IBM Blockchain Pulse

This week on the IBM Blockchain Pulse, your host, Matt Hooper, explores a totally unique use case of blockchain. He’s joined by his guest, Shaun Frankson, co-founder and CTO of The Plastic Bank. Together with his co-founding partner and the CEO of The Plastic Bank, David Katz, they’re working on converting ocean plastic into forms of currency. They’re creating a reward system for people to earn and spend plastic bank digital tokens — and using blockchain to realize this vision. This is a real-life, totally innovative example of blockchain being used for social good.   What Shaun and his co-founder David have created is nothing short of remarkable. They’ve created a new system of value. And is that not what blockchain can be at its most exciting?   Tune in to learn about all the good that The Plastic Bank has been up to in the past several years, the origin of their company, their mission statement and current goals, how blockchain is utilized in their company, and more!   Key Takeaways: [:01] About today’s ep

Today’s episode is an exciting one — it’s the first time since episode one that your host, Matt Hooper, is interviewing someone from IBM Blockchain. Kathryn Harrison is the Director of Global Product Management for IBM Blockchain Platform. She’s responsible for understanding what’s happening in blockchain all around the world, figuring out how IBM can build technology and products that help to solve different companies’ problems with blockchain, and then actually pulling together all the different parts of IBM to actually build that product and take it out to market. It’s a very exciting job!   [CTA Button][What is blockchain? Download the free eBook Blockchain for Dummies]   In this episode, Kathryn talks about her position as the Director of Global Product Management, her passion for blockchain, and the IBM Blockchain Platform. She also explains whether blockchain is a platform or a protocol, what exactly a platform is, if blockchain is a “fundamentally economic innovation” as she’s said in the past, as w

Welcome to the second episode of IBM Blockchain Pulse — the podcast that explores different blockchain use cases with leaders in the space! In this week’s episode, your host, Matt Hooper, is joined by two leaders — Jesse Lund and Jed McCaleb — to discuss cross-border payments. Their conversation today is all about financial transactions — making them frictionless, seamless, and available for everyone. Jed McCaleb is the co-founder and CTO of Stellar.org — a platform that connects banks, payment systems, and people. Their goal is to make money move around the world the way information does, post-internet. Jesse Lund is the Head of Blockchain Solutions for Financial Services at IBM. Currently, he and his team are trying to commercialize all the good that Jed is doing with Stellar by helping bring commercial and cross-border payments to the world using the Stellar protocol. Today’s interview is incredibly illuminating. They discuss the origin of the collaboration between Stellar and IBM, what they’re currently w

Welcome to the first episode of IBM Blockchain Pulse with your host (and blockchain evangelist), Matt Hooper!   Blockchain is one of the pioneering innovations of our time — it may be the pioneering innovation of our time and too few people know about it. If you are one of those people — that’s okay! This podcast will be centralized around illustrating practical blockchain use cases guided by leaders across multiple industries. From financial services to trade, to tracing the safety of your next meal, to purchasing a ticket to your next concert — blockchain is transforming lives — and not soon. Now.   In this episode, host and blockchain evangelist Matthew Hooper is bringing you a use case near and dear to his heart: identity. How many times have credit cards been hacked where they need to be canceled immediately? How many times have emails and social media accounts been tampered with? As more and more people put their personal information online, it’s come to be expected that more and more bad actors ar