From Digital Payments to Crypto to Executive, Meet Lawrence Lerner

Lawrence Lerner pioneered systems to enable digital cash and has been building cash-less payment and financial reward systems since the late eighties.

Lerner is currently the CEO of Seattle-based Pithia, part of the RChain Coop ecosystem, a $170 million fund responsible for investing in innovative projects around the RChain platform and other blockchain-based companies.

Lerner dove head-first into a series of projects that became the backbone of his career building cashless, digital payment systems.

Lerner engineered a payment system for Southwest Missouri University that used magnetic strips built into student ID cards, a first of its kind in the United States.

As strange as it sounds, centralized cashless systems like the one Lerner built were the earliest incarnations of frictionless transactions.

Fast forward a few years later - it's the nineties and Lerner is building Discover's loyalty and merchant programs - the first loyalty-rewards program for a credit card.

Through his work, Lerner gained an incredible amount of knowledge and insight working with some of the earliest incarnations of digital, including DigiCash, eCash, Mondex, and Veriphone while helping Motorola develop their mobile ecommerce business.

As interest in the cryptocurrency space grew, so did Lerner's involvement - Lerner became actively involved when Bitcoin was just a few dollars.

In 2014, Lerner was an advisor for Washington state-based CoinBeyond, one of the first point-of-sale systems using Bitcoin.

Lerner is correct that not all companies will benefit or even have a need for integrating blockchain into their business models, yet many are doing if for no other reason than FOMO. An Internet of Value.