TOKEN2049 - The Push Towards a Billion Crypto Users

today's our goal is very very simple is to share which you all not only talk about the state of the crypto markets today but most importantly what we need to do together from the 50 million wallets that we have today the billion users on crypto I can't promise you would answer all the questions on and solve all the crypto problems a today but I promise you it's gonna be insightful it's gonna be interesting and most importantly it's gonna be exciting and to do this we had a dream team panel with us today and I'll introduce them one by one so you have the chance to get to know them the first on our upper left is a Chris Chris Mars Alec who's the CEO of crypto comm where they claim they're the best place to buy sell and pay with crypto by the way one thing about Chris people don't know he started his first business at the age of eleven selling computer games so here we go at a time I was watching video games and watching cartoons he was running business already Chris great to have you on board with us today next is Vanessa Grillin vanessa is the executive director at consensus where she focuses on enterprise consulting and strategic initiatives including the EA the enterprise ethereum Alliance which we all know and most importantly she's on the board of accounting blockchain coalition as an audit firm I can tell you it's very important and she was a president of the blockchain for social impact Coalition who a chav you would ask one thing about Vanessa people don't know she's an avid horseback rider and she's to play polo when she was living in London so here we go so people in crypto have many skills and many talents including polo great to have you with us from that perspective Vanessa next is Bill Harlan bill is the founder of Abra one of the world's leading experts on cryptocurrencies and Financial Inclusion topics that we'll talk about today something interesting about Bill people don't know he's a man of many firsts he gave the first TED talk about Bitcoin in 2012 he ran the first mobile remittance service in the u.s. in 2005 and my favorite while I was working at Netscape he was part of a team that worked to deploy the new SSL technology in over 100 countries to create the Internet that we all use today at a time where probably the internet was where crypto esterday so great to have you with us bill and we look forward to hearing from you next is Galya Bernard Z is a co-founder the banquet protocol which has processed nearly two billion and token conversions in 18 months since launch across 140 crypto currencies on both atrium in the OS one thing by the way but Galia people don't know is that her dog and sidekick Negev serves as bankers chief happiness officer and you know the dog is actually at the office and even when she's here the dog is still at the office working hard so here we go great way to have you know new types of staff on board and last but not least is max and Ryan max in his basement honk is that co-founded the best park in 2014 this park was the first firm in the world to send the cash in cash out money transfer using Bitcoin and now they provide bankers money transfer solutions across Asia and Africa with over half a million cash out locations so if we're again well gate we'll talk about financial future in a second one thing by the way about the maxeen people don't know this typical Hong Kong she has a paragliding license but does not have a driver's license so here we go that's what makes it cool again so here we go from polo to paragliding we have it all in crypto line so let's start about talking about how we're gonna get to that billion users we want bill I start with you on the retail investor side I mean obviously you guys have a pretty large a retail investor client base on a scale to 1 to 10 where do we think we are right now when it comes to the offering that we have for retail investors if my mom wants to buy Bitcoin do are we there yet look I think that for retail investors I don't really see the short-term opportunity just in Bitcoin speculation I think it's fine if people want to own some Bitcoin I obviously own a lot of it I think tell people look if you want to put a 2 to 2 to 4 percent of your net worth in in Bitcoin or a basket like our bit 10 which is a combination of the 10 kryptos you should do that and that's great but I think to get to the billion users and from Main Street adopting a Bitcoin it's ultimately going to come down to Bitcoin being relegated to programmable money in the background the same way tcp/ip represents network programming in the background right you have no idea what happens when you push play on that and you should have no idea what happens when you buy Apple shares you know using crypto based smart contracts which is I think is going to be the first killer app for for Bitcoin beyond just hard money speculation and you know that's what we're focused on and it's taking us you know four years to be able to build the infrastructure building easy to use app builder liquidity rails wait for the infrastructure of that coin to catch up just to be able to just do the basics to be able to offer you know the synthetic equity product that we're gonna launch in a few weeks and and so I think that's the first time that you're going to have a Netscape moment in crypto where the average consumer and I could tell you based upon the pre-registrations we're seeing for the new equity product that the average consumers that are coming into this will for the first time be registering for a product where they really don't understand that bitcoin is driving it in the background yep you know that is just I mean if you've been in this for as long as I have and it's been ten years that's amazing you know it's like me sending an email not knowing what internal protocols are in the back I was talking to a reporter earlier is much younger than me and was looking at me like with a crooked head when I explained that in 1992 if you wanted to use the internet you had windows 311 you had to go to a third-party store a retail store by tcp/ip software they didn't know what that was and install it on your computer to create an internet connection that's where we are correct these are V your question today and I think now we have the opportunity to build that the equivalent of Netscape now which is very exciting actually I'll move it to you from when it comes to token users and actually traders many of us in the room obviously using that various tokens are actually investing in it where are we on a scale to 1 to 10 when it comes to tokens for example when it comes to users or the platforms yeah so in a way we're at the same place bill called it negative 1 maybe I'll call it positive 1 yeah since you know the lot the ico phase of the past couple years has shown us that people can create tokens not billions of people we're so far in the thousands of people but we're definitely some I think I agree with everything bill had to say about retail investors and investors using crypto what's really interesting to us at Bank or is people using crypto so investors are a small subset of that you asked about your mom or some people you know asked about their grandma or their grandpa or their dad buying Bitcoin and I always ask are they buying other assets are they buying gold are they buying commodities are they buying stocks many people do buy stocks but most people that use the products that we think of as the most successful products of the internet age your Facebook your YouTube your reddit are buying or consuming products that they want to use rather than products that they want to invest in and wait appreciate and then cash out some of that appreciation in the future they want to use the product now and so when tokens are useful when my token can buy me products on in the Commerce paradigm when my token can get me access to things backstage at a concert or a whatsapp group with someone that I want to be in touch with when my token can give me things I want my token is useful and that's where we see really the billions of users adopting crypto and like bill said they won't think of it as crypto they'll think of it as a product they'll think of it as a service they'll think of it as access to something they want to be in they won't think of liquidity networks they won't think of block chains and which blockchain is my token on no consumer will ever say that absolutely well actually let's move on to the mention about the moms and grandpas want to buy crypto watch a move it to you actually Chris do you think some of the exchanges recently have been failing the community I mean for example quadri got everything going on in Canada as a CEO of a crypto exchange if you could have a few words with what giralda see the former CEO of quadriga what would what we tell them and you think we're moving towards best practices in space well that's an unfortunate story a few words for the gentleman well don't touch customer funds will be a good one maybe don't trade against your customers I mean those are some basic principles and obviously there was a poorly run company I don't think it represents the standards that we see in the market today or where the market is going I think all the top exchanges that today are serious trading venues they are going towards you know proper certifications at once or to clear client font segregation and the others it's it's those are proper businesses surveying millions of customers and and working hard to earn the reputation every day I think quadriga is just a blip on this on the screen in terms of you look at the crypto timeline you know I wouldn't compare it to monk dogs or anything like this I think in 12 to 24 months nobody's going to remember about it it's a sad story nonetheless but I would like to agree with Galia on the 1 billion number if you want to really drive adoption you need to pass this speculative stage you know trading on exchanges you need to go into payment space there's obviously less people even today could hold equities then who buy groceries so yeah I think the move to 2 payments is essentially if you want to get true mass market adoption we'll talk about the mass market I'll bring it to you at you Maxine because we have more than a billion on bad people today you know and you know we always advocate the issue of financial inclusion and to be able to get a mass market adoption you're with your business you guys focus on Financial Inclusion where do you think we are from a scale to 0 to 10 where are we on the spectrum of really empowering financial division and reaching that billion people yeah I mean that's a great question and I think the common theme here is that what's been happening last 10 years is that you have a livewire situation when it comes to crypto right you're literally interfacing with the technology itself and that isn't very helpful for everyday people so what bits Park does essentially we want to own the entire end-to-end mile of money transfers using cryptocurrencies and I can tell you that our business and our individuals do not care about crypto what they care about is saving money being able to send money overseas being able to have that money land and cash is also an incredible component that people tend to overlook yep right now when people want to buy cryptocurrency for speculative reasons or for holding or investment they still need a credit card they still have a bank account sometimes they have to meet people on market places and meet a random stranger on the street to buy crypto so that's really unnecessary I think and I think the next five years is essentially companies like bits mark insuring that it's more of a product rather than you know an ideology so for us we really want to think and focus on leading with practicality rather than ideology what do you think Vanessa because obviously you're the president of blockchain for social impact Coalition you know very interesting name but what do you think we are I mean you agree on a scale to 0 to 10 when it comes to real financial inclusion yeah we're really at ground zero in terms of Financial Inclusion we're not positive today - what are 0 so here we go 1 1 billion people don't even have identity 2 billion are unbanked in the world and I think there's two ways to tackle these issues there is incremental change you know working with the system taking into account the reality on the ground the fact that people are still using a lot of cash and trying to find solutions around that and then there's also really systems change and I think we can do both meaning that do I really want to bank the unbanked do I really want to put people who have been kicked out of the institutions in institutions which are operated by defunct rules and regulations that are cash based and based on paper economies that's an open question I think a lot of people are focusing on creating new ways for people to engage in financial inclusion that may not be in the existing system and I think we need both there are ideas around credit worthiness around creating and building a credit that is not linked to the existing system the idea that you can transfer cash out sides the existing rails but also get landing or other credits access outside of the existing system so just to say that we need both in order to accelerate the process but nothing about the existing system bill I move it to you I mean when it comes to stable coins right obviously there's been a lot of developments when it comes to stable coins the last couple of months do you think that is a secret that's gonna bring us up because obviously there's a lot of the existing players the existing system is involved in that process well it's not a secret since everybody seems to be creating one but I do think it's interesting because the way I think about Bitcoin is like living inside the matrix right Bitcoin has no knowledge of the outside world it just is it's you know right it's it's theoretically the ultimate decentralized system and so we need a way to go from the physical world into the matrix and I think stable coins are interesting because they represent an opportunity to basically bridge the physical world and the digital world in a way that's you know viable right and legal in most places and or can be made to be legal in most places and also represents something that the consumers and retail investors and traders can get their arms around me and they understand it and that's great and then eventually if we do our jobs right there'll be a point well we don't need that anymore because everything will be in the purely digital realm and we don't have a need to go back and you know hard money will be hard money and old money will be forgotten and but that could be 30 40 50 years from now we have no idea right so I think up until that happens being able to represent fiat currencies using smart contracts is is a compelling there's an there's several ways to do that you know abre has one extreme and then you know just storing money on behalf of the consumer is another extreme but until we get there I think it's a viable means of kind of integrating old and new but maybe Maxine do you want to show cuz I know you guys lost recently stable corn here in Hong Kong really tackling Financial Inclusion I mean do you think that's a way to go where yeah I mean the thing is is that we launched Hong Kong's first able coin yep right and the reason why we did that was because it allowed our customers to hold something tangible and something that they understood we don't want our customers holding Bitcoin because if they hold Bitcoin the price the price is volatile but if they hold something like a smart Exxon HKD that means they can have that one-to-one pegged so what we've done is that we actually have a vault in Hong Kong and our customers after they've gone through the necessary email kyc deposit their cash and we're able to then give them a simple coin balance what this what the addition to this is that they're able to get a digital balance without having a bank account and I think that's the main I guess like value that comes from stable coins is that anybody in the world will be able to hold a fiat currency and be able to send that overseas so for us it's absolutely a way for people to I guess bridged that gap between hard cash and also the digital cash but I think the main thing for bits mark and our use case for it is being able to create a hundred and eighty plus peg crypto currencies without bank account's that's really where the real value is for us that's interesting but you bring it back to tube billets quickly on this topic right because you're mentioning about initially but how can we actually evolve we know where we are right right now black people are buying Bitcoin as a speculative assets you know like you mentioned but what do you think we need to make it more as an investment grade asset class or bringing to the next level from that perspective moving not not the payment side which is invisible but made see people who want to hold it as an asset class the crypto itself yeah or you don't think that's the purpose of it no I I do well no I don't think it's the purpose but I think it happens indirectly because if you're adding value via crypto and I think that the single best way to do that is collateralizing real-world assets using crypto not tokenization that's different yeah collateralizing real-world assets using Bitcoin is by far in my opinion the single best application of Bitcoin beyond just holding it as hard money okay now if I'm right with that and you're collateralizing Apple shares and spiders and you know other altcoins and fiat currency there's not enough Bitcoin on planet earth to collateralize all those assets which is great if you're believing Bitcoin because the price is going to go up and I believe that two things are going to happen as a result one that's going to give institutional investors the reason that they're looking for to get into this beyond just the fact that everybody else is doing it right because it's a tangible viable application that I think is gonna drive people all over the world to be using this even if they don't know it and hopefully they won't know it because it means it's more useful and so the side effect of that is it's going to drive retailer interest as well because once institutional money is coming in retail money is also going to come in right and so by the time we get there right you're going to have mass consumer adoption of people who don't know they're using it institutional investors who are helping drive the liquidity for the people that don't know they're using it and retail investors who are coming along for the ride because they see that there's money to be made that's interested we'll talk about is to tional investors second let's move to Galia I mean obviously your platform based on what Bill mentioned with Bitcoin you guys are empowering a lot of utility tokens out there I think your platform handles 140 of them right now what do you think is the future of utility tokens yeah it's a I'd love to give an example from an emerging market we have a project in Kenya outside of Nairobi we work with a not-for-profit on the ground they're called grassroots economics they basically help communities who don't have any access to the national money so the Kenyan shilling rather a product like bits Park might help people get more access and be able to use the Kenyan shillings more efficiently more effectively with more mobility cheaper these are folks who have no access to the Kenyan shillings at all there are seasonal workers when the season is in they can get shillings on the season is out all the shillings leave the community we minted for them their own currency it's called Serra foo which means money in Swahili and they use this currency in the community to buy and sell goods all the people are still there all the products are still there that a lot of them are agricultural products or they're farmers there's services like teachers or people that cut your hair or build your house and they use this currency to do trade in the community you can have hundreds of millions of currencies out there like this that work in communities now that we have the infrastructure like Bank were to allow these tokens to move in a liquid way between communities as well liquidity ultimately is the value of a currency and so vanessa was mentioning you know these two paradigms of incremental change within the system and certainly the system that we have can be improved by efficiencies that crypto has to offer and systemic change completely changing the money paradigm that we have in this generation we think that the next generation of money looks almost nothing like this generation it's not just government's issuing fiat currencies giving licences to banks to rent those currencies to the people it's literally you and me and your mom and anyone else issuing currencies for their communities for their projects for their next music album for whatever is the coordination or the collaboration that they want to create between people and easily issuing tokens for those purposes and easily trading between those tokens as well so it's a bit of a of a mind exercise the way going from a horse and carriage economy to a car and train economy is a bit of a mind exercise of kind of that leap forward but we think for sure that's where things are going and we're building the infrastructure and the products to enable that world we think that world is much more dynamic much more inclusive much more accessible much more fair when money can be created and generated from any point in society that means more people can have access to it and we think it's a it's an interesting paradigm to work towards it's interesting perspective on what you actually on this point of Vanessa from a institutional player when it comes to the social impact area are you seeing adoption or interest and what the gloria was mentioning right now we see banks having a lot of interest in trying to increase Financial Inclusion but let's say increase the system that they they are working with but it works so we worked with Union Bank in the Philippines creating a system where we connect the central bank I mean the Union Bank with the rural banks and give them access to some financial services so in turn they can also grant more services to their users so we see slowly the large institutions moving I would say for mass adoption most most on the on the trading side and inside I think it will be interesting when you'll be able to have a location in your 401k of some crypto I think mass adoption is really in the retirement space and the large institutional money moving around and we're not ready for that yet for several reasons happy to go into that but I think common related to custody related to regulation related to people having fiduciary duties towards their clients and I think that's gonna be one big big challenge in the u.s. notably yeah Chris would you agree I mean for the entry of institutional players where are we on scale from zero to ten it's obvious all the headlines we know about what and just like Obama's on his day one for for instance to enter crypto and if you look at the food chain right there's I agree there's a lot of simple roadblocks the LP is to hold majority of funds they don't have mandate invest in crypto I didn't get mandates first otherwise there's nothing to talk about and in order for for them to invest even they get the mandate if they want to invest into a crypto found you know you need to have custody to have clear guidelines on how to value those those assets the event the trading venues themselves they need to be much more tightly regulated right those are all those things are happening I think there's a lot of work being done but if you just go through this box-ticking exercise you can't do it today I think there's also the it will happen eventually it's not a question of if it's only a question of when and in its to show finance social proof is extremely important so if you see a few large reputable players actually getting it done the rest will follow the herd will follow absolutely we can tell you our business we're seeing that right now and so probably actually a lot more activity on the institutional side now ironically then a lot of the startup activity which is very interesting come on yeah I'm a little more forward I think on the curve see if we're going zero to ten I think we're like four actually in terms of adoption from the mainstream of the institutional we actually look at it more on the corporate side things like Samsung maybe you guys saw the announcement last week but Samsung is integrating the engine wallet the engine wallet is powered by the bank or protocol and this is a gaming token focused play and Samsung has a lot of users of their phones that want access to gaming content and this is some of the newest gaming content out there if that app is successful on that phone we assume that it will be on many phones and many apps like this will be on many phones and all the telcos are calling around being able to give their phones the competitive advantage in the market right what's the next coolest app in the App Store that's more or less a consumer side of the of the story right you also got Facebook coming up with their Facebook coin and if they deploy this into whatsapp and messenger is gonna be massive for the market right but I view this and Facebook play most mostly as a consumer side adoption thing rather than institutional money coming into the space I mean just to add to that I think there's a difference between institutions and retail right institutions is basically if they do and the best more thing like that that's that's a large amount of money but only for some but if we're talking about a billion users we really should be looking at in terms of more retail users and consumer side of things because that's really where the billion of people are yeah basic it's quite still a long way to go I think token 20:49 probably gonna have the same conversation here hopefully when we get removed to zero to five minutes get guy left so I want to do a quick fireside chat so just to give you guys an idea these are questions and panelists have no idea about so just give you guys an idea I want answers are one or two words like one or two seconds and my best friend the Bell who follows me everywhere in the world they'd be there if you guys are not fast enough I'll buzz you guys on and we have trim minutes so I'll go on with this quickly we'll start from you Chris and we'll move on here first question your 18 year old nephew comes today and asked you what is the one course he has to take a university that he should absolutely take before he graduates what is your advice what's the one course he should take or what's the one university course you wish you had taken when you're in computer science software sitting the world and crypto is eating finance Vanessa philosophy philosophy there we go while playing polo why not hey go bill probably had a cook and do laundry I don't teach now but it's always useful ethics oh yeah of course very elevated Maxine I wouldn't suggest that they go to university I think they should just quit and start a company you did which is very cool well start from you this time Donald Trump calls you tomorrow and tells you he wants you to be his crypto advisor to make America a great crypto nation again what do you tell Donald Trump I'm not American where do I sign up what do you say now that's good excellent well Donald Trump calls you to make America great crypto nation again like had nothing sorry Vanessa I'm in you're in as well here we go listening we have all to sir Chris change the reserve currency from USD to BTC here we go okay this one will start from you this is an interesting one tomorrow you have the chance to launch a new crypto startup and you had the choice between one of these co-founders they're not crypto co-founders Mark Zuckerberg Jack Ma Elon Musk or my favorite Kim Kardashian who do you choose as a co-founder no question Aiden last kiss and not even human Vanessa Jack Marquez he gets things done yet sings on here we go Ella muscles law humans like me I'll get things on bill oh it's super easy I mean the best marketer of the whole group is Kim Kardashian it's so absolutely anything that does absolutely nothing to I desperately need that because I have products that actually do something and most people never heard of so Kim Kardashian's a new CMO a go Avril and I actually go with the none of the above and add and add another woman to the list maybe a sheryl sandberg good one actually it's my fault it was Women's Day last week and I know your point Maxine I think for me it has to be all masks yeah I saw this one which is relevant to your last question your nephew comes again he's asking a lot of questions come to come and tells you he has a couple job offers one from a large bank one from a startup one for a large big for consulting firm and one from the government which job he's like oh he should take the startup I mean it depends what the startup is but yeah definitely start because you'll just get more experience that way valia any jobs from NGOs NGOs yeah not-for-profits we had Andrew was one option or startup excellent bill so I've done all three so I don't think I could have done what I'm doing today if I hadn't done all three so I would say go out and try everything yeah everything I would say banks do you know how the system currently works and really have great training good startups that's the only way to live last question we're out of time already if you are not doing the job you're doing today and it could not be crypto what will you be doing Chris crypto for life crypto crypto for life heretofore like when I say if you're not doing a job you're doing today I think consensus what are you doing trading global macro trading grow global macro betting global macro here we go bill probably a comedian comedian there you go see I learned stuff every day from these things good one bill Galia I'd be an animator what kind of a debater animated movies really yeah like Pixar and DreamWorks here we go Maxine to finish it off well if you're not doing a job between today what were you what would you be doing um I'd probably have an agriculture tech fund because I come from a really small rural town in Australia so I always kind of want to I always dream about something like that okay guys that's all the time we have today big head appellate panel is back to you on their take off [Applause]