Marketing, Blockchain and the Crypto world [with Tom Donohue]

Join Andrei and our guest on today’s episode, Tom Donohue, as they will be discussing about cryptocurrency, blockchain, and innovation in the marketing space, based on Tom’s professional background in innovative businesses over the past few years, launching and driving growth for disruptive products. 

 

Tom Donohue, is the co-founder and marketing lead of Secure Digital Asset Group, a revolutionary cryptocurrency exchange processor, as well as the product manager for Kitcaster.

 

Connect with Tom:

Website: www.kitcaster.com 

Tom on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/thetomdon 

Connect with Andrei:

Marketiu: https://marketiu.com / https://marketiu.ro 

Andrei on Linkedin https://www.linkedin.com/in/andreitiu/

Marketiu on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketiu

Marketiu on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marketiuagency

Marketiu on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marketiuagency/

Email at hello@marketiu.ro

 

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▶️ Castbox: https://bit.ly/The-Marketing-Innovation-Show-Castbox

 

Episode transcript:

 

Andrei Tiu

Hello everybody. This is Andrei and you're on the Marketing Innovation Podcast Show. Our special guest for today is Tom Donohue, who is the co-founder and marketing lead of Secure Digital Asset Group, a revolutionary cryptocurrency exchange processor, as well as the product manager for Kitcaster. He has been deeply involved with innovative businesses over the past few years launching and driving growth for disruptive products. Today, we'll dive deep into the blockchain space and marketing in the crypto world. Hi, Tom, how's everything going?

 

Tom Donohue   

Hey, Andrei, thank you so much for having me here. It's a pleasure to come on the show and be able to talk about some new tech. It's something I always enjoy talking about and I'm happy to clear up any questions or look into the future of marketing in the blockchain space and also talk about podcasts if you're interested in that as well. 

 

Andrei Tiu 

Super cool. So guys, just so you know, Tom, and Kitcaster are, you probably already know from previous episodes if you have been following us, but he just is one of the platforms that we source, and we establish many of our episodes crew. So, getting guests from there, or us being on different other shows. Tom is responsible for a big part of that. Thank you, Tom, on the obedience occasion. Today's episode is probably mostly gonna be focused on cryptocurrency blockchain, and innovation in the marketing space, because this is something that I know many of you guys tuning in are interested in. Also, it's a very exciting subject, mainly given the current context where you know, like Bitcoin, being all over the news, and people getting more and more accustomed to altcoins and crypto stuff in general. Maybe if I dare to say, probably not everybody knows what this is about. Tom, I think it'd be cool to maybe set the basics first. Let's go a bit in the back. So people can get to know you a bit as a person, how you got into the entrepreneurship space, your liquid marketing and the crypto space. And then from then onwards, you set the basis in terms of how blockchain and cryptocurrencies can play a role in business, in marketing. And more specifically, then we can explore ideas in terms of how this can be a revolution in our space, and what opportunities we have there as marketers.

 

Tom Donohue   

For sure, definitely. I'll be happy to talk about crypto and the state of marketing in that space in a couple of minutes. But first, I'll tell you, I got into marketing because I started out doing digital media as a photographer, videographer, things like that. That's what I went to school for, at first was photography, but then I quickly switched over to Media Communications, and got more into that space, just to find a way to apply my creative skills to something more than just fine art in terms of photography and cinematography. I wanted to find a way to apply those skills, and I landed on, you know, Media Communications, which translates to marketing, public relations, and that's how I got my start. That's what I got my degree in, and throughout college, I got connected with some other young entrepreneurs, and we started starting companies, and we all had a common interest in the blockchain space. We were just investing in buying Bitcoin back in 2017 when things started getting crazy. We all kind of connected and found our strengths with each other. My partner Parker is amazing at ideation and coming up with new products. Then with me, I take those products, build upon them, make them better, and also figure out how we're going to get them out to the world through marketing and other ideas. So, we started back around 2017 with the crypto projects, and since then, it's been going great. I mean, we haven't made a ton of money yet, but as with any entrepreneur, it's always a grind until you get some good investments at first, which is what we mainly work towards right now because with blockchain and cryptocurrency, all those types of projects, you kind of need a fair amount of startup capital to be able to afford to develop and build out very complex systems. As you can imagine, a lot of people don't know about blockchain, what it is, but it's not easy to make. Neither of us is coders. So, we rely on my marketing and both of our product development skills to pitch our ideas, and then go out and find developers who can help us as well. Did you say you wanted some of the backgrounds on crypto Bitcoin? Why is it becoming so popular? Is that what you were asking earlier? 

 

Andrei Tiu 

Yes. But until we get there, because you started laughing about this. What was your first venture in space when you guys grouped? Do you want to apply your ideas? What was the first idea or the first business that you want to put together?

 

Tom Donohue

For sure, the first business that we started fits well, with the marketing innovation show, it was a new blockchain platform that we were building called Fraps. It was a participatory marketing platform. So, it used blockchain to essentially compensate people for displaying ads. A lot of platforms would compensate people for clicking through all these ads, and you'll get $1 or something. But what we wanted to do was connect big companies who are looking to advertise to specific types of people to a network of those very people that could in turn, almost become ambassadors for them. But what we would do, we had technology that could trace impressions, that would install onto the person's device, and they would display the ad, in a public space. We targeted college students, so they would display the ad in a public space, and they would get compensated for how many people were exposed to the ad that they were contracted to display. The reason that blockchain was so essential in this business was because of the technology that allowed very low transaction fees. In Consett are almost non-existent transaction fees, that would allow for these big companies to get money into the pockets of people who are on the ground the very customers that they're looking to advertise to, except they're paying those people to do the advertising for them. So in a sense, let's say, I'm a big fan of Nike. Nike is going to start a campaign and get people who already enjoy Nike to represent them through their digital device and through a display ad that they would display in a public place. As people go by, they make money for the amount of time that they are out there displaying the ad, and it really wouldn't work without blockchain for the sense that there are no transaction fees for the bottle that we were trying to build. If we were to try to do it on a traditional, fiat system, it would not be that easy.

 

Andrei Tiu

And what we're using? 

Tom Donohue 

That's what we tried to do. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice, and what did it take him or what type of?

 

Tom Donohue

We were building a proprietary system. We were going to start using the waves platform, which it's kind of similar to ethereum but it allows for extremely fast transaction speeds and a lot of volumes. It also allows you to create your own coin or token fairly easily with minimal amounts of coding and things like that. So, we're going to start on that but our ultimate goal is to migrate to a proprietary system that was built specifically to do what we wanted to do.

 

Andrei Tiu  

I think this is a nice opportunity for us to discuss the relationship between cryptocurrency and blockchain because even before looking into it, I was thinking they were the same thing, but I think it would be interesting and important right now at this point to clarify the differences so that when we later refer to them, people can understand when is blockchain and when is a cryptocurrency and why they are different? 

 

Tom Donohue 

Sure. So, the main thing to remember is to have a cryptocurrency you need a blockchain but to have a blockchain you don't necessarily need a cryptocurrency. So, for somebody who doesn't really understand or know much about it just yet. That's important to keep in mind. Not every blockchain needs to have a cryptocurrency. But, order for the fundamental technology that makes cryptocurrencies work is blockchain. So, to have a Kryptonian blockchain, essentially a blockchain is just a distributed database. When it comes down to it, let's say, I had a database on my computer here and it held a lot of very sensitive information. If that database was attacked by a hacker or somebody who wanted to abuse that information, say I was running a currency off of it, they could just hack my single computer and say: "Okay, transfer all the money to my account." You don't want that, right? Cryptocurrency is touted and said by all these people to be one of the most secure things even more secure than our Fiat systems. It is because of this sense that that database that holds the transactions is distributed on 10s of 1000s of computers all around the world. Essentially, for someone to be able to do it, you would have to hack all of those computers simultaneously. And it's unfeasible, it can't be done, and it's essential to kind of wrap it all up in a simple to understand way. Bitcoin, for example, the blockchain is a database that holds the record of all of the transactions that have ever happened on Bitcoin. Now, since Bitcoin is supported by so many people around the world, that database is stored on 10s of 1000s of computers all over the world. So, to be able to forge or falsify a Bitcoin transaction is nearly impossible, because you could say, you have the database on your computer, so you initiate a transaction. That's fraudulent, right? All of those 1000s of other computers would check it according to their database, their record of it, and say: "No, that's not legit.". That's why crypto, in a sense, is more secure than a typical Fiat system, because fiat currencies are centralized. They're controlled by a government entity. Blockchain technology is decentralized, it's controlled by the people, and a lot of different people in different places. Does that make sense? I tried to kind of make it easy to understand, even though it'll never be easy to understand. 

Andrei Tiu  

Yes, I think indeed. And I think so, right now, because we have the basis, and the next thing that we can do a bit later, in a couple of minutes, when we go into the sort of case studies I think that a next step would be to look at the ways that you can use cryptocurrency to transact technology or to reward users for using a certain technology. So, let's go back to your story, though, this was the first venture to say so, the marketing platform. What next? Where do you go?

 

Tom Donohue  

Sure. We had realized that the platform that we wanted to build was going to cost an immense amount of money to create, which we don't have because we're young guys, we're just starting out, and we've pitched investors, we've gotten investments, but the fact of the matter is to just build a system that advanced was going to take a large sum of money that we just simply didn't have and we weren't capable of raising at the time. So, from that project, we moved into a new project, which is the current project that you saw on my LinkedIn and mentioned before, Secure Digital Asset group, which in our eyes was a more plausible and more possible startup for us to become successful with without needing all of that initial funding. What we're working on right now, and things are looking great, and we have some other projects on the back burner, too, that we're all just using to fund each other. So, let's say we have three or four projects going on right now. If one of them takes off, we're going to use it to fund the other ones. And we won't stop grinding and making new projects until we can until we get one that eventually works, and that's it does the other ones too because we still believe in that Fraps product as well, even if it might be on the back burner right now. We believe in that participatory marketing platform in a way to change the way that companies reach out to people and build connections with their customer bases. But now we're working on a new project that is a little bit easier and doesn't require as much money to do. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Nice, but that's the spirit, you know?! I mean, the wall might not yet be ready for it or the investors might not be able to see the opportunity, but just keep at it and surely you'll find the right people at the right time.

 

Tom Donohue

Definitely, without a doubt, it's just a matter of perseverance and sticking to it. Great marketing always helps. Essentially, what we're doing with this new company is a lot of b2b marketing, trying to get financial agencies and things to see what we're doing because the new company, just like a quick, brief synopsis of it. It's a company that looks to help encourage people and educate people on the blockchain space and how they could get into investments like Bitcoin, atherium, and other cryptos safely and securely, and, most importantly, confidently, because as of right now, it's not extremely easy to go and just buy a crypto. I mean, some websites allow you to do it, but when you purchase into that sort of exchange sense. You don't own or control the currency if you're storing it on a website platform, right? Let's use Coinbase as an example. I use Coinbase as a gateway, a Fiat gateway into cryptocurrency. But if my coins are stored on Coinbase, I don't necessarily control the keys. Cryptocurrency works off of a public key and a private key. The public key is the one that you say: "Okay, send it here, this is my address". The private key is the one that allows you to go ahead and spend it or send it somewhere else. So, the private key is the one that you don't tell anybody. When you store your coins on an exchange service like that, they control your private key, and you don't necessarily have it. That's an issue that we are trying to address and educate people on with the Secure Digital Asset group, and show them how they can purchase currencies and hold them themselves without being at the will of a big exchange like that. 

 

Andrei Tiu 

 Like holding them in a wallet, right? 

 

Tom Donohue

Exactly. The AR platform gives the customer control of their keys controls their wallet, which is not very typical in the market right now, and it does it in a way that is extremely easy for the person to understand, and it's almost foolproof in a sense that if you're on an exchange, and you're going to transfer your coins to another wallet, you need to type a 20 plus digit address exactly correct. If you don't, you'll press the send button, and then your bitcoins will be gone forever. So, the way that we have built it makes it completely foolproof, there's no way you're gonna mess up, and it's just meant to build confidence in investors who might want to get in, but they're worried that they're not tech-savvy enough to be able to manage cryptocurrencies like that. We use paper wallets. So, it's a wallet that a person can hold in their hand, it's not on the internet, and it builds confidence in the investor and it allows them to feel good about buying crypto and not be worried all the time that they're going to lose their money.

 

Andrei Tiu

Okay, so now looking at cryptocurrencies, the main ones, but also the altcoins and other possible coins and technologies that might come up. What opportunities do you see at the moment in the market? Like how can marketers look at blockchain as an opportunity to solve some of their problems or innovate in the way that they market to the public that they address?

 

Tom Donohue

Sure. In the sense of marketers and opportunities that they have with this new technology...

 

Andrei Tiu 

We can go both ways..

 

Tom Donohue

I think they could even go hand in hand, right? Because you have huge marketing agencies that could use some technology to help clean up their stuff. I think that one of the biggest opportunities is securing data. So, a blockchain, as we said before, you don't need a cryptocurrency use of blockchain, people very often are using blockchains to secure data rather than, you know, monetary transactions. So, let's say a marketing firm has a bunch of data about their customers and stuff, a bunch of data that they don't necessarily want other firms to somehow gain access to, and I'm not sure if this is an issue in the space right now with, I don't know, people trying to hack in and steal data from a marketing firm, but it's something that could be completely sealed up by having all your data on a blockchain.

 

I think another thing as well, when you're talking about big marketing projects that are doing international projects, working with, or even domestic products as well. One of the best things is that blockchain was created for his transactions and using a cryptocurrency or a stable currency such as, USD t, which is a currency called tether that is pegged to the US dollar, for example. So, it's not as crazy fluctuating as Bitcoin and the other ones, but people can use those types of currencies to make large transactions, say your marketing firm was doing a million-dollar deal, but the bank transfer fee is 3%. You're losing out on $30,000, just to get your payment. That's the thing that blockchain can help with as well. So, that's, in terms of business, especially businesses doing international transactions, a lot of them have started to think about using crypto for that very reason, for that very issue of transfer fees. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

And there were some case studies or cases in which some bigger companies went into blockchain and.. interchange, I don't remember exactly the names, but this was happening in 2019, probably mid 2019. It was just about when Bitcoin was skyrocketing during that time, as far as I remember, and then there were another couple of crypto like altcoins, to say so. Some of them I know, if I remember correctly, I think it was Microsoft, and they were another couple of companies that started to look into developing things on those technologies to improve or revolutionise the way that they were doing business or the technologies that they were creating. So, do you know any recent case studies of bigger companies that have looked at blockchain? And how have they looked at applying it within the business?

 

Tom Donohue  

Sure, I think the biggest thing that we're seeing right now is major financial institutions looking into it. So your traditional banks, hedge funds are not only looking into cryptocurrencies as an investment, but as a way for them to secure their own data. So, the biggest thing about blockchain, when it started was that this is more secure than your bank that holds all of your money, and some random people on the internet made it. So, now you have these big banks, actually looking into blockchain technology to secure their own data and transactions, which in a sense, could be an issue for cryptocurrency but then again, once you look at and see what cryptocurrency was built upon, which is that idea of decentralization. The banks still don't compete with these larger Bitcoin or ethereum cryptocurrency networks, because if a bank like, for example, Wells Fargo, which is looking into blockchain currently, if they were to build their own blockchain, they've secured their data on a blockchain, but also their technology is still centralized, right? It's still all under the control of Wells Fargo. So, you're at the will of Wells Fargo, with a decentralized system like Bitcoin. The entire community has control over what happens. So, you're not able to just have one decision maker go ahead and change everything. It just doesn't work that way. And I think that's a reason why crypto is here to stay, and even if banks and bigger financial institutions do decide to use blockchain, it's still not going to be quite as reliable or secure as these distributed networks.

Andrei Tiu

Okay. Oh, and another question that came to my mind now, I think it was slipping there for a while. What experience do you have? How do you market a crypto product or doctrine based product is different? I'd be keen to hear your thoughts because I encountered a couple of scenarios, and I think it'd be interesting for people to understand, because the crypto products are many times about the community around them. So that's why I'm thinking and I want to pick your thoughts on how you think about marketing your own crypto or blockchain products when they were not necessarily maybe b2b, but rather b2c or when you were thinking about the strategy.

 

Tom Donohue 

Of course, one of the biggest things for blockchain and crypto right now is who's going to get that mass adoption, right? Who's gonna get the attention of everybody? Bitcoin has done great with it. But there's a lot of people out there saying, and there's a lot of facts that just say that Bitcoin would never be able to be the world currency, it would never be able to be the currency that everyone's using for day to day transactions simply because the technology behind Bitcoin wouldn't allow for it. There's other crypto's that can allow for it but the biggest marketing issue is how do you get all of these people to trust you, right? So, a lot of the marketing initiatives in crypto and blockchain are about just building trust and building confidence in a platform. So, one of the biggest things that we had gone down the road of and something that a lot of people do currently is I'm fostering education. So, I'm putting out content and material that educates people about the space about what is safe, and what is not safe, what you should and shouldn't be doing, and ultimately tying that into why your platform either addresses or fixes these problems as a whole. So, I would say that is the single biggest initiative when it comes to marketing blockchain and crypto is building trust and educating because every industry every, every new idea, has those smarter who are not necessarily smarter, but more educated, more specialized, people who know about it. For example, with crypto, it's typically younger people who know all about computers, and they know why they should trust it. But one of the biggest things in crypto right now is getting the attention of those older people who necessarily don't have enough experience with computers to feel confident, to go ahead and transfer $10,000 of their money into some digital thing that they could see on their computer screen. So, that's one of the biggest issues that the industry as a whole is facing, but I think people are starting to come around and seeing the price action of coins like Bitcoin, because it's very apparent now that these bigger banks and institutions are looking into investing and are currently investing in it. So, I think that is helping, in a sense, which kind is free marketing for the entire system or for the entire community. But seeing these bigger, more reliable people that they know names like Wells Fargo, whoever JP Morgan, actually getting involved is helping to encourage trust in the system, and it's helping with these people's biggest initiative in terms of marketing, which is building trust.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And are bunking still think or like when you are in the beginning, and now way back again in the day when I was also working marketing, crypto startup kind of crypto blockchain startup. I know that everybody was going crazy about boundaries and building the sort of communities, equal communities around them around the coin, which was the crypto that was backing up the technology. Are they still going on? How are people approaching?

 

Tom Donohue 

Do you mean bounties in the sense of like it development bounty or? 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Yeah, both development bounties and if I remember correctly, they were also those things were if you were amongst the first X that were getting X amount of coins, then you'd get them at a better price, like early investment kind of pre-investment.

 

Tom Donohue 

 Yes. I think what you might be thinking of is an initial coin offering Ico. 

 

Andrei Tiu   

Yeah.

 

Tom Donohue  

Yeah. Which essentially, would be the same as an IPO on the stock market. It's like the first offering of your asset to the community. And that's actually something that we thought about doing, and there's a very specific way that you have to market those projects in order to comply with financial regulation, especially here in the United States where we're at, because the SEC is extremely strict on those types of offerings, and we actually put months and months of research into how we could actually market that type of offering without going against compliance rules. It was a huge issue, and it's something that people are still facing today, when they're trying to do those types of offerings because, in a sense, those offerings are meant for fundraising. For example, XRP ripple as an as a cryptocurrency that's fairly large out there, they're now being prosecuted by the SEC, because of how they ran their initial coin offering. It's a very political, it's a very tough space to be in, but ultimately, we decided to not do it, because we were worried that you know, just one little slip up, and the SEC might deem your offering not compliant, and that kind of just throws your company out the window. We did spend a lot of time trying to figure out how we can market it within compliance. We generally knew what we had to do, but we just didn't want to risk it because the SEC says something today, and they might change what they say the next day. So, we tend to veer away from those types of offerings, but at the same time with Secure Digital Asset group are looking to create a more standardized and compliant way for people to run those types of offerings through our proprietary product, which is those paper wallets that I had mentioned earlier. It just helps to make things a lot more clear and a lot more standardized, which is our goal, to help people with their marketing initiatives to ensure that they are not pushing out an asset that would be labeled as a security by the SEC. 

 

Andrei Tiu 

And another type of product that I think, at least in Europe.. I'm not sure but you guys might have similar stuff, if not the same. There are these apps that get mass adopted these days, where you know, you, you basically earn commission, if you bring somebody on the platform, and they transact a certain amount on the platform on specific points, not necessarily Bitcoin, or aetherium, or Litecoin, or ripple, but some maybe not a well known ones as well. What do you think about that way of promoting and building a community of users around the product? From your perspective, is it healthy? Is it something that either with eternity, although it works, it is sustainable?

 

Tom Donohue

 I think that it is a good idea. We have considered that for our very first project, and it is something that we were going to do, but you have to be extremely careful about how you do it. Like, I think one of the first and best examples of that was PayPal. When PayPal first started, Elan Musk, I think it was peer to whoever else started with them. I think they were paying something like $20 to each new user who got on PayPal, which cost them like billions. Maybe it didn't cost them billions, but millions. But it allowed them to get their initial user base, and even if they went into debt, to do it, now they had people on the platform who were using it and generating them revenue. So, I do believe in those types of initiatives, but I would advise people who are thinking about doing something like that to cross your T's and dot your I's because if you end up not having the funds to do it or not expecting the amount of growth and ultimately getting way too many people, and now you can't afford to pay anybody that's not always a bad problem to have. But it could put your business under, and if you're unable to raise funds to actually facilitate the promises that you make to your customers. One, you're in trouble financially and two, you're in trouble with the customers in terms of the promises that you've made them. So, if you want to do something like that, you have to

 think it through and, and be sure that you're ready to handle any amount of variables that could happen.

 

Andrei Tiu 

Full stop, really nice and actual. So now, going to the wrapping of the episode, but also taking away the things that I think could be, ultimately, valuable for the end marketer, that would be the guys on the show. Also, we have marketers, as well as entrepreneurs. So, I'm sure that for the entrepreneurs, this might have been a very juicy conversation and nice in terms of getting ideas and maybe polishing some of the ones that they might already have, but also for the marketers. If somebody is looking at ways to better security, probably data security is the first thing that would come to mind from our discussion so far, and relating to what you were mentioning a bit before, and marketing agencies having data issues. Typically, marketing agencies don't necessarily hold the data, and basically, the data always stays in the hands of the of the customer, like the b2b customer, but it could be a very good solution for a client to have security solutions around that so that it makes sure that they are compliant, and they don't expose themselves to risks. To sum up, what would be some other uses or case studies that people could be watching out for? Because there might be like this middle country in on, you know, like in Europe, maybe that has a startup that does probably something that would be cool, and it might benefit from the support of some initial clients. How would that look like what would be a nice feasible solution that would use blockchain and crypto?

 

Tom Donohue  

Sure, a big thing that people are out there doing, is using blockchains to tokenize real world assets. So that's something to think about as well. Let's say you own a property and you have the deed or the contract that says that you own the property. Think of this as any sort of contract or business deal or anything using blockchain to hold that and secure it: one, prevents it from being forged or falsified, and two: allows it to be accessed from anywhere just just like on a cloud. As long as you can get access to your blockchain, you can access whatever data you need to get. That's something that a lot of people are doing. So again, tokenizing, assets, deals, contracts, things that you might need access to down the line and things that you don't want to change, you can keep a very safe record on a blockchain. Next would be securing physical systems, for example, one thing that they're talking about doing is electrical grids. These are very large industrial scale projects, but these can be applied to a lot of different things, like startups. They're using blockchains to secure their grids and it's something that can be hacked, as unfortunate as it would be for an electrical grid to be hacked and shut down. But not if it's secured by blockchain, it would, it would make it nearly impossible. So let's say you have a startup that is running a system where you have to store user accounts, user profiles, and there might be some sensitive information, like the user's credit card information in there. There's a lot of services and stuff that help companies and startups do this. But there are also new services popping up that use blockchain to help secure that stuff. With a couple of clicks, you could integrate one of these services into your platform, and start using a blockchain to secure your stuff. It's just as the world moves forward into this digital age, where everything that we do is happening on a computer, or everything that we do is verified by a computer, this is the way that you can be sure that your stuff's not gonna get messed with. And I think that's the main idea of the industry. It's the security layer that so rocks solid, that everybody is confident that it will be okay. If that makes sense. There are endless applications. Another friend of mine is working on a blockchain video game where the in game items and assets will be tokenized on a blockchain. Let's use Fortnight as an example. Let's say you had like skins or like items, they would be secured on a blockchain outside of the game, to where you can go outside the game and traded those items, using the security of the blockchain. And ultimately those items would have some value. So you could sell your stuff from the inside the game, or inside the game, you could go and trade with another player. And then on the back end on the blockchain, that transaction is logged, just like if you were doing it on a stock exchange or something. So that's just an example. There are so many applications that blockchain can be used for. I'm probably missing a couple of big ones right now. But those are just some fun ideas that interest me. So I hope it helps to clear up the use cases that could come out of it.

 

Andrei Tiu  

And one question, I'm not sure if it's silly or not, but I think maybe popped up in some people's heads. Can a blockchain disappear? Can you just count on a blockchain to track all your stuff and use it and then at some point, just for it to stop existing?

 

Tom Donohue

A lot of blockchains have their own sets of regulations and things like that. LI everybody who mines Bitcoin and stores, the Bitcoin network just decided to say, at the same time, hey, we don't want to support this anymore. Yeah, they could go and turn off their rigs, and then the platform would cease to exist, but the community is so committed, and the lead set on making this a thing that I would be hard-pressed to ever see that happen. I could see it happening for some smaller projects that maybe aren't as supported. But say you are, I believed in one of these smaller projects, and we began running a node or, in another sense, storing the data on our computer and running it. Now, it'll never stop as long as you're running it. So it's, it's about the community and the adoption of each project. So like, if, if I made a blockchain and I was running it on a node on my computer, I might be the only person running it. So if I shut it down, then, of course, it would disappear. But if I were to go and turn it back on again, it would be back. So I guess, technically Yes, like a blockchain could disappear. But the more it's adopted by a community, the less likely that is to happen and for projects like Bitcoin aetherium, Litecoin, like these bigger ones, it will never go away. There's just there's just no way that that could happen at this point.

 

Andrei Tiu   

Well, okay, so this was very nice. Where can people get in touch with you? So guys, as we mentioned, this was the crypto episode. But we'll organise another one since Tom's so deeply involved with multiple projects. The other one is Kitcaster which is a cool platform. And we're going to dive a bit deeper into the content marketing side of things, and podcasting, and these other things that are probably a bit more widely adopted than blockchain at this point. And very different. But until next time, Tom, where can people find you and maybe reach out if they have any questions or ideas or proposals, ways in which you might be able to collaborate,

 

Tom Donohue

I'd say the easiest way to send me a message and for me to be able to see it would be to connect with me on LinkedIn: Tom Donohue. 

 

Andrei Tiu 

So we'll have the link in the description as well. So you guys, check it out there as well. Awesome. 

 

Tom Donohue 

Anybody can feel free to message me and ask me about anything podcasting, blockchain Whatever. I'm always down to connect. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

Thank you, Tom. So this was very insightful. 

 

Tom Donohue   

Thanks for scheduling this and getting it all set up. I know the time difference makes it difficult. 

 

Andrei Tiu  

I enjoyed it. Looking forward to our next catch up. Thank you for tuning in. If you have questions, proposals, ideas, always feel free to ping them to myself, Tom, send them over to our team and we'll make sure to try to make those episodes happen or come back with answers to you. But until next time, everybody keeps rocking it. Tom, thanks a lot for being on the show again, and wishing everybody an amazing rest of the week slash weekend ahead.

 

Tom Donohue  

For sure. Thanks, Andrei.

 

Andrei Tiu  

Thank you.