Richard O’Dell Poulden, Chairman

Following a law degree from Oxford University, Mr. Poulden qualified as a Barrister, after which he moved into merchant banking where he worked for Samuel Montagu & Co Limited. Following an MBA at the London Business School and an exchange program with Harvard Business School, he joined the international management consultancy firm, Arthur D Little, where he worked in their European strategy practice. He was also co-founder of its Financial Industries Group. He served in the UK Leadership Team of Electronic Data Systems where he worked on developing new financial structures for the sale of Electronic Data Systems services. He has founded or co-founded successful companies in healthcare, retail and natural resources and in all these sectors he has executed successful strategies for growth by acquisition. Mr Poulden is Chairman of AIM traded Wishbone Gold PLC and Chairman of Black Swan plc.

Patrick Lyle Young, Executive Director

Mr Young wrote the first bestselling book of fintech “Capital Market Revolution!” (FT 1999) and has been working online since 1994. He is the former CEO of SIBEX Sibiu Stock Exchange, a European board member of the then world’s largest institutional marketplace, Liquidnet, he chaired the Blockchain Malta Association and the Global Financial Services Centres Conference as well as serving on the board of the Swiss Futures & Options Association.

Mr Young publishes the daily newsletter of the bourse business “Exchange Invest” and has advised many of the world’s leading exchanges. He has written/edited 10 books and published over 2000 articles including OpEds in AFR, Boersen Zeitung, FT and the Wall Street Journal.

Alan David Gravett, Non-Executive Director

Mr Gravett commenced employment with Barclays Bank Trust Company Limited, (then Barclays Bank Executor and Trustee Department), in 1965 achieving the Trustee Diploma of the Institute of Bankers in 1973. By 1986 he had become manager of their Gibraltar operation, dealing with the administration of companies and trusts, leaving in 1988 and remaining in Gibraltar to join a large local trust corporation. In 1993 he became an executive director of a smaller local trust corporation and remained there for 18 years leaving when the trust corporation was sold. He is now a freelance consultant based in Gibraltar but continues to be closely involved with company and trust structures for a wide range of international clients.

Vinay Gupta, Chairman of the Advisory Board

Vinay Gupta is Founder and CEO of Mattereum which has developed specialist NFTs. These tokens are backed by an underlying physical asset paired with Mattereum Asset Passports, resulting in a universal framework for uploading physical goods to the Internet, where they can be secured, governed, traded, and utilized globally. Mattereum is the leading provider of NFT technology. He is a leading figure in the blockchain space, having co-ordinated the release of the blockchain platform Ethereum in July 2015, and was strategic architect for ConsenSys Systems, a technology hub focusing on the Ethereum blockchain and related applications.

He helped architect the National Blockchain Strategy for Dubai. He has been involved in commercial software development since 1992, with long stints in energy policy and defence think tanks, and his experience as a programmer and visionary has covered fields as diverse as medical imaging, flight simulation, cryptographic applications and the web, as well as energy policy, disaster relief, and grand strategy for poverty alleviation.