Meet the Team | Akasha Indream | Blockchain Corporate Strategy

BLOCKLOAN is going to revolutionise the global lending space. Behind a great idea, there is a team whose industry experience is unparalleled.

Meet Akasha Indream, blockchain, super knowledgeable, corporate strategy advisor for BLOCKLOAN.

“If there are pain points for customers at all because of the centralized and data nature of an entity, then that is an opening for a blockchain entrepreneur.”

1. Who is “Miss Blockchain?”

I founded MissBlockchain.Tech which is a platform that celebrates diversity in blockchain and blockchain for social good. I also manage the online telegram community Women in in Blockchain International Impact group with 600 women professionals in the blockchain space from around the world. I also advise blockchain startups on community management and corporate strategy.

2. What is your take on the state of the Crypto/Blockchain market?

As an industry, we are in the very early phases. It’s like a forest coming back to a cleared space. First, you have the clutter of pioneer species. They grow fast, and die young. Then, you have the slow growing, long lived species, that take over. There’s less of these, but they are more enduring. Right now, we are watching the death of the hundreds of ICOs and cryptocurrencies over the last 24 months that paved way for the longer lived platforms to gain market experience and lasting traction.

3. What projects in the market do you think will shape the future of the industry?

We are seeing right now the birth of Blockchain 3.0 — the conversion of real world physical assets onto the digital ledger. There will be a lot of hurdles along the way and questions that need to be answered. What protocols will these platforms put in place to determine the validity of an asset? Who authenticates this data? Who will be responsible when things go wrong and what mitigating structures will be put in place? It’s easy to get carried away with the idea that blockchain can be applied to anything, but we need to take a measured approach so that it’s not one step forward, two steps back.

4. What is the big opportunity at the moment in this space?

The key qualities of a blockchain are data storage at scale, a peer to peer network, and cryptography. Any business right now that makes money from being a centralized intermediary and who holds data at scale that is vulnerable to attack, is a prime target for blockchain disruption. If there are pain points for customers at all because of the centralized and data nature of an entity, then that is an opening for a blockchain entrepreneur.

5. Are you following any companies closely?

I am intrigued by Elastos, which is a completely open source, network operating system that utilizes the decentralization of P2P communication (the “Elastos Carrier”) and the security of blockchain to create an end-to-end secure web environment for users, internet of things, and all smart devices. It solves the congestion problem by using a main chain/sidechain structure. Every dApp can have their own sidechain with what ever consensus mechanism they seem fit. And DApps on Elastos don’t run on the Blockchain itself, but in a VM on your device called Elastos Runtime. On Elastos, every DApp runs in its own VM. The only thing that gets executed on the blockchain are smart contracts which are part of the DApp.

6. What else are you working on?

Because of my love for guiding startups on smart choices where they focus their funds on their prime value proposition, I’ve started on the venture of interviewing NEM (New Economy Movement) startups in a vlodcast for the Inside NEM youtube channel. This will be launching soon, and will be a part of my new role there as a communications lead for NEM Australia. This will be vital contribution to the developing NEM community, which has a goal for ten community projects in Australia over the next year, and also is opening a new $100 million innovation hub in Brisbane and Wellington.

7. Why is having the right advisor mix so important?

Advisors are people who have had their eyes opened in many ways by the industry. They aren’t single mindedly determined on any one outcome — they have a balance of experience. So, whilst you are busy making your startup a success, they have already been present to witness the successes and failures of many startups. This means you have many eyes looking out for you, ready to tell you when something might not be your smartest choice. That doesn’t mean everyone listens to advisors, but I sometimes think in hindsight they probably wished they had. They can also connect you, through their wide network of influence, to the people and organisations that can be the best to help to you at any one time.

8. What are some of the learnings you have gained from previous ICOs?

Security, Security, Security. I can’t say that enough. In the blockchain industry, because of its peer to peer nature, we depend on our communities. That means, we must be open and honest with out communities to be worthy of trust. But that openness must be balanced by taking our time to make smart decisions that will last the distance of our organisation. You mustn’t take short cuts, and security is one of those. Always have a security partner, like Entersoft or Segasec, who has seen hundreds of different forms of attack and can protect you from the get go, so that you aren’t even vulnerable to threats simply because you didn’t know that possible direction of attack existed. In crypto, what you don’t know can hurt you.

9. Any tips you want to share with people looking to invest in an ICO?

Think about supporting ICOs outside of the Ethereum blockchain ecosystem. There’s a lot of other platforms out there that support tokens, and which will be hosting ICOs for new technological applications. One is Centrality, but another NEM, and of course Stellar, and there are many more. If you don’t know which are good ICOs to support, then think about joining an accredited pool from a financial services provider who does thorough analysis on upcoming ICO offerings and will usually get you the discounted rate through a private allocation.

10. Why did you get involved with BLOCKLOAN?

I like BLOCKLOAN because is uses Blockchain Banking as a Service (BBaaS!) to provide a global peer to peer decentralized lending platform.

What does this mean? There have been peer to peer lending platforms before that were pure-play web based services. But BLOCKLOAN is blockchain based.

This means that, going back to what said before, if data storage held at scale is a security issue, then blockchain can be used to cryptographically secure it.

Also, with BLOCKLOAN, because it’s crypto based, we have borderless crypto personal lending. Anyone can submit their request for a crypto or fiat loan to the Block.Loan lending marketplace, and because lenders from all around the world compete, the borrowers can take advantage of these interest rate differentials that may be far more competitive than anything available in their country.

This will see a race to bottom in terms of cost savings for accessing personal loans that will change the dynamic to being one that is utterly in the lending customer’s favour.

And, because it’s crypto, crypto can be used as security, which a normal bank wouldn’t look at. Also, if someone does have large quantities of crypto, they can now put it to work by lending it through the BLOCKLOAN marketplace, which means a distribution of profits circulating through society, and reduced portfolio risk due to the pool loan fulfilment model that will be offered through smart contracts on the platform. It’s a win win for lenders and borrowers, and anyone interested in the ongoing adoption of crypto as global currency with real world application.

11. What do you think you can contribute to BLOCKLOAN?

Blockchain is creating new opportunities for how businesses can solve pain points for customers. Obviously, personal lending is one of these. BLOCKLOAN will create more transparency for the personal lending market, return ownership of the data to the user, and of course increase lifetime cost effectiveness for a loan. However, of course, blockchain is new technology, and although our children, and children’s children, will probably be as comfortable with private keys as they are with the remote control to the DVD player, the current existing market is still coming to grips with the decentralized nature of the tech. So, mass education needs to happen to create blockchain and wallet literacy, and since personal financing is such an essential facet of being an integrated member of society and the economy, of course BLOCKLOAN will be an active part of this dynamic. I hope that my skills in communication, engagement, and synthesis of strategy, will be of immense help here.

Akasha Indream, is a founding team member of Blockchaincities.io, bridging blockchain and smart cities movements for local governments globally, she is founder of WIBI.io a telegram group of nearly 600 women blockchain founders, investors, developers, consultants and is also a consultant at blockchaincentre.com.au. This amongst her being the founder of MissBlockchain.tech, blockchain for social justice publishing platform, keeps her incredibly busy and an important influencer in the space.

Thanks for your time and insights, Akasha!