Marc Blinder, Co-Founder and CEO of Aikon, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he discusses how his company is helping businesses use blockchain applications without needing to learn the intricacies of the new technology. 

Closing Bell

Aikon Helping Businesses Gain Better Understanding of Blockchain Technology

and with more companies investing in the future like N. F. T. S, the metaverse Web three. And yes, crypto implementing Blockchain technology could be the key to success. Well that's where icon comes in as the company says it is on a mission to make it easier for businesses to launch products on the public Blockchain joining me now is Mark Blinder, co founder and Ceo icon Mark thanks so much for coming on the show. We've had several guests that have been on our show saying the block chains do hold great potential and opportunity. How are you helping people take advantage of that? Well, we are all about the ease of use of Blockchain. So that's something to actually allow the average consumer who doesn't really know much about wallets or private keys or any of this kind of very intimidating Blockchain stuff. We allow them to use Blockchain applications without having to learn that new technology. And so the businesses we work with, they really benefit from that because they can bring their users into this new world and give them N. F. T. S. Or tokens or other things like that, whether it's as rewards or investments, whatever their particular use cases, we're making it easy for the average person to participate. One of the biggest questions, Mark or perhaps the biggest hurdles that people face as they try to incorporate Blockchain into their company. Well I think one of the things companies deal with a lot is actually just that it's a whole new paradigm. So even your accounting systems may not be correctly set up to handle volatile cryptocurrencies, uh your legal department may not be that comfortable with it either. It's actually part of the value we bring to our business clients. Sometimes it's just that we can give them a monthly invoice in U. S. Dollars that enables all this crypto infrastructure for them. So that alone can be a real relief to a lot of businesses that are new to this industry. Okay, so I want you to break down this next one for me, Marcus, we're all now focusing on Web three. How we get there from a web two point oh if you will but I know your company icon uses the open rights exchange. That's the O. R. E. Or Blockchain To help bridge that transition from Web 2 2. Web three explain what this is. In simple terms. Yes. So I think the simplest way to put it is that we're trying to bridge what people use every day into the new world of what we expect them to use in the future. So or and or I. D is engineered to allow you to maybe logged in with a google account or a facebook account or an Apple account things people are really comfortable with and then in the cloud we encrypt private keys for them so they can have a wallet on a Blockchain, one or more block chains. In fact they are tied to the login, they're already used to and very comfortable with. So in the simplest terms it's making the future look like the present. So how is your company planning to incorporate Bitcoin? Do you incorporate that right now? Actually we don't, we started with some of the other block chains that have more applications on them like ethereum al grandiose wax. But yeah, absolutely, we're gonna incorporate Bitcoin in Q two this year and it's Mark, why have you held off? I think most people know Bitcoin right, is the most common Cryptocurrency, but why have you held off on incorporating that particular platform? No, it's a great question. So five years ago Bitcoin was 85% of the market cap of all cryptocurrencies today. Bitcoin is only 42% of the market cap. So I think what we're seeing is that more use cases that are starting to appear on the Blockchain require different technology than Bitcoin's, frankly. And so we set out to support those new use cases that are more complex that can't really easily be handled on the Bitcoin Blockchain and that's obviously where we see most of the growth in the future, even though I truly believe Bitcoin will be here with us forever, but it does one thing, well it's digital gold, Everything else you want to do on a Blockchain, you need some other Blockchain to do today, I have to ask you about sustainability. Mark, we've got a new president at the new york stock, one of her top three goals this year is sustainability and we know in the crypto space as well as sustainability and just the massive computing power that Bitcoin and crypto transactions take and mining takes really is a cause of concern for some. So what measures is your company taking to try to make this as sustainable as uh as possible? Yeah, I'm so glad you asked that it's something I'm personally extremely passionate about. So the or Blockchain uses a proof of stake system, not a proof of work system. So with those systems they tend to take like over 99% less electricity so it's vastly better for the environment from the get go As a company Icon also uses 100% carbon neutral servers. We do carbon offsets for all our employees to but far and away. The most important thing we do is these proof of stake Blockchain technology that's much more efficient, faster and also better for the environment. All right, Mark Blinder, co founder and ceo of icon joining us from across the pond in London. Mark, thank you so much for staying late with us. We appreciate it