ICOs, Bitcoin's Growth and The Blockchain Community: An Interview Ivan on Tech

It is part of my life and my passion.

How are we going to build something to change the world?

Can give your family some bitcoin as a Christmas present? Try it. Try it. For example, a drug dealer, they give you all the charts, right?

Hello, thank you for joining us. Would you mind telling us who you are to our audience?

Sure. Thank you for having me here. My name is Ivan. 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 analysis of different ICOs and of established blockchain projects as well. Also, 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.

So you're a little bored right now?

How do you mean?

It's very sarcastic.

It's a lot to do.

It is a tremendous amount to do. How do you find spare time to just enjoy your life? Or is this part of your life and your passion in every day?

It is part of my life and my passion and I don't see it as work because it's so much fun. And technology has been my passion for a very long time. I started programming when I was nine and I've had this passion for many years now. And so I think it's very important to find something that doesn't feel like work, it feels like playing. Also, I travel to many countries and talk about blockchain and it is work, but it is also vacation and it's also exploring the world and seeing new countries, new cultures. So it's all in one and I think it's important.

So you're saying to me and our audience that this new innovation, blockchain cryptocurrency, has changed your life in such a way that it's not really work. You're traveling the world with meeting brilliant people, innovating these great new concepts and coming back home, wherever that may be, and saying, how are we going to build something to change the world?

Yeah, it is like that. And because I love programming so much and I like technology so much, it's always been like that for me. I've never felt like programming is something boring, that I need to go 9 o' clock to work and then leave at 5. It's always been that I do it all the time and it's a big part of my life, programming and now blockchain more and More.

In the past, I've seen that you've spoken about a vision you have, and that vision correlating with actually acquiring Bitcoin and aligning in the correct way. What is this vision you have with understanding and acquiring Bitcoin?

So what I meant when I said so is that you should really understand the technology and you should really understand the vision before you invest into cryptocurrencies, because it is a very volatile market. And if you are not experienced in the technology, if you're not experienced in the vision, it might be easy for you to get scared and to just lose money in this field as an investor. And so when I speak about the vision, I speak about how Bitcoin can be used for improving the financial system. And it ties to those things that we talked about before, that suddenly now people in many parts of the world that didn't have any banking services at all now have, and they're a part of the global financial system. Suddenly, if you currently, if you live in a part of the world where there is not a lot of capital, it doesn't matter if you are brilliant, you have a good team, you have passion, and you're smart, it will be hard for you to raise capital. But now, with ICOs, with crowdfunding on the blockchain, it is possible for the first time ever. And so just understanding how the technology works and how it enables all of these great things in the world, that is very important. And having that in mind, I think it is easier to invest in Bitcoin, for example, or in other cryptocurrencies and not be influenced by market volatility.

What do you think our biggest challenge to bitcoin? Scaling way above a 2030 or 4030 a Bitcoin price. What are our biggest challenges that we face ahead?

I think one of the biggest challenges is bringing the community together. We have a lot of crypto debates, we have a lot of bitcoin discussions how we should move forward. But in the end, it's all about unity. We need to unite the community and move forward together, because everything comes down to selling cryptocurrencies to the other people who don't really understand cryptocurrencies yet. They don't really understand that cryptocurrencies are real and how they can be used. That is the most important task for us. And to get to that, we need to stop fighting with each other. If you, for example, follow bitcoin discussions on Twitter, we have so many smart people, so many PhDs, just throwing very, very bad words at each other discussing bitcoin scaling. And it's really a shame, and I think we should all be thinking about that.

So would you say that it is not that top tier, the PhDs who are arguing over hard forks, et cetera, that are not really the pivotal point of bitcoin going up into the right more? Would you say it's the common person getting a better understanding and knowledge of what bitcoin is? That's the true ingredient to making bitcoin scale.

Not scale, but to bring mass adoption. That is the number one goal, to bring mass adoption. Normal people who are not very into the technology, not very into this whole community, they need to understand that cryptocurrencies are real, what benefits they can do and what good they can do in the world. And so we can do that by spreading. For example, if you want, you can give yourself family some bitcoin as Christmas present. Just getting people's hands on cryptocurrencies so that they can try and they can realize how it's working and how it can be used.

So you suggest that the advocates of bitcoin and cryptocurrency reach out to their friends and family, give them a little piece of the action, if you will, and get them involved and show how they can grow and up and to the right.

Definitely. It's for example, a drug dealer will not talk about his drug, how good it is and give you all the charts, right? He will just try it, try it, and then you become addicted to the ease of use of cryptocurrencies and you realize the potential of cryptocurrencies. So definitely more people should be practically involved. And if you own some bitcoin, just give 10, $20 to your friend as a crypto Christmas present and they'll come.

Back fiending for more. We hear a lot about blockchain bitcoin cryptocurrency taking away a lot of jobs from folks. And I'm curious to know your opinion on what will it actually replace and not to look at it in such a negative way. It's taking away. How can we look at that? And what's your view of what's the positive aspects in the job field of cryptocurrency and blockchain. What are those opportunities that you see?

So I wouldn't agree with that statement that it removed jobs. It is true in a sense that we can remove many middlemen and we can make business peer to peer. We have smart contracts on the blockchain. We do not have that many middlemen. But I think that this portion of the population, they will of course need to find something else to do. But if you compare that to how many people now will have access to, for example, capital to crowdfunding, how many new ideas will be created in parts of the world that couldn't access capital, for example, before, and build teams and build companies. I don't think you can compare those two. And for me the positive aspects definitely outweigh the be negative. And I mean with all technology there is some jobs that will be displaced, new jobs will be created, there will be some kind of transition period. This is true for AI for example as well, and it is true for blockchain. But in the end, new jobs always come up and new. With for example AI, there will be now new jobs dealing with these artificial systems. And in block there will be also new jobs. For example, we will have crypto lawyers that lawyers suddenly will need to be proficient in programming in order to understand smart contracts and to be able to audit smart contracts, for example. So 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 banking services as cryptocurrencies, cryptocurrencies as banking services and be a part of the global financial system.

You've traveled a ton and you've seen probably some of the most smaller projects, blockchain and cryptocurrency associated, and some of the largest scale projects out there on both ends. What you can disclose, what are you the most excited about?

I wouldn't talk about specific projects, but of course whenever you look at an ico, for example, it's very important to look at it as a technology startup, as a technology company, because all of these ICOs are that in a sense they have some kind of technological product that they need to bring to life, they need to develop it, they have developers, they have their GitHub account. And that is also why I do GitHub analysis on my channel. We go and we take a look at the code, we take a look at the activity of a particular project and we analyze it together on the channel. So I think you as an investor, if you're investing in cryptocurrencies, need to understand that just because it's called an ICO doesn't mean that it will be successful. There is so much more. It is a technology startup here in the and technology startups are very hard to invest in as they are without the blockchain and without the tokens and with the blockchain. It's even harder because it's a new field. No one really knows for sure 100% how to assess these projects yet we're not really sure that they can be built on Ethereum, for example, many projects have these grand visions and they want to build them on Ethereum, but then they realize that it's not possible because of the technical limitations of Ethereum. So it is a very complex field for sure.

If you had any advice to give a company looking to start an ico, what would you tell them to not do?

So, if you're thinking about an ico, think about the properties that blockchain has and the benefits that blockchain gives you. And those benefits are transparency, this introduces and immutability. So if these properties fit your problem that you want to solve, then of course go ahead. But if you see that the problem we're solving doesn't need decentralization, it doesn't need transparency and it doesn't need interability, just use a regular relational database. There is no need for a blockchain in that sense. And also as an investor, think in the same way as well, because many projects will will try to implement a token just to do an ico, just because it's hot and just because it's easy to attract capital. But as an investor, it's important to think about those things and really see does this project really need a blockchain at all?

So if you had to give investors two key pieces of advice when looking at a potential ico, what are the clear cut two pieces of advice that you would like to give them?

So I would say 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, see the code of a project. Of course, 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, 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's actual code that is being produced. So that is, number one, just learn how it works. And number two, think of those things that I just mentioned. Do they really need a blockchain?

Well, I want to thank you so much for joining us and coming out to Cointelegraph at blockasia show and this is Stephen Chase signing off for cointelegraph.

Thank you very much.