Women in Blockchain | Collaboration

Challenging the status quo is not a new concept, but what if we were given the perfect tool to really change it. In the ‘old days if you came up with a great concept and proved to be worthy of that special idea you held onto it for dear life. Independent Centralized Wealth.

 Blockchain is called disruptive by some, but why? Should it not be something in lines of, “quiet, settling and calming”.

 Blockchain Technology will not disrupt anything, in fact, it will do quite the opposite, “(or maybe it will disrupt those still trying to hang on to the past)”, Blockchain Technology has spread from an anonymous guy called Satoshi and the ideal that is Bitcoin Blockchain, into an Open Source concept of Collaboration. Our current systems will seamlessly be changed over onto Blockchains with professionals matching this new tool.

I’m Jie Lin and I got into the space out of curiosity as my friends began investing cryptocurrency as a means for passive income in college. I grew interested in the notion and challenged myself to learn more about it, even when the learning curve was steep. Then college mates told me about sharing your love for a particular token while earning money from it too. This became my first occupational dabble into cryptocurrencies and blockchain as I began to moderate ICO communities while in school.

I am currently a marketing manager of a cryptocurrency exchange, BiKi.com, managing the branding of the exchange to become a top tier exchange in the near future. I manage social media growth and campaigns, handle PR and news creation and the strategizing of blockchain meetups and events for the company. I look forward to improving the social statistics and SEO rankings of BiKi every day, making it more searchable and hence showing a sense of the credibility of the exchange to its users. Interestingly, I had kept close to my roots and still manage BiKi’s communities and helping the users every day is also something I look forward to.

I think it would be not having the foresight that blockchain was going to be such a big thing earlier. If I were to build up my interest and network from then, I would have seen the big picture and be involved with the movers and shakers since the beginning.

Start today! Blockchain is the future and if you don’t start now, you’ll be swept too far away when the bull run arrives again. I was a skeptic in the beginning and as you can see from the above answer, I regretted it.

I think it is important for people looking for jobs to understand Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle — where why you do something is the center and the most important part, the bullseye if you will, and the how you achieve it and what to do to achieve it forms the outer rings. Then they will be motivated to accomplish tasks based on the “why” of it all, not the “how” or what”. This gives them energy and passion that goes beyond basic hard skills.

I think the more mainstream cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology gets, the more people can accept it. It is analogous to a similar phase people go through when transitioning from cash to “plastic” credit cards.

People are drawn to scandals and bad news. A small percentage of people actually use bitcoin for payment of illicit goods and services on the dark web, while the rest of the majority of token holders are legitimate investors who are excited about the cryptocurrency. And most “scared” mainstream investors only hear the bad news.

I think more exposure to the real news about what blockchain is about (and not the hype and controversies) will bridge that gap.

Coinbase 101, telegram groups, Cointelegraph news. In Singapore, although I’m no longer in school, there are even courses in Singapore Polytechnic and Temasek Polytechnic about blockchain with course titles like “Blockchain & Smart Contracts Development” and “FinTech — Blockchain (Beginners)”.

I think the market is only at its turning point of becoming more mainstream. In the beginning, there was the ICO hype followed by the huge market crash, so not we are this inflection point towards change. In the future, it will take us in a decentralized world where this kind of technology is the forefront which can help to mitigate the current problems we are facing like security. But there will be a trade-off as those who lack knowledge will risk higher chances of being scammed.

BiKi is currently in its globalization phase and is attending and organizing events all around the globe. I’ve had the privilege of managing social media airdrops and meetups in places like Canada, Korea, and London and it is great to see everyone united for the same thing.

Thekey is my all-time favorite project. As we are all getting online, it bridges the gap of transitioning confidential personal information offline to online. The utility of the TKY token is also very high, and I believe it will be of increasingly exponential value in the future. For instance, no longer will transferring doctors or hospitals be a big hassle as all the patient’s information is securely stored on the blockchain, for any doctor to follow up. The project is also based on a strong team, with strong partners like NEO partnering with them. And this is one of the projects I believe will bridge that gap between technology and skepticism, as more people realize the usefulness of keeping confidential information about one’s unique identity on a secure chain, bringing with them everywhere they go, so relevant personnel can have easy access to it.

When I first heard about Blockchain, I knew immediately that I had found a new passion, a passion that my whole career seems to have been inching towards. I graduated from Columbia University having studied Computer Science and Economics in the mid-1980s, where I wrote my thesis on the effects of interest rates on the money supply, what in today’s terminology is known as Quantitative Easing. The first company I co-founded in the late eighties became one of the largest cybersecurity consulting companies in the US. The second company I started, was an early FinTech application. In the late 1990s, I went to work for Oracle, where I frequently commented that the world needed database technology where data stored could not be altered or manipulated. Because until Blockchain, any data stored could always be overwritten.

In 2006, I read an article about a man who had become a millionaire by selling virtual property to Second Lifers for Lincoln Dollars in the virtual game Second Life. I knew then that humanity was close to evolving money into a digital asset.

In 2014, I bought some Bitcoin, some of my colleagues often comment they don’t know why I waited so long because I had been talking about it for a few years by then… my mistake. In 2017, I finally made the decision to jump in feet first and I signed up for a MOOC digital currency course under the tutelage of Andreas Antonopoulous. Then I was hooked. I quit my job at a Silicon Valley software company, retooled myself, developed educational materials to teach the world about Bitcoin, Blockchain and the promise it holds for global economic reform and I set about educating as many people as possible on my own dime and time. And then SEBA Bank AG found me.

So here we are today at the convergence of economics, computer science, cybersecurity and a much-needed evolution in data storage which enables data permanence. I truly feel like I am right at home.

I spent a year working at SEBA and loved every minute of defining and building the brand. A close friend and colleague in Ireland helped with the media relations aspects of the SEBA brand launch, where we architected one of the most successful brand launches of 2018. So when I started thinking about what I wanted to achieve next, I decided that helping start-ups in the crypto-economy create strong brands via media relations was what I wanted to focus on next. And that’s when we founded Ignite.

I also stepped in as Head of Marketing for the Crypto Valley Association, because I believe that the road ahead towards mainstream crypto adoption may get a little bumpy, and having a strong representative body is instrumental in helping the ecosystem overcome some of the certain obstacles that lie ahead as regulators, global banks and sovereign governments begin to grapple with the reality of the digital asset revolution.

I can’t say that I am unhappy with any aspects of my career. I had the choice 20 years ago to stay at a large multi-national, Oracle, and work there comfortably for the rest of my days. But that wasn’t me. It would certainly have made raising a family easier, having a steady income and employment, but I don’t think my children would have learned resilience and perseverance, which they all have in them today.

I don’t think we need to nurture interest in the younger generations, I think they will grow up with crypto and blockchain being an integral part of their world. For women, more and more opportunities are arising for study in STEM areas, so we are certain to see the numbers continue to grow.

Resilience, perseverance, flexibility, creativity. Resilience because in business change is constant. Perseverance and flexibility for the same reason. Creativity is a little different. Creativity to me means that people are growing, and when you are growing, that’s food for your soul. It doesn’t matter what you create, as long as you are always creating.

Technology is going to drag humanity into this revolution kicking and screaming, it is already happening. Everything in our world is being digitized: Music, literature, movies, our jobs, all of our information, education…. Why in the world some people don’t think money will follow this trend is beyond my comprehension.

Governments have finally figured out that cryptographic money is far safer and cleaner than Fiat, with the added benefit that the tax take can come straight into sovereign coffers at the point of transaction. That’s an attractive value proposition that no government can turn an eye from.

It’s all happening, it’s just hard to see the forest from the trees.

Dublin City University launched an MSc in Blockchain — Distributed Ledger Technologies in September 2019. It is a 2-year program aimed at IT professionals who have a degree in Computer Science.

The Digital Asset market is in its infancy and the possibilities are only now beginning to gain clarity. When Blockchain first appeared on the scene, it seemed as though every problem in the world could be solved by Blockchain.

But the market has matured, and we now have a much clearer picture of the use cases where blockchain can be truly impactful, and literally thousands of Proofs of Concept are underway. In the next 2–3 years, we should really see Blockchain go mainstream.

As regards the cryptocurrency market, 2020 should be a very interesting year with the next Bitcoin halving coming in May. This next halving will alter Bitcoin’s stock-to-flow ratio, making Bitcoin — for the first time in history — a harder asset than gold. The definition of a Hard Asset is one that is difficult to produce more of, such as gold. There is already an amount of gold present in the world — the current stock of gold — and the rate at which more can be produced (extracted from the earth) is the flow of new gold. Since the flow is minuscule compared to the gold already mined and stored in sovereign coffers, gold is the hardest asset that the world has historically had.

In May, the flow of new Bitcoin into the market will be halved, thus making the Stock to Flow ratio even higher than gold. When the market absorbs this fact, I believe we will see Bitcoin achieve a new all-time high and a new Bull market will return.

I am currently involved in a project in Zug, Switzerland that will transform mass affluent access to the crypto economy. With digital assets, the streamlining of the investor value chain will deliver economies of scale which will open the market in a regulated manner for the mass affluent investor. Our aim is to make sure this sector of the market is ripe for crypto adoption.

My favorite Blockchain project is the AID: tech project which teamed up with the Irish Red Cross and Lebanese humanitarian experts to implement the world’s first aid delivery project with the objective to ensure refugees received aid in a transparent manner while preserving their dignity and humanity.

This project is an excellent example of the type of impact blockchain can have on our world.