ICOs, Bitcoin’s Growth and the Blockchain Community: An Interview With Ivan on Tech

/in /by

Ivan Liljeqvist is an international speaker, software developer and founder of Ivan on Tech. On Ivan’s channel he spreads knowledge about Blockchain technology to hundreds of thousands of viewers. He is known for making the complex simple, the boring interesting and Blockchain entertaining.

Cointelegraph’s Stephen Chase caught up with Ivan at this year’s Blockshow Asia to chat about Blockchaining the world, understanding Bitcoin and making the future better for everyone. Also, Ivan gives a bit of advice on how you can go about getting others involved in the community by giving away some Bitcoin.

CT: Could you tell us a bit about what you do when you’re not here talking to us?

IL: Thank you for having me here. Yes, I run the Ivan on Tech YouTube channel where I talk about Blockchain technology, Bitcoin, Ethereum, the technology behind different Blockchain projects. I do GitHub analyses of different ICOs and of established Blockchain projects as well.

In addition, I run a company called Stockholm Blockchain which is an educational company. We educate companies, organizations and governments about how Blockchain technology can be applied and will be applied so that they can be ready for the changes that are coming.

A cure for Bitcoin blindness

CT: What is your vision of Bitcoin you think people need to understand before investing?

IL: You should really understand the technology and understand the vision before you invest in cryptocurrencies because it is a very volatile market, and if you are not experienced in the technology or the vision it might be easy for you to get scared and to just lose money in this field as an investor. So when I speak about vision, I speak about how it can be used for improving the financial system. Suddenly there are people in many parts of the world who didn’t have any banking services at all and now have. Before, it didn’t matter if you were brilliant, or had a good team, had passion or were smart–it would be hard for you to raise capital. But now, with ICOs and crowdfunding on the Blockchain, it is possible for the first time ever. Understanding how the technology works and how it enables all of these great things in the world is very important. Having that in mind, I think it’s easier to invest in Bitcoin and not be influenced by market volatility.

CT: What are some goals ahead and challenges the community faces in achieving them?

IL: I think that one of the biggest challenges is bringing the community together. We have a lot of crypto debates and Bitcoin discussions on how we should move forward, but in the end it is all about unity. We need to unite the community and move forward together because everything comes down to selling cryptocurrencies to people who don’t really understand cryptocurrencies yet.

The number one goal should be mass adoption. Normal people who are not very into technology or this whole community need to understand that cryptocurrencies are real and what good they can do in the world. We can do that by spreading it around. For example, a drug dealer would not just talk about his drug and how good it is by showing you a bunch of charts. He will just say, try it. And then you become addicted. Similarly, the ease of use of cryptocurrencies brings about realizations of the potential of cryptocurrencies. So, definitely more people should be practically involved. And if you own some Bitcoin, just give ten or twenty dollars to your friend as a crypto Christmas present.

Jobs: How we can weed the garden and at the same time, plant flowers

CT: We hear about how Blockchain could be the end of many jobs, how can it also be used to create new ones?

IL: We can remove many middle-men and make businesses peer-to-peer. If we have smart contracts on the Blockchain, we do not need to have that many middlemen. I think that this portion of the population will need to find something else to do. Many people will have access to capitol, crowd-funding – how many new ideas will be created in parts of the world that couldn’t access capitol – building teams companies… For me, the positive aspects definitely outweigh the negatives. With all technology there are some jobs that will be displaced, new jobs will be created, and there will be some kind of transition period. We will see completely new jobs and more and more people will be able to fulfill their purpose and their vision in life by now being able to use cryptocurrencies as banking services and be a part of the global financial system.

Into the upside down of ICOs: advice from an expert

For developers: Do your homework!

If you’re thinking about an ICO, think about the properties that Blockchain has and the benefits that Blockchain gives you. Those benefits are transparency, decentralization and immutability. If these properties fit the problems you want to solve, go ahead. If you see that the problem you’re solving doesn’t need decentralization, doesn’t need transparency, and doesn’t need immutability, just use a regular relational database. There is no need for a Blockchain in that case.

As an investor, think the same way as well because many projects will try to implement a token, or do an ICO because it’s easy to attract capital. It’s important to think about those things and really see if a project needs Blockchain at all.

For investors: Do your damn homework!

Learn the basics of GitHub, even if you’re not a programmer, just learn how it works so you can go to a GitHub page and see the code of a project. If you’re not a programmer you will not be able to understand it but at least you can get some kind of feeling when you look at the number of commits, when you look at the number of contributors–the frequency of contributors. You can even learn how to look at the actual code and see if it’s just some trivial changes such as name changes or just comments, or if it is actual code that has been produced. Just learn how it works. Always ask yourself do they really need Blockchain?

CT: Thank you so much for joining us and coming out to Cointelegraph Blockshow Asia.

IL: Thank you very much.

Belarus Signs ‘Super Liberal’ Blockchain Support Legislation

/in /by

Belarus’ president Aleksandr Lukashenko has formally signed a “super liberal” bill signaling state support of Blockchain and cryptocurrency.

As local news outlet Dev.by[1] and others report today, Lukashenko set the wheels of Belarus’ so-called “Digital Economy Growth” package rolling Monday.

The legislation aims to remove bureaucracy which could potentially hinder Blockchain’s implementation, and gives the go-ahead to a permissive environment for cryptocurrency exchange.

In addition, Belarus’ ‘HTP’ – a Silicon Valley-style tech haven Lukashenko created – will have privileges extending to attracting funding through ICOs and using cryptocurrency in civil circulation, Cointelegraph previously reported[2] last month.

“Today’s ratification of the digital economy by the president: the decree will be signed by the end of this year, and is a super liberal version with 100 percent absence of bureaucracy for supporting all forms of Blockchain adoption,” one IT industry insider close to the president wrote on Facebook[3] following completion.

The Digital Economy takes Belarus a step beyond its neighbors in the race to incorporate emerging disruptive technologies. Russia, for example, has had a problematic road[4] to adoption of cryptocurrency, with conflicting statements creating an uncertain picture of their future legal status.

Kazakhstan[5], on the other hand, has increasingly taken steps towards its stated goal of becoming the “Blockchain Singapore.”

Do-It-Yourself IPOs on a Blockchain

/in /by

The global equity market has seen a very turbulent decade since the start of the global recession. Yet despite the relatively stable economic growth the world has seen over the past five years there has been a significant decline in the number of Initial Public Offerings[1] (IPOs), as well as a general lack of funding available to companies starting out. The market has been doing well, but new companies are not reaping the benefits.

This is despite the fact that there is a huge interest from the general public in investing. Apps like Robinhood have started to take the consumer market by storm, showing that young people have a genuine interest in investing to increase their wealth. This is backed up by the jaw-dropping interest in cryptocurrencies, with Bitcoin[2] reaching all-time highs as of late and articles about cryptocurrencies appearing in all major media outlets.

So if the public is interested and the economy is doing well, what is standing in the way of companies accessing funding? The simple answer is the outdated funding system that is in place. High fees for the bureaucracy of VCs, banks, and private investor firms makes the whole process intransparent, expensive, and cumbersome. As well as this, investors are wary of financial institutions since the global recession.

The global equity market seems to be at an impasse, with plenty of funding available and plenty of willing companies, but structural hindrances are making deal flow congested. As with many industries, equity markets are driving more towards decentralization, and decentralization is exactly what Blockchain technology is good for. So it is no surprise that a new startup is trying to make the equities industry more amenable to fund-raising an investing. Chainium[3] has been a work in progress for over two years.

Challenge: difficult to raise cash and difficult to invest

In many ways, the options for companies and investors are currently very limited; it is currently in a similar situation as the media industry was before the rise of freelancing sites like Elance or Upwork. There is no way to easily link up small private investors with growing companies, there is a lot of legal hurdles to running an IPO, and there are startup costs to be reckoned with. In this situation, it is completely unfeasible for peer-to-peer corporate financing for startups, so private equity firms, VCs, banks and IPOs on the stock market fill the void.

But as you can expect, these services come at a downside. The most notable is the cost involved where e.g. VCs charge a decent premium of the sale. The other downside is that a business has to pass the subjective judgement of the private investor in order to get access to cash. In an ideal world new companies would be able to go directly to their prospective end-investors with their value proposition.

Rendering middlemen obsolete

Chainium aims to make the process easier while also adding simplicity to the equation. Their main selling point is that they charge no fees but use Blockchain technology to handle the transparency of an equity sale. Their platform, underpinned by the CHX token, puts investors in direct contact with investors. As from that, the company summed up their killer advantage as:

“Business owners choose the terms on which they sell their equity and how actively they want to engage with their investors. A small family business could use Chainium to manage a simple private sale of an equity stake in order to ensure the sale is secure, legal and transparent. Alternatively, a larger firm could use Chainium to run a public equity offering and manage regulatory compliance, reporting, KYC/AML, investor communication, shareholder voting and all the other services required to manage a large investor base. Chainium removes the expensive intermediaries layer and enables access to equity fundraising directly from investors.”

Notably, the platform allows the same complete range of investor-company interaction that would be the case with traditional intermediaries, such as dividend issuance, shareholder voting, investor communications, financial reporting and analytics.

This is only possible with Blockchain technology since it offers a layer of distributed intermediate verifiability and guarantees that would be otherwise susceptible to fraud.

Simplicity in investing

The Chainium platform[4] has been in development for a couple of years and the company has a functional version on its website, which should provide confidence to investors. They are hoping that the upcoming ICO in early 2018 will put them in the spotlight and bring their solution to the attention of those interested in the future of investments.

Eoghan Gannon

 

Disclaimer. Cointelegraph does not endorse any content or product on this page. While we aim at providing you all important information that we could obtain, readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company and carry full responsibility for their decisions, nor this article can be considered as an investment advice.

Cryptography Gets Busted

/0 Comments/in /by
Read more

Mercato delle criptovalute: nuovi record!

/0 Comments/in /by
Read more