Digital Wealth News is pleased to bring you our “Fintech Luminaries” series – featuring thought leaders within the blockchain and digital wealth space. For the next feature in this series, we’d like you to meet Christian Kameir, Managing Partner of Sustany Capital, a blockchain venture fund headquartered in Newport Beach, CA.
NAME: Christian Kameir
TITLE: Managing Partner
COMPANY: Sustany Capital
WEB ADDRESS: https://sustany.co
How did you personally become involved in blockchain?
After recognizing that a handful of for-profit corporations had centralized the Internet, I started a paper outlining premises for a sustainable re-design of the world wide web in 2014. When I stumbled over the Bitcoin Whitepaper, it struck me the most that decentralized nature of blockchains could play a central role in reclaiming the web as an intellectual commons. I started consuming every new whitepaper in the blockchains space and later on led several teams to execute their own initial coin offerings.
What does your firm do/offer within the blockchain sector?
Sustany Capital invests venture capital into blockchain technology businesses.
What is your role within your firm and what do you do there on any given day?
Sustany Capital receives as many as one hundred funding and consulting requests per month. I oversee a team of analyst and project managers who perform due diligence and industry reports for our management team.
What area/s of blockchain do you believe will grow the most in the coming 5 years?
Global finance and banking infrastructure, identity management, asset management, insurance, governance (corporate and municipal).
What do you believe the next major innovation in financial technology will be and why?
Decentralized autonomous corporations (DECs) could reshape how business is being conducted worldwide. For-profit corporations are inherently hampered by the diverging interests of a mutlitude of stakeholders such as operators, employees, shareholders etc. If the first attempt to create a decentralized venture fund (The DAO) had not been hacked it would be a $5 billion funding vehicle today. As Bitcoin has proven, decentralized autonomous organizations are more resilient and allow for the alignment of interest of all stakeholders.
What are the biggest problems facing the blockchain industry in the future?
The true strength of blockchains can be seen in the decentralization of technology and ownership, creating new marketplaces with price-discovery functions uninhibted by middleman. To preserve these functions, blockchains must provide longterm sustainable token-economics that align the interests of all participants. The biggest problem facing the blockchain industry today can therefore be seen in a) distributed ledgers operated by incumbants posing as blockchain (when they are indeed centralized); b) ineffective incentive mechanism which allow a limited number of parties to overpower the collective of a given platform.
What blockchain leader do you admire the most and why?
Satoshi Nakamoto. By making the software for Bitcoin open source and not taking credit for its creation, the individual or group allowed the blockchain to stand on its own merrits while allowing enthusiasts to take ownership of essential function such as coding and mining.
How do you feel businesses are adapting to the facet of blockchain that your company operates within?
With few exceptions, the venture capital community has been slow to embrace the possibilities of what blockchain technology could mean for capital formation and portfolio companies.
Christian Kameir is Managing Partner at blockchain venture fund Sustany Capital. Christian has been a tech entrepreneur since the dial-up days and his current focus is tokenization strategies and smart-contracts and virtual asset investing. He holds a law degree from the University of Muenster. Christian is an official member of Forbes Finance Council and seasoned public speaker on topics ranging from high-tech investing to blockchain technologies. You can follow Christian at @sustanycapital on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.
