0:02 We are next going to hear from Christian Riza, who's from the he's the Utah chapter
0:07 president of Stand with Crypto. And for those who aren't aware, the crypto
0:12 enthusiasts I think are pretty excited about the decentralized identity approach.
0:17 And the Utah Blockchain Association has gone way out of their way to bring
0:21 together stakeholders and even many in this room that they've been working with
0:25 for years to help educate them on SEDI and bring their support to help make this
0:29 happen. Christian.
0:38 So I do I represent Stan with crypto. I am the chapter president for the state of
0:44 Utah. And it's my rep it's my responsibility to represent the 20,000 pro
0:51 crypto voters in the state of Utah and mobilize them on initiatives that really
0:56 align with our values. Now, you're probably thinking, okay, crypto, that has
1:01 nothing to do with SEDI. Cryptocurrency has nothing to do with SEDI. Why are you
1:06 here? What does this matter?
1:10 Our assets, our finances and our assets have been digital for years. We've just
1:15 never had the ability to take ownership, to take custody and to have those in our
1:20 control. And likewise, our birth certificates, our social security numbers,
1:26 all of these things are already digital. They live in a database somewhere. We've
1:33 just never had the ability to have true ownership and custody over those pieces of
1:39 our identity. Recently, I had the opportunity to go to our community and
1:46 really ask them and have some honest discussions and a bunch of different chats
1:51 throughout the state. And, you know, all of these people, the crypto and blockchain
1:55 people are extreme skeptics when it comes to this kind of stuff because frankly, you
2:01 know, all they know is we want to have control over our assets, our finances, all
2:05 these things. We don't want the government involved in these things, right? So at
2:11 first gut reaction of, hey guys, what do you think of this initiative? It was, no,
2:17 no, what? No, please don't do it. What are you talking about? Like, no, this is
2:20 terrible. And what I did was had everybody actually dig in and And Will Segos as
2:28 well, which is he's here. We had some conversations in deep, in-depth
2:32 conversations with a lot of these community members and had them really dig
2:36 into the underlying protocols. They're technical people, right? And after having
2:41 reviewed the information and the framework and how it's being proposed, it was an
2:46 emphatic yes. And I've got some quotes here from some of these people, which in
2:53 this case, it seems great. It seems too good to be true. I'm surprised the state
2:59 is backing this. Definitely the best approach that I've seen, this actually
3:05 makes sense. I like it. There's no way the state of Utah would go for it. And my
3:13 favorite one, if the state of Utah did this, I would be proud. I'm not a
3:20 policymaker. I don't come from, you know, I'm not here representing a big tech
3:26 enterprise. or anything like that. These people that we represent are just people.
3:32 They're regular Joes, regular community members, and they deeply care about their
3:39 privacy, their control, their ability to hold these different things, parts of
3:44 their lives, their identity, their assets, and these things. They deeply care about
3:48 these issues. And based on the SEDI framework, some of the things that ACLU
3:54 has said, And, you know, the way that SEDI is structured and framed today, the
4:01 community emphatically wants to support this. And so I guess I'm here to say that,
4:07 you know, as a community member, as a person that represents people in the
4:12 community, you know, if you move forward with SEDI in this way, the state of Utah
4:16 and other states that are here represented that will support that. And we hope that
4:23 you will. So, thank you.