Stefan Matthews Speaks about Blockchain Technology on “Hashing It Out” Ep 3

TAAL’s CEO and executive chairman of nChain Group, Stefan Matthews participated in the latest episode of Calvin Ayre’s new show Hashing it Out. As a professional with nearly 20 years of experience within the gambling industry, Matthews discussed how BSV technology may be beneficial for regulators and the whole gambling industry.

Stefan Matthews Speaks about Blockchain Technology

Last month, for the premiere episode of “Hashing it Out“, Calvin Ayre, Ayre Group and CoinGeek’s founder spoke about the future of blockchain technology within the gambling industry. Now, earlier this week, the executive chairman and CEO of TAAL, who also happens to be executive chairman of nChain Group, and executive committee member at Bitcoin Association, Stefan Matthews participated in the third episode of “Hashing it Out” with Becky Liggero Fontana. In the latest episode, Matthews described how the industry can benefit from Bitcoin SV (BSV) blockchain technology.

Why Is BSV Possibly the Best Blockchain Platform?

According to Matthews, currently, more online gambling and gaming applications are moving to blockchain. However, he acknowledged that previously, those applications could not “actually sit on Ethereum or BTC” platforms simply because of scaling issues. Matthews stressed that, unlike other platforms, Bitcoin SV or BSV doesn’t have any such scaling issues. He did not miss mentioning that the “extremely low” transaction cost combined with high-scaling capabilities truly reveals that BSV holds incredible potential. Comparing BSV to other platforms reveals an “enormous differentiation“, added Matthews.

“And of course, I’m lucky enough now to be working with a platform, Bitcoin SV or BSV, which doesn’t have those scaling issues.”

Stefan Matthews

Furthermore, he mentioned that some professionals within the gambling industry are questioning whether it is profitable (due to fees) to run every single piece of data via blockchain. Here, Matthews explained that not every single transaction is necessary to be directed to the chain.

“And the way to design that, of course, is through overlay networks that connect to the chain and you go to all your time and date stamps and everything else, which are completely immutable, that can be used for audit purposes and so on and so forth.”

Stefan Matthews

Instead, he said that with the use of an overlay network solution, the benefits from “time stamping of transactions on the chain” can be captured, while at the same time, all of the data don’t need to be “physically on the main chain”.

Before taking down the road to BSV technology, Matthews was a part of the gambling industry for nearly 20 years. In his interview, Matthews recalled how he met Dr. Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre, while he was still involved in the gambling industry.

Regulators to Benefit from BSV

Focusing on the benefits which BSV may bring to the gambling industry, Matthews said that he is rather surprised that regulators have not shown greater interest in the technology. According to him, one of the reasons why there’s little interest is that regulators may be unaware that BSV blockchain may be used for building a “fully regulatory compliant monitoring system for licensees”. With that in mind, he predicted that it will not take long before gambling operators and regulators start understanding the technology. Furthermore, Matthews said that there have been multiple discussions at nChain on that topic.

How Matthews Met Ayre and Dr. Wright

Matthews remembered that while working at Centrebet back in 2006, he first met Dr. Wright. The company was undergoing an IPO on the Australian Stock Exchange and this is when Matthews was introduced to an audit team and Dr. Wright was one of the few members.

“The man used to sit down and talk to me about all things about digital currencies, e-currencies, digital gold and a lot of technology related to that,”

explained Matthews.

Although Dr. Wright and Matthews did not work directly, they collaborated with team members for 4-5 months. Upon completion of the IPO, Dr. Wright “engaged with Centrebet in a different way“. Matthews remembers how he spoke personally to Wright who shared some of his ideas. He acknowledged that in the beginning, he couldn’t understand what Wright was working on.

Besides Dr. Wright, Matthews remembered how he first met Ayre. In early 2010, he left Centrebet, when the company was acquired by Sportingbet. After that Matthews joined Bodog Group and consequently met Ayre.

The Creation of nChain Group

In episode three of “Hashing it Out”, Matthews described how nChain Group was created. He remembered that once he decided to leave the gambling industry, he was approached by Dr. Wright via a phone call. Matthews remembered that Dr. Wright said that he was sick of running businesses, companies, or dealing with human resources. Additionally, Dr. Wright said that he wanted to generate ideas and pass them to people, who can build those ideas into solutions. According to Matthews, this was the “fateful phone call” that resulted in the creation of nChain Group. After that, he revealed that Dr. Wright moved to London with his family, and he continues to create ideas day after day, while a team of more than 200 professionals from nChain Group are creating new solutions with those ideas.

Mining Compared to an Online Casino Operation

Besides the ties that nChain has with the gambling industry, Matthews revealed that there may be parallels between the gambling industry and TAAL, which is a “specialized mining company or enterprise blockchain transaction processor“. In the interview, he compared mining to the online gaming sector. Matthews pointed out that when he got involved in mining back in 2015, he witnessed how mining operations are set up. He added that back then, he understood that those operations were “no different to running an online casino“.

Matthews acknowledged that a mining operation features the same mechanics as running an online casino with 5000 slot machines. He added that in machine learning, which is a process also known as hashing, the machines are programmed to generate a certain return. If no return is observed, an investigation is conducted to determine what the reason is.

“There’s no doubt in my mind some of the things that we’re thinking about around machine learning and AI will definitely converge into design and product areas that we’re working on over the next few years.”

Stefan Matthews

According to Matthews, processes such as scamming and “milking” means machines are being broken or influenced, thus not generating the hash. In other words, he revealed how negative processes may impact a mining operation in a similar way that they could impact an online gambling operation.

Last but not least, Matthews unveiled that mining companies such as TAAL are currently looking into the options of converging blockchain technology and artificial intelligence (AI). He added that it is yet to be determined how the combination of those two technologies may bring a competitive advantage.