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Hey everybody, thank you so much for coming back to the Phantom Power Business Hour.
Very excited to have an author on the phone with us today and his name is Raza Arby.
He's a digital transformation professional from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.
He has a degree in information systems and management from Northwood University in West Palm Beach.
In over 17 years of experience in the public and private sector, he has served on Malaysia's sovereign wealth fund.
He was a principal consultant to the UN Technology Innovation Labs and has worked for private companies like Gartner and M.Dak and Marcus Evans.
His book, which came out just a few months ago, is called the Digital Transformation of Money, a primer on why Bitcoin matters and how it works.
Raza, welcome. Thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate that. Looking forward to the conversation.
Yeah, so how did we meet? We met over on the Orange Pill app, right?
Yeah, that's right. I just found out about the... I just joined not too long ago and found out about the group feature.
And I saw that there was a group that talks about books and whatnot, so I thought, hey, this could be somewhere share a little bit more information about what I've written.
Yeah, it's funny because I was supposed to interview somebody from the Orange Pill app, Brian Dement, and Brian had to push our interview back.
Right at the same time that I think you and I started talking on Orange Pill and I'm like, oh, this dude's an author. This will be perfect. We'll just talk about his book.
Good luck. We're lucky for you. We got you in. So, let me start off. But by the way, how do you like Orange Pill app so far?
Yeah, I think it's pretty cool. I've met a few... I had conversations with a few people already.
And connected with some people, the people from Dubai and people visiting into Malaysia as well.
And it's people from various walks of life, I guess, as a mix. And it's pretty interesting.
Yeah, I'm still kind of feeling my way around it. I didn't even know there was groups in there until a couple of weeks ago.
And then I found the book group and the musician group. I'm like, okay, that's cool. That helps.
So, let me ask you... Let's start off with... Obviously, I saw your bio and LinkedIn and read up on you a little bit.
You went to school in West Palm Beach. Are you originally from Malaysia? Where are you from originally?
Yeah, Malaysia. And I went to the States to study for a little bit. Then after the uni, got a job there for a little bit.
I joined a startup and I came back in '04, '05, more or less. And that was that, yeah.
Okay. So, what... The University of Colorado has a good business school. There's a lot of schools up in the cold and snow.
Why did you choose that one? What made you choose Northwood?
It was a lot more serendipity, I guess. I didn't really... At that age, I didn't really have that much of a plan. I just fell in this and that.
Yeah. And that was one of the opportunities that opened up for me. But I've always been interested in technology.
I've always been interested in looking at how can we improve things? How do we make things better for the people?
I wanted... When I was growing up, I saw how much improvement the education system needed.
And is there something I can do in that area? And when I was around 18, 19 years old, I got involved.
Again, a lot of my life is by tons.
It's okay. It pros and cons to that.
So, 18, 19 years old, I got involved in a couple of projects. One was on e-Government and another one was on a smart school project.
Which was fairly interesting, but also opened up my eyes a little bit more to how things are.
Around 2021, I got the opportunity to continue my studies and I took that.
Well, now, what brought you into Bitcoin? What's your origin story for Bitcoin?
Yeah. So, there's a long story, short story, I guess. Short story first.
Short story long, as they say.
I've found out about Bitcoin maybe around 2016, 2017 timeframe, but the short story is around 2020.
You learn the pandemic when it hit.
I thought that was when things are really going to start to collapse.
And I've always been someone who believes in sound money, precious metals, gold silver, that kind of stuff.
And I really saw that there was something there with Bitcoin.
But around 2020 was when I really got into really research on what is this thing really?
How does it really work? And having a background of technology and understanding networks and whatnot,
it wasn't easy.
Even with someone with technology background trying to understand what in the world this big point is,
was pretty challenging. It took a long, long time to really have a good understanding to a point where I can,
you know, really talk about it fairly confidently, talk about it.
And I think that was when around that time was when I really got into it.
And I thought, you know, this is something that could potentially help a lot of people.
As things around us globally start to, I guess, I don't know how I was put about, start to fall apart.
This could be one thing that could help protect people.
And we can get into that a little bit more if you like.
But, you know, so that's whenever I knew about this, I found out about it around 2015, 2016 timeframe,
2016, 2017, more or less around that timeframe. And I only found out about it because one of my colleagues at that point in time,
he started talking about it.
And he was talking about it from the perspective, hey, these things, we're going to make money, you know,
and he's a bit of a gambler.
And he likes to put stuff in a gamble until all kinds of different things.
And that was his point of view, right? It was just a way to gamble.
And at that point in time was when I was working for an IT advisory company.
And, you know, a lot of the analysts at that point in time, when they were advising a lot of the leadership across, you know,
and there is different IT organizations, they kept saying that the innovation is in blockchain, not in Bitcoin.
So, blockchain, not Bitcoin.
Yeah. For many years, I've been talking about that.
And I didn't really know any better, but I kind of like, like the idea behind, you know, some of the, some of the aspects of Bitcoin.
I was also a scarcity decentralization, that kind of thing, but I didn't really understand how it worked at that point in time.
And 2020 came around and I started looking into it a lot more closely.
And even today, there's still a lot of questions around, what is it really for?
What are the, you know, it's use cases, what, you know, what, and on top of that, how does it even, how does it even really work?
Yeah. So, there's still a lot of that going on.
And I thought this may be a good way to help people get to those kinds of answers through this book.
Yeah, it's interesting. You know, people find their way into Bitcoin from, they found it through COVID, they find it through music, they find it through.
And the music, they find it because maybe they got into Ethereum and NFTs and they lost everything, you know, they lost everything and then they come over to Bitcoin.
You know, they get into it for scarcity, they get into it for sovereignty.
It's, it's really fascinating all the different angles that people can get into it from.
So, what started off the process of writing this book?
Right. Again, you know, so I've always had this feeling, every single other kid, you know, that there's something wrong.
Just everywhere, right? There's something, there's something not right. If you look at everything, you know, from education to all the way down to money.
Yeah, there's something wrong and there's something broken.
And I've always wanted to try to spend my time, my, whatever that I have, whatever that I can, to try to, to try to fix some of these things.
And, you know, how I got into writing this book is because I saw that at the end of the day, with all the issues that's going on in the world today, there's no point fixing any of them.
In my opinion, there's no point fixing any of them if we don't fix money.
Hey, man, it's a great point.
You know, it all boils down to that. And as, you know, the, as soon as we start, you know, as soon as we fix money, then we can start fixing everything else.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I would agree. When you think about how you wrote this book and, and I'm sure you read other books on Bitcoin.
What, what do you think your approach towards writing it in your background is different?
Like, what, what, what, what did you try to do in your book that is different from the other books that that are out there on Bitcoin?
Right. So, with some of the stuff that I've, I've seen of read elsewhere, then tend to be more focused on, okay, so what is the macro aspect of it?
What is the investment aspect of it? What is the monetary aspect of it? You know, they tend to go into, into, into those focus areas.
What is a technology aspect of it? How does it work from a technology standpoint?
And many of these different things, many of these different, different approaches can get quite technical within that particular silo.
So, what I try to do is, you know, it, with, with my experience in having conversations with people in leadership positions across various different companies and whatnot, they, they may be really, really good at understanding certain things.
But none of us are very good at understanding every single thing. This is not, not possible.
And, you know, when it comes to Bitcoin, it's, it's similar in a way because you go into the, the macro economic side of it.
You go into the monetary side of it. You go into the finance side of it. You go into the investment side of it.
You go into, looking at it from a, from an I.K. perspective, you know, how does it work from a network, networking perspective that's a database.
And it's, um, cryptography, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So it can get very complicated and it can get very technical, very, very fast.
So, what are the key insights that I can get from each one of those different areas that, that I need to be aware of?
So if I'm, if I'm a, if I'm heading on a company, if I'm a decision maker, whatnot, and I need to know what this thing is.
So that I can make better decisions so I can ask better questions.
What do I need to know?
Well, here you go. You read this book and this, this is a, you know, the ground floor on all those different aspects to get you up to speed so that you can start making better decisions on asking better questions.
Yeah. The, the book's been out now since October of last year, so three, four months.
And obviously adaptation is, is the main point is the theme trying to get more people in.
Have you found that there was a, that there was a secondary message to it that you hadn't even thought of like with, you know, with, with people who have read your book and come back to you with comments.
What, what are some of the things that they've said to you in a review that you're like, oh, I hadn't thought, I didn't think people would think of it that way.
I was just having a conversation yesterday with someone and, you know, who went through the book.
And he said, and I saw us and what, what do you think? And he said, this is really, really good because it covers all of the various different areas, right?
So it's, it's everything that, you know, the, the person I spoke with, you know, it's just, it's an average guy.
Just, you know, one of us and not a finance guy is not really an economist or, or, or, it's not really, it's not technologist or anything like that.
And he said it's, it's, it's really, really good because, you know, you, I cover all these different aspects and in a way that anyone can understand it.
And, you know, like, for example, so I broke up the book into three parts, right?
So the first part is to understand the fundamentals, which is what is money, what in the world is money, what is, what is it yesterday, what is it today?
And how, how could it, how it could potentially look like moving forward?
And in part two is where I cover the various different use cases from the key concepts of Bitcoin to looking at from a settlement perspective, remittances, protection of property rights, free speech, that kind of stuff.
And in part three is where I go into the, the mechanics, right? So how does it, how does it really work? And when it comes to the mechanics of, of, of Bitcoin,
you go through things like, like hash functions, right? So what in the world that had, you know, I was trying to have this conversation many, many years ago when I wasn't really looking into, into Bitcoin very, very closely.
And one of my, one of my friends, who around that time, we're all 2016 and 2015, he was already like big into into Bitcoin.
And he, and he gets it. And he tried to explain to me about, about hash functions and ledgers and whatnot. And just when I just started gluing over, I wonder what, what are you talking about?
Yeah.
You know, and, yeah, and if you want to understand, you know, from, it's how it works.
You know, one of the really get, you know, what is a transaction ledger and, you know, how does that, how does, how does hash functions fit into all these things as well.
And I tried to, in my book, what I try to do is, I try not to use any of the jargon. And I tried to explain it in the way that he gives people a,
Well the other thing that I really appreciated about the book is the poem is the children's poem
that you put in because I interviewed another author two weeks ago I don't know if you
heard that episode that was I think number five.
I was Boba here from Nashville and he actually put out a children's book explaining Bitcoin
to kids and my and I commended him on that because kids are a lot smarter than we give
them credit for.
They have a better understanding of language than we think they do and I really enjoyed
the poem that you put in that book for kids.
Thank you.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, that was a really great idea.
So tell me a little bit about the and let me just make one more point too.
I think that and I think you'll agree with it like one of the things I love about Bitcoin
is that if you are a super technical person you can dive into the hash and the blockchain
and the and all that stuff.
If you are if you are passionate about the economy but don't really understand the finite
numbers there's a space for you in Bitcoin.
If you are passionate about sustainability, about art, about helping people in other parts
of the world, about saw, I mean there's so many different things to study within Bitcoin
that are indicative of what your personal preferences are that it's fascinating.
That's one of the things that is fascinating to me about it.
I'm sure you've run into the same thing.
I completely agree.
I call it the great humbler.
It really opens up our eyes to see that we don't know everything.
We cannot know everything but with this thing we can start down the path of trying to understand
why certain things are the way they are.
How certain things work.
When you wrote this, tell me about your writing style because I think book writers are very
similar to songwriters in that regard.
Did you have a set schedule?
Did you say okay, every day I'm going to sit at four o'clock and I'm going to write for
three hours or was it like you would write for two days straight and then you'd take a
week off and write for three days and then take a week off.
How did you go about the process of it?
That's very interesting.
Pretty much finished writing roughly in six months.
I never thought I would ever write a book in my entire life.
That was pretty good.
I never really wanted things I set up to do for myself.
I never saw myself as an aspiring author or anything like that.
My interest has always been in looking at what is really wrong with civilization and how
do we fix it.
Being at a big point made me realize that the fundamental flaw in our civilization globally
right now is money.
I wanted to help people understand that and understand this piece of technology.
When I first started out, I shared a funny story in the book.
When I first started out, I put together the book.
I had to do something about it.
I met up with a next colleague of mine.
We got a special Valentine's Day show for you.
Then we got the music review coming up on Friday.
Then next week for the business hour.
I'm trying to line up a conversation with Sam Means from Wabelake and Open Mike.
Famous in the Noxter community.
I'm going to be with those boys down in Phoenix next week.
Hopefully we can have a quick little conversation with them and catch you guys all up to speed on what's up.
So that'll do it for us.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll see you soon or hear you soon.
We'll listen to you soon.
Take care.
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