Lucille Hu: Addressing the Global Blockchain Community (Asia) – FBG Capital | ETHDenver

whoa cool ah hello everybody it is our final what's up family over there so it is our final presentation on our final workshop for today and I'm happy to introduce Lucille who to the stage and Lucille is going to be doing she is a partner at FBG capital and FBG capital is essentially taking this ethos of blockchain as a global movement and really putting it into practice so they're kind of an Asian based firm that thinks about this global footprint and addressing a global audience and a lot of they've made about 70 investments in blockchain companies and a lot of them are essentially connected with FBG in order to expand into Asia to build communities in Asia and to work with this new global world so with that Lucille uh come on stage thank you for that very nice intro really happy to be here today at eath Denver I think I've been to a lot of conferences on both the west coast and the East Coast so really happy to finally come to Colorado so today I will be talking to you guys about the global blockchain community the Asian blockchain communities in particular a quick introduction of myself and FBG like Reece said my name is Lucille I'm based out of SF and I'm with a cryptocurrency fund called FBG capital FBG is a global a global digital assets management firm we started out in Beijing in 2014 with a crypto currency trading arm and we moved into the ICO space in 2016 today we have we manage more than 70 companies on the portfolio side and our trading arm handles more than a billion USD in monthly transactions so we've grown a lot in the last few years a lot of the team is based out of Beijing but we also have offices in Singapore New York San Francisco I'm based out of SF and we're setting up a presence in Tokyo Seoul and Berlin this year so if we're in any of your cities please please come say hi so blockchain really is a global phenomenon a lot of the folks here today are have traveled from all over the world and last year in 2017 there it's estimated that more than 4 billion u.s. dollars were put into the ICO market one billion dollars were put in in December alone and internally there's there's a lot of I think deferring estimates about what the geographical split is but internally we estimate maybe thirty to forty percent from the US twenty to thirty percent from Asia twenty to thirty percent from Europe and the remainder distributed across the rest of the world for 2018 our conservative estimate for I co funding is thirty billion so this is this is a really big market and it's a really global market so teams looking to build protocols or your own applications keep-keep the global community in mind so FF BG is an Asia focused fund or an Asia based fund and part of the reason we've been able to grow so quickly the last few years is because Asia is a really key blockchain market it's it's one of the few geographies I think we're there there's a huge population of tech enabled people who are already very comfortable and very familiar with making digital payments so it's it's a great place to experiment with with protocols and having a live user base to to kind of play and give you feedback on your products some stats the US has a population of about 330 million China is about 1.4 billion Japan South Korea other other key Asian geographies also have pretty big populations but both less than the US and China across all of these geographies mobile and internet penetration is above 95% so that's a lot of people who have access to the Internet and who are you know whose behavior is already aligned with what what we in the blockchain community would like to see in terms of interaction and engagement in the US Japan and South Korea more than eighty percent of people are already very comfortable and very familiar with making digital payments it's a little lower in China close to between fifty to sixty percent but if you if you apply those percentages to the underlying populations there's there's a huge potential community based out of China it's close to yeah close to 1.4 billion so please do not forget the other like other geographies outside of the US outside of the West as you're starting to build up your communities and your technologies so I was thinking today would be a little bit more of a conversation I'll take questions about the Asian blockchain community maybe what FBG does but I'd really like for this to be a conversation are there are there any questions now or I can talk a little bit more yeah in the with the black sweater my question is about the Chinese government's view about this technology since your firm is primarily it sounds like primarily based in Beijing do you have a view or can you share some insight about how the Chinese government looks at this space and what the implications are right so that's a question that's come up a lot especially after last September with inés ico ban so in in general China is very Pro technology like if you look at a some of the world's biggest publicly listed tech companies Alibaba JD they're all based out of China so fundamentally the government is Pro technology but there's a lot of other issues that that the government is trying to manage and regulate around so like capital outflow is an issue and because of that the government's position on blockchain and tokens has been pretty cautious and the reaction might have been a little bit more extreme especially compared to how regulation has been progressing in the US and in the West so I'd say the government is fundamentally protec but they're still figuring out how to regulate in a way that doesn't slow down blockchain and FinTech development too much so the future is bright in China but the road is is winding and I think both the government and local watching communities are in the process of figuring out what what the right next steps would be any other questions so something that's also interesting to think about is that in Asia and in China in particular where there are a lot of huge technology unicorns companies are start publicly listed companies are starting to think about how they can bring blockchain solutions on to their own platforms as well as thinking about issuing their own tokens so Ark our conservative estimate internally is that maybe up to 80% of publicly listed companies are starting to publicly listed tech companies are starting to think about blockchain solutions FBG has a good relationship with a lot of players in the blockchain ecosystem in Asia as well as more traditional you know traditional technology players so where our access in Asia is good and we're also very happy to you know introduce teams to blockchain teams as well as players in the more traditional space and that's that's something to think about as you guys work on your your protocols or your applications anything else yeah so the question was about investment focus if if FBG looks more at Asian teams and helps globalization teams or if we look more at US or Western teams and brings them to Asia the answer is both so we have a portfolio of more than 70 some of our teams are based out of Asia so we've worked with Oh Mesa go with silica and like with silica in particular we've been very proactive about helping them structure their financing as well as structure their token and connect them with sort of the relevant community ambassadors in the US but we also work closely with some US projects a few a few of which are here at eath Denver this weekend and work with them as they're building out their Asia communities so a little bit of both any other questions can you talk a little bit about your criteria and how it may have evolved maybe in the most recent quarter or so as the landscape has changed fundamentally our criteria hasn't changed too much where we're looking for strong teams with strong communities our thesis around the space is that at the end of the day while technology is is really important over the long term in order for a project to succeed the two key things are talent and community so you can like teams can start out with you know like a white paper that makes sense but there's there's a big gap between having a white paper and actually building out a product that works that people are willing to use so we like to see strong tech but we also want to see a strong team as well as like a good plan for building out a global community any other questions hi do you have any insights on like the quality of developers in the different Asian countries because I think like you know the culture of even the different development communities varies a bit and I think we don't have as much insight into that from the West so any insights that you have that you think would be interesting to everyone here so I'm not a developer myself and I might you know like in my response I might pass over maybe some of the nuances are hoping to get but I'd say globally getting developer talent for the blockchain space has been a bottleneck for a lot of teams and we think that this is an issue globally but in Asia there's so many people and so many so many people comfortable with technology who use technology in their day-to-day lives that in the near term the the pool of developer talent in Asia particularly in China will grow a lot and in the middle to longer term where we're expecting a lot more really talented blockchain developers and like watching teams to come out of Asia hi thanks specifically do you know what sorts of industries you're looking to invest in that have a focus with blockchain sure so we don't focus explicitly on any particular industry at the moment but but a lot of our investments have been more on the infrastructure level so at the blockchain level maybe the layer just above the blockchain level so far not we have worked with a limited number of projects that are industry specific do you I'm just playing off of like Y Combinator releases industries that they like to see companies start up and do you have something similar to that so areas that we've focused on at the infrastructure level include things like stable coins or interoperability platforms or scalability solutions so those those are the areas at the infrastructure level some of the areas at the infrastructure level were interested in but in terms of like industries like retail or export-import we we don't we haven't gotten to to that level yet and then are there particular that like areas that you're looking for right now specifically like that you think might have a good market like outside of what what you guys are actively investing in like some just like your insight from your your perspective right I mean I I wouldn't say that we have a specific focus or a specific area of interest but for me personally I think platforms with elegant or interesting governance mechanisms and staking mechanisms I like to look at any other questions okay well if that's it thank you I will be a teeth done verb until Sunday please follow us on Twitter at fpg capital if you have any questions feel free to email and I'm always happy to chat with teams about projects or just to discuss the space so come find me and say hi okay thank you [Applause]