A landmark hackaton organised by the StartupWiseGuys and Swedbank Latvia innovation centre at the behest of the Ministry of Economics and the Latvian State Revenue Service concluded on Sunday the 7 of April 2019.

The event was the first of its kind in the central Baltic country. The purpose spelled an opportunity for one of the startup teams to have a chance to develop a blockchain based solution for Latvian “online cash register” and “tax fraud” prevention solutions. Other categories included less focused interest fields as “big data” and “modern technologies and digital transformation”.

7 successfully formed teams managed to accomplish 7 solid projects at the end of 48h hackaton race, which started on Friday night 5 April. A cluster of well chosen mentors from PwC Latvia and the Latvian State services were present over the weekend to help the teams get ahead with the tasks. A handful of judges included Liza Aizupiete, Managing Director of Fintelum; Anatoly Ressin, CEO of Blockvis; Toby Moore of Imprimatur Capital; and Nikolai Johan Heum of Finstart Nordic, as well as three representatives of the state services.

In a heated discussion among the members of the jury, a winning team zbook.tax won prises for two categories, namely “the best technical solution” and “most applicable product (for the use case and State Revenue). Whereas the international team behind existing product request.network took home the best pitch category. In the category of the "biggest progress achieved", a newly formed team consisted only of two young bright hackers who came up with an idea and a working concept for Tax4crypto solution. Two teams – Paperless and MDS were included in the StartupWiseGuys pre-accelerator program. And participation prises went to the well accomplished Latvian project WatchDog and SmartBills.

The winners zbook.tax have been awarded a 10 hours of consultation with the state revenue service and 8 hours of consultation with the PwC Latvia in order to help the team to attempt to deliver their product to completion. The biggest progress achieved category will also benefit form 10 hours of consultation with the State Revenue Service (VID) in order to elaborate their software solution to streamline SRS (VID) needs. The achievement of Tax4crypto solution already features integrated global cryptocurrency exchanges that can access records of individual crypto asset holdings for reporting to the state revenue service.



