‘Blockchain technology has the potential to have a greater impact on our lives than the internet’ – ArabianBusiness

What are some common misconceptions you see around the blockchain?

One of the biggest problems that I see currently is that everybodys focused on cryptocurrencies rather than the blockchain itself. They also tend to look at it from a more speculative angle to get fast gains. There are a lot of good projects and a lot of good cryptocurrencies, but there are a lot of bad ones and a lot that its not advisable for people to invest in long term.

That said, I do think that blockchain technology has the potential to have a greater impact on our lives than the internet has.

What is Velas doing in this area?

We have our own proprietary blockchain, which is code based off Solana. We have the fastest blockchain in the world because we offload most of the capacity on to the hardware itself, so were able to reach unprecedented speeds in the blockchain of up to 70,000 transactions per second when Ethereum only does 40,000 and Bitcoin only does 4,000.

On top of that, weve built Ethereum virtual machine compatibility into the Velas blockchain, which means all the applications that were built on Ethereum can now migrate seamlessly on to Velas, and can benefit from our very fast speeds and very cheap transaction fees.

Were essentially building a whole ecosystem. We provide a big platform for a number of decentralised applications (DAPS) to be built on top of us.

What industries do you feel are ripe for blockchain disruption?

As I said, the blockchain sector will disrupt a whole lot of industries, especially telecommunications, energy transfusion, transportation, logistics and government services. What the blockchain is meant to do is eliminate the middle man, and facilitate end point to end point transactions or data communication. In all these sectors, I think the blockchain will be very relevant and will increase efficiency.

What are you doing with NFTs?

We have NFT platforms from the region and from outside that are starting to build on top of us. Were giving them full support on the integration, sharing our community, our knowledge and our developers experience. Here in the region, my partner did an event, painting his car at the Dubai

Opera with a famous Saudi artist. Hes going to do a NFT through a local auction house, with half of the proceeds going to charities around the world, specifically Amazonian indigenous communities.

What are your thoughts on Bitcoin as an asset?

For me, Bitcoin is the equivalent of digital gold. Its a transfer of value, not so much a payment system. Because of its architecture, the Bitcoin blockchain is heavy and slow but it is a very good store of value because there is only a finite amount of Bitcoin that can ever be produced.

The cryptocurrency market has always been volatile. However, as its getting more adoption, going more mainstream with bigger financial institutions coming on board, there will be less and less fluctuation. Right now, there is still a lot to do with regulation. Also, we had the infamous Elon Musk tweets that had some impact on the market. That said, the big crypto whales have accumulated more than $5.5 billion worth when the price dipped, so that should tell you a little bit about where the market should be going next.

When did you first get involved with the blockchain?

I was first introduced to the space in 2016. Once you understand what blockchain and cryptocurrency are, its hard to stop digging and looking more and more into it. My first professional experience would be that we created in 2017 with our wealth management company the first crypto international security identification number (ISIN) one of the first Bitcoin products that could be bought by institutions, because thats where I thought that was going.

But 2017 was the year of initial coin offerings (ICOs) and then in 2018 we entered a bear market. Right now youre seeing more and more of these types of products coming out. The market has only just matured for financial instruments with cryptocurrencies.

Weve done a bunch of other things in the space partnered with numerous companies, ran very large events during the World Economic Forum in Davos, and have ended up being the co-founder of what is now a fourth-generation blockchain company.

What is the importance of scalability in the blockchain space?

This is really important in the space, because as second-generation blockchain, Ethereum has shown us that smart contracts and giving a platform and toolset where communities can build applications is great and fundamentally important. But Ethereum cannot scale to the point of having billions of users the cost of transactions is too high and its just not scalable to that point.

For us, scalability is very important in order to have real-life real cases of using the blockchain in the real world. I think scalability in Velas really can provide that to big industries and all types of different segments of the economy, because transactions have to be cheap and they have to be fast.

Whats your advice to people who missed the first Bitcoin train but want to board the next one?

Always do your own research. Dont be afraid to do the research the informations out there on social media and YouTube. Theres a lot you can learn, and most people in this industry are self-taught.

Dont look at the noise and hype. How we look at projects is by looking at their team, their vision and their core competencies. Thats how we invest in or try to partner with projects that are looking long term and solving some concrete issues.

Just be careful out there and dont invest what you arent afraid of losing.

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