Brian Forde_ Why Congress needs a crypto "truth teller

Brian Forde_ Why Congress needs a crypto "truth teller

He explained bitcoin to Barack Obama and ran one of the first election campaigns to highlight cryptocurrencies. He says Congress needs more people who understand science and technology.

If you're not familiar with Brian Forde, the current CEO of political fundraising platform Numero: He's the one who first explained bitcoin to President Barack Obama in 2014.

"I was working at the White House [as senior advisor for mobile and data innovation] and was asked to write the White House memo on Bitcoin," Forde explained. "We had to explain it in a scientific, technological and business way to understand what the real impact is. When people hear about cryptocurrencies, they immediately think 'foreign threat.'"

That was especially true in the early days of cryptocurrency, when the main associations with the burgeoning financial technology were illegal drug sales on Silk Road and massive hacks like that of early Bitcoin exchange Mt.Gox. The science-minded Forde had to acknowledge these realities while helping President Obama come to grips with the "opportunities" associated with trustless digital currencies.

This article is part of Road to Consensus, a series that features speakers and the big ideas they will discuss at Consensus 2022, the CoinDesk Festival of the Year, June 9-12 in Austin, Texas. Learn more.

After Forde's briefing, Obama saw Bitcoin "in a different light," Forde says. "He's a science and technology president, so he can grasp this more quickly than other heads of state."

As director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Digital Currency Initiative in 2015, Forde advised many other heads of state on cryptocurrencies and got in there from the ground up. From MIT, he ran for Congress in California's 45th district in 2018 on a technology-focused platform and raised about $300,000 of his campaign funds in cryptocurrency.

Learning the ins and outs of this process led to the creation of his current company, Numero, where he seeks to simplify the complicated campaign finance process for U.S. political candidates running from the local to federal level. According to him, at least 250 campaigns are currently using Numero's software.

Bringing both simplicity and cryptocurrency to the world of campaign finance is no small feat, according to Forde. "It's bigger than professional sports. Campaigns raise about $15 billion in a campaign season. ... The NFL does about $12 billion a season. The NBA takes in about $8 billion a season. Major League Baseball does $3.6 billion," he calculates. "So campaign contributions are four times larger than Major League Baseball."

Forde spoke with CoinDesk about his future plans for Numero (yes, they include an NFT platform), his experience teaching heads of state about Bitcoin, and why Congress needs a crypto "truth teller.

Of all the heads of state and government you've spoken to about bitcoin and blockchain, who has been the most receptive?

I won't name names because our conversations were private. But when I look at all the conversations I've had with political leaders, they are much more open-minded than you would think once they are enlightened. In some countries, the policy has actually changed from banning bitcoin outright to reversing it and not implementing it at all.

In talking to other leaders, I found that they didn't have the staff with technical backgrounds to explain [the digital currency] to them, as [Obama] did. Once it was explained to them, they saw the opportunity. They realized that this was the second coming of the Internet, and they could then make their own decisions.

What made you leave the White House and join the Digital Currency Initiative at MIT?

As I learned more about Bitcoin, I was just overwhelmed. For me, it was like being 12 or 13 years old and learning the technical basics of the Internet. For the first time since I was a little kid, it sparked my imagination.

When I got the offer to start the research lab at MIT, which I consider a relatively neutral place, it was a huge opportunity for me to make an impact - because if I worked for a company, when I talked to a world leader, they would assume I was biased, and they should. But if I go there from an academic institution, I can maintain the neutrality that was needed at that time, when governments were trying to create regulations that would not allow companies and people to profit from cryptocurrencies.

At that time, the Bitcoin Foundation, which funded the original core developers of Bitcoin, also went under. I had the opportunity to raise a million dollars and fund the salaries of the Bitcoin core developers. That was an important place to be. The director of the MIT Media Lab at the time felt that there needed to be more academic research on Bitcoin. There weren't really other academic institutions that were building a real research center - there were a few professors here and there, for example at Princeton and Cornell, who taught a course [on Bitcoin], but there was no real research center.

What made you transition from your work at MIT to running for Congress in California's 45th district?

It was a unique opportunity to run for Congress. There were people like Mark Zuckerberg who came before Congress, and members of Congress and the Senate who asked him how Facebook was funding itself. They had such a lack of understanding of technology and its business models. It's so important to have technologists at the policy table. I quickly realized that we don't have many scientists or technologists in Congress.

You needed someone like me who could explain to the other members of Congress what this [technology] is and what the real impact is, as opposed to fear, uncertainty and doubt. You need a truth teller there. And you also need to hold tech executives more accountable. I would argue that Congress is getting better at that, but it's not yet where it should be. If you look at how many people with science and technology backgrounds are in Congress, the number is almost zero.

When you ran for office, what was your strategy to showcase the role of cryptocurrency in your platform? How did you do that in a way that wouldn't necessarily scare off skeptics?

It's all about education. Mind you, this district is home to some of the best tech companies. It's one of the most educated districts in the country, with top universities. This district understands technology.

They understood that it wasn't about being pro-cryptocurrency. It was about using common sense to understand the impact of technology and sharing my stories about the impact you can have in the White House, for example. If you don't have a person like me in the White House, Barack Obama doesn't get a briefing on Bitcoin that explains the possibilities to him. He gets a briefing explaining the fear.

When you were running, how much did you raise in cryptocurrencies for your campaign?

In total, I raised about a million and a quarter to a million and a half [about $300,000 of that in cryptocurrency]. We revolutionized that process. No one had raised cryptocurrencies on a large scale before. When we did it, a lot of congressmen called me and asked, "How in the world did you do that? How did you do it technically? How did you make it SEC compliant?

What were the biggest hurdles in raising cryptocurrencies for your campaign at the time?

Honestly, the biggest hurdle was the Stripe API that we originally used. Not many people remember it, but Stripe used to allow you to take bitcoin. Their technology wasn't very good because it would display a QR code, then someone would try to make a donation, and because the price changed, Stripe wasn't able to adjust, and then the donation wasn't transferred.

Then we used Coinbase's API. That worked much better. Then when we wanted to help some other people who wanted to accept cryptocurrencies, Coinbase got rid of that API. Now Stripe is rolling out a full cryptocurrency team, but people forget that they had a cryptocurrency team, and they shut it down because they weren't very good at it.

Those are some of the challenges, but you really need to be able to raise a decent amount of money to make it worth your time. It's going to take additional time for your compliance team to look at [crypto donations] because it's something they haven't done before. It's going to take additional legal time and additional technical time. I usually tell candidates that if they can't raise at least $20,000 to $50,000 in cryptocurrencies, it's not worth it.

I keep hearing the argument that if you accept cryptocurrencies, you expand your donor base. That's hogwash. If you don't understand crypto politics, why would someone who donates in cryptocurrency donate to you?

How did your run for Congress influence the creation of Numero?

I had this idea in my head that campaign technology was a solved problem. We all saw Barack Obama use Facebook at a much more innocent time. He had all these young techies supporting his campaign.

Then I remember one of my first days opening our campaign, and [they] handed me this software that was my donor CRM. I said, 'What is this?' And [my staff] said, 'Honestly, the software was just updated, and we can't even use it.' I called the company and said, 'Look, my employees who are trained in your software don't even know how to use your software.' To be honest, I'm a pretty technical person, and I don't know how to use your software.' And they said, 'Well, you can pay us $1,000 and we'll teach you.' I said, 'Forget about this company. We're going to develop our own CRM.'

You said you've seen about five to 10 politicians use NFTs to raise funds for their campaigns. How do they do that? Do they hire people to write their smart contracts? Do they go to OpenSea?

It's very artisanal. Similar to what I did when I accepted crypto, where we built our own thing. [At Numero] we're building an NFT grassroots fundraising platform for donors who want to know more about their contributions. It's not just about campaigns accepting funds in innovative ways - it's about grassroots donors having the ability to give to a campaign in interesting ways.

When you donate to a campaign now, it's an incredibly lonely experience. You sit down alone at your phone or computer, enter your credit card information, and as a reward you probably get another 100 over-the-top emails asking for a donation. That's not an experience donors want. They want a thank you, and they want to be more involved in the campaign.

We're developing tools that allow you to say: There's this NFT, we're going to raise a total of $10,000. We can use that to air a new commercial. If you donate to it, you get this NFT, and get some of your friends to donate as well. It's more of a team sport than an individual sport. Then you can help raise the $10,000, and you get access to the ad before anyone else sees it. And you see it along with the candidate.

One quote in particular from a grassroots donor I spoke with stood out to me. He said, "Politics is my sport. I read up on the candidates like my friends read up on their fantasy football teams. The difference between his hobby and fantasy soccer, he said, is that the outcome of my sport changes the lives of hundreds of millions of Americans. Right now, the experience [of donating] is like playing fantasy football alone, not with a group of friends. We want to make giving more like playing fantasy football with friends. And the end result is democracy.