Manie Eagar – DIGIFIN & The Blockchain Lab – Founder & CEO
Manie Eagar addressing a Canadian Senate Committee hearing on digital currencies regulation
Manie Eagar is an experienced global investment, mergers and acquisitions executive with over 30 years of driving new wealth creation, business growth and strategic innovation. He brings international experience and deep skills in the startup, investment management and venture capital space. He has been involved in multiple successful start-ups, government policy developments and national educational initiatives internationally.
Manie is the founder and CEO of DIGIFIN – The Future of Money – an industry-wide initiative to advance digital identity and finance, and distributed ledger (blockchain) technology innovation, transparency and inclusion. Manie has a sound understanding of the emerging markets and the needs of the financially underserved and under-banked.
DIGIFIN2020 is hosting a series of sponsored events, workshops and thinktank interactions to explore the future of digital finance, from digital currencies to the latest offerings from distributed ledger technologies to coincide with the launch of the first crowdsourced publication on global Fintech trends: Fintech + Digital Currency — Convergence or Collision?
Manie is a founder/partner of The Blockchain Lab, a partnership with leading global developers and investors to integrate cross-platform methodologies to prototype and build secure and compliant digital identity and financial services platforms with applications in fields such as finance, the internet of things, machine to machine learning and digital asset management and interexchange, aimed at the consumer, government and enterprise. Launched in Vancouver, BC, in May 2015, The Blockchain Lab is an international, industry wide and cross-sectoral collaboration.
Manie is an advisor to Identity2020, a New York based non-profit aiming to provide a secure ‘sovereign’ digital identity to address the global needs of refugees, stateless minorities and the more than 2 billion financially excluded. He is a director of the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada, the leading industry body representing digital finance, fintech and distributed ledger technology (blockchain) in Canada.
He addressed the Canadian Senate Trade and Banking Commission in 2015 and a number of his proposals for a sound regulatory environment to promote digital currency and blockchain technology innovation were substantially incorporated in the Committee’s final report recommendations: Digital Currency – You Can’t Flip This Coin!
The past few years he has focused on deal shaping and making in the new world of digital value finance, mobile media delivery platforms and digital finance 2.0, inspired by the latest cryptocurrency protocols. He has supported a number of startups, growth acceleration, mergers and acquisitions, VC tie-ups and alignments with regulatory compliance. He developed the openaxyz collaboration software that was deployed at leading financial institutions such as Barclays Africa and was nominated for the MaRs/RIC Innovation Idol in Ontario in 2012.
Manie was the chief strategist for the South African government’s $40 Billion Development Bank of South Africa Infrastructure Centre of Excellence for Infrastructure Development Plan initiated in 2012 supported by the World Bank and the IMF. He is an expert in global infrastructure and telecommunications development for emerging markets.
Facilitating a session at the THNK workshops on alternative currencies applications with the City of Vancouver
Manie has provided thought leadership to the THNK School of Creative Leadership’s Executive Program on “The Future of Capitalism” in Vancouver, British Columbia in 2015 to explore how digital currencies like bitcoin, can increase access to low-carbon housing.
Manie is the founder/partner of GriffenVentures, a global investment advisory company, startup incubator and consultancy with a focus on the latest innovations in fintech, digital currency and blockchain (distributed ledger) technologies; and alternative financing via peer-to-peer lending and crowdfunding for venture capital platforms.
His experience grew out of long-term engagements at Barclays Africa (ABSA), Vodafone (m-Pesa and virtual call centre hosting projects) and the J&J Investment Management Group (caretaking strategic partnerships such as Tata, Macquarie Bank, Old Mutual, and Dimension Data/NTT Nippon over more than a decade). He led the pioneering research and prototyping of Africa’s first multi-purposed smartcard payment platform OneCard Systems.
He was a director at ICOZA/Internet Solutions, Africa’s largest ISP owned by Dimension Data / NTT Nippon, the world’s largest ICT company, where he was also responsible for the marketing and strategy for their Cisco-based e-Commerce platform rollout.
Ms Hillary Clinton opening an OLSET class in Soweto, South Africa
He represented the UUX/TotalMovie mobile and online app based content viewing initiative of Mexico’s Grupo Salinas Telecommunications and Media in Africa and Asia.
Manie is an expert in educational policy and charitable developments, particularly in emerging and new areas. He was the founder and CEO of the Open Learning Systems Education Trust in South Africa. OLSET was a national strategy that delivered math, science and technology courses to students in South Africa that was sponsored by USAID, CIDA and Kagiso Trust. In 1996, Former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, inaugurated the OLSET project and assisted with teaching a class to students in Soweto, South Africa.