Gabrielle Patrick

Co-founder at Epiphyte.

London, England

@EpiphyteCorp | LinkedIn Profile

You originally studied law and worked in the insurance industry. How did you become such an active voice in cryptocurrency?

Many of us in this space originate from the gaming industry with a virtual currency background. I first got involved with virtual currencies in 2007 from an institutional perspective on cyber gaming and fair trade and was awarded an International Bar Association scholarship for this work. My interest just snowballed from there.

During our interview you mentioned your early career success; however, you stated “I got bored”. You are the third person we’ve interviewed who has used that exact statement to describe their career change. Can you expand on this?

I was very fortunate to qualify as a lawyer and lead the legal department of an international insurer at a young age operating in 23 countries. However, I wanted to contribute more to something innovative, significant and to better financial services. So this is more of an evolved career path than a changed one.

You’ve had the opportunity to work in Trinidad, Houston, Florida, New York; truly a diverse background. You stated you ended up in London based on a Google search. Can you explain this?

My former employer had a reach throughout the entire Caribbean region, US and Europe which gave me a good multinational perspective of what was and was not in financial services and international transactions. I wanted to focus on social gaming platforms because of the virtual currency component; I was attracted to the concept of a fun, borderless means of value exchange. I knew that the regulations in the UK were conducive to these types of models than the US where I was then based. So my market research was based on identifying the gap that existed in the UK.

Please describe how you initially became involved in Bitcoin. What was your experience like in those early days?

I first got involved by preparing a legal panel to discuss gaming law including bitcoin for the International Bar Association’s annual conference in Vancouver in 2010, typically with 5,000 - 6,000 lawyers. Prior to that I didn’t know what it was. When the value sky-rocketed in 2012 I was in London and was just one of those things where you felt it was historical but couldn’t wrap your head around its true significance.

Much has been printed about concerning the lack of diversity (gender, race, etc.) with respect to cryptocurrency. Do you think this is an accurate assessment?

Yes, there is a lack of diversity. I would like to see more women in the space but that’s the beauty of the technology: it has the potential for significant inclusion on all levels; we just have to disabuse ourselves of rigid and traditional thinking if we want more transparent and efficient ecosystems.

Who(m) do you believe has had the most influence with respect to your own career?

My family. I have a lot of lawyers in my family. One family member told me a long time ago, whatever you do, make sure you operate the same way when no one’s watching and make sure it counts for something.

Who do you consider to be strong women leaders in the FinTech space?

Fintech generally in Europe, Adizah Tejani, Head of Ecosystem Development at Level39. She is very unique, humble, performance driven and unconcerned by adulation, a rarity in most circles. There are many others including Edwina Johnson at Startupbootcamp. On the non-acceleration side: Elizabeth Stark and Charlene Chen of Bitpesa.

What do you see as the 3 leading future trends for FinTech?

The whole point of fintech is to produce, faster, cheaper transactions and remove inefficiencies: a better user experience. That means change which means continued friction between stakeholders. However, I think we will continue to see changes generally in data management, asset management, crowd funding and peer to peer models.

Blockchain technology will continue to evolve and be used for capital market trades, remittances, new financial products and plays and non-financial usage such as asset registries.

I think it will continue to be a challenge for banks to implement and integrate fintech with their systems for a variety of reasons and I would like to see a much higher conversion rate of fintech exploration in innovation hubs to integrated technology.

More about Epiphyte:

Multiple companies are providing services and technologies to streamline financial trades utilizing blockchain technology.

Epiphyte partners with them to provide the technology for the other leg of the trade – transfer of funds. Epiphyte’s technology provides for fund transfers guarantees that match the Blockchain transfers: instant, irreversible, audit-able and utilizing smart contracts.