Energy Giant BP Says It's Tested 'Internal' Tokens

Energy giant BP would consider partnering with blockchain startups that are doing initial coin offerings, and it's even tested tokens internally, an executive said Wednesday.

Speaking at the Blockchain Expo in London, Julian Gray, the technology director for BP's digital innovation organization, voiced a common theme: non-financial enterprises are perhaps more open to open-blockchain innovation that their financial-services counterparts.

"We haven't done anything with public chains yet. But that doesn't mean we won't. We have done proof of concepts using tokens internally, transferring value."

Inside BP, he said, there's a lot of education that needs to be done.

There is a handful of people at the company, formerly known as British Petroleum, now who realize that blockchains, even the open kind, are not merely "Hacker territory."

Gray said that while his own innovation department is robustly funded, he is open to working with others that have gone the ICO route.

The session moderator, Lewis Cohen, a partner at the law firm Hogan Lovells, said it was interesting to hear someone from a company like BP say this.

While the financial services industry has shown a lot of resistance to anything having to do with ICOs or public chains, that's not the case in the wider enterprise world, Cohen said, where he's found players are more amenable to the token route to funding innovation.

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