The "anchor" of the next generation of currency will focus on "digital assets"

Author: Zhang Lili; Source: Zhang Lili Digital Economy Research

After the US election was settled, global cryptocurrencies and digital assets have received a new round of high attention. Of course, in the digital economy era, the status of "digital assets" is rapidly and comprehensively upgraded, and in the future, digital capital will be greater than financial capital.

Modern currency is generated by debt or credit, so the currency "anchor" is essentially what kind of guarantee and income people rely on to repay the money behind the bank. We all know that the scale of the digital economy is constantly expanding, and this is not only happening in China, but also a global feature. Among them, industrial digitalization accounts for 90% of the global digital economy and is the absolute main battlefield of the digital economy. Therefore, under such a high-speed development of the digital economy, it is normal for the asset form circulating in the economic system to change, and new asset types are born quickly, which is naturally integrated into financial activities. Almost all over the world, the "anchor" of the next generation of currency is focused on "digital assets".  

Since 2020, the global encrypted digital asset industry has entered an explosive growth. There are three main reasons for the outbreak. The first is the expansion of investment institutions in this field. Second, the rapid rise of distributed finance is the internal motivation for promoting encrypted digital assets. Of course, the third important factor is that the regulatory policies of various countries on encrypted digital assets have been gradually clarified. From the perspective of the development speed of legal digital currency, it is basically a state of comprehensive acceleration after 2020. China's digital RMB has undergone multiple rounds of pilots in many places and leads the world. So by the end of 2024, how will the encrypted digital asset industry develop? What are the future trends?

First of all, data assetization and asset digitization continue to broaden the boundaries of assets. There are two concepts here. It is easy to understand that asset digitization is easy to understand, that is, traditional assets appear in digital form. Data assets or data assetization are various transaction data, behavioral data, etc. generated based on the Internet, which has become a new asset category. For example, in our catering consumption, in the entire industrial chain, we can use the current digital information technology to obtain data from the entire chain, including food preferences, age, income, credit, social relations, etc., and use these real data as credentials, which can be used as new "anchor" assets.

Since the birth of Bitcoin, there have been more than 20,000 digital asset trading platforms of all sizes. Generally speaking, these platforms should be regarded as attempts at innovative solutions. Currently, the data assets generated by data and data elements basically come from the huge public service data of industry, culture or cultural creation, and digital cities.

The development of the global digital asset market has the following three new features, which are worthy of attention.

First, the agglomeration effect of the encrypted digital asset market has been significantly enhanced. First, the current market value of encrypted digital currencies has been occupied by Bitcoin and Ethereum by 70%. Secondly, it is noted that the computing power of the cryptocurrency industry is still accelerating. Computing power is a very important part of cryptocurrency. To obtain the accounting power of the block and the corresponding energy industry, data center services and computing power will increase. After all, the greater the computing power, the greater the security factor of the entire blockchain network.  

Second, mainstream commercial institutions are accelerating their layout of encrypted digital assets. From the perspective of direct investment in encrypted digital assets, a more representative case is that Tesla accepted Bitcoin as a payment method for purchasing cars in 2021. Of course, direct configuration is also increasing, through traditional capital market institutions such as encrypted asset lending companies, hedge funds, mutual funds, and family funds.

Third, the impact of encrypted digital assets on traditional capital markets is accelerating. With more and more virtual data generated by social data, natural data, and the metaverse, the data minerals with continuously enlarged marginal effects, on the one hand, are accelerating the catalysis of various new financial products, and the decentralized finance mentioned above is a representative. In addition, under the constraints of securities laws and financial supervision, there are many successful cases of financing through the issuance of securitized tokens, which has indeed brought a lot of imagination to the traditional capital market. Especially digital artworks in the consumer industry, games, digital works in the cultural industry, intellectual property protection and trading of artworks, virtual and personalized tourism, especially educational resource sharing in the education industry, in-depth integration experience of industry and skills, etc. Of course, games, advertising, new media, as well as product brands and supply chain collaboration in the new manufacturing industry are all in the process of accelerating.

In the long run, the challenges of global digital asset development are compliance, security and professionalism. After all, how to balance supervision and innovation and how to promote the healthy development of the market is a difficult problem. I pay more attention to professionalism and compliance. After all, digital assets are new things, and most people, including professional investors and regulators, need to improve their professional capabilities. Compliance is also closely related to professionalism. At present, global cases are not so rich, and consensus also depends on circles and regions. We need to learn more, communicate more, and remain vigilant and flexible.