 Good afternoon everybody. You're very welcome here today to a really fascinating topic. And I suppose you see it there, Ar amount becoming the world's first blockchain hub question mark, or indeed maybe a statement we'll see at the end. I think we all have heard about bloodchain but it's probably most associated with cryptocurrency. Ac mae'n gweithio y gallwch yn ymddangos, ymddangos, mae'n gweithio'r ysgol o'r profesor o'r ysgol, mae'n gweithio'r ysgol, mae'n gweithio'r ysgol a 9 o 10 o'r cyfnod o gyfnod cyfnod cyfnod. Ond yna, mae'n gweithio o'r blach oherwydd mae'n cyfnod cyfnod cyfnod oherwydd ymddangos. A yn ddweud, mae'n gweithio'r cyfnod cyfnod mae'n gweithio'r gweithio o'r model yma yn y brans ffarae o f więcej cael ei haes, ers arweithio'r gweithio, ysgol, ysgol, ymddangos yn ym thyf. Dyna dwi'n고fio'r gweithio. A mae'n gweithio'r gweithio. Dyna eich ffordd, dyna eich ysgol, ac mae'n ddweud ddarparu y cwrnod hynny er Whenever you are at the cool face, particularly looking at the application in terms of companies and startups and what is possible, can we do it? Can we have that critical mass? That is our own home, Ms Gerald from Enterprise Ireland and my, objetos Chathamry from the Department of Finance who is also looking at those issues, particularly at the policy area. Cyn gyda i'r rymdeg o'r cyfrannu o'r cyfrannu ar gyfer y newid? Byddwn ni'n bwysig o'r Llockchain Ireland a'r ymddangos, bod Ion i'r mya a'r rai ar y cyfrannu amweilio i'r mor gweithio yn y gyfrannu a'r cyfrannu sy'n byddwn ni'n cyfrannu o'r cyfrannu wath o'r cyfrannu yma, sydd eisiau werthynnwys, ymddir i'r bywg, ymddir o gyfnodd y byddai hwn yn ymddir. Yn unrhyw i gynnugiad ni'n ei wneud sut mae'r knight, mae'r plant yma yn eu cyflwyno'r proiectau ffiltiaeth, oedd y mae'n syniad o fwyfanaeth eich cyflwyno yn Ffintech ar Eurland, yma'n eu cyflwyno am Gwyrdd eich eirelin, eu gwneud y sagfynu eich bod y dyfodol, ydych yn ddweud bod y dyma eich cymun ar y cyllidgynith, yw'r cohoedd'r gweithio i'w hynny'n rhaid, rydych chi'n cael anghylchol. Mae aelod yn ei urch. Gweithio ar y ddigwydd, ond yn estyn nhw'n anghylch gyda'r eith ag amser ond y gweithio ar hynny'n cael ei ddweud, cwm ehon o'n dechrau hynny'n byw iddo yn yma. Fy oedd y cyflef yn cyfrifysg yna, wedi ar gystafell ar gyfer mae'r ddechrau yn rhai gwyb sy'n gweithio'n ddweud ar draws-rwm Fyny, Ar hyn yw Llywodraeth Cyn Madame llawer o'r ddechrau, i ddaeth gweithio y cwestiwn, yng Nghymru'r ysgolion ym Gweithreduol, wedi'i gwneud, dywedig i'r hyn o'r dweithio'r gweithredu. Dedy'n gofynu. Gweithio'r gweithredu o'r ddechrau sy'n gofynu hwnnw, ac mae'r hyn yn beithio. Mae'n gwneud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud i ddweud, I'm only a year and a half in Enterprise Ireland now so I actually don't know a huge amount about all the things we do because there's so many things. We're obviously a Government agency working with Irish companies to scale internationally. Over 5,000 businesses across many sectors. I think 70% of the companies we work with in our portfolio are technology driven and our focus is on innovation and innovative companies. We have 33 offices, we have about 600 people in the organisation, 33 offices internationally Ac rwy'n amlwg y clwnnwyr, mae'n cyfnod i Irish company fe gynnwys i'w wneud yn gynghwyl amgylcheddu ac rwy'n gweithio'n cymhwyl i'w gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio. Lai'r anhygoelau ar y gynhyrch y ffrindigol Cymru yn y bydd y cyfrannu 23b o cyfnod o'r ysbwrth, ac mae'r cyfrannu gweld â'r cyfrannu gweld. yn dderbyn â'r ysgolaeth sydd hyn yn ei bod yn credu pith yng Ngységwyd ei mewn hwn yn maen nhw'n newydd. Rwy'n meddwl mae'n ymwneud bod y nifer i fynd i fyfyddon ym mhwn hyn wedi'u fitn sydd peth yn diolch y sgol sydd yn ddiddordeb a y pethau'n ddigon i ymwyng ymddangos a hwn, oherwydd i'n cwestiyngau ar gyfer hwnnw mewn cyntraer. Yn nifer o ff yn dda, mae'n dweud ei bod yn diolch fawr ymwneud o fewn hynny i ein cyffredig, mae gennym rwy'n ganwyr, nid ymwneud llawer o'r 60% i'ch ein bodi eich llwyddon dechrau ac mae'r rhaid yn bwysig o'i ddod y ffond, felly mae'r bwysig o ffondid haf yw o arweithio ac mae'r bwysig o'r bwysig o'r yw bwysig o'r yw ffondid, at yw yw ei dda i'r wath o'r bwysig o'r oedd eich wpedwyd i'ch eich ei w Keyf yn bwysig o'r eich bwysig o'r company yw. ..y'n mynd i'r ufynu, ydych chi gennym ni am y bywm... ..y mai fe hynny, wedi'i fydd oír unrhyw ffranteid... ..yna rhoi gyda'r unrhyw sydd hynny. Felly, yr unrhyw ymydd ymlaen o 1100 miliwn... ..ym ni'n unrhyw ymlaen. 90 hebysu unrhyw, fe unrhyw am hynod dod yn ymdangos digb... ..y'r uwch yw gallu bod ymlaen ymlaen y maen nhw yma... ..y'r rhaid i'r 1 petir oes ym水 ni. Y ffemaen nifer sefydliadau yn y gweithio... diwg wedi bod y prosesol iawn i gweithio i gael ei genellwch ein bod y bwrdd i'r cyfnod penhyrch, nad ym arddangos hwnnw, dda'i hynny'n 50 cyfnod cyffredinol sy'n gyfnod cyffredinol i hynny, lle mae'r gŵr hefyd sicrhau i ddiweddio'r cyfeiriaeth agnod yn cael ingybwynd yn bod yn ym gyfrifydd am y cwmpl o gyrfaen syniadau a'r growl syniadau a'r cyffredinol neu fydd wychydig deis Like a It Start funds, but we are, I suppose, the number one provider of funding to startups in the country. Then our focus is on innovation, so we work with a number of different partners and, Laura, you probably know a little more about all of these things than I do but I'll read what's on my slide. We work with technology centres, we support companies... I work with a portfolio of large and small companies, there are different departments in the organisation But we work with providing research and development grants to food companies the likes and then innovation vouchers which allows Irish companies to match partners with항 universities and research centres to get smaller pieces of work done. It helps those companies where they might not be at a scale yet where they would have employee numbers to be able to dedicate to a specific project like that. a dyna i ganddo i'r gynllun i dda i amddangos. Felly mae'n gweithio bod rhywbeth a dwi'n gweithio'r cyffredinol. Mae'r ddweud yn ddewg yma, mae'n ddweud cyffredinol yng Nghymru a'r Ffintech Cymru'r year yn deunio. Yn y ddweud, mae'n eu gwneud yn y llyfr o'r 2014 ac yn ddweud y 2017. Nid ydy'r ddweud yn teimlo, mae'n bwysig o'r Ffintech Cymru, cael y tuadau sy'n ddweud i'r syniag Ymnydd Yn yw'r 500 start-ups they start-ups in terms of volume in the deals. You look at a list like this you see why Combinator is one of the most successful accelerator programmes in the world and they make investments all around the world in early stage start ups we invested last year in 23 Fintech companies which are Irish companies based here at Dublin. Small team focusing on that so we are punching well above our weight in the scheme of things both in a number of sectors but also in Fintech and specifically. That's the conendrop with our own piece out of the way anyway. Why Ireland for blockchain? I agreed to talk here because I'm heavily involved in blockchain. I look after most of Entrypris Ireland's blockchain engagement from whatever shape or form that takes. Some of it is their internal strategy, where we work with the IDA in terms of a joint ICT strategy. Others is our work with research centres or early stage work that's being done with clients or it's direct investments in clients. There's any number of ways the organisation works with a number of different areas. My team looks after then our involvement with the IFS 2025 strategy, things like that. So I was very keen to have the chance to stand up here and have the conversation. What was interesting was when it got announced on social media that I was doing it, someone contacted me on LinkedIn and said obviously Ireland is not the first blockchain. There's Switzerland and there's Malta and there's any number of other places. To me it's a different approach or how we see it is a different approach. Myself and I are involved in a number of different initiatives here. Ireland has a strong track record of building innovative companies or having multinational innovative companies built out of Ireland. That is the focus of when we talk about it as a blockchain hub or what we like to call it as a centre of excellence. It's about having companies build significant projects or significant companies out of Ireland. It's not just that we have an open registry environment that allows companies to be based there for particular reason. This is about getting jobs on the ground and building significant companies and projects out of Ireland. The value I suppose, I'm here in a bit in Antwerth's Ireland now. We've gone on a journey ourselves so I took on A-Tech as my client from when I joined the company. At the time they were looking at doing an investment, an early stage seed investment. I was conscious that I'd done work in my previous role in Deutsche Bank with blockchain and others. I was fairly up to speed in things. I'm not hugely technical but I understood the application of it. There was a journey that the organisation needed to go on because typically everyone associated blockchain was cryptocurrency. For us to be able to do any sort of investment or any sort of significant involvement in that, it involved educating our own internal people and we've used, in that situation, we use expertise from the likes of Deloitte to come in and talk to our senior management to explain why blockchain is not Bitcoin and that typically was the main question, is it not Bitcoin? It was actually a year ago now almost to the week at the Blockchain for Finance conference last year that there were two companies there which had I suppose guided that they were being supported by Antwerth's Ireland that were involved in cryptocurrency at the time and that made noise because that wasn't technically the truth. Both companies had engaged with Antwerth's Ireland but not in the way they've been portrayed so we asked that to be corrected and then subsequently the newspaper articles that came out on the back of it whereby we were not supporting these types of companies which wasn't accurate and ironically this we got a phone call from the Irish Embassy in Thailand to say oh why are we supporting companies doing cryptocurrency because you know it's banned over in Thailand. So we've gone on a journey in the last 12 months which ultimately led to two big announcements that we made there in June of this year which was our investment in Atec. So Atec was Antwerth's Ireland's first investment in blockchain firm but it's also one of the first companies in the world that has two government investments so we co-led that investment with the Singapore government or the Singapore equivalent of Antwerth's Ireland SG Innovate. You know we both recognised the quality of the team and the opportunity there and were very supportive of Niall and Joseph and the team but it was I suppose it was the kind of tipping point of our journey as an organisation whereby we got you know we can see the value of it we're able to clearly say well this is not bitcoin obviously people now know that in Antwerth's Ireland which is a good thing but also all of the wider it allowed us as an organisation then to have the conversation around well you know we like we love blockchain as a technology and as a potential technology of the future for a lot of our companies and the application of that but it also meant that we had to have asked ourselves serious questions around things like ICOs and cryptocurrency do we work with a company that makes bitcoin ATMs I spoke to a company like that recently I did four million turnover these sort of questions that hadn't come up before we don't have policies in place around them and it was it meant that the organisation had to go through a large learning curve I presented to one of our committees on blockchain and cryptocurrencies and ICOs during that committee while I was presenting with two people on the committee who I could see out of the corner of my eye ask each other what is ICO and one of them is googling it while I'm explaining it so it's been a long journey over the last year but so I mentioned our competitive start funds we launched one there in June at MoneyConf but this was a specific typically we do a fintech fund of about half a million a year we made the conscious decision this year to increase the amount to be invested to open it up to a wider range of companies but specifically to move out of fintech and into what we've classed as deep tech but specifically around blockchain to try and get some of those blockchain ideas off the ground I mean I think I think maybe 12% or up to nearly 20% of the applications that came in were blockchain focus which was great and I mean is that like the organisation is in a position now when we're keen to so we've supported four investments in blockchain companies since we did our first one in June so we're making significant progress in that and also then our wider support and the wider initiatives we're involved in coming back to the why Ireland piece like I said it's not a how you know we're behind the likes of Switzerland or Malta are these places it's it's not a apples and apples sort of thing to me Ireland is strong because it has you know it's ranked number one for SMEs and innovation and we have all of the large financial services companies here and the born and the internet companies here and that's not just because of the tax rate that's because of the talent it's because of what they potentially can build here and it's access to the European market that's why companies come here or build companies out of here and that is what we want to focus on you know in terms of becoming a blockchain centre of excellence and similarly from financial services point of view you know where the fourth largest is exported in the EU of financial services all valuable things that point towards why Ireland is a very good place to build your company out of or to you know be a really good place to locate your head office for or your international head office for multinational those things are still the reason why Ireland why I believe Ireland has an opportunity here in the next couple of years to be a hope for blockchain we want Irish companies the likes of aitech to be building their international business out of Ireland but we want the large multinational cities and visors and all these that are doing research innovation here we want them to focus their blockchain work out of Ireland and that's some of the initiatives that we're working on and it all ultimately from an Irish point of view when we're talking to people in the market at all is around collaboration that's the announcement around blockchain Ireland of which there's a number of key people involved in blockchain women Ireland there's a number of initiatives where people are actively working together to say well how can we get make Ireland the centre of excellence in the space but fundamentally it's one of the key value propositions for us when we're talking to international guests around Ireland because in very few other countries in the world can you get senior executives from Facebook or Google or these in in the room with our Irish clients you know that happens we facilitate that regularly the idea facilitate it regularly and you don't get that level of exposure I suppose to key decision makers at an international level in many other countries and that's kind of where we see one of the unique value propositions about Ireland in terms of both blockchain and all other kind of technologies this is I mean it's probably changed since I put this together and I've added some to it it's it's somewhat reflective of the ecosystem and I suppose the reason I'm using the slide is because it shows the range of companies so I look at blockchain and I look at the range of companies in it for its Ireland support and international companies that are based here and the kind of breadth of sectors that are involved in and that's where the value is in this technology and that's applicable across multiple sectors and also it has a very key use case in some of the sectors where we are very strong like food you know agriculture construction all of these things you know we're some really interesting companies both early stage and large there I'm probably leaving out half a dozen and I may have some wrong I'm not sure but there's a lot of activity going on there's more coming there's more to talk about multinationals coming here and exchanges being built here and a lot so I mean in six months time this will probably have twice as many companies hopefully and twice as many Irish companies and that's just a slide I suppose on all the different non-financial technology based blockchain use cases which like I said I feel is a natural follow-on from the previous one to show that it's the range of opportunities that blockchain can be applicable to and then when you take into account all of the sectors that are here and all of the areas that Ireland is strong as a country I think Ireland has a very strong opportunity to be a center of excellence here for blockchain it requires a lot of work and there is an opportunity that will I believe be missed if stuff is not done on it in the next couple of years I believe and I think my echo it that there's a lot of work going on together of what I hope is the right people to try to drive that forward and does every week there seems to be positive news coming out in the blockchain space directed towards Ireland so we hope to continue on that and I think I'll leave it there actually that's it and we'll take questions after Maia's on her piece. That's great thanks very much. Thanks for showing how very clear this is a dynamic area of the range of opportunity so it's constantly changing and at the heart of this as own has alluded to as Maia's Santa Maria who's head of the financial advisory team within the shareholding and financial advisory division of in the division department of finance and own if you think enterprise Ireland is maybe a little bit conservative I think the image of the department of finance would be somewhat similar if not but they've got the right person here in Maia because she's involved in a lot of collaborative things like blockchain Ireland which really is bringing people together working with own the idea and lots of other bodies and I'm delighted that Laura Clifford and myself are involved with Maia on blockchain women Ireland as well so Maia it's over to you. I'm in good company there I have to say thanks that was a great presentation I think it's going to be very tough to follow up with the boring piece I say of the next 10 minutes. I'd like to maybe to start my like five minutes chat to you I didn't prepare any slides because I think the topic is a heavy note as it is. I just wanted to quote really quote effectively I was lucky enough to attend Mark Carney's Whitaker conference last last Friday and I was taken aback by his choice of quote from Tika Whitaker himself where he actually mentioned how important he was to the work that he was doing as governor Tika Whitaker's words around adaptability how being adaptable was effectively a scenic one on for economic growth and there was me thinking here our words altered or written and published like back over there 50 years ago and how important it is that we remained exactly that adaptable and what does it mean that we come and we begin where we are adaptable and he was able to use that in the in the context of being ready for the fourth industrial revolution so effectively how do we remain adaptable well how do we actually adapt ourselves to remain able to to really face up and work with technological advances and it's particularly really really important in in the space clearly of public administration of public services and in the case of department of finance so how can the department of finance help economic growth and certainly at least not be an obstacle unless it understands a new technology like blockchain and this is what the the working group is trying to do. I was very lucky to be here think was March feels like a long time ago at this stage and at that point in time we had just got signed off with the working group to to kick off and I just wanted to use these five minutes to let you know what we've been working with not just attending conferences but hopefully doing some work as well the the working group on virtual currencies and blockchain technology two very different things was approved by the minister back in in early March and we set ourselves to at least deliver some quick wins not because they were quick but they were wins but certainly things that we definitely needed that we definitely thought that they were that we needed to actually have them and secured them straight away and they were particularly around providing clarity to consumers to investors and businesses there were a few things that we felt there was we could do something about quickly and these were things like creating a landing page within the department of finance so you go into the department of finance you put in virtual currencies blockchain there's a there's a page there with links to all those things at a minimum that from a regularly perspective are important to the Irish blockchain ecosystem both important for investors but also sorry for consumers I'd say but also for investors yeah particularly maybe clearly looking at fdi some of the links there and I don't want to you know to to um to spoil it but you having the pleasure to go and check our website and these are linking it so for example the central bank um warnings that were issued in December and January in relation to investing in cryptocurrencies um the ccpc did a really very interesting piece as well about investing cryptocurrencies um there was some um worked on sorry there's uh at um European level in relation to vat applicable to a um bitcoin sales actually Liam's nodding there he knows that well so it was something simple it wasn't a token gesture but we kind of feel comfortable there's now way it plays you can direct to people to say listen that's definitely there um other things that we wanted to to do um straight away a kick off isn't the first and the first 90 days of the working group um was effectively also increasing um provide the grounding work the grounding work to a clearer landscape for the blockchain ecosystem in Ireland um so what does it mean um what does it look like are we talking about two companies are we talking about half a million people are we what are we talking about it's always been hard to actually put a put our heads and hands around it okay because it's new it's not really a sector so how do we get involved with plugging in and getting um the ecosystem together because without knowing what people are talking about or they're worried about we can't as policy makers get a feel forward we need to look at so the first initiative on that was to be able to to work with the likes of the idea and enterprise Ireland as part of the um back then it was called the Irish blockchain experts group now it's called blockchain Ireland and uh being able part of the um strategic group in delivering the uh the blockchain Ireland website um was you know was was high in the genders all for us why is that important because when you look on ecosystem you need to be aware of all the different parts so only sitting down looking at it is just not about um what companies are working this space but looking at the gaps that there might be in the ecosystem so what do we have in terms of research um what do we have in terms of education do we have enough um post grants um coming in with a lot of level of education do we have the the right information data points um do we have the right support in terms of them um supporting um startups financial interest in around ICOs what about what are legal firms doing about about about this technology and that was um that was the certainly our intention behind supporting the uh the blockchain Ireland initiative and continue to support the blockchain Ireland initiative because of this because it really um allows us to look across the whole landscape and see where we can actually provide value if needed um finally as well um the the intention of the working group was to to provide um a platform for the Department of Finance um in relation to blockchain to reach out at European level and globally um in a coordinated manner and what I mean coordinated is um as you know from a traditional perspective the Department of Finance is set up in its divisions uh blockchain is is it's tricky in terms it it goes across all different divisions so there's an element of it that could be taxed there could be elements of it around AML there could be elements of it around the banking policy PSD2 so how do we actually weave a thread together that we're coordinating in terms of our understanding of digital current descriptive assets and so forth so that's what the working group has been it's been doing um since its creation um some tangible outcomes of that have been for example um um attending every OECD forum and uh just front table and um discussion in the last six months um around cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology that's been really really insightful for us particularly because it also brings countries from outside the European Union and some of them are very advanced in blockchain stages so we're thinking of the lax of Australia the lax of premuda for example um we are also involved at European level so there's an EC Observatory Forum um Ireland um has a representative particularly in the second working group the second working group is in relation to or discusses user cases so we've talked about about yeah there's a blockchain piece but what does it really mean for us what does it really mean for the companies can we use this what can we use it for so there's a one of the two working groups the second one as um as I mentioned is round user cases and we have uh an Irish representative attending those meetings there'll be two meetings going ahead there's one actually happening um the second week in um in October um and the intention is what use case from blockchain is um is provable is tangible that not only can be used for that where it's actually used in the member state but potentially that other member states in Europe can actually utilise and and roll out to to the wider European Union. At European level as well there've been discussions already um about ICO regulation without going into into details there's discussions about being being appended to the uh draft funding regulation so I guess um through the working group and engagement with the um with the uh the team in the department of finance who are in charge of reviewing the draft fund regulation so again making sure that we understand the technicalities of that technology and how is um how it's proposed to be regulated through through the draft regulation um this is what we did kind of already in the first three six months of the working group so of more interest to use like well what next what about going forward yeah um well the important thing about going forward is and I want to link it into the adaptability and also Conarland to be a blockchain hub well you can't build economic growth until you actually understand all the elements of the ecosystems how they interact with each other but also how each one of those elements is properly prepared to actually deliver this economic growth so if we look at it there's certainly an element of infrastructure so is Arland can be or can Arland be a hub from an infrastructure perspective in terms of a technology perspective can Arland be a blockchain hub by providing the right talent pipeline um can Arland be a blockchain hub by actually providing the right support to startups by actually providing support to enterprise through the uh to the adequate search um research pieces so that's the longer piece um and particularly from a department of mine's perspective our involvement here is what our policy and if appropriate do we need policy tweaks do we need to what do we do so that we don't um stump that or block that economic growth in any way short shape or form and um the european commission actually um raised this already a few months ago by highlighting the fact that sometimes regulation particularly regulation that's been written a long time ago potentially it actually works against the newest technology by being biased so this is something that we're conscious of and clearly is going to be a um a focal point of our work coming to the next step five or six months um good um it's kind of hard because regulation is like so uh so so boring no it's not um such an interesting topic it is um maybe just point just point at one final um when i we we were lucky enough to discuss this over lunch when people think of blockchain they just think about it in a big box and when we talk about regulation um i'm doing this piece of education about regulation on blockchain yeah which is we already have a lot of regulations for a lot of things so if regulation already stands potentially already is applicable to whatever it is that um we can do through blockchain when we're looking at regulation for blockchain what we're really trying to think here is do we need regulation for something that has come out being totally new around blockchain and that is in the realm at the moment of cryptocurrencies uh crypto funds of wallet providers yeah um even exchanges to a certain degree before we even come to discuss regulation around those very specifics we Ireland as a jurisdiction need to agree what do we think crypto crypto assets or digital currencies or cryptocurrencies actually are so if you look at all the other member states around europe um would there be um the department of finance would there be the central bank would there be any other supervisory regulatory body have come up with their own stance and they've said well we think that currencies are a unit of account or they've said we think it's an intangible assets or we think it's not legal tender but it is the type of digital asset currency stroke to this date and please correct me if i'm wrong because i have not as far as i know Ireland has not come to that point so the minute we crack that and we all agree to what that will be regulation if it's necessary will fall from that okay thank you