastercard.com/smallbiz. Together, let's Start Something Priceless.   Resources:• To join the WorkParty click HERE • To connect with Dr. Roshawnna Novellus click HERE • To connect with Jaclyn Johnson click HERE • To follow along with Create & Cultivate click HERE • To follow along with EnrichHER click HERE • To submit your questions call the WorkParty Hotline: 1-(833)-57-PARTY (577-2789) Produced by Dear Media

Techstination interview: Order food, fight cancer. #StandUpToCancer & Mastercard partner again.

My guest this week started as a software engineer but soon discovered he had a love for payments. Brightwell CEO Larry Hipp has had a fascinating journey throughout the fintech space. He has a genuine passion for seeing people succeed and places a tremendous amount of intention and importance on the resiliency that a strong company culture can provide.For those of you who may not know, Brightwell is a fintech company that grew up in the prepaid industry. They cater predominately to the cruise ship market by providing prepaid cards for employee payroll. In fact, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that they single-handedly transformed the cruise ship industry from cash to digital. So, how did the global pandemic impact their business model? It's inspiring to hear how the company continued to survive and thrive when cruise ships around the world completely shut down.Post-pandemic, they are going strong and have expanded their product suite into cross-border payments just as much as cruise ship payroll. One of their most coveted offerings, and a competitive advantage that truly sets them apart in the industry, is their capacity to have so many of the country's top money movers under one roof. Their proprietary app interface features Western Union, MasterCard, MoneyGram, and several other key players to facilitate cross-border payments for their customers.Tune in this week and hear Larry talk about his journey through fintech and where he sees the industry going in the next 2-3 years, including a predicted consolidation throughout the fintech space to create new versions of the legacy players and how blockchain will change our industry significantly.

Woolies is going to let customers pay with QR codes, as it tries to turn up the heat against card giants like Mastercard and Visa.   Instagram will begin testing NFTs user profiles this week, so that you can now have your Bored Ape in your profile picture (but not everyone in the decentralised world of Web3 is happy about Zuck coming in).   UST, one of the largest crypto stablecoins, has just sank below 70 cents in value - which is very interesting... since it's meant to remain at its intended $1 peg.   ---   Download the free app (App Store): http://bit.ly/FluxAppStore Download the free app (Google Play Store): http://bit.ly/FluxappGooglePlay Build the financial wellbeing of your team with Flux at Work: https://bit.ly/fluxatwork   ---   The content in this podcast reflects the views and opinions of the hosts, and is intended for personal and not commercial use. We do not represent or endorse the accuracy or reliability of any opinion, statement or other information provided or distributed in these episodes. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome to Mastering Cyber with Host Alissa (Dr Jay) Abdullah, PhD, SVP & Deputy CSO at Mastercard, and former White House technology executive. Listen to this weekly one-minute podcast to help you maneuver cybersecurity industry tips, terms, and topics. Buckle up, your 60 seconds of cyber starts now! Sponsored by Mastercard. https://mastercard.us/en-us.html

Today we're sharing a preview from another podcast we love, Slate Money. Every week, Felix Salmon of Axios is joined by Emily Peck, also of Axios, and Slate Pay Dirt columnist Elizabeth Spiers to chat about the latest in business and finance news. In this episode, Felix and Emily sit down with Alexandra Roberts, professor at the University of New Hampshire Franklin Peirce School of Law. They talk about everything trademarks, from social media to counterfeits and parodies. They also talk about trying to fix racist logos and what happened when Mastercard tried to low key change its logo. Hear more episodes of Slate Money wherever you get your podcasts. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Our expert hosts, Benjamin Ensor and Kate Moody, are joined by some great guests to talk about the most notable fintech, financial services and banking news from the past week. This week's guests include: Nilixa Devlukia, Founder, Payments Solved Karen Kerrigan, COO, Moneybox With soundclips from: Gwera Kiwana, Product Manager, 11:FS Paul Stoddart, President, GoCardless We cover the following stories from the fintech and financial services space: Stripe launches open banking product sparking Twitter taunt from Plaid CEO - 3:35 Moneybox announces crowdfunding campaign - 14:35 EU claims Apple breaking competition law over contactless payments - 30:00 Banking giant Truist acquires fintech startup Long Game in effort to reach younger demographic - 38:40 Buy Now Pay Later will soon affect your credit score in the UK - 48:15 GoCardless appoints Mastercard and Vocalink exec as president - 51:10 Citigroup trader triggers European flash crash - 54:00 Swiss banker put strip club visits on expenses - 55:22 This episode is sponsored by Alto IRA Did you know the majority of people are investing in cryptocurrency through a taxable account, when they could be using an IRA and avoiding or deferring the taxes? With an Alto CryptoIRA, you can invest in crypto without tax headaches. Create a free account in minutes. Choose from over 150 coins, and invest with as little as $10. No setup charges and no account fees. To open an Alto CryptoIRA with as little as $10, just go to www.altoira.com/insider This episode is sponsored by TrueLayer Let's face it, cards were not designed for online. Payments can take days to settle, hurting customer loyalty. While high fraud, clunky checkouts and expensive fees mean millions in missed revenue. At TrueLayer, we've made instant payments available for businesses across Europe and the UK. So you can cut costs, fight fraud and get money moving fast. To learn more visit: www.TrueLayer.com/payments Fintech Insider by 11:FS is a podcast dedicated to all things fintech, banking, technology and financial services. It's hosted by a rotation of 11:FS experts including David M. Brear, Simon Taylor, Jason Bates and Gwera Kiwana, as well as a range of brilliant guests. We cover the latest global news, bring you interviews from industry experts or take a deep dive into subject matters such as APIs, AI or digital banking. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to subscribe and please leave a review Follow us on Twitter: @fintechinsiders where you can ask the hosts questions, or email podcasts@11fs.com! Special Guests: Gwera Kiwana, Karen Kerrigan, Nilixa Devlukia, and Paul Stoddart.

Richard Medcalf is the founder of Xquadrant, and host of The Impact Multiplier CEO podcast, and describes himself as "what you get if you were to put a McKinsey consultant, a slightly unorthodox pastor and Freddie Mercury into a blender." Richard is an executive coach & leadership consultant to exceptional founders & CEOs and their leadership teams. His clients are elite performers who've already achieved incredible things, and still have the ambition to 10x their impact and influence and achieve something that seems impossible right now. That can involve 1:1 coaching, taking the leadership team to its next level, or scaling high-performance culture throughout the business. After a Masters's Degree at Oxford University, where he came top in his year, Richard started his career in a premier strategy consultancy where he rose to become the youngest-ever Partner. He then spent 11 years at tech giant Cisco, firstly elevating Cisco's relevance in the C-suite of its Fortune 100 customers before being selected for an elite team set up by Cisco's President and CEO, John Chambers and Chuck Robbins, to catalyze strategic partnerships & new business models. Richard has advised Founders and C-level execs for 20 years, from Fortune 100 companies (Comcast, Mastercard, Sanofi, Sky, Orange, Bosch…) to high-growth tech firms (in AI, networking, robotics, fintech, …). He has overseen over $2B of deals. Keen to marry the disciplines of strategy and leadership in service of his clients, he qualified as a senior leadership consultant and executive coach before founding Xquadrant in 2017. Richard is bi-national English/French, lives near Paris, and is happily married and the proud father of two. He's also a licensed lay minister in the Anglican Church, and has an insatiable love for spicy food and the electric guitar. -- Critical Mass Business Talk Show is Orange County, CA's longest-running business talk show, focused on offering value and insight to middle-market business leaders in the OC and beyond. Hosted by Ric Franzi, business partner at Renaissance Executive Forums Orange County. Learn more about Ric at www.ricfranzi.com. Catch up on past Critical Mass Business Talk Show interviews... YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gHKT2gmF LinkedIn: https://lnkd.in/g2PzRhjQ Podbean: https://lnkd.in/eWpNVRi Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gRd_863w Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gruexU6m #orangecountyca #mastermind #ceopeergroups #peergroups #peerlearning #collectiveintelligence #southerncalifornia #criticalmassbusinesstalkshow

This week, Mike Agerbo and John Biehler discuss the latest tech news and have a chat with Greg Baker from Vancouver's PC Galore, one of the oldest used computer stores still around after nearly three decades. We talk with the folks at Mastercard about their new TrueName option  and get a little nerdy to help you troubleshoot problems that could be caused by bad USB cables with the help of a device called a USB Voltmeter.  Can't get enough of GetConnected and our charmingly nerdy hosts? Subscribe to the GetConnected podcast and don't forget to listen to them discuss mobile technology on the App Show podcast. You can also find us on the web, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Over the course of a career, women may earn as much as $1 million less than their male peers. Building a business, a common path to build long-term wealth, is more difficult for women for a few reasons. Access to funding and the confidence gap are two of them. As the creator of social commerce platform LTK (formerly RewardStyle and LikeToKnowIt), Amber Venz Box is at the helm of the creator economy. She was recently named one of America's richest-self made women after her company's latest round of funding and remains one of the most successful entrepreneurs to date. But her success didn't come without her fair share of hard work and determination. Today I'm chatting with Amber about how she overcame systems and dynamics that contributed to the gender wealth gap. She's also sharing advice on how to gain and maintain confidence, support the future of female entrepreneurship, and how she's working to empower businesses of all sizes.   Sponsors: • Mastercard | When women-owned small businesses thrive, we all thrive. Learn more about the tools and resources Mastercard is offering, from moving your biz online to best practices on digital security, at mastercard.com/smallbiz. Together, let's Start Something Priceless.   Resources:• To join the WorkParty click HERE • To connect with Amber Venz Box click HERE • To connect with Jaclyn Johnson click HERE • To follow along with Create & Cultivate click HERE • To follow along with LTK click HERE • To submit your questions call the WorkParty Hotline: 1-(833)-57-PARTY (577-2789) Produced by Dear Media

Scott Gatz is the founder of Q.Digital, the media company behind GayCities, Queerty, and LGBTQ Nation, and has worked with brands like HBO Max, Mastercard, Lexus, and Target to connect with the LGBTQ community through various touchpoints. In this episode, we discuss the democratization of content creation and publishing which allowed him to build Q.Digital to tell stories about the LGBTQ community which doesn't get represented enough in the media, his method of branding and the importance of community building when creating niche channels, the evolution of LGBTQ content and how the taste has changed over the years, the importance of managing your focus and leading small effective teams when building a business, and why you should take action on opportunities you recognize as gateways to success because you never know who or what can take you where you want to go. Learn more at TheCreativeHaven.com

Welcome to Mastering Cyber with Host Alissa (Dr Jay) Abdullah, PhD, SVP & Deputy CSO at Mastercard, and former White House technology executive. Listen to this weekly one-minute podcast to help you maneuver cybersecurity industry tips, terms, and topics. Buckle up, your 60 seconds of cyber starts now! Sponsored by Mastercard. https://mastercard.us/en-us.html

Senator Roger Marshall joins David Webb to discuss the expiration of Title 42, the letter being sent to the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board to make sure they crack down on disturbing content from Disney about gender dysphoria, Inflation and urging Visa & Mastercard to forego their fee increases that would hurt independent grocers and customers who are already dealing with the costs of inflation.

California Mass Exit, Housing Market, Batteries, Solar, Tourism, Trade, Visa, Mastercard

In this special episode GELF Co-Founders Kent Allen and Jim Okamura take us through a recap of the GELF event held recently in 2022. If you liked this podcast, you can follow us on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Amazon music podcast channel or your favorite podcast platform, please rate and review with a five star rating and be sure and recommend to a friend or colleague in the retail and cross-borders commerce industry.I'm Michael LeBlanc, Founder and President of M.E. LeBlanc and Company Inc. and you can learn more about me on LinkedIn, and you can learn more about the Global E-Commerce Leaders Forum and continue to keep up with the latest on cross-border commerce online at https://www.globalecommerceleadersforum.com/Safe travels everyonePhoto by Jonathan Gonzalez on UnsplashAbout Us Kent AllenI help innovative digital companies tell their story and build relationships with prospective and established clients and partners. I've spent the last twenty years providing market analysis, research & thought leadership, market development and consulting services within the ecommerce technology and digital marketing community.Current focus: Globalization via cross-border ecommerce, marketplaces and international retail expansion. Co-founded the Global eCommerce Leaders Forum to foster community among and provide education to digital professionals with international growth objectives.My 20+ years of experience in the digital commerce and marketing industry and strong personal connections have provided me with opportunities to stay ahead of the curve and explore "what's next" for my clients and our audiences.My research, content marketing & thought leadership skills coupled with my strong client interface skills allow me to define & execute next-generation marketing and commerce strategies & improve business performance.Specialties/Skills: Market Research, Communications, Strategy, Planning, Best Practices, Trend, Data and Competitive Analysis, Public Speaking, Writing and Expression Jim OkamuraJim Okamura is Partner with McMillan Doolittle - The Retail Experts. Jim has more than 25 years of consulting experience focused on the retail industry, including 20+ years in digital transformation strategies for retailers, brands and retail-related companies. Specializations include cross-border & global ecommerce and organization design for digital transformations. Through our global alliance, Ebeltoft Group, we have deep retail expertise in more than 20 countries.Clients include Wahl Clipper, Gap, adidas, Hunter Fan, Bassett Furniture, Giant Eagle, Federated Coop, Harley-Davidson, Baccarat, DSW, Tractor Supply Co., MasterCard, Verizon Wireless, Neiman Marcus, Navy Exchange, Lands' End, Microsoft, The Body Shop International, L Brands, Timberland, Media Markt, Lowe's Companies, Pep Boys, Crate and Barrel, Loyalty One, VISA, and Cadillac Fairview.Jim is a Co-founder of the Global E-Commerce Leaders Forum, a community and conference series focused on global and cross-border ecommerce. Digital Retail Globalization, such as riding China's ecommerce growth wave, is important for brands, retailers and distribution partners of all sizes. About MichaelMichael is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. He has delivered keynotes, hosted fire-side discussions with C-level executives and participated on thought leadership panels worldwide.  Michael was recently added to ReThink Retail's prestigious Top 100 Global Retail Influencers for a second year in  2022. Michael is also the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts, including Canada's top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus the Remarkable Retail with author Steve Dennis, Global E-Commerce Tech Talks and The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois.  Most recently, Michael launched Conversations with CommerceNext, a podcast focussed on retail eCommerce, digital marketing and retail careers - all available on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music and all major podcast platforms.   Michael is also the producer and host of the “Last Request Barbeque” channel on YouTube where he cooks meals to die for and influencer riches.

EP 59: Grief is Love ft Kimberly Novod "Life is for the living and you have to live." Kimberly Novod is the founder and executive director of Saul's Light Foundation, a New Orleans-based nonprofit organization dedicated to addressing the unique social-emotional needs of Louisiana's neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and bereaved families. As an equitable healthcare advocate and birth doula, Kimberly is most passionate about maternal mental health issues, prematurity, and infant loss in the Black community. After experiencing all three, she knows that the most impactful thing we can do after loss is to lead a meaningful life.  In 2019, Kimberly was the recipient of the Millennial Changemaker Award and a New Orleans City Council  Proclamation for exceptional community service. The following year, she was appointed to the Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies Advisory Council by Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards and in 2021, Kimberly was recognized as a Fearless Striver by the Fearless Fund and Mastercard. Kimberly is a graduate of Xavier University of Louisiana and received a master's degree from Troy University. She is a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.   In this episode, you can expect to hear: -What is Saul's Light Foundation -Prematurity birth -Choosing to live and not death -Grief is not what holds us back together, it's love -What you need to do to move forward Connect with Kimberly Novod https://www.saulslight.org/ https://www.instagram.com/sauls_light/ Tell me your story! Visit www.theflywidowpodcast.com

In this conversation, we chat with Gene Hoffman, Chief Operations Officer and President at Chia Network. Formerly CEO & co-founder Vindicia, eMusic, PGP, PrivNet. Recognized by the San Francisco Business Times with the “40 under 40 Emerging Leaders Award” in 2012, Gene has deep experience with building companies that disrupt markets. As head of eMusic, Gene was featured on the cover of Forbes Magazine as a member of the July 1999 E-Gang, and named one of the 100 most influential entrepreneurs in technology in Upside Magazine's November 2000 Elite 100. Gene led the acquisition of eMusic by Vivendi/Universal in June 2001. Before founding eMusic Gene was Director of Business Development and Director of Interactive Marketing of Pretty Good Privacy. More specifically, we touch on the early days of encryption, digital signatures, cryptocurrencies, and copyrights. As well as, the evolution of intellectual property management, the mechanics behind subscription infrastructure, how to build an alternative network to Bitcoin's, and so so much more!

We're kicking off this season of Money Moves with a financial literacy trailblazer who's on a mission to make wealth attainable for anyone. Dominique Broadway is an award-winning personal finance expert, speaker, and founder of Finances Demystified—a platform that's demystifying money and making financial literacy accessible to everyone. After years of learning, practicing and implementing her own personal finance tactics, Dominique earned a Bachelor's and Master's degree in business and finance, which led her to landing roles at major corporate brokerage firms like UBS and Edelman. But after witnessing first hand the high barrier of entry for investing, Dominique walked away from clients investing 10 million dollars and set out to spread financial literacy. Since founding Finances Demystified, Dominique has been named one of the Top Financial Advisors in the United States for Millennials and continues to work passionately with young professionals, entrepreneurs and families, helping them bring their Dreams2Reality. Dominique is here today sharing her advice on investing in yourself and owning your worth, so that you can finally take control of your financial future!   Sponsors:• Mastercard | When women-owned small businesses thrive, we all thrive. Learn more about the tools and resources Mastercard is offering, from moving your biz online to best practices on digital security, at mastercard.com/smallbiz. Together, let's Start Something Priceless.   Resources:• To join the WorkParty click HERE • To connect with Dominique Broadway click HERE • To connect with Jaclyn Johnson click HERE • To follow along with Create & Cultivate click HERE • To follow along with Finances Demystified click HERE • To submit your questions call the WorkParty Hotline: 1-(833)-57-PARTY (577-2789) Produced by Dear Media

My guest is Alla Bondarenko. She's an art historian and gemologist from St. Petersburg, Russia. She works remotely for a Russian company in Playa Del Carmen, Mexico. Her two passions are psychology & travel.Lucky for us, I'm not interested in gemology, so we mostly discuss travel & psychology. No applause please—it's my job to ensure each episode is worth listening to. But this one, especially, you'll want to copy the link and share with friend(s).Why?Because Alla is the smart & opinionated friend, who, if you got her in a room to "pick her brain" (like many people say they want with you over coffee sometime—but you never hear from again), you'd be like: "Holy moley—this girl's been holding out on me."She doesn't volunteer what she knows, but with a little prodding, you realize the wealth of information in her noggin. In Texas, we'd say, "Look at the big 'ol brain on Alla."Enter Man O. Perhaps the brightest Christmas light on the tree—at least during the USSR years when Christmas was largely erased from the calendar thanks to anti-religious policies during the Soviet Union years. But we're back! Notice the picture at the bottom of the show notes.For this episode, I reserved a private room in a co-working space. And the two of us dive-deep into:Alla growing up in RussiaRussia-Ukraine conflictmasculinity / femininityfake Covid vaccine cardsthe years following Soviet Union's implosionAlla's opinion of PutinFor those of you with no patience—you're either a bad doctor or lack self-regulation—at around 30:00 minutes in you'll hear a unique opinion of the Russia-Ukraine conflict.Or maybe you have a 27-minute commute tomorrow morning and want to hear a fearless Russian's take on Putin that'll fire you up for the day. If so, you've come to the right place.You can catch the rest of this podcast episode on your way home, on a walk, or at the gym. Aren't podcasts the greatest invention since drip coffee? You can listen anytime, anywhere.When I start asking Alla about the first time she'd heard about "the conflict," she says she didn't believe it at first. When friends told her the news—she thought she was hearing the product of mass-media manipulation. It took several days for her to finally believe it was in fact true.We also talk about her troubles working remotely as a result of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. For example, since Visa, Mastercard, and all other money-transferring services are now blocked for Russians like her, she says she must be paid in a Russian account—but then she immediately turns her rubles into cryptocurrency.Since the war began in February 2022, she says the exchange rate of Russian rubles (RUB) has plummeted. Right now, she's taking a 20% pay cut at work. But for many weeks—immediately following the conflict—she suffered what amounted to a 50% pay cut, almost overnight.We also share our thoughts on topics such as: travel, dating, meditation, and much more.Having Alla on the podcast was my biggest "score" of '22. Suffice it to say, you'll learn something new. You'll also nearly guaranteed to hear an opinion you haven't heard before.She's incredibly bright, well-read and possesses that singular trait I value most in a podcast guest—she speaks candidly & without reservation.

Mastercard Incorporated, Q1 2022 Earnings Call, Apr 28, 2022