BAR­BA­DOS–Bar­ba­di­an, Gabriel Abed, co-founder of the Caribbean's first dig­i­tal cur­ren­cy as­set ex­change, Bitt, is rep­re­sent­ing the re­gion at a Block Chain Sum­mit host­ed by Richard Bran­son on Neck­er Is­land.The aim of the Fo­rum, which ends to­day, is to gath­er top thinkers in the world of Blockchain, Dig­i­tal Cur­ren­cy and Bit­coin to help de­fine the fu­ture.

Abed's in­vite was to "come vis­it Sir Richard Bran­son's pri­vate is­land as we con­clude a set of dis­cus­sion high­light­ing crit­i­cal is­sues and so­lu­tions that will help lay out a frame­work for a world where hu­mankind is ful­ly ben­e­fit­ting from the amaz­ing tech­nol­o­gy be­hind the Blockchain."Blockchain is a trans­ac­tion­al data­base found in cryp­to-cur­ren­cies.

Based in Hast­ings, Bar­ba­dos, Bitt of­fers a plat­form that tar­gets the Caribbean re­mit­tance mar­ket. It got off the ground in No­vem­ber 2014 with a seed fund­ing round of $1.5m to de­vel­op and ex­pand its trad­ing plat­form.Michael J. Casey, au­thor of the Wall Street Jour­nal pub­li­ca­tion, The Age of Cryp­tocur­ren­cy : How Bit­coin and Dig­i­tal mon­ey are Chal­leng­ing the Glob­al Eco­nom­ic Or­der,' en­dorsed Abed's at­ten­dance at the Fo­rum.

Casey, who has quot­ed Abed with­in the pub­li­ca­tion, dub­bing him 'Mr Bitt', notes that "as we en­joy the gifts of the Caribbean over our three day stay in Neck­er, it seems fit­ting that some­one from the re­gion's fledg­ling dig­i­tal-cur­ren­cy in­dus­try should be present."Since the re­lease of Casey's pub­li­ca­tion, Bitt has moved for­ward, de­vel­op­ing some in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions to ad­dress bit­coin-to-fi­at volatil­i­ty in a way that could help cut the re­mit­tance fees charged in the re­gion.