News & Updates

I can’t say I’ll be sorry to leave 2023 behind, whilst a lot has happened and many new and exciting things have come from this year, it’s been hard work generally.

The year started badly for personal reasons with my wife’s health scare, and this I think caused my attention to be deflected (understandably) – which led me to playing ‘catch up’ on so many aspects of business.

I write this now having just had a minor surgical operation myself, which does mean that I’m offline really until the new year now. A welcome rest if I’m honest.

Positives from the year though are many. banxlocal.uk has taken much of my time, with the progress and shaping of the project really coming into its own now. I’m really looking forward to this playing out as we are poised and ready to start building and making physical progress.

My work with LeaseTeq AG has been good, and now the Series A is successfully across the line, attention can turn to the development into new territories and new technologies.

CoEfficient is unrecognisable this year (in a good way) the strides made in shaping the proposition, introduction of the partnership programme, the successful onboarding of many new clients really shows that hard work pays off.

I’m very excited for 2024 on various fronts, including developing Alnistar into a clearly defined consultancy, and starting our recruitment for the skilled business advisory team planned. I’m also going to be announcing a new property opportunity early in the new year, working with a US based developer.

I’ll write again early in the new year, but if you’re reading this, I hope you get a restful and happy festive break and are ready for a quick start in 2024!

After the unseasonably warm ‘late summer’ weather that we enjoyed up until Mid-October, the last few days have changed and we’re now really at the ‘business end’ of the year!

Since last posting, I’ve taken the wraps off the banxlocal.uk project, and successfully presented this at Tekex, in Guernsey.

The project is gathering pace and we’re in full flow with developments and discussions around partnerships, investment and our roadmap.

Bringing a service delivery channel to the retail banking space is exciting, if complex, but as we build our team and advisory board out, we’re attracting specialists who can really contribute to the delivery.

Our website will go live in the next couple of weeks and we’re now engaged with a wide variety of interested parties.

In other news, several other interesting projects have crossed my desk and whilst the investment landscape is still slow, there are ‘green shoots’ of optimism starting to reappear.

November will be a month of travelling to various meetings and appointments which I’m optimistic will set what has been a very disjointed year straight and see the results the efforts put in deserve. Exciting times!

The summer months have been a period of consolidation this year, often summer is a frustrating time when people are away and business stalls, but this year I have been in a position to close some ongoing projects, take stock of my position and come out of the other side with a much clearer vision for the future.

This future starts now, in the same way that September sees the school academic year start, and I too have the feeling of a ‘new year’ in my work.

Notably my work has now some very distinct threads, and I have committed much of my time to one project in particular. Currently listed as ‘Stealth Mode’ on my Linked In profile, I anticipate being able to open up on this exciting project in the coming weeks, and certainly by the time we get into October and my next update.

Taking time off in August is not something I have tended to do historically, but given the patchy weather it was good to kick back and head off to the sunshine for some days, and certainly now, with the clarity this break provided, I can see clearly what the steps to success look like as we head towards year end!

The months of May and June saw a huge amount of activity for me, and culminated with a much-needed holiday in Spain.

The workload saw some successes in several of the projects I’m working with, and indeed saw me becoming involved in a variety of new markets and sectors.

Notably, the tokenisation of real-world-assets was a key portion of my work. This is a sector of particular interest to me and the world generally right now. Bringing assets on chain is seen as possibly the most practical usage of blockchain technology, serving to offer provenance for the items in way not seen before.

I also took time to broaden my knowledge in the space, blockchain, crypto and the wider remit of fintech are such fast moving environments keeping abreast of new ideas, developments and use cases is all important.

Equally with regulation and compliance moving at pace in the various jurisdictions I operate in, keeping up to date with this has been integral to my workload in the past weeks.

Summer now beckons, and I’m expecting a flurry of activity in the coming weeks.

After the dramas of the family health scare in February, I omitted to post an update during March at all as I’ve been super busy trying to reorganise the priorities in my life.

Now it’s mid-April and I’ve reached the point where I understand better what I need to do, and importantly, how to achieve this.

My work is important to me, and I love the ebb and flow my typical week takes jumping from meetings, topics and projects from call to call, but now I have some clear hours’ worth of project work ahead of me and my focus is on completing this effectively.

Research is such an important part of business, and I see often businesses failing in this area which ultimately leads to them failing generally.

It’s never been more important to understand the customer, and a business that doesn’t keep up with these demands and needs will not only struggle to retain its clients, it will also fail to attract new.

I had to travel a few times since my last update, into England a couple of times and then to Switzerland and Italy. Every time I travel I come home with new perspective and ideas. It’s always nice to be home again, but immediately I am I am thinking about where my life will take me next.

Opportunities are out there when you are in the right frame of mind to notice them. I think the months of February and March 2023 will go down as testing my ability to remain positive, and now we’re into April optimism and discovery await!

February has been a difficult month for me on many levels.

A family health scare brought home just how important it is to live a healthy life and keep a healthy mind. Taking pleasure from the smaller and perhaps ‘taken for granted’ circumstances.

I’ve been guilty of trying to do too much simultaneously for too long, and this has been to the detriment of the effectiveness of my work and my happiness. Sometimes I should just say no!

I recently listened to a number of audio books on the topic of time management, quality of life and similar subjects, and the take-away for me from these is that the power and ability to control what you do, what you don’t do and manage the two is what leads to satisfaction in work and personal life.

Being able to control things is a gift, controlling how much work you do, how much time you allocate to certain things, how much leisure time you take, is really the secret to happiness and satisfaction in life.

Demanding situations occur from time to time, having spent a lot of time pushing for results on a number of aspects, I now realise that all of this effort was for nought. I didn’t control the situation and therefore will always find it hard to become satisfied by it.

As we move from winter to spring, I now take a new focus on the things I can control, seek the opportunities where I can actually make a difference and then revel in the satisfaction of having done so!

More next month!

The end of 2022 was very busy and time available in my schedule prevented me from writing an update as I might usually do at year end. That said, given the state of the financial markets at that time, I was not enthused to write too much! The FTX scandal has had far more impact on my activities than I first suspected, with many clients, investors and colleagues taking a much more cautious approach even if not directly affected themselves. The recent delisting of USDT on the Canadian exchanges has also caused more concern generally – so frankly speaking, I haven’t been too inclined to write too much here as I don’t like to spead any doom and gloom. The media can do that perfectly well!

That said, I’ve met the first weeks of 2023 with a renewed optimism. I sometimes surprise myself with my ‘every cloud has a silver lining’ attitude.

I’ve not any specific update aside from the fact that the festive period and the social scene that goes with it brought me to meet lots of new people, which is one of my favourite things. I’m always inspired hearing the diversity of peoples’ personal and business lives.

This month is largely a month of catching up on a range of outstanding matters, clearing out the hangovers of 2022, and whilst I won’t write specific details on this page just yet, all my January efforts will be important in shaping the new year ahead.

People my age have been through this cycle before, with volatile and uncertain markets. The one thing that age is good for is that it provides the experience to know that there will be better times ahead, no matter how the situation looks now.

Happy new year and I wish you a positive and successful 2023!

I’m fortunate that the events surrounding the collapse and demise of FTX appear to have had little impact on me personally or my network of friends and colleagues. Of course, the ‘ripple effect’ has again set the markets into turmoil and this clearly affects everything. The worst impact is that all the good work heading towards ‘RealFi’ as opposed to DeFi has taken a step backwards and means those perhaps considering a first foray into the blockchain world have used FTX as an excuse or reason to pause again.

Cryptocurrencies need regulation. Personally, I think the idealistic world of DeFi and its anonymity is unsustainable if crypto is going to ever going to go mainstream.

I advocate change in the financial world, wholeheartedly! Having been involved in the finance sector all of my working life I know first-hand that the system is not efficient as it stands.

Regulation is coming, KYC and AML procedures will be the norm, but that doesn’t mean they have to be there in the way the market looks today.

As you will know, I advocate SSI, and specifically IAMX’s implementation of it. IAMX to my knowledge is the only 100% GDPR compliant solution which conforms to the W3C open standards for DID’s.

IAMX is now in the process of scaling up significantly, with numerous strategic and significant partners becoming more involved.

The Cardano Summit 2022 in Lausanne was a hotbed of talk about RealFi and how the cornerstone of unlocking this trajectory for the industry lies in new, more convenient, more secure and innovative ways to perform the regulatory check we all know (in our heart of hearts) that must be in place to prevent financial crime.

December is nearly here, and often it heralds a time to reflect on the year past, honestly, I’d say let’s put 2022 into the history books quietly and spend December planning and developing the space for 2023.

On the day the clocks go back to GMT and officially British Summer Time comes to an end, inevitably I’m tempted to start thinking about how the year has been for me, 10 months of the year gone, and what have been my results.

A huge swathe of this year has been devoted to IAMX and deservedly so, as it’s a huge project with massive impact and real-world benefits. The challenges have been around getting the conversation of digital identities started. I’m pleased to say though that we are now engaging in meaningful conversations, looking at real use cases and practical applications. The pinnacle of this I think will be as IAMX heads to the Cardano Summit in Lausanne in November. Digital Identity is on many people’s radars now, which is a huge shift from earlier this year when I’d say 9 out of 10 people that I mentioned it to didn’t really understand the technology, why it is so needed and what the wide-ranging benefits are.

A I develop conversations across many industry verticals which can directly benefit from a ‘one click’, GDPR compliant, secure user onboarding facility I’m encouraged by the willingness to speak that the space now has.

Elsewhere the markets continue to be slow, the crypto winter continues, and we are in something of a holding-pattern still as was wait for some positivity and confidence to return.

2023 is just around the corner, but there is a lot of work still to do this side of the end of the year!

September started with a flurry of activity on many fronts. Specifically IAMX seeing some significant progress in terms of partnership news and new innovative plans. I have now ‘beefed up’ my role in IAMX from Advisor to ‘Head of Innovation and Partnerships’ as the traction we’re seeing in these areas requires more attention and focus from me.

IAMX are heading off on a ‘roadshow’ across the Atlantic in October, visiting significant prospective partners stretching from New York to California, Canada to Florida across a two week period. By the time the team return I’m expecting to be able to break some really major news!

Other facets of my work are similarly busy, SIKA and Factiiv both making significant progress. Factiiv for example is now MVP ready on TestNet and embarks on a new phase of its journey in terms of attracting and engaging with it’s user base.

Some interesting new opportunities are under review now, and I continue to expand my network and secure relationships. Simple steps such as attending the local networking scene, whether the black tie dinner for the Guernsey Chamber, the premiere of a new movie, coffee mornings and breakfast meetings. All are opportunities to meet interesting new people.

Of course, the sad news of the death of Queen Elizabeth 2 has had an impact on the momentum of business this month as the country and commonwealth pause to pay their respects to a remarkable woman. Personally speaking, having only ever never known Britain with a Queen as monarch, a woman who conducted herself through some impossibly difficult times with grace and dignity, it’ll be an interesting time ahead to watch Britain develop in the new era with King Charles 3.