S3 E2 - The Missing Internet Trust Layer with Timo Hotti

The future of trust in the digital economyFor a long time, I struggled to articulate exactly what bothered me about crypto. It wasn’t just the reports of grift, fraud, or dark-market economic activity. More fundamentally, crypto has never quite felt like the internet at its best — open, connective, trust-building, and generative in the ways transformative technologies should be. Then I read the new Internet Trust Layer white paper from Finnish technologist and financial thought leader Timo Hotti.Aside from being a fellow hockey fan, Timo is an early web technology adopter whose work has focused on data, transactions, and decentralization. He leads transaction decentralization initiatives at a major Finnish bank and was one of the core contributors to the Findynet open-source project — a decentralized national identity and transaction platform developed between 2019 and 2024 that continues to seek contributors today.In his white paper, Timo does more than critique the limitations of crypto as a foundation for the future digital economy. He lays out a compelling alternative: a path toward active digital money and a payment infrastructure built on repeated acts of trust rather than speculation.I was genuinely excited to have this conversation with Timo, and I think you’ll find it as thought-provoking as I did.Here’s our conversation on the future of trust in the digital economy.---Guest InformationTimo Hotti, Principal Technology Strategist at OP Pohjola | LinkedIn---Important Resources for Stuff We Talked About:Internet Trust Layer (ITL) white paper by Timo Hotti | SubstackThe Findynet open source project | GithubThe Next Big Thing | SubstackFollowing our discussion in April, Timo was inspired to attempt to describe "where's the transformation, if there's any." He shared the link with us as an additional resource for the discussion in the episode.On this episode of The 311 Podcast, Paul and Timo discuss:Introduction and Economics Crash CourseActive Money ExplainedCrypto as Barter Trust Formula X counts as Y in CFour Body Problem B2BActive Money Without CryptoCredit and Real ContractsAutomating X Counts As YDecentralizing the RootAgent Keys and TrustVerifying Agents SafelyCocktail Party ProtocolTrust Layers Beat MiningAI Meets Agentic TrustFindynet Status and Wrap Up---Recorded in April 2026.This is a show about the people that make digital public service work. If you'd like to find out more, visit the311podcast.comWe're going to keep having conversations like this. If you've got ideas of guests we should speak to, send us an email to  [email protected]