‘Cyprus has the human capital in technology to contract for work abroad” — Electi Consulting CEO

“Blockchain technology follows the so called Gartner’s Hype Cycle that all nascent technologies go through. A lot of hype initially, many promises, people trying to invest or make money out of this technology in a quite aggressive way. A lot of noise, and the benefits aren’t clear.. But now blockchain is more mature, and we have clear use cases, and applications with substantial value-added, explains Dr Theodosis Mourouzis (Managing Director at Electi Consulting – a technology consulting boutique focusing on Blockchain and AI, Founder  of Cyprus Blockchain Technologies – a think tank for emerging technologies, Industry Associate at UCL Centre for Blockchain Technologies and Associate Professor of Business Intelligence and Data Analytics at CIIM).

Governments were very sceptical about Blockchain technology in the past, especially because of its association with cryptocurrencies. Thus, the first attempts were to ban Blockchain or regulate it, as well as its technology “derivatives”. However, as  Blockchain’s benefits became better understood, along with  the fact that Blockchain and cryptocurrencies are not the same concept, the majority of the governments have launched a Blockchain strategy. They are now trying to adopt Blockchain technology in order to improve the public sector operations/offerings as well as to understand how digital currencies and especially tokenisation can be used to improve the financial services sectors and the economy in general.  Two years ago, the government of Cyprus had created an ad hoc committee for exploring blockchain applications in two dimensions: Legal and regulatory aspect and technical applications of blockchain in the public sector.

 Blockchain in use appeared first in the Bitcoin whitepaper, where it was deployed as the backbone accounting ledger of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Almost immediately after this,  many uses for Blockchain that went way beyond cryptocurrencies became apparent, Mourouzis points out.

 “Blockchain helps in certain use cases, for example, when we have lots of parties involved in transactions (like cross border transactions or supply-chain examples). It helps us to put all stakeholders on a single platform for better orchestration, removing  inefficiencies and providing better visibility.. It is the technology that can orchestrate and organise multiple parties offering at the same time transparency of the status and state of the ecosystem, enhanced security and capabilities of automation.

In Cyprus we have the government, academic, private sector but also individuals interested in this technology. Government is working on its Blockchain strategy, universities offer courses in the field and we have also the Cyprus Blockchain Technologies, which is a not-for-profit corporate think tank, which has as a mission to bring all big industrial stakeholders to the table to discuss applying blockchain in use cases and also influencing the government and society in the right direction about these kind of new technologies.”

There are indeed good examples of these uses cases, Mourouzis says.

“At Electi, one of our strategic pillars is Blockchain technology. We have experience in applications of this technology in many sectors such as retail, IP protection, financial services, shipping sector, custodian solutions etc. For example we have designed a custody solution for securing digital assets for a UK based client.. Digital assets are very important today: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, all these are players entering into this space and have their offerings.  Also, we’ve built other solutions focusing on combating forgeries on certificates and documents. ”

In terms of new technologies, Cyprus has the supply, and there is extensive demand from abroad, according to Mourouzis.

“In terms of supply, with new technologies, we are talking about intellectual human capital. I’m glad to say that in Cyprus, there are many very well-educated people. So in terms of human resource, we are at a very good level, you can find people that are very, very good with any technology of interest. Unfortunately, we don’t have the analogous industry demand here in Cyprus. However, the internet makes it possible to leverage the demand from abroad. In more technologically advanced countries like the US, United Kingdom, or Germany, there is a big shortage/gap of such talent — they cannot find data scientists, they cannot find blockchain engineers, etc.”

Mourouzis does expect the government to play a role in attracting more technology companies to the island.

“The government at some point is expected to invest more in tech infrastructure. If they design/offer the right incentives, big tech firms/giants might be interested to run offices in our island. This is what happens in Greece now. Greece has been very successful in attracting companies like Amazon, Microsoft etc for running also operations and R&D departments. Thus the government  is definitely playing a very important role in the transformation of the island, because by giving the proper incentives, having the proper legislation, regulations, they can incentivise other companies come to Cyprus.”