TAAL Distributed Information Technologies Inc. (CSE:TAAL | FWB:9SQ1 | OTC: TAALF), the first publicly listed and regulated company that facilitates businesses building applications and contributing data onto a public and scalable blockchain, is a sponsor of the CoinGeek Zurich Conference taking place on June 8-10. In our recent conversation, TAAL’s Chief Commercial Officer Kal Suurkask spoke about his role and the company’s latest endeavors.
Can you give us a brief overview of what your company does?
Kal Suurkask: TAAL is a blockchain infrastructure technology company, and alongside the infrastructure operations, it focuses on transaction processing. The transaction processing platform feature allows application developers and large enterprises to connect to the BSV blockchain to build their businesses, utilizing the technology’s efficient attributes such as low-cost transactions and scalability.
Is there anything regarding Bitcoin you’re excited about right now?
Kal Suurkask: My role is to create and manage the commercialization aspect of the business, so I can see firsthand what’s going on—an innovation that’s happening right now. In addition to developers building applications around mobile gaming right now, we’re seeing all types of businesses emerge, from companies putting accounting invoices on chain, to companies doing work around all aspects of tokenization. Also, we have created a platform for developers to take full advantage of blockchain technology, making it simple and easy to integrate with.
When it comes to TAAL, people often wonder what STAS protocol is. Can you share details about it?
Kal Suurkask: It is a token protocol with several functionalities released a few months ago. It uses traditional Satoshi and puts a smart contract in it. As part of the initial private beta test, we have some really creative developers using it, providing insight and sharing positive feedback. Also, there is a massive interest at a macro level as we see new business models emerge, for example NFT platforms and exchanges, to name a few.
TAAL filed its year-end financial results for 2020. Can you talk about it as well as the roadmap for 2021?
Kal Suurkask: The company has mining infrastructure as one of the primary services, and we have a lot of capacity to mine. We will continue to grow our infrastructure to meet the market demand and this is a big part of our roadmap for 2021. Our leading service offering is transaction processing and we will continue to build services around this platform in 2021, including building out our token protocol, exploring data retrieval and archival services, among a few other soon-to-be announced offerings.
When it comes to mining and transaction processing, there is a debate that some are small while others are large miners in this space. What are your thoughts about that?
Kal Suurkask: From the company’s perspective, our goal is to make the process simple and seamless for clients to work on blockchain. We do that by being responsive and flexible with our infrastructure. We work closely with the Bitcoin SV Infrastructure team to ensure we can offer clients features such as high ancestor levels and low dust levels. For us, it is about communicating with other miners and letting the public know what we are doing as we aspire to be leaders in the infrastructure space.
What are you looking forward to the most about the conference being in Switzerland?
Kal Suurkask: Switzerland is a beautiful and progressive country in financial markets, especially cryptocurrency. The country’s policymakers and politicians created a regulatory framework and safe environment for startups, which attracted several brilliant Bitcoin innovators there. They have built quite the inviting ecosystem, so it is only fitting that the CoinGeek conference is taking place in Zurich.
When did TAAL decide to set up an office in Zug, Switzerland?
Kal Suurkask: We opened an office there in 2020. As I mentioned earlier, it is a very progressive country financially and has some of the best talent in this space. We are growing there, especially in R&D, and I have had an opportunity to meet quality people in Switzerland. We are growing our team there, especially in R&D, and, boy, are we seeing some talented individuals surface. Zug, in particularly, has an excellent blockchain ecosystem, and we can access a good number of talented minds there, which was also why we picked the location.
Why did TAAL decide to sponsor CoinGeek Zurich?
Kal Suurkask: We see tremendous value in collaborating and sponsoring the conference. We are the regulars, and we keep showing up no matter what, and it keeps getting better each time.
What is the core value of conferences for businesses and individuals?
Kal Suurkask: It is a great opportunity for entrepreneurs because they get to network and learn the latest trends in the industry. On a personal level, it positively challenges my thoughts and ideas as I get a chance to meet and connect with other technology innovators.
Do you have any presentations or speakers that you are looking forward to attending at the conference?
Kal Suurkask: There are many interesting panels, but I’m interested in the work surrounding healthcare data. This sector is ripe for change, and there are going to be exciting business models emerging—blockchain can efficiently contribute to counter the siloed setup and lead to a more efficient and transparent system. I am also interested in the Transmira panel on blockchain and AR/VR.
If there was one takeaway that you want the audience to know after seeing you and your team at CoinGeek Zurich, what would it be?
Kal Suurkask: I want the audience to know that we are open for business. We are still an infrastructure mining operations company, but one of our main focus areas is on transaction processing and the services surrounding this. We want to encourage businesses to use our TAAL Console if they’re going to interact with the blockchain. Another benefit of using Taal is that you can sign up send your data through to the blockchain without having to hold a digital wallet or cryptocurrency. Clients are also offered fixed and volume discounted Service Level Agreements, which make it easier for them to forecast and budget. We have the flexibility and the processing power to work with small and large enterprises alike and we are able to tailor our processing packages to our customers’ needs. This is the future for the transaction processing platforms, the future for Taal.
Why would enterprises find it beneficial to partner with TAAL instead of sending transactions to blockchain?
Kal Suurkask: The first major benefit is that Taal is a credible partner for many clients. We’re a publicly traded company, listed on the Canadian Securities Exchange that is subject to many rules and regulations that go along with being a publicly listed company. We also have all of our research and development work done out of Switzerland and are subject to the many rules and regulations of the country. Clients like to know they have a credible counterparty that is based out of countries with proper legal and regulatory environments. Secondly, Taal is reliable. We have a large amount of transaction processing infrastructure, which becomes incredibly important for companies with large data processing needs. Clients need to know that we have the ability to fulfill our Service Level Agreements. Whether a client has a need to have 100 transactions processed per day or one million transactions processed per day, with our infrastructure capabilities and technical knowledge, we’re likely to be the best to deliver. Finally, Taal offers flexibility. Our clients have the ability to pay in fiat and with all types of customized payment packages, including volume discounts and fixed pricing, depending on the clients’ needs. Our platform also offers a user experience not too dissimilar from the experience offered by the well-known billion-dollar software database providers – the added value, of course, being that Taal, through the Bitcoin SV blockchain, is able to offer unbounded scaling at extremely low costs.
TAAL’s CMO and Executive Board Member Angela Holowaychuk will join two panel sessions at the CoinGeek Conference in Zurich: BSV is Green Bitcoin: Energy Consumption & Environmental Sustainability on Day 2 at 16:50 CEST, and Blockchain as a Service (BaaS): Easy Infrastructure for Enterprise-Grade BSV Applications on Day 2 at 14:00 CEST. Catch Holowaychuk and all of the CoinGeek Conference speakers talk about blockchain and igniting the power of data by registering here for free.
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