BCBusiness

10 BCBusiness MAy 2018 PORTRAIT: ADAM BLASBERG I t's been called a fraud that won't end well, a failure as a currency and the online equivalent of gold. Of course, I'm talking about the cryptocurrency bitcoin. Those recent assessments belong to JPMorgan Chase & Co. chair and CEO Jamie Dimon, Bank of England governor Mark Carney and Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, respectively. Who do you believe? Dimon has since back- pedalled, telling Fox Business Network that he regrets his outburst and that blockchain, the online distributed ledger underpinning bitcoin and other digital currencies, is real. No wonder: like many other big banks, JPMorgan Chase has joined the game, developing its own blockchain technoloŠy for ‹nancial institutions. Investors of all stripes are jumping on the crypto bandwagon, too, at their own risk. For those who subscribe to Warren BuŒett's maxim that you shouldn't back a business you can't understand, cryptocurrencies raise a red f lag. Even if you do grasp the technoloŠy, bitcoin—which was trad- ing below US$7,000 at press time, after peaking at almost US$19,500 last December—is a speculative bet. All of this left us curious about how B.C. ‹ts into the cryptocurrency picture. In "New Kids on the Block" (p.26), my predecessor Matt O'Grady delivers a thoughtful take on that question by pro‹ling several Vancou- ver players. O'Grady focuses on Sean Clark, whose previous venture, online marketplace Shoes.com, crashed and burned early last year. Undaunted, the entrepreneur is back with First Block Capital, a £irm he co-founded with Dutch investor Marc van der Chijs. Bitcoin and blockchain oŒer Clark a shot at redemption, but what about their dark side? Going back to the bad old days of the Vancouver Stock Exchange, B.C. has been a haven for ‹nancial scammers and fraudsters, and lack of regula- tory scrutiny around digital currencies leaves investors vulnerable to pump-and-dump and other schemes. Fortunately, experts like law- yer Christine Duhaime, also featured in our story, aim to hold swindlers accountable. On page 37, we indulge our curiosity in another way by launching the ‹rst edition of BC City Guide. With our annual Best Cities for Work in B.C. ranking turning ‹ve this year, we decided to boost coverage of the communities that appear on the list, from the Lower Mainland to Vancouver Island to the Northeast. By look- ing at them as places to live, work and invest, BC City Guide helps ful‹l our mandate to represent the entire province. Thank you to contributors Melissa Edwards and Dee Hon, and to associate editor Felicity Stone and assistant editor Nathan Caddell, for making it a reality. Nick Rockel, Editor-in-Chief bcb@canadawide.com / @bCbusiness editor's desk Our guide to retirement and succession planning helps you prepare for life after work IN JUNE Both Sides of the Coin C O N T R I B U T O R S Based in the Comox Valley, freelance writer Ryan Stuart ("Going With the Flow," p.15) spends a lot of time in nearby Victoria and Tofino, which got him wondering why those municipalities dump raw sewage into the ocean while B.C. is becoming a hub for wastewater treatment companies. Stuart is the field editor at Explore magazine and contributes to several other outdoor adventure publications. Jessica Natale Woollard is a Victoria-based writer who covers business and lifestyle for print and online magazines. In this issue, she explores the advent of slow fashion and the ways that B.C. companies make sustainable clothing ("Uncommon Threads," p.17). "Before researching this article, I didn't truly understand that synthetic fabrics are plastic products," Woollard explains. "Now I'm itchy just thinking about it."

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