Blockchain and social value
During the panel discussion I had with Stephen M. Meade Takhmina Nasimova Josh Berger Sofya Puzhaykina in #AIBC #Dubai, we exchanged opinions on how blockchain can contribute to sustainability and offer social benefits. This is the first question I asked myself when I moved MobiFi into crypto.
“What can crypto do for us besides trading and speculating?”
People want to make money. If you look at the crypto spaces, the major part is trading; NFT is also trading. There is nothing wrong with it, but can (and should) we do something else?
Value #1 — Financial incentives
It fills the gap where it needs some financial elements to boost usage.
If you look at all the problems we face today as human beings, many of them can be categorized into a simple group: lack of money or lack of financial incentives.
Regarding sustainability, there is some lack of money blocking the massive adoption. We call it the “Green premium,” which Bill Gates uses in his climate change book. “Green premium” is the extra amount of money end-user pay so that they can use clean energy from the sources like wind, solar, and hydrogen.
People are reluctant to use new energy products, not because they don’t like to be green, but because of the price, you have to pay extra. So that’s where crypto projects can add some differences. For example, parking indoors sometimes is a little more expensive than parking on-street. Drivers can stop driving around to find a parking spot (generating a lot of CO2) but park their cars indoors. Parking service providers can use the power of DeFi to generate extra yield to compensate the price automatically.
Value #2 — The bridge between real-world and crypto.
We need to link web2 and the real world with web3. Otherwise, you quickly fall back to the trading and getting-rich game. Everyone knows that the majority will lose money instead of making money. Linking the real world with web3 creates actual usage and value for people. It’s against the metaverse concept to live in the digital world. But do you believe in Meta (Facebook) to live a virtual life but watching Mark Zuckerberg buys land on a real island (Kauai, Hawaii) and live in an actual mansion?
The best example I can give here is crypto transaction vs. SWIFT. If you have never transferred any money abroad (to a different currency), you perhaps won’t believe how ridiculous and expensive it is. For example, moving Euro to a USD account will cost you at least 41 euro of transfer fees, and you will probably lose even more money in the exchange rate. (data from the Wise app). Besides, it takes days and an intermediary bank that sometimes messes up your money. It takes only a few seconds in crypto, and even with the expensive Ethereum network, it costs much less than SWIFT.
Crypto payment to replace SWIFT international wire transfer will be a game-changer in the financial industry.
Value #3 — Crypto fund raising.
I have seen many great startups fail due to lack of funding, especially some ideas that are so advanced and have more risks for investors. Investors are profit-driven, but great ideas that bring good to society sometimes do not get investors a lot of returns. People tend to rely on government funding for such innovations. However, the tedious selection process and high competition do not give most startups much hope.
Crypto fundraising is different; it lows the bar so that ordinary people can participate in the investment, even with $10. It’s a very effective crowdfunding mechanism that works.
See below the changes from ICO vs. IPO in the last few years.
About Yudi:
🎯 Current focus: Project Lead of mobifi.io
💡 Founder of Things Protocol
💼 Ex IT CTO Consultant of Royal Dutch Shell
🙋🏻♂️ MVP of Hedera Hashgraph
🔗 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/xuyudi/
🐦 Twitter: https://twitter.com/yudixu
