The Akron Legal News

Ohio State alumnus provides insight on bitcoin eco-system

BRANDON KLEIN
Special to the Legal News
Published: November 2, 2017

Jad Mubaslat said it "so long ago" when he founded, grew and sold his bitcoin exchange company last year.

Since then, Ohio had minimal activity related to the blockchain technology that transfers bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies, The Ohio State University alumnus said.

"But in the past six months ... things are definitely getting more interesting in Ohio," Mubaslat said.

He referenced Columbus-based Rev1 Ventures, which works with a few blockchain-related startup companies.

The organization also hosted a "Rise of The Rest" event when AOL co-founder Steve Case awarded $100,000 to SafeChain, a local startup that provides a blockchain solution to eliminate title fraud and redundancies in real estate transactions, from his Washington-based investment firm.

"The event was validation that national leaders in entrepreneurship and venture capital recognize the great things happening in Columbus," Rev 1 Ventures Chief Executive Officer Tom Walker stated in a blog post.

But it also signals the upcoming disruption blockchain technology could bring to several industries.

"Bitcoin is just a small fraction of this blockchain movement," Mubaslat said. "The underlying technology will allow us to move data in a more secure manner."

Although blockchain technology illicit some privacy concerns, developers are addressing that issue, he said.

Ultimately, blockchain could be the way people's health records are transferred securely.

Credit scores could be stored securely on the blockchain "instead of Equifax's database," Mubaslat said, referencing the credit rating company's data breach.

On the other hand, it's unlikely that Americans will adopt bitcoin for everyday transactions because credit cards and internet make transactions fast and easy for consumers.

But residents in Third World countries in South America and Africa are more likely to adopt the practice, Mubaslat said.

"Unfortunately the actual consumer adoption has really kind of been lagging, especially in Ohio," he said.

Mubaslat once purchased haircuts with bitcoins at a barbershop in the Short North. But the shop eventually stopped the practice. It use to have a bitcoin ATM that transferred to a different location in central Ohio.

Columbus now has four Bitcoin ATMs, according to Coin ATM Radar website.

In 2013, Mubaslat was a junior at Ohio State when "bitcoin had caught my eye," he said.

The biomedical engineering student thought he could become the next "Wolf of Wall Street" for cryptocurrencies because of its volatility, but acquiring bitcoins was difficult enough without counting the number of times Mubaslat was scammed.

Eventually, he bought a "bare-bones" online exchange that would turn bitcoins into dollars and vice-versa for $300.

"It was the best investment I ever made," he said.

Mubaslat received help from his roommate, Chad Davis, and they grew the online exchange to what became known as BitQuick. They went to California and raised $1.6 million in seed money before selling the company to a Chicago-based bitcoin ATM company.

"I want to do more personally than just operate an exchange that trades bitcoins for dollars," Mubaslat said.

After selling BitQuick, he went to work as part-time software developer and studied blockchain applications in health care for his master's degree in industrial and human factors engineering at Wright State University.

With plans to graduate in December, Mubaslat is seriously considering to remain in Ohio as the startup scene rapidly matures and technology makes geography almost irrelevant.

"It also presents an interesting opportunity to be sort of a big fish in a small pool," he said. "Whereas if you go out to the Silicon Valley, everyone's doing cryptocurrency. Everyone's doing blockchain. But if you stay in Ohio, there's an opportunity to be a leader. Especially in a space that is so technology driven, it's kind of difficult to make the argument that you need to be geographically located in some certain area."

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