LegalTechTalk Uncovered Ep 12 – Dr Max Bernt 

Transcript

Robert Hanna: Welcome to the Legally Speaking Podcast, LegalTechTalk Uncovered mini-series powered by Clio. Please introduce yourself.

Dr Max Bernt: Hi Rob, it’s a pleasure to be here. My name is Max Bernt. I’m serving currently as the Managing Director for TaxBit Europe.

I’m based out of Vienna, but traveling most of the time. So, yeah, pleasure to be here in London.

Robert Hanna: You’re on the road. And yeah, we’re coming live from LegalTechTalk, obviously at the Continental Hotel in London. It’s amazing, good energy.

How are you finding the conference?

Dr Max Bernt: I really appreciate it. So I arrived yesterday, was here all day. Unfortunately, I have to leave a bit earlier today, but it’s very, very interesting to see where we are heading towards the digitalisation of traditional legal processes and services.

So it’s great to see that not only artificial intelligence plays a role, but also blockchain in this regard. And that’s why I’m here, right?

Robert Hanna: Yeah, and look, I’m a big fan of blockchain and anyone who’s been following my journey, anything that’s sort of gonna be tech for good and can help things and more transparency, I’m all for it. Can you describe what you’re briefly working on at the moment?

Dr Max Bernt: Okay, so I’m managing director of TaxBit, right? TaxBit is the leading tax and accounting compliance solution provider for the digital economy. And the company recently announced it expansion into Europe and into EMEA.

And what I’m doing for the company is basically as managing director, growing the company in these areas, right? We are serving free verticals. We’re working in institutional accounting, institutional tax reporting, as well as with governments.

We have been working with the US government for the past three years in servicing them with software for crypto tax audits. So a very interesting topic, yes. And what I’m doing at the moment is I’m talking, I’m flying around a lot in Europe, being a lot in London, like HMRC here, Paris, et cetera, and talking to governments basically about how can they use our software to help them with coping with the challenges that arise in the context of digital assets and crypto assets, especially in the area of taxation and accounting.

Robert Hanna: Nice, I like that. It’s so important, isn’t it? And it’s kind of forward looking, it’s where the market’s going, you’re providing a solution.

But as I say, anyone who’s trying to embrace technology and legal, there’s challenges, right? There’s challenges on that. But what sort of the key challenge you’ve identified in the legal sector and how are you going about addressing that?

Dr Max Bernt: So the key challenge that we identified is that it’s really, really, really hard for most service providers that hold crypto assets to really do their accounting and their tax reporting, because it’s so complicated with transactions and you have to, like most companies are actually still working with Excel sheets, right? Whereas the issue is with crypto assets really, that the volatility of the market is very hard to track. So in order to do proper accounting and to do proper tax reporting, you really need to have a solution that helps you to have valuation down by the minute or down by the second.

And a lot of companies are right now still depending on very big consulting firms or tax accountants to do that, because there is a huge liability in this context as well. So what we are doing is we’re really trying to optimise the challenge, like to optimise the processes of coping with the challenges that arise with the dress that’s in the area of accounting and tax reporting. So it’s something no one really wants to deal with, right?

So we are solving that pain for most companies and we are pretty much the only provider that does this on this big scale.

Robert Hanna: Yeah, and you’re right. Like, you know, there’s no point burying your head in the sand. This stuff needs addressing.

And the fact that you’re addressing that pain point, providing a great solution, I think is fantastic. What’s been a standout moment for you then in terms of the whole conference so far? What have you most enjoyed?

Dr Max Bernt: I think my panels like to be honest, to actually sit alongside really brilliant minds and discussing with them the future also of blockchain and the regulatory challenges that arise in the context of digital assets. But what I also see is like, there’s a lot of people here that are pitching AI solutions. And going forward, most people that think about blockchain, we just think about crypto assets and like the speculative side of it.

But what we have been really talking about is tokenisation of real world assets. It’s the use of blockchain as a proof of source for artificial intelligence, because ultimately who knows where ChatGPT is sourcing its information from, right? So you need to have some kind of traceability in this sector as well.

And so what I like about these conferences that are not just solely focused on one area is that you have a broad spectrum of people with broad different backgrounds and different expertise. And if you can like discuss with them, it really helps you to progress further in your own area as well and get like different points of view. So you’re not just like in your own silos.

Robert Hanna: Yeah, I love that. And it’s so cutting edge what you’re doing. It’s so important.

And like you say, not many people are looking at this and you’re really kind of getting to the heart of the problem of providing the solution. Where can people find out more about you guys and feel free to chat on your websites, any social media handles. We’ll also share them this episode for you too.

Dr Max Bernt: Yeah, absolutely. So our website is taxbit.com. We were the first unicorn in our field.

So we are growing right now our business globally. So hopefully they see us soon everywhere. They can find me as I’m on LinkedIn.

I have their Max Bernt is my name there and on Twitter as well.

Robert Hanna: There we go. Max, it’s been a pleasure having you on the Legally Speaking Podcast. Delighted we managed to do it in person.

Wishing you lots of continued success. But for now, from all of us, over and out.

Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you like the content here, why not check out our world leading content and collaboration hub, the Legally Speaking Club over on Discord. Go to our website www.legallyspeakingpodcast.com for the link to join our community there.

Over and out.