A Philosophical Framework for the Future of Finance in a Web3 World

What if the future of finance isn’t about trusting banks—but proving everything?

In this episode of the Weekly ROAR Podcast, Dustin Hedrick and Brandon Billings unpack a bold new vision for the future of finance: Banking 3.0. As global financial systems undergo a once-in-a-century transformation, they explore how Web3 technologies like blockchain, smart contracts, and decentralized identity are reshaping the very foundation of money, ownership, and trust. This isn’t about replacing banks—it’s about evolving them into something faster, more transparent, and aligned with the user.

• Why the current financial system is breaking—and what’s driving the shift to Web3
• The core principles of Banking 3.0: self-sovereignty, transparency, and programmable trust
• How banks can evolve from custodians of money to infrastructure providers in a decentralized world

Resources & Links:
https://www.r0ar.io/

The future of finance will belong to systems that prioritize speed, transparency, and user ownership—and that shift is already happening.

If this episode expanded your perspective, follow the podcast, share it with someone in finance or tech, and stay tuned as we continue breaking down the systems shaping the future.

Weekly ROAR Podcast with Dustin Hedrick & Brandon Billings
Sponsored by https://www.r0ar.io/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Welcome back to your weekly roar, my friends. Now, not just streaming, officially, our podcast is becoming its own little baby broadcast. We may be on radio for the next 80 years, we don't know. But we're starting right now, and my name is Dustin Hendrick. Happy to be with my good friend here, which you can't see on radio if you're tuning into it. Bring a billings, bring it in take it away. Does my beard look okay? Your beard looks great, man. From where I'm listening, your beard looks great.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Thanks, brother. Today's episode is a big one, so let's dive into a philosophical framework that's shaping the future of finance and what we're calling banking 3.0.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Big picture time, baby. Let's start with the reality. Global financial system is going through a once in a century or 200 years, two centuries transformation. Traditional banking gave us stability, but it wasn't built for a digital borderless world. Let's be honest. You tried to send money with Western Union or anything else, holy schneikes, this has not been fun. So, what's emerging now through Web3 is a completely new financial foundation. We're taking, we're talking about the blockchain, but in less crypto bro terms. The smart contracts, the decentralized identity, and tokenized value we're going after. And what we're presenting today isn't anti-bank. So, legacy bankers, if you're hearing us because we're on a new format and you're like, whoa, the crypto bros made it to radio. Um, listen, we're not kicking you out. We want to tear down the idea, the idea that we're tearing down a system. So we're gonna evolve banking, not destroy it. This is a partnership, not a competition. So for you guys, we can't compete with your ability to get stuff in and out of a physical location. We can we cannot compete with the relationships you have, long going, and even what's been in the past for how to use money. However, you cannot compete with us with speed, transparency, trustless systems, or more. Even efficiency, you can't compare. You can never compare. You can't tell me the 21-day clearing of something, or a 21-day closing of something, or 14-day closing of a property, or 30-day closing on a house, or transferring money somewhere 14 days or five days held, seven days held, or depositing an untrusted check, seven days, 14 days, 21 days, or for that instance, money coming from the government and a direct deposit taking three days. Wait, what? Charges of $5 to $21. We're talking about seconds. You can't compete with that.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

What are you saying, Brandon? Go ahead, jump in. I was gonna say, in all fairness, I wouldn't trust the government either.

SPEAKER_02 3:30

So yes, we have a good, healthy distrust. So we're not presenting anti-bank, hear us. We're not tearing down the system. We're evolving it, we're perfecting it, we're transparencying it with the right kind of obfuscation for privacy and safety and protection. So banking 3.0 is post-centralized, it's user sovereign, and it's programmable by default.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

Yeah, uh, thank you, Dustin. Um, so if you're a banking executive listening to this, here's the core idea. Banking 3.0 is a framework to help institutions transition safely into a Web3 future. This isn't about removing banks or regulators, it's about upgrading the infrastructure, introducing blockchain-based settlement, programmable contracts, and verifiable transparency. There are three major shifts happening right now. First, customers want ownership, not access, ownership of their assets, their identity, and their data. It's very important. Uh second, trust is no longer assumed, it is verified through cryptography, real-time audits, and transparent ledgers. And third, competition is global. It's no longer about geography, it's about adaptability, which creates a huge opportunity for banks to shift from holding risk to providing infrastructure. I'm telling you, listen to that statement.

SPEAKER_02 5:09

From holding risk to providing infrastructure, there could be so many 2008, 2009 wouldn't happen, 2007 wouldn't happen. It's different. That's right. We're talking about dealing with the mindset of we spend nine dollars of every one dollar you give us. That does not make sense. We are a big investment bank and we naked short sell so that we undermine our competitor and we drop their their value, Lehman Brothers, from $14 a share, $21 a share to 31 cents and put them out of business. And it's not even real, it's a different world. So, evolution banking, let's break it down historically. Banking 1.0 with physical branches, paper ledgers, and full institutional control is what it was. Then there was banking 2.0, digital interfaces, mobile apps, faster payments, but still very centralized and still custodial. And let's be honest, they play with time value of money. TVM. If you don't know about TVM, go to your AI friend. Or if you're scared of AI, go to Google, put your tinfoil hat on and go to Google and ask it. What is TVM? What's the time value of money? Because that's where banks make massive money. TVM, TVM. If you're not doing first in, first out, and you pretend like you're paying off people's credit card and you're like putting payments at different dates and times by holdings, and you're screwing with people getting extra fees. There's that. There's a percentage of change just over a day when they hold it three days, five days, seven days, 14 days, 21 days. Is it really about the risk or is it an opportunity for them to make a bank off of your money sitting in limbo and feeing you to death? So that's banking 2.0. It got digital, but even more corrupt. Let's be real. Calling it out, bankers. Don't hate on me too bad. Now we enter banking 3.0, where assets are user-owned. Systems are transparent, and finance is driven by smart contracts, not fat cats eating at the big oyster bar when they get off from work and driving a Lambo to do it. That ain't what we're after. The key shift here is philosophical. We move from trusting institutions to verifying truth. So if you put your money in that bank, you're trusting an institution. How many of you have tried to get out money recently to buy a car or something? You want to pay cash? And they're like, what's this for? And why are you doing it? And we'll let you know when you can get it. What? That's my money. You can't tell me when I can do it. If you've had that experience, you know what I'm talking about. And I have. So we're moving away from that, where we have to trust an institution who really doesn't have the money it says it has and is spending more than it actually owns, is taking risk on you. So I would talk about the fact that it changed the way the profiles work. Go look this up. Banks change the way the profiles work. So you're not, you're not necessarily insured for what's in your one account. You're insured for what's over your profile. So if you have three accounts and you have other businesses that are connected to your profile at the bank, your FDIC insurance coverage is only on the profile, not the granular account. Look it up. This is real. These changes happen in the veil of secrecy in the darkness of night for the protection of consumers over the last four years before we had insanity leave the White House. Oh my goodness. So this is real. This is this is more than it's more than philosophical to be honest. It's sovereignty. It's sovereignty. It's giving you your dignity back. You worked for it, you earned it, you own it. Boom.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Thank you, Dustin. Uh let's talk about the core principles, right? So the the core principles, the tenants of banking 3.0. First is self-sovereignty. You talked a lot about that. Users control their assets, identity, and data. Custody becomes optional, right? Uh that's really important. Second, transparency by default. Proof of reserves, public audits, and verifiable systems are built in. They're not added later. That's literally the infrastructure of how it works. Third, programmable trust. Smart contracts automate everything from settlements to lending to savings. That's important. Fourth, permission minimized access. So financial access without traditional gatekeeping, enabled by cryptographic compliance. So if you're in compliance, you want your money, you get it. You don't have to answer questions. Actually, my mom had the best answer to that question of what do you want this money for? She said, personal business. And they gave her the money and she went on and did what she needed to. It was great. I just love that. Um fifth, composability. Think financial Lego blocks, systems that plug into each other and evolve without centralized approval. And finally, incentive alignment. Everyone in the system, users, builders, validators, they all share in the upside.

SPEAKER_02 10:48

It's good stuff, man. It's good stuff. You should never have to explain yourself to your bank. That's right. You should never feel like you are um a bad person at your bank. You should never feel like they're doing you a service at your bank. They are not. It's a lie. It's fake. They are taking from you. You are being sucked dry, and then you're being told a lie that you're the one that owes them something. No, no, no, no, no. They're using your money, they're holding your money, they're lending your money. They could not exist without you. Get it right and get some gumption, get some backbone, and tell them, no, I'm not going to tell you anything about my money, and you can back off. Give my money. I love what your mom did. That's awesome, Brain. And so here's what the where this gets real for institutions. So if you're in here and you're still listening, I'm shocked if you are and you're a big banker. But hey, good on you if you did and you're not pissed at me so far. But this is where it gets real for you as an institution. These principles are not abstract. So the SEC, they're abstract. They abstract things on purpose. They obfuscate and create abstractions and what they call bulletins, not real laws, but things that they can say you're not keeping as if it were a law, but they're never regulating on that bulletin law, but on the heart of the law. What the hell? You get to choose how you believe my heart is about a law. Guys, I don't need that kind of subjectivity, objectivity mix-up. I want you to be like honest to goodness, without your own perception or your own opinion when it comes to banking, my money, and the law. It's not your business. It's not your opinion. I don't need your gossip. I don't need to know what anyone else thinks about me, about my spending. Come on. We are a democracy. We need to pull up our big boy pants and we need to remind the government what our founders said that the government should fear the people, never the people fear the government. So let's get that back, right? And don't let those big bankers push us around. So, big bankers, if you're still on, so glad you're here. Please don't be too pissed. I'm going to show you a future that can make you not go out of business. But if you are and you dropped off, we we will replace you. This is how you can stop from being replaced. These principles are not abstractions, they're not bulletins, they're not things that people can mess with or interpret, which we've seen people regulate through their own interpretation versus actual law. These are tied to real contracts that are binding. They map directly to what banks already do. So if you hear a banker or a bank say, we don't do crypto or blockchain because it's the wild wild west, no, actually, the users may be utilizing it like that it's the wild wild west, but it's more clear, transparent, and more direct and more safe than your bank is. It really is. Because you can't fake the smart contract when it's locked in. It's law. No heart of the law, no heart of the bulletin, no idea of regulation. All of those. The IRS uses bulletins and have has their own court system they use against us, and you don't have to show up for it and they can take everything you own. This is real today. None of that is really legitimate or illegal, but they're using it on us. Think about it. Banks are doing the same. So back to this. This is real. Custody becomes custody as a service. Users hold assets, banks provide security and recovery. That's all. The bank doesn't own your money. Right now, you don't own your money if it's in a bank. And big guys out there, that actually should scare you if you're a big banker. You should never want that level of responsibility because guess what? When you got a legal entity that's daddy's home style, they're gonna come for you because you are the ones that are responsible for that custodying. You're the one that has the trust of those people. And if you do wrong, you can be personally liable for it. And you know that. You know that this takes that away. It keeps users sovereign, reduces risks, and also removes that liability of custody because custody is a service, it's not pure custody. The audit and reporting shift from periodic and opaque to real-time and transparent. Settlement moves from delayed batch processing to instant or programmable execution. In our blockchain, the 2.0 blockchain we're building right now, Roar Chain 2.0, that blockchain literally has to be slowed down because it executes so fast, it'll scare banking systems. So we've slowed it down to ensure there's the ability for checks and balances that a bank may want and meet whatever ISO requirements banks have. And we've done all of that. White papers are oncoming. You guys can see what we've done. We have done so many white papers on both that chain function, platform function, as well as um on banking 3.0 for you. I mean, we're talking probably 15 to 20 plus white papers, right? Compliance evolves into cryptographic enforcement. Rules are embedded directly in systems, and then a pro product development becomes modular, integrating with open protocols instead of building closed systems. And we're finding there are backdoors in closed systems. I don't care whether it's banking, finance, voting, government, defense. We have found backdoors everywhere. Manchurian chips, remote function, remote install, remote wipe. Guys, this changes all of it.

SPEAKER_01 17:04

So what happens to banks then? Uh they don't disappear, they transform from custodians to infrastructure providers, running nodes, providing liquidity, acting as on-off ramps, from gatekeepers to validators, offering risk analysis, auditing smart contracts, and interfacing with regulators. Uh, in short, they become participants rather than controllers.

SPEAKER_02 17:30

I love that. I love that. So, some Web3 financial primitives. We need to dig into it. Let's talk about what makes this all possible. It's the new primitives of finance. So the basics. Let's get it down to the basics. Back to the basics. Tokenized value, on-chain identity, decentralized storage, smart contract automation, and programmable incentives that are automated, systems that reward behavior in real time and are directly correlated. And really they're immutable, unstoppable, and censorship resistant. Why is that important? All of these things are built into contracting and the chain and the ledgers themselves, which means it's not up for someone who wants to law fare somebody or de-platform debunk to personally use their power in a position to bully someone. And it is bullying. I've been de-banked and it's bullying. Part of what we built and how we built it is because we're getting in the middle of the fray to make sure that people aren't bullied in the future the way we've been bullied. We've been able to do our whole business literally from a crypto perspective. So we built it and now we're doing more. I can't leak right now, but there is so much to be leaked. Won't let you get there, but it's there. So these create financial systems that are always on, globally interoperable, and trust minimized. By the way, trust minimized is important. It means that you don't have to trust an individual to be trustworthy, right? An agent of trust. So there's agency and there's trust. Now, if you're in the legal world, you're like, that's exactly what it is. In our world, it means this it takes out the human that can make the error based on judgment or their personal opinion. And it puts it down to the letter of the law. I love this. Got two definitions for you. My definition of abuse or bullying in this case, and my definition of neglect. My definition of abuse or bullying is not knowing how to avoid punishment. Let's just say that every bulletin for the SEC, the IRS, the CFTC, or anyone else out there, banks included, FDIC, I don't care. Fed now system, the Fed, Treasury, whatever, they all have these bulletins, and they're supposed to measure the law by the heart of the law. That's all kinds of room for bullying. I like the letter of the law. And why I like the letter of the law is it's programmable. And guess what happens? You know how to avoid punishment. Now they're out there and they'll say, well, that means that the bad guys can find workarounds. So let them just get smarter and build better laws in smart contracts. So stop allowing people that opacity, which is what it is in these bulletins, to bully good people because they got power. And y'all, it's just like, I'll tell you, it's like Africa. When I worked in Africa, the leadership used to say, whoever leads eats. So whatever tribe leads next is the one that gets to eat, and they bully everyone else. So if you're out there and you're your African background, you're like, that's exactly what it is. You know what I'm talking about. That it cannot be how it is. This needs to be deconstructed so it's not attached to Congress or political oversight or Democrat versus Republican. It should be flat out, honest to God laws, written in code, because that's transparency. Now, my last definition I'll give you is this. And this is good for us to have. So that's bullying and abuse. Let's talk about neglect. Neglect is not telling someone how they can be successful or grow. Prove me wrong. In parenting, that's abuse and neglect. That's bullying and neglect. So we need to be laser clear. Here's how you can become the best you can be at your finance. And take that out of those big boy fat cat, you know, horse driving, Lamborghini driving, Mercedes driving, whatever. I don't care. People that are driving around your car on your money, on your fuel, self sovereignty. So this Creates trust minimized solutions. You don't have to worry about whether you're abused from it. And you can plug into other trust minimized solutions. Let's talk about this way auditing becomes very easy, which means taxes become easy. It's just ledgers to ledgers. It should be easier than we made it.

SPEAKER_01 22:20

This makes it easy. So, Dustin, the next big question then is what about regulation? Banking 3.0 doesn't remove it, it upgrades it. Then rules become code, then, like you were just saying, audits happen in real time, and risk is transparent. Any regulators actually gain uh more visibility, not less.

SPEAKER_02 22:44

I think that's important for some of the regulators, especially since 80% of the debt owed to the IRS is by IRS employees. I just throwing that little nugget out there for you. I might be wrong on the exact number, but if it's north of 10%, my friend, something's wrong. So yeah, there you go. Well, you know, go ahead and say it.

SPEAKER_01 23:08

It could be too that uh it makes it harder for corruption in a system like this. And and there's a lot of people maybe that take advantage of that corruption, right? So they may push back against a system that would reveal quite so much. Yeah, crypto would make things um act less blue.

SPEAKER_02 23:33

I'm not pointing at any out there that's actually robbing us blind, but I am. There you go. If that means you, oh well, deal with it. I don't care. This is this transition is not overnight, it's evolutionary. Okay. We're talking hybrid systems, custodial and non-custodial models working together. So it's not gonna be quick. Actually, it probably will be because we're already building out into Saiyan. If you're out there and you're hearing this, you're gonna want what we got because we can make it, you know, overnight. Um to say in tokenized internal ledgers, proof of reserve systems, smart contract settlement layers. It's gonna take a minute. We're thinking about it, we're building it. The goal is confidence, not disruption. Now, that transition is gonna be something that takes time. And honestly, we're already on the front end of that too. I cannot leak right here, but I want to so bad because we're crossing that line and making sure that on either end of it we got the answers.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

So, to that point, this is where Roar comes in. Roar isn't trying to be a bank, it's embodying the philosophy of banking 3.0 user-owned assets, transparent tokenomics, incentive alignment, and modular decentralized infrastructure that evolves over time.

SPEAKER_02 24:47

And banking 3.0 coming isn't coming because of ideology. It's coming because it's more efficient, more transparent, better aligned, faster, better, cheaper. That's all I can say. So I'm gonna say it again. Three days, five days, seven days, 14 days, 21 days, and then add weekends to those. And those are business days that things can be held. Experiences I've had personally, whether it's a check being held that's untrusted, or deposit is coming in, three, five, seven, fourteen, twenty-one, those are normal days in the banking world. And then those are business days. So a month for the worst case scenarios of certain transactions, that's just not the same as seconds.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

We have slowed our transaction time down to six seconds. That's right. Also, let's go beyond that. Fees each one of those have a fee. You get hit with fees all the time. And the fees are not five dollars or whatever, they're literally fractions of a penny, like point zero zero zero one cent. And that's to transfer a hundred thousand dollars if you want, whatever you want to do, immediacy, speed, trust, and then with the help of banking 3.0 and legacy banking and that custodying of wallets and systems, just think about how it can be absolutely adopted for everyone and saves everyone so much money and creates so much more trust, taking away that fear. So it's just institutions will win, and the ones that will win will win because they're the ones that embrace programmability and transparency. They're gonna respect user ownership and they're gonna build transparency into the core of their systems. Those are the ones that are gonna win. The others, you'll be left in the dirt, you're gonna be a glorified ATM. Know that because it's gonna happen. The future banking isn't centralized or decentralized per se. It's verifiable, programmable, and user first. And that will be both centralized and decentralized, but at the same time overlapping with trustless solutions. So, anyway, I hope that wasn't too like heady or deadly or whatever. Hope it really gets to you, and you can see from a developer's perspective, what we're trying to make very available to every user on the street. This is a better world. And it's even better, even better if both groups work together. The trusted legacy banks that already have our money with these solutions that do it better, faster, cheaper, but have challenges for adoptability like holding wallet keys and stuff. Put that custody as a service together with it, where the bank is holding your keys and yet everything's built into smart contract like we do, and guys, it's gangbusters. So that's it for today's episode of your weekly roar. If you're building, investing, or just paying attention, you're early to one of the biggest shifts in our financial history in the last 200 years. So, but here's the thing if you're out there in your big bank and you made it this far, pat yourself on the back. We didn't think you would make it. But if you did make it and you want to know more, you're interested, reach out to us. Because, guys, we already have feet in both worlds, and I can't leak any more than that. Just big banks, bankers, whatever, small banks, regional banks. Heck, we don't care if you're a community-based bank or even a little credit union. Call us, talk to us, hear about what we got going on, and we want to hear what you want to do and help you get there. So until then, we will see you next week. Thanks for being on. Thanks, Brandon, for sharing with it with us on this call as always. Appreciate you. And we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Thanks, everybody. Take care.

SPEAKER_00 29:16

Thank you for tuning in to your weekly Roar podcast. See the show notes to learn more about the topics in today's episode, and be sure to subscribe so you never miss out on the latest high impact trends and strategies shaping the future of decentralized tech.