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Rupert Barksfield is a British technology entrepreneur and the co-founder and COO of Centry Capital, an AI-assisted tax and wealth planning firm.
He is also the co-founder and former CEO of VALA, a social app that combines short-form video, creator rewards and crypto features. He has worked in crypto since 2016 and has more than 15 years of experience across fintech, medtech and ad and event technology. He was project lead and founder of Amulet Protocol, a DeFi insurance protocol built first on Solana, which announced a $6 million seed round in April 2022.
He co-founded the fintech startup Pynk, where he was COO, and is listed as a co-founder of Strolll. He worked as a partnerships consultant for the Solana Foundation in the UK and EU from 2023 to 2024.
In 2025 he served as COO of the AI company Sensay. His current focus is operations, growth and client experience at Centry Capital.
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Latest interview · Aug 30, 2024VALA combines social media, content and crypto tradingWatch the episode →
Key points
- VALA addresses crypto adoption barriers by combining social media video content with simplified asset trading and staking directly within the platform.
- Gen Z and millennials increasingly learn financial information from short-form video platforms, but crypto content is actively dampened on traditional social media.
- The platform eliminates multiple steps between learning about an asset and purchasing it by integrating wallets, KYC, and trading functionality into one interface.
- Content creators can tag assets in videos uploaded to VALA and share them across Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms with embedded links back to the platform.
- VALA's core principle is simplicity, allowing users to watch videos about assets and execute trades with minimal clicks while abstracting away technical complexity.
In their own words
“The trillion-dollar opportunity inside crypto is to own the whole chain and take responsibility for users.”
“We've gone on-chain, but we haven't changed the model.”
“You've got to be in it to win it, and that's what we're swinging for the fences with.”
“You've got to have a working product and show that you're serious about what you're doing.”
Every appearance on Crypto Coin Show
Latest episode shown above.
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