Ian Cain on Running for U.S. Senate from Massachusetts (EP.524)

This episode features Ian Cain, a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, discussing his background, political aspirations, and views on blockchain and economic development.

1. Ian Cain emphasizes his deep local ties and commitment to addressing Massachusetts-specific issues, contrasting with Elizabeth Warren's national focus.
2. Cain highlights his background in technology and local government as crucial for understanding and leveraging blockchain for economic and governmental improvements.
3. He criticizes the current senator's lack of engagement with local communities and leaders.
4. Cain discusses his initiatives in Quincy, including a municipal fiber optic network and support for tech startups, showcasing his proactive approach to local economic development.
5. He outlines his vision for using blockchain technology to enhance governmental transparency and efficiency.

1: Introduction

Matt Walsh introduces Ian Cain and discusses his candidacy and background. Cain outlines his journey to politics and his views on blockchain. Matt Walsh: "Today on the podcast, I sat down with Ian Cain..."

2: Background and Local Impact

Cain shares his professional history and his achievements as a city councilor in Quincy, focusing on local economic projects. Ian Cain: "But we acquired and developed power plants in the Middle East..."

3: Blockchain and Technology

Discussion on Cain's engagement with blockchain technology and its potential applications in public sectors. Ian Cain: "So residents had been complaining to me for years that they were sick of their Internet incumbent..."

4: Political Aspirations and Critique

Cain expresses his motivation for running against Elizabeth Warren and critiques her focus and effectiveness. Ian Cain: "We have an opportunity to take back a seat for the people here in Massachusetts..."

5: Closing Remarks

Cain concludes with a call to action for support and outlines the impact he aims to make if elected. Ian Cain: "This is a huge task, and this represents a real opportunity..."

1. Engage locally: Understand and address the specific needs of your community to make effective changes.
2. Leverage technology: Explore how emerging technologies like blockchain can improve transparency and efficiency in government.
3. Build partnerships: Collaborate across sectors to foster innovation and economic growth.
4. Stay informed: Keep up with local and national political developments to better advocate for your community.
5. Participate in governance: Get involved in local government or support candidates who align with your values to influence change.

Ian Cain, republican candidate for U.S. Senate in the state of Massachusetts against Elizabeth Warren joins the show. In this episode we discuss:

Ian’s personal background and path to politics. How he became interested in emerging / blockchain technology. Qubic Labs and fostering a startup ecosystem in Massachusetts. The on-chain municipal bond project in Quincy, MA. The key issues that MA voters care about. Elizabeth Warren’s posture on crypto and whether the “anti-crypto army” is a real thing or a political stunt. Stablecoins Digital asset market infrastructure and why it is important to prioritize this effort. Ian’s message for Massachusetts voters. Links:

To support Ian Cain please visit www.cainforus.com To learn more about Qubic Labs visit www.qubiclabs.com Qubic’s Impact Report More on the Quincy Municipal Bond effort.

People

Ian Cain, Elizabeth Warren

Companies

Castle Island Ventures

Books

None

Guest Name(s):

Ian Cain

Content Warnings:

None

Matt Walsh
Today on the podcast, I sat down with Ian Cain, republican candidate for us senator in Massachusetts, against Elizabeth Warren, the current Massachusetts senator from Oklahoma. In this episode, we discussed Ian's path to the political arena, his work with emerging technology companies, and his views on the blockchain industry, as well as a lot more. I'll disclose at the outset of this podcast that Ian is a good friend of mine. I've known him since high school, think very highly of him, and myself and members of the Castle island team are financially supporting him in this important race. I think you'll enjoy this podcast.

So without further ado, here's my conversation with Ian Kane. Matt Walsh and Nick Carter are partners at Castle Island Ventures. All these expressed by them or the guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Castle island ventures. Guests and hosts may maintain positions in the assets discussed in this podcast. You should not treat any opinion expressed by anyone on this podcast as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of their personal opinion.

This podcast is, for informational purposes only. Brought down by bad mortgage investments Lehman, which has 25,000 employees, will be liquidated. The federal government loans American International Group AIG $85 billion. This is a different kind of market, and the Fed is asleep. The federal government is stepping in to stabilize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two mortgage giants that have been threatened by the housing crisis.

The bank of England has pumped 75 billion pounds more into Britain's ailing economy with a new round of quantitative easing. You print a couple trillion dollars, and. All of a sudden people start to worry. So out of this worry, we have something called the bitcoin. Bitcoin.

Ian, welcome to the podcast. It's been a long time coming. Very excited to have you on. All it took was for you to run for us, senator, to come on my podcast. Well, you took my first line out of my mouth, first of all, longtime listener, first time caller.

Ian Cain
But I'm so glad I'm finally important enough to be on this. Well, we've been working together a long time, and we've known each other a long time, but a lot to talk about here. Crypto is just one piece of it. But why don't we start off with just a little bit on your background? What was your path to public service?

So, I grew up in Quincy, Massachusetts. We call it the city of presidents, which is just south of Boston. I went to the public schools here until I went to BC high with you. After that, I pursued an undergraduate degree at Boston College, graduated with a degree in political science in 2004. I did a couple years in commercial real estate with a firm called Tischfinspire in Boston before joining an energy focused private equity fund, which was based in Waltham.

But we acquired and developed power plants in the Middle East, North Africa, and east Asia. So I was there for five years, went and got an MBA at Duke, where we reconnected. And I came back to the Boston area after that to join a tech company that was spun out of the MIT media lab. It was an earlier application of natural language processing and machine learning that we sold to market researchers and people with lots of qualitative data. But it was at that point, about 2015, that a seat on the city council in Quincy opened up.

And as I say, I've long suffered from a political affliction, always had interest in politics. It's like my sport. I've always followed politics with my parents and my grandparents, who exposed me to concepts on both sides of the aisle, always trying to have a more holistic perspective of the world. And I had dabbled when I was younger in middle school, did class rep and student council in high school. And at a certain point, I said, let's take this to the real world.

And I ran for a seat in 2015 and won. So I've been on the city council in Quincy for nine years now. I'm in my fifth term, and I'm currently the city council president, which is a position that you're elected by your peers. And we run the meeting and set the agenda with the mayor. But it's been a great experience.

And I think that being a city councilor has been the place that you probably can learn the most about getting stuff done in government, because, one, you're representing the interests of your neighbors and your family and your friends, who they can show up at your house if you don't do what they ask of you or expect of you. But then you have to learn how to make partnerships within government across the board, and how to get things done for people, whether it's getting their street paved or their sidewalks down, their trees trimmed. Really the grassroots constituent service thats integral and important to understanding how government works. But over nine years, weve focused on some interesting projects. Quincy has been going through its own economic development boom.

Weve been absorbing a lot of the supply constraints around housing in the greater Boston area. And at a certain point in time, theres two projects around economic diversification that I started focusing on in order to complement that growth. One of them was building a seawide fiber optic network. So residents had been complaining to me for years that they were sick of their Internet incumbent in Comcast, really the only game in town, and that the service quality was poor and they were paying a ridiculous amount of money for their Internet and cable. So I looked into some models and realized that we could actually turn Internet into a public good and create a competitive marketplace for service offering for our residents.

And so we've been working on this project for the past six years and developing it. We put out a master plan in 2021, and we're heading towards pilot phase. Hopefully we get some shovels in the ground to build this network within the next few months. So you are super deep in emerging technology, and I was thinking about this interview last night, and in the context of when we were in business school back in 2013, I don't think we ever talked about bitcoin together, but we used to talk about emerging startups and what the new categories of innovation would be and where jobs would be created. So what was your path to even being interested in blockchain and crypto, and how do you contextualize our industry here with blockchain crypto technologies in the context of broader startups and capital formation?

So it was funny. Now, remember running into you in Boston, you were telling me what you were working on at fidelity in the consulting practice, and I thought that was super interesting. And I had been familiar with distributed ledger technology, but I wasn't totally ingrained. I hadn't played around with any of the systems or wallets or onramps or anything. But it was when we started Cubic labs, which we'll get into in 2019, I participated in a program that was hosted by a quasi state agency called the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.

They were educating local elected leaders on potential blockchain deployments in cities and towns. So I started getting to know about the art of the possible. And when we created Cubic, we were trying to support startups and founders who were building companies around financial and government tech. So this made sense. But what I quickly realized was nobody had yet built an ecosystem to support this blockchain space in the Boston area.

There were some meetups going on. You had, of course, already started Castle island, but we were looking to try to create an ecosystem of startups and founders that could help to create jobs and support our mission through cubic labs. So we started getting to know people. I mean, you and I started talking. I said, hey, what can we do here?

How can we be supportive to your efforts? We started getting to know the folks at Algorand, we started getting to know other capital providers, entrepreneurs, and said, okay, let's see how we can bring this together. You guys at Caslon were generous to commit, make a financial contribution to us, which we saved, and said, let's see if we can attract a pipeline of blockchain companies. And we hosted a blockchain showdown, we called it in 2021, which one of our judges was Nick, which we're grateful to have him for. And I think with some short marketing and $20,000 prize pool, we got about 80 applicants from around the world, which was really cool to see.

And we had this showdown about seven companies, and one of our companies from our ecosystem ended up winning a $15,000 prize. But we just said, okay, one, this is a differentiator. Theres something opportunistic here. Theres a technology that has the ability to create efficiencies not only within government, but in financial services economy and to potentially create jobs. So lets run with this.

So we started to create a narrative. We just said, okay, Quincy is going to be the blockchain capital of the commonwealth and were going to create a globally recognized tech and development hub for blockchain tech. And slowly but surely, it was the slog it started to take. So fast forward to after the blockchain showdown we did in 21, we started getting a group together to pitch a grant to the same organization, Massachusetts Technology collaborative, to try to build more ecosystem. So there was an innovation grant program that they were running that the ultimate goal of which is to create jobs and more economy in the state.

So we put together a $5 million package to say, okay, if the state gives us two, we'll line up $2 million in private capital. And then we got some in kind contribution of legal in accounting and data analytics to support the formation of companies that we could create a research and development and commercialization program. So we pitched that. We won that grant from the state in 2022. And then in earnest we've been running that program.

Toward the end of 22, beginning of 23, we launched it. Cubic is such a great organization. Would love to talk a little bit more about it. It feels to me like a big differentiator that you've been involved in these startups at the formation stage versus some of the people you might be running against for Senate, for instance. They come at it from more of an academic background, but maybe talk a little bit about why you even started the group and then what its developed into.

Matt Walsh
I saw the Quincy Muni bond announcement this week, for instance, which seems like a very tangible example of something that has grown out of that work. No, thats a great project and ill get to that in 2 seconds. Again, Cubic was an effort to diversify economy in Quincy at a time where its seeing a lot of residential real estate growth. So I wanted to see more innovation economy from Quincy, putting Quincy on the map for something else, especially Quincy, which a lot of cities and towns in the country had this huge industrial base at one point in time that was decimated in the advent of when we were based on shipbuilding. So after World War two, people really weren't building too many ships anymore.

Ian Cain
And then cities and towns that once had thriving retail districts were decimated in the advent of malls. And so Quincy's been, I think, seeking a new identity. We wanted to be able to contribute to that and this was our effort. So the idea was lets support founders through providing low cost real estate and strategic advice. Lets help them with their business models and plans and help them raise capital.

And weve been able to do that. And again, this is financial and government tech focused, but with an acute value proposition around blockchain and digital assets. But over the past five years, weve supported over 40 different types of companies, providing them with advice. Weve helped them raise millions of dollars. Weve helped them create jobs fulfilling our mission, all on a shoestring.

This has been through generous real estate support. We structured our organization as a 501 C three nonprofit so that we werent trying to sell desks like a weWork. We wanted to truly create environment and ecosystem and create something that could grow and thrive. So through that program, even most recently, weve been giving out $25,000 non dilutive grants to companies to prove out pilots and MVP's and guide those towards business plan development and then support them with private capital investment. And one of the companies that has come out of that R and D program is a company called Blockwise Advisors and blockwise advisors, theyre technically called the blockchain advisor to the financial advisor on what was the first municipal bond offering on chain in the country that was just executed this week.

Very cool. So Quincy is now in the Muni bond game on chain. Quincy is the Muni bond game. Thank goodness. We work with great people in local government.

Our mayor, Tom Koch has been very supportive of cubic labs and its goal to try to create economy in the city. So weve been trying to create a mini cluster. We want to connect to the local institutions like the city itself, the municipality. We want to connect to the likes of Quincy College to deploy things like technical and non technical curriculum that can train people in this frontier technology to allow them to connect to the companies that were creating and have pipeline for talent. Weve proposed a couple of different types of projects and im glad that this one stuck because to me its such a huge market opportunity in a old market, but its huge.

So the skys the limit here. The project that was completed this week was with JP Morgan and it was on their private onnx blockchain. And that was phase two of what would be a three phase project with the city. So the first was feasibility, the second was this offering. And the third would be building a public facing platform that would connect residents to participate in municipal bond offerings locally.

So it's the idea of Quincy bonds for Quincy people and thereby aligning civic and financial interest at the local level and allowing people to participate at low dollar amounts and have some financial upside. Trey, in a lot of ways it reminds me of the financial services industry where we started with these private blockchain experiments back in 2015 and 16, and then stablecoins burst on the scene as a public blockchain. Good. But you don't have to squint too hard to see that if you were to get some regulatory clarity, maybe you would be able to have an ecosystem where, hey, there's a bridge being built in Quincy. And as a Quincy resident, why wouldn't you want to participate in that and get some of the financial upside as opposed to just syndicating debt?

Matt Walsh
It seems like a really interesting financial product, but also a really good thing for a community. Well, there's no better way to put your money where your mouth is. If you support a particular project that you'd like to see advance in your own backyard, or in somebody else's backyard for that matter, then you can participate. But it is strong alignment. I think that there's no better support for any type of project than somebody putting their money behind it.

So let's get to the main event here. You are running for us, Senator, against Elizabeth Warren. How did this all come about? As someone who's known you for a long time, I always figured you'd do something big, but this is a big. Move outside of your trying to push me this way, then.

Yeah, exactly. No, this wasn't all that premeditated, to be honest with you. I been comfortably in my city council role and had just started looking at this in probably February. And what I see here is that we have a person that currently sits in this seat that does not participate in Massachusetts. This is a person that's largely focused outside of Massachusetts on issues that Massachusetts residents do not care about.

Ian Cain
We have an opportunity to take back a seat for the people here in Massachusetts to give them representation that they don't currently have. I think that what we've seen over the past twelve years is a person who was bestowed upon the commonwealth of Massachusetts from Washington and took a position in the state, but was immediately looking at getting back to Washington to run for president of the United States. And it was clear that Massachusetts residents weren't interested in her being president and that the country wasn't interested in her being president either. So you have a person that's sitting in this seat that has settled on the US Senate because they didn't get the job that they really wanted, which is not good in Quincy. We're the 7th largest city in the commonwealth, and I've never seen Senator Warren in Quincy for anything.

We don't hear from her or her office about connecting on any particular issues or getting any insight. And I know that personally, if you're not talking and connecting with people, whether they're constituents or local elected leaders in government, to understand what's going on on the ground, then you're not doing your job. Every political job is a constituent service job. You go to DC to make the votes, but you do the work in the place that you represent. So it's pretty wild to me that I've never seen that person here.

So this is a chance to really leverage the skills that I've developed and the experiences that I've had not only in the public sector, but in the private sector, as a coalition builder, as an economic developer, both locally and globally, to bring that experience to cities and towns across Massachusetts, because the city council role is totally replicable across 351 cities and towns in Massachusetts. And you get to take that to the federal government and marshal resources back here for the state. So when I'm out about talking to people on the weekends and going to kids soccer games and things like that, no one really talks about crypto. To me, it is probably the number one issue for me, political context. It is surprising to me that Elizabeth Warren has taken such an active stance against it.

Matt Walsh
So is there a marketplace for her anti crypto ideas in this state? Why do you think she has taken such a stance? So I think it's more political opportunism. I think it's a very easy thing to take a constituency that is not necessarily as politically organized or doesn't have concentrated votes in particular areas and make them the fall, make them the bogey person, and she does that with a lot of different groups. So in this case, I'm going to form an anti crypto army, which I can't imagine anyone signed up to join.

Ian Cain
I don't think that that actually exists. But that's talking about the ambiguity of millionaires and billionaires not paying their fair share or talking about the poor people who were prevented from blue text and Apple's market share and Tesla and Elon Musk. Let's take a prominent enough concept just so that I can align with them. But it actually has nothing to do with the issues that people care about in Massachusetts. It's not advancing any agenda.

It's not making my life any better. It's not improving that the people who are hurt by inflation right now and can't afford housing, they can't afford regular groceries, kids, the cost of tuition is insane, cost of healthcare, those are the real issues that people care about. And if you're not finding ways to improve those pocketbook issues, then youre really not doing anything. So how does that feed into how you would describe your priorities for this role? Im interested to see how crypto even factors into that.

Matt Walsh
It sounds like its probably not the number one issue people care about. Obviously, youre, I would say, an expert in the space, but how do you contextualize just what you want to focus on? Preston? So crypto is certainly an issue, and I think one we can talk about this forever because I love this. Crypto, unfortunately, has developed a bad connotation.

Ian Cain
Its a negative term almost. And that's because of a couple of bad actors in this space that you guys categorize and talk about regularly, which is great because you're like, we're not them. We're trying to partner with government to make this space absolutely legitimate, that there are real rules in place that govern our operations and regulations. You're asking for that. That's very clear.

So it will be an issue, and especially in the broader context of economic opportunity. So if you have a sitting member of Congress that is actively working against innovation and economic growth and economic potential in actually what will end up being a globally competitive way, where were losing minds, where were losing potential financial gain, not only for residents of the country, but money that could be obviously put into the government coffers, which nobodys interested in really paying. But of course, theres that aspect of it, then thats somebody that needs to step aside, thats halting progress from our general economy. The true issues that matter, especially to residents in Massachusetts right now, are issues around the border and illegal immigration. We in Massachusetts have been absorbing a very unfortunate migrant crisis.

We've been taking people into the state, and it's been costing the state an absurd amount of money. Last year alone, it was a billion dollars. In the fiscal year, 25 is projected to be another billion again. This member of Congress had the opportunity most recently to offset some of those financial constraints that have been put upon the state through a bill. And she passed.

And thats unfortunate because people are looking for relief again from anywhere that they can because theyre so hard pressed in other areas. So I outlined a whole bunch of those issues that matter to people, those pocketbook issues. But it starts with this migrant issue, and then it goes into general economic opportunity and then housing. In Massachusetts, weve got a really, really big problem where theres no current path that used to exist for people to participate in the housing space as they once could. Housing prices have gone sky high because of the limited supply that exists in desirable places where people want to live, especially around the greater Boston area.

But then you couple that with the fact that we have failing and crumbling infrastructure. So its not just roadways, but think about the transit system that is unreliable. So we have limitations in how far outside of the greater Boston area people are willing to live. So its a whole host of things that interconnect, but it all comes down to improving peoples ability to live better lives, to enable them to live better lives. The infrastructure thing is something that we obviously see every day living up here in the Boston area.

Matt Walsh
It strikes me that someone like a Chuck Schumer has done a really good job of getting money for his state and building out new companies and building out infrastructure in New York. Why has Massachusetts not gone in that direction? Is it just that no one wants to work with Elizabeth Warren on a. Bill, or maybe she doesnt want to work? I dont know.

Ian Cain
Its either an unwillingness or a reluctance to do the work because the work is tough. So from my perspective, I can work with anyone. I don't care what you think. I know what my job is. I know what my job would be, and that's to work with people who I might not agree with any issue, but we got to figure out a way to get what people in Massachusetts need.

There are models of this that used to exist, and irrespective of parties, there's Ed Brooke in the sixties and seventies. There's Tip O'Neill, who's the longtime speaker of the House, who worked collaboratively with Ronald Reagan, the Republican, to get things done. Ted Kennedy is another we've had many people that have represented our government in different ways that got the work done, and they didn't let their party affiliation get in the way of the job. Totally. So switching gears a little bit at Castle island, we have probably backed ten to twelve israeli based companies or founders that were originally born in Israel.

Matt Walsh
And what's gone on with the terrorist attacks has certainly impacted all of these people at a very deep level, not to mention the companies that they operate. This is obviously an issue in this race. It seems like you have quite a different stance on just what to do around this conflict than your opponent. So maybe talk a little bit about how you see that issue evolving in the context of this race. No, this is a very tenuous time, and I've been learning a lot about this issue from another perspective, which is from residents of Massachusetts who have felt that they have not been represented adequately at the federal level, especially by Elizabeth Warren, on this issue.

Ian Cain
And I think it's so unfortunate that we're seeing this insidious. I see it like a malaise that's existing on these college campuses, where they're gravitating towards these concepts that they clearly don't fully understand in a broader context. And I think they're, unfortunately, misguided. I never personally thought that I'd see a day when Americans would be advocating for pro terrorism organizations. But I just know personally, and where we sit here is that I firmly stand with Israel and denounce any form of anti semitism, am firmly on the side of our american israeli residents, especially here in Massachusetts.

I understand that it's been a difficult time for some of them, and they felt more fearsome than they normally would. And I've even anecdotally heard in places like Newton that gun applications have gone up 300%. I think people are seeing the need to find ways to protect themselves more, which is unfortunate. So it's unfortunate that our senators not taken the mantle to support residents that care about this and to support our allies in the Middle east, but I certainly will be doing so. Definitely a really important issue for a lot of folks.

Matt Walsh
All right, switching to the topics I care most about, since this is my podcast, we get to talk about the crypto policy here. I just think about stablecoins as the biggest no brainer. And it just shocking to me that Elizabeth Warren has come out as so anti stablecoin. When you think about just all the benefits that arrive from being able to have lower price transactions for remittances, and really the users of some of these products are some of the most marginalized groups that just don't have access to the US banking system. So what do you think about stablecoins and maybe contrast that with what youre seeing out there in the Elizabeth Warren camp?

Ian Cain
Trey well, it sounds to me that this is, again, if youre coming out so strongly saying, hey, Im anti crypto and Im building this army or whatever, I dont know if theyve actually sat down and talked to the space or learned about the space or understand it at all. It seems a little, again, misguided in your approach for improvement or I dont know what the goal is of being so steadfastly anti. But I think as weve talked, that what stablecoins seem to represent is a great way to proliferate the use of the dollar in global markets. Totally. It just seems that would be something that every politician should get behind.

Matt Walsh
It seems interesting, though, its not that democrats are against stable coins. To me, its almost a young versus old issue for some politicians. Yeah, but thats actually part of this campaign too. Its that were looking at a bench of people that are thinking about current and new issues with old and dated thinking. So you cant be thinking about issues in 2025 or 2024 with laws from 1930 when things like stable coins and a market structure around a new and innovative frontier technology couldnt have even been conceived.

Preston well, you brought up market structure. That was something I want to ask you about next. We seem like were in this regulate by enforcement sec zone right now for at least the foreseeable future this year. We're living in a market where the banks and the broker dealers want to play in this market, but they structurally cannot until you have a market structure bill passed. What is your view towards that bill and maybe just broader institutional participation in this versus offshore casinos getting all the action offshore casinos?

Ian Cain
Yeah. Well, it just seems there are some interests being protected. Again, there's a clear opportunity here. You're a great representative of the space who's saying, listen, we're here to be regulated, regulate us, show us the way to the possible, which totally makes sense. That's the place to start, is how can we provide regulatory clarity to this entire market so that people know how to register and to create more capital?

That's a no brainer. I think that that totally makes sense. And I would be actively supporting those measures. The offshore casinos, this is what will be the adverse effects. So we start to talk about people not feeling comfortable, one in a state environment, then they won't feel comfortable because they've got concepts that they seek to proliferate so theyll go offshore and then the chicanery will just exist elsewhere.

The problem of anti money laundering and know your client and categorizing technology companies as money transmitters, et cetera, wont fully be solved because theyll just go elsewhere and do it. Trey, the whole anti money laundering bill is a really interesting one because if you think about it from the perspective of youre a criminal, in my mind, a public blockchain is just the worst place to do crime because your crime exists forever. It's a notary system that exists for all time. Cash is a much better way to do criminal activities in my mind. And everyone knows this on both sides of the aisle.

Well, has not cash been the de facto method for crime for its existence? It makes you think that maybe cash would be illegal if it was invented today. But I would say you talk to law enforcement officials, which we do all the time, and they actually say, well, look, we want people to be using public blockchains if they're committing crime because it's just so much easier to find them. And there are these chain analysis firms that you can use if you're a centralized company. So it's a solved problem.

Matt Walsh
I would say, obviously you're always going to have crime on any platform, but I'm curious why this just keeps on getting brought up by Elizabeth Warren and why she's pushing this issue when it's really not a core issue. You'd have to ask her that. I do not know. But I just do know that if you were a person that believed in even good government, this is a potential tool using blockchain or distributed ledger technology to adequately represent financial transactions within government as well. It would create an opportunity to essentially open up the books so that people could actually follow the money and financial flows within a huge bureaucratic system that governs their day to day lives.

Ian Cain
So im missing the point, as well as why youre so vehemently against it, where again, this is something that can improve from an operational perspective, the technology, but then also create economy and leverage the possibility of creating jobs through that to benefit real people. I don't know why you'd be against that. That's a real head scratcher. So maybe switching gears a little bit towards just the race, what does it look like now for the next few months here? How does one even run for senator here?

So this is a startup especially, it's a fundraising job. You're really out there doing is raising a bunch of money to put together a team that you can run an effective race. This is a short sprint. It'll be five months to a primary in September, the day after Labor Day. So it's a mix between getting financial support and going out.

And I'm running as a Republican, so I'm out meeting republican town committees all over the state and just trying to become as popularly known as possible in a short amount of time. But, yeah, this is a high growth startup in a short period of time. So it's an interesting race. You mentioned you're running as a Republican, which is great, obviously, because Elizabeth Warren is a Democrat. And I think you're someone that has operated on both sides of the aisle.

Matt Walsh
There is another Republican running against you, John Deaton, who I think on the crypto issues is very aligned with the industry, probably shares the same views as you do on a lot of these issues, frankly. So what do you think about just having a competitive race in the primary and then having to go fight Warren in the general? I guess a competitive race in a primary is probably healthy. But I can tell you this, I think that Massachusetts residents generally, they're already tired of electing a senator who's moved here for political opportunism. And it hasnt worked out for us to this point.

Ian Cain
So I dont think people will go for that again. But I certainly think that on the crypto side of the page, sir. But thats not the only thing going. Theres a whole portfolio of political and professional experience that I bring to the table that will certainly lend itself much better to this role. So what would your closing message be to voters who are listening to this in Massachusetts?

Well, first of all, I appreciate you having me on today, and I appreciate being able to connect to your audience. This is a huge task, and this represents a real opportunity to take out who is enemy number one to your space with a person that understands it, with a person that's committed to it, with a person that has proven to bring disparate groups together to make things happen, especially within government, which is difficult to move. That takes time. It takes skill to navigate how to make things move in government. I hope you'll consider supporting my campaign.

We need tens of millions of dollars to make this happen. So if you're willing to make a contribution, if you're willing to host an event, please reach out. You can reach out to us at Caneforus. That's cainforus.com. And we'd love to connect with you.

Matt Walsh
Ian, thanks for coming on. We're super excited. We're obviously supportive so best of luck and we will talk soon. Thanks, Matt. Thanks for listening to another episode of on the Brink with Castle island.

To find out more about Castle island, visit Castleisland VC. To listen to all of our podcast episodes, please go to onthebrink dash podcast.com or just click on the tab in our website. Thanks for listening.