The Industries Exploring Blockchain The Most Are Healthcare & Finance
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Name: Mohammed Naquib
Role: Blockchain Forensics @ Limar Global Technology Co
Location: Saudi Arabia
Mohammed Naquib is leading a Malaysian based Islamic Fintech Company as its Technology Head responsible for transforming the eLearning company to an “IBFtech” products and services portfolio.
He is an ardent advocate of decentralization and its benefit for the Islamic Fintech space. Based in Riyadh, Naquib is the official ambassador for Algorand and Hedera Hashgraph. He works full time as a Business Architect for a Global Telco Giant.
Naquib specializes in the legal aspects of Blockchain and is a certified Blockchain Forensics and Crypto Investigator, also serving as a Blockchain advisor for a Saudi based DLT Company.
When not working, Naquib mentor’s university students on research projects centred around Applied DLT & ABC (AI & Blockchain Combined), helping institutions build up blockchain curriculum for the students. He also conducts workshops on Enterprise Blockchains as part of the Saudi Hyperledger community.
1. When Was Your First Encounter With Blockchain Technology?
It was early 2016 when I had first heard of Blockchain, from my economist uncle. But, all I did was to map it to bitcoin where my thoughts ended, as I was least interested in finance & economics.
But as time progressed, I started seeing this word buzzing everywhere, and slowly, I started realizing that Blockchain is much more than bitcoin. There was something in it, and it was making people go passionately crazy about it. Informative posts on LinkedIn added the fuel, and one day I came across a certificate program on the Blockchain.
As a sign of fate, I was going through a difficult time in my career and hence thought of taking up a certification to make my profile multidimensional. That’s it. There was no looking back.
As I started learning more and more about this, I understood why people are going crazy and promoting its adoption the world over.
I understood why Andreas Antonopoulos lost weight when he started learning bitcoin and Blockchain. All because I was doing the same, devoting around 6 hours on an average every evening (which is continuing today).
2. In Which Industry Are You Implementing The Blockchain?
We’re focussing on the enterprise sector, and as I am associated with three organizations where I held different positions, the focus area varies for each of them.
My interest is Blockchain Analytics and Crypto Compliance.
I am also speaking on this topic (Importance of Crypto Regulations and Forensics in the Face of Open Blockchains) at the Crypto Asia Summit, scheduled for May 22nd (https://chaintalk.media/summit-speaker/mohammed-naquib/).
3. Which Industry Could Gain The Most Value From Blockchain?
With the passion of Blockchain and other DLTs increasing with each passing day, and multiple industries exploring the use case, IBM being the frontrunner has been thriving in implementing its Fabric-Based IBM Blockchain Platform effectively in supply chain use cases.
It’s one of the examples, where industries of all sectors are exploring the options to use DLT to solve real-world challenges.
Like in the current global pandemic situation, the industry exploring this space the most is health care and financial institutions.
4. What’s The Biggest Challenge With Implementing Blockchain?
The biggest problem is always at the beginning, trying to understand the reason why such technology is needed.
The second difficulty is finding qualified developers because after Blockchain has been highlighted as the most in-demand skill, every other guy is submitting himself as a blockchain developer by displaying some certifications.
I am not discouraging this approach; this is how most of us have entered this space, but what I expect from my developer resources, is a real hands-on experience. They can achieve this by making apps and sample use cases, with the help of the developer community and the GitHub resources.
5. What Types Of Blockchains Have You Implemented?
We have implemented and worked on enterprise blockchains, but currently exploring some B2C use cases on EOS and Algorand 10.
6. What Advice Would You Give To A Rookie Developer?
Learn, practice, and build.
It’s how people across the industries, and over the ages have gained skills. Even “rocket science”, the proverbial difficult branch of study has experts only after the rookies learned, practised, and built the systems.
Everything starts ground up. What skips the foundations, falls soon.
