Anthony Anzalone, founder of Verona, really grateful for your time.
Thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me on.
You are building infrastructure that allows for more effective identity verification.
First and foremost, give us a bit more of an introduction to Verona and why is your core product needed in the landscape today.
Absolutely.
I mean, first of all, you cannot believe anything that you see on the internet, especially in the age of AI.
Understanding the truth gets harder and harder, and so we make private, portable, and programmable data that AI.
And people can use.
This is an error, like you said, of AI generated content.
How much more difficult is it to verify what is true and what is not today than even just a few years ago, Anthony?
I mean, I think I saw a stat that AI AI generated document fraud is up 500%.
You know, it is an intense cat and mouse game and the cat is effectively losing to the mouse.
So identifying from the source and getting source level verification is kind of the only way and just not even playing the game.
There are Bots.
There are deep fakes.
There are synthetic voices, you name it.
I mean it is out there and it is being used by fraudsters right now.
Talk to me a bit more about the internet's so-called trust crisis as a result of what's out there for the so-called bad guys.
Yes, absolutely.
I mean fraud is up in every industry, whether it be insurance, real estate, you name it, people who have been doing the same kind of fraud verification checks of like 1995.
We're in a new era and we need a new way to keep up with everything, and you know I think you're seeing a lot.
A lot of privacy preserving AI companies come online and there's a reason for it.
Why do AI agents actually need verified data as well and talk to me a bit more about the ways that you are thinking about how to solve these these challenges that everyone else has faced.
We just don't spend our time the way that you do trying to go about doing something about it.
Of course, of course.
You know, I really think if you really look into the future, AI is going to dominate commerce.
You know, I think you see it a lot, but with AI dominating commerce, you're looking at two completely independent parties that have no.
To trust each other and AI cannot act on sensitive information.
It's just kind of given what it's told, what it believes, right?
And so in order for, let's say if you want to talk about a car loan or you know insurance in the future, the only way to do that, you know, income verification, employment verification, real world facts need to be identified in order for AI agents to even begin to transact with each other.
What does invisible crypto mean ultimately?
That's a yes, as soon as Is a smile to your face, what does that actually mean to you and what The components about it you would most want someone watching this interview to also better understand.
I mean, I think it's an important day as well because I just saw Securitties ringing the ending bell, the closing bell of the New York Stock Exchange.
Crypto is becoming more and more mainstream and it is hitting a mainstream audience and at the same time it's becoming more and more invisible, right?
You're being able to see crypto dominate places like the New York Stock Exchange, the real world, and the reason we're able to do that is by making it invisible and only showing the benefits of it.
Are there popular misconceptions you see in the broader identity verification space that you wouldn't want more people to have a version of the corrected record about?
I think there's a lot of internet scraping.
I think there's a lot of internet scraping which doesn't really do the job too well.
And I think that it just it's super, super easy to fake, and I think everything, you know, you look at the internet now, it's just completely AI slop, and we're trying to put an end to that.
Please let's limit the AI slop as best we can.
I speak on behalf of everyone.
Anthony Aloni, founder of Verona, really grateful for your time.
Thanks for having me here.
