Where normally one writes their job description, Michael Jackson’s LinkedIn profile it reads: “Hello. I’m here to help”. It’s an apt description for how he leverages his vast experience and contacts to bring value to fintechs in Luxembourg.
Best known for his role as COO of Skype from 2004-2007 and partner at Mangrove Capital for over a decade, the British-born businessman is like a coastguard for entrepreneurs lost in the sea of fintech. And his current passion is crypto.
“It’s a global phenomenon that’s not limited to a particular geography. Clients come from anywhere and just now platforms are accessible from anywhere,” he told Silicon Luxembourg.
It’s this context that makes it possible for him to pick and choose projects to advise. Among those in Luxembourg are VNX, founded four years ago as a digital assets platform for people to list and trade assets. “We started off doing fundraising for companies and then the pandemic came along and rather took the wind out of the sails.”
Jackson thought back to Royal Mint Gold, a project he worked on four years earlier. Driven by the UK treasure, the goal was to tokenise gold holdings of the Royal Mint of Britain. The project was mothballed two days before launch. So, in March 2022, the firm launched VNX Gold, a token stored on Ethereum blockchain technology representing an ownership stake in a physical gold bullion certified by the London Bullion Market Association.
“I won’t say that we copied them. A lot of the stuff we’re doing is quite obvious. The difficulty is building the ecosystem, getting everyone connected and then having the product, VNX gold, accepted as what it is: a reliable, collateralized system,” said the entrepreneur.
VNX is regulated in Liechtenstein, a country chosen for its “straightforward digital asset regulation” and easier “accessibility to decision makers.” The technology for the platform is being built by a small team in Luxembourg and Jackson and co-founder Alex Tkachenko promote the product at conferences, because of the complex rules on selling the tokens.
Working in the field while crypto remains unregulated presents risks. One cautionary tale is the May 2022 crash of Luna, a cryptocurrency, whose oversupply led to a $60m loss of value, provoking a meltdown of algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD.
“It’s very sensitive because single events can change things tremendously,” he said.
From a consumer point of view, it means more work is required in education. Jackson is also on the board of Arcane Crypto, a Norwegian-based institutional investment platform for High Net Worth Individuals. He says: “Our biggest product today is actually research. Our daily and weekly newsletters which are targeted exactly to these people to help them give confidence to help them understand the volatile markets and generally feel more comfortable with what’s going on through information has proven to be a tremendous asset for us.”
This article was first published in the Silicon Luxembourg magazine. Read the full digital version of the magazine on our website, here. You can also choose to receive a hard copy at the office or at home. Subscribe now.
