Vision 2020: Growing the Canadian and international crypto and blockchain ecosystem

Ten years after the inception of bitcoin, crypto and blockchain technologies are fuelling some of the most exciting innovations around the world shepherding in the next generation of developers, startups, collaborations, consortia, enterprise initiatives, and professional service providers; drawing attention from regulators and triggering government engagement.

DIGITALFUTURES.B.U.I.L.D. draws on years of engagement in the Canadian and international crypto and blockchain communities in support of sustainable ecosystem build-outs, networking and knowledge share: Bitcoin Alliance of Canada, Blockchain Association of Canada and the BC Blockchain Forum.

More recently, a number of jurisdictions have taken the lead and are setting the example for progressive, innovation-friendly regulation and supporting ecosystem buildouts that are already innovatively leveraging their leading regulation and financial hub status to build out their financial and blockchain technology ecosystem with supporting legislation.

The landscape has evolved to where there are thousands of coins/tokens offered by individuals, groups, countries and retailers – to provide an exchange of value or to provide rewards to an underlying base of users/customers/citizens not to mention denominating coins/tokens to represent other stores of value such as contracts, physical goods (tokenized assets), digital identity, digital services, shares (tokenized securities), gold bullion, etc. And then there is also crowdfunding, gifting, brand promotions, etc. promising growth opportunities and access to second markets globally.

Today a vast community of bitcoin, altcoins, blockchain… developers, early adaptors, sectoral interest groups , nd large-scale enterprise have entered the industry. VC’s, DAO’s and ICOsare funding the movement.

Why is crypto and blockchain attracting all this interest? If you talk to the community it’s clear, there is a belief that blockchain and digital currency startups will be the next wave of googles, ubers, airbnbs, and facebooks. But for as many unicorn-making aspirations that there have been to date, there are countless zombie-startups who simply never got out of the starting block or failed over the last year. Yet even more are entering this space adding further opportunities, risk and complexity.

Regulators are scratching their collective heads harder than ever figuring next steps and how to support innovation, investment, and adoption of digital currencies and blockchain (distributed ledger) technologies in Canada and elsewhere.

DIGITALFUTURES.B.U.I.L.D. is an initiative to help navigate to the next level of debate, adoption, understanding, governance and opportunity – by providing a coherent voice and demonstrating the way that we can make this all work for everyone.

There is still much work to do around merchant adoption, friendlier user experience, regulatory clarification, the opening of bank accounts for crypto startups and trading accounts around the world. And closing the gap between innovation and regulatory roadblocks (who have legitimate concerns around compliance, consumer protection, KYC, AML, ant-terrorism, the list goes on). Or banks threatened when they have to comply but seeing startups straying into their turf while challenging regulatory hurdles or attempting to leapfrog it.

In reality, the startups are simply overwhelmed by the dearth of requirements to play on the financial institutions’ turf and their terms.

This is the time to redouble our efforts and ensure that the fight is just not just on the frontlines, but also where it really matters. With people who can apply this for their personal benefit and in their daily lives.

Manie Eagar, CEO, DIGITALFUTURES.B.U.I.L.D.

Meetups & Events

BC Blockchain Forum has hosted and supported a number of great events over the past few years.

Thomas Linder has broad experience in advising Swiss and foreign companies in international tax matters. He is particularly specialized in leading inter-disciplinary projects in the context of acquisitions, corporate restructurings, and migrations and has in-depth knowledge in cross-border transactions and tax accounting.

He specializes in blockchain and TGEs (token generated events), also called ICOs. He talked about how Blockchain technology can design digital information units that contain elements of a property right (according to civil law concepts) to which an owner has direct and exclusive access that can be defended against third parties (right in rem).

Lukas Sieber helps US businesses set up & grow in Switzerland’s economic and innovation center, the Greater Zurich Area (GZA).

Based in New York City, he leads a team of dedicated professionals based in various locations across the US. They assure a confidential and free advisory service, assisting companies in evaluating the GZA region for their expansion and relocation projects.

Lukas share valuable jurisdictional lessons learnt from the Switzerland and Zug evolution as Crypto Valley. His provided  examples of specifically a friendly business and regulatory environment contributed to success.