Welcome everybody, thank you so much for joining us here in Davos and around the world. I am Henry Blodgett, I'm the editor-in-chief of Business Insider and we have a wonderful panel today, one of the hotbeds of innovation and growth in the world economy is financial technology, different in new payment systems, business systems, or changing everything about how we interact with money and how we pay each other and we have a wonderful panel to explore the trends that are driving that today. Before I introduce everybody, we will focus, a lot of the innovation is going on in Asia in particular, in fact half of the global investment in financial technology is in Asia, so we will focus on that as we examine the question of what are the trends that are driving this revolution and where are we going from here. And we really are incredibly fortunate to have such a wonderful panel with us. I'll introduce everybody very briefly and then we'll jump right in. On my left is Francisco Gonzales who is the group executive chairman of BBVA which is one of the largest banks in Spain and also one of the leading digital banks in the world. And one of the things you'll notice about the panel in general is just how many people, these companies and technologies touch. I think the panel as a whole is reaching or providing platforms for more than a billion people worldwide and BBVA in particular this is a 160-year-old company with 63 million customers. So just an incredible reach. Next Cecilia Skingsley who is the deputy governor of the central bank of Sweden which is responsible as other central banks are for setting monetary policy and having a safe and efficient payment system for Sweden. Lots of regulatory issues that go along with that that touch everything that happens every day on innovation. Eric Jing is the CEO of Alipay which is a tremendously successful and large payment system in China that grew up organically over the past 10 years. 450 million users in China alone and recently has been expanding beyond China and now has more than 200 million users with its partners outside of China. And to give you just an example of how fast it's growing in the golden week in 2016 the company in terms of transactions outside China did four times as many transactions as the year before. So radically changing everything and we will talk with Eric about that. Next Dan Schulman is the CEO of PayPal which is one of the original FinTech disruptors and is fact almost a middle-aged company now relative to some of the other newer companies out there. PayPal has 200 million users in 200 countries around the world and millions of merchants and has now other payment platforms like Venmo which is a new person-to-person payment system in the United States. Very exciting. And then on the end David Craig who is the president of financial and risk for Thompson Reuters. David runs a massive global technology and information platform that many of the payment providers and banks and financial services companies use for information and transaction all day all every day huge number of transactions 450 professionals around the world in 150 companies. So let's 150 countries. So let's jump right in Dan given your status as one of the original FinTech disruptors what trends enabled PayPal to be launched now 15 to 20 years ago and what is enabling the continuing growth from here? I think there are two meta trends that are inex honorable and just continuing to accelerate. First is that currencies of all kind are digitizing. Checks are disappearing although 85% of the world's transactions are still in cash they're increasingly digitizing and so you've got money in general digitizing and whether that be in the form of cards they will digitize or actually currency itself will start to digitize as well. So you're seeing that happening but all that is enabled really by the explosion of mobile into the marketplace probably have 80% penetration of mobile right now in the world's population next five years called about 90% and there are two trends that happen with mobile. One for consumers is you have all the power of a bank branch in the palm of your hand right now and so basic consumer financial transactions can be done quickly you don't need to stand in line to make the transaction you can do it immediately. They're simple and easy to understand they're more secure than money there's a lot of leakage in money and finally they're much less expensive. The digital world can be 80 to 90% less expensive to serve a customer than through traditional bank branches and so you're going to have an explosion of kind of platforms that manage and move money for consumers. On the retail side retail is going through a fundamental transformation due to mobile as well there used to be distinct worlds of online and offline mobile is blurring the distinction between online and offline if you make a purchase using your mobile phone and pick it up in store is that mobile or online or is that offline it's actually a combination it's just commerce and more and more retailers are now taking a look at what Amazon and others are doing and thinking how do I compete how do I use the mobile phone to get closer to become more intimate with my customer and digital payments is a key driver of that integrating rewards as a currency type it's that kind of thing so those trends those secular trends are driving growth through all regions of 20% plus easily throughout the world and we only see those continuing to accelerate. And Eric are those the same trends that are driving Ali Pays growth and as you expand beyond that is something different in Asia? Let me start by showing one story and true story in China. In China there was a county you call a dingy county which is just located by under Everest mountain very far away right very small population so previously it's very high it's such big challenge for them to make a payment payment to them is something very very far away right they can walk you know tens of miles to not to buy something you know if you want to make a transfer to some other people see even far away you know they got to go to some branches to do that very far away but today by having mobile phone you'll see such easier for them to buy something from Anibaba from Taobao using mobile phone and make a money transfer via Ali Pays apps very easily to do that so it's quickly improve their lives give them such a convenience for them so that's their true story so to me the next generation of financial systems are big trend I think they're two things number one is more technology we'll be applying to this sector more technology we have we know that you know mobile technology helps us to increase the reach so we can reach out to millions of people right hundreds of million people in a very cost effective way number one people are talking about a cloud computing can bring down the cost of processing percent cost dramatically right and with cloud computing in place so basically give us a bit capability to launch your new products in a very short period of time very short period of time so you can quickly launch your new products and by having big data increase your capability to manage your risks right by having that you can do the credit rating to giving out uncollecting financing or loans to SMEs so these are you know technologies have been applied to this sector to reshape redefine sales products but today we are also seeing AI deep learning machine learning technology by magic right will be used to do the KYC or give you a kind of you know I mean to to protect the account so these are we are seeing more new technology applied increasingly applying to this sector to really change changer I mean to innovate this number one secondly I mean our new generation and new generation on financial system will be more inclusive focusing on our little guys focusing on those underserved or unserved including SMEs because previously in traditional way it's very hard for for institution to really offer appropriate products for them in a sustainable way you know I mean cost effective way so people I mean for many of them does not easily can get access get access to the financial service but today is different so we can make the world more inclusive we can bring the financial service I mean products to just you know I mean underserved people to give them to bring the equality to them to give them more I mean input a knife and our product loans on connect our loans on connect our nice notes SMEs to help them grow their business help them to create more jobs so today the second thing so quite different I mean our tech new tech more technology will be applied into this sector to reshape redefine a sales products and we are focusing more on inclusiveness to provide inclusive financial inclusion to the people so there's are two trends two opportunities so basically for example I'll give you a number for right now over one set of our our users we're talking about four hundred four five zero million right active users in China so over one set of them are really from rural areas from villages so taking I mean the county as an example the county is located in located in Tibet all the Tibet there from any pace data we can see that their mobile payment accounts for 90% of overall electronic payments they are the highest payment mobile payment penetration in that so by having this technology we can really I mean bridge the gap for the people in the West West and the people inner develop the East so that's what I mean that's the trend the emerging in our inner in China and Francisco in running a hundred and sixty year old bank when you see what's happening with PayPal and Alipay and so much of the other innovation are you terrified are you excited do you feel that they are complimentary to you or they are threat to you and how do you how do you adapt as such an old company I am a second excited frankly because we have been working on turning the bank to the house for ten years now we tried and we are in that process of being so agile and so efficient as the new cameras it's not easy it takes time but our edge is that we have we have started this process back in the day ten years ago so those guys either are in some part of the value chain payments for example and financial probably is spreading its product and we are a fully universal bank we provide every sort of services from the deposit to mortgage the mutual fund consumer loan everything so our relation with our customers is broad is really very important and we today can say that we have deployed our platforms in the cloud we created the first generation platform in the banking system and totally custom oriented totally real time totally integrated back three years now we're in the second generation of that platform because we are migrated to the cloud I'm changing a lot of things in order to have just one platform in the world and we have completed overhaul our management management team and at the end of the day we are creating a new breed of professional banks blending bankers good bankers and good digital and creating a completely new way of running banking systems nowadays numbers net promoter score in the banking system is a metric in order to assess customer satisfaction normally it's in the range of zero even negative our number now is 19 but our up banking up is 63 which means as soon as we turn our customers into digital ones they are extremely happy extremely happy the loyalty is higher and we are cascat we are getting back on course dramatically the problem is that we are now in the middle of the process because we have to run the legacies at the same time we are creating a new entity but the future is is bright I think the banking system is going to be completely overhauled there are 20,000 banks in the world the number will be cut back dramatically over the next five to 15 years and usually the regulators have to understand that moment because the process is going to be very painful for many banks consolidation is not going to be the solution at least the full solution because the solution is to mastering the the the technologies the exponential technologies the cloud and the AI and blockchain everything so my view is that there will be a new league of competitors made up of those guys definitely and some physical bands like BBA which were able to turn into a real digital house we will be definitely a data driven bank data allow us to to make decisions and automate things very rapidly and my vision is very very very very upbeat but the process will be very painful for many many many banks and Cecilia as a central banker and someone responsible for regulation given the pace of technology innovation sometimes the adoption and usage runs way ahead of what traditional firms can adapt to especially when they are struggling to make sure they're in compliance with your rules how do you view the innovation and some of the new technologies as a regulator and how do you balance the desire to move as fast as the technology is moving with on the other hand not wanting to advantage innovators and disadvantage existing firms how do you think about that well it's about striking the right balance as a central banker I am fond of innovation because innovation is very important for growth and central banking is about giving our best contribution to a sustainable growth of a time in the Swedish central bank we try to walk the talk in this supporting innovation in the sense that we have deliberately stopped subsidizing the use of notes and coins meaning our own product so we have closed down all the votes in Sweden except for one and leave to the private sector meaning banks and shops to to both organize and to share the costs of handling cash back and forth and this in combination with that Swedes are happy to adopt a new technology has meant that we reached a sort of a breaking point now in Sweden where where most people are very happy to to use cards or mobile phone apps and we are actually supporting that as well because there is since a couple of years back a very successful real-time payment app between individuals called swish which all the banks big banks are connected to so as long as you have a bank account you can connect your mobile phone number to it and then people to people can can do real-time payments between each other and the reason why this works 24-7 although banks are closed and our computer system is closed is that we provide the the payment system in Sweden with a credit in central bank money so it works 24-7 thanks to the Riksbank credit so we try to to not only talking about the need for innovation in this area we also we also try to to support it now I think it's important you mentioned it in your introduction we have the legal obligation to maintain a safe and efficient payment system and I think it's important to distinguish between when we analyze this various payment methods and and money in itself because there are different kind of animals and I just like to give you a little bit of a demonstration so there are two versions of money in a society the version that most people think about is this version this is a 200 Krona Swedish bill it says issued by the Sveriges Riksbank and it's the safest thing in liquid asset you can you can carry around at least in Sweden most people in Sweden have kind of turned away against this or not most people it's still very accessible and still very useful but more and more people start to realize that you can you can be very happy just walking around with a card a debit card or use this instant payment system on your app and is this a problem well we don't know yet we are as I said neutral whether people want to use our kind of money or or or the commercial bank version of money however the pace is going rapidly in Sweden and I see central bank version of money as still a kind of money that is has special contents it's the safest thing you can carry from time to time people would like to prefer prefer to use this kind of this kind of money and way of payment so what we're doing now in Sweden is a kind of interesting project we are looking into whether we should modernize our offer to the Swedish society coming out with a digital version of our currency for those who want to use that instead of the commercial bank alternative so this idea that that private money and central bank money can continue to work side by side and to some extent also keep the competition up when it comes to payment system efficiency so I want to come back to that question because one of the trends that everybody is watching incredibly closely is the rise of Bitcoin and the blockchain and Bitcoin is viewed by some as being a separate new kind of money that is not controlled by any central bank and is therefore in some people's eyes it's better and so I definitely want to come back to you on that before we do that I just want to go to David David you serve hundreds of thousands of institutional users with a with a huge platform and one of the things you've talked about is that Thompson Reuters has made the decision that instead of trying to build the technology perfectly itself and keep up with the innovation they you are actually treating it like a platform with API's that other technology providers can plug into and information services providers so talk about your platform and where you're taking it and and ultimately what what you need to do to compete yeah thanks Henry and without wanting to get into competition with Dan here on bragging rights I mean I I sometimes think of Thompson Reuters as the first FinTech innovator back in the 1800s when pigeons migrated to Telegraph there was a kind of distortion remove in the world if that US dollar GBP spot spot still in cool cable because of the undersea cable so yeah we've lived through some step changes in technology over our 160 years and I think what's going on now is another big big step change I would describe it as exciting and exhausting just to keep track sometimes of everything that's happening and I think the reasons for that are very clear the financial system the financial players the industry spent seven years basically focusing on safety and all compliance there's been a pent up demand particularly from customers to innovate and deliver better services so I think you're seeing a backlog of ideas and things coming forward you're seeing a huge amount of talent that's out there many of whom actually worked in the financial institutions with money with ideas and can do things quickly and one of the reasons they can do things quickly is that compute power that used to be only available to big organizations is now available at very small incremental cost in the cloud and you can do things very very quickly on platforms that exist today in a way that you just couldn't couldn't before you can do it faster cheaper than often the larger organizations like you know ourselves and others on the panel to do it you do have customers there's a problem out there customers see the new experience on their mobile phones they see all the apps they can use they're wanting that experience from the financial institutions you know many of whom have put nice front ends on their payment system but are still running a massive batch processing end of day and they're not getting the experience they want you see this huge regulatory burden that's you know evolved over the last few years there are 200 regulatory changes a day there's this huge burden of things to do and you know my view is the financial industry has responded to that by mainly throwing bodies that problem compliance officers you know have grown in number and it's now looking at how do we automate that and move that and change that and then of course you got the new technology you know blockchain AI biometrics things that have arrived and coming to maturity that weren't there before so you have this all of these things coming together at the same time and the question of course for any financial players is what do you do because if there's a lesson learned from the previous distortions the market structure changed you know it's very hard to see it's very hard to see what that change might be but the winners and losers in these distortions change and we're seeing that now so how do you keep up we of course invest in these technologies we have innovation labs and we do things ourselves we invest but we've also realized that we can't necessarily keep up with four men or four women in a lab or a garage and how they can build things quickly why not open up our platform and and let the commercials and the API's you know enable them to try things out and to innovate and regulation plays a very strong part in this and there's a big difference I think in the world between those regulators who've recognized that competition is as important as safety and have created an environment for innovation and those regulators who are either competition is here and safety is there and there's a little bit of a problem about which one's leading and you can see that difference around the world at the moment so for us this is a core part of our strategy which is to open up the platform allow third-party providers to do that allow them to innovate you know and what's important in this is in a highly regulated environment you know one man's app or one woman's fintech company is another bank's virus you have the security and the other things you got to do so we allow the permissioning for them to be distributed around the world you know using our infrastructure to do that as well so we've identified two trends digitization and mobile that are really at the core of driving this I would I would ask if there's one more and I say from the experience of business insider which we started about ten years ago one of the things that's been very helpful to us is that there's a new generation of consumers and in our case media consumers who don't have the habits that I grew up with and the financial publications that I grew up with and we've been able to grow because folks who are just getting interested in news and financial and business news they're open to new brands and in financial services for older people like me the there is such trust built up in banking brands and other financial brands over time that it feels very risky to especially with your money trust a new startup or a new brand you haven't heard about and yet younger people just starting their own financial lives don't have that and they're much more open to that so how much is you as you look at what is driving your growth how much of that is that and how and are you is your user bases are they skewing younger or are you reaching everybody at the same time yeah the user base is skewing younger and they expect different things expect a far more digital experience they they also expect you to you know not just be one source of news they expect you to bring all of the environment to them and a lot of its noise and they want to filter they won't understand what's really going on and we've seen many examples where you know on social media things are reported that aren't necessarily true and right and yeah that might be fine in a consumer environment but if you're making big split second trading decisions or investing decisions that can be a real problem but you can't ignore it because it's out there we've actually built tools that look and analyze at the social media and try and distinguish between fact and fiction and do that's a very powerful way of extracting news from that noise that's happening and it's got great you know support because people they want the trusted wire they want the people behind it but they also want to know what's going on and and have some understanding of whether it's something I should act on or this is noise and I should just ignore that. Can I make a comment on that? Please. Wayne Wiener I think the trust is most fundamental thing when it comes to the financial service so I in the evening for you know it's no matter what kind of technology you are using your you're using that so I mean trust is most most fundamental thing when if we're talking about you know you can use many different ways to for example to do consumer marketing to get many users in the short period of time but if you want to sustain a business you have to be based have to be that has to be built based upon trust I mean kind of protect the interests of the consumers protect them give them their best security create value for them that's the only thing you can want to divide a non-term sustainable business so we we we've been you know for any pay we've been in this sector for 12 years you know from day one any people was not created to to provide a payment solution actually it was created to to solve the issue of trust barrier because at that time I mean the retail platform was created by an center they don't see each other that's 30 years ago so kind of fascinated the transaction by removed the trust barrier so we create kind of escrow payment so buy it we send the money to escrow then or the escrow can't notify us said okay we got money you can do the delivery then or by a receive the money said I confirm the receipt of the products so the escrow cannot release the money to the center so this is about trust so if you this kind of I mean mechanism to quit me I'm just to remove the barrier of trust so from day one we are you know all our focus is on whether we create venue I mean for our consumers so I mean what I will see the cost kind of centrist centricity is the most fundamental things of your business and you have to keep on strengthening on that keep providing interest for them keep creating venue for them so all our innovation will keep innovating for the past 12 years the only thing to do we did not innovate for innovation we innovate for our venue creation whether we can really create venue for consumers we don't consider from profit making perspectives if you can create a venue you definitely will have profit you will have your consumers right have a user base if we don't create venue if you don't protect them if we don't providing a trust non-term trust for them there you will your business will go away even if I build something but it's really very very quick any that's my my comment I think that foundation is based on security it's based on privacy it's based on service yeah as well those are the things that form the foundation of trust but if you look at surveys across the world in many ways technology companies now are some of the most trusted companies in the world whether it be a Google whether it be an Alipay whether it be a PayPal very strong brands very strong trust and then if you look generationally it's very interesting to see the differences in generations as well the Gen Tech those were born with screens in their hands their public private boundaries are much different than older generations the thing that makes Venmo so popular is that it took a transaction the sort of P2P transaction and turned it into an experience it turned it into every single Venmo 95% of all Venmo transactions are shared with friends and in those of you who don't know is a system app based system where individuals can pay each other small amounts yeah it's the leading app in the US for the millennial generation on how they manage and move money and every one of those transactions they can opt to share with their friends and they can comment on it and 90% plus comment on their transactions and then share it most of you in the audience will probably never do that but there's very very big differences between generations and I think as we think about where the system is going and that's really kind of what I really spent a lot of time thinking about 10 years from now who is the next generation of what are their needs going to be we've got 2 billion people in the world right now that are underserved they need a basic system and platform for financial transactions and I don't think that we should extrapolate what was but we ought to reimagine in a world of mobile and software and connectivity how would you build a financial services platform to serve that sort of the the majority of citizens so that managing and moving money is a right for all citizens and not really privileged for the affluent and that to me is is a critical element of what we're trying to do that is a very interesting because of course you can imagine we are trying to to know what will the banking system look like in 5 to 50 years from now now we are seeing an explosion of stirrups and companies who are creating a specific product throughout the value chain for the time being there is no one player who is able to supply the entire value chain this is our mission to to supply the entire value chain if you want to be a real player a successful player in the future you have to understand how the digital work how the digital the world works first margins very low extreme transparency lack of conflict of interest and as a bank we can't pretend to sell products we have to become the real and trusted advisor of our customers so our vision is over the next years and we are working on that we have we will have a platform where we try to we won't produce our products anymore because we don't want to have conflict of interest with our customers will pick up the best products and and a person and experiences in in the world out there innovation is going to be out there in the hands of so we'll package those experiences and products and we'll produce an specific experience for our own customers based on AI that big data and so on. At the end of the day we are creating an ecosystem where we want to serve not 63 million customers we will need probably hundreds of millions of customers because the margins will be extremely low and we need to scale in order to work with very low marginal costs. The question is how or what will the competition league look like. So I think few numbers a few numbers of players we won't be a bank we will be a service company and we will work not just with financial problems but also product because so as soon as we have data we can turn it into a deposit onto a health product. So what is going to happen over the next five to five years it's really incredible in terms of change and nothing is decided yet. You have the Facebooks the Google's and financial the PayPal the BVA's probably a couple of more few old banks and startups nothing else. And we are talking about dozens of players not thousands of players. I'd like to challenge a little bit about your concept of trust because trust can be easily disappear. At the end of the day people want to know is my money safe and are they accessible to me. Is my money safe and accessible to me. And I think we learned the hard lesson. I mean I appreciate there are surveys showing that technological firms high rank in values and trust. But those were the situation also with the big banks and then 2008 appeared and people really across the world started to ask is my money safe and accessible. And it turned out that a lot of wasn't. And even if you had your money involved included in a deposit insurance scheme a lot of people started to move their money around because they wanted to have it accessible. So I kind of a word of caution here is that yes trust so far and perhaps this generation is happy to adopt a new technology. But there will be times in history we still haven't figured out the avoidance of financial instability and the various kinds of bank runs. There will be times again when people don't trust the place where they are put their money in.  And if they're not we're going to see a lot of flows back and forth and a lot of instability in same way as we saw in 2008. And we have to look into the fact that this can happen again. So regulation is so important regulation will either accelerate or probably hold back the process. But regulators will shape in some way will shape the future financial system. So it's very important for them to balance innovation customers. Customers rights. And of course financial stability. That is it's a regulator. I'm not prepared by the way today to understand what's going to happen and they need to hide people you know understanding the cloud on many things. So we have to be to pay attention to events because the role of regulators will change or will shape the new financial system. I would love to open up for your questions in a few minutes. I just want to ask one more question which I alluded to earlier which is there's once again excitement about Bitcoin Bitcoin for those of you who don't know is an electronic currency that has been the object of speculation on and off for the last 10 years or so. Every big price run up and then collapse and now a new price run up. And Bitcoin is underpinned by a technology called the blockchain which a lot of people think has implications way beyond Bitcoin itself. But first I just want to open it up to anyone who wants to comment on Bitcoin. But Cecilia wanted to ask you given your position. A lot of people say Bitcoin is a new form of money. And it's a one of its advantages is that it's not controlled by any central bank that might be politically motivated and might devalue it depending on a particular time. And we are starting to see lots of transactions with Bitcoin that are cross border and outside of the banking system which a certain segment of users are very excited about. They like that. So what do you think about that. Well as an economist looking at what money is it's both a payment method. It's a store of value. And in order to make this efficient it has to be a stable store of value. And you can do that either through pegging your currency to another currency or as many of the central banks are new now now have inflation targeting. And a stable store of value. That is something that Bitcoin or these other cryptocurrencies does not have. They are volatile as you said. It's more like a speculation as a financial asset rather than than actually money in the economist sense of you. So I usually when people introduce this question are you seeing Bitcoins as a competitor to the Swedish currency. I say well do you use Bitcoin. Of course not. They say why not. Well it's not stable. Well there you see. We still have rather a strong product to offer from from the central bank. If people don't like it to kind of they don't trust the state. Yeah. You can make transactions through other ways of methods. You can use Bitcoin. You can use black cats cupcakes. That's up to you. You know if you if you if you think that's efficient and safe. We provide the kind of the state option which is safe and it's efficient and is widely distributed and it has a stable store of value. I love the technology behind it though. And that's very interesting. And I'm learning a lot about that. Yeah. And I want to come in on the technology side that underpins it because I think blockchain distributed ledgers is potentially transformational. There's lots of experimentation going on. I think 17 might be the year that some of the experiments start start to work. But I want to link it back to the trust discussion because what I've really learned about this technology without getting into the technology is blockchain and distributed ledgers distributes trust amongst a group of people who have to work together who don't necessarily trust each other. So the financial system what distributed ledgers does is a group of participants have to then collectively agree a standard of how they federate that that trust and the financial industry hasn't in history been particularly good at collaboration. It tends to be lots of groups of people sort of collaborating sort of competing. And this actually offers a way of changing how that operates and how that works. It also does something very interesting around utilities and there's a lot of questions around what you do. Utilities need to exist in a world where you've got distributed ledgers does my clearing house go away. I think they exist but they change their role actually changes from one of we don't have to centralize ledgers and infrastructure and be the source of that central trust. We can now federate that around the participants be it payments be it securities clearing be it transactions in a different way. And I think that is really exciting because part of the technology aside it changes how the participation of the industry has to function for this to work. And as was said you know no one player can solve the whole financial industry on their own. They actually have to work together. And if there's one thing I found particularly here is the amount of discussion around collaboration and partnership is at an all time high underpinned by I think some of this technology and that's really interesting. Yeah. Also one of David's comment. Yeah I agree with you. Actually you know from my view the blockchain is not the essence of blockchain is not about decentralization but trust. Actually blockchain used their distributed edge in our equity consensus to create a trust among the parties without relying on our own centralized party. That's the key. So I mean so where you know you can not off I mean there are not applications we can use my blockchain into that. For example there where the trust is strong trust is needed. You can actually use blockchain to to to really I mean into that black blockchain technology into that areas. Actually we already in the financial we use we are a couple of pilot projects while using blockchain to I mean totally change their process order order order I mean kind of game. For example the philanthropy. You know by using I mean blockchain technology you can really trace all their flows of the deleted funds. Come from every each one and then you get management fee then the fund will be used to to I mean support specific project or specific person. All this you see your blockchain I mean this really really can increase the transparency of that I mean philanthropy projects. This is one of examples. We also can see if we can apply their blockchain to the supply chain finance because all their traffic records is unchangeable right. So give the strong capability to better manage the risk credit risk and to maybe you can grant your credit I mean to to the to the to the I mean companies in the inner in the supply chain. So just two examples. So I mean that trust I mean this trust is a new is a new technology to create trust to bring the trust to the game. So that's that's interesting. Yeah great. So let's take some questions. I have a few more that we'll follow up with but go ahead. Yes. Microphone is coming. Thank you very much. I'm a journalist as well. I work for the Spanish Daily Economist and I would like an open question to the panel. Despite the none of the FinTech players are a systemic player. Could the next financial crisis start in the FinTech wall because there could be some sort of chain reaction precisely because the regulation right now it's very low. Good question. For the time being startups of Intx represent a very very small part of the market value. So I don't see any systemic risk today. But over the next few years we will see how those guys develop their business and come theoretically can can pose a system of risk. So again regulators have to follow those events and to take pre preemptive preemptive measures. Cecilia do you want to address that too. Well it's that I couldn't I couldn't rule it out.  I think I agree with the previous speaker that they have a small part. Mainly the way I see FinTech is is taking creating new interfaces but still very much in the established systems. So but but being a regulator being on the public sector side is about understand this and how it affects infrastructure. And I try to have a very humble approach here because keep in mind I try to keep in mind that the global financial crisis started with these subprime structures. And when they started to reach the newspapers they was considered to be just a small part of the market and not too much to worry about five six eight percent of the mortgage market. But it turned out to be the weak chain in the link that it created about a fire of it across the world. So be humble and follow the development is my my. Yes I remember very distinctly the word contained used many times to describe subprime and then the whole world melted down. So very good comment on a quick couple of things on that. I think when you reach the size of either an ant or or a PayPal we follow all the regulations and compliance that any bank does around there. So we take that extremely seriously we can't operate in 200 countries and serve 200 million people without full compliance around all the regulatory environment. Second we have a tremendous amount of data and information and data and information is very powerful in terms of looking at abnormalities or things that just don't look right in the system. And it's very important there's a difference between a startup and an established FinTech player. We have over six billion transactions that go through a platform. We analyze every one of those. I think the place that all of us whether it would be almost any industry traditional banking or FinTech is cyber security is a issue of tremendous importance to all of us in the financial sector.  There's a tremendous amount of interest from bad guys in terms of compromising systems and it no longer is sufficient to build deep moats or high tariffs to keep people out which you really need to be able to do is have a tremendous amount of data and very smart modeling and algorithms to spot abnormal behavior to prevent it from leaving the system. So scale and big data and modeling is incredibly important. And I would say that FinTech at scale prides itself on those pieces of it. We need to always improve constantly give it constantly iterate on that. But I think all of us in the financial system I think that is the systemic risk is cyber security. Let's take another question. Which one over here. Bekir Pakdem Ali from Tucson. I'm directing question to you. We understood the hassles and problems of the trust issue for the blockchain currencies. Should we expect to see any currencies issued by the central banks in the near future? And then will you be ready or welcoming this situation? Is your question whether we will use the blockchain technology or not or issue the central bank? You any of the central backs in the world? Well, I can only speak for my own central bank, which is the Swedish one. And we outlined the speech in November last year where I kind of looked at the situation saying that we have reached the breaking point among Swedes where they kind of turn away from notes and the usage of notes and coins more and more. They are happy to use the commercial banks money and products. And then we have to look into whether we should come up with a more more digitalized or electronic version of central bank money for all those people who doesn't want to or doesn't get access to their commercial banks services and systems. I think, you know, as I mentioned before, there are two kinds of money and I think we should continue to provide two kinds of money. And if his history, I mean, this was a novelty 350 years ago with paper money. But we have moved on since then. And then it's just a question of whether we should update and come out with an electronic version or not. And that is the work that the central bank not only my central bank, but other central banks are looking into the next next years to come. I don't have a forecast of whether it will happen or when it will happen, but it's definitely a kind of homework we all have to do. And especially us, since people are rejecting our current version. I think both of those versions that you're holding up digitize. That's what happens. They digitize. You're not going to have a card 20 years from now. Let's just like try to take time out of the equation a little bit so you don't debate whether it's five years from now or seven years from now. But all of those versions begin to digitize. And of course, we would take those digital versions into the platform and system. I also strongly believe in something that you were talking about that no one company or government entity can do all of this. We have to collaborate together. That is essential. Going to actually don't think the battle is between us. I think the battle is a war on cash, a war on waste that goes out there. We're just at the very beginning. And if we actually have open platforms and digital platforms, you can take the best of the assets that we can bring and the best of the assets that the traditional financial service can bring and come up with value propositions that serve customers and different segments of the market better than either of us could do alone. I think we need to figure out a way of doing that because that to me is the homerun. That to me is the way that we actually become allies in the advancement of digital payments together. And I think we've got to figure out those collaboration models. We've got to have the right platforms and open API sets to be able to go do that. It needs to be in a trust foundation. But it's a little bit like waves on the sand. You're not going to stop this from moving forward. None of us are going to stop this from moving forward. We now need to figure out how do we make it as safe, really safe as we possibly can and how do we work together to advance it. Because if you can, the value that that can create, the inclusion that that can do could really make a difference in the lives of so many people in the world. And that's a goal and a vision that all of us should have to move forward on. Great. Let's take one more question and then I have a concluding one. What do you think is the future of cards? Do you think they exist five years from now? So you've got like debit or credit? Is that what you're talking about? Debit or credit? Physical card or virtual card. Yeah. The form is not important and the form is not important. It's not something that you can identify that card, that account belongs to you. That's critical. Yeah. Yes, someday those cards go away, but it's like money. Like people predicted the demise of cash forever. It's been around for hundreds of years. It's not going away anytime soon either. So it's just a it's a matter of how quickly does this evolve going forward. But I mean, I think you look at some experimentation like what's going on in India right now, which is really quite astonishing what they're what the Prime Minister is trying to do there. There they are making a play on identity and digital to really take away a lot of the leakage in the system and the waste that goes on and really try to accelerate digital payments. I mean, there have been speeches where there won't be ATMs in India. I mean, since the demonization, you've seen digital wallets in India grow 40 percent week over week. So I mean, I think it really depends on like like you, I would not predict a time frame on it. But I think we can be certain that all of these forms digitize as we look forward. And let's let's end on that expand on where we're headed. We've identified a few different things, the importance of mobile importance of digitization, leaving aside a specific time frame. Francisco, you've talked about how the bank becomes a service provider, a platform with best of breed and all the different pieces, some other predictions, fearless predictions about where we're headed. The bank is this. Absolutely. It's very difficult to to know what's going to happen over the next five to 15 years. But because technology is evolving, by the way, service security is big big thing, which has to be addressed, not just by the banks and by the authorities. Yeah, the authority has to be really involved in how to tackle that that danger. On the other hand, you have the big guys Facebook, for example, or Google, where they are managing AI, you know, head of everyone. And in my view, the AI will will be a real game changer. Blockchain is a game changer, but the other thing is going to be seized by everyone because I think blockchain is going to be an standard. Blockchain, I mean, it's two relationships will be an standard, but the difference would be will be make by the guys who really, really manage data and AI. And how how does AI play in financial services and technology? Wow. You know, when you have the data and you have the right platforms and the right data scientists, you take the data in real time, in our case, and we turn the data into information, information to knowledge that you have, for example, to predict and we are giving the services to our customers, what's going to happen with their finances over the next three, four months or years. If you are in a restaurant, we have also those apps. If you want to to to consume a good batch of wine, our apps are saying, don't do that. Otherwise, you won't pay your mortgage at the end of the day. In other words, I'm not sure I'm like that. There's a huge amount of information about not just your oppression, but your future. You're making some other trends. I want to bring up a new concept we call a tech thing, you know. People, not people today that are talking about think tech, think tech. We are talking about tech thing. It's not it's not just a play on the wall, it's actually it's different. Today, I don't believe in the many tech companies. They really know how to dealing with their risk. Talking about the thing, it's all about dealing with risk. I believe that having data is very important, give us potential capability to deal with risk. But having data does not necessarily mean you can deal with the risk. So tech thing meaning we are using technology to empower, I mean, banking systems to upgrade, upgrade their service products, to work together, to partner together, to serve the consumers, serve the SMEs. Right. We are seeing that I mean, think tech think companies have, you know, I mean, the partnership between tech thing companies and our traditional banking institutions, they are more cooperative than competitive. So it's about how we're using technology to upgrade the entire systems by working where it causes it together. It's not about just disrupt. I'm asking one question. How many tech companies can really disrupt? I mean, in the area of, you know, in the very, I mean, professionally, in the area of, in the sector of trust, dealing with trust, we don't believe that. You can see another troubles, I mean, some, some companies made, right? So we are seeing that we position us as a tech thing companies by using tech, big data cloud computing, or all this technology to partner with. I mean, traditional institutions by working where it causes it together to call offering to upgrade our service products to serve the SMEs, to serve the consumers, to serve those underserved before. So that's, that's, that's kind of concept I want to bring up. So we don't should not only look at want to disrupt some of us, we should look at how to work together constructively by offering the additional value, the value we have not been offered before to a group of people, which are, I mean, little guys, which are underserved or unserved, that's called inclusive. So working together, focusing on our inclusive. So thanks, Eric. So we have a couple minutes left. Yeah, very short. Just a regulator perspective striking the right balance between safety, efficiency, innovation, flexibility and standards are efficient. Second thing is we have to try to be as technologically neutral as we can. Now we are having cards and phones, but perhaps in the future, we're going to use finger sizes and, you know, just the various kinds of new standards. And the third thing I think is important is to make changes, be a bit gradual. This is about people's trust in money. It's among the most serious things that society, and my view at least can is is is can offer people don't experiment too much. And it's important to remember that, although we all feel that we're living in a fast moving world, I mean, not much, much have happened, actually. We used golden coins for thousands of years and then 350 years we started to do paper notes and now we go digital but the paper notes and the coins are still there. Let them work side by side and let the involvement do the rest. Great. David, you have one quick last word. Final prediction. I think everyone's going to get serious about fintech and where they're investing in the coming years. I think if I'm bold the end of centralized infrastructures trust is distributed across that. And I think the most precious thing in a few years we'll all be looking after is not our credit card but our digital identity. Great. I want to thank all of you for joining us and thank the panel is a privilege to be here.


Meritocracy, meritocracy is you move up the ranks in life based on how hard you work.   People who move up, sometimes they enjoy the benefits of nepotism. Their dad was frat brothers with social and so, or he used to work for the company, or he knows somebody who knows somebody. Sometimes they enjoy the benefits of, you know, economic white privilege. Meaning that while your grandfather's neighborhoods were being redlined and the property value was being plummeted, his grandfather's neighborhood, the property value was being inflated. So a house that grandpa bought for $20,000 is now worth $2 million. Whereas a house that your grandfather bought for $50,000 is now worth maybe a hundred. So it's easy to say, oh, Jimmy is just a harder worker than Jamal. Jimmy did half the work, but because of how he's been positioned, through no merit of his own, it's going to appear like he works harder. So when people say you have to do twice as much to get half as far, that's what that means. I still have to say meritocracy is a myth. In Pearl's case, the reason why she has 6,000 videos up on YouTube is because, number one, and she said it herself, the worst that can happen is I have to go back to my mansion at home.   She could throw everything she has at it. And she has a base and a foundation to start from that we don't have. All of the reasons she has 6,000 uploads is because she has disseminated the work. Now her Africans are doing it for her. She's got Nigerians editing her videos. So whereas somebody like me who's editor, director, producer, talent scout and the whole nine and some of you guys as well, she has a team and it builds on itself, right? She uploads more videos, more opportunities for virality. So it's gonna look like Pearl does more work, but no, she just has more Africans. When you listen to the Anton Daniels of the world, when you listen to the obsidians of the world, they'll have you believe that she deserves her success. Subsequently, other white people, other white men and women who are doing better than you deserve their success because they work harder than you and they want it more than you. The reality of it is, that's not the case. Anybody who's worked in corporate America like S. Ed can attest to that. The reality is the fact that to get to a level to be neck and neck with our white counterparts and means we have to be exceptional means that we're not progressing. Because unfortunately, we've been led to believe that as black people, the reason why these people are stuck in Chicago shooting themselves and these people are stuck in the slums and these people are stuck here is because they just didn't want it enough. They just didn't want enough, they're lazy. These motherfuckers led us to believe that the products of ancestors who built this country are lazy and we believe them. If I wanna go further back, they led us to believe that the products of the ancestors who taught their ancestors how to wash are uncivilized and we believe them. We have the goal to sit up on public platforms, not just to defend mediocre white women but to tell our people that you're not doing it because you don't want it enough. You're not doing it because you're not part of my bag chasers or my mastermind this. But as high time, we start thinking these things through and we start considering who our heroes are and we start considering who deserves our attention, our patronage. Are we going to continue to fall for the optics of success or the reality? And I'll give you this quote from somebody who interviews women on a regular basis and has people DM me or even tell me in real life, man, how you find all these beautiful women? This, this and that. I'll tell you this and it's a double entendre. Hopefully the wise can hear it. Just because she looks good doesn't mean she smells good. And that's true for women and that's true for men too. And the smell obviously is not necessarily scent but it's also like character and things like that. If the people who have the largest followings in our community start sounding like white supremacist when you close your eyes, you know there's a problem. When they start defending, spending more time and energy, either defending their ego or defending somebody who's counter to our progress. You know there's an issue. Pearl hiring staff was just smart business. She's been transparent. Then when she started out, it was just her but she reinvested everything into building her team. She knows how to scale. Absolutely, absolutely. One thing that our white brothers and sisters know how to do is leverage talent because they don't have it. One thing they know how to do is leverage talent because they don't have it. One thing they know how to do is exploit resources because they don't have it. And until we start to value our own talent, our own resources, they'll continue to. And to his point, it's just smart business. It's just survival.  You don't understand history because the point is not to hate white people. The point is to know how to move around. I said a while back, some people speak because they have something to say. Other people speak because they have to say something. Unfortunately, in this man's fear, we've made famous the people who speak because they have to say something. I thought the man's fear was created because the white man's fear wasn't necessarily speaking to our specific issues. I thought the white man's fear wasn't as embracing of us. And that's why we created this space where we could talk specifically about black men and specifically to black women. Because again, as somebody who actually wants to speak from a place of understanding and knowledge and like competence, I listen to the divestors. I listen to the themas and thoughts. I listen to a bunch of people that I fundamentally might disagree with. But what breaks my heart is when no motherfuckers make better points than the people on this side of the man's fear. I see Bernard Riley, he posts, he posts, I think it's a thumbnail saying, who does more damage to black men? White women or black women? And I'm like, yo, if I'm asking this question to a group of middle schoolers, I can understand how this might be a hard question to answer. But when I'm asking this question to the niggas who were born in the 60s, 70s, and they're telling me that black women do damage to the level of white women, that the black woman who has you in child support court on the macro is more dangerous than the woman who got Emmett Till lynched.  Like, do y'all niggas want to attack the cancer or you just want to attack the symptoms? We have the audacity. We have the unmitigated goal. Shout out to Stephen A. Smith, the impetus to say that women are less logical than men. Women are more emotionally based than men. Like how am I or anybody else supposed to defend us logically, factually, facts over feelings, right? Against the divestors, against the neo-feminist, the radical feminists when we have stooped to some levels lower than them. Somebody sent me Bernard Riley stream and the FD signifier was on there. Do I agree with FD signifier? No, obviously not. I think the niggas panned it a little bit. But when I'm just optics, right? I'm just watching five, 10 minutes of the stream and he's more composed than the black men who are standing up for black men. I'm like, man, you lost. Because I thought we were supposed to win on logic. I thought we were supposed to win on the superior argument. But now we're playing the ad hominem game. Who can be louder? Who can talk over who? Who can flex? Who can convince the crowd in the chat that if we were face to face, I would win in a fight? That's where we are. I think catharsis is important. I think men deserve an opportunity to have their grievances heard or have their grievances articulated. And that's what I do to women. I articulate men's grievances to women. However, do you wanna be angry or do you want things to change?   It doesn't move the needle. And we need to be able to, even if we make space for this, we need to make more space for that. Because again, despite if you go overseas and you prop up another man's economy, I would hope that some of that survivor's remorse would still stick with you because there's another version of you, gear, still who could not afford to go overseas. I thought men were solutions oriented. I thought when the world was falling apart, our women, our children are supposed to look to us as a paragon of strength, as a pillar.  Daddy is still composed. And again, I'm not saying this as somebody who hasn't been a black man. I'm a black man. A lot of this stuff, the reason I can articulate them so well is because I've experienced them. I have the same grievances. I have the same issues, but I still understand we have to keep the main thing the main thing.  It's easy to get under a black man's skin. We want to critique the Democrats because they know it's easy to get black people to react. It's easy to get black people to vote with their feelings. And we try to tell the story, but it's because we're a matriarchy and it's ruled by women, which is true. However, when I watch some of these spaces, it's easy to get black men to think with their feelings. It's easy to get black men to react. So brothers, if we want better, we have to be better. And that doesn't just stop at performing better.  The world will not take the black man's fear serious because it claims to be pro-black male, but not pro-black.


What are your thoughts on Christmas?  Well done! Oh no Alright, let's see what I got Yeah, you try Look at that, yeah Look at that!


It's official the fantastic forecast is officially announced now before we get into that I'm gonna connect you to a video where weeks and weeks ago We gave all this information except for what the story is about we gave us all this information from our Marvel source But let's get to it. Let's review the thing Iban Moss Bakarok Johnny Storm Joseph Quinn Sue storm Vanessa Kirby and mr. Fantastic Pedro Pascal Incredible cast of course here at the Latino slant. We're very very excited and happy for Pedro Amazing actor check out What he's able to do in narcos season one on Netflix now really fast new information is that? This fantastic for duration will be a period piece. Take it retro. Take it old school. I love it Maybe Galactus Javier Bardem rumor rumor rumor


Yes, let's resume. We have finished up to verse 18. So we will now begin with chapter 8 verse 19 onwards. So maybe we can have one person read out verses 19 and 20 please. Then they said to him, where is this father of yours? Jesus answered, you know my father as little as you know me. If you knew me, you would know my father also. Jesus said these things in the treasury while he was teaching in the temple, but no wonder then chose to arrest him because it's our annoyance. Right. So here, because Jesus said that his witness is not just him. He's not the only one testifying about himself, but even the father also testifies about him. So then they very mockingly say, who is your father? Because they believe that Mary gave birth to Jesus through sin, not because she was divinely anointed for it. And so they are indicating that he is an illegitimate son. And so they very mockingly say to him, oh, your father testifies. Who is your father? It's the comment that they pass regarding him. But then Jesus answers very cleverly. He says, you do not know me or my father. If you knew me, you would know my father also.  You know all along that I have been speaking about the Heavenly Father. And the reason why you're not able to accept all of this is because you know, you don't really know me and you don't know the father either personally. If you really believed in God, if you were really submitted to him and wanted to hear his voice, then so easily you would have been willing to accept what I am saying. But then you know nothing about the spiritual father because you don't really belong to him at all. And so you're having much difficulty in accepting what I am saying about myself and about the father. So even though they are trying to, you know, talk about his physical father and then they're trying to make implications regarding that. Jesus goes back to the main point and points out to them. You know, if you really knew the father, then you would not even be having these issues. And they get what he is saying because they're quite offended. But it stays over here. He spoke these words while teaching in the temple quotes, yet no one seized him. So they probably really wanted to seize him and beat him up because of what he had said.  And so they are the ones who get insulted in the process. And then Jesus goes on to speak the verses 21 to 24 if we can have one person read out, please. Again, Jesus said to them, I will go away.  You cannot go where I'm going. So the Jewish authority said, he says that we cannot go where he's going.  Jesus answered, you belong to this world here below, but I belong from above. You are from this world, but I'm not from this world. That is why... Oh, yeah, yeah, that's it. Up to verse 23. Thank you so much. All right. So here Jesus says to them, you will... Okay, that would be verse 21.  Now these religious leaders are under the impression that if they die, they will go to heaven. And Jesus is saying, where I go, you cannot come. So if they are going to go to heaven, then that means Jesus is not going to heaven in their twisted logic.  Is that why he is saying, where I go, you cannot come?   So if they are going to die, then they will be going to heaven, but Jesus says they will not be going where he is going.  Look at the way their thinking has become so perverted.  And then Jesus very plainly says, you are from below, I am from above. So I obviously will be the one going to heaven because I am from above. I'm not even of this world. I have come from there to teach you certain things to guide you in a particular way through the science that I am doing to point you in the right direction. So I am from above.  You think that you're going to go to heaven, but no, not at all. You are the ones who would end up in heads. So that's basically the point that Jesus is trying to make over here. Then in verse 24, he says, he makes a very significant point. If someone could read out for us, verse 24. I'll read 24. Yes.   Thank you. Yes. So over here in our English translations, just so that we get it grammatically correct.  But when you go to Bible Hub and look at the original wording, it just says, if you do not believe that I am, that's all. It's just the I am statement that is made over here. Wherever that Greek word, E-I-M-I-M-E is used in a divine sense.   Because they are under the impression that because they are descendants of Abraham, they will go to heaven. But he is saying that's not the criteria to enter heaven. The criteria is to believe that I am divine, that I am the Son of God, that I have been sent by the Father.  Otherwise, you know, you would have, you would be dying in your sins. Your sins would not be washed away. Your sins would not be forgiven. The atonement for your sins will not be done. You know, what I am going to do on the cross will not benefit you.  Okay, so in this chapter, for the first time, Jesus used that term, that I-me term, E-I-M-I, that Greek word, which means I am. And he goes on to use it another two times. So there are three times in this chapter where he uses the term I-am to talk about who he is, that he is divine, that he is the Son of God.   You know, there's a repetition over here is emphasizing the point that he has made because for the Jews, they considered two things important. One, of course, that they should be descendants of Abraham to enter heaven. And the other thing, of course, is repentance. So which is why when John is preaching repentance and he's baptizing, if you remember, even the religious leaders also go to him for baptism. And we see that in Matthew chapter 3, verses 7 to 10, we don't need to read out that passage. But then, you know, even in your Bibles, if you could very quickly turn to Matthew chapter 3, verses 7 to 10, that is where even the Pharisees and Sadducees go. They also go over there to be baptized in the baptism of repentance. Why? Because they consider that all. You must be a descendant of Abraham. And second, you must have repented. So they want to do this outward ritual to show that they are repenting. But John the Baptist discerns what they are like on the inside. And he says, you brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the coming wroth? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. So he says to them, there's no repentance at all inside you. So why on earth have you come over here? What on earth makes you think that you will escape judgment? You will definitely not escape judgment unless you produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And so then, you know, he says that in verse 9, he says, oh, they're in that Matthew 3 chapter. He says in verse 9, do not think you can say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. I tell you that out of these stones, God can raise up children for Abraham. And then he says the axe is already at the root of the trees. And every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. So these are the points that Jesus is making over here. He says, indeed you will die in your sins if you do not believe in me. So these are people who must accept the words of Jesus. They must be willing to submit to him and repent of their attitude. Only then can they have a chance of their sins being washed away. So Jesus is making the point that it's not enough for you to just repent. The repentance should come through Jesus where you submit yourself to him. And you choose to believe what he is saying and you choose to walk in that. That would be true repentance. So he's kind of giving them a new definition of what repentance means. Repentance is not just simply getting water baptized. Repentance is actually believing in him and submitting to him and walking in him. Because that alone can save them. So that is why he says you will indeed die in your sins if you do not do that. So then again we come back to the same argument versus 25 to 30. Where the people are again saying who are you and then maybe we could just very quickly... Okay, about six verses. If someone could read out verses 25 to 30, we'll kind of sum up that and then move on to the next thing. Verses 25 to 30, please. Then they said to him... Want to go ahead? Please go ahead, brother President. Then they said to him, who are you? And Jesus said to them, just what I have been saying to you from the beginning. I have many things to say and to judge concerning you. But he who has sent me is true. I speak to the world those things which I heard from him. They did not understand that he spoke to them of the Father. Then Jesus said to them, when you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he. And that I do nothing of myself. But as my Father taught me, I speak these things. And he who sent me is with me. The Father has not left me alone. For I always do those things that please him. As he spoke these words, many believed in him. Yeah, it's interesting.  And in fact, this is not even the first conversation. He's told these things earlier and they go on questioning him again and again, repeating the very same questions. They don't seem to be getting the answers which Jesus is giving. And so it says in verse 27, they did not understand that he was telling them about his Father. They have become so blinded that the explanation that Jesus is giving the same explanation. You and I, by now after having gone through the same kind of teaching again and again, must be thinking, what is this so difficult about it? It's so easy to understand. Jesus is saying, I'm from above. The Father has sent me. Believe what I'm saying. And then, you know, you'll be saved. Simple teaching. And they go on and on about the same thing again and again. And in fact, it says over here, they did not understand that he was telling them about his Father. Imagine how blind they have become. They want to be blind. They do not want to accept the truth. It's too painful for them. And so they have chosen to blind themselves and they have chosen because and because they have chosen to blind themselves, the evil one has taken full advantage and totally blinded them. And they are so confused. They're not able to understand what he is saying. And so the danger we see over here is that if someone chooses to be blind, the evil one will most gladly help you in being really blind where you will not get it. And you see the contrast was 30, even as he spoke, many believed in him. So it's not a difficult thing to understand. What is being taught is very simple. A lot of ordinary people standing over there have caught what was being said and they have been able to believe it and accept it. But these very, very learned people are unable to even understand what is being said. They're getting more and more confused as the conversation is going on. Why? Because in their heart, they do not want the truth. They do not want it because they do not want the truth. They are unable to understand it. On the other hand, you have people who are just standing over there and listening to this whole conversation and they are catching what is being said. And so, even as he spoke, many believed in him. And wow. So here in verse 28, yes, true. In verse 28, we have the second time that Jesus refers to himself as I am. And again over here, the English word he has been attached just to make it grammatically smooth. But otherwise, Jesus is basically saying in verse 28, when you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am and that I do nothing on my own. So he says, I am so much in line with the Father. I don't say anything on my own. I even obey him to the extent of allowing myself to be lifted up on the cross. So when that happens, then you will really know and believe that I do everything in line with his will. And then you will have to admit and accept the fact that I have come from him, that I am the Son of God because my will is in line with the Father's will to that extent, to the extent of actually allowing myself to be lifted up on the cross. So of course, they would not have caught the nuances because the cross incident has not yet happened. But this is what Jesus is referring to. He says, on that day, you will have to accept that I am in line with the Father. And then of course, we come to the very famous verses which are very widely referred to. If we could have someone read out verses, just to comment on what was said over here, the heart of men is desperately wicked. I mean, it's so true. And it gets the heart reaches that stage of desperate wickedness because in their desperation, people do not want to accept the truth. They are willing to grab on to anything else which can maybe help them to avoid the truth. So they are willing to go for any theory, any explanation, anything. They are that desperate. And so because they are that desperate to run away from the truth, they end up becoming more and more hardened and they become desperately wicked. So true. So very true. Yes, if you could have someone read out verses 31 and 32. Verse 31, then Jesus said to those Jews who believed him, if you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth and truth shall make you free. Yes. So in the scriptures, like I'm sure you've been told before, you have two kinds of knowledge, two kinds of truth being given. You have the logos and you have the Reema. All of God's word is the word of God. It is logos. It has been given to us to know, educate ourselves to know that this is what God regards as the truth. This is what God regards as the right thing. So we have all of the word of God being given to us to know the truth. And then you have the Reema word where God takes a certain particular truth, one particular teaching, and he impresses it upon your heart for one particular situation. Maybe you're facing some particular circumstance.  God picks up that one single truth and he impresses it upon your heart and it becomes very personal to you during that event that you're going through. And then there is another kind of truth which you don't really learn just in your head. It comes through experience. And so it's this third kind of thing that Jesus is talking about over here. So God gives you the whole logos, the entire word of God. He gives it to you so that you can educate yourself on what he believes in, what he regards as the truth, what he expects of us. So all of that is given to us, the logos is given to us and it is our duty to educate ourselves and study it and learn it and be well informed regarding it. And once we know it, God can take up specific little little portions which we require in a particular situation and he brings that to our mind and he makes it very fresh in our minds and we see suddenly, oh, this is how I should apply that truth to my situation now and it becomes the Reema word of God. And then the third kind of learning happens when you apply and practice this logos and Reema even as you are obeying him, even as you are following these instructions and doing what you are being told, through your life experience, you begin to discover the truth of these things. It's no longer just head knowledge, now it is experiential knowledge where you have actually experienced it, tasted it and seen that it is real and true and good. Now that that truth becomes tested and proved to you. So here that is what Jesus is referring to. He says, if you hold to my teaching, if you do what I'm telling you to do, then you are really my disciples, you will know the truth experientially. You will practice it and discover that all that I'm saying is really correct. That it really works and once you know that, that will just set you free because you have not only just kept it in your head, but now you have applied it and allowed it to work out its fruit in your life. So the fruit that it has worked out, what is the fruit that the word has worked out? It has released you in certain areas. It has brought fruit, it has brought success into your life in certain areas. It has maybe increased your understanding of a situation in different ways. This word bears fruit and brings freedom in every area of your life so that you can walk deeper and deeper into Shalom, the abundant life that you're meant to have. So we have the logos, word of God, all of the word of God, which is logos. We have the reema, which is that little portion which God uses and reminds us of in specific situations. And even as we start practicing these logos and reema, even as we start doing it, the fruit of the word begins to operate. We start seeing the success, the peace, the faith, the increase in faith which we need. We need the change in the circumstances. We see victory happening. We see all of these things happening because the truth is now being acted out in your life. But you're actually putting it into practice and you will see the freedom which comes with it, the success which comes with it. And you will be set free in all areas of your life to walk into greater and greater abundance, abundant life into Shalom. So here it's not talking about just head knowledge, but knowledge which you have chosen to believe and put into practice. And then of course, you have these leaders immediately protesting and saying, no, no, we are free as well. So if we could read out verses 33 to 36, please. They answered him. We are Abraham's descendants who have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say you will be made free? Jesus answered them. Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore, if the son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. Okay, so they are not accepting what Jesus is saying and putting it into practice in their personal lives. And so he's unable to set them free and cause them to walk into abundant life. They're unable to achieve that. They're unable to reach that because they are not submitting to his word, believing it and practicing it. So they are like slaves who live in a house, in a household back in those times. Back in those times, not only would the family members be living in that large joint family, but you would also have all the servants and slaves and all of them also living over there. So because these would be large setups. When we think of house, we think of a little apartment with maybe two bedrooms or three bedrooms. But the houses of those times were not like that. Each time there are more people joining the family, you would just add an extra room. You would build an extra room and that becomes an extension of the original house. So you had these large houses where you have a lot of people living including the slaves and they're all benefiting from the provisions provided in the house. They all enjoy what privileges are granted in that house. But those slaves are not permanent. They're slaves. One day they will just remain as slaves and they will not step into the privileges which the sons would step into because there's paperwork backing up the sons. They are meant to inherit and they will go on to become masters. So the slave and the children are all at the same level in the early stages. The kids are enjoying benefits. The slaves are also enjoying benefits. But the slave will continue staying over there at that stage where he's just enjoying benefits. But he never becomes truly a son. He never really gets that paperwork in his hand which says that now he's no longer just a child but now he's the master and now he can take part in greater business or he can participate in things which only a son can participate in. Those rights will never be given to the slave. So it's very sad. Jesus is saying you people think that you are descendants of Abraham but you're not going to be having any of those privileges which are meant to be given to the actual true children of Abraham because you people are slaves and it's a very sad thing. You're not even sincere slaves, genuine slaves who are doing your work. You are slaves to sin. Sin has taken over as your master. So you're temporarily living over here in this family of Israel as slaves but you're not sons.  So he's pointing out the great danger that they are in. On the other hand if they repent of their attitude, if they choose to place their belief in him he says that he's willing to set them free. He's willing to set them free of their sins and help them to walk into their inheritance but that's a choice which they would need to make but they are still arguing, they are still insisting and so we have verses 39 to 41. If we could have someone read out verses 39 to 41. 41. Yes. They answered him. Our father is Abraham. If you really were Abraham's children, Jesus replied, you will do the same things that he did and all I have ever done is to tell you the truth. I heard from God.  Abraham did nothing like this. You are doing what your father did. God himself is the only father we have. Okay. Yeah. So here we have... Yes. Thank you. So here we have Jesus saying, they insist on the saying, Abraham is our father and then Jesus says, if he was really your father then you would do what your father does because Abraham, what did he do when messengers came to him from heaven? He received them. He was open to what they were saying, which we see in Genesis chapter 18 where messengers were sent to him from heaven and he believed what they were saying and he accepted it. On the other hand now someone, a greater messenger has been sent to these people and these religious leaders are rejecting him. They are not accepting him. So he says, he repeats the same thing. He says in verse 40, Abraham did not do such things. When Abraham, when those messengers came to Abraham, he did not conspire to kill them, but these people are doing that. And so he says, no, no, no, your father is not Abraham. Your deeds, your actions show that your father is somebody else and he goes on to talk about how they belong to the evil one rather than to the Lord. And so when they say that the people are very angry, yeah, so we have verse 41 where they say, we are not legitimate children. They protested. The only father we have is God himself. So again, this may be a slur against Jesus. They're again trying to mock him. So they are saying, at least we know who our fathers are, but then you claim that you are the result of a virgin birth. So we at least know who our human father is and we also have God as our father. And so they again mock him. And then maybe we can go to verses 48.  So he says, can any of you prove me guilty of sin? And that's a question. If you look at the next few verses, nobody comes forward and says, okay, you have done this, this, this. So it's an amazing testimony. They could not find a single thing that they could accuse him of. So he is true in all that he is saying and they're not able to question his integrity regarding his lifestyle. So even his lifestyle is evidence that all that he is speaking is the truth. And then maybe we can just very quickly look at verses 48 to 50.  They very clearly know that he's not a Samaritan. They know that he is from Nazareth and his lineage is from David. So they're just making accusations now. By this time, I think they're kind of running out of good arguments. And so they just randomly saying whatever comes into their head.   But what is Jesus doing over here? He says, I am not seeking glory for myself. But there is one who seeks it and he is the judge. So I'm not even trying to glorify myself. It's the father who is testifying that I am from him to science and wonders to perform to back up what I am saying. So I have the father's backing and I am glorifying him. I'm not trying to glorify myself. So therefore I am not demon possessed. And then we come to the last portion where 56 to 59 where Jesus says, I think this is an interesting passage. Maybe you could very quickly look at it if someone could read out for us 56 to 59 please. 56 to 59 Your father Abraham rejoiced that he was to see the time of my coming. He saw it and was glad.  I'm telling you the truth. Jesus replied, Abraham was born. I am. Then they up stones and they speak like stones to throw to him but Jesus himself Jesus hid himself and he left the temple. Thank you. Yes, thank you. So we have in verse 24 and in verse 28 and again here in verse 58 where Jesus uses that I-E-I-M-I that Greek word which means it's a divine word which is used for I-E-I-M. So this is the third time where he says before Abraham was born I-E-I-M. So in verse 56 Jesus says when Abraham was told about these things we are not sure to what extent Abraham was aware of what exactly his seed would do because he's told that these generations would be blessed through him so I don't know to what extent he was aware of how they would be blessed but whatever it is that he was told we learn over here that Abraham rejoiced when he heard about these things so whatever revelations were given to him it made him glad and he rejoiced but here these people who are calling themselves sons of Abraham they are not at all rejoicing they are not at all happy with what God has planned for them so they say how would you know whether Abraham rejoiced or not you are not around at that time and then Jesus says I was very much around at that time because I am and he has said it three times in a row in the same conversation so now they are really upset and they pick up stones to stone him but of course it is not yet his time and so he slips away from there so we come into John chapter 9 which is mainly the story of a man who was born blind and Jesus you know gives him back his eyesight and if you look in your textbook you would see a table in which you have a comparison being made between the Bethesda pool incident and the man over here who is healed of blindness so John chapter 5 is the story about the paralytic who is healed of his paralysis and here in John chapter 9 you have a person who is blind from birth and he too is healed and in the table you have some interesting comparisons being made one I think very interesting comparison is that in the Bethesda pool incident the man who became sick got that way because of his sinfulness it was his sinful actions which led to his sickness but over here in this story we see that this poor man never did anything sinful to deserve what he had done it is just something which happened to him because of the kind of fallen world that we live in another thing that we see is that both the stories involve a pool of course in the Bethesda pool incident the pool does not really play any role at all in the healing over here in this particular story this blind man is asked to go and wash the mud which Jesus has put on his eyes is asked to go and wash it off in the pool of Siloam so I think that's a rather superficial comparison nothing much doesn't really help us much maybe one interesting comparison that we could see between the two is the Bethesda pool man doesn't really stand up for Jesus or anything he says Jesus is the one who made me carry the mat and he just passes on the blame to Jesus but over here you see this blind man was recovered his eyesight he kind of takes a stand for Jesus and in fact openly says now I am his follower so as for the Bethesda pool man we don't really know what Jesus says to him don't sin anymore because something worse may happen to you and so we do not know whether the man acted upon Jesus advice or not but over here we very clearly see that this blind person he takes a stand for Jesus and he decides to become a follower and in fact he worships him it's the wording that is used about him so to very quickly go through some of the main things in this story maybe if someone could read out verses one and two and Jesus was walking along Jesus was walking along he saw a man who had been born blind his disciples asked him teacher who sin cost him to be born blind was it his own or his parents thank you yes okay so they were probably thinking about Exodus chapter 20 verse 5 and also Deuteronomy chapter 5 verse 9 where it says that the children would be punished for the sins of their father so they are wondering whether this man was born blind you know right from babyhood right from the time he was born so did his parents commit some terrible sin or maybe some ancestors who committed some terrible sin because of which this man has been born in this condition that is one question the other question is did this man himself commit some sin so in what they are trying to say is I know did God anticipate that in during his lifetime he's going to do something really horrible and so knowing that because of God's fore knowledge regarding our sins is it because of that that God decides to bring a judgment upon him even before he has committed that sinful deed so they made it in that sense and Jesus of course replies and says no no this man has not committed any terrible sin and nor have the parents sinned in any way rather this is just going to be one occasion where God gets one more chance to display his glory okay so so we could say what learning can we take away from this there are unfortunate circumstances that come upon us because of the wrong decisions that we have taken it can be because of the sins which we have done so sometimes things may go really bad in our lives and we may end up with a lot of suffering and a lot of trials because of the sin in our lives and because of the wrong decisions which we took without God's guidance that could be the case on the other hand certain things just happen to us because we are living in a in an imperfect world other people do things to us they are the ones who are sinning and we are the innocent victims of their sin and we suffer because of what they have done so it could be any of those you know reasons because of which the suffering has come but one thing we can take away from this verse is that you can just see it as one more occasion where God can display his glory so it doesn't matter whether the suffering has come because of my own stupidity and my sin or because of something that someone else has done whatever the source may be there is hope in the Lord you know God who is willing to to display his glory in our lives and help us and bring us out of that situation is willing to deliver us so we can always have hope that whether it is our fault or whether it is someone else's fault if we can just go to him humbly you know with an attitude of submission then he will be willing to display his glory in our lives and act on our behalf coming to verses 6 and 7 where Jesus you know I think maybe we should read these 2 verses if someone could please read out verses 6 and 7 when he had said these things he spat on the ground and made clay with a saliva and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay and he said to him go wash in the pool of Silom which is translated scent so he went and washed and came back seeing yeah no explanation is given as to why Jesus chose this mode of healing it seems rather messy and unhygienic but you know all we can we can just maybe try to make some assumptions or you know draw some inferences one thing that was mentioned in your textbook was the kind of maybe slight similarity to the Genesis act of creation where you have God literally taking you know mud and creating a human out of it and then he does something he breathes into that clay which he has created and it becomes a living person and so over there in that incident you had breath being released here you have saliva being used so is Jesus doing this with some kind of spiritual significance in mind maybe it's something from him that he is putting in that mud mud is just mud you know there's no life in it there's no restoration or healing in it but Jesus adds saliva to it and now it is no longer just mud there's something of the living God there's something of the creator in human form so there's something of Jesus in that mud now and so this man goes over there and washes his eyes and he's actually so maybe there's some kind of spiritual significance because Jesus has the creator God who was there in creation when the first human was created now he's using saliva over here to restore this man's eyesight in this remarkable way so we can only make assumptions and of course Jesus very very deliberately chooses to do this on the Sabbath as it is pointed out in verse 14 and this in fact an explanation that Jesus gives about why he's doing it on the Sabbath he says you know as long as it is day we must do the works of him who sent me so now is the time for healing Jesus has come onto the earth to do these things to deliver people from the stronghold of Satan to redeem them from the consequences of sin and so as long as it is day as long as crucifixion time has not yet come he has come over here to do the works of him who sent him and so it doesn't matter to him whether it is a Sabbath day and whether the Pharisees have made any rules regarding the Sabbath day that is irrelevant only what the Lord, only the laws and commands given by God you know those matter and so man made practical rules about the Sabbath don't apply and so God Jesus chooses to continuing to doing the works of the Father even on the Sabbath day and then we move into verses 17 to 23 where the Pharisees question the man's parents and they say is it really true that Jesus healed him and the parents do not want to take a stand afraid that they would be excommunicated and so they just say why are you questioning us, you talk to him directly he is the one who got healed let him speak for himself and so we come to verses 24 to 34 where the healed man he speaks up and he says that you know this maybe we should leave this passage for next class because it's nice some of the things that he says it would just take maybe about 5 minutes or so so it wouldn't really interfere with next week's portion so we'll deal with John chapter 9 verses 24 onwards at the beginning of next class alright, anyone has any questions otherwise you know we can conclude with the word of prayer alright, let's close with the word of prayer Lord we just thank you so much for the things that we could learn from your word today we thank you O Lord that if we believe in you if we submit to you even if we have not led perfect lives you will still be willing to display your glory in our lives thank you O Lord that you are a god of second chances thank you O Lord that you don't bring judgment upon us immediately but you advise us and say go and sin no more so we thank you that in you we always have hope so O Lord we pray that we would not be people who foolishly keep running away from the truth and allow the heart to get more and more hardened because that's a thing which those leaders did O Lord to themselves if they had not kept running away from the truth then their hearts probably would have remained sensitive to you and they could have probably repented and been saved but Lord they allowed themselves to be hardened more and more so O Lord whenever you speak uncomfortable truths to us help us O Lord to humble ourselves and accept even those uncomfortable truths we pray that they would not make the mistake of running away from the truth trying to hide from it because that leads to a hardening O Lord and that's so dangerous we pray O Lord that you would guard us against those things and Lord all the things that we have learned today in today's lesson bring these truths back to our mind O Lord as and when we need it in our own lives thank you Lord in Jesus name amen amen thank you so much for participating in the class and we'll meet again next week thank you thank you