57. Ande Burchfield – Burchfield Law – A Primer on Cryptocurrency and Blockchain Technology

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

All right. Welcome to another episode of How That Happened. And I'm really excited today. So my guest is Ande Burchfield and Ande is an attorney with Burchfield Law. And the way we met is kind of cool I think. So I have known for a while I wanted to do an episode around cryptocurrency. I am not an expert at all, but I have a lot of interest in it, have done a lot of my own research and have had more and more clients asking me about crypto. So this has been on my radar. I wanted to do an episode. And so I started asking around with people I know here in Oklahoma city, "Hey, who is the person I need to know or meet to have on the podcast to talk about cryptocurrency?" And Ande, your name kept coming up. So here we are, and thank you so much for joining.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Well, thank you for having me, Aaron. This is a treat to be here and your office is amazing.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Thanks. I'm just glad to be in the office. Well, okay. Let's start super basic, like 101 just for some of us that have, we've heard about Bitcoin and Ethereum and just because we read the newspaper, watch the news, but we don't know anything about it. What is cryptocurrency?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah. Okay. First I'm a licensed attorney. I mean, nothing I say here should be considered legal advice, just because I am an attorney doesn't mean I'm your listener's attorney. So everything I say is my own opinion and for conversational purposes only.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

And that goes for everything I say as well.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

But what is cryptocurrency? I'll break down the word. It's what I like to do when I'm talking to, I've given some classes at the local law school and things like that. So obviously currency is it's whole thing to unpack itself and we're not going to go there. But we'll call it money for now. Crypto is the prefix for cryptographic. So when we're talking about cryptocurrency, it is something used as a means of exchange and using cryptographic technology.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

And fairly recently like I referred to himself or a group, we don't know who or who it was, but Satoshi Nakamoto cracked previously unsolvable code or problem. And he found a way using cryptography to make some something in data immutable, which means that be it can't be taken away. It can't be deleted. And he found a way to make it a single unit. So, and you just seem like you were probably spending a certain amount of time in the late nineties downloading songs off of Napster, maybe like I was.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Sure. Yeah.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

And what we were all doing with Napster was we were copying and pasting files, and so one of the things about cryptocurrency that makes it special is that there is no copy and paste. It's not leaving a duplicate behind when it moves. It is moving in whole, it's a cut and paste. So that made it possible to say this is like money when I give you my Bitcoin, that one Bitcoin leaves me and goes to you. And that was what was unique about the technology at the time. So cryptocurrency is running on blockchain technology.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Okay. So let me just interrupt real quick. I want to ask a question because and maybe this is over simplistic, but one of the ways I think about Bitcoin and ... I'll just stick with Bitcoin because all of the other coins, I mean, there's some real differences. But Bitcoin, because of the things you mentioned, there can never be more or less. It can't be destroyed. No more is created. But Bitcoin is not a physical asset, but it's a store of value. Like when a thousand years ago people were bartering.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

If you needed some food and I needed a coat and you had a coat and I had food, we would just trade. And that was valuable to you, that was valuable to me. Then we up with other stores of value. Eventually gold or precious metals which again can be mined but not created. And then eventually we left that at least in the US like in ... I can't remember the year, 60, 70 something.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Left the gold standard.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Left the gold standard. And now we have this currency that can be created. It can be destroyed, but it's a store of value. We've all said a dollar is worth this much stuff, buying power, whatever, it's a store of value. So Bitcoin is a store of value. And one of the things that makes it really attractive as a store of value is there's a finite just like gold. There's a finite amount. No more can be created. And it can't be destroyed. Is that fair?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah. Yeah. So you can independently verify that by looking at the Bitcoin white paper. Bitcoin is not the only cryptocurrency, there are many, many different cryptocurrencies now. And all of the good ones have white papers where they open source, make it available to the public what they're all about and how their network finds consensus and independently verifies things. What their coding is all about. And they have different purposes. So Bitcoin was created to really looking at money.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Ethereum was created really looking to the ability of smart contracts, to run smart contracts that are totally self executing transactions that two individuals, or even with intermediaries can enter into. And then the computer just follows the code and it occurs. And smart contracts are going to be a way of the future. They're not going to go away and they're going to eventually prevent a lot of litigation and conflict. Right now they're still ripe for litigation and conflict. But yeah, so not all cryptocurrencies are the same and people definitely need to be aware of that.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Ripple for instance, is going through massive historic in my opinion, lawsuit and they're refusing to settle until they're really, I think sticking their claim for the industry. They're refusing to settle until there's further guidance on what exactly you need to do things correctly in the future. But ripple was created with the idea of offshore transactions. International transactions to be not offshore, but international transactions to be streamlined and less painful than they are now.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Okay. So before I interrupted you, you mentioned the blockchain. So let's talk about blockchain because there's a lot more we could talk about just staying on crypto, but one of the real keys to Bitcoin and some of the other upper tier cryptocurrencies is the underlying technology of blockchain. Which I think is super important, not just for cryptocurrency, but we'll talk about like other use cases of the blockchain as well. So you, you started to go there. What is blockchain?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah. So, blockchain technology has several characteristics, and cryptocurrency is just one use of blockchain tech. You can call it distributed ledger technology as well, because at the end of the day it is a distributed ledger that the public can access and independently verify the data. So in terms of Ethereun, you can go to ether scan, and you can see real transactions happening on the Ethereum network. And so there are lots of different blockchains. They could be public or private. But the technology has core characteristics, which are it being immutable, as I discussed earlier.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Being decentralized. You can't sell a blockchain technology that is not yet decentralized, but decentralized tends to be the goal. And it's a really big turning point in some legal regulation in this space. But decentralization means that there are nodes, computing power running in decentralized ways. So they don't know each other. They're not being operated by the same individual or in the same place. And the nodes have their computer program that's all the same, and they're reaching a consensus independently by working together.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

So the contrast to that would be like a non blockchain transaction, so if you and I agreed you're going to buy something from me, I'm going to sell it to you. We both have our own ledger, like whatever, a spreadsheet or accounting system. I don't know if your ledger matches mine. I record the transaction on my ledger, you record it on yours. And we never know that it matches. And then when you pay me or I pay you, I can't remember who the seller or the buyer was, but then it goes through a middleman, a bank, or some clearinghouse that verifies these funds are good and they're supposed to go from this person to this person. All of that's gone. In blockchain, it's transparent-

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Peer to peer.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Peer to peer it's verified, and there is no middleman.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Right. But what I'm all about is the adoptability of the technology and what it could do for so much. It's just going to totally revolutionize certain industries, insurance, real estate. I read an article that was cleverly titled the other day that was it's going to do for contracts, what emailed it to letters. So I'm all about the adaptability of the space and using it and real use cases. And so my primary interest, especially this past year, year and a half has been the infrastructure businesses that are coming in, they're cryptocurrency banks or different FinTech businesses that are broker dealers or alternative trading systems that are using blockchain technology, but are in a way becoming intermediaries.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

So some of the core interest in blockchain tech and crypto is, oh, it's peer to peer. But peer to peer, as we have learned it involved a lot of personal risk. You have to have a high degree of trust with those that you're interacting. It's irreversible, unless somebody chose to send it back to your address. So there's intermediaries coming into the space, which are building up the infrastructure and making it to where using our in the United States or whatever, nation's current regulatory regime, they can do things at a higher level that very much mirrors our present day financial system.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

But they're able to avail themselves to the unique nature of this technology and the revolutionary parts of blockchain technology at the same time. So we were seeing like lots of different ... It's not black or white. Some companies are coming out, "Oh, yes, we use blockchain tech, but it's on our private network. But we are using it for a higher degree of success in whatever it might be, supply chain management, such-

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Okay. That's a great point. Because there's a lots of layers or levels of implementation with blockchain that vary from just a private, closely monitored blockchain to a public blockchain for something like Bitcoin or whatever.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah. If what you're asking is like, what industries are using this right now? There's so many use cases for it that are already being transaction ed, being out in the marketplace, you can buy some insurance products from [Lemonhade 00:15:54], and many other insurance companies. There's a bespoke insurance policies in this space as well. Supply chain management, logistics, you mentioned agribusiness earlier. Country of origin labeling.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

That's becoming increasingly popular for informed consumers and retailers to want to provide to their customers. One of my favorite, and this is really dated and I haven't looked at the marketplace to see who's doing it or not. But one of my favorite examples of a supply chain, how blockchain can be really increased trust in marketplace participants is blood diamonds.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

So if you want to buy a diamond today and you want to make sure it was ethically sourced, you could verify it by basically the chain of title that it comes with.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah. So I've thought a lot about that. Not that specific example, that's a great one, but some other sort of use cases where you want to verify, like you said, the sourcing, the country of origin or whatever, all these different attributes of something in the marketplace. I mean, there's got to be a certain level kind of an inflection point of adoption. For that to be really useful, on a broad basis.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

So an area of interest for me right now, where there is broad marketplace adoption happening just exploding is the security token market. And I will distinguish security tokens from an initial coin offering ICO. Like we all heard in 2017, 18, there's just a huge craze, lots of fraud. And a security token is a digital representation of a real-world asset that is a registered security offering. And I really like that for the beginner who's interested in this space, but doesn't want to have the risk of running a foul of regulation or just getting hacked.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

They want to increase their exposure to the technology and what it can do. I'm loving the security token market. I'm a real estate person. And my background is in real estate and also at real estate investing and also writing registered securities offerings. So it was a natural progression for me to become totally enthralled with the security token market because these are real securities that are using tokens to represent the investment and to even distribute like the drips and dividends.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

So to that point, and tell me if I'm off the path here, but you could tokenize any physical asset?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yes.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

I get excited about that because even something that you hear a lot about right now in the news is people getting their title to their house stolen. So I'm thinking, okay, what if we just tokenize every deed, every mortgage.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Like an abstract.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah. Right. So you can tokenize any physical asset that should, in theory, with wide market adoption, make the transparency and, and the distributed verification makes it very safe, very efficient.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah. Well, I would leave it to the technologists to tell you how efficient it is. There's a lot of varying degrees of efficiency in the technology. And so that's why you're seeing different layer one and layer two distinctions. When you go to read about it, you'll see lots of people describing their blockchain based company. And what it does is a layer two business, because it's just running on its own network that is operating on top of an underlying blockchain protocol to improve the scalability and inefficiency. And so it would be operating on a layer one like Bitcoin or Ethereum, or so many others.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

So Yeah, I think that what it's going to do for abstracting title once adopted by the public officials will be fantastic. But also it doesn't have to be a physical asset that's being tokenized. It could be an intangible like equity in my company.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Right. Yeah. Or I mean, like NFTs are like, it's intangible. I mean, there's no physical asset there. People are creating tokens of, I guess it can be art or whatever. There's really weird stuff out there that-

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

[Metaverse 00:21:32]

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

It's a big shift at least for me and I think a lot of people to think about what a thing is. And we've already, like for ever, we've had intangible assets that we understand. There's things on our balance sheet that you can't go touch or hold. It's the same thing.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

There's Bitcoin that's from your balance sheet.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

There is now. Yeah. But it's an intellectual property, it's alone.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Commercial paper.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah. Right. So in a lot of cases we've already gotten completely comfortable with what a thing is. Because I like to think about, it's not a thing if I can't see it and hold it, but we're way past that.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah. And I can't speak ... I've got my start writing securities offerings and helping with compliance on registered transfer agents, which are a historic really important part of our highly complicated settlement and clearing process of the financial system in the United States. Just one tiny little part of that network. So I have really in my practice, stayed away from AI. And so far the metaverse, there's some blockchain based gaming companies that are so interesting. But the space has really matured. It's come a long way since I threw it on my website that I'll accept your cryptocurrency for payment of my services put that on my website in 2017.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

And I've been working with people in this space ever since and the maturity and the size of the institutional players now has really blossomed and is creating totally different atmosphere.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Okay. So I want to dig on something you just said. So in your practice you've been accepting or open to accept cryptocurrency as payment for fees, right?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Okay. So for listeners that are business owners or CFOs or whatever, and maybe they're starting to have customers and clients say, "Hey, I want to pay for this in Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever." Just not too long ago, Elon Musk said you can now buy a Tesla with Bitcoin.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah, and then he decided against it.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

And then he decided against it. But you're seeing things where we can actually just go transact for goods or services more and more using cryptocurrency as the exchange. So for the business owner, that's just running their business, providing a good or service, this is coming up more and more. What do they need to think about? What's important to think about if they're like you wanting to say, "Okay, yeah. I'll accept your Bitcoin or your cryptocurrency in exchange for the goods or services."

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah. Okay. Well, in relation to my practice and what I did in 2017, the trickiest part was I'm a lawyer and we operate on pay your retainer and then I'll dig it that as the services are rendered, especially for new clients in the space, that was very important. But if you pay a retainer and a highly volatile asset, that might go up or down. What is it valued at? And at what time? So timestamping that. And to do that, I would break it down into two different approaches for companies in general.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

But quickly, I'll also say this highly affected the ethics rules and I needed to do a full analysis to satisfy myself in order to be able to do that. And I did, and I feel very comfortable with the way we're doing that now. But for application in businesses, generally, I would say that there's two main approaches. There's a hands-off approach and a hands-on approach. In reference to the hands-on approach, I was so interested in what Visa has recently announced is doing. I think it's incredible to have these big companies really open exploring different things, but-

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Sorry. Just for listeners, what is Visa doing?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

I mean, I'm looking forward to finding out everything that visa is doing, but I think they're talking about being able to support payments in different mediums. So I could maybe have a basket of different types of currency, USD, some different alt coins, Bitcoin. And I can maybe choose at a certain point to use my visa to be a means of intermediary, but decided that day to pay in Bitcoin.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Got you. So you don't have to liquidate Bitcoin? You can just, with your Visa card, you can transact directly in Bitcoins.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

I think that that's their pie in the sky plan. Right now that doesn't fit with my understanding of realization events and different things like that. But what I think business owners need to know is a hands-off approach would just be converted to USD and you'd get it and make sure if you're doing that, that you're using hands-off approach a third-party intermediary. So gilda.finance, it has some really great product out there for business owners. I think it integrates with the Coinbase wallet integrates with QuickBooks. For crying out loud, I can't believe we're here. I can't believe that's what happening.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

But that would have been the first thing I jumped on in 2017, had they existed to just have those integrations. So that's a great place to start, but if the company wants to take more of a hands-on approach they should look into the crypto banks, different crypto custodians. So Wyoming they have what's called an SPDI charter, a Special Purpose Depository Institute Charter where they have heavily scrutinized different groups and said, "Yes, we will grant you a charter to custody others cryptocurrency."

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Which is really great for institutions that need a third party, but also just those who are uncomfortable, having a hot wallet, cold wallet, paper wallet, don't even want to know what the wallet is. They don't want to keep their private keys. They want somebody else to do it for them.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

So I think that's really important because unless somebody is viewing it as an investment like you would ... I don't want to say speculative, but like mutual funds or even CDs, like whatever, unless you're viewing it as a long-term investment most companies would probably, like you said, just want to liquidate that to cash because they're just like AR once you get paid, you are going to turn around and buy something or pay for labor or whatever you do in your business.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

If you're not using a service, that's going to help you timestamp, what you're going to help you with your tax reporting. IRS still views us as property, so you're looking at capital gains, you're looking at-

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Right. So I think that's important to think about, but then the other thing you mentioned that I think is really important is like, where that is? Where are you accepting that? What kind of wallet or whatever because there's a lot of difference there. And you mentioned like your own personal key versus a custodial wallet, like Coinbase or something where that's super important. That distinction, because last time I read an article there's like $140 billion worth of Bitcoin that's just been lost, because people had their own personal wallet with like 27 digit key or whatever, they lose the key and it's gone.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

I've heard heartbreaking stories. Clients call me, "Hey, I got hacked. I had $17,000 worth of Bitcoin. I'm a long haul truck driver, and I just got hacked." But like, "I'm so sorry."

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Well, when you say they got hacked, their key got stolen, right?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah. I can't really volunteer my time with them because a lot of times the mass of their net worth is in this cryptocurrency that had this sudden increase in value. And I don't really help with that. So I don't know. I don't get into that. It's not part of my services, but they do call. I mean, I was the first attorney in Oklahoma to be advertising this space. There are really great attorneys globally that I recommend for different things. That's not something I do.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Right. No. And the way I think about this is like we were talking before we recorded custodial versus non-custodial would be like, a custodial relationship is where I buy shares of a company that owns gold and I have market exposure, but I don't have exposure to if I lose that gold, whereas if I buy a gold brick or whatever, gold coins, and I put it in my safe and it gets stolen or I lose it, I have no custodial recourse. I'm the custodian of that gold.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah, buyer beware. Especially if you're a business you need to understand the people that you're working with. If you're going to transact in crypto you need to have a degree of trust. And really, I would emphasize using some sort of intermediary service like Gilded is doing. I would still reserve it only for high end, low volume of transactions services because handle with care until you have a high degree of comfort.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

But I like to talk about Coinbase. They did an IPO this year, which is really interesting to see as a security token fanatic like me. It's interesting to see leaders in this space like Coinbase, which is an exchange choose to go the traditional route of an IPO instead of a security token. But you're talking about with gold and holding it in real life versus having gold stock. You can do with Coinbase, you can choose to invest in cryptocurrency, or you can invest in traditional market venues in Coinbase is IPO.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

And there's actually a website you can look at. I don't have it in front of me, but it was tracking for awhile. How well you would've done in crypto different crypto assets versus how well you would have done if you had invested in Coinbase's IPO.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah, that's interesting. So okay. I don't know if this fits here or not, but like the first time I really got interested in crypto in Bitcoin was years and years ago, I went and read the white paper. And the first thing I said after I read it was, "Oh, this is for drug dealers and money launderers. This is a disaster. This is crazy. I'll never." That was my first reaction years ago. I don't feel that way anymore, but I think that there's still some sentiment that this isn't like mainstream. This is for like bad actors to be anonymous. So, I don't know. What do you want to say about that? Is there-

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah, if you got to do something naughty, do it with cash in a suitcase, because at the end of the day, there is an immutable ledger and there are IP address. There are folks out there who are incredibly talented, but they make claims that they can track every transaction on certain networks, all coins that are meant to be super, super anonymous. And there is a rich history of Bitcoin and Silk Road and all of that.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

And I think maybe the reason I thought that was because of the unregulated de-centralized aspect, which I've really become more informed about and realize like the great benefits and how that's one of the magic inputs of the whole system. But that was my very first reaction.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Right. And one of the things I'd like to say to all people in the area when were just generally talking is, a lot of people, especially in 2017, all the people watching initial coin offerings, they were just absolute securities offerings that were unregistered. Nobody wanted me to tell them that they needed to do a securities offering for what they were doing to sell investment contracts. But it's super important to understand that it's not the wild wild west.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

And if it is still the wild wild west. If you still think that then our new SEC chairman is the sheriff in town. But we do have laws that regulate this activity. There's many different organizations that are watching and regulating. But right now, as a regime, there's not a centralized act. There is regulation by enforcement. So you can't just go and read one statute that tells you, "This I'm going to do it right. This is how I'm going to do it wrong." No, you need to be aware of what the CFTC, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission is steering, depending on your activities.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

What FCEN is doing then since the Financial Crimes and Enforcement Network. OFAC the Foreign Asset Control Office of Controller of Currency, Department of Justice, FTIC, IRS, the Securities and Exchange commission, the FTC. And then different states and their securities administrations, their state legislatures and their court systems have all weighed in on this space. So, but it is enforcement or regulation by enforcement, which means finding the information you need is really tricky and it's driving legal costs in this space.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

But it's not the wild wild west. There are rules to doing much of the things that are trying to be done on the blockchain. It's just simply using this new technology. Now, do I think those rules are really helpful in providing room for innovation? Absolutely not. I love Hester Peirce, she's an SEC commissioner, and I think she's got some great momentum behind her. And I really look forward to seeing some of her approaches adopted in this space, but I can go on and on about regulation. That's my bread and butter, but it's important to know at least where to look for them [crosstalk 00:38:05].

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Yes. And I think for me, one of the big takeaways for any business out there based on ... You just rattled off, I don't know, a dozen different agencies and organizations that are spending significant time and resources looking at this. For me, I think the big takeaway is, "This is not going away. This isn't a fad. Business owners need to educate themselves because as we speak countries like El Salvador has officially recognized ... What was it? Bitcoin.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Bitcoin is legal tender.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah. Which almost makes it on par with the Fiat currency in that country. China on the other hand has banned all cryptocurrencies and all underlying activities.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah. And all those miners can come to Oklahoma, we a have a spot for you by the way.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Absolutely. And some of them are. And then the US there's a lot of momentum and not rumor, it's beyond rumor, but there's going to be a FED coin or digital dollar or whatever it's called. The US Federal Reserve is going to back a digital coin.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Well, I look forward to seeing what they release on that. We thought they were going to do something this summer, instead we just got more information about how Jerome Powell believes it's more important to do it right, than to do it quickly. In my opinion, it's not going to keep US from being behind. We are losing this race. I think I taught my first continuing legal education class in this space in 2018. And I told the people in the room, I said, "We are losing this race. We are not a global superpower." And probably the regulation by enforcement approach that we have, and all of those different authorities to check that I just listed off, I hate doing that because I think it creates a chilling effect in the marketplace.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

You might have a listener right now that was thinking about doing something really exciting and is like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't want to do all that." And just goes off and does something neat in the AI, but I want to see the market. I don't want to see a chill on the marketplace.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah. And I think the important thing there is governments are getting involved. Government sponsored coins are going to be introduced. None have been yet, but a lot, like many federal banks, central banks around the world are working on this right now. I'm not about picking the winning coin or advising on the specifics of Bitcoin or Ethereum or some other alt coin. Like, "Who can do that?" I can't do that. But just knowing this is part of the market, this isn't going anywhere. If you've ignored it, because it's this niche thing, you've gotten away with that now. But I think at some point you can't. You will get left out of activity in your market if you are not adapting with the times and with the technology. Is that fair?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah. I mean, I think that with any type of change there's being on the bleeding edge and then being at the cutting edge, and 2017 was really early lot of people went home bloody.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Well, it's like the early bird gets the worm, but the early worm gets eaten. So be the second worm.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Right. But I really look forward to seeing what we hear on the FED coin. There's a lot of really good minds on it. And that's a CBDC, a Central Bank Digital Currency. So basically virtual format of beyond currency for a nation or region. And China is definitely ahead of us there, so we'll see.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Well man, I feel like my questions were just all over the place because I'm really interested in this topic and I'm still learning, becoming more knowledgeable. So sorry to our listeners, if we bounced around a lot that would be my fault.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

I would just say to listeners, you don't have to understand all of this. I certainly don't, and it's helpful to understand the lay of the land, but once you get a real application you can just dive in on that one thing. And to transact or hold and just diversify and increase your exposure to this technology it'd be a part of the right of the future. You don't have to understand it all. You just need to follow some safe practices, maybe use the centralized exchange, not a decks.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah. Okay. Any other like topics or questions I should've asked that I didn't, that you want to talk about before we start to wrap up?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah. I'll tell you my goal of this space and I want to work with more [Reg 00:43:49] plus Reg D even some of the crowdfunding offerings. So all those types of securities offerings are available to be traded as a security token. And you can buy those from different ATS's like tZERO, Merge, [inaudible 00:44:15] supermarket. And I think that if anyone out there was trying to look for something and immediate really high growth area to follow the technology, I'd be watching the security token market as it relates to real estate assets. And I love ... I'll give a shout out to some guys who have a podcast that have just done an outstanding job, especially in the past year. Then I don't know, this is not an advertisement, but I've been really impressed with the STO Market podcast. And it's such limited scope, But they're looking at above board regulated securities offerings using the technology and I can't get enough of it.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

So it's the STO Market podcast?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Okay. And that's securitized token ... Sp what is STO?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Security Tokens. Yeah.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah, okay.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

So those are the digital representation of real-world assets, real securities.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Okay. We'll put that in the show notes as well as, was it Gildan?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Gilded. Yeah.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Gilded. Yeah.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

I was going to set up an account just for my firm just to get in there at that for a client to hire me to get in the weeds there, but I don't think anyone's going to want to pay my rates for that. They could have customers service.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah. You never know though. Super interesting. Well I think ... Man, this is like such a big topic and hopefully we touched on things that would be important to listeners or at least kind of piqued their interest so they can go dig more on things that may be seemed meaningful to them. There's probably two more volumes of podcasts we could do, because this ... I don't know, it's easy to nerd out on this and really go down some deep pathways of just exploring, because there's a lot of really interesting things going on.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Entrepreneurs are innovating around tokenization, the blockchain. And like you said, that all of the infrastructure that supports the whole thing. You talk about cryptocurrency, that there's all of this computing power behind it, there's mining operations, there's all this infrastructure, electricity is a big, big deal. Some of the environmental crowd is like pushing back pretty hard on this because-

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Business school at them.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah. So but anyway, thanks. Thank you so much for just sharing your knowledge. I wish everybody could see right now, Ande is such a thorough thinker and researcher. She's put a lot of thought into this and has all of these notes and it's really impressive.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Some of this is class stuff from last time I-

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

But you've been at this longer than most people. And so thank you so much for taking time to just share with the podcast. Really appreciate it.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

That's my pleasure. It's my pleasure Aaron thank you so much.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Okay. So as you know before we end, I've got five questions that we ask all of our guests, so you're ready for this?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Okay. What is the first way that you ever made money?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Cleaning up trash after hometown football games?

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Oh, really?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Okay. So I'm one of those people that, I always take everything with me because I feel bad because you can't-

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

I was in second grade. So just to give a little second grader with her dad out of the cold morning [crosstalk 00:48:04].

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

So how much did you make cleaning up?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

I could have me go under the grand stands, because it was [crosstalk 00:48:07].

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

You were smally to get under.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah, $20 a game to go help him. He was from a really small town, he was the principal. And I'm pretty sure he just didn't want to pay somebody to do it out of the athletic budget.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

That's really cool. So now when you go to a sporting event, do you leave your-

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

There is no litter left behind my [crosstalk 00:48:26] I can tell you that.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

I guess, so you leave it as clean or cleaner than when you showed up. Very good. That's unique. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that answer before. What would you be doing if you weren't an attorney, if you had a completely different career path?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

I'd be a dance teacher in a small town.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Okay, awesome. So, that was a passion for you as a kid?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Dance growing up. Dance teachers they've a special place in my heart. For several dance teachers I had, they just let you know that you can take on [crosstalk 00:49:00].

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

You do anything. Yeah. Awesome. I love it. Okay. Good stuff. What would you like to go back and tell your 20 year old self? Which hasn't been all that long ago for you.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

On this episode, you got to say buy some crypto. I was a tiny ... I've been watching all kinds of insider trading tips.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah, exactly. That's brilliant. In fact I haven't looked today, but I think yesterday Bitcoin was 38,000, I'm trying to remember, I looked at different numbers.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

I'm not [inaudible 00:49:39] in the market.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Let's just say it was somewhere between 30 and 50,000. That's where it's been for last few months. When you first-

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

It's the [volly 00:49:49] of the volatility of the market.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah. And when you first became aware of Bitcoin, it was probably pennies.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Oh, yeah. I mean, I learned about Bitcoin at a currency conference in Santiago, Chile. Because my husband had a golden silver purchasing business. And so it was on our radar and then I went to securities law and Mt. Gox got hacked. And for anyone out there who lost money with Mt. Gox, I wasn't one of them I hadn't bought yet, but if I had bought then I would maybe be retired in crypto cities of San Juan, which by the way is a great place to lower your tax liability if you're a crypto ale.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Oh yeah. So I'm just looking, I just looked, 56,000 is what it's at right now, Bitcoin. So if you would have bought at 15 cents, that would be good.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

I wouldn't have had much money to buy it with them. So probably-

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

That's great. You wouldn't need much at 56,000 per coin. That's a good one. That's like back to the future where he buys the sports Almanac. All right. What would be the title of your book?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

So I would probably say Katrina crypto, just because again on topic here, but what I would really do if I was publishing an autobiography, I would follow Hester Perse because I'm such a fan girl of her and she has recently put a framework for what she thinks needs to happen in this space. And she published it on GitHub. So I think more than the title, it'd be the method of publication.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Okay. I like it, on point. What's the best advice you've ever received?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

The best advice. Stop, stop deflecting errands, invitations to cover whatever it is podcasts and just put it on the web.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

You're here.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Yeah.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah, that's funny. Yeah. I had to be a little bit persistent but-

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

I appreciate it. Just having watched the volatility, the space ... I've had had exposure to people who've really gotten burned. It's still one of the really wildly safe place to play. You hear the term sandbox thrown around a lot in the regulatory discussions and you just need it to be ... I would hate for anyone to want to do something that turns out to be ill fated for them.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Right. Yeah. And I mean, that's true for, I mean, anything, right?

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

Right.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

We're not immune to the consequences of our decisions.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

But I do believe in this technology and I think it's been, I think five years, 10 years from now, we'll be so glad that we did this and that future clients have the availability to listen to what Ande thought in 2020,

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Some things age well, some things don't, but I figure as much content is created every day now something will be hard to find in 10 years.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

So true.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Well man, thank you so much Ande, and Ande Burchfield you're pretty easy to find-

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

LinkedIn, that's where to find me.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Yeah, people can connect with you on LinkedIn and congrats on being the most common answer to, what crypto person do I need to talk to? Yeah. And just everything you've done with that in your firm and look forward to seeing what's next for you and this technology.

Interviewee - Ande Burchfield:

I appreciate it, Aaron.

Interviewer - Aaron Ackerman:

Awesome. Thank you so much.