That was a wonderful overview of the grand narrative. Let's try and peel that onion a bit. Before we get to identity and trust, let's talk about the steps from cash to digital money. Do you believe cash is going to disappear? And if so, is that a good thing or a bad

thing? Well, so I'm rather with the William Gibson view of this. So I loved all those William Gibson cyberpunk books of the 80s. That's kind of, that holds a sort of shape, my thinking about a lot of things. But in one of the books, Burning Chrome, the protagonist who finds himself in the future, finds himself stranded somewhere, and he has some money that he can't buy anything with it. And the quote is paraphrasing, because I don't have it in front of me, but it's something like, it wasn't that cash was illegal. It's just that you couldn't do anything legal with it. It's kind of a description of Sweden now, never mind the sort of cyberpunk far future. So money won't disappear, but it will become irrelevant. You'll have post functional cash, of course. I mean, you'll still need to pin something to a bride's dress or wedding in a mobile phone really isn't going to function that way. I can well believe that post functional money will survive, essentially for ceremonial purposes. But for day to day use it will be relevant. Do I think that's a good thing? Well, actually I do. And I know I'm going to get yelled at by all of the Bitcoin maximalists. Oh, you know, if you don't have cash, then you get spied on and you're an instrument of the state and all this sort of thing. But of course, that's a function of how you design the digital currency. And I think if you look at the experiences of the consulting company that I helped to found, because on Hyperion, they worked on one of the most successful cash replacements of all time, which is empeza, and also one which failed, which was Monvex. And from both of those, you learn some pretty useful lessons, which I think inform the debate about central bank digital currency. Now, I feel that, you know, my opinions about central bank digital currency are well founded than some other people's, but it is based on some external experience. So will cash disappear? No. Will it become irrelevant? Yes. Is that a good thing? I think broadly thinking it is. I understand all of the arguments, which say some people become marginalized or excluded if they can't use cash. And that's certainly a challenge to the technologists when it comes to the design of cash alternatives. But for people who are trapped in a cash economy, these are the people who, if they lose their cash, it's gone. They don't get it back. If I lose my bank card, I don't care. They'll send me another one. I don't lose any of my money. These are the people who get shaken down and robbed. These are the people who don't have access to online good deals. This whole thing about we should preserve cash use, no matter what the cost in order to support people who are essentially trapped in that economy. I don't think that's the right way forward. For people who want to use cash for money laundering and tax evasion and drug dealing and bribing politicians and so on, that's a different issue. I certainly think if you look at the figures for the amount of cash in circulation compared to the amount of cash that's actually used for retail transactions, I think those figures tell their own story. I think Bundas Bank, if I remember correctly, they're figures with it. I think something like nine in 10 of the bank notes that they produce are never used in retail transactions. They're purely for stashing and hoarding. Will the cash disappear? No, is that a good thing? I think yes, I think we should be able to protect marginalized members of society more effectively than by just giving them

cash.