Anthony Di Iorio starts new role as Chief Digital Officer of the Toronto Stock Exchange

Earlier this month, Ethereum Co-founder and CEO of Decentral & Kryptokit, Anthony Di Iorio began his new job at the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). “I’m excited to take on this new role at one of Canada’s top financial companies," he said at the time.

The TSX’s parent company, TMX Group Limited, is headquartered in Toronto, with offices across Canada, key US markets, London, Beijing, Singapore and Sydney. The group is best known for its stock exchanges, such as the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), ranked the world’s ninth largest by market capitalization in Jan 2015.

The group serves emerging small cap and early stage companies, and helps them grow into “the blue-chips of the future.” The Group operates equities, fixed income, derivatives, and energy markets, generating US$717.3 million in revenue during 2014.

“TMX Group is made up of an impressive portfolio of assets, capabilities and intellectual capital. As we prepare to enter the next crucial phase in our evolution, the job at hand is to determine how best to leverage all of our strengths and enable innovation across our business lines to create unique solutions for our clients that only TMX Group can provide.”

• Louis V. Eccleston, TMX Group Limited Chief Executive Officer

With a litany of impressive accomplishments, it is of little surprise that the TSX created a role specifically for him, Chief Digital Officer. Di Iorio started this new position hoping to help push Canada as a “top-tier player in financial tech and innovation,” and he will likely be working on any strategy around "the conversion from analog to digital."

In early 2012, Di lorio became convinced that Bitcoin would make a major impact on the world’s financial markets, and decided to become active in the space and investing a large portion of his savings that year.

He went on to launch the second Bitcoin ATM (BTM) in the world, and the first Bitaccess machine, in the hometown of the TSX, Toronto. How far things have come; Canada has coincidentally just launched installed a 100th BTM machine.

He also began organizing Bitcoin and decentralized technology events that year, and has over 100 events under his belt to date, including many Ethereum conferences and the Bitcoin Expo series in Toronto.

Among the events is the popular DEC_TECH (Decentralized Technologies) meetings, which Di Iorio hosts every quarter. He founded the meetup group in October 2012, there are more more than 1,200 members, including entrepreneurs, investors, startups, marketers, developers, and general enthusiasts of bitcoin and decentralized technologies of all types.

It was at one such meeting, in the summer of 2012, that Di Iorio met business partner Vitalik Buterin, who shared with him the vision for Ethereum. This was over a year before the whitepaper was written.

“The idea for a Turing complete Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform was devised by Vitalik while traveling around working on various projects in 2013 and realizing that adding features and building on top of Bitcoin was very limit beyond payments.”

• Di Iorio

He then founded the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada, in early 2013. It remains a group dedicated to raising awareness of bitcoin among Canadian consumers, merchants, businesses, regulators, and policy makers. Soon afterward, he created and sold the gaming site Satoshi Circle.

Di Iorio and Buterin then launched the first in-browser Bitcoin wallet, KryptoKit, all while he was still running various events. “I had brought in Vitalik as part of the Kryptokit in late 2013,” Di lorio explained.

Around the same time, In December 2013, he co-founded Ethereum, a project that he was actively involved in until recently. “Over 50% of my portfolio is in Ether and Bitcoin,” Di Iorio divulged in a recent “Ask me Anything” session. “The Ether to Bitcoin split is about 40% / 60%.”

“When [Vitalek] showed me the [Ethereum] white-paper in November 2013 I was hooked. I then passed it along to Charles Hoskinson and he joined the project. Mihai came in as he had also founded Bitcoin Magazine with Vitalik, and Amir C joined also as a founder as he had worked with Vitalik on Colored Coins. That was the original founding team.”

• Di Iorio

Although smart contracts are an obvious tool for him to use in his new role at the TSX, Di Iorio mentioned that "there are no plans at this time for TSX to be working with Ethereum."

Di Iorio started off 2014 by opening the decentralized tech hub Decentral, in Toronto. Decentral is a home to tech startups and innovative entrepreneurs focusing on disruptive and decentralized technologies. It has since spawned projects like Decentral.tv, a 24-hour interactive internet dashboard that acts like a TV station for Bitcoin market news. A second innovative wallet, and perhaps the most simple of all bitcoin wallets, Rushwallet, was also launched that year.

A year ago, Di Iorio founded and became the CEO of Decentral Consulting Services, a technology consulting firm that specializes in blockchain and decentralized technologies. The firm works with Banks, Stock Exchanges and other enterprise businesses providing guidance on Blockchain technology. “For all our clients, we provide a professional gateway to the blockchain revolution,” said Di Iorio.

Different business models may need different forms of a distributed ledger product, and Decentral is set up to help clients choose the right technology for their needs. However, between the different types of blockchains, Di Iorio sees powerful, open ledgers that can handle robust smart contracts, like Ethereum, eventually dominating the market.

"I personally believe that permissioned blockchains have the most appeal to financial institutions. Regulations play a big part in that appeal. However, they are going to have to compete with open systems like Ethereum in the long term, and open will always win out in the end, in my opinion."

• Di Iorio

The following month, Di Iorio became the Cryptocurrency Advisor to Fintech Cluster at the MaRS Discovery District, Canada’s first startup accelerator and dedicated financial technology hub, also in Toronto. In this role he connects the financial services sector with startups developing technology in emerging payments, peer-to-peer transactions, and alternative lending.

Di Iorio also found time to lecture a Masters Degree program on Digital Currency, an online course offered by the largest university in Cyprus, the University of Nicosia. Available worldwide, the program “seeks to fill an important gap that exists today between the supply of and demand for academic knowledge in the area of digital currency.” The first course will be available next month a free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), and is run by Bitcoin experts Andreas Antonopoulos and Antonis Polemitis.

For those that may be concerned that his new role at the TSX will impact his many other businesses, Di Iorio offered some assurance: “Decentral and Kryptokit, along with the decentralized tech (DEC_TECH), Bitcoin, and Ethereum events we host at MaRS Discovery District and at our space will continue on as normal."

Di Iorio now has an office at the TSX, where he spends half of his time, but the number of hours varies, “I’ve been averaging 35-40 there and about the same at Decentral.” The hours clearly add up, and while he works ”constantly,” he tries to keep regular hours, “from 4 am to 6 pm every day,” and he’s quick to credit the team, "a well-oiled machine."

“We’ve got a staff of 10 currently working at Decentral on various projects. Most of my time is spent directing the activities. The work is spread out between managing the ATM, Development of Ethereumwallet.com, the next line of wallets we’re about to announce, and client work on the consulting side, and pushing out content and reports.”

• Di Iorio

Di Iorio told Brave New Coin that he would like to see stronger merchant adoption, “more big companies accepting and promoting Bitcoin would be great. There seems to be a lull recently.” He states that big savings when using Bitcoin, or at least discounts, would also help drive adoption. “Purse.io is a great example. If only the masses would realize they could save +20% on everything at Amazon using Bitcoin. As a community we should be screaming this at the top of our lungs.”

Bankers and financial institutions in Canada, he states, are eager to learn more about new technologies like distributed ledgers, and he isn’t worried about any “perceived opposition” from the sector. His personal goal in the new role is to “bring visibility to bitcoin and the blockchain within the Canadian finance markets.”