Stefan Matthews handing over CEO reins at TAAL to Richard Baker in January 2022

Stefan Matthews, CEO of TAAL Distributed Information Technologies Inc. (CSE:TAAL | FWB:9SQ1 | OTC: TAALF), announced he will step down from his position on January 1, 2022. Taking his place will be Richard Baker, who currently sits on the company’s Board of Directors and has served as Lead Independent Director of its Technology Committee.

Matthews will remain in a leadership role with TAAL, continuing in his current position as Executive Chairman of the Board—something he has committed to doing until December 2022. Taking over Baker’s leadership of the Technology Committee is fellow current Board member Deborah Rosati.

In a statement to CoinGeek, Matthews said: “Now is the perfect time for this transition to occur, TAAL has been steadily growing its revenue, quarter in quarter, we just released our Q3 results and have set ourselves up for a strong 2021 result. This provides the foundation for additional hash to come online later in the year and in Q1 and we have just announced the acquisition of a 50MW facility in New Brunswick.”

Richard Baker is well-positioned to take over as chief executive, and his time on TAAL’s Board appears to have been in preparation for his ascension to the CEO role. The company referred to the change as a “transition” in its quest to become a major, BSV-backed data backbone to the growing digital economy.

He was formerly CEO of Cambridge, U.K.-based GeoSpock Limited, a data analytics software company, and is also chairman and director of TAB UK, a fintech data science firm. In 2010, he co-founded Cleartrade Exchange (a fintech commodities futures exchange) and in 2016 moved to the European Energy Exchange.

Baker thanked Matthews for his mentorship and guidance during his time on the Board of Directors, and said he looked forward to continuing to work closely with him as TAAL commences its next phase of development and growth. Baker has overseen development of an overarching business strategy for the company, to be implemented in 2022.

“TAAL has a critical role to play in assisting the maturing and adoption of Bitcoin SV blockchain. As a market phase, this reminds me of my early career where I had the pleasure of working in the Telcom’s industry in the early 1990’s with Nortel Networks and Cable & Wireless during the build of extensive optical fibre networks around the world; this infrastructure became the backbone of the internet we know today and has enabled innovation that no one could forecast way back then.”

“I firmly believe we are witness to the next big technological and economical evolution of data and money networks and unlocking, scaling and liberating accessibility to the unique capabilities of Bitcoin SV is at the heart of my leadership journey with TAAL. We have a truly talented global team and an incredibly rich BSV eco-system of partners and I look forward to collaborating and building together compelling service propositions for our clients.”

Matthews said Baker has his full confidence and support, particularly in the Bitcoin mining, processing infrastructure and operations areas. He called Baker’s promotion to CEO as “a natural progression,” adding that the two have worked together closely over the past year to develop a strategic vision for TAAL.

“This will ensure a very smooth transition and position the executive leadership of the business to deliver significant innovation into the blockchain sector,” he said.

Around the time he joined TAAL’s board in late 2020, Baker gave his insights to CoinGeek Conversations in an interview titled “How BSV will power the machine to machine economy.” Looking towards a world where the majority of data is produced not by humans but by IoT sensors and devices (often driven by their interactions with humans) he asked: what would be the best way to harness this vast amount of information?

Increasing automation would lead to a new economy where more daily transactions would be between machines, he said, and BSV should be the digital ledger of choice for that economy. In doing so, it would be in competition with existing Big Cloud players like AWS, and BSV would need to prove its value as a better alternative.

Overcoming large companies’ hesitancy to use blockchain platforms and digital assets would be key, he added, and BSV’s emphasis on scalability and compliance with existing systems would be advantages.

Watch: CoinGeek New York presentation, TAAL: Leading the Future of Blockchain Transaction Processing