Blockchain Journal with David Berlind Blockchain Journal

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

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

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

David Berlind, host of the Blockchain Journal Podcast, interviews David Bchiri, President of XRPL Commons, an independent non-profit organization that helps to drive the success of the XRP ecosystem (XRP is the native protocol token of the Ripple distributed ledger). During the interview, conducted at the Consensus 2023 Conference in Austin, Bchiri explains that XRPL Commons is working towards the support and education of four organization types — "pillars" as he calls them — to drive interest and adoption; universities, large organizations, startups, and the community. In the blockchain industry, "community" is a standard one-word reference to the collection of individuals — developers, enthusiasts, adherents, retail investors, fans, etc — who, in aggregate typically represent a huge base of support for a given distributed ledger's ecosystem. XRPL Commons aims to be at the crossroads of these four pillars with dedicated educational programs for each.

As Berlind points out during the interview, blockchain as a technology faces various obstacles when it comes to adoption by enterprises and other large organizations (one of Bchiri's four organizational pillars). Among the challenges is a complete lack of familiarity with blockchain technology among business executives. Most of what those executives see are the unflattering cryptocurrency headlines in the mainstream media. Bchiri agreed, saying that the solution from the XRPL Commons' perspective is to invite those executives to XRPL Commons-organized briefings where they can learn about the true value of blockchain technology and how it can unlock new opportunities in their specific industries.

Bchiri echos some key blockchain messages having to do with the erosion of corporate trust and the role that decentralized public ledgers — systems and records with which malfeasant or incompetent organizational personnel cannot tamper — can play. Whereas centralized systems leave open the opportunity for manipulation of information by one or a handful of people who are in charge of them, Bchiri pointed out that blockchain creates complete auditability and permanence of data that cannot be changed and therefore offers enterprises an opportunity to restore the trust which has been eroding over time.

To watch the video version of this podcast or read its full-text transcript, go to:
https://blockchainjournal.com/interview/xrpl-commons-president-david-bchiri-education-is-a-prerequisite-enterprise-blockchain/

The video can also be watched on Blockchain Journal's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qO3SXEMeDxE

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

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