How Securrency is bridging traditional finance and blockchain networks

0:00I'm Ashlyn Addison from event chain for investmentpitch media and FinTech news network and today on blockchain interviews with manuel ren sync the strategy director of security and well thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show it's a pleasure to have you here today yeah my pleasure Ashton very good to be here I'd love for you to start out by giving a little bit on your

0:22background in the capital markets and financial industry and how that led to you focusing on sea currency yeah okay so although I'm a Dutch national I first started working in capital markets I think in 1997 at the time it was called Chase Manhattan Bank which is an acquisitions Department then I ran for a short stint to deutsche bank and very quickly joined a FinTech although we

0:52didn't call it the FinTech I suppose at the time but the financial technology startup has enough out of JP Morgan called risk metrics and I stayed there for 12 30 years as head of EMEA and then and later as head of Middle East and North Africa for MSC I MSCI by the time had bought risk metrics after that I did some consulting and in

1:232017 I worked for almost a year for a as Swiss crypto exchange called licky which was a great experience and a good introduction into digital assets and then about I think one and a half one year and eight months ago I joined SU currency any Abu Dhabi very cool and yet you guys really have something special going on right now and it seems

1:52like you're growing the platform at a time when the nature of financial services is being disrupted completely so can you talk a little bit about know what is the model for sacaron see and how exactly are you disrupting the financial industry yeah sure so I think blockchain has done a lot of the disruption for us of course so so blockchain is you amazing technology that allows for very

2:17efficient transfer transfer of value you know globally it's I believe the first time that you that you can really create a unique digital asset that cannot be copied and pasted so it's really a unique fantastic technology and you know we're really building on that so we are a blockchain company and particularly digital asset company and really we are

2:46both a ragtag and the FinTech company so on the ragtag side you should probably know that our CEO and founder Dan Dhoni has a career in digital innovation and digital transformation digital identity and digital assets at the NSA and other places the rest of the founding team also has a background in government legal and in military so it's no surprise that ragtag and compliance is

3:16you know a key theme for us so the core solution we have there our super power I would say is the policy engine it's a policy policy engine that allows for multi jurisdictional compliance so both for new or frank's of digital assets as well as secondly trading of additional assets so this means that digital assets can be offered in multiple jurisdictions

3:44as well as traded and you know fairly decentralized manner while remaining compliant with the relevant regulatory regimes and these jurisdictions can be the jurisdiction of the offerer jurisdiction of the broker jurisdiction of the offering itself and of course of any venue where the TRO gonna stay where the token is traded so so compliance is very important and we believe that you

4:09know combining a digital identity with policy enforcement as well as privacy protections lead to an honest blockchain on the on the FinTech side we have a huge software library of capabilities that allow for a capsule form of actions and value transfer both across blockchains for one blockchain to an other as well as from block change to legacy Ledger's centralized database

4:38basis so interoperability is the other key theme so compliance and anthropology so we're not selling on the blockchain we do not foresee or believe that that any one blockchain will rule them all instead we see many disparate networks and databases that will talk to each other and interoperate along a set of standards so no much like today's internet of data and so we're attacking

5:04this interoperability piece I think it's a space that is not very crowded at all you know anybody can build an offering platform but this interoperability piece is so complex and and we believe that we are leaders in this space it's really our you know our other superpower besides the policy engine definitely and with this policy engine multi-jurisdictional seems like a very

5:28important piece of that because of the globalization through these digital assets becoming borderless can you talk a little bit about you know what are the jurisdictions that are part of this multi jurisdictional piece and are you seeing interest from banks and financial institutions in certain parts of the world that are looking to innovate first yeah for sure so we so you know

5:54jurisdiction wise we see it everywhere but but we as a company we are doing right now projects between the u.s. the UAE Singapore Australia as well as London so so these are the jurisdictions that we that we focus on but of course there's no limit there's other jurisdictions that's that are also very progressive you know a lot happening in

6:22Germany who wants thing in Germany about 40 banks now you know mainstream banks apply to become crypto custodians in France we saw the large bank like suction doing the digital euro project with the central bank the Netherlands where I'm from originally is you know it's also aiming to be at the forefront of digital securitisation so you know we see that regrets it's hard

6:50to keep up reading and it's not just bank it's banks but it's also asset managers exchanges and fintax that that want to get into digital assets mm-hmm and you mentioned the u.s. there but also some regions that are you know you know emerging and seems to be growing really rapidly with this multi-jurisdictional policy yeah is it extra work to integrate oh the u.s. into a

7:18multi-jurisdictional policy because traditionally you know the US has had to have different rules and regulations for token sales and for crypto currency exchanges and they seem to be taking a different path than others so is that fitting into this you know global policy that you're working on yeah that's that's complex that's not an easy task as as you say so you know we thought we

7:41thought it would be easier so we wrote I think the tokenization platform in a couple of months and we thought that the policy engine know would take us you know maybe here it's now five years down behind we're still building on it so but so what it is what we have built now is is this policy engine that allows you to configure these local rule books so you

8:10can configure you know without using codes a lawyer you know typically a lawyer will be doing this work so they are not coders they're not smart contract experts but by dragging and dropping and drill down boxes they can configure the rules for their jurisdiction and then the engine combines it all and updates the you know the compliant where tokens with this

8:32information so the talker knows exactly what it can do when it's being offered and it knows exactly post issuance what it from what wallet to what quality that can travel anywhere and from under which conditions here so we built the compliance into the token and you're in abu-dhabi right now you're very familiar with the regulatory environment in the Middle East because

8:56you give a comparison for those that are in the Americas on what is the innovation looking like there in terms of FinTech you know innovation into the traditional banking system yeah so so here very interestingly we we have and that's a bit different from the US we have an approach of sandboxes so that's modeled on the original FCA sandbox in the UK so this is happening both in the

9:22UAE and Saudi Arabia and and so and UAE for instance these efforts are taking place within the context of their legally offshore international financial center so it's almost like sandbox within the sandbox or two levels that allow for easy innovation so these international financial centers like the Dubai International Financial Center and the Abu Dhabi global market have their

9:50own laws and English law and you know many of their regulators come from the air from the SCA in particular and this really allows them to be more nimble and innovative now ATGM where we are registered in particular has been varying octave and they have even launched the first I believe the first crypto specific guidelines and regulations for exchanges and brokers

10:19and custodians and syntax so you know we are based here in ATGM and we're in good company which you know companies that others will know like Kraken and Cohen and and also transfer wise and I guess why don't you know more generally I think also on a government leadership side has been a lot of support for blog shame or you know box shame luxury not not so much digital assets you know with

10:46leadership pushing ministries to dock box chains and in there digitalization efforts and their effort to make government paperless for instance yeah yeah it's good to be in good company and speaking of good calm yes speaking of good company you recently at the beginning of this year closed the 18 million dollar series around so congratulations to that and that was led by wisdom tree

11:11investments and some other good partners can you talk about the synergies that you have with those partners that have invested and you know what is the goal now that that investment round is closed yeah that's right so wisdom tree is one the other one was the Abu Dhabi Investment Office which is a Abu Dhabi sovereign class fund and they found deep tech companies to establish themselves

11:36in Abu Dhabi and they helped us you know they're more of a silent investor and they helped us with their their network and government and financial institutions wisdom 3 is is very strategic so their CEO which Ono Steinberg it's really a visionary he you know they're they're known for their ETF business they've been an innovator ets and he is now he's a big believer in

12:02initial assets you know so he I think chose to invest in us because he realizes that no compliance is everything really so we're working with them on digitalizing a number of funds ETFs and and also other font types and can I say they've been not only an investor but also in an amazing client and through them we are building pipes into their ecosystem so this includes

12:30their historian their transfer agent and of course exchange venues in terms of what comes next yeah after C was a comb series B I'm already very busy with preparing that as we speak yeah I never stopped C so what would you say is the main going to be one of the main key factors of success in integrating compliance smoothly you know and it's a smooth transition from

12:58the legacy financial system into you know a blockchain based one so yeah when it comes to visual assets are we gonna make that a success are we gonna get you know mainstream adoption I think the main features are really to set up a system that allows for you know at the same at a minimum the same or even a higher compliance standards and and block tree and actually allows for

13:25higher compliance standards because of the transparency of a box chain so as long as you you know combine that with privacy features you can get higher compliance standards and of course and I think this is where a lot of ICO companies and made a mistake you you need to be able to block this new new technology into the existing system make sure it's not isolated and

13:53make sure you don't duplicate costs for clients and so that you can efficiently you know transfer value from from any ledger to another whether it's a distributed ledger or virtually ledger or centralize much mm-hmm yeah I agree again compliance and interoperability yeah very nice well we're running out of time and well thank you so much for taking the time to do the interview

14:17if there are viewers that are interested in learning more about the currency what's the best way for them to to learn more information yeah sure so our website is secure and c-calm we have a newsletter that you can subscribe to we of course on twitter linkedin my email is Semin well taught ransom cats currency dot-com happy to answer any questions awesome thank you so much man well I

14:44appreciate it all the best Vista currency and let's follow up in the near future thanks all Dustin take care you