Sorry, good evening everyone, welcome to this crypto asset bubble session, which is developed in partnership with E-Tai Media Group. As the price of the Bitcoin sold by 13 fold in 2017 with extreme volatility, Bitcoin emerges from the underground world of nerves and criminals to become a mainstream investment today. And from today, there are close to 1,000 different crypto assets on the market, and also the combined market value of the cryptocurrencies surged to 540 billion. And the blockchain technology that underpins it has become impossible for the big financial institutions to ignore. So are these crypto assets finally coming into their own, or are they bubbles, fraud, Ponzi scheme index of money laundering, or is the seed of the next financial crisis, and maybe even worse? So recently, the central bank have entered the fray with several announcing that they are exploring or experimenting CBDC, which is central banking digital currency, with blockchain, and also other technologies. And because today, technology developers and investors and regulators and central bankers see crypto assets in different ways, and few people can ever be on the same page. So I have a very big ambition today for our session that I hope we can help chart the future path for Bitcoin, crypto assets, ICO, and blockchain technology all together. And you will be a little bit skeptical for me, but I do have this big ambition because we have a big and we have very good panel today. And so then we introduce them very briefly to my left, Mr. Nail Rimmer, and he is the general partner and co-founder of the index Ventures in Switzerland. And next to him, Jennifer Jules Scott, she is the principal of the red ink partners in Hong Kong, and also she is a young global leader. And next to her, Professor Robert Schiller, and everyone knows you. He is the Sterling Professor of Economics in Yale University in the United States. And the last but not least, Ceciline Skinsley. She is the deputy governor of the Swedish central bank, which name is Svidrigs risk bank. I'm not sure am I right or not. Yeah, in Sweden. Welcome so much. Thank you very much. And before we start the debate and dialogue, can I do a very quick poll? Just like I learned from Jenny yesterday. Are you pro or against Bitcoin? Pro? Can I be halfway? Can we do pause? You can, you can. And against? No? Okay. Well. And what about you?  And how many of you are against Bitcoin? Or only a few of you? Great. It's the starting point. We should see, we can do this again in an hour. Of course, yeah, right, exactly, exactly what I mean. Exactly, yeah. So my first question is for Professor Schiller. As a Nobel Prize laureate and also the world best economist on asset bubble and the behavioral finance. And you are among the first group of economists who blame Bitcoin as a big bubble there. And in your view, how do you assess the fundamental value of the Bitcoin? Do you think that the Bitcoin, ETH and the Ripples will replace a large fraction of the conventional money someday? Okay, maybe I can step back and put some historical perspective. Sure. There have been repeated proposals to change the currency. Very interesting proposal came in 1879 from Simon Newcomb, a famous astronomer who was reacting to the instability of the gold standard. And he proposed something called the compensated dollar, which is paper money backed by gold, but the gold content of the dollar is constantly changed by a monetary authority to keep the buying power absolutely constant. Need idea, it was talked about for a long time. Never, never happened, okay. Another need idea in Chile in 1967, they introduced a new unit of account called the Unidad de Fomento. Again, aiming at stability. This Unidad de Fomento is a daily interpolated Chilean consumer price index. There's a website, Unidad de Fomento.something. You can look at it. You can make payments now, it's an electronic system. And it had a good foundation. But the funny thing is it only spread geographically. Mexico has a Unidad de Inversión, there are other Latin American countries. So the spread of these ideas, although they're good ideas, seems to me to have like a geographical or epidemic nature to it. Bitcoin is another really clever idea. I'm impressed with the technology. And it is spreading in certain quarters. There are certain kinds of people who love this. But it doesn't, in my mind, it seems to me it's technology for something else. It's gone viral as a currency. And the blockchain is important, but it's not going to be stable. And so I think, you asked me whether I'm for it or against it. I am for the Unidad de Fomento. And I will argue that every country should adopt what Chile has invented. And maybe we don't do that because we're not in the habit of listening to Chile or we don't like the story or the sound of how it came about. But there are other ideas. And so I tend to think of Bitcoin as an experiment. It's an interesting experiment. It's not a permanent feature of our lives. We're overemphasizing Bitcoin. We should broaden it out to crypto, toward blockchain, which will have other applications. But in Chile's case, the underlining technology is different from the technology in Bitcoin, which is blockchain. It still is digital now. I mean, you end up using a website to... Okay. And it has real value. Let me say, in any other country in the world, there's inflation.  You pay a rent which is fixed during the year and change maybe once a year, or then there's a nuisance of changing it. And so that means that the real value of the rent you pay has a jagged and sawtooth pattern. Every year, it goes down until suddenly it goes up again.  Why do we still do it? In Chile, they've got it worked out. You do your rent in UFs, Unidad de Fomento. And it's absolutely stable. Why aren't we imitating that? Okay. Then you have an answer to my question. Do you think that down the road, the Bitcoin will occupy the more and more share of the payment and the money share we have today? And also, Governor, maybe you want to answer this question, too. Well, yeah, I don't think it's big on payments. You agree on that. I think to define Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency. In first place, do you think it's a currency or it's not a currency? I think it's a very lousy currency. I don't think it's a payment. It's a very lousy payment. I don't think Bitcoin is disrupting currency or money. Bitcoin is disrupting gold. If you think about what gold and reserve is doing today, Bitcoin can do that and do that better. And I couldn't help. So you mean it's an asset instead of a currency? But Governor, do you agree with Professor Shiloh? I want to represent the conventional issuers of money, which is central banking. Money, if you think about it, I'm not going to go. I'll do a little bit of history as well. So money is a social convention that mankind has come up with to facilitate store of value and facilitate medium of exchange. Otherwise, we would go into barter trading, and that's horribly inefficient. And also, you need to account. And we have moved from gold to in Sweden. We were poor, so we used copper. And we have evolved into paper notes. And now we have the greater part of conventional money, fiat money, is actually produced by the commercial banks. But it starts with a central bank version of money. But in order for money to be defined as good money, efficient money, it has to be a store of value that is pretty stable, at least in consumption. Consumers, from a consumer's stable consumer perspective. So inflation, it must have price stability. And it has to be enough people are prepared to accept that version of money in a country or in a currency union, et cetera. So in my view, cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and the others, the way I've seen them so far, they don't meet the criteria for be called money. They can be called an asset, fine. But they are not a very good version of money because it's not a very stable store of value. They fluctuate a lot. And it's not a very efficient medium of exchange because you don't buy your groceries with Bitcoin or you don't get your salaries in Bitcoin. And you can certainly not pay your taxes in Bitcoin. There, you still have to use the conventional versions of money. But Japan government defined Bitcoin as a currency. I've heard about that, too. But you still as a taxpayer in Japan have to pay your taxes in yen. And that is the critical factor that creates the great externality effects that makes money efficient in an economy. Yeah. So Jennifer, I'm sorry to intercut you. And do you agree with the professor and do you agree with the governor, please? I disagree. Which part? First of all, I pick up what professor said there are certain type of people pick up Bitcoin. I can be more specific what type of people. The type of people who are a little bit rebel. The type of people who think why for, in fact, I'll talk about history. The first central bank was created in Sweden in 1668. And for 350 years, we have central banks have unchallenged the authority to issue money. And you earn that money. And the money is inflationary. Bitcoin is deflationary. Bitcoin is completely mathematical. Deflation is a problem, same, similar with the gold. So we abandon the gold standard. So if you use currency, I might agree. But if you use Bitcoin as store value, why would I earn my hard-earned money through my hard work? And next year, we'll worth less. That's what happened with the fiat currency. But with Bitcoin, there are only totally in the world there will ever be 21 million Bitcoins. So the value to create more money has to be deflationary. So as a store value, I think Bitcoin is a very, very efficient. And either people like you or not, it's not going to go away. But what if there's a collapse of the price of the Bitcoin of some time, maybe this year or next year? Doesn't matter. What do we about the storage of the value if you want to keep the value? But maybe, yeah, please. I mean, currencies have collapsed many times. Many times, right. Because of the back, right? And just so, I mean. But maybe not Bitcoin, maybe another currency because the latest news that some kind of rating agency, just rating the Bitcoin and some other cryptocurrencies and their conclusion is that the Bitcoin is not a good one. But still, the price is very, very high. I would argue that, and first of all, I'm very uncomfortable disagreeing about price winning economists on anything. You can feel free to overrule anything I'll say. But what I would say is that the reason I'm for this is that I'm an investor in technology and innovation. And I think this is one of the most audacious, generous, and profound inventions that we've witnessed. That certainly I've witnessed in my career. And it does have the ability to help many, many people. But we're nine years into this experiment. And the experiment has gone well at times. And more poorly, right now it looks like it's working. But it has by no means succeeded. And it could fail completely and go to zero and lose people's confidence. But it has accomplished a number of things that I think are remarkable. It's completely trustworthy with no central authority or entity controlling it, a distributed ledger. It's a strength or a problem. Think about the security issue. Think about the hack issue. Right. So it can't solve all problems. I think the problem it really is trying to solve is being exposed to currencies that are moved around at the whim of governments who may or may not know what they're doing or may or may not have your interests at heart. The people I know when you talk about people who own Bitcoin are some very, very, I know some very, very smart, educated, rational people who grew up in Argentina and witnessed their parents going to the supermarket with shopping bags full of currency and spending it all in one day because they're worried that the next day it would be worth less. For them, they don't have a lot of faith in the Argentinian government's ability to defend their currency, maintain its value. And they also like the idea of it being transportable. So when you talk about somebody using an unidad fermento, what happens if they cross the border? What about refugees? What about people in Iran or in camps in Turkey? So it's a very convenient reassuring way of storing value. Sure, it's super volatile. It's actually quite inconvenient to use. And there have been many issues with it, related not so much to Bitcoin, but to the exchanges and to the wallets that you have to use, which are kind of hacked together and not particularly convenient. So it's still a hobbyist thing. But as I say, we're only nine years into this thing, and it's still trusted. And it's still doing what it set out to do, which I find really remarkable. Yeah, I think a nail and the Geneva raise a very important point is that the authority and money authority, some monetary authority or all money authorities on this world, is not that trustworthy because they issue too much money. Governor, do you agree with them? So I can't talk for all the central banks of the world through all through history. I think there is a point there that in countries, I mean, money is a trust.   And that hurts people. And mankind, as I said before, has been struggling with this for thousands of years. You have agreed about gold. You had an intrinsic value. We fell apart with inflation. You could always melt it down and start over again. And then for the last 300, 400 years, we have used more and more of paper notes. And then we have gone into the digital banking system. And I understand there are countries where you don't trust the public authorities. And you see this as an alternative. I think it's a very poor alternative, to be honest, given that it's too volatile to be used as money. I have no problems if people want to invest in it and use it as an asset. I mean, you can use anything that other people agree has a value, you can do that. But if you're talking of money in a efficient economy over time, it's much better if you have a trustworthy authority that issues enough money, not too little and not too much. And the way it works now in most central banks, and there are exceptions, I agree, is that we don't connect the money, amount of money we issue and the price we put it to gold. But we have something else. We have the law. The law is the gold of modern central banking. And the laws in most countries now say, you should give out money and put the price on money over the interest rate to the extent that you cause price stability, which is roughly one to 3%, because you have to allow for relative price changes. That's how it works. And it has worked tremendously well in most countries. But if you get it wrong, you get it wrong. But you also got it wrong. You will get it wrong in the cryptocurrency world as well if there are too much of us interest holding this versus how much will be issued. So that is the challenge we all have to face when we are in the money business. I think at this stage we have some consensus that the Bitcoin is more asset instead of a currency. But if it is good asset, shall we regulate it? Professor Schiller. I was impressed when I visited Lithuania recently, small talk that I had there with some Bitcoin enthusiasts. Someone said in early 1940s, Lithuania was annexed by the Soviet Union. And they said, do you know what happened to you? If you owned a house and you had a portfolio of investments in Lithuania, well, they probably took it. They defined you as a capitalist tool or something and they took it. Not only that, but they sent you to Siberia as well. If you had had Bitcoin back then, they couldn't have taken it. That led me to stop and think, really, you know, I don't trust foreign governments taking over but those things have actually happened in recent history. On the other hand, I think you would have probably lost your Bitcoin too, right? If all those things happened, you would lose your computer and it would be gone. So maybe the whole premise. I don't have the full story of what we're... No, I think you wouldn't lose it. If you keep your private key as long as you can access to internet, you can always access it. Yeah, you have to memorize it then? You can memorize your private key. You can memorize your... Does anybody do that? Of course. And people put their private key into a safe. A lot of people now, they use a hardware wallet to keep their crypto assets and to keep their private key into a safe. And I think in future, a lot of private banks, one of the services they can provide to their clients is to keep the private key of their digital assets. And I think in terms of... We keep referring back to Bitcoin as currency or asset. It reminds me, perhaps this conversation 10 years down the road will sound a little bit like when we say, my space doesn't really work, therefore internet probably won't work, right? So I think this is... So now we have WeChat. Now we have WeChat. Because we have to realize this is an infancy stage of a potentially multi-decade project. And technology right now is not perfect. I don't argue for a second that crypto assets right now are all perfect. But you're asking where Bitcoin price is going to be. To me, I have... Hold on, please. I will ask you later on. I don't want to go back to regulation. No, I want you... Yes, I will give you my two cents on that. But the point I was trying to make is that pricing of Bitcoin, since the first time I read Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper, I realized pricing of Bitcoin... Have you met him? I wish. I was joking this morning. I think President Trump tomorrow probably going to announce that he's Satoshi. Quite popular. Is he that smart? He's the smartest guy in the world. Maybe in a different way. So back to my point, I think we overemphasize Bitcoin's pricing. I think that's really misleading. Because the fact that people keep talking about Bitcoin that is below 10,000, it's a disaster, or above 10,000, it's crazy. I actually think the fact that Bitcoin is still alive, still attracts so much attention. The fact that we're talking about Bitcoin in doubles with a Nobel Prize winner, a central bank governor, and seasoned investors. I think it's very good. But in your mind... It means it's a powerful idea. Right. Which is your favorite cryptocurrency? Bitcoin, ETH, or Ripple? I have them all. I don't have Ripple. I have them all. Why don't you have Ripple? Because the price is so low? No. I think one of the spirits of people who came into this space and the very early on, that they knew we exchanged a little bit about this is decentralization. Satoshi invented the Bitcoin protocol in that ashes of 2008 financial crisis when everybody lost their faith in central bank. And so he created this decentralized peer-to-peer payment. He really intended to be a payment system. He invented this peer-to-peer payment system really is to establish some peer-to-peer economy with no intervention of central bank. By the way, do you mean that... Do you hint that the bitcoins can self-regulate themselves? There's no need of the regulation at all? Okay. This is a very good question. We keep comparing Bitcoin with U.S. dollar. Let me say this. Behind Bitcoin, there's no Bitcoin central bank. There's no Bitcoin Inc. CEO overpaid and when it's crashed and ask taxpayers money to bail it out, Bitcoin behind it... There's no centralized institution behind Bitcoin, you know, borrow 200 billion debt. You're right. So just in short, is more trust or less trust in the lack of the central bank? I must protest here. You're saying that people don't trust central banks anymore. Let me get you an example of how at least they trust the central bank and the money in Sweden. The number of transactions in Bitcoin is one-thirtieth of the number of transactions done by cards which is a proxy for central bank money through the banking system in Sweden. So it can be an asset. I think we can agree on that. I also think we can agree on that the technology is promising but it is not a very well-spread payment method. So a lot of people, most people and most transactions in the world are still done with conventional currencies issued by central banks. What about regulation? I understand that there are people who have different views but we still have a very competitive product. Can I comment on regulation? So I actually do think it needs to be regulated because I think anything that I would want to become mainstream needs to be regulated. It needs to exist in society and can't be this huge overhang over it that promises to change everything because the regulator decides this is no longer cool. So even, you know, and by the way, this is the same story of any fintech innovation and the best ones have always done things that were a little bit beyond the boundaries of the current regulatory framework but they've done it in a responsible way and they've actually gone and asked the regulator to take a look at what they're doing. The UK, for instance, was I think admirable in creating this sandbox to allow them to play and do limited damage if things don't work assuming that they were trying to do something of value. So basically I think that there will be object lessons and I do think this is kind of one of the things I worry about and actually referring to one of the talks I saw you give Professor about narratives. I do believe a government will probably come down very hard on a cryptocurrency and make it a lesson and what I would love to see is for there to be a role model where somebody actually takes an application and works with a government and does something that corresponds to a certain regulatory framework but this can only be done in one country at a time. Nobody can regulate all of Bitcoin you can regulate the use of Bitcoin in your group of countries. Which country in your mind? I think the most forward-thinking countries should probably do this. England? Perhaps. No. Perhaps Sweden. Then back to regulation. You are very right that we need to regulate the thing that becomes a mainstream investment target but at the same time the question is the sandbox will not solve the problem. You are going to regulate the Bitcoin ICOs and how to regulate the ICOs and Bitcoins? There are already regulations in place here some of them. If you see it as an asset which most countries do there is investor protection consumer protection legislation there has been some authorities clamping down on platforms and if you use it for illegal transactions if you are involved in drug dealing anti-money laundering financing terrorists you will be hunted by the authorities independent of if you pay in dollars or in Bitcoins or in cupcakes or whatever you use. The problem is that you cannot regulate Bitcoin today in terms of the money laundering but it is the activity that is going to be clamped on independent of which currency you use. I think the regulation in the past few months even is more and more clear so you can apart from China China had a hard stop in terms of Do you think China made a mistake? I think for China where China is right now China needs to give a hard stop in terms of ICOs but over a longer term we keep hearing that PBOC has been contemplating issuing state issued a hard cryptocurrency so I can see why... You mean the central bank you mean the central banking digital currency Yes. With that I think it is actually very valuable for PBOC you can have perfect capital control you can have perfect tax system to collect the tax but back to the point to governor central bank people don't trust the central bank completely anymore but what I find very very valuable the gift from Satoshi to the world is to for many many years we just assume that money should come from central bank but because of Bitcoin because of cryptocurrency it really provoked a lot of people start to think what is money where money should come from how much our money should be I think that kind of debate is healthy Very good and also very quick question for Jennifer do you have trust in monetary authority in Hong Kong I do I use currency every day but I also want part of my portfolio I want some of my assets has zero correlation to central bank policy and which is cryptocurrency is providing right now Investment portfolio kind of thinking diversification but also I think in terms of tokens right now you can issue security token or utility token utility token pretty much apart from China's hard stop but pretty much every country self-regulate if you issue security token pretty much every country will either have existing security laws to govern your security token or their central bank has issued very clear indication in terms of how you regulate security token Professor please I was recently involved in discussion with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange about creating a futures market and regulators had to approve the futures market in Bitcoin and I think that was only last month that that happened I initially opposed the idea I'm not quite to your level of enthusiasm I think the media maybe means to represent you a little bit yeah sometimes that happens but the thing is that what struck me about this is that while you it was possible to short Bitcoin via some of the exchanges it has been difficult to short and financial theory says if something is not shortable then it can be taken over by enthusiasts and the doubters no longer have an adequate way of betting against it so we've just seen both the SIBO and the CME have both created futures markets for Bitcoin and that might make it more stable now in fact when people ask me should I invest in Bitcoin I have a follow up question long or short what are you thinking of and I can't I can't really what's your view long or short at this moment hold I would say long but not more than you can afford to lose completely because it's an experiment and we want the experiment to succeed but one sure way of making it fail is if too many people lose their life savings then it will go to zero because they'll sell they'll sell the rest and also hold for your hold but at the same time also think let's be honest right now there are about more than a thousand cryptocurrencies in the market right now I would say 1995 perhaps even a higher number of those cryptocurrencies would not be around in three years time because a lot of those companies took these window opportunities issue their token with a very simple business idea and put into a white paper so essentially they are using seed stage VC, angel stage business proposal to seek IPO level of fund raising and I think that's not going to end well another thing is I have to give some feedback to media I think media right now are the media right now overly focus on the pricing and not paying actually we are not you mentioned the central bank digital currency we have just published an article from the deputy governor of the PBOC and he declared the thinking, the forward thinking of the CBDC plan in China by the PBOC and you talk about the blockchain technology but according to the plan from the PBOC they said that maybe we are not going to use the blockchain as the as the technology for the CBDC in their plan so governor you also have a corona plan so what kind of technology are you going to utilize it has a different completely starting point the research project we run at the Riksbank and the starting point we have is that technologically and legally it becomes very easy in Sweden to live completely cashless and there is no legal obligation for banks or for shops to take notes and coins and it's very easy to use cards and instant payment apps so we see a rapid decrease in the value of circulation in notes and coins and as a central bank we are sort of neutral about this we think that people should be able to use the payment methods that they find safe and efficient as long as they are safe and efficient however going from a non cash society into a potential non cash society where notes and coins are no longer useful as a store of value well it can still be a store of value but not as a medium of exchange is a new society and it opens up a number of intricate questions such as can we still say as a central bank that we provide a safe and efficient payment system is it accessible for everybody because in reality it means that everybody has to be a part of the commercial banking system and not everybody wants to be a part of the commercial banking system or not even allowed into it so that is the starting point we have to look at the consequences of a cashless society is it still safe and efficient if we go in there and if we find that there is a need for a public sector digital version we are looking into what sort of features that would have and that is what we call potentially an e-crona and it's far away into the future it's not something that we are doing near and no we don't know if we're going to use blockchain or any other technology but it would be work as a one to one exchange rate versus the corona that we have which is the national currency and it would potentially work as a complement to the notes and coins that we provide so that people also in the future will be able to choose whether they want to have a claim on the commercial bank having the deposits there or if they want to have a claim on the central bank they can have it now with the notes but potentially they can also have it in the future Governor, very quickly, do you think the CBDC in Sweden will be M1 M2 or M0? I'm sorry, too academic? That's a good question so that would be a digital version of cash so the answer is it would be M0 the nearest version and also do you think it should be retailing or wholesaling means shall we need banking sector or we don't need them anymore so the reason for why we started this project was that we see that individuals are stop using cash or the banks and shops stop accepting and offer cash services so we if there is a need it would be offered to individuals primarily I see then will it be anonymous or not? So that is one of the other questions where the staff is looking into my personal view is that it's perhaps not the core business of the public sector to facilitate illegal transactions so at the end of the day it would probably be necessary for be able to look into transactions in an e-crona for criminal investigation reasons but it's a political issue and we leave that to the legislators to look into it potentially so how will we see the CBDC in Sweden? I don't know it's a long way to go but we have to do the homework since cash is going out of fashion very quickly Jennifer your view on the CBDC I think in fact I don't think completely outside of central bank system a very efficient payment system will really exist because I don't think any country any Soviet country any central bank will allow there's another alternative currency completely outside of central bank's oversight however I do think that we haven't mentioned the term token economy we focus on if cryptocurrencies is going to replace money or not or if it's a store of value or not however I think if you look a little bit beyond of the manic you mean the technology? I think the technology now creates this very effective very efficient micro-incentive system that will potentially disrupt venture capital we are in fact disrupting ourselves and potentially will disrupt IPO market I have been investing FinTech for a number of years and over the years I have seen many companies that always building on the same system just incrementally make it a little bit more efficient a little bit more transparent but with blockchain the underlying technology let me ask you a very specific question do you think the blockchain technology can replace the RTJS system in the banking sector we are using today I think the scalability is not there yet but over time give it time how long? it's hard to say that the acceleration is happening very fast so I think the breakthrough could happen any time so a couple of things to comment on I mean the first is tokens and their use in delivering other functions than just transactions or store of value which is the primary function of the Bitcoin blockchain I do think that's interesting and so if you think of notaries or title insurance things that require some sort of a stamp and a lot of bureaucracy it's possible to it's quite conceivable to think of a blockchain with a token that's used to verify those transactions and to store them forever in an inviolable way but that's still I think it's a bit easy to say that the blockchain will generate lots of things and we're not so sure about Bitcoin the truth is you do need one with the other because you need this way of giving people incentives to do all the work to verify this distributed database I mean two people running two computers is not as trustworthy as thousands of people doing this so I think you can't sort of buy into it but not completely buy into it you do have to buy into the idea that these things will be valuable now what does that do to venture capital and our business of investing in the equity of startups and helping them grow their business I think that as it's been pointed out there's a lot of volatility and there's a gold rush and lots of people just think why wouldn't I buy Bitcoin that clearly cannot last and that will not last and so that's attracted lots of people into the market and lots of I think unethical offerings of tokens and those things will hopefully be regulated out of business or just shut down on the other hand I don't think that every business can fund itself by monetizing some unit of exchange in their future business by selling tokens and not by selling equity you know if you think of something like Kickstarter I think of Kickstarter as kind of a proto ICO in the sense that you know Kickstarter the site where you can show some product and sell it you make a nice video that describes a product hopefully something that you will actually make and people will give you orders actually give you the money buy it beforehand without selling equity so before we open the floor let me ask now and Jennifer very quickly one question about ICO why China government shut down all the Bitcoin exchanges and all the ICO because according to one survey in China 90% of the ICO scheme is the cheating scheme and cheating case so that's the reason why the China government moves very quickly to stop everything but how is the situation in other places in your view ICOs I don't think China has a monopoly on that I think there are a lot of people who are taking advantage of of this gold rush and the fact that and the people are not doing their homework and just buying things without without asking themselves what's going on but that doesn't necessarily mean that the whole thing will come crashing down Jennifer I think you know first of all you don't need ICO to tokenize tokenization doesn't really require ICO I think it's a marketing process secondly I think there's a ripple effect in terms of central banks action and the regulators action because in the past probably seven or eight months I have spoken to governments from Oman to Switzerland last week I just met Switzerland's federal council who's in charge of the economy and after the meeting with a group of us he actually announced that he wants to make Switzerland a crypto nation and you know in Asia, Cambodia, Bangladesh etc a lot of smaller economy now they started to think if we just make our regulation a little bit more crypto friendly perhaps we can attract a lot of capital and a lot of talent and either you like it or not I think we are really at the cusp of something quite extraordinary happening in terms of monetary reset in the history every time there was a big disruptive technology taking over what followed with that is always a monetary reset from real way to internet but now with the information technology we've already at the end of probably 25 years if you think about how seamless everything else using technology and then you think about our financial system there's a mismatch so who's there to say things are not going to be completely different and I think in the 90s when people talking early investors going to internet they always say intranet will probably take off but internet can't imagine people sometimes we need bubbles to nurture the new technology it strikes me that what bothers me about bitcoin is that the enthusiasm I see is like a speculative bubble it's about somebody made a lot of money I wish I could get in on that too and it looks selfish to me there are other financial innovations that are exciting that I don't hear all to me they're exciting for example the benefit corporation is an idea that's spreading it's a kind of corporation which is halfway between for profit and non-profit it's a for profit corporation that has in its charter a public purpose so here we're living in a world where we're getting rising inequality we're getting nationalist separation of and bitcoin seems to fit in too much with that I wish people were less enthusiastic about making money I know it's not you must have consensus that technology should do the good for the whole human being it's too philosophical so it's time for us to open the floor for questions collect all the questions we collect all the questions and we will ask panelists to answer them together please identify who you are and please be very brief so for example you issue a crypto crown and it will mean that people will be able to keep these crowns at their own wallets so the need for custodianship like what the banks are doing will diminish it means that a lot of cash will go out of the banking system which they will not be able to use so what macro effect do you think it will have on the whole banking system and how will it change it very good questions and please we collect all the questions thank you great discussion I'm a journalist but I'm asking an interested individual you said crypto nation I like that I'm going to scratch tomorrow with a failed state or some country X would you make it a crypto nation good question which panelist do you want them to respond to you okay great we collect all the questions please yeah thank you I'm from CIC China Investment Corporation and a question to professor since the professor you have a CICI speech a few months ago and it was focused more on behaviour I was very curious you haven't touched on it maybe take the chance from your behaviour perspective to comment on this because of limited time please be brave thank you hi I'm a journalist from Holland one issue that has not been discussed is bitcoins energy use which seems to be hanging over as a dark cloud rising up to levels of maybe entire countries I'm especially interested in the Bitcoin fans perspective on that Li Wei I want to build on professor you have no time to build you only have time to ask for yourself if Bitcoin enthusiasts view this as an asset it's okay nowadays inequality the need to do money laundry and people's distrust of the government everyone will just pile in say China crack this down these people will go to South Korea or Japan and then when there is if central bank do not act there is an eventual crack kind of fall and then all the people Korean have go on the street to protest so I'm just wondering this is not a steady state so the central bank have to go in before this become a systematic risk you mean the CBDC or the regulation regulation the CBDC can help do you have questions comment good very good thank you so just challenge the view of the okay and Aileen thank you with ita media group my question of form is governor is that do you think it is possible or necessary or feasible for us to do some global coordination regulating Bitcoin or the crypto asset I'm very sure another question is that do you think a nest financial crisis may be caused by crypto asset because a lot of investment bank like Goldman Sachs are now testing waters to provide brokerage service in terms of Bitcoin features thank you very good questions and I see there is a hence from the gentleman the lady please thank you my name is Jennifer this question is actually for Neil we talked a lot about Bitcoin but we didn't get a chance to talk about other cryptocurrencies and as you know a lot of startups are now raising money and it's disrupting your venture capital model so I'm curious to hear whether or not you're going to start investing into into the ICOs how do you feel about that and what is your strategy going forward yeah the lady here please yeah you hi I'm a crypto newbie but one of the things my understanding is is that the technology protocol behind Bitcoin isn't particularly scalable and so if the underlying protocol isn't scalable how do you expect it to sort of do something like become gold or you know replace the reserve currency yeah very good question and the final one yeah final two from the gentleman there hi I'm from Geneva and cousin I was just wondering the Bitcoin is based on what value how is it just the demand that makes the price of the Bitcoin what is the value how do you scale the value of the Bitcoin okay thank you the final one Jeremy Warner another journalist it's not part of the problem with Bitcoin as a currency that it can't expand beyond a certain point and therefore it can't really accelerate economic growth properly and a bit like when currencies were linked to the gold standard it would then become a I think we have solved that problem you arrive late I guess anyway anyway I think we have a 8 or 9 question so every one of you you can pick the questions you like and comment on that maybe now from you okay so I'll comment first on the crypto nation if you're a failed state you know I don't see why you could actually do so I don't think you'd print paper currency you might do a central bank controlled digital currency or you could do something that was distributed in terms of control and you might attract a lot of business and and citizens so I would definitely try that the other comment the other one I wanted to comment on was the question about whether this disrupts the venture capital model I don't think it does as dramatically as you might think I think that there are still and I think there will be for quite a while entrepreneurs who want to sell equity and work with with somebody who's aligned with them in the same security to build a company and to share the gain that doesn't mean you might not at some point issue tokens but it doesn't mean that they'll use them as their primary way of raising capital on the other hand there are some ICOs that we think could make sense and we are looking at those carefully and also technology the scalability issue so I mean the that kind of reminds me of what people used to say about the internet and about the early days of ethernet or TCP IP that it will never scale I think we'll get there I think that these things entrepreneurs are very resourceful engineers are very resourceful and it will scale or we will come up with versions of it that will scale better but you're right it's not particularly fast it's not particularly cheap and it consumes a lot of energy I'll try to use one sentence to answer every question crypto nation definitely because of trust leap we didn't use to trust a paper note but now we trust paper note now we are a lot of next generation are digital natives so why would we still go back to build paper money in terms of energy use I totally agree I think bitcoin is not efficient at all but again depends on what you benchmark against right if bitcoin is disrupting gold compared to gold mining and gold security and gold security and transportation bitcoin is not that bad in terms of money laundry let me answer this question with a question before bitcoin what did we use for money laundry so bitcoin is just a tool it's not the reason there's money laundry in terms of global coordination of regulation I'll leave to the governor to have final say but I think from my own experience I think each government each central bank has its own priority it will be very hard to achieve global coordination in terms of scalability versus being a very effective store value scalability is measured by number of transaction per minute so if you use bitcoin as payment the number of transaction per minute matters right if you look at visa master but if you use a store value you're not going to trading every all the time so because it's disrupting gold so it's not currency in terms of bitcoin the value I think a lot of people argue that there's no underlying value but if bitcoin can replace even 5% or 10% as a store value compared to the global gold reserve you can do the math that bitcoin right now it's still very undervalued so it's adjusted from a belief the value is from people's belief gold prices based on how we consistently Professor you have more someone asked for a behavioral finance perspective so I come back to the idea that bitcoin is an interesting idea but it's way over represented in our attention because it's like a speculative bubble that it involves contagious stories about people making a lot of money and that you don't like this but let me go it's not about money there are other innovation there are other things to think about I will arrange another event for you to debate for the whole day on that but before that Professor would you like to answer the question from will bitcoin nurture next financial crisis but that's the thing about central banks have been perfecting their art for how many years since 350 Swedish case and I congratulate you they now think that they have a target inflation rate and they're pretty much hitting the target bitcoin you said will be deflationary maybe massively deflationary I don't think you have a good feeling about what that will mean for the economy it seems like it will be very disruptive to the economy we've got a good thing going with you people we do our best over to me then and the question regulating globally or nationally I think it's mainly taking care of it is taking care of on a national basis through investment protector legislation, anti-money laundering protection etc globally it remains to be seen whether it's going to be regulated or not is it a source of new financial crisis this is I may have to regret this for the rest of my life but I think no I don't think this as we can see it now to be a source of the next financial crisis because the sizes and the level of leverage is probably and it's not within the banking system as we can see it so so that probability is pretty low the consequences from a macroeconomic perspective of keeping central bank editor currency in the wallet next to your notes and coins next to your debit card where you keep your commercial bank money it's a very difficult question there are different research going into different directions they open up a variety of trick issues let me just finalize by saying that safe and efficient versions of money that are being offered in ways that society needs in order to facilitate transactions in a safe and efficient way that is very beneficial for the economy I'll stop there I think we have run out of time but I would like to take the privilege to ask you very quickly to final questions the first one is that in one year's time how would you predict the average price level of the bitcoin and the second in ten years time do you think which currency will become the next great global currency central banking digital currency of the dollar CBDC of the euro CBDC of the R&B or bitcoin the first as a decision maker in interest rates I had to make a number of forecasts luckily bitcoin is not one of them that affects my world as a decision maker so I will not give you any forecast of what bitcoin will be on the question of in ten years time which currency will become the next big global currency I don't think it will be bitcoin in terms of sizes and in terms of how well is this sort of used in the economy and I think it remains truly a very open question whether any central bank have issued a digital version of their own currency addressed to individuals it's a very open question but a lot of us including the ricksbank are looking into it Professor I'm glad you set the example for not answering your question I've discovered that when I give flippant forecasts they get quoted okay then the global currency in ten years time okay maybe I can guess this it's not as dangerous I'll say the euro euro, CBD is a euro okay, Jennifer back to you I don't like the point about it's about money it's okay Jennifer we still have time I want to say this I actually don't care about where bitcoin's price is going to be the fact that bitcoin has been survived for so long it means it's a very powerful idea I really don't care where it's going to be I will hold not really primarily for the profit I will hold for the idea for the belief I think secondly I think for the belief and also for the idea that could inspire a lot of different possibilities and imaginations in our new monetary system in ten years time I still think that I don't think cryptocurrency completely outside of the central bank system will really flourish in the global is it bitcoin or anything else no I think it potentially could be Chinese central bank issued national cryptocurrency that mobilized the trade and built the world so none of them answered the question but I have to I'm happy to I'll take the heat for the forecast I would say that I think very briefly I don't know 25,000 a year from now please don't write it down but I would also agree that as long as it's alive and higher than it is today I think it's a success I don't care if it's but to your other question I think it will be a digital currency and your bet is as good as mine nobody said the dollar so why don't we say the digital dollar thank you so much final poll for you how many of you are against bitcoin now fewer how many of you pro bitcoin now also fewer very strange thank you so much for joining us thank you so much for our work


How do I know how the chocolate shape because they have cameras they have devices that can actually measure the magnetic field from your heart and from your chocolate points and they're actually shaped like this. So, not only is it outside externally inside of our own bodies we have this shape that's occurring naturally. So why not use a shape that interfaces and communicates in the most efficient way instead of using these. You know, there's some of these really high powered PMF devices and it costs like 15 to $30,000. But what they're doing is just wasting energy wasting money because it's not efficient. Why not. So what we have we have these and these actually do better we have lots of doctors chiropractors positions, say they have the machines they have the expensive ones, and they have ours and say well actually we're getting better results with this with a lot less energy and it costs a lot less. And once again, there's the main one of the main reasons is because of the shape of the energy field that we're creating. But another reason is because we're using frequencies that are more advanced than whatever anybody else is doing.


OK. Can you hear me? Welcome. So for so, let me start saying that I've been a student at this school various times. So for me it's a great pleasure and great honor to be able now to contribute to this school. I will talk about some recent developments in our understanding of gauge theories with matter in three dimensions, two plus one dimensions, so two space in one time. And, well, of course, we live in three plus one dimensions, at least these are the dimensions that we have observed so far, but nevertheless it turns out, at least it seems, that gauge theories in three dimensions are relevant for our world. Just to give you an example, there are materials known as topological insulators, and if you look at the behavior at the surfaces of these materials, or more generally at interfaces between different topological insulators, there are some massless or gapless modes that propagate, and in certain cases these modes are described by three-dimensional gauge theories with matter. Another example is lowest land level at half filling fraction. This is a system that can be realized, for instance, if you take a thin film of material and you immerse it in a magnetic field, and once again defective physics can be described, it seems, by three-dimensional gauge theories. So, this fact for us will be just some motivations, so I will not talk about condensed matter physics, neither I will talk how these gauge theories can be obtained, nor what is the condensed matter phenomenology of these theories, our interest will be purely theoretical. So one of the main tools that I will try to develop in these lectures is the tool of infrared dualities, and this word is in the title. So, what do I mean by that? Well, I mean that we have two theories, theory B, it could be more than two, let's say there are two. These are two different theories with a different physics, different Lagrangian, however, if you look at the behavior of these theories at long distances, for instance, a correlation function at long distances, that means at low energies, so let me draw this arrow, by which I mean the RG flow, then they present the same physics. Yes, in fact, a special case of this could be that you have some theory, which is A, and you ask, what is the infrared physics, and maybe the infrared physics is weekly coupled, and then you write down some theory B, and then you say that this is the effective description of theory A, if this is weekly coupled, but more generally you are in this situation, in which maybe you don't have a weekly couple description, and yes, this precisely expresses the fact that they are in the same universality class. Now, of course, this infrared duality is particularly useful, or nice, is this infrared physics, is some non-trivial CFT, because then this equality of these two theories, which is not really an equality, because in the UV these theories are different, and then becomes, we can go lower energies, and this equality becomes more and more accurate. Now, we will not be able to prove this duality, so we will conjecture this duality, and we will do some number of checks, you will tell me probably if you want, one will have to run lattice Monte Carlo simulation to check these dualities, but what we will see is that if these dualities are correct, then there is a number of very interesting physical implications that one can derive from them. Yeah, so the statement of duality is that I have two theories, which are really different in the UV, this is what I mean by infrared duality, it's not an exact duality, so if you compute correlation functions or scattering processes in the UV, they are different, however, if you look at long distances, or low energies, low momenta, then they are approximate, asymptotically the same, so in particular if you go in the CFT limit, correlation function of very long distances, those are the same. We will not have an exact dictionary, because that is very hard to find, but that's the idea, that there should be a dictionary between operators here and operator here, such that if you compute correlation functions, you compare them using the dictionary, then they have the same behavior. And yeah, so the dictionary is part of the duality, and in general it's hard to find a complete dictionary, in our example we will be able to find a dictionary between some simple operators, if you want the lowest dimension operator with certain charges, but for instance the operators do not have specific quantum numbers, then it's really hard. But there is a lot that one can do. Now the dualities that we will be talking about, in fact are similar to supersymmetric dualities, and some of you might be familiar with supersymmetric dualities. We know a lot of supersymmetric dualities in three dimensions, but also in four and two dimensions, in fact they make a very big story, very big and intricate story, and in fact it turns out that the huge amount of knowledge that we have developed over the last many decades about supersymmetric dualities will be a very, has been a very important guiding principle to formulate these dualities. Now in the case of supersymmetric theories and supersymmetric dualities, we can run extensive and very convincing checks of these dualities. In fact we are convinced that those dualities are correct. Essentially because of supersymmetry, there are a lot of quantities that we can compute exactly and not perturbed, but they will be a strong coupling, for instance with localization techniques, so with some other methods. And every time that we compute these quantities on the two side, we find a perfect match. Of course this quantity should be sensitive only to the infrared physics because, as we say, in general the theories are different in the UV, but of course this gives us a great confidence in these dualities. Now here in this context we will not have supersymmetry, so this will be a non supersymmetric context. We don't have these very powerful tools at our disposal, so it will be much more difficult to run powerful checks, but nevertheless there is a sector of operators or quantities, I should say, in these theories that are protected in the sense that can be computed exactly even at strong coupling. And these protected sectors or quantities have to do with global symmetries and anomalies, so we will touch on that. OK, so after these introductions to the plan of the lectures is the following. So I will start discussing some aspects of Saint Simon's theory. And here we will see the first example of duality, which is a level rank duality. In fact this duality will turn out to be not an infrared duality, but an exact duality. Then we will discuss some dualities in simple abelian theories with matter, and in particular I would like to review a particle vortex duality in some generalizations. Then we will go to more complicated Saint Simon's matter dualities. We will say something about anomalies, more specifically tough anomalies, and then depending on how much time we have we will discuss various physical consequences, implications of the dualities. Any questions so far? So I will start discussing some aspects of Saint Simon's theory. And now this first part will be a bit technical, but we will develop some tools and some concepts that will be useful in the following explorations. So I hope I will not lose your attention, but in case in the following parts it will be more and more physics, if you want. Moreover I will just cover some very specific aspects of this theory. This is extremely rich, extremely interesting theory. We could spend months talking about this theory, so I will just highlight some aspects. OK, so we want to discuss gauge theories in three dimensions and there are two kinetic terms that we can consider. One is the Young Mill's kinetic term. So let me use the language of forms to write this kinetic term. So here f is my field strength, which is written in terms of the connection. In my convention the covariant derivative will be the standard derivative as commutator with the connection, or anti-commutator when it acts on forms. This is the odd dual, constructed with the metric. And this is the gauge coupling that in three dimensions has dimension of mass. And there is another term, which is the Saint Simon's term. Here there is a trace, generally it's a non-Abelian group. OK, so the first question that I would like to ask is what are the degrees of freedom in this theory? And we can try to answer these questions semi-classically. So we compute the equations of motion. So if you compute the equations of motion, you'll find something which is first order in the field strength. It is Maxwell equation in this theory. Then we can take this star, we apply this star to this equation. We use the equation again because then we get this star here. We use the equation, we also use the Bianchi identity. And we can reduce this to the following equation. So this is the Laplacian. The Laplacian of F. OK, so what are the... So we're interested in the semi-classical degrees of freedom. So we solve the linearized version of this equation and we look what are the solutions. So if you write the solutions in terms of the connection, we find two types of the solutions. One is waves. And the mass of these waves is g square k over 2 pi. In particular, even though here we have gauge theory, we have not broken gauge invariance, but this dynamical degrees of freedom are massive. In fact, this theory is sometimes called topologically massive young meals. But this is not the only solution. There are also zero modes. If you have the flat connections, so for solution for which F is the field strength is zero, well, since F is zero, these solutions have zero energy. And so we have these two types of solutions. Now, if you are interested in the pure Chen-Simon's theory, we want to get rid of this term, so we send g to infinity. And what happens in this limit is that this degrees of freedom becomes infinitely massive. We can forget about them. So the dynamical degrees of freedom disappear. We are like with these modes, but in fact these are not local dynamical degrees of freedom. If you wish, because they have zero energy, and so we cannot kick them and give them some momentum and obtain something which is some local dynamical degrees of freedom. We only have these modes, which have zero energies, and so in particular the theory that we remain with is gat and is topological. So, yes, sorry, so now I will go there and I'll start big again. Thanks. Thanks for reminding me. So what do we mean that the theory is topological? H is the emiltonian, the energy. So these are zero energy modes. So what do we mean that the theory is topological? Well, what we can interpret, we can say this in various ways, so one way to see that, to say what does it mean, is that the theory does not depend on the metric. And this is clear classically from this action. This action classically does not depend on the metric. This piece did depend on the metric because in order to construct the object dual we need the metric, but not in here. We only use these forms. So the classical theory does not depend on the metric and in fact also the quantum theory does not, and we will say a little bit more in a minute. The theory is gapped because the dynamical degrees of freedom are infinitely massive, but still it is not trivial. In fact, it is far from trivial. It is not a trivial gapped vacuum. And the reason is that even though we only have these states with zero energy, we can have some degeneracy. We can have some number of these states. And in particular, the number of states that we have depends on the topology of space. So if we take this theory and we put it on a sphere, then there will be a single vacuum, a single gapped vacuum. This, if you want, is trivial. But if we take a more general topology for space like a torus or some remote surface, then this illbe space will have some degeneracy that will be multiple states, and so the theory starts becoming more interesting and more complicated and far from trivial. Okay, so what are the observables in this theory? Well, there are no local observables because we can go back to the equation of motion and if there is no, this Young-Mills term, f equal to zero. So the field strength is zero. We cannot construct local gauge invariants. So there are no local observables. But there are some non-local observables, which are very interesting. These are the Wilson line operators. So these are operators that are constructed along a line. So we need to pick some line, some close contour gamma. Then we construct these operators in the following way while we can integrate the connection. This is what we have. So we can integrate along gamma. This, more precisely, is patored exponential. It's such a way to make it gauge invariant. And in order to have a gauge invariant, here we have to take a trace. And when we take the trace, we can choose a representation of the gauge group. And so this operator here, in fact, is a function of the contour gamma and is a function of this representation. In fact, we can think of these operators as the word lines of some very massive particle that was created by some field at very high energy. And some theory that maybe flows to this topological theory. And this is clear from here, because this is the word line action for a theory that is coupled to A. Sorry, for a particle that is coupled to A, but this particle is very massive. So these are the observables in the theory. And so what we can do is to compute correlation functions of these observables. And in particular, we mainly talk, but not only about the Euclidean formulation. So in the Euclidean formulation of the theory, we go on a manifold, which is Euclidean, some three manifold. Then we can take some close three manifold. And we can draw these lines, or maybe some linked lines. And then we can ask what is the expectation value, what is the partition function with this insertion, what are the expectation values. Is some representation of the group. Because A, I mean, we can contract A with any generators of the group in any representation. And then we take the trace in the given representation and we get a different answer. In fact, in principle, a different operator. So these are the objects that we can compute in this theory. So let me make a couple of remarks. So the first thing is that we said, well, the theory is topological because the tensimons functional is topological, does not depend on the metric, just you write it without the metric. But in fact, this is a gauge theory, so we should do gauge fixing to quantify the theory and the gauge fixing action is not. So we might be worried that, okay, maybe classically the theory looks topological, but then we have to regularize it and do the gauge fixing. So maybe we lose the fact that the quantum theory is topological. But in fact, it turns out that with addition of suitable counter term, local counter term, and this is what we always do in quantum field theory, we can keep the regularized theory topological and so the quantum theory is topological. Up to a small remnant of this fact and this remnant is called the framing anomaly. And what this framing anomaly is, is the fact that we need to specify some extra data if we want to associate a well-defined number to the partition function in this theory. We'll not bother exploring what this quantity is because we will not need it, but we'll have to choose some framing and for a given choice of this extra data, we'll be able to associate a well-defined number to the partition function. If we change this data, we will get a different number, but the nice thing is that if we know how we change this data, we know precisely how the partition function changes. So this is almost as good as saying that we didn't need any other data. And in particular, the only change in this partition function is a phase. We get a phase that depends on how many units we change framing times some number. And this number C is called, in this context, the framing anomaly. Now, there is another type of framing anomaly which is related to this one. And this other type is related to the lines that we inserted. And this other anomaly can be understood in the following way. So these lines are defined as some exponential of these operators which are the connection. Imagine we want to compute a correlation function of these lines. These lines, we can imagine that we expand these exponentials out. And so we get a summation from the Taylor expansion where we have products of these integrals. And we have to integrate these operators A along the contour, but then we have multiple. When we expand, we get things like this, the products. And when we do these integrals, some point, two operators collide at the same point, and this gives us divergences in general that we have to regulate and cure. And so here we need some extra data and this extra data is the framing of these lines. Now, what this framing at the end of the day is is the following. So you have your line, and what you have to do is to attach a small ribbon to these lines. So imagine that there is a small ribbon that you have to attach it and only when you do, you attach this small ribbon, then you can get a well-defined number after the correlation functions. Now the reason why is precisely this ribbon is precisely what I described here. So the problem was that when you do the integral, at some point there are two points that collide and so what you do, one contour, you leave it along this line, the other one you move it a little bit, off in this direction, but you have to tell me in which direction you move it. So that is the reason. The point is that there are different choices for this ribbon because I could have chosen something like the following, which the ribbon goes around, and if you compute with these two different regularization of these two different framings, the difference in your correlation functions is, again, a phase. Let me write it here. So if we compute the correlation function of these operators with this prescription and we compare it with this other prescription, the difference is a phase. Again, there is an integer number that tells us how many twists we made in this ribbon, and then they have h, and this h is called the spin. This is the spin that we associate to this line. Of course, from this definition, you see that this spin is only defined in mode one. So to each line we can associate this spin. In fact, we can understand physically why there is this spin. If we think that these lines really are some very massive particle, if this very massive particle has an integer spin, then the correlation functions are single-valued. But for instance, suppose that particle was a fermion, then if you rotate by 2 pi around the particle, you get a minus, and then, in fact, if the spin is 1 half, you precisely get a minus. More generally, in three-dimension, you can have fractional spins, and so in general you will get some fraction here. But in the low-energy topological theory, you are only sensitive to the spin mode one. OK? OK, any question? Yes, so what I have in mind is that, OK, I'm computing some generic correlation of these lines. For instance, I could have a line that goes like this, another one that goes like this, maybe there is some knot, something like this. For each of these lines, if I want to get a well-defined number, I should attach this small ribbon around each of the lines. OK, it's a small ribbon which is on the side and goes all around. After you do that, you get a well-defined number. But if you change and you say, OK, I choose some ribbon, my friend chooses another one, which has a small twist, then my friend will get the answer, which is almost the same, but it differs by a phase. OK, and if I look at how the answer changes when I do this twist in the ribbon, I can extract the spin of this line. Well, it's an anomaly in the sense that, classically, you didn't need this information, but when you go in the quantum theory, you need some extra data, if you wish. In the same way as the framing anomaly, you needed some extra data that was not obvious from the beginning. In these senses, anomaly. You can probably express it in some other way. Well, what it is, is that you have to give me... So, there is a line, there is a normal bundle, which is a plane, if you want, but you just look close to the line. You don't need to think about the old manifold, and you have to give me some non-venison section of this normal bundle. So, this will be the mathematical way to think about it. Physically, it's just a very small ribbon that only has to be in a neighborhood. I mean, the theory is topological anyway, so it doesn't matter if the... No, no, for each line, for each line, maybe you have just one. In general, there are no intersections, first of all. OK, this line do not intersect in this picture so far. And for each line, you have to attach this ribbon that goes all around. I'm just saying, if you don't do that, you cannot associate a well-defined number to the correlation function. You need to do that, then you get a number, because you do this regularization, in which you do this point-splitting regularization, essentially. And if you make a different choice, you get this face. Don't look convinced. Yeah, so I told you that normally it appears because when you compute these correlation functions, you expand out this, and you integrate along a contour. So you have this contour, and when you expand out, you have products of this... You use Taylor formula, right? This explanation is one plus the integral, plus integral, integral, and so on. And when you do have two of them, each of them is integrated along the path, at some point one is x, the other is y, and you integrate, at some point x and y collide, then you get divergences. You have two operators at the same point. I mean, this is an integral formulation, you have operators that collide in point, and you get these divergences. This is a path integral point of view. OK, I didn't want to spend one hour on this, but... Ha-ha-ha! So the origin of the framing anomaly, just for the three manifold. So the origin is that... As we said, so the classical action is... Some action is independent of the metric, but the gauge fixing action is not. Then you need to add some counter terms to make the theory topological, but these counter terms depend on some choice, which is a trivialization of the tangent bundle. But we will not need this, so if you want, we can talk more in the discussion session. OK. Also because we will not need this framing anomaly, we will need this pin. OK, so let me say a few things about the transhumance functional, just as a classical functional. So we said, OK, the transhumance functional, let me write it once again. So this is a function of your connection on some three manifold. Let me write it in this way. I don't write wedge. I don't understand it there. Fine. So first of all, this functional is written in terms of the connection. So if we want that this makes sense, the connection should be well defined on our three manifold. Now, we have a gauge theory. So this gauge theory has some gauge bundle, some principal bundle for gauge group G. So E is some principal G bundle. Now if this G bundle is trivial or parallelizable, then you can find some connection, which is just a globally defined one form on your three manifold, and we can use this formula. If the G bundle, the gauge bundle is not trivial, in general, we can't. So we'll come back to this in a moment. So for now, let's assume that we are looking at some gauge bundle, which is trivial. So is this functional really gauge invariant? Well, we can try to do some gauge transformation. So we pick some function omega on the three manifold. Is our gauge parameter for gauge transformations. We transform A, and we look just to the computation, we see how does this functional change. And in fact, it does change. So if we compare the function on A omega with the functional on A, it is not zero, the difference, but is equal to, and I invite you to do this computation, is equal up to some factors, 2 pi k, to an integer, the functional of the gauge transformation. And what this is, is the winding number of this map omega. So this was a map from m3 to g, and there is some winding number. Here if you assume that this g is simple, otherwise there would be multiple possible winding numbers. But there is this winding number that counts how many times this map rops inside g, and it's not zero, but it is an integer. And so, well, this functional is not really gauge invariant. We do, I mean, if we do an infinitesimal gauge transformation, this winding number is zero, and then this is zero, but otherwise it's not zero. However, so it looks like we are in trouble, however, when we define the quantum theory, so the pat integral, what we have is the exponential of the action. And so what we really need to be invariant is not really the action, but is the exponential of the action, OK? If this is well defined, this is good enough for the quantum theory. And so you see that if k is an integer, then this object only jumps by multiples of two pi, and then this exponential is well defined, because even though the function shifts, the exponential does not. And so we find a quantization condition, so k should be an integer, OK? If k is not an integer, this function is just not defined, even if you want in perturbation theory, in the sense that here we are assuming that the gauge bundle is trivial, the problem is not well defined, OK? What if the gauge bundle is not trivial? In this case, we cannot really find a globally defined one form, which is this connection, so this function does not make sense. And we need some other definition. And the other definition that will be important for us in the following lectures is the following. So we start with our three manifold with some gauge bundle e. And then we extend this manifold in the bulk. What does it mean? That we find some other manifold, some other four manifold, y4, with the property that the boundary of y4 is m3. And then we extend the bundle that we have on m3, we extend it on all y4. And so we have this system, what is this geometry, and we define, which in Simon's functional, as k over 4 pi, in the integral now on this y4 of trace f with f. Now, well, this definition is clearly gauging variant, because f is gauging variant. Moreover, if we are in the previous case, it reduces to the previous case, because if this bundle was trivial, and then when we do the extension also this bundle is trivial, so we can find a globally defined connection, and then you can easily check that this is a total derivative, so you use torque theory, and in fact it's the total derivative of the transformant term. If you want the transformant term is defined in such a way that its differential is given by this object here. So it reduces the definition, but it is more general, because it's varied when the bundle is non-trivial. Well, I mean, so the question was why transformant theory exists in odd dimensions. So if you define transformant theories like something which is written in terms of a, but not in terms of just f, then yes, if you want, these are the descendants, Vess and Zumino, of powers of this f. Now, you might give the name transformant to something even dimension. There are these things, which are related to discrete groups as opposed to continuous groups, so we will not enter into that. Okay, so we have this definition. However, it looks like this definition depends on some choices that we made, because we have to choose this manifold and to choose the extension of the bundle. So we might worry that it's not really a good definition, it depends on extra data. And in order to understand this question we use a standard trick, which is the following. So suppose that we made some choice and suppose that now we made a different choice. Now, this is some Y4 with some E tilde. We made some different choice. Okay, the bundle is the same, but now here we choose some Y4 prime with some E tilde prime, and we get the same. So we want to know what is the difference when we evaluate this function on these two configurations. So what we can do is that we can take this geometry, we do some party or orientation reversal, and then we can glue it here, because they have the same boundary. So we can say that the result is the integral over Y4 plus Y4 prime bar, this is orientation reversal, because the boundary is the same. And now this object here is for pi, the integral on this manifold, which now is a closed manifold, and this object is not zero once again. However, we recognize that this is the instanton number, or if you want, it's the second-gen class or the first-pontriagin class, depending whether the bundle is complex or real. And so in particular this is quantized, it's not the generic real number. This is a multiple of Z, sorry, a multiple of two pi, and so we are in the same situation as before. This is really not well-defined, and when we take the exponential, it is well-defined, and provided once again that this K is integer, this is quantized. No, no, no, no, it's FJGF, so this is, if you want the theta angle in four dimensions. If I write it in components, this would be F mu nu, F rho sigma, epsilon mu nu rho sigma. No, it's not the young Milster, this is topological. In fact, this is an integer. So questions on this? So here, okay, there was a small assumption that we made, that in fact given a manifold and a bundle we can extend the manifold and the bundle. This assumption is not correct in general. There are cases in which we can always extend the manifold, but there are cases in which we cannot extend the bundle. But there is a way to cure this problem, this has been done by a diagram in Witten. The answer is very technical, so I will not go into that, but for us it will be enough to assume that this is possible to do and when it is not, there is a way to cure it. So now we have these theories, we understand how the computation of the loops is hard because this is not a trivial theory and in fact I will describe a piece of the story, a very small piece of the story now, but not the old story. But the important thing is that since this is, if you want, this is a topological theory it can be solved. In this theory we can compute everything we want. But I will not describe, as I said, we can spend months in starting this theory. But I will describe, I will try to describe a small piece of the story. In particular, there is an obstruction, I mean it's a topological condition, I really don't want to spend 10 minutes in this. There is some topological obstruction that you can get using group-comology that tells you when it is not possible to find a man for the extents, the bundle and when it's not possible, there is a way to cure it. It's very technical and for us it will not be illuminating although it leads to very interesting physics when one has discrete groups but we will not go there. Other questions? So somebody asked about how do we compute correlators and I would like to say, before going there we should ask what are the observables in the quantum theory because we only said what the observables are in the classical theory. The first question that I would like to ask is what is the spectrum lines particularly in equivalent lines because the construction that we had before was classical. It's not obvious that different lines have different definition in fact turns out to be the same operator. So we like to understand what are the inequivalent lines and their spin. And the reason why I would like to look at this question first of all because this is the first question before going to the correlation function we want to understand what are the objects that we want to compute correlation functions of but if you want from the physical point of view as you said these lines in fact they are representable line of very massive particles and these spins are the spins of the fractional part of the spins of these particles and so in fact the condensed matter literature these are the anions so we ask in this theory what is the spectrum of the anions so this is a very physical question to ask. Although I will not go to the derivation of this statement but a very convenient and efficient way to make computations these sort of computations is to use a correspondence for us will be is some computational tool a correspondence between 3D and Simon's theory and two dimension like Karel algebras and this was discovered by Whitten and then More and Cyberg although maybe clues of this were before so what is so we talk about in Simon's theory what is this Karel algebra well you should be familiar with this if you study two dimensional conformal field theory because essentially in 2D CFT we have some spectrum of operators we have some fields and these fields in general we have some that depends on z and z bar and they have two conformal dimensions in h bar and now there is a subsektor of these fields in which one and two sides let me say on these sides the dimension is zero let me say that these fields are holomorphic so this Karel algebra is the sector of holomorphic fields we can think of it in terms of holomorphic fields in some CFT and so this Karel algebra will be some set of fields they are holomorphic and they have some dimensions in particular among these fields we always have the identity we always have the stress tensor but then we can have more and what will be important for us these fields are mutually local so what does it mean so these fields since we are in a CFT so there are OPE and of course this OPE is holomorphic already so this OPE is in Thomas lectures but we probably saw it before we have some holomorphic OPE and we want these OPEs to be single valued we will define functions of these complex variables so in particular all these pins should be integer in this way the correlation of the OPEs we will define the single valued and the theory can be modular invariant so in particular for us what this means is that all these pins are integer now once you have a Karel algebra this Karel algebra here there are irreducible representations let me call them h lambda and essentially these irreducible representations you take some primary of this Karel algebra and then you construct all the descendants this is the infinite dimensional representation and in particular we will have some dimension so h lambda will be the dimension of the primary in this representation ok, so let me make this a little bit concrete so first of all where does this correspondence come from and I will give you an example so one nice way to derive this correspondence and I will just give you the physical picture is the following so you take a very special manifold which is a disk times time ok, so this is a manifold with boundary and then you quantize in Simon's theory on this manifold for instance you do canonical quantization we will find some Hilbert space and this Hilbert space turns out to be precisely the 2D Karel algebra you have to use operator state correspondence so you can map states to operators in two dimensions but this Karel algebra arises in this very simple and physical way in fact we can do something else we can also insert a line here h lambda and repeat this quantization and when we do that so if we insert the w lambda and again we compute the Hilbert space now what we get is in fact one of these representations dimension of the primary of this representation mod 1 is precisely equal to the spin of this line so I will not go through this computation it is rather long and technical and difficult but I just want to state this correspondence that as I said it becomes at the end of the day a computational tool so so from the so we associate this tradition Simon's theory to a given Karel algebra and moreover we associate lines so a line w lambda which with spin h to some irreducible representation with dimension so I know that this is fast but the point that I want to make is that now that we know about this correspondence what we can do we can take our favorite textbook on CFTs or Karel Algebras we can take if you want the yellow book of Di Francesco and then we can find what we want about the Chen-Simon's theory particularly we can find what is the spectrum of the lines, the spin and of course there is more in Chen-Simon's theory there is fusion, braiding and so on but everything is contained in this Karel Algebras so we can read off everything from there so let me give you one example so suppose that we take and this is one of the simplest examples so we want to study at some level K where G is a simple connected and simply connected SUN spin n your spin n and so on you know these groups so what is the corresponding Karel Algebra the corresponding Karel Algebra is just the enveloping algebra the smooth current algebra or if you want this is also known as the affine the algebra at level K so this is something that we know very well and so as I said we can open the yellow book of Di Francesco and we can read off what are sorry compact and we can read off what are the lines and the spin in this theory in particular how what are the representations in this theory and the representation of this Karel Algebra or affine the algebra we want to classify the representations so we start with the dinking diagram the extended dinking diagram in this case so let me do for instance SUN we have to extend the dinking diagram this will be the dinking diagram of SUN we add one more node let me say N plus one so if the rank is N and then if you want to classify the representation we have to provide non-negative integers these are the dinking labels so we have to choose some lambda 0 lambda 1 and so on up to lambda N there should be no negative because it's only the dominant weight that give your representation however in this extended lambda 0 is fixed in terms of the other ones lambda 0 is K minus minus lambda this product between the weight that we are using the highest weight of the representation and is the highest root but this should be non-negative and so we get a constraint that this lambda theta should be in so in particular these are called integrable representations the integrable representation in this SUN plus one K-Chang-Simon's theory that means the lines here corresponds to representations of this group such that they satisfy this bound and in particular they are finite there is a finite number of them so even though classically we thought that there was an infinite number of operators we didn't have these representations but in the quantum theory it's just a finite number ok ok, I should probably stop here as it means that it's a transformational theory classic that does not depend on the metric it's completely invariant under different morphisms even though it's not a gravitational theory in the sense that you integrate where the metric it does not depend on it however, so classically this is so but when you do the quantum theory you have the standard thing that you find with anomaly that you need to regularize that you can break this symmetry because gauge fixing requires a metric and you almost recover it with the suitable choice of local converters but not completely because the final answer that you get still is not for the most part does not depend on the metric but there is this dependence on the framing that I didn't say what it was because it's not particularly relevant for us this choice of the trivialization of the tangent bundle but the answer depends on this extra data so this is the symmetry that is broken so we can start I think we have the lecturers of the day Francesco Tom and Guillermo is there and Marina so you can start asking questions just can you go through the last step of this song


Hi everyone and welcome to JSA TV and JSA podcasts where we're connecting the latest stories, news and innovation from leaders across our industry. And today I'm happy to be joined by Theo Voss, CEO and co-founder of Interlink. Yeah, welcome. Thank you for having me. Yeah, so great to have you. It's nice to catch up. We're on day two here of Capacity Europe at the Intercontinental. How's the show going for you? It's amazing for us. It's the first presence of Interlink since we've been found in 2021, so this is the first capacity that we're doing. It's really exciting. We're having a lot of good conversations. We have been announcing a new product just yesterday. We've been on a panel yesterday, so Voss is really going well. Wow. Yeah, that's great to hear. Yeah, first time here and already lots happening. So let's back up for a second and just letter because you, as you mentioned, relatively new to this audience. Tell us about Interlink. Yeah, of course. So I think important to mention is that the people behind Interlink are not new to this industry. So everybody is an industry veteran. I've been in the industry for 10 years, but Interlink itself is relatively new. So Interlink has been founded in 2021 by my co-founder Mark and me to combine two things in this industry. And one is the need for automation and one is the other is the need for more sustainable kind of practice and more sustainable business and more sustainable products. Okay. So let's talk a bit more about that in terms of what you're doing in the ways of automation and sustainability that are innovative for the industry. Sure. So we spoke about this on the panel yesterday that we see so much growth in this industry and we see traffic growing. We see new trends like AI coming up. So there is a long-term perspective for everybody in the industry that needs more capacity, needs more infrastructure, needs more services provision. But we're still in a time where most of this is done by hand. So most of the carriers, most of the providers, most of the telcos still have 20 weeks lead time for services. And this is where we think that in order to work with this demand in order to fulfill this demand, we need more automation in order to scale. So Interlink is purely built on 100% automated platforms. Everything with provision, every service that is being purchased is instantaneously provisioned and there's no manual interaction needed anymore. And I think this is something where we really kind of set an example as well when you look around here at capacity that this is going to be a next trend when it comes to technology and how we do business. And I think the other thing is the sustainability part for us as a business that is carbon neutral certified since last year. One of the first big corporations in this industry that we need to make sure that we as an industry itself pay our fair share. And kind of take care of the responsibility that we have in terms of energy usage and reduce and make sure that we commit ourselves to a carbon neutral but also kind of let's your journey. And I think this is where Interlink again is one of the four runners here. Yeah, that's amazing to hear. I mean, sustainability continues to be such an important topic for our industry. For all industries, if we're being honest, but especially for our industry, you know, for folks like yourself that can make a difference in this. It's really, I think, appreciated by everyone and so many people that we talk to want to do business with folks that share that same way of thinking. Yeah, exactly. And I think the beauty of the business that we do is that we combine these two things, automation and sustainability, for our customers, which are mostly enterprises, and make them able to consume and not longer build. So we have a lot of build in this industry custom build for clients. And we make this a consumer approach, which is more similar to what we have in the cloud industry as of today, where they can consume IP services, security services, layer two services all around the world. So we have a global footprint as well, just with a click of a button. And I think this is something also related to the discussion yesterday on the panel is where we see the cloud providers, where we see large enterprises moving towards to. And I think this is also where we try, and I personally, as being industry for a decade now is trying to push everybody into that direction and setting, hopefully, a good example. Yeah. And so that the, you've mentioned the panel a couple of times now is about the convergence of connectivity in cloud. Is that right? Yeah, exactly. So I think that panel yesterday was a bit phrased around the challenge of convergence that everybody sees, but we don't feel that this is a challenge. We see it as a wonderful opportunity, actually, to use these tools that I mentioned earlier, automation sustainability, to move forward and kind of have a much more scalable, much more cost efficient way to fulfill the demand for more bandwidth, for more capacity all around the world. I see. Okay, so it's been great chatting with you. I didn't ask, where are you based and so where have you come from to come here? So we have the roots in Berlin, Germany. This is where the company has been founded and is headquartered, but we're fully remote. So we have 30 employees as of today, 50 nationalities and everybody is working from home. We set this up from the beginning also to make the business scale and not be dependent. I mean, we have a shortage of staff. Everybody has hard time finding good people. So this makes it much easier as we are small, but we are an international business. Right, yeah, covering lots of nationalities, as you said, which is so important in the global business that the global marketplace. Yeah, exactly. It also makes it easier to hire good talent and so on and so forth. So it overcomes again a few of the challenges when you commit. And I think this is important from day one to be remote native, because then you don't have this conflict of having people in an office and people remote. And I think this has gone well now. Yeah, yeah, well, that's great. Great to hear. I'm looking forward to talking to you again, you know, as the years progress, I'm sure we'll be here again next year. Maybe at some of the other shows throughout the year, but it's been great chatting with you. Yeah, I was going to say for the remainder of the week and then for folks that maybe aren't able to be here or don't get a chance to see you. How can they connect with you? So we have a boost up here. One floor above 914. We can stop by. We have a good presence on the web, of course, on social. So feel free to look at inter.link. It's the website. Feel free to reach out on LinkedIn. If you want to hear more, learn more. I think we have a few press releases coming up. We're featured in capacity media. We have now the interview that the two of us did. So I think there's plenty of chances to get in touch. Fantastic. Thank you, Theo. We appreciate it. Thanks very much. And thank you viewers for tuning in this morning to JSA TV and JSA Podcasts. Stay tuned for more interviews throughout the rest of the day in the show. And until then, happy networking.