Compilation: Eight-Dimensional Capital Research Institute

Compilation: Eight-Dimensional Capital Research Institute

Sources｜Coindesk official website, Odaily and other public information

Years later, facing the astronomical figures in the account, Colonel Aureliano Buendía will recall the distant afternoon when his father took him to see Bitcoin. At that time, the coin circle was a village of 20 families. The houses made of fences and reeds were lined up along the river bank. The rushing river was crystal clear, and the warm stones on the river bank were as white and smooth as prehistoric giant eggs. At the beginning of the world's new life, many things have no names yet, and they still need to be pointed with fingers when they are mentioned.

—Adapted from "One Hundred Years of Solitude"

Several big positive lines have changed beliefs. Recently, the price of Bitcoin has stepped out of a strong curve that reshape beliefs. From April 30 to today, the price of Bitcoin has doubled in just two weeks. And hit a high of $8500.

At the same time, the annual Coindesk New York Consensus Conference (Consensus) was also held as scheduled, attracting the participation of major companies, developers, entrepreneurs and investors in the blockchain industry. Although the industry is still very young, the consensus conference has become an industry tradition. Since 2015, Consensus has attracted much attention every year.

The theme of this conference is: business, market and technology. The main topics are: token issuance, blockchain games, enterprise alliance chains, decentralized finance, blockchain governance, Dapps, etc. In addition, Security Token Offering (STO) and stable coins became the focus of discussion at the 2019 Consensus Conference, and the hottest staking economy and POS mining are also hot topics among the participants.

Let's take a look at the wonderful speeches of the guests on the first day of the meeting.

At the opening ceremony of the first day of the conference, Alex Sunnarborg, the co-founder of Tetras Capital, released Coindesk’s blockchain development report for the first quarter of 2019. , Bitcoin halving, on-chain transaction data, computing power, difficulty, basic transaction measures, transaction fees, DeFi, Staking, institutional entry, talent influx, escrow services, futures inflow, etc. summarize the first quarter of 2019 blockchain development.

The report believes that: the last round of bear market is over and a new round of bull market is starting; developers and technology are better than ever; researchers and investors are more critical; long-term institutional investors are openly entering the blockchain industry; Mature.

The topic of this opening discussion is "From Digital Gold to Contract Theory: Economics for Mainstream Application". The guests participating in the discussion were Nobel Laureates in Economics Oliver Hart, Eric Maskin and Joshua Gans.

Professor Joshua Gans of the University of Toronto proposed that from a mathematical point of view, blockchain technology can guarantee secure transactions. For investors, instead of focusing on some unrealistic ideas, it is better to look for actual "problems" and find investment opportunities from "problems". It's like investing in unicorn companies like Microsoft and Cisco. He believes that it is difficult to develop a brand new platform and network, but "blockchain as infrastructure" (blockchain as infrastructure) can allow many small businesses to come together to develop solutions, thereby reducing network costs.

The 2007 Nobel Laureate in Economics and Harvard University Chair Professor Eric Maskin mentioned that due to the advantages of blockchain technology in terms of security and efficiency, it has attracted more and more attention. Although it is difficult to conduct some rigorous and large-scale experiments on blockchain and cryptocurrency, we can conduct more small experiments. He also talked about the rise in the price of bitcoin in recent weeks, and believed that cryptocurrencies have the advantages of "safety", "high efficiency and low cost", "transparency" and "integration of high technology".

Eric Maskin also talked about the application of blockchain technology in the auction industry. He said that if I am a bidder, I may not want my competitors to know how many bids I have. One of the great advantages of blockchain technology is that it can make enough information that can be disclosed, so we can complete the transaction, and some information that cannot be disclosed can maintain privacy.

Oliver Hart, a Nobel laureate in economics, is more concerned with "contracts and governance." He said that it is wrong to think that blockchain technology is only related to transactions, and governance will always be important. Instead of relying solely on mechanics, he argues, we should explore contract incompleteness. “My current thinking is that the answer is not to make everything happen automatically, but to be kind to each other.” He added, “The contracts in the real world are also incomplete. They don’t say what will happen in the future. Treating contracts as complete transactions is a mistake. Governance will always matter.”

Sigal Mandelkar, Deputy Director of the Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Agency of the US Department of the Treasury, attended the meeting as a regulator and delivered a keynote speech "Understanding US Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering: What the Digital Currency World Should Know".

Since 2013, FinCEN has received 47,000 suspicious activity reports (SARs) involving bitcoin or virtual currencies, she said. SAR now collects virtual currency information including: device ID, IP address, wallet address, transaction hash. According to FinCEN data, hackers have stolen as much as $1.5 billion in funds through virtual currency exchanges in the past two years.

Valerie Szczepanik, Senior Advisor for SEC Digital Assets at the US Securities and Exchange Commission, talked about the recent hot IEOs on the forum. He said that exchanges in IEOs may participate in brokerage behaviors of brokers. If they are not registered with the SEC, it will violate the laws of the United States.

According to Valerie Szczepanik, if the buyer and any buyer are located in the United States, as long as the cryptocurrency exchange that launches the Token sales business and collects transaction fees from it must meet the legal definition of a US securities dealer. As a result, these cryptocurrency exchanges need to follow the registration and licensing requirements of broker-dealers, alternative trading systems (ATS), or national securities exchanges.

SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce said the U.S. has always been a place where innovation can flourish, but much of the activity is now happening overseas. She hopes that the United States will be more open to innovation so as not to miss the wave of blockchain technology.

The main agenda on May 13th includes: "The Launch of the Lightning Network", "Defining DeFi: What is Decentralized Finance", "2019 Global Blockchain Research-Returning Blockchain to Business Applications", "Staking Economics The rise of the blockchain", "Under the background of cross-chain technology, 10 consortium chains can still work interactively", "What is the use of stablecoins besides being used for transactions?".

Launch of the Lightning Network

The roundtable discussion on Lightning Network was jointly participated by Blockstream researcher Christian Decker, Lightning Power Users founder Pierre Rochard and Casa CTO Mr.Jameson Lopp. At the meeting, the guests showed the progress of the Lightning Network in terms of nodes, wallets, applications, and development. Casa CTO Jameson Lopp revealed at the Consensus Conference that he is promoting the combination of Casa and Tor, a well-known proxy tool. According to Lopp, it’s not just because “we’re crypto geeks,” but also because “encryption is cool!”

Defining Defi: What is Decentralized Finance

BlockFi CEO & Founder Zac Prince pointed out: DAI's lending rate of 19.5% has drawn additional attention to DeFi. On the one hand, KYC lets us know who the user is? Where? On the other hand, it sacrifices a certain user experience. Zac revealed that BlockFi plans to issue a cryptocurrency credit card this year.

Preston Byrne, partner at Byrne & Storm: "Finance is complex and difficult, and it is much more difficult than technology developers with many ideas but little experience understand."

refer to:

refer to:"Decentralized Finance DeFi: A Continuum"and FinTech Collective

Deloitte: Let the blockchain return to business applications & IBM: Blockchain applications in business

Guests from traditional technology giant IBM and financial industry Deloitte discussed the application of blockchain technology in business. The 2019 global blockchain survey shows that blockchain companies are slowly beginning to apply it to different business scenarios, and executives of many companies no longer focus on "whether blockchain technology is useful or not" , but "how to operate blockchain technology in different business scenarios, and how to make blockchain technology serve people's lives".

The Rise of the Staking Economy

In 2019, POS mining has aroused a new trend of thought among miners and investors, and has triggered many experts and bigwigs in the industry to discuss the Staking economy. Regarding this issue, Staked co-founder and CEO Tim Ogilvie, Bitfish Operations Director Jun Soo (JK) Kim and Farbric Ventures partner Max Mersch will discuss the custody risks, physical security and business models of the Staking economy.

Polymath, a security token issuance platform, will launch Polymesh, a blockchain dedicated to digital securities. Polymath officially announced that it will cooperate with Charles Hoskinson, the co-founder of Ethereum and Cardano, to launch Polymesh. This decision means that it will create a public chain tailored for digital securities. It is reported that Ethereum is a technically powerful public chain, but it does not focus on regulations or compliance. In contrast, Polymesh is considering these factors from the ground up and hopes to build the infrastructure of the world's capital market. Currently, Polymath has helped issue more than 120 digital securities.

Tomorrow, in the sub-forum on "How Security Tokens Become the Hottest Asset in 2019", guests from STO industry organizations such as OpenFinance, Harbor, and Coindesk will share with us the latest developments in this field.

The Consensus conference will last for two days, so stay tuned for more hot topics to be shared and sorted out.