Morgan Stanley Veteran Joins Bitcoin 2.0

NEW YORK, April 6, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

Announced today, Jacob Dienelt is the latest Morgan Stanley veteran to leave Wall Street and join the Bitcoin industry. Following the likes of Blythe Masters, ex JP Morgan Chase & Co Executive and Paul Camp, former JP Morgan Managing Director -  Mr. Dienelt of Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management has made the move from traditional banking to join the emerging digital money industry with Factom as Head Treasurer.

Factom, a Bitcoin 2.0 company creating a notarized audit trail with Blockchain technology, has hired Jacob Dienelt as part of its focus on Bitcoin asset management for its software token sale. As the first Bitcoin 2.0 company to bring a Wall St veteran onto its team, Factom will be setting a new standard for Bitcoin treasuries while its software token sale continues into its 2nd week.

Mr. Dienelt brings his experience to the nascent Bitcoin industry after managing a Future Specialists desk from Morgan Stanley's offices in New York. He graduated from Kenyon College in 2003 where he majored in Game Theory, thereafter he worked at a private Real Estate asset management company doing REIT analysis.  

On leaving his Wall St job Mr. Dienelt states, "after two years traveling to Bitcoin conferences, mining, and running a paper wallet company, I'm glad to have found a home in the space.

Factom is the first non-financial application of the distributed ledger technology that will, over the next decade, change how people prove their data is authentic, and so much more. I spent almost 10 years at Morgan Stanley, and I'll miss my friends and clients dearly.  I just couldn't miss an opportunity to help shape such an important ecosystem as it develops. I'm very excited to be working with [founders] Paul, David, Peter, and the rest of the team."

This announcement comes from Factom of London UK, and is the first blockchain technology company to follow the likes of Circle Financial, Digital Asset Holdings, and 21 to bring on a former Wall St veteran as part of its team. Similar blockchain technology companies announced recently their plans for technology improvements with the Bitcoin Blockchain, namely side-chains for Blockstream and tokens for the Internet of Things with Colu.

Factom has been at the forefront with their series of collaborations involving Bitcoin price stability with Tether, documenting Gold exchange trades with Serica, and providing notarized audit trails for the Internet of Things with Rivetz.

David Johnston, Chairman of the Board with Factom comments on the addition of Mr. Dienelt to the team saying, "as the worlds large companies and institutions begin adopting blockchain technology, it naturally follows that their top people will get involved in projects such as  Factom in order to be leaders in that transition."

Mr. Johnston is referring to the latest trend of Wall St executives who have left to join Bitcoin companies despite the public skepticism Bitcoin has received from banking executives. Jamie Dimon, who runs JPMorgan Chase was quoted last March stating that 'Bitcoin [is] a terrible store of value that could be replicated over and over.'

"The question isn't whether we accept it," Mr. Dimon said in a recent interview with CNBC. "The question is, do we even participate in people who facilitate Bitcoin?"

Unlike Bitcoin companies who are focused on its use as a digital currency for payment solutions which Mr. Dimon is referring to, Factom is only using the technology of Bitcoin - namely the distributed ledger and consensus system that makes up the Blockchain. This particular aspect of Bitcoin is seen as "a public ledger of ownership and transfer that cannot be denied because it's absolutely transparent," when referring to the advantages of the Blockchain and how it can solve the challenges of world poverty (quote from Brian Singer in Forbes last week).

Factom is providing a distributed consensus and audit trail leveraging the Bitcoin Blockchain. Their open source platform is solving the challenges of Bitcoin's block time (10 minutes for confirmations) and data size (40 kb) by storing a compressed and encoded version of the data (a hash) into the immuable records of the Blockchain itself. They have so far received over 1000 bitcoins as part of their token sale supporting the development of the platform which ends next month. Upon closing, Jacob Dienelt will be taking the lead on managing the Bitcoin assets received during the sale - bringing his wealth of knowledge and experience from Morgan Stanley to Bitcoin 2.0.

Further information on Factom please see http://www.factom.org

Company Contact:
Tiana Laurence
VP of Marketing
Factom.org
[email protected]

Press Contact:
Lisa Cheng
Director
Vanbex
[email protected]

SOURCE Vanbex