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reputation as being a safe haven."
Beyond the outright criminal, Duhaime also
worries about some of the unethical behav-
iour she sees inltrating blockchain.
ICOs, for
instance, have the benet of being egalitarian,
allowing people of modest resources to raise
money without expensive listing, legal and
accounting fees. But they also tend to attract
those who are skirting regulation for other
reasons, Duhaime says: "People who get into it
with a good marketing plan who are scammers
—who have no concern for the rule of law, who
are just out to get a bunch of money and not
ever develop technoloŽy with it."
Recently, Duhaime and the Digital Finance
Institute partnered with Ottawa-based Mind-
Bridge Analytics Inc. to develop an articial
intelligence–based anti-fraud services plat-
form, CoinWatch, that will analyze digital
currency coins and digital currency nancial
services. "We can detect things like if an
ICO
says, 'We're based in Switzerland, and this is
where all our people are from,' but yet when
you go to invest, you nd out they're actually
in Slovenia or in Russia," she explains. "We've
had some incredible interest from some gov-
ernment regulators already, which I can't
name, that want to partner and want to use it.
And we've already had a global law rm sign
up and a global accounting rm."
meet the Chain gang
O
n a rainy day in late November, many
of those hoping to launch an
ICO,
invest in a blockchain startup or oth-
erwise prot from cryptocurrencies
have made their way to
SFU's Morris
J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue in down-
town Vancouver for the third annual
VanFunding conference. Would-be investors
network in the atrium with tech entrepreneurs
(wearing T-shirts emblazoned with their start-
ups' logos), while speaker after speaker in the
Asia Pacic Hall extols the virtues of this new
world order.
Brady Fletcher, managing director of the
TSX Venture Exchange, is rst to address the
crowd: "It's a really exciting time—not only for
people to be able to invest in these companies
that are doing disruptive things, but for us,
as capital markets, to be able to adopt these
technologies to really streamline what we're
doing." As of that day, Fletcher notes, bitcoin
and ethereum alone account for some US$200
billion in market capitalization.
By and large, the speakers' tone is booster-
ish, but some do inject a note of caution into the
proceedings. Bernd Petak, Vancouver-based
partner in venture capital Ÿirm Northmark
Ventures, has been a keen observer of the
blockchain world for more than a decade; about
half of the pitches his rm takes are blockchain-
related, he tells the audience. Petak o¡ers some
tips on how to tell if a blockchain application
makes sense—or whether it's suspect.
"Bitcoin is used frequently for fentanyl; 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"
—Christine Duhaime, lawyer
