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In a Trusted World with Sebastiaan van der Lans
In June 2020, WordProof and Sebastiaan van der Lans were awarded the top prize of Blockchain for Social Good by the European Commission and with it a whopping €1 million. They beat off 175 contenders from more than 40 countries at various rounds to emerge the overall winner with ...read more
A New Playroom for Adults with Heather Montgomery
Exploring your sexuality in a safe place has become more difficult ironically in this digital era. It might be argued that people can look online for any number of different interpretations of their sexuality, but in reality, it’s easier to come a cropper as anonymity is often ...read more
NFTs; The New Drug for the Digital Classes with Evan Vandenberg
NFTs, or Non Fungible Tokens, just might be the next gateway drug into all things crypto. NFTs address the critical issue of a digital asset being unique – ensuring provenance and ownership while removing the problem of counterfeits. In essence, NFTs are used to create verifiable ...read more
Building a Marketplace where Everyone Wins with Nikolay Shkilev
Nikolay is a serial entrepreneur based in Russia. Holding a PhD in Economics from the University of St Petersburg, he is the president of Balt Shelf Holding, a company with many businesses from logistics, to high tech to manufacturing. He has held this role since 1997. He is also ...read more
Filming Tim Draper's Eyebrows with Sukhmen Nijjar
We begin on the subject of eyebrows; or rather I begin, with the owner of the eyebrows in question no less the crypto luminary Tim Draper. I am a self-confessed fan of Mr Draper but am less enamoured by this particular part of his visage. I also confess to being slightly ...read more
Sebastien Borget – Not an overnight success
There are many metaverses in Web3 with more springing up overnight. Some bright spark recently called the metaverse just space on someone’s computer (or more correctly computers) but on February 15, JP Morgan issued a report on metaverses which concluded by saying that the ...read more
Get Paid to Watch Porn with Stefano Contini
PornVisory is a different kind of adult entertainment site where the users are paid to watch content. Currently the videos shared are curated by the PornVisory team (the name is a pun on Porn + Advisory) rather than the other way around. The team selects what they feel to be the ...read more
Running Meaningful Hackathons with Edward Buchi
Edward Buchi is very keen on Hackathons. When I spoke with him today he is running a month long virtual hackathon with some 20 plus groups participating so far. He doesn’t know what the final number will be as people are allowed to enter at any point. There is only one important ...read more
Helping the Unbanked Earn Crypto with Tanya Hardie
Tanya Hardie, AnyTask Marketing Manager at Electroneum, has just celebrated one year with Electroneum. She arrived at the busy cryptocurrency company with little experience of blockchain but with a strong marketing background. From sports to bathrooms, Tanya has worked across ...read more
Infinity Token Generation with Lafayette Tabor
When I first started looking at the DEUS project I found it very confusing both in the token generation and the actual platform. Turns out, it is both much simpler than I originally understood and yet deeply complex at the same time. The token generation is a continuous model, ...read more
The Defiant with Robin Schmidt
Robin is a filmmaker and broadcaster and a very fine one too. He has twenty plus years of making films, real films, but he also has around the same amount of experience filming coffee makers. He has nothing per see against coffee makers, indeed some of his best coffee has come ...read more
Disturbingly Satisfying Digital Art with Jon Noorlander
Have you seen the exploding heads by Jon Noorlander, the Swedish artist? No? Then please google him and then come back and read this article because my excitement won’t make sense otherwise. The reason for the interview today is that he is moving into fine art with a new series ...read more
Saving the World one NFT at a Time with Joel Comm
Speaking with Joel Comm alone today is pretty rare as he is mostly joined at the hip with his co presenter of The Bad Crypto podcast, Travis Wright. Today storms, COVID and NFT madness means the two have been separated but I am delighted to turn the tables and be able to ...read more
8 things successful web 3 leaders do as part of their morning routines
We spoke to six accomplished web 3 leaders about how they spend their mornings. While there is a lot of variety in each leader's routine the one unchanging characteristic is consistency. 1. Drink lemon water first thing in the morning Lemon water contains nutrients that help ...read more
From Crypto to Cash with Richard Ells
It’s the holy grail of the cryptosphere – mass adoption. The second mantra is help the unbanked: notice I don’t say bank the unbanked, we don’t necessarily want to funnel people into a banking system that no longer serves the ordinary people, but to help people get access to ...read more
Who has Thought about Founding a Country with Vit Jedlicka
When Vit gives keynote talks, as he does all over the world on blockchain, finance, political platforms, he often opens with a thought-provoking question: “Who has thought about founding a country?” Depending on the audience, people can nod enthusiastically, hands go up in the ...read more
Regulating the Financial Sector with Teana Baker Taylor
In October, Teana Baker-Taylor took up the reins as the General Manager of the UK for Crypto.com. She leads the U.K. business strategy and oversees operations, including leading licensing efforts, regulatory affairs and business development. A heavy hitter woman in finance, ...read more
$MEME; the DOGE of DeFi with Jordan Lyall
It started as a joke, as an accidental thing. Jordan has been in DeFi for many years, he has a senior position in ConsenSys and his job is to build DeFi products. “I’m deep in this space and have been building products, infrastructures and apps in DeFi and it’s really getting ...read more
Can Blockchain help Stop Human Trafficking with Jax Harrison
Human trafficking is a multibillion dollar business and it is growing exponentially. Consider the fact that a kilo of drugs can only be sold once only but a human being can be trafficked over and over again. It’s all in the maths. 40 million people are trafficked each year with ...read more
From Dog Food to Charity with Philipp Kothe
Philipp Kothe, blockchain expert at Datarella, once set up a healthy dog food brand in Guatemala with his sister who is, according to him, dog mad. She works with dogs, training them and also, and perhaps more importantly, training their owners. She had moved temporarily to ...read more
JPB Liberty files David and Goliath Class Action with Andrew Hamilton
Before I get to the big news I want to explain about the name of this company. In a recent interview I kept on stumbling over the initials JPB. In exasperation I asked the founder, Andrew Hamilton, why on earth had he chosen those initials, could he not have gone for something ...read more
Baking a Bigger Pie for Women with Bridget Greenwood
Bridget does not like to stereotype but to nurture is a core component of her being. As founder of The Bigger Pie she puts into action the vision she has of an empathetic world where diversity is embraced, and women help grow the pie. She sees her role as allowing others to have ...read more
Playing Games on Blockchain with Jessie Reich
Jesse, or Aggroed as he is better known, is the CEO of Splinterlands, the most played game on blockchain. His nickname comes from a term used in gaming where one player purposely agitates a sleeping threat such as a dragon; to aggro is to invade a monster's space and aggroed is ...read more
Can blockchain and gaming exist in the same space?
“We’ve achieved a lot in the first year but now we need to tackle the elephant in the room – if gaming is going to be the first killer to on ramp people for mass adoption, then we have to make blockchain gaming more like video gaming,” says Ingram. “Blockchain is all about owning ...read more
CEO of Guardians of the Blockchain explains about his passion for startups, data and blockchain
Pavel Entin was born in the Soviet Union in 1976 when it was still under communism. His family are all academics, and his mother was keen for him to become a medical doctor. But his education took him to the US on a student exchange where he was part of a group of one of the ...read more
Unlocking the Power of DeFi
I’d like to address a fundamental misconception about investing and crypto – Is it just about the APY? I would argue people engage with crypto for a wide range of reasons. Sometimes, people engage with crypto as a direct reaction to the financial crash of 2008 where the banks ...read more
A Blockleaders Guide: Here’s What Makes the NEAR Ecosystem so Great
Near Protocol’s user-friendly interfaces make it easy for novice blockchain users to set up everything from a simple wallet to an NFT marketplace. Blockleaders tested the system, and we can say the platform is living up to expectations. And with a recently completed funding round ...read more
Financially Independence for Women
Eunice Wong is on a mission to show other people, especially women, that they can become financially independent and has found she has a natural flaw for trading – something that surprised her as she never studied finance. “Actually I wanted to be a rock star when I was younger. ...read more
NFTs are not just about art
NFTs are not just about art. Into this exploding field comes established player, Mintbase, with ambitions to rethink NFTs. Just as we get our heads around the concept of digital art NFTs then another cargo-load of applications arrives to really fry the brains. So let’s begin at ...read more
Take back the Internet - BAXE
BAXE is not just a platform, it’s an ecosystem with a vision to take back the internet. As CEO and co founder Christian Moore explains: “This is our mission; I have been blessed by a team of highly intelligent capable executives who are passionate about our dream to use ...read more
Are you thinking of travelling and working remotely this year ?
Growing up I always thought going to work would entail a long journey to an office somewhere never did I think going to work would allow me to work remotely and travel Europe for 3 months. In September 2021 I worked remotely from Spain, France and Portugal whilst making some ...read more
Fashion Giant Gap Launches NFT collection on Tezos Blockchain
The long standing retailer has launched a dedicated NFT collection, with exclusive physical hoodies available to some lucky buyers. It started with luxury brands coming out in the metaverse, then Adidas jumped in and created a splash, now clothing retailer The Gap is aping into ...read more
Making an NFT marketplace in just one hour
Gregory Zaitsev’s co-founder and CEO of Unique Network Alexander Mitrovitch, calls his CTO the brains behind the operation. Zaitsev blushes at this compliment but he concedes he loves to come up with new ideas. Like his co-founder, Zaitsev also enjoys the rigors of being an ...read more
Gamerhash - make passive money gaming
Artur Pszczolkowski, CMO and VP of GamerHash Formed in 2017, GamerHash is a well-established project with just under 1 million users and a solid commercial base. In fact, given the commercial premise of the project, it is surprising there are not more copycat companies following ...read more
The Old Man’s Views The Old Man Looks Back on 2021
Firstly, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas. Omicron upturned my Christmas plans, but we all got through it safely. We are about to enter another year of government restrictions and lockdowns, and it's just not good enough. "5-weeks to stop the pandemic" has become 2-years, ...read more
Here's to 2022 ... from Blockleaders and our friends...
Lisa and Jill :-) ...read more
The Old Man’s Views Satoshi Lives!
I am rushing to get ready for a flight to the UK. Hopefully, it will take off before Boris bans all incoming flights. As most of you are preparing for another Covid Christmas, I'll try and keep it short so that you can get to the shops or down the pub as soon as possible. The ...read more
Sarojini McKenna – Alien Worlds, co founder
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree – or the code from the DAO. Half way through our conversation Saro looks me in the eye and says the code for Alien Worlds is pretty much the same as laid down for the proposed Liberland governance foundation, a micro nation sitting on the ...read more
The Old Man’s Views Covid, the Metaverse and Biden… What could go wrong?
Last night I had my Covid booster jab and feel like crap today. Therefore, I will mimic what our governments are doing: Follow the science and give out loads of mixed messages. What can we expect to see between now and the New Year? It's a hard call, but I don't see too much ...read more
Are Crypto Assets now considered a crucial component in investor portfolios?
When Tim Cook and Elon Musk tell you that they own crypto, we know that there is a long-term outlook for the sector. These high worth individuals and long term thinkers may even consider HODLing to send the next generation to the moon. However, many traditional wealth managers ...read more
Unbank the world – with Alex Mashinsky, CEO of Celsius
First let us stop and commend Alex Mashinsky for his impact on the world as we know it. An early pioneer in VoIP, with patents going back to 1994, he is now in the process of replicating that disruptive game changing charge with MoIP or Money over IP. As we sit in the middle of a ...read more
It’s Time to Clear up our Rights to our own DNA
by guest columnist Dr David Koepsell It has been seven years since the US Supreme Court finally weighed in on the issue of gene patents, invalidating the practice so companies could no longer patent unaltered parts of nature. That was a great step in the right direction. But ...read more
Vandalism saved Darren Cullen from a life of Crime
Darren straddles the divide between the underworld and the status quo, providing an essential bridge for digital tourists wishing to travel in either direction. He is contraction personified and has no issues walking either side of the street. “I keep my feet in both camps, ...read more
Fine Art and NFTs set to Collide with the Out of Africa Collection
The art world has been truly re-awakened with the influx of creative NFT artists and collections available today. Although the global pandemic has presented a challenging period for creatives across a wide spectrum, the world of digital art has thrived and given artists a new ...read more
The Old Man’s Views The People Vs The Powers?
Omicron: Yet, another variant of the China virus that our governments enjoy using to impose their authority? If you can’t beat them, we should join them. I was thinking about this and how we promote cryptocurrencies. Perhaps we should be talking less about opportunity and more ...read more
Save the Planet and Earn Money
An interview with Stefan Rust, Founder and CEO of Sonic Capital Stefan Rust, founder and CEO of Sonic Capital, has used his time in COVID to kick start the next version of his career and one that may be his defining legacy: he is on a mission to save the planet and make money. ...read more
Suku - supply chains to increase revenue
Interview with Yonathan Lapchik SUKU, first published in December 2020 On August 4, 2020, Yonathan was cooking Uruguayan steaks at a BBQ for friends in Miami. All was quiet; work was good. He was working on a project, SUKU, three years in the making when he got a message saying ...read more
UN COP26 #Digitalart4climate Winners Announced
There were 208 artworks from over 58 countries entered in the Digital Art 4 Climate competition. The youngest artist was 10 years old. The digital artist Bricx Martillo Dumas, aka Shrimppaste, who hails from the Philippines, has been declared the winner of the DigitalArt4Climate ...read more
Worlds First Simulated Crypto Trading Competition Attracts 20 Global Teams
The Blockchain Academy has launched the first Crypto Trading Simulator competition for Universities around the world this week. Over 15 clubs, 20 teams, and more than 100 traders globally have signed up to participate in the universal challenge. Welcoming the top blockchain ...read more
Circle Launches Fund for Early Stage Blockchain Projects
Circle, the digital currency company, has launched the Circle Ventures fund to support early stage blockchain projects. Circle Internet Financial, LLC today announced the launch of Circle Ventures to invest in compelling, early-stage blockchain projects and companies that further ...read more