Empowering businesses and governments to succeed in the new digital age

Toronto, Ontario
As AI systems become more autonomous and powerful, we need to move beyond “pacing the frontier” and build the rules, institutions and accountability needed to govern them. In my latest article for the @financialpost, I outline seven foundations for governing AI before it governs us. Read the full article here: financialpost.com/technology…
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New @defidecodedpod is out! I sit down with past guest and industry leader @luigidemeo who is now heading up BD at @aave His ambition is to build the infrastructure for global credit markets. Can Aave eat Wall Street, and remake finance for the better? Find out! 👇
Episode 250: Will Aave Eat Wall Street? with Luigi D'Onorio DeMeo of Aave Labs @alextapscott @luigidemeo @aave @CMCC_Global 0:00 Introduction 3:48 Leaving Avalanche and landing at Aave 7:17 From ETHLend to the largest lending protocol in crypto 11:16 $80B in deposits, no back office 12:12 How overcollateralized lending works and why people borrow 15:49 Why Celsius and BlockFi blew up and Aave didn't 18:46 What's being built on top of Aave 21:12 Life after CLARITY, and the cost of uncertainty 23:55 Does uncertainty advantage the risk-tolerant? 26:20 Why stablecoins cut at the heart of the bank model 29:29 Deposit insurance as a taxpayer subsidy 31:22 Fintech as digital wallpaper and why that's ending 33:34 Moving loans off balance sheets and onto Aave 37:23 The DTCC and the next killer app
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Every 20-odd years, the boundary between humans and technology gets redrawn. The first era of the internet was PC-based: static, read-only content. The second was smartphone-based: rich media and user-generated content. Now, roughly 20 years after the iPhone, the internet is entering a new era. In my book, Web3, I argued that this next era would be defined by the convergence of three technologies: 1. Blockchain and digital assets 2. AI 3. Wearables, including VR and AR Wearables—and VR in particular—have always felt like the technology of the future. And perhaps always would be. But this $META announcement feels like a watershed. All three technologies have now reached their tipping point. The next era of the internet has begun.
Here's everything I announced at Meta Connect today 👇
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What if we are creating an artificial intelligence with powers once belonging only to the gods, living not in the heavens, but in corporate data centers? Recent experiments have shown AI agents escaping contained environments, communicating through unauthorized channels, and finding ways around constraints their creators never intended them to bypass. In my latest article, I explore how we can govern increasingly autonomous AI before it begins to govern us. We need neither a global freeze nor blind faith in corporate self-regulation. We need a new governance architecture that keeps humanity (not machines or tech executives) in control. Read the full article here: dontapscott.substack.com/p/w…
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This is 100 percent correct. Canada can be the world's most prosperous and dynamic economy by embracing innovation industries. @dtapscott and @alextapscott laid out exactly how in our major report: blockchainresearchinstitute.…
The world’s biggest investors are descending on Toronto for the first-ever Canada Investment Summit. They’ll be pitched shovel-ready projects in oil and gas, mining, power generation, infrastructure and more. I hope we see some major deals announced. But I also hope our guests learn that Canadians are not only “hewers of wood and drawers of water.” We are also some of the world’s boldest innovators in AI, next-gen compute, space, blockchain and more. Invest in Canada, yes! Help us build the physical infrastructure to become a global energy and industrial powerhouse. But also help us build the digital infrastructure needed for Canada—and the world—to thrive in this new technology order. Our startups are shovel-ready. Venture capital is shovel-ready. Builders are shovel-ready. I will be at the Canadian Global Growth Forum today, hosted by @cvca making this case to global investors If you want to invest in Canada while pushing the frontier forward, consider Canada’s builder community. CC: @EvanLSolomon @FP_Champagne @buildcanada @lucyhargreaves4 @Ben_Bergen @cvca
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It's time to build, Canada!
Data centres can and should be an unambiguous net positive for communities across the country. Setting common standards with buy in from Canadians and industry leaders should lead to more development - not less. This is great news. Now let's build!
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The folks at BRI are excited about this drop! Check out the new episode of @defidecodedpod in the post below 👇
New DeFi Decoded is out! I sit down with @ericrichy, CEO of Coinbase Canada. If Amazon was the “everything store,” @coinbase wants to be the “everything exchange”—a trusted global platform where anyone can trade any financial asset, anywhere, instantly. Can they pull it off? Eric and I discuss. Enjoy!
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This is absolutely correct. We identified the funding gap as a critical reason why Canadian ingenuity in AI and other technologies rarely translates into global champions.
This is a great initiative, but Canada’s historical issue hasn’t been attracting brilliant minds — we’ve done that (see @geoffreyhinton, @Yoshua_Bengio et al.). The bigger challenge is retaining those who want to build global champions. Too often, they end up in SF. That’s the priority.
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In his latest piece for @ServiceNow Workflow, @dtapscott explores how personal AI agents trained on our own knowledge and judgment could reshape not just how we work, but how organizations are built. servicenow.com/workflow/inno…
My latest piece for @ServiceNow Workflow is live: "Identic AI: The Next Stage of the Agentic Enterprise." Thank you to @dianawudavid, Sasha Lal, and the ServiceNow Futures team for the invitation to dig into these ideas! servicenow.com/workflow/inno…
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Stablecoins increasingly looks like the only solution for to keep the U.S. treasury market stable, absent massive QE. For example, if the stablecoin market grew to $3 trillion (10x today), it would soak up more treasury issuance than China, Japan, the U.K. combined.
Sobering data from the @FT today on the changing composition of government debt buyers. Foreign investors’ share of US Treasury holdings has fallen from 57% after the financial crisis to 32% at the end of 2025. That makes developing new sources of structural demand increasingly important. Dollar stablecoins turn growing overseas demand for digital dollars into demand for US Treasuries. We need that at all points on the yield curve. Washington should be looking for ways to expand this new source of global demand for US Treasuries, not putting obstacles in its way.
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Trump waiting until after the midterms to impose escalatory tariffs. Pretty clear acknowledgment of how politically disastrous they’d be. Imagine the price of America’s best-selling vehicle, the F-150, increasing 50% amid an energy crisis...and right before an election. Ouch!
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Didier Lavallée of @TetraDigitalGrp is one of Canada's foremost leaders in the space, and was an influential voice in our report, "Rebuilding Canada for the New Technology Order" blockchainresearchinstitute.…
New @defidecodedpod is out! Canada was once a global crypto leader. After all, Ethereum was built in Toronto by (mostly) Canadians. Then builders fled. Can Canada reclaim its lead? I talk with @TetraDigitalGrp’s Didier Lavallée about why it can - and must. Check it out!
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In his latest piece for @ServiceNow, @dtapscott argues that AI-native enterprises will be built around four capabilities: data, workflow, orchestration, and governance. The real opportunity isn’t automating yesterday’s enterprise; it’s designing tomorrow’s. Read the article here: servicenow.com/workflow/inno…
My latest piece for @ServiceNow Workflow describes how the future of management in the age of #AgenticAI is not about controlling work; it’s about orchestrating intelligence. The real gap is institutional readiness, not spend. Thanks @dianawudavid, Sasha Lal, and the Futures team for the invitation to contribute and for sparking such a thoughtful conversation around it! Read the article here: servicenow.com/workflow/inno…
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The SEC just took a huge step toward bringing crypto into a clear regulatory framework. This can fill the void left by congressional inaction - for now. But America needs to give entrepreneurs, investors and markets certainty for the long term. In other words, it needs CLARITY.
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New @defidecodedpod is out! Why did Chicago trading firms embrace crypto years before Wall Street banks? Was it the entrepreneurial culture of the rough and tumble trading pits or something else? I sat down with @Aryonchain and @mcasto_ of @CMT_Digital to explore how CMT evolved from a trading firm into a leader across venture, DeFi, stablecoins, tokenized RWAs, onchain lending, vaults, and more. A wide-ranging conversation. Check it out!
Episode 244: From Wallets to Vaults - Understanding Institutional DeFi with Aryan Sheikhalian and Matt Casto of CMT Digital @alextapscott @Aryonchain @mcasto_ @CMT_Digital @CMCC_Global 0:00 Introduction 3:15 Guest intros: Aryan Sheikhalian and Matt Casto 3:30 Matt's journey: from Vanguard to crypto market making 6:02 Inside CMT's early market-making desk 7:26 What the Head of DeFi role looks like today 9:33 How CMT backs into theses in crypto venture 10:27 Stablecoins and RWAs becoming platforms 12:40 Stablecoins as crypto's Trojan horse 13:44 Coming full circle: financial services and the Q1 deal data 16:29 Vaults as a new institutional primitive 18:44 What exactly is a vault? 20:59 When does a vault become a financial product? 22:29 Vaults and the regulatory question 24:14 Different flavors of vaults and decentralization 25:10 The CLARITY Act: an uphill battle 28:23 Beyond DeFi: DePIN, AI, and the Web3 thesis 29:47 Blockchains as coordination infrastructure 32:08 Incentives, tokens, and why clarity matters 34:33 What's next: stablecoins eating legacy payments 36:43 Closing thoughts
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As we have argued in our research, the time has come to pass sensible comprehensive regulations for blockchain and digital assets. CLARITY is a good bill - let's get it passed.
Incumbents have a choice: defend yesterday’s moat or build tomorrow’s markets. Goldman Sachs has calculated that CLARITY can be a boon for financial innovators willing to embrace blockchain and crypto. Time for others to get on board. Let’s pass CLARITY now.
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Great seeing @Scaramucci at the Out East Summit. Always insightful, always entertaining, and kind enough to help with a little unpaid promotion for my latest book Web3!
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Today I opened the @Futurist_conf with a keynote on “Rebuilding Canada for the New World Order.” After discussing Identic AI and the rise of personal AI agents, I presented the five priorities from our new 200-page report: building sovereign digital infrastructure, scaling Canadian innovation into global companies, solving the productivity crisis through AI and other advanced technologies, rethinking national defence for the age of algorithms, and creating a new social contract for the New Technology Order. These themes are applicable to any “middle power“ country. @alextapscott and I aren’t just publishing a report. We’re building a movement to decentralize the AI stack and help rebuild Canada’s economy, government, and institutions for the age ahead. Download a free copy of the report here: blockchainresearchinstitute.…⁠ #BlockchainFuturist #AI #IdenticAI
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