24 MONDAY 18 JUNE 2018FEATURE CITYAM.COM 25MONDAY 18 JUNE 2018 FEATURECITYAM.COM

A new series on AI, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency and Tokenisation

need to know about, just like ecom-merce and Dotcom in 1998. A dollarinvested in Amazon in 1997 during"the doubter years" is worth $1,500now. Did you invest? Were you per-suaded by the doubters? Have youbought a Bitcoin? It's all part of ourcollective learning. You have to bebrave to change and evolve, and yes -it's hard. I find it hard myself.

Being an historian (thank you Mrs

Like most people who came late to theworld of crypto, tokens and Blockchain, itwas hearing about some ‘dodgy,

underworld, cryptocurrency’ with nounderpin called Bitcoin that first made meaware.

With a background in authentication andverification of documentation, consumer goodsand the like, I was approached casually around about the sametime about something called Blockchain and distributed ledgertechnology (‘DLT’) to see if there was a fit with my business.Stupidly, I passed the inquiry over to a now redundant teammember who, as usual, missed the point and failed to reportany useful findings - worse still, I didn’t follow up!

I didn’t realise then that Bitcoin and Blockchain were bornfrom the same source: Satoshi Nakatomo. To quote CharlesHoskinson, of Cardano fame, Satoshi’s the guy who made theultimate mic-drop by disappearing almost as quickly ashe/she/them appeared! To this day no one knows who Satoshireally is but it is essential for anyone who is curious to read theoriginal white paper published on 31st October 2008.

I started my journey of learning in the early part of 2017 butonly really started engaging in September. The first thing tonote is that there are very few experts in this field and it’s amuch-bandied term. Let me be clear - I am no expert. However,meeting with City A.M. I discussed the idea that as I learn,perhaps I could share my new knowledge with the readers.

My personal feeling is that Blockchain, cryptocurrencies,decentralised ledger technology and tokenisation are togetherfast becoming the biggest cross industry disruption since theWorld Wide Web went live on 6th August 1991.

I have been very fortunate indeed to meet, in a relatively shortspace of time, a passionate and knowledgeable bunch ofcrypto-insiders who will be regular contributors to this page,and I would like to introduce them today: Thomas Power, RickO’Neill, Jonny Fry, Mark Kirby and Barry E James. Of coursethere will be many new faces that make an appearance everyMonday - all of whom share the same aim, which it to keep youthe reader informed, and to bridge knowledge gaps whereverpossible.

To that end my email address is CryptoInsider@cityam.comfor you to send your feedback, questions and suggestions,which we will endeavour to answer directly and incorporatewhere possible into this weekly feature.

Tomorrow, together with other Crypto Insiders, I will beattending Team Blockchain's ICO Meetup London being held atCMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang LLP, 78 CannonStreet. If you would like to attend please emailjonny.fry@teamblockchain.net

Gaskell, St Andrews Leatherhead1976-1982) history matters to me, so Ilike to keep notes and record eventsso that in the future (when I am inmy final trimester (2024-2054) aged60 to 90) I can teach Internet (Digital)History to students.

With this in mind, I encourage youas readers of City A.M. (one of mydaily faves) to read, research, absorb,ponder and build your Blockchain

(token) strategy for the 2020s. Andyour learning journey begins withbuying some cryptocurrency, be itone Bitcoin $BTC, one Ethereum$ETH, one Ripple $XRP, one Litecoin$LTC, or (as my son and I have done)buy a dozen different tokens.

The buying of cryptocurrencyteaches you how much you have tolearn before you can even considerhaving a strategy or preparing your or-ganisation to learn what a Blockchainstrategy is or would look like. Andthere are hundreds of crypto tokens tochoose from: see www.coincodex.comfor an exhaustive list.

Your (branded) tokens are a long way

out, and yes you are going to have todo this. Just as you may have resistedecommerce twenty years ago and al-lowed Amazon to take it all (or at leastmost of it) you can resist Blockchain allyou like: but it's coming anyway, so it’sbetter to be prepared.

If you have questions, message me onyour preferred platform below.

Thomas Power is a Board Member with9Spokes PLC in New Zealand You can findThomas on twitter @ThomasPower Youcan write to Thomas on emailthomas.power@9Spokes.comThomas also welcomes questions atWhatsApp and answers thousands eachweek +447875695012

If you’re trying to wrap your headaround Blockchain, think aboutthe birth of ecommerce (i.e. buy-ing stuff online). Compuserveopened the first ecommerce store

in 1984, fifteen years before the ideaof making purchases online becamemainstream.

Amazon.com was listed in May1997, and 21 years later it utterlydominates the ecommerce space:even eBay looks a poor and shabbyrelative by comparison. Ecommercewas a winner takes (almost) all mar-ket play, and Jeff Bezos (founder &CEO of Amazon) deserves some seri-ous respect for his ownership of theecommerce monopoly.

Roll forward to 2008 (in the middleof the Global Financial Crisis) and theBitcoin Blockchain was conceived bya mysterious person (rumoured to be

Hal Finney, Nick Szabo or StuartHaber, now Chief Scientist at Auditchain and referenced 3 times inthe Bitcoin Whitepaper) under thealias Satoshi Nakamoto.

Now, almost ten years on, Bitcoin istrying very hard to progress from anunorthodox and little understoodcurrency to the mainstream andwidespread usage. Perhaps we needto be more patient with this “new”venture, this so-called store of value(SOV) or perhaps digital gold, than wewere with the growth of ecommerce.

It takes 15 to 18 years for a piece oftechnology to be launched, doubted,challenged, accepted and adopted:thus the Bitcoin Blockchain is fore-

cast to become mainstream between2023-2026 ...if it makes it that far.What it will be used for then, none ofus know. By definition, we cannot beexperts in new and unknown markets.Do you know any wealthy futurists?

Since 1980 (aged 16) I've worked inand around technology and its mar-keting for hardware, software, ecom-merce, internet auctions, communitybuilding, social media & networking,

SaaS, Blockchain, and Blockchain'sdesire (to quote Anthony Pompliano)to "Tokenize The World".

I study hard, research endlessly, goto an event every week, and I meetthousands of people around theglobe. I seek out the patterns, shapes,trends and memes - and Blockchain isjust that: a meme, in the originalsense of the word.

Consider Blockchain something you

Thomas Poweris one of the world’sleading influencersand speakers in therealms of AI (artificialintelligence),Blockchain,Cryptocurrencies and Tokenomics

ConsiderBlockchainsomethingyou need toknow about.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION:THE VIEWS ANDOPINIONS PROVIDED BY CITY A.M.'S CRYPTO INSIDERARE OF THOSE NAMED IN THE ARTICLE AND SHOULDNOT BE TAKEN AS INVESTMENT ADVICE. THISCOMMUNICATION IS MARKETING MATERIAL.

It takes 15 to 18years for a piece of technology to be launched,doubted, challenged, accepted andadopted

In association with

Richard is engaging andpassionate about the medicalaesthetic sector and cosmeticsurgery, having been involvedsince 2004. Starting from a

business development perspective, it isclear that Richard’s focus quicklybecame the improvement of thecustomer/patient journey, which led tohim creating the first interactive patientmanagement system called iConsult,which was made possible with theadvent of the iPad, in effect replacingpaperwork. By using the embeddedcamera to take photographs and havingthe ability to mark up the images it waspossible to create an engaging andpersonal consultation method, whichhas the effect of replacing paperwork.Being digitally recorded meant thatvaluable patient data is created thatclearly needs to be secured.Statistically speaking, nearly fifty

percent of patients considering acosmetic procedure don’t go throughwith it, citing trust and cost as beingcentral to the decision, but equally fearof negative outcome – with search

engine results more focused on thehorror stories than the positive ones.With transparency of data andaccountability and the realisation thatthe patients can have ownership of therecords, Richard set out to address thiswith iConsult - enabling patients toaccess their records and share themseamlessly with different practitioners.Richard first became aware of

Blockchain in April 2017 and quicklyrecognised that it potentially providedthe solution to secure the data andprovide permissioned access to it, and

and partners across the board, fromexperienced bankers and businesspeople like Julian Macedo and RobWestmacott, to marketing experts likeRick O’Neill - not just techies. From alegal perspective Allen & Overy havebeen invaluable in their attention todetail, guiding us through the newlycharted waters of an Initial Coin Offeringand from our own industry Dr Ravi Jainand aesthetic nurse Nikki Zanna haveprovided their expertise and in depthknowledge. The crypto sector is nascentand I love being at the cutting edge.“Cosmecoin will enable the safe

introduction of patients to trustedpractitioners in a safely encrypted andtrackable manner using the iConsultsoftware. Patient consultations andmedical records including medical orsometimes very personal images arethen stored securely on the platform’sEthereum Blockchain. Their Cosmecoinapp will connect consumers with trustedpartners while recording the process,protecting all parties and rewarding bestpractice. Connect – Record – Protect –Reward is the Cosmecoin Mission.“Our goal has always been to help the

good guys get found and the bad guysget found out, and blockchain andtokenisation helps us to achieve that”.Richard is clear in his vision for the

future – to take Cosmecoin to a globalfooting without compromising thefounding principles of iConsult.

will be the first to develop a Blockchain-based solution for the Cosmetic Surgeryand Medical Aesthetics industriesglobally. This platform has the potentialto be the market leader in this industryand change the way the consumer,clinics, suppliers and manufacturersconnect in the industry forever.Richard told me “it was clear to us early

on that to successfully create theplatform, and navigate the crypto world,we needed the best possible advisors

enable the creation of a tokenisedplatform that rewards best practice.Richard explained that his mantraacronym for the business is STACIE –Safety, Transparency, Accountability,Compliance, Integrity and Engagement. Cosmecoin is shaking up both the

medical aesthetic and cryptocurrencysectors with the launch of a first-of-its-kind ICO that could be the catalyst thatrestores trust between patients andcosmetic surgery practitioners. iConsult

Rick O’Neill,Founder of Look, Touch & Feel - a Specialist DigitalMarketing Agency pulls back the curtains on ICOs, and their Marketingcampaigns, to reveal the real indicators of potential success and failure.

Marketing & Community has proven toplay a pivotal role in the success ofICOs over the past 2 years or so.

However, there is an important distinctionto be identified between a big impact mar-keting campaign and a genuine projectwith a good chance of sustained success.Through this series of 12 short guides, I aimto use my experience in advising ICOs anddelivering marketing and communitystrategies for them, to give you some of themost important identifiers of an ICO in re-lation to its chance of success, and how toanalyse them.

This week I want you to consider “TheTeam”, and in particular the Founder andtheir closest 2 to 3 colleagues. What expe-

rience does the Founder have in business?Have they successfully built and sold abusiness before? Does their CV indicatecommercial acumen? Look closely at theonline presence of the Founder and theirclosest colleagues too. What confidence doyou glean, from the content and commen-tary they share, that they have what it takesto launch a successful business in such acompetitive landscape?

Of course, in a tech-heavy startup (whichall ICOs are), the CTO is also absolutely crit-ical. Firstly (sounds obvious, but…) is theCTO fully invested? Are they full-time onthis project? What does their experiencelook like? I’ve seen ICOs where the CTO wasa freelancer - which represents a huge risk

as they carry with them vast amounts ofthe intellectual property and real substanceof the project if they disappear (and theyhave been known to).

Study the Legal Counsel and CommercialFounders too (and I hope there are some!),and again - research their experience upuntil now, and their commitment to thisICO project. ICOs that go on to succeed anddeliver a return for investors tend to haveentrepreneurial and commercially savvyFounders, fully-invested CTOs and Core Di-rectors, credible and reassuring onlinepresence, and clear and coherent visionsfor the future of the project.

Next Week we will look at how to evaluate“The Concept” for an ICO Project…

CITY A.M.’SCRYPTO INSIDER

City A.M.’s Crytpo Insider interviewed the Founder & CEO of iConsult SoftwareLimited, Richard Crawford-Small

Initial Coin Offerings are a form ofcrowdfunding, on steroids. They arethe fiery furnace in which new digitalcoins and tokens are formed underthe immense pressure and white heatof innovation.

Week by week we will be trackingsome of the latest innovations andtrends, as they happen, and com-menting on the latest innovations inlaw and regulation.

ICOs are a global phenomenon.Born global, global in nature andthey defy categorisation. Born,mostly, as startups but movingaround the globe choosing domicilesand tax zones like multinational cor-porations do. VC funded but withoutVCs calling the shots. Regulators, gov-ernments and tax authorities strug-gling to catch up, or even to agreehow to categorise these 21st century,highly mobile, digital assets. Or arethey currencies? Or securities? The ar-guments rage - and will continue torage for some time to come.

We'll bring new insights from the lat-est data on the around fifty new ICOswe collect each week, adding to wellover 2,000 we've already profiled in theToken Intelligence platform - whichalso signals the level of transparencyachieved by each and red flags, wherenecessary, those failing to provide it

The data tells us that where crowd-funds raise, on average, from tens to a

few hundred thousand, ICOs raise onaverage more than ten million andwe'll be using these data to surface thelatest trends and innovations. Newuses of the blockchain technology thatgave birth to Bitcoin, the first onlinecurrency, in not just funding, pay-ments and finance but medtech, logis-tics, gaming and beyond.

Decentralisation is the unifying, orshould that be dis-unifying or disrup-tive, theme of all this. Blockchaintechnology applied to remove theneed for a central authority, or evencentral database, exploring newareas. 'Napsterising' new ecosystemsone after another, removing frictionand making them flow more freely,and democratically.

But there's more than one kind ofBlockchain. A still startling innovationwhich has changed the scope and artof what's possible, but is no panacea.Inevitably there are those who see allthis self-funded innovation as a band-wagon and want-in regardless. Othersare prepared to false-flag their sharesas another kind of token or coin, or sellhot air or just a dream. We'll be flag-ging some of those up, too.

So paradoxically in this new world ofdigital money it is not cash that is kingbut a free flow of information. In that,transparency is key.

Read more at CityAM.com/crypto or ICO-rad.io

ICO NEWS

@CityAm_CryptoE:CryptoInsider@cityam.com

Staring Into The Furnace of Innovation

BLOCKCHAIN ISHERE TO STAY - AND IT’S TIME TOPAY ATTENTION

Cosmecoin isshaking up boththe medicalaesthetic andcryptocurrencysectors

BEYOND THE HYPE

JAMES BOWATER

PARTNER CONTENT

CRYPTO