Encrypted

Jamie Burke is a co-founder and CEO of Outlier Ventures, one of the leading European crypto VC incubators.

Ahmed catches up with Jamie in London to learn more about Outlier Ventures, how they’re structured, their investment thesis and what makes them different as a VC investing in this space.

Unlike other VCs, Outlier is funded by the capital of the co-founders, their team is mostly comprised of technical analysts and researchers in order to do a lot of applied learning as well as supporting the projects they invest in and contributing to the wider ecosystem building out open source networks. Jamie likes to describe Outlier as more of an incubator or a Venture as a Platform business where they reinvest all returns into the platform, where they recently committed to reinvesting $30 million of their own capital in the next 3 years to support investments.

Jamie then goes onto to discuss the concept of Convergence and what the Convergence stack is, how autonomous agents work, and how they’re trying to create the new data economy.

If you’re a governance lover, Ahmed and Jamie discuss the concept of Pathway to Decentralisation. This is a really interesting concept and idea which proposes founders and projects to never codify assumptions early on and to keep some aspects centralised until their assumptions are validated. Jamie also shares their recent partnership with Smart Dubai and how they’re working together.

Ultimately, this awesome episode is all about the new internet, theorizing how it could play out and what's needed to realise the vision. What’s amazing is that this is all a socio-economic experiment and we have no idea what will happen.

All this and more on this week's episode of Encrypted.

Also, the legal bits for the soundtrack used in the podcast:

Track Name: Warm Nights

Music By: LAKEY INSPIRED @ https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired

Original upload HERE – https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired/warm-nights

License for commercial use: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported “Share Alike” (CC BY-SA 3.0) License.

Full License HERE – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

Special Guest: Jamie Burke.

Asim Janjua, is the Director of Innovation and Design at Consensys in the Middle East.

In this episode we look at blockchain from a design perspective and to answer the most crucial question: how does design intersect with blockchain?

Asim walks us through deisgn thinking techniques and how we can use that for emerging technologies like blockchain and cryptocurrencies. He looks at it from two lenses:

Asim explains how his design led experience at Google led him to use those same principles when building out Consensys in Dubai. We also touch on whether design is one of the best ways to achieve mass adoption and how thinking of it from a human perspective is crucial for mainstream adoption. Examples such as Gemini and Grid Plus from the crypto space was highlighted by Asim as two comapnies which have implemented sound design from both a process and a user experience stand point.

One of the main points we emphasise is that design should be implemented in the beginning before starting any project as opposed to thinking about it later on in the project. These come in the form of user journeys and user personas to test whether or not problems discovered in the research phase can can be solved using the product.

We switch a gear towards the end of the podcast where the discussion leads us to how the paradigm shift with blockchain is bigger than those of the other emerging technologies we are currently seeing, such as AI and IoT.

All this and more on this week’s episode of Encrypted.

Special Guest: Asim Janjua .

Gabriel Abed Is the Founder of Bitt, a company known for inventing central bank digital currencies.

In this special episode, Ahmed and Gabriel take a deep dive into Libra, Facebook’s recently announced cryptocurrency that they will be launching in 2020. Everything you need to know about Libra such as what it is, the economics behind it, how it will work and also the Libra Foundation are all discussed and explained.

More importantly they discuss what Libra means for:

Among the takeaways from this episode and the Libra project itself are:

All this and more on this week's episode of Encrypted.

Also, the legal bits for the soundtrack used in the podcast:

Track Name: Warm Nights

Music By: LAKEY INSPIRED @ https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired

Original upload HERE – https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired/warm-nights

License for commercial use: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported “Share Alike” (CC BY-SA 3.0) License.

Full License HERE – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

Special Guest: Gabriel Abed.

Almost everyone in the world has or will eventually be bestowed with a grade, certificate or honour that will at some future point need verification.

Today's episode has both Nic and Ahmed interacting with Educhain CEO Mark Balovnev on how to build scalable academic passporting systems. Focusing on interfaces to access documents and wallets for sharing with other gateways and portals.

Mark talks about how sentiment has changed over the last 3 years, why industry is adopting the technology and increasing mobility of these documents.

Key learnings:

All this and more on this week's episode of Encrypted.

Also, the legal bits for the soundtrack used in the podcast:

Track Name: Warm Nights

Music By: LAKEY INSPIRED @ https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired

Original upload HERE – https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired/warm-nights

License for commercial use: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported “Share Alike” (CC BY-SA 3.0) License.

Full License HERE – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

Special Guest: Mark Balovnev.

Faisal, finally back on the show, joins Ahmed to welcome a new guest, Fatma Elsafty, who is the Blockchain Technology Manager at Du, which is one of the leading telecom operators in the UAE.

Fatma, in charge of driving Du’s blockchain programs, walks us through why Du are focusing their time and efforts on using blockchain technology and what they are actually building for their diverse customer base.

One of their main products is the Blockchain Platform as a Service (BPaas) which helps enterprises and SME’s alike easily deploy blockchain network and applications in a simple and secure environment. Fatma shares why the BPaaS is a game changer for the region and how they are aiming to lead the enterprise space for blockchain adoption.

With all the focus on their end customer, we also learn about Du’s other ventures in this nascent space such as the Smart Contract Repository and the Dapp marketplace they are building.

All of the above and more will be on this week’s episode of Encrypted!

If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on iTunes and the other platforms. Don’t forget to support us by spreading the word!

Special Guest: Fatma Elsafty.

In this episode, Ahmed and Nic speak to Hubertus Thonhauser, Founding Partner of Enabling Future and a Board Member of the Tezos Foundation.

Hubertus, who was part of the Tezos Foundation board transformation and is currently very active on Tezos operations, speaks to us about how he became involved in the project and gives a rundown on the early days of Tezos, its present status and also the future outlook.

He shares why Tezos was initially created, how they completed a mega crowdsale and the key features that distinguish Tezos from the rest. We also touch on the issues that the Tezos Foundation faced following the fundraise and how the team acted accordingly.

We also talk about the verticals in enterprise that Tezos will initially tackle which are: Digital Assets, Mobility and Gaming. And yes, Tezos are creating their own token security standard under the Digital Assets vertical, so do make sure to watch this space!

Hubertus being an investor himself at Enabling Future, shares his investment experience in both the start-up sphere and blockchain/crypto sphere and what he typically looks out for in projects.

All this and more on this episode of Encrypted. Please subscribe if you still haven’t and remember to rate and review the show!

Special Guest: Hubertus Thonhauser .

In this episode, Ahmed and Nic speak with Gary Sheynkman, an Investment Partner at Ginco Investments and the Corporate Lead for Techstars Dubai.

We find out what Ginco Investments is, their role in the entrepreneurship ecosystem and their enterprise-focused investment thesis. Being the first Emirati family to operate a pure play early-stage VC, they have also ventured into the blockchain space.

We also talk about what crypto related services will pave the way in the short term to medium term future, such as crypto asset management and custody solutions that hedge funds and professional investors inherently need.

Gary also shares his views and insights on how start-ups should approach this region and how they should set their expectations when starting in this new market.

Finally, we also talk about the regional banking system, how they should improve and change and why on earth we are still using paper to change small details in our bank accounts!

If you enjoyed this episode, do not forget to hit that subscribe button and do remember to rate and review the show. Every little helps!

Special Guest: Gary Sheynkman.

In this episode, Ahmed and Nic speak with two amazing lawyers who are actively leveraging smart contracts for their current line and future line of work.

We have Mark Beer, President of the International Association for Court Administration and a lawyer turned tech entrepreneur Alessandro Palombo, CEO, and Co-founder of Jur joining us in episode 37 of Encrypted.

We talk extensively about what smart contracts really are, the roles they play in the future in both codifying principles and contracting machines, and how billions of people can benefit from this!

Yes, we also tackle the million dollar question: What will the roles of lawyers and law firms be in a smart contracting future world?

We hope you enjoy. And don't forget to subscribe to our podcast and make sure to rate and review the podcast as well!

Special Guests: Alessandro Palombo and Mark Beer.

Staking. Generalised Mining. Proof of stake. What are all these???

In this episode, Ahmed speaks to Tim Ogilvie, CEO of Staked which recently raised $4.5 million from investors such as Coinbase and Pantera to build a staking as a service platform for institutional investors.

We cover the difference between proof of work and proof of stake, different implementations of proof of stake (POS, DPOS etc), the roles of staking services/node operators, opportunities it presents, and related regulatory concerns.

We hope you enjoy!!!

If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and the other platforms. Don’t forget to support us by spreading the word!

Special Guest: Tim Ogilvie.

In this episode, we speak to Talal Tabbaa, Co-founder and COO of Jibrel Network. Ahmed also welcomes a new guest host on the podcast, Nicholas Watson Managing Director of Naseba.

We cover examples of winning, implementing and managing digitization of sukuks (Islamic bonds) and fiat. We also take some time to answer the question...What does Enterprise really mean? as well as looking at how to tackle the Middle Eastern enteprise space, especially when it comes to blockchain!

We hope you enjoy!!!

If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and the other platforms. Don’t forget to support us by spreading the word!

Special Guests: Nicholas Watson and Talal Tabbaa.