Founder Stories | Guy Halford-Thompson, CEO Blockchain Tech LTD

My name is Guy Hathaw Thompson. I'm the CEO and founder of btl. The Internet revolutionized communication. It's completely changed the way we communicate, whether it's through phone calls, through emails, through social media. The blockchain is going to be changing how we transact anything of value. So when you really break it down to its core, the blockchain is very good at record keeping and keeping track of information. The big inefficiencies and frictions today are caused primarily around compliance and regulation. Taking an online document signing service as an example, a lot that goes into trying to provide confidence that yes, the user did actually sign this document willingly and intentionally using the blockchain, we can recreate that entire system in just a few lines of code. Because the blockchain, by definition and by design pattern, has a lot of those features that we would have to build on top of an existing system built in by default. So that's things like extremely strong cryptographic signatures, extremely strong identity verification, huge strength and traceability, irrefutable transactions. If a record is put on blockchain, you cannot contest it, it's cryptographically secure. So these are all things that require a huge amount of work and investment to build on top of existing Internet technologies. But using blockchain, all of those framework functionality is already there. It's on the one side, record keeping, and on top of that, it's also very good at keeping track of who put that information on the blockchain. So if I make a. If we were going to do a bitcoin transaction, I send you some bitcoin. Firstly, we know irrefutably that that transaction has happened. No one can contest it. You can be very confident that that money has arrived in your account. And on top of that, you know irrefutably that it was me that sent you the funds. We're working with some really, really great people at Visa, specifically in the one of Visa's innovation arms, which is called Visa Europe Colab. They're based in London. It's a fantastic team there. They really understand what it's like to work with a startup and how to and the importance to move quickly in this space. We also just announced another project that we're doing with Ernest and Young in London and that's around looking at the applications of our Intbit platform to energy trading. So again, energy trading, an area where there's a lot of regulation, it's an industry that typically has not benefited from advances in technology. A lot of energy trades are still done over the phone. And so working with some of Ernest and Young's large clients in the energy space to see if we can use blockchain to create some efficiencies and reduce friction in those areas, which again, has huge, huge applications. We're also excited to be working with Vancouver's Victory Square and we're just announcing, just announced a partnership with Fantasy 6 and that's looking at blockchain applications to the fantasy sports space. Again, very exciting space for us. So our experience with Launch Academy has been fantastic. I've known Shafeen and Ray for a long time now. They've been incredibly supportive. A lot of the very strong connections we've made both with some of the team we've now brought on, as well as industry connections and opportunities, come directly through Launch Academy. And, you know, I can safely say that we definitely would not be in the space we are right now if it wasn't for that support. It's a fantastic opportunity, especially if you're just starting out. And not only are you learning and getting world class tuition from the guys at Launch Academy, you're also right at the heart of Vancouver's entrepreneur and tech scene. Hugh and I started small with a company that we bootstrapped from the ground up in the form of quit bitcoin, brought on external investment. We ended up listing the company back in November of last year. We were the world's first blockchain company to go public. We listed as a venture company on the Toronto Stock Exchange. It's an industry that's been developing incredibly quickly. If we look back even just 12 months and look how far blockchain has developed since then, it's absolutely staggering. And so it's very important for a company in this space to be able to keep up with that speed and that momentum bit by bit. Blockchain is certainly going to change the world and hopefully BTL is going to be a part of that movement.