[Event] Singapore FinTech Festival 2022: Industry Insights from Global FinTech Experts

Day 2

The Great Merge: Rearchitecting Ethereum with Vitalik Buterin

Coinlive reporting at Singapore FinTech Festival 2022 in Singapore. At the session titled “The Great Merge: Rearchitecting Ethereum with Vitalik Buterin”, co-founder of Ethereum and researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, Vitalik Buterin the man himself, talks about Ethereum's Merge – the benefits, the difficulties, and the problems.

First off, Vitalik introduces the timeline of Ethereum’s Merge. He says that the road to the Merge is a very long process. In January 2014, Vitalik wrote a blog post talking about Proof-of-Stake (PoS), he and his team have no idea whether it will succeed at that time. Later in November of the same year, they were convinced that Ethereum could really switch to a PoS mechanism. Then in December 2020, Ethereum‘s PoS blockchain – the Beacon Chain – was officially launched. In September this year, the highly-anticipated Merge finally happened.

Vitalik shares the benefits of the Merge. Compare to the original consensus of Proof-of-Work (PoW), PoS consumes at least 2,000 times lesser electricity; that’s 99.95% lesser. Besides, PoS has a more powerful consensus design with parallel confirmations which results in much better chain stability. Other benefits include: the increasing difficulty to attack the chain, easier to make future upgrades, and a lower token issuance requirement. PoS enables Ethereum to become more sustainable, economically and environmentally.

As the Merge is completed, the Ethereum Foundation led by Vitalik is now ready to focus fully on other problems that matter the most to the Ethereum ecosystem and its users. There are eight billion people on earth but the vast majority of them are not using blockchain. Even people who are using cryptocurrency are not using blockchain either; that is the problem Vitalik recognises. People are interacting with crypto but not through blockchain, instead, they are using centralised services or exchanges to enjoy faster speed, lower transaction fees, and near-to-zero transfer fees.

The remaining problems are scalability, user experience, security issue, and privacy, which he already has a couple of solutions in mind. For instance, “danksharding” is the solution for Ethereum’s scalability. It improves the Ethereum base layer by adding a large amount of data space. This is a space where there are a lot of data. Users can send transactions into the space, and it will be up to the Layer 2 protocols to interpret the data, creating a scalable system that provides value to users.

Account attraction is another one. For now, users are storing assets in their wallets. Every wallet has its own private key. Losing the key means losing the wallet access, or if hackers stole the key, they would have the access to the wallet. The solution Vitalik has been thinking of is to move this single key to a smart contract that could has multi-authentication functions.

Besides the issues that the team is currently working on, Vitalik’s longer-term goal is to stabilise the Ethereum protocol, which will take more years to get there. The switch to PoS is the first big change for Ethereum; Vitalik and his team feel that this kind of large improvement to the protocol that solves the real problem is possible. Rest assured that the scalability, openness, privacy, and users’ and developers’ convenience will be worked on progressively over the next few years.

Stablecoins: The Future that is your Money

Coinlive reporting at Singapore FinTech Festival 2022 in Singapore. At the session titled “Stablecoins: The Future that is your Money” hosted by Jo Yeo from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), Changpeng Zhao (CZ), founder and CEO at Binance, and Richmond Teo, co-founder at Paxos/BUSD, expound on their thoughts about stablecoins.

Richmond introduces the Binance-owned stablecoin, the Binance USD (BUSD), has consumer protection built into it. He thinks that consumer protection is very important and should not be a statement on the website. BUSD has a fully backed reserve and is transparent, most importantly it is regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services. Consumer protection being built in can gather trust from retail users. He saw that the unregulated competitors had shrunk in size, which is one of the signs indicating that the retailers do care more about safety.

When asked about the need for different stablecoins and cryptocurrencies, CZ believes there is a need for more cryptocurrencies and emphasises that BUSD and Binance Coin (BNB) are both different type of coins. Stablecoins are for transaction and payment while other innovative coins are for community development, ecosystem development, and other use cases ─ there is no conflict at all. In fact, he thinks more stablecoins are needed, for example, an SGD stablecoin.

Speaking about the controversy of stablecoins’ auto conversion into BSUD that spurred recently, CZ explains that the motives behind are from the user’s perspective. Before the implementation of stablecoins’ auto conversion, trading liquidity separates into different trading pairs, making it a hassle for users to find the best trading price. As for now, Binance accepts deposits in all types of stablecoins; they will be converted to BUSD in a 1:1 ratio. The end result is one trading pair and only one liquidity pool, which is beneficial to all users. Also, when users are withdrawing the BSUD, they can choose to withdraw in other stablecoins, and not be only limited to BUSD. The main point of auto conversion is to combine liquidity.

In terms of regulations in Singapore, retailers have limited access to crypto which CZ thinks is not wrong to take cautious steps. However, with Hong Kong opening up crypto to retailers, he asks if Singapore should re-evaluate the regulations.

Richmond expresses that education is very important to retailers and Binance offers a lot of educational materials to the public. CZ recommends that retailers who have just started, should not be putting too much exposure into crypto, probably around 0.1% of personal net worth, as it requires a lot of practice to get used to blockchain transactions, wallet safety, etc.

During the QNA session, one of the audience asks about the future outlook of stablecoins, native coins, and CBDC. Richmond and CZ believe all of them will coexist for quite a while. CZ explains that the functionality of the three of them is separated and does not overlap. Most CBDCs have unlimited supply and a lot of approval requests are required, like when doing a cross-border transaction, for instance transferring money from the U.S. to China. Stablecoin serves as an intermediary between native cryptocurrency and fiat currency, which is good for payment and transferring fixed-value assets. Last but not least, the native cryptocurrency comes with a limited supply and more use cases. The fundamentals of these three camps are totally different.

Day 3

Welcome to SFF 2022: 8 Global Insights

Coinlive reporting at Singapore FinTech Festival 2022 in Singapore. Tascha Labs’ Macroeconomist, Web 3 Startup Advisor, and Angel Investor, Tascha Che, is at the session titled “Welcome to SFF 2022: 8 Global Web3 Insights”. Tasha shares her thought on the core benefit of Web3 in which its real value is not only about transactions. She believes Web3 is about giving people ownership. Blockchain technology has now lowered the entry barrier to capital ownership via digital assets, driving the meteoric rise of Web3. Besides, tokenisation is also one of the fuels of the Web3 economy.

Satoshi’s Inspiration

Coinlive reporting at Singapore FinTech Festival 2022 in Singapore. Principal at Stuart Haber Crypto, LLC, Dr Stuart Haber, is at the session titled “Satoshi’s Inspiration”. Stuart begins his talk with his own blockchain story back in 1989 when he was a young cryptography researcher. The purpose of cryptography is to protect critical information. He and his fellow researcher published a paper titled “How to time-stamp a digital document” in 1990. The word “time-stamp” was chosen because digital documents are in a string of bits that cannot be stamped; thus, the term was created. He then explains further about his solutions for solving time-stamp issues. These are believed to be a part of Satoshi’s inspiration for designing bitcoin.

Effective Policies for Crypto Assets

Coinlive reporting at Singapore FinTech Festival 2022 in Singapore. At the session titled “Effective Policies for Crypto Assets” hosted by Timothy Adams, President and CEO at the Institute of International Finance (IIF), Sigal Mandelker, General Partner at Ribbit Capital, and Diogo Mónica, co-founder and president at Anchorage Digital, expound on their thoughts about regulators and policies. They express that some regulations are too old for the current innovation and technology, especially for cryptocurrency. For example, the U.S. regulators are still using the old rulebook to determine whether digital assets are securities. They also concur that it is good to see that some government in the world, for instance, Singapore, is embracing the latest technology, which allows regulators to work hand in hand with the private sector to protect users from exploits and hacking.

Crypto Assets Built to Last

Coinlive reporting at Singapore FinTech Festival 2022 in Singapore. Co-founder, Chairman, and CEO at Circle, Jeremy Allaire, is at the session titled “Crypto Assets Built to Last”. Jeremy believes that the crypto winter is an extraordinary time and compares it to the dot com bubble. He says that blockchain is still in the early development stage which is somewhat similar to the early mobile phone era with many different operating systems in the early days, and now it has narrowed down to just iOS and Android. Jeremy thinks that crypto will follow in the mobile phone’s footsteps, with only a few blockchains left in the coming five years with most applications built on them. In future, he is looking forward to a “crypto super app”, which does not exist now.

The Next 10 Years: Building the Crypto Economy, Scaling Web3 Innovation, and Weathering Storms

Coinlive reporting at Singapore FinTech Festival 2022 in Singapore. Co-founder and CEO at Coinbase, Brian Armstrong, is at the session titled “The Next 10 Years: Building the Crypto Economy, Scaling Web3 Innovation, and Weathering Storms”. Brian expresses his excitement that those who generated their wealth from technology are starting to reinvest their money into solving science problems. For instance, Elon Musk is one of the pioneers. He believes that technology is the way to improve the world, whereby capitalism is a force for good. He proceeds to share his story of building things with an IBM computer when he was a kid. Like most crypto leaders nowadays, the bitcoin whitepaper inspired and introduced him to the crypto industry. Despite the current market condition, he thinks companies need to be relentlessly determined and learn to improvise, adapt and overcome. As Coinbase just secured a Digital Payment Token license in Singapore, Brian wishes the situation in Singapore could be recreated in other countries as the company’s mission is to increase economic freedom in the world.

Balancing Act: Seeing Through Turbulent Times and the Web3 Shift

Coinlive reporting at Singapore FinTech Festival 2022 in Singapore. At the session titled “Balancing Act: Seeing Through Turbulent Times and the Web3 Shift” hosted by Tanvir Gill, Anchor at CNBC International, CEO at Capital A, Tan Sri Tony Fernandes, CEO at DBS Bank, Piyush Gupta, and Founder and CEO at Paytm, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, shares their opinion on the topic at hand. Piyush thinks that the U.S. economy might be turning down due to the tightening monetary policy; if China remains in its current locked status, the issue will compound. Next year might be choppy for the macroeconomic. Other than that, geopolitics is also one of the world’s biggest challenges, for example, the China-U.S. tension. Tony, one of the biggest names in the airline field, shares his perspectives regarding the airline industry. Airline companies have rich data on high spending and loyal customers. He is building good businesses based on these data, such as the payment app, the super app, and the ride-hailing app. Vijay, shares that a significant amount of demand is growing organically, and he is seeing a profitable quarter coming soon in 2023. As for the Web3 shift, Piyush views Web3 as a game-changing distributed ledger system. Meanwhile, Vijay thinks Web3 is too farfetched to execute practically in the world we are living in; it is not practical for everything to be replaced by Web3. Lastly, Tony admits he is a big fan of Web3, especially NFT with utilities; he believes it is a wonderful way of building a community.