ICON CAPITAL RESERVE SA (“ICON”) established in 2013 to empower UHNW and Family Office Private Clients to create, trade and reserve value using Gold and the Blockchain has agreed to acquire 5% of BIOHAX INTERNATIONAL (“BHX”) also established in 2013, as a leading Blockchain powered company offering human embeddable technology protecting digital identity.
Jowan Osterlund, Founder and CEO of BHX noted “Peo Stromberg, who leads Business Development for Hedera in Europe connected ICON CEO Brad and I and something just clicked, as we spoke for 90 minutes on our first call discussing various pains and cures in technology and how solving the KYC challenge was a company maker for those that figure it out. Brad quickly understood that our injectable biochips provide immutable KYC and rather that being about big brother or conceding control, the BMX solution offers complete sovereignty over identity which is powerful. Relatively quickly, Brad suggested investing in BHX and we jumped at the chance to align and also pick up some shares in ICON. We have also taken onboard his montra of ‘the future has arrived it just isn’t evenly distributed’ and are benefiting from his subtle guidance as we enroll new customers and investors.”
J. Bradley Hall, Founder and CEO of ICON commented “Jowan was facing a potentially lethal threat that many highly disruptive innovations face, namely fear. Technology is not good or evil, it simple enables. When German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press 376 years ago, I don’t believe he was trying to topple the important information repositories that Churches, Temples and Mosques represented however, the leaders then certainly thought so. In spite of resistance, knowledge became decentralized, manifesting the Age of Enlightenment. The Chinese used Gutenberg’s tool to create precious metal backed, printed money and fused it with their own innovation, gunpowder to create inter-generational wealth and dynasties.”
Jowan added “When I described the frenzied excitement or frightened response I get from those first exposed to our injectable chip sets, Brad laughed out loud and noted that was the same response he got when he began advocating for a pending fusion of Gold and Blockchain that would become AUREALS™, a 1 gram weight and measure of fully reserved, digital Gold. He said when keynoting global, family office events starting in 2013 ‘Most of the audiences thought I had just beamed down from another planet’ and that he could relate to what we were going through. He decided to back my vision in a small but meaningful way and said ‘Together, let’s put the power of identity back where it belongs’.”
Brad observed “Identity and KYC are certainly hot buttons but I believe that focusing on the Blockchain as some sort of magic, is misguided. It is like giving a 5 year old a mobile phone without a network connection. After about a minute, what was cool becomes useless, unless you add a connectivity. IBM’s PC’s were ornaments until Microsoft (MS) offered them DOS and then changed the game, when they embedded Windows software on OEM devices. Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee created the ultimate geek club with the World Wide Web but the internet was unleashed when Netscape re-imagined his browser and Google began to index the treasure trove of information. The next wave of innovation is being constructed with distributed ledger technology (DLT) but simple ledger entries that act like ‘claim checks with nothing to claim’ will revert to their intrinsic value of zero, as Voltaire noted all fiat currencies do and powerful replacements representing assets and cash-flows will take center stage.”
In closing Hall noted “I think it was Bill Gates who said ‘There will always be banking but not necessarily banks.’ There is a bit of an arms race going on in financial services and in particular in payments where DLT based solutions like AUREALS™ are disrupting incumbents as the command and control hierarchies of the last 70 years begin to decay and implode under their own weight. In terms of Gold, a trusted store of value with a 6000 year legacy, I think Ray Dalio founder of Bridgewater Associates put it best when he said ‘Those who don’t allocate 10% of their portfolios to Gold, don’t understand history, economics or probably both.’ It seems the future has arrived and IT IS getting a little more evenly distributed.”
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About ICON:
ICON CAPITAL RESERVE SA was established in 2013 to empower UHNW and Family Office Private Clients to create, trade and reserve value using GOLD and the Blockchain. ICON is built on a foundation of Security, Discretion and Trust.
The Company has fully invested in future-proof software and encryption to create AUREALS™, a fusion of GOLD and the Blockchain that insulates holders from currency, institutional and systemic hazard.
ICON has established successful Private Client relationships in Europe, Asia, GCC, CIS and the Americas (excluding the USA) for several years. AUREALS™ were initially built with the Colored Coin Protocol of the Blockchain and have been updated, now offering AUREALS™ (ERC20) and CINTAMANI™ (ERC721) as smart contracts on Ethereum.
The Company has begun aggregating a USD$500m war chest to establish DLT leadership through a buy and build strategy built around AUREALS™ a fully Gold reserved, digital clearing and global reserve currency.
About BIOHAX INTERNATIONAL:
BHX started when Redhat Magnus Glantz and Jowan Österlund implanted biosafe NFC circuits for proof of concept. From the novelty of being able to open a door or activate a smart home, to hands-free checking out from the cafeteria the goal is to eventually eliminate the need for plastic cards and other disconnected physical tokens of identity and proof of value. In addition to ICON, BHX has secured partnerships and strategic alliances with companies like distributed ledger leader Hedera Hashgraph, and Verisec, a Swedish company providing secure Global E-ID.