Future of Crypto Exchanges

[Music] thank you daniel um and welcome everybody to the last session of the day hopefully everyone is still focused and willing to participate and as daniel said this is crypto so we're quite a talkative community and welcome discussion um and naturally love to collaborate and support um any of the questions that you may have i'll introduce myself quickly and then i'll bring the panel in my name is ian taylor i'm the executive director of crypto uk crypto uk is the uk's trade body a trade buddy as most of you will know is generally a not-for-profit member-led organization which main objective is to advocate for fair and balanced regulation we work specifically um with the uk government to help them understand what's happening in the crypto space but also we work on a number of other issues such as consumer harms advertising illicit finance but also try and really help senior politicians and members of different agencies in the uk understand the benefits that crypto will bring and hopefully we'll dive into some of that today um okay so before i've been the panelist and i'll just set the scene and this is a panel on the future of crypto exchanges um i think we'll all agree that the last two years we've seen a real rapid adoption of crypto whether that's on the retail side um the fca the uk's financial conduct authority they released some summer research that stated overall public awareness had increased significantly and they estimated in their uh research that ownership had increased um up to 2.3 million um adults in the uk from 1.9 billion in 2020 um and they believe that nearly 80 of adults have not heard of cryptocurrencies and then on the institutional um arena we've seen a very large increase just in the last 12 months at crypto uk we've seen many institutional um questions um from banks from payment providers from law firms consulting firms not to mention um many of the brand names global brand names you know paypal square visa all providing services or holding crypto on that balance sheet and now exchanges to the topic of today's discussion exchanges were if you like the first real major market participant naturally they provided access to digital assets for both retail and and institutions at crypto uk exchanges were our founding members so that's what we've seen behind us um let's sort of dive into the topic of um the future of exchanges what will that future look like will we see consolidation we see banking license being forced on um exchanges or something else okay so let's bring in our illustrious panel firstly if i could just ask each of you to give a brief introduction about yourselves and i'll start with uh edgar please sure thank you very much yeah uh well my name is edgar and clara plazencia i'm a business development manager for uh europe and in latin uh pretty much i'm doing uh expansion here in spain right now at the moment i work for bidget which is a crypt exchange um based on singapore um so yeah right now what we are trying to do here in in europe and latin america it's um for everyone to know our brand and try to expand ourselves i will explain you a little bit later uh all our new features and features i mean and all our new uh gadgets so yeah pretty excited to to be here and thank you very much thank you edgar and let's ask jeff mike to do something next okay hey it's great to be here uh my name is jeff and i'm heading um global strategy for hobi so really what it is is um all our expansions to all our global markets um i'm heading these initiatives and then i'm really on on the marketing side that's one stance and the other side is all of our different products right um ecosystem with mining with defy with our nft marketplace our exchange spot trading futures so with expansion it's really handling all of these products and seeing how they can get into our global market so right now we have users in 130 different countries and regions and global hubs in about 20 places right now so i'm really helping do all this uh right now i'm in singapore i'm a los angeles native and right now i'm operating out of singapore thank you jeff pleasure to have you uh with us today uh our next uh oliver thanks can you hear me well okay perfect hi everyone so i'm oliver yates and i'm the ceo of shield market um we're one of the leading electronic prime brokers for cryptocurrency and we're based out of paris france um so actually it's part of our activity we're plugged into some of the major exchanges like hobie to source liquidity for our customers happy to be here thank you oliver and our fourth panelist rodolfo hi everybody uh i'm rodolfo rod for it's easier to remember i'm a business development manager in the crypto team at revolut hopefully you know revolut is one of the largest fintech in europe and we offer both uh banking and crypto services very excited to be here for this interesting conversation thank you to our panelists okay let's get get into our questions so first question to oliver please um as a user of an exchange coming from an institutional perspective perhaps start by telling us how exchanges in your experience have evolved in the last couple of years perhaps talk to the different products and features and services on exchanges now and then move on to the issues that you see that perhaps need addressing um to enable greater adoption and some of the you know questions that you see from your clients sure so the the first thing is that i'm going to address this question as a user of an exchange but so we're an institutional user in the sense that we deal in large volumes and our customers are mainly funds and other brokers so that's a our point of view it could be very different for a retail customer and also if i ask this question to people on my team the answer is going to be very different based on if i'm speaking to people on the tech or the trading team or if i'm speaking to people on the operations and the back office team very different uh answers there so starting with what improved in the past two years um first thing is most exchange most of the top exchanges at least have reduced wash trading this was something you know that was revealed in a lot of research articles uh plagued the crypto space and if you look at it now it's it's it's almost non-existent so this is great for the overall image of the crypto ecosystem especially when you're pitching to you know to more traditional players um also the user interfaces are you know they're more friendly i'd say that's from my personal experience going on these exchanges even though we mainly use the back office we don't trade on the trading interface it's still more friendly and then more importantly you have a very high variety of features that don't exist in traditional exchanges but since crypto exchange are kind of you know central hubs for everything crypto related they've been adding obviously everything around staking mining yields and always this idea that you know from from your single account you're able to access all those products seamlessly which is great um and also there's you know exchanges have been venturing into the d5 space you know thinking about the the the the binance chain for example you have others um but the idea being that this it's kind of like a semi-centralized ecosystem to try out defy stuff i guess um and it's in it it's also new but gives more opportunity for investments and to try out things that are a bit more sophisticated than simply buying bitcoin um also some exchanges are currently part of of ecosystems like like firebox ecosystem for example that makes but it makes integration a bit a bit simpler for for players that want to plug into them it's less of a hassle um and i'd say that from our experience you know the the support personnel the communities locally in each country have much improved you have a lot of people now for example in france but in other countries with that you know you can speak with them you have actual contact and i think it's great when you're an institutional customer or pro customer if you have that now these are mainly things that would be said by the tech and the trading people in my team and then if i turn around and i go and speak to the obs guys what i'd see is that overall back office hasn't improved much it's still very unstable so for example currently there is no nominal access when you're a pro user you need governance you need nominal access for different different employees on your team because they won't have the same rights some people have the right to deposit some you have the right to trade and it's this is very hard to find on the most liquid exchanges so we kind of have to manage all that ourselves it's really tough um also a big issue that i it's not really the exchange's fault it's just ecosystems for legos but there is no clearinghouse right now so counterparty risk still exists and it's really tough for traditional brokers to understand how they can plug into exchanges because they kind of have to take everything on themselves the risk the custody all of it and i think that's something that's just still missing from the overall exchange ecosystem and one of the main reasons why some people will directly go to over-the-counter trading desks um and then you'll have you know some exchanges in instead of that will offer credit lines but most of the time when you're using those credit lines you're not trading on the same order books as the other customers it's not it's not the same experience they're very limited um it's not of your margining won't work on the different assets you're trading so it's it's still it's in its infancy um and this is an issue credit in general is an issue in the trading ecosystem for crypto something else that comes up up and again mostly from the ops team is is that the apis are still very much retail oriented and what i mean by that is that the documentation is not that straightforward um the apis are still unstable and they're all rest apis using json which is not the fastest way to transmit information in the final financial sector but still it's the norm in crypto so that's what we use um another big issue is that ultimately a lot of the activity in crypto is on ramping or off-ramping to and from euro or dollar or yen or whatever and and that means that the exchanges have to be plugged into the major banking networks and it's still not the case for most exchanges getting from a 2 dollar for example or euro even worse to crypto you need several steps this is something that we offer but that means that we have to kind of do all these those operations on our side um and also one of the main reasons why people sometimes go to otc desk directly to trade from euro to bitcoin from dollar to bitcoin um and finally yeah there's another aspect that's super important is that the legal structure of most of these exchanges is very difficult to understand by a traditional compliance department you know when when a company like ours on plugs into an exchange we have to to kyb the exchange and it's still very tough and we have roles from our regulators we're regulated prime brokers so we have those rules that come unto us and so it's it's quite tough now what i'd say is being done right now to the rest of those issues the first one is that you have cross margin solutions that are being developed either by the exchanges themselves to allow trading seamless trading across all the assets on margin um or by third-party brokers like ourselves or others but ultimately it's still improving uh you know it's defragmenting the exchange market and the other aspect is that a lot of the major exchanges are are now filing for regulation and and you know serious countries so so what i mean by that for example is a country that has a clear crypto framework most countries don't have a crypto framework yet but even the u.s doesn't have a unified crypto framework but some countries do switzerland for example so i'm thinking about finance that that announced that it's filing for registration in france right now so you have you have this movement of and it's not just finance it's most exchanges they're they're moving out of the offshore space and and on to more you know regulated spaces and so ultimately this will imply better performance because they have more uh requirements from the from the regulators in terms of the performance they have to offer um so yeah that's that's that's my take on it uh essentially well thank you very much for that oliver that's that's super interesting and i was just wanting to pick up on some of the sort of market integrity um the market surveillance pieces that you mentioned and australia was a big problem um a while ago but now has somewhat been solved um however i do i do know from talking to policymakers that that they're quite focused on this especially um around say a protection for funds that are being put into centralized exchanges uh staking products with you know interest bearing offerings and and how those client funds are protected and so on and so forth so yeah i'd be interested to see how the and you touched on the regulation and we can dive into some more regulatory discussions uh later but let's let's now turn the discussion over to rod and as you mentioned in in in your intro you work out one of the largest uh fintechs and revolut members that come to ucan we work closely with them on a number of issues um and we know that revolut has been offering um crypto to its clients for quite a while now so in your experience how do you see the role of exchanges and banks operating in this current two-speed regulatory environment and then just to be clear for it for the audience exchanges in the uk at this time require two licenses uh to operate it's differs across jurisdictions which is the new uh money laundering regime which is the eu aml d5 anti-money laundering directive five and an e-money electronic money license if indeed the exchange allows you to um on board with fear so that's that's the uk but yeah maybe over to you uh rob with with you know a a greater expertise in this space yeah thank you thank you anne first of all uh this is a super interesting uh question right uh one thing that i want to clarify though is that of course i can share my personal opinions right and i cannot talk for uh for revolut this is uh this is clear uh look i think that in general exchanges are doing like a great job in increasing adoption uh if we think about let's say retail clients right um and i mean more and more uh these exchanges are converging in terms of services that they offer to uh to to banking uh uh offerings right but uh if if you step a second and and you understand how this uh these companies operate uh you realize that actually this is uh this is taking a little bit of a step back uh compared to what is basically the essence of of blockchain and cryptocurrencies which is uh i mean uh being decentralized right um i think that i mean bitcoin was born uh probably not willingly but in a moment when people were a little bit uh mad at banks because i mean it was uh right after and during the crisis uh many people had lost a lot of money uh that were deposited on banks and that they trusted a lot uh and uh and now i mean they were given the opportunity to have full control on their money which is basically if you have uh bitcoin you can simply decide uh where you wanna transfer to which address you wanna transfer your money and you you have full control over that you don't need any third party to that for you uh but on the other side i mean this was of course full control over your money but control also means responsibility and as we know i mean uh you have to take good care of your your privacy otherwise if you lose that i mean we heard many times the story of people buying uh bitcoins and losing the hard drives and losing a lot of money right and so um as soon as uh people were more attracted to crypto exchanges seemed the seem to be the right uh let's say uh compromise of having an exposure towards crypto but also not have the responsibility of managing your own your own keys and uh your own money and also i mean it was extremely uh easy to do that right so if you think about transacting in uh in on a blockchain i mean it's not rocket science but it's not as easy as transferring money to to an exchange and i mean onboarding on the exchange and uh and purchasing uh krypton on that uh the only piece that was missing i mean initially the exchanges did a good job with with people that were interested in uh and actually investing in cryptocurrency as an asset to to speculate but as soon as adoption increased and people started to to to wanting to spend their money uh exchanges had basically two solutions uh two possible solutions right on one side keep everything as it was and uh allow people to uh withdraw their their their cryptocurrency exchange to fiat and spend money uh with their traditional bank right or go into let's say uh go into offering more banking like products like cards uh and then after cards uh borrowing and then landing and then of course crypto specific uh products like staking so on and so on and so forth right uh but the focal point that were that i mean people started missing is that these companies are not decentralized even though many of them are now working to to improve on that point uh and are fully centralized but they are i mean not all of course but they are some under certain degrees a little bit shady meaning that the level of transparency that would be expected is not there so what is happening is more and more people is pouring money uh in exchanges and taking on it's a credit risk that they don't realize they're taking right and uh i mean so my suggestion i mean i i don't i don't i'm not a believer in uh in a street and let's say violent regulation of exchanges i don't think that is needed right but of course as we are going towards that as you as you mentioned in many countries uh the increase in in in transparency and accountabilities and accountability for these firms is is necessary to avoid let's say a black hole risk of not knowing uh where this money go if by any any chance i mean exchange go go burst right on the other side we have banks as you mentioned and uh i think that banks are now facing uh different different challenges right on one side you have large increment banks that have some kind of also technical legacy right that it makes a little bit difficult for them to to to shift towards uh the digital asset world and on and you have let's say smaller banks or newer banks that don't have probably the technical legacy but along with larger banks are facing an in a regulatory environment that is uh uh let's say a little bit old and not up to speed what uh the way the the the world is changing so my view is that in the short term probably we see uh coexistence of the two worlds right uh simply because uh i mean the way in which adoption is increasing is not uh let's say followed up by the way in which either banks or exchanges can offer the full package of uh let's say of of products to their customers but i think that we will reach a point in the future in which basically exchange and banks we will need to offer the same uh the same basically products right because as adoption increases on one side you have exchanges that will receive more and more pressure to make crypto available for use to their customers and they are already moving in that direction right on the other side you will have banks then more and more will need to offer crypto uh products to their customer and i mean they will need to do that to avoid basically uh failure because uh if uh if adoption increases and people more and more uh switch for digital assets compared to traditional assets i mean you will you will need to you will have to go there eventually um and i hope but i'm pretty sure about this that the regulation will support this uh otherwise i mean what you will have is having a full uh or at least a light regulated environment where the risk will increase uh tremendously uh and the more regulated environment will be basically left dying because of not uh changing the regulation um so this is this is my take on on where we're going in this two-speed uh environment right thank you very much for that rob um and i'll open up to the floor um for a question as to where you folks think regulations should be but i'll just give our audience a little insight as to some differences that we're witnessing across across the globe and and with the work that we do with the uk regulators know some people in the community are saying exchanges are operating like banks um and we see the new products and services um really develop in the last couple of years i can remember when i first got into the policy space of crypto some three years ago no exchanges were offering any interest bearing products um and that's you know really developed um obviously derivatives and other such products are common common uh place and leverage offerings so let me give you an example of what they've done in japan so the the japanese have come up with the sro the sale regulating organization model so the japanese financial services agency the fsa they gave the cryptocurrency industry self-regulatory status permitting the japanese virtual currency exchange association to police and sanction exchanges for any violations look at what's happening in the us with the potential stable coin regulation now these aren't not a stable coin issuer isn't in exchange but there's a suggestion that stable issuers should be um fall under banking regulation which is such a heavy lift compared to in europe where we see stable coin issuers as payment instruments and regulated under payment infrastructure and regulatory clarity rather than banking so anyone on a panel want to sort of chime in with their view as to what the right regulation is for a quick chassis exchange jeff you are down there doing the strategy um at hwabi you know what's the folks in singapore think it's all right the right model yeah yeah you know regulation sure that's that that's the topic we're always caring about right when you're when we're doing expansion when we want to go into a new market the first thing we think about is what is legal what can we do here what kind of products can we offer here and then how can we you know adhere you know work with the government closely do we have any relationships there um what what are the rules right this type of stuff right so um hobie's always been really closely following a regulatory policy right we're working with a lot of different regulators and all over the world right like we were one of the first ones to get the licenses in japan and korea right we're all especially in asia it's a lot easier for us since um our major like headquarters and stuff has always been in asia right but uh to your question where where regulations should be headed uh we want to kind of see it like this regulation is there to actually protect users right when governments are are regulating the assets and different kind of financial products it's really to help you know protect where the money's coming from right protect how how users are using these products how we should be you know taxing it and that type of stuff right uh but this overall it's good for the ecosystem right when you're regulating it it becomes more legal it becomes more available to you know just like you know a lot a lot of large institutions right now like we mentioned earlier paypal and venmo and stuff like that catch up um it makes it very more accessible so it makes them more uh likely to be working with crypto assets right it makes crypto assets a more tangible source a more founded um kind of entity right so with that it's good for the entire ecosystem so for us we see that regulation is definitely going to be the future a few years ago a lot of places were still in more gray zone territories with regulation they weren't really sure how to regulate or are going to work with spot trading derivatives mining they weren't exactly sure what exactly to regulate right and then as we see now over the years even like today um they have a lot of different rules a lot of different policies out there but it's good for the ecosystem as a whole so i think for our stances we will continue following regulation and we're also like working our research teams are really working closely with different countries regulators to build these new policies and i think that's going to be the future thank you jeff and and thanks to the questions from the audience i know some of the panelists answered in the chat but we'll we'll bring some of them in in a minute but let's uh turn to to edgar who works at a big gap which is a crypto asset exchange as as he mentioned in his intro so uh what do you see as some of the popular features on your platform um and you know what do you feedback do you hear from your clients and maybe delve into some recent new features that you've added and you know where are the growth areas in these offerings sure thank you very much for the question first of all i think we cannot speak about future of exchanges without um without trust right and this is something really um it's really important uh because it's like the base of any any relationship a lot of our users are kind of concerned uh because sometimes we just um establish or promote like uh um you know put some money here um we have some promotions uh you will get some usd for uh doing days doing that and actually sometimes we have to say like the whole part of the story um this is for all the exchanges i mean and sometimes it's um it's it's really uh important to to speak about also um that if you are uh trying to invest this money in in uh in exchanges uh there's a risk right there so uh in data in all of the exchanges um we all have nice tools uh that really helps you with this kind of risks risk management is really really important and so i just want to create some conscience um for the people that um really use stop loss really uh use uh take profit um features and also here in bitcoin we have something really um new let's say well he's not that new but we are the leader in in this kind of feature which is um uh copy trading um but first of all you have to to come up with a thesis you have to come with uh some ta technical analysis you have to do some uh dior uh do your own uh research about investing in a token so yeah all the exchanges will have like nice tools to help you uh create some some income we are really um we have really financial tools but it's up to you at the end um if you use it uh you use it well right um so yeah um pretty much in mitigate what we try to do is create that conscience uh we are trying to create some content educational um content that will help you um with this along the way and also i will try i would like to speak about uh something really interesting you were talking about before um bit kid that last march we acquired um a um a decentralized multi-chain wallet and i just want to say from here that um we acquired bitkey it's um a really nice multi-chain wallet and we became from that acquisition we became the world's uh only c5 and d5360 uh integrated exchange platform so it's really interesting how we can we can combine not only um c5 but also also define here you have uh it's like a cold wallet and you can you can combine it um you can do some bitswa defy dab nft um storage so yeah we're on unbelievable we are trying to evaluate and we are trying to to go uh upwards and i'm just i'm just um i would like to to really create conscience about uh that um you need to um to be really conscious about what you're doing in exchanges it's not only uh put some money there and uh let let them people um uh do do whatever whatever they want with your money you have to investigate some something and well um that's it on my side well thank you very much edgar and you touched on um an interesting point do you do your own research and and you know we see a lot of people wanting unfortunately to get get rich quick and just focus on on the retail space and i think there's some been some good questions um from the audience and thank you daniel for your questions and perhaps um to you edgar these questions around education career counselling um you know what can exchanges do and what does bit get do for say the newbie that wants to um you know join in the party so to speak and invest in crypto but doesn't have any real knowledge or education do you provide those resources on your platform yeah for the new people for the beginners i would say um first of all uh we have a lot of tutorials also a lot of exchanges have other tutorials to to get to know this uh technical analysis uh but for me it's like a combination of two things uh not only uh study some uh charts and stuff you need to also know what you're doing with your money if you are investing in something in good quality projects or if you are doing some uh trading just for for some income so it's really uh there's a difference right there um if you work with different time frames when when trading if you are investing uh maybe you can put it in in some um cold wallets like like git kit for example and if you are trading doing some trading uh of course you will have to um to do to use uh shorter time frames but yeah just to answer your question uh directly we have tutorials and we have this uh copy trading feature which helps you a lot if you have a thesis or maybe you are starting to this uh through this career maybe you can confirm your thesis by following more experienced um traders so at the end it helps you it gives you like the push you need to to do that trading um but yeah that's how we i think uh we can help our new new uh users for the platforms exchanges thank you edgar and just just to be clear for the audience you know nothing you say is um any kind of advice another financial advice financial arrives that the the lawyers always will tell us to disclose this but i think there's there's two things so there's one for me we see a lot of people vulnerable people getting getting scammed um so just be very careful do your homework use reputable exchanges um and also secondly the benefits and this is something that this is a platform that we get to talk to politicians about is we see a great use case of education or financial literacy before crypto uh you talk to somebody you know i did an economics degree used to be a trader in the city of london people aren't interested in the history of money people weren't interested in how you calculate um apr or you know what is interest-bearing instruments but i've seen lots of people that don't come from a financial and economic background really start learning these concepts and i think that's generally good for society that educational piece can really help folks um manage their money generate wealth themselves and be you know be more financially astute so i think there's a you know there's a good story there too around this so let's move on to our fourth question to jeff please um so let's discuss um how you see your client base which predominantly your your based in asia using crypto perhaps talk about the different demographics um you know what age categories uh social economic class um investing and is it more of an investment opportunity in your region as i think what we know is the case in in the uk or are you seeing other use cases uh folks using crypto as it was designed for the bitcoin white paper you know a p2p trustless payment network yeah sure sure um yeah so first i'll go over kind of like the overall i guess our user demographics right from our products we have more of our institutional customers in the americas and europe especially in uk we have a lot of institutional clients out there so they're going to be larger right but when we're talking asia um of course in hong kong singapore we also have you know a few customers here and there but overall across asia we really want to focus on our retail users right we have a lot of there's the mobile penetration age is very high right everyone's on their cell phones everyone's very active everyone's very accustomed and educated to technology right so they're they're very active right and this is perfect for crypto because crypt is so dynamic it's always changing uh you need to be active right and that's why some of our best traders are in asia because they're online all the time right i think i saw a question down there should it be twenty four seven two quickly 24 7. yeah they you when you're trading you you're up 24 7.

you set alarms right in the middle of the night to wake up and check on your check on your portfolio right but um to the question payments or investment right so in in a lot of areas of course they're using crypt as you know remittance tools right they're sending remittances in like america you can see they're starting to buy houses and cars and all types of stuff with crypto as well right but i think for right now in this stage um in asia it's still going to be more for investment right and there's a couple reasons for this um for one it's going to be the accessibility right so you can imagine like in the us we can get a credit card when you're 18 years old you can start a bank account when you're you know even if you have a parent you know co-sponsor like 14 16 years old right but in asia and a lot of countries here you don't have access or the people don't have access to a lot of these financial products right and that's what um crypto does right with crypto with these different you know especially like in d5 or like all these different crypto products you're giving people this access you know we see a lot of ads buy bitcoin with one dollar right you can get apy right just like you said people are learning about what staking is what farming is what is lending right um you're giving people access to all this stuff right so that's one thing um a lot of people who wanted to invest did not have these opportunities in traditional finance but crypto kind of opens the world to them right they have this accessibility that's one thing and then we talk a lot about mass adoption this is one key driver that is can help mass adoption right by giving people access by giving people these tools to to be invested right that's one thing the second thing is the actual products being invested right so um you know asians the asian community they're very like i said they're very active they like to jump on opportunities very edu education level is very high they like investments right but especially in a lot of major asian countries the regulations so strict on traditional investments that it's very difficult for them to access but with crypto you can literally you know invest into almost any project right any project built by anyone around the world you can have access to this right in traditional finance if you don't have the right accounts or the right you know net worth or whatever or whatnot it's hard for you to buy you know stocks or bonds or whatever from different countries however cryptos can be made by people in different countries and you can have access you can be investing you could be participating in the communities and they love that right they look very active okay and then and then the third thing is uh background accessibility we talk about um what crypto is bringing we you see a lot of large exchanges and edward kind of touched on this we're they're making white versions right it's just like us we have a light version of kobe right it's it's making it easy for people to buy cryptos and we're literally two two clicks you can get cryptos right and and and these wallet products just like um you know edward also mentioned we were also launching our 4b cloud wallet right so so the cloud wallet does a couple of things right um or other wallets not just our own wallet but it one it's a custodian right so we're we're housing we're letting users house your own private keys right you have access to your own private keys we it doesn't have to be in a centralized location they might feel safe with that and then we're giving them this technology to you know fight assets cross chain right you can be occupy assets um across any chain right you can have access to that and then the second the last thing is with liquidity right a lot of times people want to buy into an a crypto asset or a digital asset but they don't have the liquidity but with these wallets that are coming out right now including ours uh shout out um we're connecting them to these exchanges so you can you can have the full liquidity of any exchange that that you want right and then and get these assets so so in general we see that the asian population right now they're taking a lot of advantage of trading of derivative products of of these wallets of these new newly listed tokens right you can see that they're they're more accustomed to buying you know we we did a lot of product runs uh of course they're still buying our main coins bitcoin ethereum but you see that we've taken a lot of interest in these new projects up they want to be more involved thank you uh thank you thank geoff and and just yeah focusing on age i was aware of some policy for exchanges actually excuse me in south korea that i thought was somewhat really prohibitive um and i can draw some comparisons with other examples but but creme if i'm wrong i don't know if you know this but i recall that part of the registration process for a quick classic exchange in south korea was that they had to have a banking relationship with one of the major south korea banking institutions and that's quite a heavy lift because i know in the uk i can't speak for south korea that getting a relationship with a bank for any quit to asset market participant exchange custodian trade body is absolutely impossible because there's just no risk appetite at this time is that is that your understanding check for other panelists yeah i mean the policies has changed as like you mentioned it over past couple months there's been a few changes but i think what when you think about is the most the most inherent reason of why we're why they need to do this right it's all about kyc so kyc has always been a very very focused issue in in south korea they want to know who's buying who's selling and they want to kind of keep track of all the assets involved right so with this banking relationship before it was more so when you're when you're with the bank your kyc right so that way it makes the process more easier but like you said uh because it's requiring this new barrier it is a little bit harder for other other people to be joining it's definitely a longer process than before okay um well excuse me well thank you very much for for our panelists i think well you know we're kind of coming to the end of the session but before we before we wrap up let me go around each of the panelists and perhaps uh start start with you um oliver to give us a get your crystal ball out and tell us what do you think um the crypto asset industry in general and you can focus on exchanges or just generally um it doesn't it doesn't matter in your answer you know what where do you think things will be in 12 months from today if you don't like the 12-month time horizon you can shift it out to five years exactly yeah i'll shift it out because 12 months i have no idea i mean people have been buying pictures of gorillas for two million dollars in the past few months like really i have no idea what's going to be happening in the next 12 months but next five years i'd say that we're gonna have a shift in terms of the the main i wouldn't call them trading venues but the main markets there's going to be a shift towards hybrid decentralized finance what i mean by that is that you have d5-like infrastructure which could look like you know automated market makers or lending pools and all of that but with um with with with kind of a kyc layer institutional layer you already have that going on you know aves trying out its beta for for its institutional pool i mean it's benefiting from the savings incurred by d5 infrastructure while still having you know a centralized entity doing some supervision some kyc not everything decentralized and this is what also binance is is looking at i mean we heard about i think bullish exchange is working on that you have a lot of venues working on that i think this is what we're we're moving towards slowly yeah i tend to agree with that oliver i think you might see this you know yeah hybrid of the best of both worlds the benefits that the innovation and you know these new business models corporate structures dows and your talks on you know amens and the benefits they bring less slippage and you know access for long tail assets um so let's now bring rod in get your crystal ball out please sir where where do you think things will be in uh yeah again uh i i think it's uh i mean it's easier to give a a longer term outlook rather than a 12-month prediction right but uh i i will agree with uh with oliver i think that um and i hope actually that we will actually get the best of the of the two worlds right and i think that what will uh a transformation that we will actually see is uh adoption more and more let's say this will become the normality for for many people more and more this will i mean the crypto world will become the way in which people actually manage their money so it's not only let's say the the cool investment that you enter uh because you want to make money quickly but it's the way in which actually you can manage your your your whole financial life and i agree in the fact that probably what we will see is the creation of micro uh or macro um let's say uh well garden environments where once a customer is kyc can actually leverage or fully leverage the the centralized let's say nature of these uh of this technology to basically do everything he wants with uh with his money thank you rob um and will we see a revolutionary institutional offering equivalent for access to d5 for institutional players in the not too distant future yeah i cannot really answer to that right no i'm sorry i couldn't i couldn't help myself but actually absolutely speaking for yourself um well i know from the folks that are made uh they're talking to institutions so this is yeah probably not too far away okay um the same question now to edgar what do you think is coming down the pipe well um this is a really tough question actually but i really see massive adoption uh in the next um 12 months uh i see a lot of institutional uh also money coming into exchanges and all and other platforms create the platforms so um i really see and i think uh it will be uh just as all over said it's gonna be a combination um to defy and and also um cfi in in certain way and um i think a lot of people will not only invest in crypto but they will try to uh store their money in encrypted because a lot of our tokens are good good quality tokens and they have used cases uh right right now so yeah i see massive adoption i'm in this environment since a while and this is the first time i see a lot of deaths a lot of a lot of depth working really hard in a lot of ecosystems just to mention someone not to to make them uh promotion but i for example i love uh solana avalanche i know a lot of depths are working really really hard in this kind of of depth so yeah pretty much i think uh institutions and this kind of um of great whales they will realize there's a huge opportunity here and i see massive adoption in the next uh the next year yeah that thanks edgar and and you know from my side um uh actually that's not fair i should go to jeff first and just a big shout out to jeff he's in singapore so that's plus seven cets i'll let you guys do the maths well well done a bit yeah extra shout out and now now you're to tell us where the future may take us uh 12 months bitcoin's gonna be at 200 grand because guaranteed not that's personal personal view no um yeah i think i'm bullish on d5 i think um d5 just has a lot of possibilities right you're giving people the chance to like especially like with collateral and like staking you know people a lot of people around the world never have the chance that they're making their money work for more right they're working for more they have money they're holding it and they can make more money with it right that's just investing in drone right but it's like a lot of people never had this opportunity and there's just so many possibilities in d5 by offering people these services you know we're even derived products you know double lending this type of stuff right um and then the second thing is i think with nfts and the metaverse i mean a lot of it's based on the art aspect right now but i think coming forward it's going to be more it's going to really connect the digital and the real world right you can be using it for authentication supply chain you know i think a lot of like major brands are going to be starting to adopt it bring more people into the crypto world that way so i think these two things are really going to be uh you know top top winners right now in the space yeah thanks thanks jeff and you know it would be unfair for me to ask you folks um what you think the future is and so you know from my side um you know i do see a great amount of institutional focus and when i go to events um there's it's this is demand lead all of the tier one institutions want some form of access and with that will come a whole slew of new innovative developments and infrastructure building and one would hope that we see perhaps a you know a two-tier system where you can play around in a you know what is the d5 space now with perhaps some better protections for consumer harms whether that be um uh front running minus detecting value or that be for price manipulation or you know in symmetries of of information or smart contracts falling over um code you know locking up funds for example um but also for those institutional players that have a heavier lift that needs to get things through their compliance team and there'll be products and services for that job right so i think that's that's a wrap uh all that remains is me to thank our full panelists thank you so much folks and i will hand back to our hosts thank you and goodbye thank you ian what a good way to exercise today we thank you very much for for staying we had almost 40 or 50 speakers all along today so thank you very much to all of them for being here and sharing all these experiences and to the audience thank you once again for being with us i hope tomorrow you can join also we start a bit early tomorrow we start at 11 45 central european time just one thing i wanted to mention is that european blockchain convention is a good way to learn stuff and be connected to the latest news in the industry but it's also a great way to to networking we're using brella to follow all these sessions but also because you could connect to anyone in on the bladder platform so you can go to the people tab and then you can reach out to anyone there and suggest meetings and have yeah meetings on the umbrella platform nothing it's a awesome way to get to to meet peers in the industry so ian jeff oliver edgar broad thank you once again and i'll see you around thanks everyone see you thank you [Music]