So it’s mostly Jim, and some NCTU or NTU students?

Certainly. For Professor Liao’s lab, it’s just his master students, or...?

Well, it’s also funded by Apple and many other companies...

Yeah.

You mentioned at NCKU, there is just Jim, or is there a lab?

I think HR more than anything at this point is where we can help, right?

30 full time.

It’s not like you can suddenly convince MasterCard to...

Second, is the kind of assurance that it...because both the Hyperledger stuff and the Enterprise Ethereum stuff relies on the fact that if this is not trustworthy, people like 10 times or 100 times larger than theirs at stake will suffer greatly, so it’s kind of a deference to their ...

Right, and of course, IOTA clears faster, and things like that. The technical advantages are pretty obvious, but what it lacks, of course, first is a clear comparison table.

What you’re really saying is that we’re not participating in the governance, steering the direction, and things like that, right? It’s this level of participation that you’re mentioning? I’m seeing a lot of IoT adoption of blockchain technology, but as a distributed ledger, not as...

So it’s not like we don’t make contributions.

Well, we have PhDs and professors contributing to Hyperledger and to the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance...

Or do you want to have snapshot version of this, and tested by Taiwan’s white-hat hackers? We can do that, too.

I don’t think the tech is ready to be sent straight to the cybersecurity department. It’s still evolving, right?

The actual work in improving, or at least experimenting, with those technologies and making sure they’re secure, mostly lies in either experimentally in the Asia·SV, or in production — that would be our cybersecurity department.

His new role in the BOST, I think is not to directly specify smart city protocols or things like that. It’s mostly to allocate sufficient funding toward defining the security properties and related regulations, and things like that that’s required to make this kind of application level things happen, as ...

I don’t think the BOST is looking at any particular protocol at the technical level, though. The BOST is the board that determines the science and technology funding for the administration. Of course, Director Tsai knows a lot about this, as he came from the Asia·SV office.

As far as I know, the only blockchain-related email loop that I am in is receiving the Asia·Silicon Valley bi-weekly report.

I see.

Mm-hmm.

Alongside security. [laughs]

Instead of security?

I’m aware of his work.

...which also has a smart contract angle. It’s difficult for the national government to simultaneously think it is a new cryptocurrency, and it’s also an IoT ledger product. What’s the angle that the ITRI people are looking at?

Seriously, of course we’ll take a look, code-wise, but I’m just looking at the angles. The IoT secure storage, Tangle, is different from the Fintech cryptocurrency IOTA...

"It’s the same thing, right?"

Early days, before the World Wide Web, people still ask, "What’s an Internet packet?" or, "What’s TCP?"

Once you have time stamps, once you have computation consensus on the transactional order, or whatever. Are you actually looking to building that?

But we already do that, just to put on the IOTA ledger. There’s more contracts.

Mm-hmm.

But have you hired, dedicated or otherwise sponsored a more practical penetration testing?

I think, within those three programs, one need to position this technology appropriately. If it’s the first part, the smaller scale, easier to allocate subsidizing or sponsoring program, one would naturally ask, "Have you done any serious mathematical proof of how many nodes in IOTA network, once they’re compromised, compromise ...

Between those, of course, there’s always the National Development Fund, which never invests as the largest or the sole investor. It’s always matching with other VCs.

It will take another few months, but once they’re there, they’re at two arms’ lengths from the national government, and they’ll be able to participate much more freely as a direct investor on ventures.

The other part, of course, is Taiwania, which is a new investment fund. Taiwania was set up just specifically to invest in IoT, but they are still forming...

The ASVDA, the Asia·Silicon Valley Development Agency, is at arm’s length from the national government. They’re run by people who actually connect with Silicon Valley. They’ve identified a few key points, and one of it is IoT security. They’re currently very interested in any kind of IoT security projects. That’s ...

The idea here is not just the "Things" part. The "Internet of" part, the Io part, of course, is what the fund is really after. It takes three forms. One is direct subsidizing or sponsoring of local government projects, but it’s always kind of top-down. The top-down isn’t actually driven ...

Right. In the national government level, the flagship IoT project is the "Asia · Silicon Valley" project. I always pronounce the dot.

That’s right.

Whenever regulators see cryptocurrency, they think money laundering. I’m just trying to make sure that the current generation of IOTA technology is not adapted for money laundering as compared to IoT...

In Taiwan, we’re not outlawing anything, but we do view cryptocurrencies as something that really needs a little bit more attention, as opposed to just any other IoT distributed ledger technology, because of the possibility of money laundering. We’re trying very hard not to be seen internationally as a money-laundering ...

In Taiwan, there’s two core brandings going on. There’s the Fintech Sandbox Act, which enables all kinds of Fintech experimentations. You may or may not be considered a cryptocurrency. It doesn’t really matter. I just mention that because you just mentioned that is a cryptocurrency, but it carries a different ...

I’m very well aware of the technical level.

The Fintech lab... But you’re not marketing yourselves as a cryptocurrency?

Yeah, the Fintech lab.

Sure, sure. Of course, yeah.

Sure.

No.

OK, so we’re not going to be asked to enter the ICO, then?