The Bermudian-based Hub Culture made a splash at Davos Thursday during the World Economic Forum, the first full-fledged gathering in three years.

And Chance Barnett, the founder, chairman and chief strategy officer of the island’s new digital bank, Jewel, was part of a panel presentation on the Ven Digital Asset Fund.

Mr Barnett commented: “Money is changing before our eyes”.

His remarks were related the development that Jewel is building a payment structure to handle normal currency in the digital space.

Hub Culture created one of the first crypto-based digital currencies a decade ago, the “Ven” currency.

Hub Culture is an invitation-led social network service located in Bermuda which says it has 32,000 members.

The Ven is being directed towards the ocean and climate sustainability.

In fact, the Hub Culture founder and creative director, Stan Stalnacker, revealed that it will be the first to appoint a natural entity, the ocean, as a member of a board.

This is the latest development in a global movement to protect nature by recognising its legal precedence.

With Bermuda in the centre of the ocean, it makes sense to recognise its importance and to support ocean health.

The appointment to the board will be backed by a number of proxy advisers from the ocean sciences and experts in the topic.

It follows Switzerland as one of the first countries to recognise the legal rights of nature. It is expected to lead to a larger trend.

Hub Culture is holding a Frontiers Event on climate in Bermuda in June.

Hub Culture is one of the most engaging social and business hubs and it is more than digital. It regularly holds hubs to engage business and thought leaders in the region, such as Amsterdam, Atlanta, Barcelona and Buenos Aires, to name a few.

It held a significant conversation at COP27 in Egypt in November and is planning its engagement for COP28 in Abu Dhabi later this year.

After attending the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi earlier in the week, I can attest to the incredible advancements that the UAE is making in renewable energy. It may seem counter-intuitive that an oil rich country would be a global lead in future energy developments.

One of the unique initiatives in the UAE is to encourage mangrove forests. This is a topic relevant to Bermuda. There could be possible funding for such a project, locally. The national airlines of Abu Dhabi, Etihad, asks each person booking a flight to elect to make a contribution.

Entities such as oceans, mangrove forests and others requiring conservation can be funded by cryptocurrencies such as Ven.

In fact, Ven is positioning to be a leading funder for regenerative finance. One of the attendees in the packed Davos Hub Culture session in the Ice House pointed out the need to also consider the “green” entities.

Mangrove forests are an interesting combination of the two. These will typically be created with a legal entity and can be funded by non-fungible tokens or fractions of an item owned by the public with less than institutional investment sizes — similar to shares in a company but traded in crypto. There are also institution investors in NFTs.

Polygon has created a platform that uses 80 per cent less energy than a search on Google. They base it on 39 hubs for scale and efficiency.

“Blockchain is not the only solution,” said cofounder Antoni Martin.

Polygon will assess each company’s server requirement to devise the best data tracking solution. The new platform will deploy in ten days in around 39 major financial global nodes.

There will be 110 verifiers for their nodes, versus the millions that can evolve in active blockchains. They will find a way to collaborate with the other panel participants including Hedera. Hub Culture is looking at a $1 billion market and carbon credits for nature.

Different species of crypto will combine to become a source of liquidity like Tether stablecoin, and be a source of origination for NFTs. Guardian buttons can be used to initiate environmental contributions in crypto via the VS02 Ven currency.

Carbon Markets liquidity will also merge. Governance protocols need to be established and transparency is critical for a sustainable digital currency. As evidenced in Davos, the advancements are occurring at an increasingly rapid pace.

Hub Culture is a leading innovator in advanced concepts at Davos. Their Ice House has been a recognisable venue for advanced conversations at the Davos World Economic Forum for years.

The Ice House is a structure built totally from plastic recaptured from the ocean. It is a unique open and light-filled building that is fully transportable. This construction concept can be ported to other building requirements. The concepts are also portable.

Patrice Horner, MBA, QFA is a financial consultant