Independent interview with CoinPublish.com

Questions have been raised time and again about the future of Blockchain IPOs as Security Token Offerings (STOs) and people related to cryptocurrency. We have not left any stone unturned to find people who are actually making a difference in the industry. The team got the chance to interview one such young and dynamic entrepreneur and had loads of questions to ask and answers to look forward to. I spoke to Mohammed El-Masri of PermainChain Technologies regarding the details of his life’s task and how he keeps up with the continuous changes happening in the industry.

Mohammed El-Masri always had a flare of entrepreneurship even during his undergraduate years at Concordia University in Montreal, where he developed a great interest in Economics and Banking which gave him a clearer outlook on the rest of his life’s journey. Though he started his career as a Telemarketer at a Manulife Securities office in Canada until he realized the thriving potential for investment advisors in the Gulf region were he started working with a leading investment firm in Riyadh, KSA. After that experience there was no stopping for Mohammed El-Masri, he kept on climbing the ladder of success by leading and heading Business Development and Corporate Finance departments for organizations which requested for his services. As he always wanted, he founded ArabianGulfInvestment.com. Now, he Co-Founded PermainChain Technologies.

When I spoke to him, I had a number of questions in my mind, but due to limited time, I had to pick a few important ones. Though they were just a few questions, I am happy to say every answer was satisfactory and gave me a better understanding of him as a person.

Let me just begin by asking what was the inspiration that made you be a part of the Blockchain/Crypto domain?

My passion for unlocking the truth naturally brings such breakthroughs on my radar. My personal mission to fostering a global virtual world where equality of opportunity and equality of possibility is attainable makes Blockchain technology very much an interesting societal and global breakthrough. I see its potential to distribute new wealth for the commonwealth. Cryptocurrency and crypto asset-classes can make this possible. A decentralized autonomous world where we are all governed by a coded constitution that is tamper-proof and programmed with inclusion and consensus at its core. That is a world I want to be a part of. A world where every sincere reasonable and truthful voice is considered.

A noble thought, but why is it that people in just a few countries are welcoming the Blockchain technology with open arms and there are a lot of countries which are against cryptocurrency?

I cannot speak from the perspective of other countries. However, my understanding is that blockchain is inevitable. It is the new internet. See… when the internet was first created, it was created as a communication protocol. It eventually allowed for the world to communicate instantaneously. Today blockchain brings us the new internet as a transaction-protocol.. where the world can send money and value to one another instantaneously. Something the internet couldn’t do in the past. Now some countries are accepting this revolutionary shift of power to new capital and have decided to adapt and adopt. Other countries are just slower to adapt and adopt as it all depends on the strength of their existing regulatory frameworks… I believe that in the places where corruption is the highest they will take longer to adopt blockchain than other less corrupt and more advanced countries.

Do you think Blockchain will change the face of existing technologies? How is PermainChain Technologies connected to such change?

Not ALL businesses necessarily require to implement blockchain. It really depends on the ultimate purpose of the business model in question. However, I believe most, if not all financial, investment, trading, and other movements of value (i.e. data) are being revolutionized by blockchain. For example; our team at PermianChain Technologies is developing a Trust-as-a-Service (TaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that uses blockchain as business model enabler to. allow proof of data and focus on oil trading & investment. We provide investors access to an inaccessible private equity asset class. We use blockchain for transparency, investor inclusion to look out for their interests, for ease of trading & investing in oil projects via smart-contracts and to facilitate a higher level of liquidity in a crypto-economic model.

What are your thoughts on a governing body to regulate cryptocurrency circulation?

Every jurisdiction should impose regulatory frameworks that exercise proper oversight over the industry to avoid fraudulent activities and to safeguard investors from highly volatile and a highly exposed market. To be honest, I would much rather trust the authorities than the corporations that have taken advantage of global capitalism over the years. I mean the same people and corporations that brought us into various financial crises will continue to do so if proper regulations are not imposed upon the global crypto market.

Since you have supported smaller enterprises, Do you think Micro and Medium enterprises can use blockchain to their benefit? How would you suggest them to do so?

Yes, they can. I believe by adopting blockchain into their business operations and their business models early-on they will see the rewards from the benefits. They can benefit from efficiencies, like lower costs by eliminating or reducing paper-based transactions, faster payment methods which could reduce a company’s working capital gap, proper accounting and reporting that happens in real-time, live and permanent inventory registry and more… in the future, Decentralized Autonomous Enterprises (which I can explain next time we meet) will function without the need for day-to-day top-level management. This allows us to work more on our business in a proactive manner.

With your professional experience, do you think governments are willing to adopt new technologies in governance?

Yes, I believe they are. With time…

How would you explain the idea PermianChain Technologies to a person who has just started exploring Blockchain?

We help oil producers raise funding by registering their oil reserves on our platform and keeping track of these reserves on a permanent virtual ledger while giving investors and traders access to invest and trade in these oil reserves.

What are the future plans for PermianChain?

As we have already secured over 500,000 barrels of proven oil reserves to be listed and registered on our platform, the PermianChain plans In the very near future to launch the MVP of our platform. We plan to increase our reserves to 50 million barrels within the next 5 years while working on expanding our user-base globally.

Who do you think are your competitors and what is it that you have, and they don’t?

recently, the next oil boom has been fueled by blockchain, as majors like BP and Shell just launched their own oil blockchain based platform (Vakt) to serve the industry with the objective to cut costs for post-trading allowing for paperless trading of commodities. Other blockchain services like the S&P Global Platts have launched a blockchain for Oil terminal stock level reporting which has been recently implemented in the UAE at the Fujairah Oil Industrial Zone (FOIZ).

However, as you can see, none of those companies is dedicating to providing access to private equity oil investments. Our platform is a Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) that focuses on digitalizing the value of proven oil campaigns to assist exploration and production companies to meet working capital and development funding requirements while providing investors a more secure, transparent and liquid asset-class under a regulated environment via smart contracts and Blockchain.

Our business is catering to a highly sophisticated niche market that operates in a sensitive sector, Oil. There seems to be enough room for competition in this sector because it is a widely used commodity with global demand currently outweighing global production, but the players in this industry are rather driven by the power of political influence in most cases. However, the private equity investments that are being poured into the oil sector have proven to generate higher than average returns in regions like the East-Texas Basin or the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico where we see over 50%+ rates of return and acreage prices driven upwards of $11,000 to $60,000 an acre.

Nevertheless, the barriers to entry for such investment classes are really high, and various issues can be faced by passive investors who do not have the time to oversee their investment.

Having said that, I believe our platform can benefit from the existing oil blockchain businesses that are in the market today by working with them to enhance our user experience..

I have met your team, they are amazing people and expert in the fields, How did you build such a team? What qualities do you look in people to form amazing team?

As a team, we all have one thing that unites us, and that is our Vision. I don’t believe that it was due to my efforts alone that the current PermianChain Team was brought together. I believe strongly that the universe brought us together because we all shared the same vision before anything.

How do you feel knowing that you have made a difference in the world?

I believe we still have a long journey ahead of us. To personally feel like I made a real difference in the world I still have more that needs to be accomplished, one mission at a time. But it’s true that I am fulfilled because every day I work on changing my world and the world of each person I interact and engage with… I believe that is where we need to start, by changing each other’s worlds one person at a time.

What are the goals of your organization moving forward?

I believe that the Crypto Asset-Class is here to stay, and the Blockchain Economy is breaking through the trough… to reap the rewards of the expansion cycle, I am focused on liquidity while maintaining wealth preservation for future stakeholders of our platform. The immediate focus is to structure our offering under a defined regulatory & governance framework. My short-term goal is to accomplish this before we go live with the PermianChain platform.

I have one final question for you. Have you ever experienced failure? How did you overcome it and what did you learn from it?

Failure is inevitable for every person that is on a journey, may it be personal or professional. I experience failure every day; sometimes I fail to see the signs that come from family and friends about their hardships, sometimes I fail to take quick decisions that may have an important effect on the business or any relationship I am building, sometimes we fail to be mindful and to simply enjoy the moment. So I deal with failure by understanding its purpose which is to be a constructive realization of your mistakes. You can only learn from failure if you realize why it occurred, and what you missed from its occurrence. So I am very mindful about failure, and I really enjoy the learning curve it’s been providing me since my early college days until today.