Trust Stamp securing stablecoins with biometrics – ICYMI

Trust Stamp Inc (NASDAQ:IDAI, ISE:AIID) executive vice president John Bridge talked with Proactive about the company’s latest biometric technology and its application in securing stablecoins and digital assets.

Bridge outlined how Trust Stamp’s “stable key” technology enables identity to be bound to tokenized assets using a privacy-preserving biometric template

He explained that traditional crypto systems often rely on passwords or seed phrases, which, if lost, can lead to abandoned assets.

Trust Stamp’s approach enables a more secure method through biometrics, offering a solution to the long-standing issue of lost crypto access.

Proactive: Welcome back inside our Proactive newsroom. And joining us now is John Bridge. He’s the Executive Vice President with Trust Stamp. And John, it’s good to see you again. How are you?

John Bridge: I’m doing good. Great to see you again as well.

The company has some really interesting news today, talking about some of the work you’re doing to protect stablecoins. Talk to me a bit about stablecoins. They’re commonly used now, but they can also lead to problems.

Yeah. Stablecoins are a great tool for cross-border payments and payment settlements. I think with the passing of the Genius Act, we’re going to see even more rapid increase. And there are some vulnerabilities. The speed of the payments moving can create issues with compliance and regulations. So, we’re hoping to address some of those concerns and provide some solutions.

You have patents within the company that are allowing you to put this type of technology forward. So how can Trust Stamp really help people who are using stablecoins?

So our latest patent binds identity to tokenized assets.

So how does that work?

Using our stable key technology, we were able to create a tokenized version of a biometric template. So it’s privacy-preserving. And then that template can be used to bind the identity to a stable asset, stablecoin, or other crypto asset.

So the way it worked in the past was you would have a password to get access. But if for some reason you lose or forget that password, that becomes void. There’s nothing you can really do about it. So the biometrics will enable people to ensure it’s the right people accessing those funds?

Yeah, that’s really a great point. Seed phrases can get lost. And we know that a lot of crypto has been abandoned because of lost seed phrases in the past. So we’re able to regenerate that seed phrase using our technology, and it’s really bound to a device and a biometric.

Stablecoins have been a bit of the Wild West, with a lot going on. There’s supposed to be new regulations coming as well to better protect the consumer. How does your technology fit into what may be coming?

Yeah, that’s a great point. The Genius Act and the Stable Act, which hasn’t quite passed yet, address this by creating a regulatory framework. Among those are making sure stablecoins are paid 1 to 1 against real assets, generally U.S. treasuries. And then there’s an audit aspect to that as well. FinCEN and Treasury are tasked with creating some reports. Those will be coming in the coming months. Treasury just finished a comment period. One of the things they’re looking at is DeFi. But the stablecoins themselves also face issues. In countries that haven’t adopted the FATF rules yet, there’s uneven compliance. Hopefully, with the introduction of our tool, that compliance will be built in.

Lastly, one thing I noticed when I was reading about the patent was the fact that it allows you to have biometrics without leaving identity markers. That’s a big difference in what you’re doing, right?

It is. Using a zero-knowledge proof or another method for ensuring someone is who they say they are — or validating things like KYC — without having that raw data exposed is really important. Even with encryption, encryption keys can be compromised. We have quantum computing getting ready to hit us. So being quantum-ready — those are points that we have tried to build in and foresee with this technology.

Quotes have been lightly edited for style and clarity