BC Business
Founder and CEO
AGE: 29
COMPANY: BTL Group Ltd.
The story: Blockchain technology is one of the biggest ideas starting to transform digital finance. It’s the foundation for cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, but few people understand how it works, and even fewer have tried to use it for other purposes. So as a leading thinker in the field, Blockchain Technology Ltd. founder and CEO Guy Halford-Thompson educates enterprises and guides them through the development of blockchain-based business applications. Essentially, the blockchain is a computer network that acts as a public, digital ledger to record transactions. Beginning in 2009, cryptocurrencies were the first and most widely known applications for the blockchain, but BTL is working with large (undisclosed) financial institutions and other companies to unlock the technology’s vast, untapped potential to increase security, reduce counterfeiting and reduce transaction costs. Halford-Thompson’s firm is nearly as old as its technology, opening its doors in June 2015. The Eton College and Durham University graduate keeps an office in London’s Canary Wharf but prefers to work from his adopted home city of Vancouver.
Markers of success: BTL has raised $2 million in funding, and consults for some of the world’s leading financial institutions.
PHOTO: ADAM BLASBERG