Celebrating Cryptocurrency’s place in the Fourth Industrial Revolution

An interview by David Gates, Partner at Rapid Innovation Group, with Oliver Oram of MindArk PE AB — a Swedish software company planning a token raise

Blockchain, Bitcoin, Ethereum, cryptocurrency, tokens, ICO, Token Generation Events. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past year you’ve no doubt heard at least one, if not all, of those terms being discussed online, in the news, or on the television. However, despite this technology having already been around for the best part of a decade, it seems that very few understand it.

I caught up with Oliver Oram, CEO of Chainvine and Advisor to the Board at MindArk PE AB (‘MindArk’) to discuss distributed ledger technology (commonly known as ‘blockchain’), the role digital assets are playing in the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ and how MindArk is using the opportunity to create something new.

David: Hello Oliver, perhaps you could start by introducing yourself and MindArk.

Oliver: Hello! Of course, I’m Oliver Oram and I’m an Advisor to the Board at MindArk, the Swedish software company and creators of Entropia Universe: the world’s largest real cash economy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG for short). Entropia Universe is the most successful example of an in-game real money economy which uses a virtual currency, Project Entropia Dollars (‘PED’), with a fixed US dollar exchange rate. Players earn PED through in-game activities and are encouraged to develop unique skills to service the community.

David: Thank you. Before we talk more about MindArk, maybe you could tell us why blockchain is such a difficult concept to grasp?

Oliver: Blockchain is the backbone of the entire digital asset ecosystem, i.e. cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. It is an immutable ledger of every transactions that has ever taken place within its network, allowing every unit of currency to be tracked from its inception to its current position (I use currency as an example, but it could just as easily track any digital asset).

I think most people struggle with the fact that it is entirely digital, there is no physical ledger. There is nothing tangible which can be held or easily visualised, backing the blockchain up, so people struggle to get their heads around how it holds value.

David: But digitisation isn’t a new concept, almost everything is done digitally these days.

Oliver: Exactly. For years we’ve relied on the internet, an entirely digital repository of data, to record important and sensitive information with little doubt that it is safe. Blockchain itself is a new concept though. It is a challenger to the status quo, and that’s a scary prospect to many. But it doesn’t have to be. The rise of digital assets is part of a wider revolution, an innovation revolution that Klaus Schwab termed the ‘fourth industrial revolution’. This ‘revolution’ is essentially the digitisation of, well, everything — and blockchain’s immutable ledger is proving to be an invaluable tool during this transitional period.

David: Don’t you think that the market is becoming saturated with blockchain solutions? It seems that one is popping up for every conceivable industry or sector.

Oliver: We’re experiencing a flurry of activity in the blockchain and digital assets space, with crypto coins and tokens appearing to fill perceived gaps in every industry. However, that is part and parcel of a revolution. All assumptions must be questioned!

David: So, how does MindArk fit into this fourth industrial revolution? And why is it holding a token raise.

Oliver: MindArk really fits into the ‘technological revolution’ of which the industrial revolution is one component. Historically, markets were opened through physical trade (and sometimes conquest) but as society’s capacity for digitisation increases, trade is as much in intangible ‘goods’ as it is in tangibles. For example, MindArk holds the world record for the most expensive digital asset ever sold: Club Neverdie, a resort within Entropia Universe, which sold for $625,000 by being purchased in fractions, the largest of which was valued at $335,000. Blockchain allows the record of ownership of digital assets to easily be split into manageable, and accessible, chunks, which would make purchases like this easier in the future.

So, there is a valid argument out there for attributing real-world value to intangible assets (digital assets or items, such as design or brands) and we’re applying this technology to the intellectual property market, which will be funded through our token raise.

To give you an indication of the market opportunity, the World Intellectual Property Organisation states that intangible assets amount to one third of total production value in the US. In monetary terms, that is a 5.9 trillion USD market in the US alone! The World Intellectual Property Organisation also presents the concept of “patent syndication” (“a group of individuals, companies or different entities that come together, to pool their resources and share in the ownership of a patent within a country with the original owner of the patent”) to expand the markets for intellectual property.

David: How would MindArk facilitate the expansion of the market?

Oliver: Through tokenisation. Tokenisation is at the heart of enabling transactions in intangible, digital assets. This means ‘bite-sizing’ intellectual property that has been put to economic use, yielding either a regular return for its owners (much like an income stock) or having the potential to generate significant returns (much like a growth stock). The key is that tokenisation will reduce the minimum spend required to invest in these assets, much like the stock market enabled participation by the ‘general public’ in listed companies (in as broad a sense as possible). We’re not at a point of equivalence with stock companies yet though. The exchanges that exist today for digital tokens are fully engaged in enabling speculation on tokens that most market participants do not understand.

David: Precisely, these exchanges are not providing the information one would seek from a traditional stock exchange: the regulatory or exchange-demanded provision of information to holders and potential holders is negligible. Where are the annual reports, quarterly financial statements, and warnings on forward looking statements?

Oliver: The reality is that application in the real world means that the system must be tempered. The tokenisation of digital assets will require a central location where information is provided and exchanged freely. MindArk already possess such a location in Entropia Universe’s real money economy.

David: So, MindArk has already shown a proof of concept?

Oliver: Precisely. Players have been trading digital assets on the platform for years, we know the concept works because we’ve been testing it since the game’s launch in 2003! It’s taken a while to get to the right point, but revolutions take a long time; just because we’re operating in the digital age it doesn’t mean that has changed. Britain’s industrial revolution took around 60 years, so we can’t expect this one to happen overnight.

David: Indeed it doesn’t, and it’s not as if you one day wake up and realise you’re in the middle of a revolution.

Finally, Oliver, what sort of patents do you see being exchanged on MindArk’s platform?

Oliver: We won’t be seeing patents on metal surface treatments being exchanged any time soon; most venture capitalists would run a mile if such a concept was raised. What we’re more likely to see are data files for 3D printed miniatures for Games Workshop games, maybe the syndication of university patents, and certainly the fractionalisation of revenue generative MMORPG space stations.

David: Thank you Oliver.

To find out more about MindArk and its token raise visit www.deeptoken.io and www.mindark.com