Jamie Burke is a co-founder and CEO of Outlier Ventures, one of the leading European crypto VC incubators.

Ahmed catches up with Jamie in London to learn more about Outlier Ventures, how they’re structured, their investment thesis and what makes them different as a VC investing in this space.

Unlike other VCs, Outlier is funded by the capital of the co-founders, their team is mostly comprised of technical analysts and researchers in order to do a lot of applied learning as well as supporting the projects they invest in and contributing to the wider ecosystem building out open source networks. Jamie likes to describe Outlier as more of an incubator or a Venture as a Platform business where they reinvest all returns into the platform, where they recently committed to reinvesting $30 million of their own capital in the next 3 years to support investments.

Jamie then goes onto to discuss the concept of Convergence and what the Convergence stack is, how autonomous agents work, and how they’re trying to create the new data economy.
He talks about the evolution of the internet citing two main innovations; platforms and cloud. Like every other person who believes in the space, Jamie touches upon the current problems of the internet and these past innovations, in particular how big platforms and cloud providers have become. With European regulators trying to strive ahead to unbundle these mammoth platforms to protect the end consumer, Jamie shares how they are solving these problems and preparing for what consumers demand in the future.

If you’re a governance lover, Ahmed and Jamie discuss the concept of Pathway to Decentralisation. This is a really interesting concept and idea which proposes founders and projects to never codify assumptions early on and to keep some aspects centralised until their assumptions are validated. Jamie also shares their recent partnership with Smart Dubai and how they’re working together.

Ultimately, this awesome episode is all about the new internet, theorizing how it could play out and what's needed to realise the vision. What’s amazing is that this is all a socio-economic experiment and we have no idea what will happen.

All this and more on this week's episode of Encrypted.

Also, the legal bits for the soundtrack used in the podcast:
Music Credit: LAKEY INSPIRED

Track Name: Warm Nights

Music By: LAKEY INSPIRED @ https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired

Original upload HERE – https://soundcloud.com/lakeyinspired/warm-nights

License for commercial use: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported “Share Alike” (CC BY-SA 3.0) License.

Full License HERE – https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode

Special Guest: Jamie Burke.

Episode 29 is here! Ahmed sits down with Walid Daniel Dib from Addenda and Vivek Bhalla from Takaful Emarat.

What is insurance and what challenges does the industry face?
Ahmed starts off by questioning the two guests about what we mean by insurance and the challenges that the industry faces. Vivek touches on the concept of how sharing should be closely related to this industry and how it is a social responsibility to share risk, a principle held at Takaful Emarat.
Being described as an industry still with a stone age mentality, main challenges include: very low digital processes, engagement with customers is low, and fundamentally it’s all manual process orientated.

Collaboration is also a key challenge that Walid pointed citing that insurance companies find It harder to come together and would rather sit on their heaps of data and not doing anything with it.

Can blockchain help? And if so, how?
Well of course blockchain would be able to help, and Walid and Vivek cite many examples, both theoretical and practical applications that are currently being deployed. Do tune in to find out more!

Going corporate!
Walid cites the importance of private chains and what they offer over public blockchains, particularly in a corporate environment. Fun fact, Walid used to be a bitcoin maximalist before going corporate!
Part of this conversation entertained many questions such as: how to maintain trust in networks operated by, let’s say, a group of insurance companies? Another question is then, who is responsible for authenticating all this data and how is it structured? Do insurance companies have to remove all their old systems away? Ah yes, the burning questions needed for innovation to really happen are explored too!

Ok, but why does this all matter? How will I, as an end user, see any change?
Ahmed then steers the conversation to see why this all really matters and what the implications are for both end users and insurance companies.

Walid and Vivek cite further examples, both within a typical insurance transaction (that is usually coordinated between many parties), and also enterprises currently developing proof of concepts in industries like trade finance.

With authenticated data processed seamlessly and less reliance on manual processes, the biggest implication for end users are the cost of premiums should significantly drop.

B3I
B3I is a blockchain Insurance Industry Initiative that provides insurance solutions on a blockchain platform offering opportunities for efficiency, growth and quality across the value chain to benefit all participants including end customers.
This industry initiative is what Takaful Emarat is a part of to help realise the innovation blockchain brings to the insurance industry.

Lets talk convergence
Ahmed asks how AI, IoT and blockchain are able to come together to be able to provide far better value than what each technology can provide on its own. Yes, there will be an inflection point soon! Listen in on what the guests had to say.

The relationship between a start-up and a traditional player
We can see how amazed Ahmed is to see how a traditional player within this stone age like insurance industry is working closely with Walid’s start-up, and helping to drive innovation.

Walid first starts off talking about his experience in the Fintech Hive, a leading fintech accelerator in Dubai, and how their talks with traditional insurance players surprised them as they saw local players being a bit more open compared to the international insurance firms with regional offices. Vivek and Walid both talk about their experiences working with and engaging the regulators and ultimately describing how their partnership formed and how their work is evolving!

Well what an episode that was, do make sure to tune in as we talked about the above and much more!

If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and the other platforms. Don’t forget to support us by spreading the word!

Special Guests: Vivek Bhalla and Walid Daniel Dib.

In the 24th episode of Encrypted, Ahmed and Faisal were joined by a very special guest from the Middle Eastern bitcoin and blockchain community, Ola Doudin, CEO of Bitoasis.

Being the only exchange in the MENA region with on-ramp and off-ramp (i.e. exchange fiat for crypto and vice versa), Ola shares her background and past experiences before launching Bitoasis. We were impressed by it and we’re sure you will too!

First, we wanted to clear misconceptions and confusion around the ‘Virtual Currency’ ban in a policy paper that was issued by the UAE Central Bank in early 2017. With Bitoasis already being an established digital assets exchange, Ola explains how they reacted to this piece of news and how they made a clear path forward.

How can you get a crypto exchange license in the UAE?

This led the discussion to the subject of obtaining a crypto exchange license here in the UAE when there was no clear guidance or laws on running crypto asset exchanges. Ola explains their approach with licensing in the UAE, their approach with lawyers and regulators and most importantly, how they dealt with compliance. For those budding exchange entrepreneurs looking towards the MENA region, you’ll definitely learn a thing or two from Ola’s experience.

Oh and what about a bank account?

Getting bank accounts as a crypto company is not an easy task here in the UAE. Ola, however, has showcased to the region that it is doable. She explains the journey Bitoasis had with their banking relationships, the challenges they encountered and how they resolved them. Yes, relationships played a key role, but make sure to listen in to hear what else Bitoasis had up their sleeve to secure stable banking relationships for their exchange.

Ola emphasises that after the ADGM issued its exchange guidelines, regional banks have taken a more accommodating approach to banking crypto companies.

Regulatory and competitive landscape

Ola talks about her experiences engaging with regulators across the region and GCC stating that we are at a point where most crypto companies and exchanges have to classify themselves as a financial services companies and thus have to be regulated accordingly. Faisal tries to understand how Ola is trying to scale Bitoasis in the region as well as her thoughts on the regional crypto exchange competitive landscape as more exchanges are actively trying to set up shop in the UAE.

Bitoasis’ Demographics

Ola shares the demographics of Bitoasis’ platform; particularly the persona of their users and their most active regions. She also highlights that the main crypto communities are UAE, Saudi and Kuwait.

She also mentions that users are not only on the exchange to trade and invest but their users use their platform as a means of payment and micropayments through their wallet product.

Being a crypto entrepreneur in the Middle East – wait a female crypto entrepreneur

Here we try to understand Ola a bit more and how she persevered in a niche space during a time when blockchain and crypto was unheard of and typically rejected. Vision, their stakeholders, execution and being in the right city to experiment (want to hazard a guess where they experimented?) were the main factors behind their growth and success. This is an interesting part of the episode, so do make sure to tune in!

Decentralisation and data hacking

We diverted our discussion to data, how dangerous centralised data stores are for society and more specifically the paradigm shift that needs to occur to prevent incidents such as the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica case. Ola asks an interesting question: when a huge data leak happens, what is the role of government and public services?
We clearly see that it’s just a matter of time that these problems will be solved using blockchain. So if you like to hear about the philosophical side of blockchain and why it can solve the above problem, then you wouldn’t want to miss this one!

Building the infrastructure and what should be done in the region?

Ahmed asks Ola where does she see Bitoasis in 5 years time? Will they do an ICO, be an STO exchange etc?

‘Building the infrastructure; particularly the liquidity pool and education that’s needed to build an industry’ – was her answer. Very visionary and powerful!

Faisal follows up to hear Ola’s thoughts on what she thinks should be the government’s role to aid the industry and especially what should be done in the UAE and Dubai? Well, do tune in to find out.

As you can see, we talked about a lot of things and so all of the above and more will be on this week’s episode of Encrypted!

If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on iTunes and the other platforms. Don’t forget to support us by s...

The world is at the at the forefront of the token revolution. With the invention of non-fungible tokens, we have seen a lot of innovations and developments to find solutions to complex real-world problems.

In the episode, Ahmed sits down with Aniket, and they discuss the current happenings in the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) world.
The episode is centric towards explaining nonfungible tokens in a simple and easy to understand manner, highlighting the developments from the birth of NFTs till now.

They covered the applications of NFTs in gaming and other industries as well as current developments in the space around nonfungible tokens. They also shared some future trends and why NFTs can possibly be valuable in the future.

All of the above and more will be on this week’s episode of Encrypted!
If you liked what you heard, please do leave us a review on iTunes and the other platforms. Don’t forget to support us by spreading the word!

🎙️ We are so happy to share with you our anniversary, #100th episode of #Encrypted podcast, featuring Eowyn Chen, CEO of Trust Wallet, one of the largest multi-chain, non-custodial crypto wallets serving tens of millions globally, that has recently moved its headquarters to #Dubai! 🚀
💡This episode of Encrypted is powered by myco.io and sponsored by The #HBAR Foundation: https://www.hbarfoundation.org/
✅The HBAR Foundation cultivates vibrant economies and ecosystems on the Hedera network by providing financial, community, and marketing support for projects attracting millions of users and billions of dollars to the ecosystem!
🔎 In this episode, Eowyn shares her incredible journey from building Binance’s central marketing team to scaling Trust Wallet into a leader in Web3. With her unique perspective—rooted in history, finance, and tech—she dives into:
🔑 The Philosophy of 'Trust Yourself': How Trust Wallet empowers users in a decentralized world.
🌍 Blockchain Integration: The criteria and challenges behind supporting a vast ecosystem of blockchains.
🛡️ Security First: How Trust Wallet leads the way in safeguarding user funds across multiple blockchains.
🌐 The Future of Crypto Wallets: Eowyn’s vision of a Web3 experience akin to the “Amazon of Web3.”
💡 New Innovations: From decentralized ‘Launchpool’ features to UI/UX upgrades that cater to both beginners and pros.
📜 Regulatory Readiness: Balancing compliance while staying true to decentralization.
🎤 Eowyn also opens up about Trust Wallet’s independence from Binance, the profitability challenges in the wallet space, and the role of education in combating Web3 social engineering risks.
📺 🎧 Watch and listen now to hear Eowyn's insights and explore the exciting future of self-custody and Web3!
👉 Link to the episode: [Insert link]
🙌Let us know your thoughts on this inspiring discussion and how you see crypto wallets evolving! 💬

EncryptedPodcast #TrustWallet #DubaiBlockchainCenter #Myco #Hedera #Hbar #HbarFoundation #Web3 #Blockchain #CryptoInnovation #SelfCustody #TrustYourself #Security

Special Guest: Eowyn Chen.