In this episode we have special guest Joe Lallouz, CEO and Co-founder of Bison Trails. In this talk, we deep dive into what running a remote company is like, the transition from physical to remote, how to maintain strong leadership virtually, and more importantly how to retain talent (and how to peacefully allow your good ones to leave if they have an entrepreneurial bug!) There were so many awesome nuggets shared by Joe in this episode even way before we talked about crypto! On the...

Todays episode is a great mix of enterprise scaling of tokenised securities and the blending with DeFi. We have the co-founders from Securrency, a leading blockchain and crypto technology platform helping transform the digital securities industry. Having started this journey long before ICOs/IEOs and many of form of security or utilities tokens starting gaining steam, John Hensel and Dan Doney began their journey to build their interoperable and very versatile financial supply chain...

We're super excited to have Danny Oyekan on this episode today. He has been slowly and quietly building his own blockchain empire and ecosystem through a variety of ventures he is spearheading, one of which is CoinsApp, which is one of the sponsors of this show! In this episode, we hear more about CoinsApp and the incredible traction it recieved post launch, how they're disrupting the remittance industry and hearing the low down about blockchain and crypto in Africa. We also discuss the...

In this episode, we uncover the story of how Barbados set its sights on creating a digital dollar and how this set the course for a legal central bank digital currency across the Caribbean. We speak to 3 amazing guests, Dr. Delisle Worrell (the Former Governor of the Barbados Central Bank), Gabriel Abed (Founder of Bitt.com) and Simon Chantry (CBDO at Bitt.com). The three share with us stories from the past of how Bitt.com came about, how the idea of a Central Bank Digital Currency came...

We speak to Arif Khan, CEO and Founder of Alethea.AI, which is a blockchain marketplace for synthetic media. We discuss all things under the sun related to synthetic media, specifically AI generated content. With the drop in costs of computing power, according to Moore's Law, this allows people to experiment with new technology and in this context AI generated content. This is where you have fully AI generated audio, videos and imagery leading people to experiment to create content...

In this episode we have special guests Maja Vujinovic, Ex CIO of Emerging tech globally for GE Digital and Vinny Lingham, Founder and CEO of Civic. With the world living through a pandemic, economic uncertainty and political upheaval through the Black Lives Matter movement in the U.S., we discuss how the world is becoming divided and old traditions being highly questioned. We first talk about vaccinication where Vinny walks us through how vaccination will become an underpinning factor...

Encrypted is excited to partner up with the Future Blockchain Summit who have recently held their first ever Digital Keynote! Digital Keynote, a live webinar series dedicated to tackling and exploring the world of Blockchain. Join us as we discuss with foremost experts from around the globe and break down topics such as Blockchain Development, Use cases, Tokenization , Sustainability, Business Networks and more. In this episode of Encrypted, we are sharing the Digital Keynote as a podcast...

Ahmed sits down with Mohamed Abdou, the founder and CEO of Pravica where they discuss a wide range of topics ranging from privacy centric apps being accessible to millions, the opportunities blockchain represents, how it is perceived in emerging countries like Egypt, where do we expect to see adoption coming from and all the learnings Mohamed has had building a Web 3 start up in MENA. All this and more on this episode of Encrypted! If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review...

Mike Dudas is the founder and CEO of The Block, the leading research, media & information brand in the digital asset marketplace. In this episode, Ahmed and Mike discuss the global impacts Covid19 is currently having on the tech industry and the chain of events that is happening in Silicon Valley tech companies so far. They also discuss impacts on crypto, and impacts on both their underlying businesses as Mike shares The Block had its record break revenue generating month in March...

In this Covid19 special, we have an interesting discussion on how this pandemic became widespread with the advent of lies and fake news. Our special guest, Arwen Smit, walks us through a few eye opening topics in times like this: Three questions regarding lies: How strong is a lie? Who can the lie reach? How to sever the link between the two Taxonomy of “fake news”: Mis-information, Mal-information, Dis-information What type of fake news was spread during the outbreak and where does...

Ahmed was in Denver, Colorado speaking with Dr. Steven Waterhouse from Orchid Protocol. Dr. Steven (or as he’d like to be called Seven), is quite an experienced individual who can do loads of English accents as well as researching and implementing AI before the dotcom boom, built companies and sold them, and was also a VC investing in a variety of tech companies. He is now decentralizing VPN - Woah hold up, what does that even mean? In this really interesting discussion, Ahmed and Seven...

Nic had the opportunity to speak with Hussein Khanji, partner at Hoxton Ventures during ArabNet Riyadh in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Hussein walks us through his theory on venture capital, searching for unicorns and avoiding copycats. Plus he discusses why business models should be able to transcend borders and why it plays to their investment strategy. Special Guest: Hussein Kanji.

We welcome Mariam AlMuhairi live from Davos at the World Economic Forum to discuss with us today the newly published whitepaper from the WEF and Dubai Future Foundation: Inclusive Deployment of Blockchain - Case Studies and Learnings from the United Arab Emirates. Mariam who is the Head of the Center for the 4th Industrial Revolution led the report's formation, paritcularly from a policy standpoint. In this episode, we discuss: Mariam's insights from Davos Key takeaways from the...

This is part 1 of a series of podcasts recorded during Arabnet Riyadh 2019. We had the pleasure of speaking with Ali Al Omran, Chief Information Officer for Arab Bank. We go in to details on how banks in the region are diversifying their interests, creating collaborative environments for startups to work with banks and where the future of fintech is heading as Saudi Arabia moves quickly to disrupt and create growth in its economy. Special Guest: Ali AlOmran.

In episode 60 (woot woot, 60 episodes and counting), Ahmed and Nic speak to Anthony Gilman, Founder and CEO of Aqua. We dive into some company drama that unfolded during Aqua's fundraise, especially as they opted to do an inital coin offering (ICO). In this episode Anthony's shares: How not to do an ICO How he fired his CTO How he made a good situation out of a bad one The hotel and hospitality inudstry's current problems How Aqua is out to solve them We loved this story Anthony...

In this episode, we sit down with lawyers to pick their brains and know how about regulation surrounding blockchain and crypto in the region. Karm Legal is a home grown legal practice based out of the UAE focusing on Fintech and blockchain. On the show we have Kokila Alagh, Founder of Karm Legal and Akshata Namjoshi, Senior Associate at Karm Legal speaking to us. We discuss: How progressive the implementation of regulation has been Comparing regulations/initiatives around ADGM, DIFC,...

After several requests by regular listeners, we get back to summarising interesting news that has happened in the last 7 days. With Matt Hamilton and Gary Sheynkman as our guest news commentators. We discuss some unlikely stories, including you’re not a banana if you say you’re a banana and how this ties into stable coins and FinCEN, how China appears to be 'protecting' (cough cracking down cough) its crypto businesses and a quick catchup on where Telegram Open Network is heading with...

Ahmed is in San Francisco for his first ever visit! As well as attending the San Francisco Blockchain Week, Ahmed set some time to explore a bit of SF and also spent time interviewing one of the pioneers of blockchain technology in SF; Matthew Liu from Origin Protocol. In this episode, the pair discuss: Matt’s experience and key lessons as a product manager at Youtube in its early days Matt’s ups and downs in entrepreneurship What it takes to be a real entrepreneur Why Origin is...

Nic Watson and Ahmed Al Balaghi co-host todays episode with a Millennial angle, with guest star Erik Mendelson, a music executive with Grammy Award Winning artists under his belt. We discuss how the record industry is not paying it forwards to the artists and creative teams involved in music production and how blockchain through Tune Token and Cre8tor app will enable a fair share of earnings. Learn about: Their journey to securing recognition in technology Gaining momentum with music...

Nic Watson and Ahmed Al Balaghi co-host todays episode, with guest Damu Winston, author of “I Don't Trust You, But Blockchain Will Help” Today we focus on distrust and what it means to live in a world of genuine, fake and fraudulent trust. In a world where every day you are surrounded by information that directs your decision making and purchasing habits, how can you be sure what you are basing your decisions on are real. There are so many factors that impact trust and how organisations,...

We are live! We held a live podcast at Gitex and discussed an awesome topic ‘The future of programmable money’! We had two great guests on the show: Gabriel Abed from Bitt.com and Aruba Khalid from the Dubai Future Foundation. In this episode, we discussed: Why programmable money is important (04:17) What is programmable money (06:32) Money for the authorities: Is there an argument for separating political decisions from economic outcomes (09:47) How Bitt.com have helped central banks...

Interested in hearing about how a young 27 year old is building a crypto empire? Ahmed is in one of his favourite places in the world, Shanghai, for the Shanghai Blockchain week. In this episode, he caught up with James Wo, CEO and Founder of Digital Finance Group. The two delve right in to talk about James’ incredible ventures as well as latest topics in the crypto world including: Digital Finance Group’s $80 million venture fund which was raised from traditional capital in Shanghai...

Ahmed jetted off to China for the Shanghai Blockchain Week and in this episode, he is joined by an old friend of his, David Johnston. David is literally an OG in this space getting involved as early as 2012 and has contributed in more ways than one since joining. He is currently the Chairman of Factom and the Managing Director of Yeomans Global Capital. Ahmed reminisces the first time he and David first met, remembering a quote he would never forget; ‘Everything that can be decentralized...

In this episode, Ahmed sits with Pranav Sharma, Founding Partner of Woodstock Fund. Woodstock Fund is a new and emerging crypto fund based out of India and Pranav delves into how their fund operates, in particular, their 3 core focuses, which include: Public decentralised ledger technology Decentralised finance Web 3.0 Pranav shares his experience of co-creating creative solutions in sales and distribution and how his learnings through creating this led him to create the fund he is...

It’s our 50th episode anniversary!!! In this episode, Nic and Ahmed are back to co-hosting together, and for this special milestone, we have a special topic in store. We are joined by Amin Elkholy, Siddiq Farid and Matt Hamilton to discuss all things economy, crypto, sound money, pending recessions, global reserve currency and much more! The first topic is all about crypto or fiat, examining traditional currencies and what sound money could look like in the future. Amin and Ahmed look...