Jack Dorsey was at Imperial College London this week for a discussion with London-based cryptocurrency experts.

Dorsey, the CEO and co-founder of Square and CEO and founder of Twitter, met with academics, researchers and founders from Imperial and a range of London institutions to discuss issues around cryptocurrencies including regulation, sustainability and mass-market adoption.

Dorsey was welcomed by Imperial’s Nick Jennings, Vice Provost (Research and Enterprise) and Professor of Artificial Intelligence.

Professor William Knottenbelt the Director of the Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering presented his research into Bitcoin transactions. Professor Knottenbelt showed live and historic Bitcoin transactions on the Data Observatory.

Dorsey met student entrepreneurs Annika Monari and Alan Vey who co-founded Aventus – a blockchain-based event ticketing solution that practically eliminates fraud and unregulated touting.

Aventus launched the token sale of its AventCoin (AVT) - "the Bitcoin of ticketing” – in 2017. They sold out within seven minutes, receiving over 60,000 Ethereum – then equivalent to around $20m – from investors.

The Director of the Data Science Institute, Professor Yike Guo, explained the Institute’s multidisciplinary mission.

The entrepreneur and technologist was visiting the capital as part of London Tech Week. At the Data Science Institute, Dorsey joined a roundtable of academic experts on cryptocurrency from Imperial, UCL, LSE and other London institutions, chaired by Professor Jennings. 

Cryptocurrency research at Imperial

Imperial’s Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering aims to become a leading international centre for ongoing research and its application related to cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

It conducts research directed at designing and engineering improvements to the protocols underpinning blockchain technology. The Centre also to gain insights into the dynamic operations of blockchain and associated markets.

It is exploring novel blockchain-based applications across multiple domains, aiming to lead the global development of ''killer apps'' for the blockchain.