The concept of identity is quite a polarising one in cryptocurrency. People forget sometimes that Bitcoin grew out of a niche corner of the Internet, birthed from ultra-libertarian ideals with self-sovereignty, anonymity and independence central to the thesis. 

Of course, cryptocurrency has involved beyond Bitcoin, and today we have numerous different views and thousands of projects, some with similar goals, some with differing ones. 

Concordium is a layer-1 blockchain project which embeds encrypted ID into every transaction that occurs on the network. This is intriguing because it goes against what some purists would describe as the original Bitcoin vision. 

We sat down for a quick mini-podcast with Concordium CEO Lone Fonss Schroder to get more of an insight into this, who says that “a lot of business does materialise because you do not know who you are transacting with”, and asserts that this identity is vital to gain trust in the space.  

Other topics such as whether regulation is a positive thing (another thing that may send maxis into a fit), the strengths of decentralisation and the current market environment were discussed, and while time constraints prevented Dan and Joe digging into Schroder’s answers too deeply, they’ll be put on the agenda for next time.