Corporate Excellence 2019

20 CORPORATE VISION / Global Excellence 2019 , 2 Issue 3 2019 Jan19358 Mitch is currently CFO and General Counsel of Chia Network Inc., a fast-growing blockchain company developing an innovative new digital currency. Chia is a revolutionary new digital currency that solves many of the problems inherent in Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies. Among other features, it is “green” or eco- friendly, as it does not rely on wasteful “proof of work” mining. The energy consumption of the global Bitcoin mining community alone is enough to power several nations (for example, Denmark and Austria) -- Chia saves all of this electricity by utilizing proofs of space and time to validate transactions. Chia calls this “farming” instead of mining. Going into further detail, Mitch begins by providing us with an overview of how this approach works and the benefits of using it. “Chia is a digital currency utilizing blockchain technology, and a network that uses ‘Chiascript’ as its programming language. Chia relies upon proofs of space and proofs of time, instead of traditional proofs of work, to validate transactions and write new blocks to the blockchain. Chia ‘farms’ via Mitch Edwards named Blockchain CFO of the Year Mitch Edwards, CFO of Chia Network Inc., has been named the “CFO of the Year 2019 – Blockchain” by CV’s 2019 Corporate Excellence Awards program. Chia Network is a San Francisco-based company that is developing a new digital currency called “Chia.” Mitch is also an Advisor and Chief Strategist to Horizon-Globex, a leading blockchain-based securities technology, compliance and trading company that has developed blockchain software for use in U.S. and international capital markets. He was CFO of Core Scientific, Inc., a blockchain and artificial intelligence infrastructure company, and prior to that Acting CEO of Overstock.com and CFO of Skullcandy Inc. and BitTorrent Inc. Recently, we caught up with Mitch who provided us with an overview of his current activities. unused storage space that is allocated by ‘farmers’ who will receive Chia coins for solving a block challenge as a consensus mechanism. Additionally, Chia ‘farming’ uses proof of space, co-ordinated with another consensus algorithm, proof of time, to mitigate known attacks on previous proof of space based blockchains. This prevents wasting massive amounts of electricity to secure a blockchain and lessen (e.g. ASIC-powered mining) centralization. “Following on, Chia then uses empty storage (like hard disk drives) to farm seeds. As there is massive empty storage space available on computing devices around the world, and anyone with unused storage space will be able to farm, this leads to farming decentralization. Bitcoin’s proof of work mining protocol, by contrast, drives the validation and consensus process toward a small number of large, wealthy miners. This is because acquiring specialized ASIC mining equipment and locating them near cheap electricity is beyond the resources of most small participants in the cryptocurrency ecosystems. Chia should become the most decentralized cryptocurrency on the market.” Since inception, Chia has recruited one of the elite engineering and developer teams in the world, led by Chia’s founder and the inventor of the BitTorrent protocol, Bram Cohen. When discussing the team at Chia, Mitch is keen to highlight how the company has a diverse, talented and passionate group of individuals who form the backbone of the firm. All are recognized experts in the fields of cryptography, blockchain and distributed computing. “The Chia team is broadly recognized for its innovative and disruptive discoveries relating to cryptography, blockchain, cryptocurrency, and proofs of space and time. Chia has recruited a veteran team of the world’s best distributed computing and cryptography engineers, as well as a management team with deep experience in taking companies public and operating public companies.” Looking ahead to what the future holds for Chia, Mitch says: “Moving forward, Chia hopes to change the way foreign payments are made, the way corporations transfer capital and make payments around the world, and bring the cryptographically secure blockchain into the mainstream enterprise world. It solves many of the problems which we face in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies relating to security, efficiency and scaling. Ultimately, our goal is to create the most widely used, most secure, and most efficient digital currency in the world.” Mitch is also an Advisor and Chief Strategist for Horizon- Globex, a company with offices in New York and Switzerland. Globex is a leading blockchain- based securities technology, compliance and trading company that has developed proprietary blockchain software for use in U.S. and international capital markets. Its innovative products automate the issuance of smart securities (aka “security tokens”), compliance with complex regulatory and custody requirements, and trading and liquidity on a blockchain securities exchange. As the tokenization of assets increases in frequency and amount on a global scale, Globex is positioned to become the leading suite of software with appropriate regulatory licenses for compliant issuance, custody and trading of smart securities.