Ripple’s Stefan Thomas to give keynote address at the Blockchain Africa 2018

The producer of the well-known “What is Bitcoin?” video, Ripple chief technology office Stefan Thomas, will give the keynote address at this year’s Blockchain Africa Conference, which takes place in Johannesburg on 8 and 9 March.

The announcement was made in a press release today by the event’s organiser Bitcoin Events.

Ripple provides enterprise blockchain solutions for global payments. Thomas is also known for his open-source software projects, such as BitcoinJS, are widely used in the industry serving millions of cryptocurrency users.

Since joining the San Francisco-based company in 2012, he co-created the Interledger protocol (ILP), an open protocol for moving value across  ledgers in the same way that information currently moves over the internet.

Ripple’s Stefan Thomas has co-created the Interledger protocol, an open protocol for moving value across ledgers

Thomas’s talk is titled “Blockchain – Connecting the world or dividing it?” He will look at his more than seven years working full-time on Bitcoin and Ripple, and give his take on how much progress has been made towards that dream. He will cover the role of ICOs, smart contracts and what blockchainers can learn from the early days of the internet.

Finally, he will talk about the Interledger protocol and how the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is using it to make the financial system accessible to everyone.

The cryptocurrency, XRP, recently surged to an all-time high of $3.84 on 4 January and by-passed Ethereum to become the second largest cryptocurrency (after Bitcoin) in terms of market capitalisation of $120 billion.

For more information about the conference or to buy tickets, visit http://www.blockchainafrica.co.

Featured image: Ripple media via Youtube