Blockchain, DeFi and CBDC - the Next Fintech Frontier

or good afternoon or evening and uh we have a nice panel of speakers who are in quite a few places uh so we hope that you're going to find this useful and interesting uh first of all to give everyone some context we're going to get each of our speakers just to say hello uh what their name is and what their background is and then we're going to talk through the topics so i guess first up maybe we go from top left which is marcelo if you can say hi and who you are and what you do hi everyone uh good morning for me good afternoon good evening for everybody else uh my name is marcelo miranda i am from rio de janeiro brazil uh my company is called finchain and we are a one-stop shop for everything related to blockchain crypto defy uh own in the brazilian region uh we have projects of creating new crypto tokenizing assets also trading and developing algorithms for trading and also training and consulting for startups banks companies in general in brazil my background is not technical i'm actually graduating in economics uh and with an mba in the university of michigan in the united states and i'm very glad to be here with this great panel and happy to discuss everything related to d5 cbdc and blockchain awesome thank you so maybe ava sure thank you so much simon thank you for the opportunity to be on this panel my name is iva chaki i'm the executive director of the hunt institute for engineering and humanity at southern university southern methodist university which is in dallas texas i'm also the co-founder of the inclusive economy consortium and the president of fintech for good um my background is also not in technology even though my work over the past 25 years have always centered around technology my work focuses on building and fostering a climate smart um and inclusive economy and therefore it is very much focused on various disadvantaged and under-resourced groups and smes small and micro businesses and in terms of the educational background i have masters in finance and a phd in public policy cool thank you ava so next uh is is it zhiyang sorry thank you thank you simon uh my name is jiaying last nam jiang i'm a house of global fellow at nyu law right now and also working on law and tech related research and i have two additional projects one is on cbdc cooperating with the china center at yale law school and also a contributor contributor of the rec check initiative which is a law and blockchain initiative at the codex stanford law school my background uh well legal background and i i admitted to practice law in in the state of new york and also china i think that's it no technical background though okay perfect and i think it's important to have people that can communicate as well as the developers so uh 2017-2018 there was a lot of noise around blockchain and what it could do and and maybe a lot of hype so two years later or even three uh if we considered the gartner hype curve in terms of getting very excited about things and then disillusionment but people actually working to build things uh where do you feel we are on on that gardener height curve in terms of blockchain d5 and cbdc and what are you excited about and and maybe um if we go top left uh gian i'm gonna get it right yeah yeah yeah no problem well i think over the past few months uh well definitely defy has increasing activity and also popularity so do nfts and a few weeks ago when i i saw an article and an author turning his in new york times column into an nft and put up for auction and it was it was sold for 560 thousand dollars well that's fun to see but uh whether nfts uh is the next frontier next frontier in trading or in kind of a new form of tulip i think it's still subject to debate i'm being very cautious in this space and i think other panelists will share more light on this topic but i i think today i would like to focus more on cbdc because it's one of my research projects yeah i think according to the most recent bis survey bank for international settlement the vast majority of central banks like 86 percent uh are exploring cbdc's either retail cbdc or wholesale cbdc central banks are more i would say they are more aware of the benefits and costs of a cbdc and the necessity or possibility of issuing cbdc different countries may be at different stages i would say in terms of the development for example bahamas has launched its own version of cbdc and the uk and the u.s are still studying cbdc debating if a uk version of cbdc like digital europe or a u.s version of cbdc is needed well in china i would say china started research in 2014 and has expanded pilot programs uh in many cities over the past few months and the pboc which is china's central bank people bank of china has been working with partners like commercial banks restaurants retail stores etc the most recent development or trial was in october 2020 the pboc distributed about 10 million eastern white by the way eastern is trying china's cbdc uh in a digital red pocket to to shenzhen resident about fifty thousand shenzhen residents and residents could use this incident y can spend it at over three thousand restaurants and retail stores and this week-long child um ended with eight point eight million incident-wide being spent in over sixty two 000 uh transactions so i think that's something very excited uh because the general public can have a sense of you know how a cptc look like how it works and how it you know how it's different from existing payment platforms that's something very exciting okay cool um so from brazil marcelo what's your perspective on this where are we on the hype curve well the hype curve simon i think we would pass the i forgot the technical term on the gartner curve but the crossing the the desert or the uh like the bottom i think we passed that that i think the hype was from my perspective and i i started my company i started like learning about crypto 2013 so i wasn't like one of the original gangsters but i was definitely like early especially for brazil um so i i believe we did have a big hype there it's i mean it's it's not that i believe it's clear with uh getting to the you know the prices that we got in crypto early on the icos the dows and everything so for me that was the first peak of that gardner curve and and then we crossed the desert uh in in from 2018 2019 2000 part of 2020 and uh you know i think we're coming with we're coming back on that uh upward slope with projects that are more sound in terms of technology in terms of business concepts more robust obviously there's always hype uh as as you know as we've seen with with the nfts uh there's you know with every like everything else there's gonna be stuff that just bust but there's gonna be useful stuff coming from this as well uh but but i do believe we are on a more consistent part of that curve uh so i i i'm very excited about the next couple years because i we do see you know the the institutional players now coming into crypto happening in the u.s already happening in europe uh parts of asia i think we're gonna see that in the emerging countries next and uh obviously being an emerging country like brazil uh we you know very excited about that yeah exactly and like you say uh it's actually been around longer than people realize so yeah i think that's good thank you uh and how about you ava so from my perspective and considering the work that i'm doing um i feel that the the hype has been sort of narrow and uh and and we definitely have had a lot of hype around you know cryptocurrencies and nft um but the the space that i'm most interested in which is really the applications of blockchain for sdgs towards the sustainable development goals i don't think we have seen that much hype i think we could really use some hype uh i think blockchain in some ways have a bit of a pr problem because in the public consciousness the kinds of applications that are better known on sir are are not really the the ones that have those kinds of social and environmental impact and so um from my angle i'm i would love to see a little bit more hype happening in the future um with respect to those applications uh-huh and i guess while that's true uh the united nations does have a good uh like there's an irish company that helped a tech to help to use blockchain to do uh relief payments and uh shipments to make sure it was done with less corruption to the sudan so in some ways the united nations has been uh quite quite a positive organization in terms of showing uh interesting use cases for it but like you say you still have to communicate that and explain to people what you've done so yeah like you say uh they can know they can do more um so sorry i completely agree simon i think that's that's exactly the point is that we do have some of these really promising pilot use cases but the but they are not in the public consciousness so i think having more hype and awareness around them i think could be very useful yeah definitely and there's another one with oxfam in vanuatu using it blockchain to help reach the unbanked as well but like you say you know if people don't know about that they don't see the value so look i guess this is good fine because this leads into the next question which is uh what what are the challenges that we face to achieve the things and uh well maybe we start with you ava because i mean uh you can expand on challenges can be communication challenges can be logistical or yeah okay which over to you yes so so from my angle the challenges that i see is impart um again this the lack of public consciousness around this topic and you do have a number of institutions um the the u.n and the u.n system as a whole actually is doing some really interesting things um fao um uh even ephad uh so so these various institutions um international organizations that are part of the extended un system have been funding and piloting some very interesting use cases but the awareness of them and the potential of blockchain um for environmental and social good have been very very limited in my experience and so from our angle we have been trying to do some work around this but i think it really would take a concerted effort and it leads um to my one of my points about barriers and challenges the the which is that the ecosystem is um not very cohesive i think there is a lot of ecosystem work that we need to do and connect more dots so that there is um more of um there is an ability for people to connect these possibilities and um and and raise awareness around them uh but there in general i find that there is a there is a knowledge gap um and that knowledge gap needs to be addressed and again it will take an ecosystem approach for us to do that um and in many cases we have a technology gap so some of the potential beneficiaries are suffering from lack of access to appropriate technologies uh which again will take a a whole other set of uh solutions and interventions to address and um finally what i'd like to say is that on the policy side there is a lot that could be done through policy and right now i feel that when we think of policy um i like to use a broad definition that is not only law but also incentives much more broadly and not necessarily only by government but by various institutions that can be well positioned to put these kinds of incentives into the ecosystem and so i think a significant challenge right now is because of the lack of awareness and lack of knowledge there isn't really a systemic systematic uh policy support for these high impact areas awesome cool very good thanks good answer marcelo i i do agree with eva and i do think there are silos and there are gaps on knowledge and lack of policy uh in brazil we see that for sure we do we do see a push uh our current central bank uh president is is very keen on blockchain which is good so they are doing stuff i but but the main challenge in my view is is definitely the regulatory uh gray area that most things blockchain crypto defy uh end up in in in our region so i'm very excited about the fight it's it's one of my main focus areas right now for our company and in brazil there is a clear need for for that for uh kind of taking the concentration from the financial system and and reducing that and defy and blockchain can be a good tool for that but unfortunately unfortunately we still have regulations that were made even before the internet so most of the times there's there is a gray area and you have to make a decision where whether you're going to take the risk as an entrepreneur and and run with it and end up having problems later or the other alternative is not to innovate not not do anything and just go with the status quo uh which which uh obviously crypto blockchain people don't like doing so so at the end of the day um without clear regulations uh we i mean things just cannot go too far and that's a problem in in brazil and i see it's a problem in most countries yeah look definitely uh otherwise it's wild west and you have to have that degree of protection for for best practice and to build confidence and and finally our third speaker what are your thoughts yeah um i didn't agree with uh two panelists and in the cbdc space there are also a lot of challenges for example uh let's say take china's cbdc as an example if it's widely adopted in china there will be a lot of like privacy concerns due process concerns and you know also the uncertainty of data use data assets and data usage for example the pboc china central bank theoretically will have complete access to transaction information of every uh cbdc users because theoretically still directed theoretically because a lot of technical details remain close to the public so my analysis is based on publicly available information and then the change the chance to talk to people there so theoretically it has central bank has the capacity to clear all transactions and it seems clear that other agencies will need access to this information for example uh law enforcement tax authority and other and other like intermediaries but it's not clear how they will get access to the information although there are already existing rules detailing the sharing of government information among government agencies but um you know their specific applicability to ecdy remain unclear and in addition intermediaries like alipay or whichever pay would you know or other commercial banks would involved in in the deployment of ecdmi they also have to access at least some information involved in ecmr transaction uh but their rights and responsibilities regarding this information remain unclear and also another concern is you know or challenge it is widespread adoption of ecd1 could allow for greater government insight and control of individual transaction at a very micro level in real time and that could you know that could potentially monitor and control every transaction that that might also raise some concerns too and those are the challenges that i can think about right now yeah i definitely yeah and like you say um it's that balance between privacy uh uh efficiency and then who has your data and what they do with it so uh with what you've articulated uh the next question is is uh what could good look like and if you had a magic wand or the ability to just make things happen uh what would you do and and and and if things went well where where why might we be if if things progress positively um who'd like to start first so ava no thank you simon that's a huge question um so um i see so many exciting opportunities and i think if it if if i could um i would have that magic wand um i think one of the low-hanging fruits at least in terms of appeal um and and potential application uh is in the fintech area um fintech decentralized finance there are so many people out there billions of people who are um on bank and and and we don't hear enough about it that you know we tend to focus more on emerging markets but um you know currently living in the us and working with communities here it is mind-boggling how difficult it is for small businesses to get financing to the point where i'm working with some organizations that um represent um under-resourced uh entrepreneurs you know people of color veterans they have a hard time getting a few thousand dollars of credit line for their businesses so i i do believe that perhaps the lowest hanging fruit in in in many ways is is is is fintech and access to financing and so if i had that magic wand i would put a very concerted effort behind that um policy again regulations are obviously barriers but but just convince stakeholders in our work that has been such an effective way of approaching the problems that we currently have in the blockchain space um that just convene the all the key stakeholders around the table and and and have the dialogues and the consultations around what's possible and what would it take to get there and um and then i would follow with with some of the other high potential areas i mean there is so many you know whether we are thinking of supply chains smart contracts uh even in the education space i'm seeing some really interesting solutions that can be very empowering to individuals and even businesses that come from a less privileged situation and so um but from my angle i would focus on access to finance first that would very systematically support small businesses and then riding that awareness and knowledge created and partnerships and coalitions created uh i would i would then move on to various other areas again i have a bias but obviously i would focus on the ones that have the highest impact on micro and small businesses because at the end of the day they are the ones that are creating the majority of jobs um globally speaking perfect okay who'd like to go next marcelo i'm actually uh going with access as well perhaps in a slightly different way okay yes uh our region in general is a very it's not very equal not like in terms of equal opportunities and equal information uh access so we do see that uh if you if you talk to people that went to universities people that have a job and speak some english uh they they do get it like they are getting out right they understand blockchain now they understand defy a little bit they understand crypto they understand the needs of this technology uh but that's a very like uh limited elite right i mean if we if we look into brazil or any other country in the latin american region uh that's the to to get to the hearts of the broad population where you really gonna have an impact we need more access we need more awareness and we need to make sure that they they have they have access to the technology and that's that's something that is still your challenge so if i had the power i'll come up with something that will turn this uh as you know in a quick second cool okay and xi'an yeah um i would say onecoin always has two sides right nothing is 100 perfectly good technological innovation you know is born or is created to solve some problems but unavoidably it comes with some drawbacks like concerns i say about ecd and why the good the good part about it is if easy ny is widely adopted in china yes maybe consumers could enjoy a faster safer payment system and uh those who are on bank like eva jesse on bank or under bank may be able to you know enjoy financial services like people in metropolitan cities do and from government standpoint incident one may help combat some financial crimes like money laundering or tax innovation but the key is you need to overcome those challenges in terms of what like whether something if i'm the leader what i'm uh what am i going to do uh i would say cooperation is the key uh both domestically and internationally for example domestically you need to uh disclosure is you need to give transparency to the general public and to the to other parties who can pay you know played a role in this uh in this system for example uh the incident why the decline is two-tier the second tier distributors including you know commercial banks and other financial entities you i think it would be unwise to disintermediate those you know uh second-tier distributors you need to include them in the system and then constantly consult with them and then have their participation would be would be great and also internationally i would say uh constantly work with uh international partners to explore the message cross-border payment system or to discuss the interoperability issues uh that would be good for the you know both for the purpose of financial stability and also uh the purpose of providing financial service to more people especially who are in disadvantage i think that's the key cooperation yeah and that's the whole value of the unbanked and using the technology to be able to reach a wider range of people which in itself should be uh bringing benefit to more people so that's that sounds like a good idea so uh as my follow-up question then for each of you is is what projects do you feel are good examples and if people when people talk to you and you explain uh and to showcase examples to show them why this can have a massive impact which which projects do you feel uh are the ones that you would recommend others and and are there any particular parts of the world that we should be watching uh marcelo you would like to like to take this first definitely so we do have a couple good examples or just mention one that is not ours but it's our in our uh it's our clients uh these guys from uh moss they created the one of the first i'm not sure what was the first but one of the first tokenized carbon credits uh uh globally but focus on the brazilian region especially in the amazon rainforest where we're having a lot of uh problems in terms of deforestation you know just kind of illegal activities of woods um smuggling things like that so uh the whole idea of the token is to sort of give some income to uh the landowners that that don't get stimulated to to actually cut their forests right cut down their their their wood so um we they they had uh i mean they created the token that had the whole idea they didn't have the the uh the contact with these land owners uh it could be indigenous uh reserve places or even like sort of people in this rural areas where they have no access to technology or anything so they they needed to uh get their token out there so we do have a uh crypto exchange called flow btc in our group and we were the first uh exchange to say okay we will take that shot and we'll try to uh you know give people access to your token so people can actually compensate their carbon footprints by buying that they're talking and then redeeming it so this is uh this has become a major project project in brazil and also starting to be um something global and we're very proud of this because it's it it's sort of the whole um it impacts the whole chain right both like people in these rural areas with no access people who will have no ways of offsetting the carbon food prints can now have this method for doing it and companies as well so it's we're very proud of being part of of this project it's called moss.earth if anyone wants to check it out cool that's really good uh i think it's great to have actual examples xiang how about you yes i think a few projects one is of course in the cbdc space i would say china right now is working with uae and central bank of uae and also bis to explore the you know uh the international cooperation part of cbdc i think that's definitely worth watching and the second thing is libra or which is now called dm i guess everyone is paying close to attend paying close attention to this field right now because libra or dm uh claims to provide financial services to those who are unbanked under banks and of course some people say that it the the goal is to replace the traditional financial system well it might subject to debate but i think it's definitely worth watching and it's a new phenomenon on the third one i would say is sandbox not a specific project in one country but sandbox was first proposed by uk cabinet office i think sandbox is a good great example to show that how regulators can work with industry participants to create a safer place for for innovation and i think many countries right now are exploring their own version of sandbox either regulatory samples some are uh industry sandbox i think that's also worth paying attention to cool that's great thank you very much um that's good and now ava yes um actually i'm fascinated by the um specific example that marcelo mentioned so i'm adding it to my favorite list right now uh i think that's brilliant and i was not aware of that um i'm agnostic in terms of the very specific kind of company or case but i have a a list of favorite areas um and as discussed for um and and they are all around either access or transaction cost and so access to finance as we discussed earlier is is for me pretty much um on the top of the list and there are various very interesting efforts i'm agnostic frankly at this point uh in terms of which one um i think the jury is still out which one will be most effective and i think we need to keep a close eye on this space and see you know what works what doesn't work who does it work for so so then there needs to be some ongoing analytics done and see um how these solutions work um the next one for me is is really access to markets and and various marketplace efforts marketplace efforts that make it easier for um small businesses to access market opportunities or even value chains in in this complex um global economy um supply chains once again the supply chain based solutions um are very much around access to markets and and in particular in the supply chain space um the solutions that are related to food security in particular i think are particularly impactful and powerful because it is uh in in this globalized era where a lot of the smaller sized producers in terms of agriculture and food systems have been left behind they can really open up some market access opportunities for for for those producers um smart contracts is kind of a no-brainer that that that relates to all of this um as i mentioned earlier i think there are some efforts in the education area which i find uh particularly exciting many of them are early stage so once again the jury is still out which one of these will be most effective but but in general the kinds of solutions that allow for people to have these blockchain based proofs that they have taken certain classes so often people do enroll in educational efforts where they end up not having anything in hand they are not going to get a degree or certificate or whatever at the end in kind of the traditional conventional fashion that they can show to the job market when they are trying to get a decent job so to the extent that their progression or any kind of accomplishment from an educational perspective again some kind of course or class that they have taken can be documented um on a blockchain and and they can have some kind of evidence that they can use uh in the job market um i think has really high potential uh most of the efforts that i'm aware of uh are again just early stage um in fact here in in dallas we have a very big community college system and they are looking at some of those um opportunities and options because um as as you might know often people who go through the community college system it's it's it's not uncommon for them to not finish but just take some practice here or here or there and not being able to leverage that or monetize that later on uh in the job market and then the last bucket i have that which i'm i think is is very important and high potential is in the area of property rights and that's in particular in in emerging markets and i believe india is probably the farthest ahead they have done some very interesting pilots um when it comes to property like right so that was kind of my my list cool yeah good uh and i think that by having the three of you it's all very diverse perspective so it's good to get different opinions um the the next question then is how has the last year been during the pandemic and has it helped to speed up digital transformation and uptake of d5 blockchain uh cbdc related initiatives uh so xiang how's it been for you what's your perspective on this oh last year i think definitely it helped speed up digital digital transformation you see people are gradually adapting to this kind of like welcome from home uh phenomenon and also online education becomes prevalent in the cbdc space uh like i just say bahamas has already issued their own version of cbdc and china has run trials that's all they you know shows how people or how the industry can adapt to digital transformation quickly and i would say there are some more uh developments for example in the nft space i have seen some scholars argued about the laws for nfts for example one scholar argues that nfts are you know personal property not contract not pure uh intellectual property licenses uh because transactions in fts are in the form of a sale the lot of sales of personal property should apply and also some some uh scholars argue that nft will serve as a you know powerful grounding example of digital personal pro property and it's a legal form of ownership that is both you know needed and has not yet been you know clearly established online i think these are all the um developments in the field and showing that how we how it sped up the digital transformation and people have already started thinking about the proper regulatory regulatory regime and laws and etc i think that's a good sign okay good yeah positive so ava so so my comment is not going to be as specific to um uh blockchain or or central bank digital currencies or or or defy it's more about um the last year and and and what it has um resulted in our space and the some of the gaps that we discussed in particular for example technology gap uh during this covered period uh what what has become i think very clear to uh a lot of people much more so than before that we do also have a pandemic of inequality and and the pandemic made the situation um even worse and so those who already were struggling with um access to wi-fi access to technology or not having the kind of decent quality technology uh disproportionately suffered and so in in some ways this has been very tragic in another way i hope that um it has raised enough awareness that um hopefully we have more of a momentum to actually do something about it and indirectly therefore i think blockchain can have a really important role to play uh once we focus on on on how to actually address some of these issues but but again from from my perspective the um this this period has really um heightened um awareness about uh the importance of um digital inclusion and and and how much more work we have to do in this area yeah look i think you're right ava because uh lockdown is one thing but if we didn't have connectivity as well then we'd be in a very different place so marcelo what are your thoughts just on this last year for in relation to you and this question yeah this uh i think after that first impact that initial shock that we all had uh and a few weeks or months of adaptation to the new situation i think in terms of uh digital transformation i think was a big boost in all fronts including blockchain uh including uh defy crypto we see a little bit of that and or maybe a lot of that reflecting in the prices of cryptos uh obviously a consequence as well of the all the numerous packages by the by the central banks worldwide so which is also a consequence of the pandemic right so so in all means i think we did have a big boost on everything related to uh the theme that we're discussing here today and digital transformation in general uh i i do agree with you with that obviously there there are there are things that are uh we cannot in any way say this this was a good thing was the right thing that happened right this is this was overall like obviously uh a side effect or something really bad uh but we have to see the silver lining and we have to run with it and and i'll give you a little example in brazil notaries they have to i mean almost every document you have to notarize in a physical military place uh that is not for example a bank just a teller of the bank like like you do in the states maybe other countries too but in brazil it's a very bureaucratic thing uh anytime you have a signature you pretty much have to take it to the notary uh and the military business is very strict also goes from father to son for for several generations so it's sort of like a illegal poly uh not many players in that space and with the pandemic like people couldn't do that right and so we saw growth of obviously we saw a growth of tools like click sign docusign and digital signatures uh in general are obviously not blockchain type of signatures uh but but regular uh signatures uh digital signatures but uh to counteract that the the association of military uh officers in in brazil they created their own blockchain so they said okay i mean i'm competing now with docusign i'm competing with this what is superior to that and they created their own like permission blockchain among all the no trees and seems to be working fine so that's just kind of a side effect of all the this uh you know uh very unhappy phase of of course i think that's a really interesting example i mean and you know we had that in ireland too where there were things that didn't really need to be done in person but had always been done in person and hopefully it's nudged some things that can be moved faster um yeah perfect um so i'm just reading the question in general uh banks can't support people in rural areas how can fintechs occupy this space so uh would anybody like to touch on that question and can you see it as well i think you can yeah we can we can see simon i can i can check with that one on that one so so obviously we have a lot of rural areas and very remote areas in our country in our region in general and and we already seen that that impact of impacts go into that those areas uh we we heard about this a lot from africa right africa also being like having the uh even even more of a remote uh uh areas uh not banked and uh and and but we do have a lot of that in our region and we see fintechs covering the the gaps that banks wouldn't normally go like we don't have a lot of banks in brazil we have like perhaps five big banks that control pretty much the whole banking system um and it's very hard to compete with these banks and they they i mean they have a lot of influence over the governments they can you know move their little uh pieces of proposal to make it harder for fintechs to compete with them but once you go through markets or areas that perhaps they don't see as profitable for them that's where we see a lot of fintechs driving perfect xi'an um i think different countries may have different you know situations in china while traditional banks yeah maybe less incentivized for them to you know provide financial service to people who are in the rural areas this is where china's central bank stepped in and out at least uh china's central bank the appropriate one of the purpose uh to create central bank digital currency is to provide uh financial services who are in uh rural areas because like alipay and which pay these two are the major key payment platforms in china but they don't have the economic incentive incentive to provide service students who or to those who are in rural areas so central bank because it's free free to use the only thing you need is a smartphone and according to my research the chipping smart form is about like 100 and i don't think it would be a huge expenditure for local governments to provide a smartphone for people in those areas but once you have a smartphone then everything will be easier the central bank can provide this uh like transaction financial transaction services for those people yeah yeah look i mean an m passer in kenya beyond has shown that you can do a lot you you know there's you just move around it very quickly uh ava any thoughts yes um so i i love this topic and and this is an area that i've done quite a bit of researching and it is very difficult to serve rural areas because typically your transaction size in terms of banking is small and to reach these areas is expensive so the transaction cost is high and when you look at um even microfinance it's very expensive in rural areas even when microfinance is offering products and solutions in the small transaction size that's often needed especially considering that rural areas especially in emerging countries are predominantly agricultural or food system related so the typical loan size tends to be relatively small and therefore the interest rates that banks have to charge or high um so this is a situation where um fintech just makes perfect sense the barrier is once again um there there is the the access to technology uh piece that that giang um kind of spoke to a little bit um it's my experience has been that just that that in and of itself even when people get access to the technology let's say in this case a smartphone that does not necessarily mean that they will be using some of these services so there are additional capacity building educational activities that have to go alongside and so from my perspective i think there is a natural opportunity in rural areas for fintech to partner with um supply chains and so especially when when you look at rural areas being predominantly agricultural or food system related the role of supply chains and value chains is really important whether you're thinking about the agricultural input providers fertilizers seeds etc and them naturally serving these areas or whether you're thinking about the companies that are sourcing through their supply chain certain products from these areas there are companies that do business regularly in these rural areas so there is an opportunity to piggyback on that and in my research actually what's very interesting is farmers tend to trust the these companies that they have been doing business with more with respect to financial services than some of the more traditional financial intermediaries so it's very common for these companies whether it is the suppliers of input or the companies sourcing from these areas to to offer some kind of value chain financing and that's not necessarily something that these companies like to do uh they don't make money on it but it's just car part of what they have to do in order to empower these farmers or small businesses to be able to do what needs to be done with respect to the the the company's operation so from my perspective i think there is a very obvious and natural opportunity for fintech to partner with these companies who are interested in seeing uh these farmers or small businesses in the rural areas or households to get financing and therefore um but it's not necessarily part of their own business they are just doing it out of necessity so a partnership with fintech could help improve the trust factor to help make sure that the these entities are more trusting of this new technology based financial solutions that are being offered to them and these companies are already in the business of providing some kind of technical assistance and know-how in rural areas anyways in most cases so for to piggyback on that and to provide the additional educational and technical assistance activities that is necessary with respect to the fintech piece is is uh much easier than to create those programmatic efforts on a stand-alone basis yeah look i mean and i think that goes back to the whole point that it's a service that you offer and you help people in a variety of ways so there is perhaps some business there but it also makes sense um so uh so the uh i know we're close on time so i was just going to quickly ask you about nfts do you feel it's helped raise awareness uh is it something you would buy yourself and or would you make one of yourself so uh jiang what are your thoughts well to answer the first first question uh i think it definitely helped to raise awareness of wider issues for example i just mentioned that scholars have been discussing the legal nature of nfts it is a personal property or contract or ip license and the discussion of you know what law should apply and whether it could it could be the next frontier in trading in the art especially in the art area i think these are all the awareness second question if i will buy one uh yeah i'm still studying this and probably yes because for example in in 2017 i start trading like bitcoin cryptocurrencies the purpose is to you know learning by doing so because i do this kind of research it i have to get to know you know how platform works and then different parties get involved so if i want to have a deeper understanding of nfts yes i probably will buy one but not gambling though yeah yeah but i think you make sense i think you know it the best way to really understand crypto is is to have gone through the pain points uh the risks the the whole process and if you haven't uh then it's far harder to speak negatively about it so yeah marcelo i'm not not to say i haven't bought anything but i i did something i put a bid on a crypto punk little cool okay i didn't get it uh it was way above my my bit uh but i just i just played with i i tried i think i was leading late in that game i wish i was doing that two years ago but uh yeah i think just for fun it's i think it's it's just just like anything related to collectibles or on a more like uh sophistic sophisticated way like art in general i think it's a it's a positive positive to have this uh because we do know it's hard for for artists in general to sell their arts and now we have a new way which uh just like in crypto or defy sort of you you have a chance not that you're gonna do that right away we have a chance to eliminate or reduce the intermediaries or or at least uh take the concentration from a few uh let's say big galleries or art dealers to uh you know kind of uh smaller platforms smaller websites it's not what's happening now we see already concentration in this uh platforms like variable open seas uh nifty and so forth but uh for sure just like with crypto exchanges this gonna if this goes well we're going to have a lot of a lot more of these platforms and a lot of them are going to be niche based or smaller or very segmented so i think in general is positive obviously avoid the hype and buy like a little pixel for millions of dollars uh but but in general i think there's going to be good things coming out of it and and who knows maybe there are lessons there for others for for other like things other segments other sectors uh from these little playful things that we're seeing happening now with the collectibles yeah look i think so uh you know it's it's a bit like you know a lot of things were innovated in pornography first in terms of charging for content and then it gets rolled out to other areas and like you say it's very hard for artists to sell their work and and we're online so much so therefore why wouldn't you have collectibles uh ava i'm fascinated by nfds uh i also i'm really interested in the arts piece um just i can only echo what uh marcelo already said about artists and they have their ongoing struggle to monetize their work and survive and and i do believe that artists have such an important contribution so we definitely want them to survive and this you know maybe this is this is a great way uh i have not come to the point where i would be too tempted to buy one of them but that might change and um and i really don't have enough expertise to opine on it a lot more in terms of the direction of where this may be heading but i do find it very fascinating and i'm following the developments with curiosity cool yeah i think so so um we're almost out of time uh xiaojing any final takeaways uh final final takeaway i don't want i do want to you know quickly talk about you know and the broader impact of technology either like our topic suggests nfd or blockchain or whatever artificial intelligence technology the impact of on the work of professionals and i think a lot of professional white collar workers always made a mistake uh by you know thinking that their work can never be replaced by by machines by ai or by blockchain whatever technology it is because uh these technologies or ai cannot think or cannot feel so they cannot emphasize judgment or be empathetic and i think this is one of the biggest mistake of misconception that i have ever seen i think i would like to introduce the book of richard seskin's book called online core and the future of justice he called this kind of thinking ai fallacy or maybe technological fallacy it's a view that takes the only way you know think the only way to get machine or technology output from human will somehow mimic or replicate human reasoning and i think this is a very this mistake takes a very uh excessively human-centric view of you know technology.ai and he gives a lot of good examples and i suggest suggest you take a look at this book that's it okay thank you so ava any final takeaway uh sure uh we have we have done a study looking at best practices and scaled uh solutions in the climate smart inclusive economy space and one of the things we found is those solutions predominantly consisted of partnerships and often partnerships of strange bet fellows you know large corporate partnering with the very innovative social enterprise but that partnership allowed for the impact to get scaled and the reach to be scaled and and that's the final point i would love to make i think this is a space where we need these partnerships and i think we need to be open to who those partners might be they may not be always the ones that we think of and so i believe that uh forging partnerships and and building coalitions is going to be really important for us to be able to um scale the impact of these technological solutions at least in myspace again looking at more the environmental and social impact side of it awesome and very concisely said so i'm going to say thanks and then thank you to all our speakers and then marcelo is just going to give us his final uh thoughts and take away as well so over to you marcelo thanks simon so for a final take away i think uh uh we've come a long way with this blockchain crypto thing from the times that this all started with satoshi nakamoto's paper uh such a long time ago over 10 years now and uh a lot has been built a lot has failed as part of the process and we still like we still don't know exactly how it's going to be like in the next 10 years but i think just having a panel like this with people from different parts of the globe sort of speaking the same blockchain language already makes me positive makes me confident that i mean there's there is something much bigger in our day-to-day we are a lot of times just so focused on you know the nuts and bolts does you know small bug that happen in your smart contracts deployment things like that that's that it's good to sort of take you know a few steps back and look at the macro view and see how things are developing a panel like this is is very good in my opinion for this type of stuff so thanks thanks everybody for this great panel thank you awesome thank you everybody look forward to the next talk thank you thank you bye bye bye bye

Channel: Dinis Guarda

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Id: -OcpMuVook0

Length: 61min 55sec (3715 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021