During an after-hours event on the eve of Consensus 2023 in Austin, Texas, Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind speaks with Pascal Gauthier, CEO of Ledger, and Brandon Russell, CEO of Etana Custody about a newly forged partnership between the two companies. 

With products like its line of nanodevices, Ledger is widely known in cryptocurrency circles as a physical "cold wallet" provider that offers hardware-based solutions for the self-custodying of cryptocurrency. But Gauthier takes a broader view of Ledger as a security company that also offers management and governance solutions to businesses where no single individual can or should have full control over an organization's cryptocurrency reserves. 

Meanwhile, few if any enterprises are going to self-custody cryptocurrency reserves in any significant amounts. Much the same way enterprises custody their cash and other assets with enterprise-grade custodians such as banks, Etana claims to offer safe and compliant custody of digital assets to large organizations. However, regardless of where exactly an organization's digital assets are custodied, a management and governance layer of the sort offered by Ledger is still necessary. Thus, the partnership between the two companies brings together the security technology provided by Ledger and the custodian services offered by Etana to provide greater security and governance to digital assets held by their mutual enterprise clients.

In the interview, Gauthier explains that for enterprises with significant crypto assets, it is important to have a governance layer on top of those assets to ensure that there are clear rules of engagement when it comes to who, within the organization, can access and spend those assets. Russell further explains that the role of Etana is to handle the trade lifecycle of the assets, with the goal of mitigating counterparty risks and ensuring that assets are safely kept for the benefit of the underlying clients.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/ledger-ceo-gauthier-and-etana-ceo-russell-discuss-enterprise-crypto-wallets-and-custody

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlbFcycaGKM

Ledger CEO Gauthier and Etana CEO Russell Discuss Enterprise Crypto Wallets and Custody Services

Of the many barriers to blockchain adoption that enterprises must contend with, one of them has to do with basic record-keeping issues. If you've ever studied the details of just a single blockchain transaction, then you'd know that, from a financial point of view, such transactions look nothing like the sorts of transactions that are typically recorded into an organization's financial ledger or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. 

Blockchain transactions have multiple "ins" and "outs" and involve financial values that go up to eight decimal points or more. From one chain to the next, there are wildly different transaction fee structures involving multiple fee types, all of which have to be individually recorded and categorized. And then there are the compliance issues. The organizations that set the standards for how all transactions are recorded (blockchain or not) like the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) are just now issuing their final guidance on how to comply with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). 

Meanwhile, today's ERP and accounting systems are light years behind. Enter Bitwave; a solution provider that bridges the gap between the way transactions are recorded on dozens of different distributed ledgers and a multitude of existing enterprise financial solutions such as Oracle Netsuite.

To find out more while he was covering Consensus 2023 in Austin, TX, Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind interviewed Bitwave co-founder and CEO Patrick White at the Enterprise Digital Assets Summit (a satellite event that took place the day before Consensus 2023 started).

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/bitwave-looks-bridge-chasm-between-traditional-erp-and-enterprise-cryptocurrency.

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBlbjNRHk3c.

Bitwave Looks to Bridge the Chasm Between Traditional ERP and Enterprise Cryptocurrency Accounting

Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind interviews David Wachsman, CEO and founder of Wachsman Public Relations, one of the largest (if not the largest) PR firms in the blockchain industry. The interview took place at the Consensus 2023 conference in Austin, Texas, where Wachsman PR has been a sponsoring exhibitor since 2015.

Wachsman revealed that his company currently represents 75 to 80 companies in the blockchain and Web3 space across three offices in the United States, three in Europe, and one in Asia. Given his years of experience and industry observation, Berlind was looking to Wachsman to see what blockchain trends and new companies were most interesting to him and to get some predictions for the year ahead. 

Based on what he has seen over the last year, Wachsman believes the blockchain industry is making a pretty hard pivot toward enterprises; a segment of the market that, until recently, was pretty underserved.  While there is still plenty of demand for cryptocurrencies from retail investors and consumers, Wachsman says the real killer use cases for blockchain involve scenarios that most people cannot naturally imagine until they take a moment to really understand the unique value proposition (UVP) of distributed ledger technology (DLT). For example, how blockchain can serve as the backbone for air traffic control systems that handle swarms of drones or for three-dimensional accounting systems that address the unique needs of a multi-party supply chain. However, Wachsman does admit that working with enterprise companies can be complicated. He notes that many blockchain companies are still struggling to successfully target enterprises with their offerings. 

When asked by Berlind about the barriers to blockchain adoption, Wachsman cited regulatory uncertainty, cryptocurrency volatility, and the lack of understanding of the technology as some of the main blockers. However, he believes that the benefits of blockchain technology are enough to convince enterprises to overcome those barriers and get started on their blockchain projects.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/ceo-blockchain-public-relations-giant-wachsman-sees-major-industry-pivot-towards/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVroMvcLSog

CEO of Blockchain Public Relations Giant Wachsman Sees Major Industry Pivot Towards Enterprises

Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind interviews Adam Lowe, the Chief Product Officer for Arculus, an exhibitor at Consensus 2023, about its digital asset and digital identity platform that allows enterprises to enable employees and users with a single smart card that stores their cryptocurrency keys, their application credentials (eg: Microsoft 365) and even their building entry credentials. The same smart card can even be used as a payments card (Arculus already supplies smart cards to many credit card-issuing financial institutions). 

Lowe explains that smart cards have been protecting keys for decades and have never been penetrated. Arculus claims to be the first to put payments, FIDO keys, WebAuth keys, and crypto-keys all on the same card using the same secure on-card microcontroller. Lowe highlights that enterprises are interested in the solution because no one wants to manage multiple systems to handle each of these different use cases.

David asks Lowe if the card and the infrastructure behind it includes all the technology to manage the multi-party permission structure that enterprises might want to apply to the way they involve multiple managers and executives in the cryptocurrency custody process.  Lowe responds that such permissions should be managed with smart contracts and that Arculus can then integrate with those smart contracts. However, other solutions — for example, one that's emerging from a partnership between Ledger and Etana Custody that was announced at Consensus 2023 — are launching in an effort to help enterprises with such permissions management. Even so, the consolidation of all those capabilities into a single smart card is, in Blockchain Journal's estimation, where things are heading. Even from an employee's point of view, nobody wants to carry three or four physical security tokens when they can just have one. 

Toward the end of the interview, Lowe explains some potential consumer applications: the card could be used as a secure digital identity to access things like email, social media, and banking. He also mentions that the card could be used for government applications such as voting, health records, and digital passports.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
/interview/arculus-offers-enterprises-crypto-key-storage-payments-2fa-system-access-and-more-one/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLiYcuiVV0w

Arculus Offers Enterprises Crypto Key Storage, Payments, 2FA System Access and More on One Smartcard

For many enterprises, the idea of venturing alone into the wilderness of blockchain is a frightening proposition. Not only is there a general lack of blockchain and cryptocurrency talent within their executive, management, and developer ranks, the talent pool from which to recruit enterprise-grade blockchain expertise is, in 2023, tiny. In other words, demand for talent is outstripping supply. Enterprises could simply do nothing when it comes to blockchain. But sitting still while competitors and startups are keen to discover how blockchain can be used to disrupt the status quo is not the best option. So, what's an enterprise to do? Who can they turn to?

Enter the so-called "Final Four"; the four major accounting and IT consultancies that survived the shakeout from what was once called the "Big Eight."  Keen to capitalize on the enterprise's need for professional assistance with everything from blockchain strategy to tax to regulatory compliance, Accenture, Deloitte, EY, and KPMG have all established global blockchain practices. And each is competing to win the hearts and minds of enterprises ready to enlist a consultancy for blockchain help.

While he was covering the action at the Consensus 2023 conference in Austin, Texas, Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind met up with Paul Brody, the global leader of EY's Blockchain Practice to better understand what EY (formerly known as is Ernst and Young) is doing in hopes of differentiating itself from the other Final Four consultancies.

According to Brody, among other investments in privacy and supply chain, EY views its own software investments such as Nightfall — a Layer 2 technology it jointly developed with Polygon — and Starlight (a zero-knowledge compiler for building private smart contracts) as major differentiators that make it possible for EY to not just bring expertise to the negotiating table, but intellectual property as well.

Consultancy EY's Enterprise Differentiator is Privacy on Public Blockchains: Global Lead Paul Brody

Of the many blockchains that are out there, only a handful are really thinking about how to satisfy the requirements of enterprises interested in public distributed ledger technology (DLT) for digital transformation, industry disruption, stakeholder engagement, or business innovation. 

While he was in Austin, TX to cover Consensus 2023, Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind interviewed Robert Viglione, CEO of Horizen Labs, the engineering organization that supports the Horizen blockchain and its protocol token: ZEN. 

One of Horizen's key areas of focus when it comes to serving enterprises is about Zero-Knowledge or ZK cryptographic technology. In the interview, Viglione discusses how ZK technologies make it possible for the different stakeholders in a blockchain-based multi-party transparency use case to draw certain conclusions (for example financial conclusions) from batches of transactions without actually revealing the underlying details of those transactions. For example, if a transaction represented the settlement of an invoice, the amount may be known and so too is the fact that it was for an invoice. But other details regarding the invoice such as what goods or services the invoice was for or even who it was to can be kept private. 

Viglione also discussed the forthcoming introduction of an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to Horizen's mainnet (blockchain industry jargon for the actual production public blockchain and not the non-production or "testnet" version). Some of the enterprise-targeted public blockchains have strategically embraced the EVM as the means through which their public distributed ledgers will support enterprise needs for custom blockchain application development. As more chains gravitate towards the EVM as their virtual machine of choice, enterprises can seek solace in those chains knowing that the EVM is becoming a defacto industry standard,  making it easier to switch public ledgers should the need arise without having to recode their applications from scratch. It is akin to the comfort that enterprises have traditionally appreciated in the multiple Java Enterprise Edition (JEE) offerings on the market and the flexibility that was similarly afforded to enterprises by virtue of the JEE standard.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/why-enterprises-would-be-wise-choose-an-evmcompatible-chain-horizen-labs-ceo/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFnTfQwq2lY

Why Enterprises Would Be Wise to Choose an EVM-Compatible Chain: Horizen Labs CEO

Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind interviews Dr. Ben Zhang, the co-founder and chief operating officer of NodeReal, at Consensus 2023 in Austin, Texas. NodeReal claims to be a one-stop infrastructure provider that eases access to public and private blockchain services for enterprises that don't want to build their own blockchain application infrastructure from scratch. In many ways, NodeReal is positioning itself as a turnkey AWS-like provider for distributed ledger infrastructure.  

However, David questions why a company would want to build its own blockchains when private blockchain technologies (eg: Hyperledger) and public blockchains already exist. Dr. Zhang argues that Web3 technology is changing the ownership of data and many companies, such as gaming companies, see benefits such as quicker access to customers and better incentives to engage with their users through blockchain-driven decentralization of their applications in private, public, or hybrid scenarios and that solutions like those from NodeReal can give them a big head start.

Overall, the interview provides insight into why companies should be interested in building their own blockchains and the role of NodeReal in providing infrastructure services for these companies. It also highlights the benefits and challenges of building private blockchains and the importance of considering how Web3 technology can benefit businesses.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/iinterview/nodereal-looks-offer-amazonlike-infrastructure-specific-enterprise-blockchain-deployments/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maAegJm8mrA

NodeReal Looks to Offer Amazon-Like Infrastructure Specific to Enterprise Blockchain Deployments

Blockchain Journal editor-in-chief David Berlind interviews Miles Paschini, CEO of FV Bank, at Consensus 2023, a blockchain and cryptocurrency conference in Austin, Texas. FV Bank aims to provide an enterprise-grade custody solution to organizations and institutions seeking a reliable, regulation-compliant, and structured way to operate in the digital asset space. 

For those new to the terminology of the blockchain industry,  a custodian is the entity that controls the private keys to digital assets. But simply holding those keys is not enough. Also of import are the legal and regulatory frameworks under which custodians of any assets — digital and non-digital — must operate (although FV Bank specializes in the custodianship of digital assets). 

In the interview, David asks how FV Bank can promise compliance in an environment where there's a dearth of laws regarding crypto and subsequently, a great deal of regulatory uncertainty. Paschini disagrees, saying that both banking and custodianship are very well-understood from a regulatory point of view. For example, know your customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) regulations are well-defined, and the real issue is that some subsections of the blockchain industry have decided to ignore many of those existing laws. That said, Paschini concedes that FV Bank would like regulators to clarify certain aspects of the market, such as what is a security or commodity in the context of digital assets, and to define more market-friendly tax regulations around crypto.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/compliance-is-key-factor-enterprise-choice-crytpocapable-custodians-says-fv-bank-ceo

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsQzuuJwaHo

Compliance is Key Factor in Enterprise Choice of Crytpo-Capable Custodians Says FV Bank CEO

In the virtual halls of Blockchain Journal (BCJ), we often talk about an elephant-in-the-room like problem that we've nicknamed "The William Shatner Problem." It all started when our technical analyst Bob Reselman was looking at some non-fungible tokens that were once minted on the Wax blockchain in partnership with William Shatner and then asked a simple question: "How is anybody expected to know for sure that it was the real William Shatner who worked on these NFTs and not an imposter?" 

When BCJ editor-in-chief David Berlind posed that same question to Wax co-founder William Quigley during the NFT.NYC 2023 conference in New York City, Quigley's answer was essentially that we have to trust Wax as a central entity to be telling the truth and that like Amazon, it's beholden upon Wax to market itself (and maintain itself) as a trustworthy marketplace. The problem with this approach is that it's a non-technological and non-standard approach that doesn't scale across the blockchain industry. In fact, BCJ's so-called William Shatner problem is not just about C2C contexts involving consumer activity in the primary and secondary market of NFTs. It's also a proxy for a larger identity issue that needs solving before businesses can fully exploit the potential of distributed ledger technologies. 

During Consensus 2023 in Austin, Texas, after Ripple CTO David Schwartz concluded a fireside chat during which he openly discussed some of the challenges when it comes to the intersection of blockchain and identity, BCJ's David Berlind interviewed him for his perspective on the William Shatner problem. Similar to some of the conclusions that were reached in Berlind's interview of Wax's Quigley, Schwartz — one of the OGs of blockchain technology — agreed that it is a problem that needs solving, joked that he and Berlind should call some venture capitalists, and suggested there may be no way to avoid the need for central authorities that vouch for the identities of blockchain users (individuals or organizations). The idea is similar to the originally intended role of Certificate Authorities back in the days of Web 1.0.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/ripple-cto-david-schwartz-proof-identity-will-require-certificate-authoritylike-approach/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9o1elZGZug.

Ripple CTO David Schwartz: Proof of Identity Will Require Certificate Authority-Like Approach

Step into the world of Neo and discover their latest efforts in making a change in the blockchain world. Hear first-hand about their user-centric approach to blockchain technology and how they are making it accessible to everyone, from hardcore gamers to casual enthusiasts.

This Company is Revolutionizing the Crypto Space | Neo | Money in the Bank w/ Franck

The world's leading source of information for enterprises and businesses looking to use blockchain as an application platform for digital transformation, business innovation, customer engagement, and industry disruption.

"Money in the bank, with Franck” With over 20 years on Wall Street, Franck talks about the stock market and gives practical advice about all things financial.  From financial planning to asset management, Franck talks about how the financial world works in practical and everyday language.  His experience working for and with some of the largest financial services companies in the world gives him a unique insight to how things get done in the industry, and as a business owner he is also in touch with the dilemma’s that go along with that side of the financial universe.

New tracks tagged #consensus2023