Rohas Nagpal, Chief Blockchain Architect, Wrapped Asset Project
I started my career in the early 1990s as a hacker. Those were the days of Solaris, FreeBSD, Windows NT & Novell NetWare.
Podcast
Overview
What are investments? When a person puts his savings into something to earn returns in it, right? But when we think of making an investment, we either think of investing into real estate or other high-end things. These things are not always available for common people with less salary.
To make the opportunities of investments available for common people, Rohas Nagpal and his team are working on a project called The Wrapped Assets Project.
Our guest for today, Rohas Nagpal has a keen understanding of technology, blockchains and the cyber world. He is the Chief Blockchain Architect of the Wrapped Asset Project.
Rohas started his career in early 90s in the field of hacking, then he moved to investigation and cyber security. In the year 1999, Rohas co-founded the Asian School of Cyber Laws to educate people about the cyber world and to do real world investigation.
About the Wrapped Asset Project
Rohas explains that when you take a normal real-world asset, tokenize it and make it available to people on the blockchain is called a Wrapped Asset. One of the biggest advantages of it is fractionalized ownership. To make us understand better, Rohas tells us that with the help of the Wrapped Asset Project, you can buy one square inch of a very posh building in Dubai in the future. Currently one has to buy a floor or at least an apartment in a building, which requires a lot of money so only the rich can think of it. Wrapped Asset would enable the investors to buy very small units of a large investment.
He states that the vision and motive of introducing the Wrapped Asset Project is taking the world’s assets, putting them on a blockchain and making them available to a global pool of investors.
Equity shares versus Wrapped Asset
On being asked about the difference between Equity shares versus Wrapped Asset, Rohas explains that equity shares guarantee ownership of the company and a person can buy at least one share of it, whereas, a wrapped asset can be called the buying of a small fraction of that one equity share.
Future Money Wallet
Rohas tells us that establishing Wrapped Assets is not enough, it is necessary to make it easy for people to buy and sell them. The concept of the Future Money Wallet is to provide that facility. The Future Money Wallet will act as a gateway to the world of Wrapped Assets.
How did Rohas get interested in blockchains?
Rohas recalls that around 2010, when he was a cyber security officer and was investigating a drug mafia case, got introduced to the concept of Bitcoin. He was quite fascinated with the concept. As he started going deeper into it, he realized that blockchains, for the first time in the world, are giving immutability. The immutability can prove that the data has not been tampered with. It also automated Smart Asset Lifecycle Management. These things attracted Rohas to blockchains and in 2016, he moved to this field.
How much should we stay away from technology?
Talking about the increase in technology in every space, Rohas believes that it is getting to a scary level. Rohas knows that things high on tech can be hacked easily and he stays away from such things as much as possible. He affirms that we can’t avoid technology completely in this high-tech world, but we should avoid it to some extent. He also suggests everyone use a basic phone for all the OTPs of the bank and other important things so that nobody can hack and access your bank account.
Profile
How it started…
I come from a military family so I had the great fortune of growing up in many cities and attending many schools.
I started my career in the early 1990s as a hacker. Those were the days of Solaris, FreeBSD, Windows NT & Novell NetWare.
My life-long love affair with Cryptography started when I chanced upon David Chaum’s work on blind digital signatures and the “Handbook of Applied Cryptography” by Menezes, Oorschot & Vanstonemy.
Cyber crime investigation & more…
In 1999, I co-founded Asian School of Cyber Laws along with 3 of the most awesome people I have ever known – Debasis Nayak, Abhinav “Abhi” Bhatt, and Shuchi Nagpal.
Over the next 16 years, I worked in cyber investigation & cyberlaw. I proudly count some of the best investigators & lawyers amongst my students. I have also had the privilege of assisting the Govt. of India in framing draft rules under the Information Technology Act.
My work spanned 18 countries and I have investigated cyber crimes & data breaches for hundreds of organizations across many sectors – from aerospace & banking to law enforcement, pharma & shipping.
I also had the privilege of leading the teams that developed “Collaborative Online Investigation Network” & the “ASCL Volatile Evidence Retrieval Tool”.
I authored the Cyber Crime Investigation Manual, which has been referred to as a “bible for cybercrime investigators” by the Times of India.
Blockchain & crypto…
I first heard of Bitcoin in 2011, when I was assisting the police in a case involving the drug mafia. I found the concept fascinating and even mined some bitcoins.
And then I made one of my biggest mistakes. I “deleted” my bitcoins.
In 2015, I decided to move into the blockchain space. I barricaded myself at home and spent 4 months studying bitcoin technology and setting up multichain blockchains.
In 2016, I co-founded Primechain along with Shinam Arora, a brilliant engineer, and long-time colleague. We also co-founded BankChain – a community of 37 banks plus IBM, Microsoft & Intel. Our core product was a “self-building” blockchain ecosystem with a web app, PWA, and a Blockchain REST API service.
The project went into hibernation in early 2018 after the Reserve Bank of India’s ban on crypto.
I continued as a Blockchain Architect for some very interesting projects.
In 2020, after the Supreme Court struck down the RBI ban, I became actively involved with the crypto industry.
My daughters also developed an interest in crypto and so I wrote the “Future Money Playbook” for them. I also developed a Crypto Masterclass with them and my mom as my first students.
To add more logic and math to crypto price predictions, I developed the R.O.H.A.S. Cryptocurrency Valuator.
Currently, I am the Chief Blockchain Architect of the Wrapped Asset Project and am building the Future Money Wallet and the Hybrid Finance (HyFi) Blockchain.
I also conduct the Blockchain ADDS course and Crypto with Rohas
