The Rise of Bots: Understanding the Dead Internet Theory and Human Verification

Robots, they're taking over the internet.

There's an internet theory called the dead Internet theory, and while improving, this theory claims that since around 2016, most of the internet's content and activity have been dominated by bots and AI generated material rather than true human interaction.

Well, this concern has only made human verification more important.

The process is. online to confirm that a user is a real person.

And when it comes to blockchain, stablecoins are being used to confirm a person's identity during payments.

Joining me this morning to weigh in is Phil George, founder of Earn OS.

Phil, good morning.

Thank you so much for joining us.

So first and foremost, walk us through the heavy presence of bots online and how human verification is trying to fight this.

Yeah, I mean, we've probably all completed one of those captures that annoys us and slows us down, but definitely if it wasn't 2016 since the internet was dominated by bots, then definitely in the last few years since all of the LLMs and chatbots have been taking over, it's really interesting to see that.

These LLMs for the amount of times they are sprawling a website, it might be 100 or 200 times, and only one of those times is a human click compared to the bots.

So the bots definitely are taking over and obviously that means that figuring out who's real and who's not real, who who's a real human and who's just a bot, becomes more and more important when it comes to financial transactions, but also when it comes to things like advertising, which is what the internet is effectively powered by.

Yeah, and speaking of payments, Bill, how are stablecoins being used in human verification?

Well, I guess that Bots can transfer stablecoins to one another and so can people, but people can pass KYC and then those wallets can be considered verified or human, meaning that if someone completes a verification with their passport and those sorts of things, and then that KYC is attached to a wallet that they're transacting with, then we can sort of know that that wallet is attached to a person who's previously verified their identity, but we don't necessarily know what their identity is, just that it is a real human person.

Um, so that will become more and more important as more and more of the internet becomes bots, and then we have to be able to identify which are human transactions and which are bot-based transactions.

Yeah, and so, I do want to expand on this.

Why do you see stablecoins becoming the internet dollar faster than say central banks can actually adjust?

Well, I think that it comes down to a freedom of movement of money, right?

So for the first time in the history of money we're able to basically have a financial transaction with anyone who has a laptop or a mobile phone, and we can create a web-free wallet instantly without the normal barriers that are involved with having financial transactions where you need to go to a bank or you need to.

Have access to traditional financial systems.

So you can have as many wallets as there are people instantly at nearly zero cost or much, much more than that.

Um, one of the interesting things is that while stablecoins have been really, really exciting recently, I, um, Circle recently said that they've only got 5.7 million wallets that have got more than $10 in them of, of stablecoins.

Which means that while these are massive growing businesses and as you mentioned before, Tether have just announced their massive raise, there's still a lot longer to go before we actually have, you know, billions of people transacting.

But the reason that I think that internet native money wins is because there's absolutely zero friction for anyone anywhere in the world to actually create a wallet and then receive money into it.

And central banks are normally, it's not central banks themselves, but traditional banking systems are walled behind having quite a few more checks and balances in place before you can open an account.

So when you can now open an account instantaneously on any internet connected device, that's the system that's going to win just because it's the minimal friction pathway.

And of course, Phil, we can't have a conversation about stable coins without talking about regulations.

So when it comes to the regulatory landscape moving forward, what are your expectations both in the US as well as abroad?

Well, I think that obviously we've seen US regulators become more and more favorable to stablecoins.

Obviously people want to have nations want to have demand for their money, and stablecoins are just another massive demand sink so that people, people can buy their money in different ways.

So I think that we're going to see the rest of the world follow course with the lead that the United States has had.

And more and more countries around the world are going to advocate for and support the issuance of stablecoins in order to increase the demand for their money so that they can remain competitive in the global environment.

And finally, Phil, before I let you go, of course, when we're talking about payments and stablecoins, it's all about use cases.

So what are some myths that you would like to dispel when it comes to stablecoins?

Um, maybe not so much myths, but I think that a lot of the time when we're talking about stablecoins, people are talking about them being used as a mechanism of payment so that you can more easily pay businesses, whereas at NOS we think that one of the most transformative things about stablecoins are actually what you can do where businesses can now pay anyone on the internet any amount of money for any activity that they can perform.

So we're targeting advertising, for example, where we're empowering any brand on Earth to pay any person on Earth any amount of money to reward them for who they are and what they do instantly over the internet.

So for the first time in the history of money, anyone on earth can be paid any amount of money for who they are and what they do instantly, and we think that we call that payment transmission as distinct from payment receipt, and we think that that's transformative because People being able to receive money from companies is something that we haven't really done that much before, and we think that that unlocks an entirely new use case and profoundly powerful new economies that will arise on the back of that, and stablecoins are a big part of of that unlock.

OK, Phil, we will have to leave it there.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

See you later.