A new kind of company is gaining popularity in the crypto world. Decentralized Autonomous Organizations, or DAOs, are member-owned and governed organizations based on a blockchain network, with no central leadership. One such organization is PlannerDAO, which bills itself as a decentralized community of financial planners committed to bringing crypto education to all financial professionals, as well as providing all people with access to digital assets. Steve Larsen, a co-founder of PlannerDAO, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.

Closing Bell

PlannerDAO Brings Crypto Education to Financial Professionals

in the crypto world, a new kind of company is gaining popularity, decentralized autonomous organizations or douse are member owned and governed organizations based on a Blockchain network with no central leadership and one such organization is Planner Tao, which bills itself as a decentralized community of financial planners committed to bringing crypto education to all financial professionals as well as providing all people with access to digital assets. Joining us now to discuss is one of the co founders of planner Tao steve. Larson steve. Welcome to the show. So before we get into what planner Tao does, can you talk more about what the dow is and how an organization can benefit from being operated in this decentralized way? Absolutely. Usually when planted out comes up, we have to start with what the dow is and talk about that. So as you mentioned, it's decentralized autonomous organization and that's how you get the pronunciation tao. And basically it's a group of people who collate around a common cause or purpose. It can be a formal corporation, it can be a nonprofit or it can just be a movement and the reason they do it because it gives you more control over the direction the organization is going. So whether it be governance or payments to each other or major initiatives, the members have a lot more control and influence than they might in a typical organization. So let's talk about more. Let's talk more about planner Dow. What does it do? How is it trying to widen access to crypto? Yeah, we're trying to accomplish the same things. I I really just mentioned, we're trying to have financial advisors and financial planners take control of the profession so we can really guided ourselves. There's so much to figure out with Cryptocurrency and digital assets right now that we really want the people who are on the ground, meeting with the clients sitting in their offices and kitchen tables around the country to have an influence over how this is regulated and how this is implemented. So we have several initiatives going right now in order to promote what we're doing and and bring these services to consumers. Do you think there are any potential drawbacks to having organizations operate in this decentralized way? Member governed way. And how does planner planner tao whole aim to fight that sentiment? Yeah, I don't know if it's drawbacks, but there's certainly challenges um douse our new and no no to douse look alike. So every dow has a unique challenge and that certainly applies to us most doubts that are out there taking existing group of crypto users and crypto enthusiasts and then they start a project out in out in crypto land for us. It's much different. We're taking a group of professionals who all have professional jobs and our financial planners and we're trying to introduce them to crypto and run it in addition. So one of our challenges is that we don't have people who can necessarily put in the hours that some of the other doubts have. So we have to work around that. And so our challenge of course is producing the volume of work and press and spreading the word. We might have a little, a little more difficult time doing that than your typical organization. So planner Tao is the parent organization of the Crypto Education Platform Inter Access. And very recently on March 31st planner dow announced it was merging Inter Access with other crypto education companies. Tell us about that. Can you tell me more about the merger and what this new company and this combination of company aims to do? Yeah, what's really neat is how we set set this up? So, planner now itself is a nonprofit organization. It's, we're applying for five oh one C three status right now and it does not generate a profit. It certainly generates revenue to advocate for the industry, but it's not a company. What we do is we contract with other companies to provide the education for our members. So Inter Access and CPU World are two of those firms of which I owned, one now merged with another one owned by Adam Bloomberg and Ron Dixon. And so we provide the education for people to qualify to take the certified Digital asset advisor exam. And what's really neat is it's not just going to be our company's, we're inviting, uh, numerous other organizations to be education providers as well as a matter of fact one of them that's coming on this summer is Rice University is going to be an official education partner of planner down. So I want to talk to you as a co founder of planner. Tao the companies governed by its members like you mentioned, it has no central leader. What is your involvement with the way planner dow operates on a daily basis? And what initiatives do you have planned moving forward, steve? Well, ironically, my role day today is as the central leader and I'm working as hard as I can to move that out of there. So unfortunately when you start any organization that does have to pivot around a few key people and what we have those key people, but pretty much all of our initiatives are designed to give as much control as possible to the members. So whether that be voting Or distributing tokens are ways to compensate each other. That's something we're always working really hard on very, very quickly. About 15 seconds. Can you talk about douse members? What kind of financial planners are using this platform Steve. So typically independent financial planners as opposed to some, you know, maybe big Wall Street planners that you might hear about? These are independent planners who are running firms all over the country and they're actively meeting with clients and they want to learn, how do I explain this to my clients. How do I do this safely securely and legally for everybody. All right, thank you for squeezing that in in 15 seconds. I wanted to get that question and steve Larson, co founder of planner Dale. Thank you so much for your time. Steve have a great weekend.