Richard Olsen, the finance legend, has discussed blockchain exchanges with IT students and young professionals at a fintech lab in Perm. He shared his view of how the technology can change the global market.

The annual Perm Winter School took place in one of the Russia’s administrative centres. The agenda of this year’s School included the discussion of financial networks, market microstructure design, blockchain protocols, risk management and regulation.

The organisers managed to attract a number of prominent speakers, including Richard Olsen, the founder of Oanda, one of the top forex exchanges, and an innovative trade platform LykkeX that trades all classes of assets and financial instruments issued in a form of Colored Coins. Lykke uses blockchain to offer access to financial market from anywhere in the world. In turn, Lykke Wallet provides personal ownership and direct trading of multiple assets.

Olsen is known for his emotional way to deliver the message and his unorthodox ideas. This conference was not an exception – calling the existing financial system “a pile of spaghetti” due to its isolation, non-transparency and high costs, Olsen explained the benefits that blockchain provides. From his point of view, blockchain’s trust machine turns out to be a seminal breakthrough for global marketplace design. Three main components contribute to that: global notary service (blockchain itself), standardised securitisation (Colored Coins) and digital signatures/encryption (wallet).

CoinFox reported earlier on the concept of the PWS. Official website also provides more details on the event.

Anna Lavinskaya