The Future of Trust with Mat Yarger

The Future of Trust with Mat Yarger explores work at the intersection of technology, data, and sustainability.Each episode features a conversation with a guest driving change, such as academics, entrepreneurs, project developers, farmers, and community leaders. Guests share how technology is creating scalable solutions to sustainability challenges.The podcast is hosted by Mat Yarger, Founder of DEMIA, US Army Combat Veteran, and former Head of Sustainability at the IOTA Foundation.🌐 Demia.net

The Future of Trust with Mat Yarger is a technology podcast hosted by Demia, with 28 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Demia hosts The Future of Trust with Mat Yarger, a technology show with 28 episodes published.

Our AI reads these to draft pitches. Use them as grounding for a pitch that cites a real guest and a specific topic.

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  Episode #28

  S1 E28: The Trust is in the Details, with Oneza Zaim

  Sep 23, 20262h 2mS1

  In this episode, we sit down with Oneza Zaim, a carbon markets analyst at Planet2050, a climate fintech company financing high-integrity CO2 removal projects and opening carbon assets up to retail investors for the first time. Born in Abu Dhabi and raised across three very different environments, Abu Dhabi, Pakistan, and now Berlin, Oneza traces her understanding of trust back to a childhood spent learning other people's languages just to make herself understood. The conversation moves from her training as an industrial auditor, through a site visit where she walked into an unmarked chemical vapor leak and had to call a halt on the spot, to her current work vetting carbon dioxide removal projects at Planet2050, where her team has screened more than 250 projects across different CDR technologies. Oneza and Mat dig into what actually makes a climate project bankable: not a checklist, but a matrix of who is carrying which risk, how dependent a project is on subsidies that could disappear, and whether the story on paper matches what you find on the ground. As Oneza puts it, "integrity does not mean that you do not have weaknesses, it means you know where they are and what you're doing about them." They also unpack why projects tied to an existing supply chain, like coffee waste turned into biochar, tend to earn investor trust faster than nature-based projects like mangroves, even when the latter matter just as much. If you enjoy the episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Oneza ZaimLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oneza-zaim-6767a159/ Planet2050Website: https://planet2050.earth/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/planet-2050 Referenced in the conversation Lucas Zaehringer, Co-Founder and CEO of Planet2050, who Mat references as a longtime collaborator going back to his time at Gold Standard: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucas-zaehringer-65725145/ Gold Standard, the carbon certification body where Mat previously worked with the Planet2050 team: https://www.goldstandard.org/ Open Forest Protocol, the blockchain-based forest monitoring platform Oneza cites as an example of improved traceability for nature-based projects: https://www.openforestprotocol.org/

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  Episode #27

  S1 E27: You Already Own the Debt with Andrew Forson

  Sep 1, 20261h 12mS1

  In this episode, we sit down with Andrew Forson, President of DeFi Technologies and a serial entrepreneur working across asset management, cryptocurrency, and blockchain infrastructure. Raised in a small blue-collar town outside Montreal by two Ghanaian immigrant physicians, Andrew traces his approach to trust in institutions, markets, and government back to a childhood built on self-reliance and hard work. The conversation moves from wrapping digital assets into regulated investment products, to QuickPick's blockchain-powered remittance platform for underbanked users, to the moment a trusted co-founder tried to sell stolen IP behind his back. Andrew and Mat dig into what he calls the real break in global trust: sovereign debt. With nearly all of the world's 195 countries carrying unsustainable debt loads and politicians facing zero accountability for it, Andrew argues "you are certainly a shareholder in the country's outstanding debt" — whether you realize it or not. They also unpack why small, disciplined economies like Switzerland, Singapore, and Rwanda earn outsized trust, and what it would take to give the world's poorest access to fair, inflation-proof investment. If you enjoy the episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Andrew Forson Website: https://www.forson.com/ X: https://x.com/Forson LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paforson Andrew’s companies and projects DeFi Technologies (Nasdaq: DEFT): https://defi.tech Valour: https://www.valour.com/en/about Kwikpik: https://kwikpik.io Stillman Digital (DeFi Technologies subsidiary): https://www.stillmandigital.com/ QXT Capital: https://www.qxtcapital.com/ Scramble Academy, Torremolinos, Spain: https://scramblestuff.com/scramble-academy-worldwide/ Referenced in the conversation The Hashgraph Group, where Andrew previously led ventures and investments: https://www.hashgraph-group.com/ M-Pesa, the Kenyan mobile money platform Andrew cites as the first credit-based e-money at scale: https://www.safaricom.co.ke/main-mpesa/about-m-pesa/m-pesa-journey Dell Technologies Solar Community Hubs, the shipping-container connectivity project Mat describes outside Manicore, Brazil: https://www.dell.com/en-us/dt/corporate/newsroom/announcements/detailpage.press-releases~usa~2022~05~02052022-dell-technologies-unveils-solar-community-hubs.htm FAS Amazonia, the Brazilian foundation running the Amazon hubs: https://fas-amazonia.org/solar-community-hub-da-dell-expande-conectividade-e-conservacao-na-amazonia/

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  Episode #26

  S1 E26: One Key for Everything with Raido Saar

  Aug 18, 202650 minS1

  From investigating forged documents on Estonia's post-Soviet border to founding ComplyOnce, Raido Saar has spent his career chasing the same question: how do you know who's really on the other side? Along the way, he helped shape Estonia's X-Road digital government infrastructure and built one of the first biometric passport identity solutions in Europe. In this episode, Raido sits down with Mat Yarger to unpack why the world spends $500 billion a year on anti-money-laundering efforts yet recovers just 0.02% of illicit funds, how outdated identity checks let one scammer open five fraudulent accounts using the same stolen face, and how Raido himself nearly got scammed on a fake podcast call. He also shares how LinkedIn and its verification vendor lost his identity data twice, and makes the case for a single encrypted identity key that could replace the passwords, selfies, and stolen accounts fueling today's fraud epidemic. It's a candid, wide-ranging conversation about why our systems for verifying trust are still built on 1990s architecture, and what it will actually take to fix them. If you enjoy the episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.

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  Episode #25

  S1 E25: First to Market or Built to Last? with Jeff Mahony

  Jul 14, 20261h 13mS1

  In this episode, we sit down with Jeff Mahony, Chief Architect at RYTchain, where he's building a Layer-1 blockchain designed to bring governments and citizens onto shared, gas-free infrastructure, with national pilots already underway in Pakistan and beyond. Jeff grew up poor in Southern California and was working manual labor jobs by age nine, an experience that shaped his belief that talent is everywhere but opportunity is not. That belief carried him from aerospace and defense, where he worked on high-stakes systems, into financial infrastructure, where he built SaveDaily, a no-minimum, no-fee investing platform for what he calls "the other 93 percent" of America. We talk about fatherhood at twenty-nine and the ego it forced him to confront, why he'd rather build for relevance than race to be first, and where he thinks the AI industry is heading without enough seasoning behind its talent. It's a conversation about opportunity, durability, and what it actually takes to build systems people can rely on. If you enjoy the episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.

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  Episode #24

  S1 E24: Where Trust Breaks When the Law Gets Involved with Deanna Reitman

  Jun 30, 20261h 16mS1

  In this episode, we sit down with Deanna Reitman, Partner at Foley & Lardner LLP, where she works at the intersection of energy, commodities, and compliance. Her career has been built on a simple premise: trust has to survive scrutiny, not just sound good in a pitch deck. Deanna shares how an early grounding in rules and consequences shaped a career spent in the rooms where deals unwind, ownership gets disputed, and standards collide with the law that actually applies. As more markets lean on real-time data and digital platforms, she's blunt about where people get it wrong: "Data doesn't prove ownership. Leases do." We explore what it actually takes to protect a buyer from acquiring something they don't own, why self-reported compliance keeps creating the same failures, and what she needs to see before she'll stand behind any system, digital or otherwise. The conversation closes on what it would take for carbon markets and digital assets to hold up under real pressure, instead of unraveling the moment scrutiny arrives. If you enjoy the episode, don't forget to subscribe and leave a review.

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