119: "Do We Exchange Trust Before We Exchange Money?" ft. Tony Camero
In this conversation, Erik sits down with Tony Camero, founder of Scend Technologies and creator of TrustMesh, to explore one of the most foundational (and misunderstood) forces in human systems: trust. Together, they unpack how trust actually works between people, why our current digital systems distort it, and what happens when trust becomes computable—without becoming surveilled or centralized.
This episode moves fluidly between philosophy, economics, blockchain, AI, leadership, and real-world application—asking not just how we build trust systems, but who should control them.
👤 About the Guest
Tony Camero is a builder and systems architect working at the intersection of leadership, trust, and technology. He is the founder of Scend Technologies and the creator of TrustMesh, a protocol designed to make trust explicit, contextual, and human-centered in digital environments.
Tony’s work spans fintech, decentralized identity, messaging systems, and civic infrastructure. His leadership philosophy blends first-principles thinking, practical execution, and a deep respect for how real humans actually collaborate—especially in communities historically excluded from traditional trust and credit systems.
🧭 Conversation Highlights
- Why trust is the real currency exchanged before money ever changes hands
- How modern society relies on proxies for trust—and why they’re breaking
- The difference between institutional trust and human trust
- What it means to turn trust into a computable input without creating surveillance
- How TrustMesh avoids becoming a social credit score or reputation capitalism
- Why context-specific, revocable trust matters more than universal scores
- The implications of trust for AI agents, delegation, and human agency
- How decentralized systems could reshape local economies and communities
💡 Key Takeaways
- Trust is contextual, spectral, and earned, not binary
- Most digital systems confuse visibility with trustworthiness
- Centralized platforms gate trust based on their own incentives
- Transparency can replace blind institutional trust
- Future systems must protect individual agency, not just efficiency
❓ Questions That Mattered
- What actually is trust—and why can’t we automate it until we understand it?
- How do humans grant trust differently across contexts (money, secrets, leadership)?
- Should trust systems be absolute or probabilistic?
- Who should control trust signals: platforms, institutions, or individuals?
- How do we prevent trust systems from being gamed—or weaponized?
🗣️ Notable Quotes
“Before money ever changes hands, a subtler currency is exchanged—and that currency is trust.”
“The question isn’t who are you—it’s what trust has been explicitly granted to you, by whom, and in what context.”
“We don’t need better proxies for trust. We need better representations of it.”
“This isn’t a social credit score. It’s opt-in, contextual, and revocable trust.”
“Biological systems aren’t centralized—why do we keep building digital ones that are?”
🔗 Links & Resources
