Wang Hao - The Future of Open Finance: Embracing Blockchain Technology - TOKEN2049 Dubai 2025

In my 20 years career, I've been doing finance mostly. The only difference is last four years I'm using a different technology that's called a blockchain. And that's something that I do see a huge potential which I like to show here and hopefully you have a similar kind of concept that finance can be done differently. Before everything I mean I just want to use a disclaimer. Uh number one we are less in Abu Dhabi global markets which is uh in um a free zone and anything talking here is not for financial devices.

So before I start with anything, so this is the thing is like I want you to close your eyes, think about a world where all financial transactions you do daily to your friends, to your business partners or anything on crypto etc are real time and secure. And this is actually perhaps true. you already have it perhaps if you live in a say in a very wellestablished financial center as I came from Singapore for the last 11 years and most of things is done instantaneously and 24/7 uh financial transition between corporate accounts business accounts individual accounts but if you come to certain parts of the world I would say 80% unfortunately is still using very old probably underdeveloped infrastructures So that's something that's how do we build this. Before I talk about this, I I like to say a little bit word about myself. We are seeing this guy uh talking here.

So I used to be a banker investor for the last 15 years and city normally in Tokyo and the hedge fund family offices. That's mostly my early career. I've seen what the existing financial infrastructure has been doing for investments, for trading, for any business. And then in the last four years, I become more or less a dreamer and actually executioner and builder. Um, several companies I've tried and currently I'm the SEOs of changer, which essentially want to build a crypto bank uh based out of Abu Dhabi in Europe.

So before we talk about anything open finance, what are we trying to solve here? What are the pain points? I think we have three here. Security and cyber security is probably the most crucial one. Inefficiencies, how efficient you can do it and trust.

I'll probably just use some of the numbers which in our case is actually not um so unfamiliar. Every cyber security on average is cost about $6 million. This is happening on a global basis and we need almost six month a year to actually identify who did it or where they come from and another 51 days roughly two months to just stop it before any further damage. So we lost about $6 billion last year and this number is much faster. It's four times faster than the global GDP.

So it's growing at 24% ker. So if you do cyber security on the positive side, that's a good business. So that's cyber security inefficiencies. um people who do send money globally either to your friends or to your families or to any global payments you probably don't encounter that high cost or inefficiencies unless you're sending to countries like for example India Pakistan Africa Latin America on average this cost about 5 to 7% and this is on a global basis we're talking about and if you're lucky you get one or two days get a process received otherwise as you just don't know where the money goes. How many times you ask where's my money and they said okay this has been sent and then you ask the other side have you received and no unfortunately and where got this stuck no one can tell you this is due to confidentiality so that's kind of things we are facing still among probably 80% of countries and 70% 70% of the swift transaction got exceptions that's why it needs a human interventions to come in and check oh this is a typical error or this whatever they fix it.

Lastly, trust. So, one of the biggest banks in the US somehow build their trust over probably 50 to 100 years and they just lost that trust in almost two years or three years. They created 3.5 million accounts without any customer authorization. They just created and where's Fab if you know remember and that's why probably Warren Buffett sold the shares about eight 10 years ago on average why the bank needs to do this because they have very high cost it's not just about you don't trust the bank and the bank don't trust you they will need a dedicated team that's called compliance to check on you that you are a real person you are legit you are trustable And this cost $150 for individual customer 1,500 to 3,000 per corporate customer and usually takes about 3 days to 3 months.

That's a trust we are trying to solve. So what can we do differently? Open finance is more I would say uh the second stage we can come to the next one is called open economy. anything that you do to live your life whether it's a work life anything that's going to be connected through the finance so it's more than just like a financial transactions we can think about how you can do this a simple case sending money from UAE to UK or sending money to from here to Uganda which is very different you probably just think how do I do it uh next if you want to buy a property which is Dubai you see all these shining luxury condos penthouse houses. If I cannot afford it, how do I get exposure?

Buy a small piece. Can I do it? How to do it? How about you like Taylor Swift, right? You want this song, you want a small, not just for collection, any streaming revenues, you want to get a share.

How do you do it? And also, of course, if you like a football, a jersey by Christina Ronaldo signed by him. And how do you get this as a assets potentially into your portfolio? This all about when I'm talking about blockchain can offer such a tremendous very efficient and open infrastructure. So security no matter what you hurt on the blockchain hacks this is much lower than traditional finance.

We're talking about 0.1% to maximum 1% of transactions globally. And traditional finance is 10 to 15%. And that's only reported. Efficiencies, we don't need to argue.

If you send the money, no matter it's uh $10 or $10 billion from here to New York through the stable coin rails, it cost the same thing and it's real time. It doesn't matter. Trust this is something that's building and actually is in the development stage. We're thinking about how you can trust your bank and how the bank can trust you. I'm using two examples.

Do you look at your bank statement each month when they send you? Do you calculate how much fees up to two decimal points? Are they correct or not? Anyone do your bank statement checks is credit card? If not, give a check randomly and you will find a lot of surprises.

That's the trust we need to build. Secondly, how do the bank trust us? A ID that is digitalized and carry across no matter where you live in UAE, Singapore, Hong Kong or leave you you live in Thailand, Latin America. So this is one of the case that's already been done on the national levels. This is just a global transfer using stable coins CBDC's managed to cut the time dramatically and the cost by 50%.

this there's still much more potentials and second case we all seen this what has been happening in the real estate market here in Dubai tokenization is definitely going to take more number one it's not just about a concept it's not just about the news it will be about how new generations our children going to buy real estate so give a little bit of discussion about ourselves so we provide services think out um on the finance um industry. So custody is basically do deposit withdrawals and conversion is you do exchanges fiat cryptos that's what we do payments is something that we are planning to to launch with the license hopefully investments also in the pipelines and later we want to facilitate global trade finance which UAE stands a unique position and this is a little bit about ourselves why we are so passionate and why we are so confident to do this. So changer we are unique in three types. Number one where licensed by ADGM. So we think about whatever you treat your money safety is number one.

You don't think about return you think about safety first. So because we are lic probably the most rigorous regulatory framework and the process over there. Second, if you have any concerns, questions or system issues, you can reach to us 247. Our customer cares. So that's what we help to achieve your best experience.

Number three, people talk about if this happens, if that happens, the most recent hacks at one of the top three crypto exchanges lost $1.4 billion. What happens if you're lucky? That's this company basically have a much deeper wallet to pay you back. Some crypto exchange don't they just walk away and due to no matter no license there's no regulatory protections.

Second there's no insurance. So that's something that we are different we have insurance to protect in case of anything happens. It won't come out from our financial capitals. It will come from the insurance. So that's about us changer.

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