32 BCBusiness MAy 2018
demand," he says. "But the experience in the
space is kind of lacking.
"People have to do their due diligence,"
Hobbs continues. "They've got to look at these
companies that are going public and look at
them really hard. Have they ever built a block-
chain product before?" He compares the current
situation to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s:
"A ton of companies came in really quickly, there
was a lot of hype—and there's not a lot of those
companies around today. My hope is we can
build something better. I mean, that's our goal."
Chasing CrYpto's
Criminal element
Building a better, safer blockchain is also the
goal of Vancouver lawyer Christine Duhaime.
Duhaime advises startups in the ‰ntech and
blockchain world. In 2014 she founded the
Digital Finance Institute, an independent
research group that aims to address issues "at
the nexus between ‰nancial innovation, digital
‰nance policy and regulation."
"I think there is no question that, like any
‰nancial instrument, there are examples of bit-
coin being used for ‰nancial crime," Duhaime
acknowledges. "A big one that bothers me
a lot is that bitcoin is used frequently for fen-
tanyl; the dealers get fentanyl through China,
and they pay for it with bitcoin. So that's an
example, really dear to all of our hearts here in
Vancouver, where bitcoin wallets are being
used by fentanyl, and it's killing people."
Duhaime notes that digital currency
exchanges aren't regulated by Financial
Transactions and Reports Analysis of Canada
(FinTRAC)—the federal agency that gathers and
analyzes intelligence on suspicious ‰nancial
transactions—leaving it up to the individual
exchange to do its own due diligence. That's
where she steps in, in an advisory role, to help
build more-transparent bitcoin wallets, with
systems in place to monitor suspect behaviour.
"The exchange needs to have its own meth-
ods of procedures because it doesn't want a
BUILdIng BLocks
A pioneer in the
Vancouver crypto-
currency space, Lisa
Cheng runs an incu-
bator for blockchain
companies