SOV Interview with Barak Ben Ezer

For today's episode, Divi interviews the CEO and co-founder of SFP Technologies, Barak Ben Ezer. The company is building SOV as the first blockchain primary currency in the new legal tender for the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Barak Ben Ezer studied computer science and economics in Colombia and New York, although he's originally from Israel. Later, he worked for Microsoft for a while and then started his own business, a remittance company. His remittance company built an app for remittances for migrant workers in the Middle East to send money, such as bitcoins to Southeast Asia. He mentioned that this was in 2013. As it went on, they continued the company but ditched the crypto element, specifically bitcoins, because it has many regular to irregular problems, such as connecting with the economy, banks, and existing payments rails. For example, a Filipino worker in Israel wants to send money to their kids but has to convert cash in their side. This conversion is problematic because crypto and banks don't match. They did some ways and even ended up selling the company. He realized that the crypto people want crypto to turn into money from a legal perspective. However, the global regular don't see it that way. They even explained that bitcoins and other virtual currencies act as currency but are not real currency or real money because only a sovereign entity can issue money as its circulating legal tender. This illustration is how global regulations work. Barak Ben Ezer and his team pitched or introduced the idea to the Marshall islands since they are a sovereign entity. He formed the team to go there and make it happen. He realized that he needs to have the right people, the credibility since he wants to go top class in everything.