Had a chance to attend Crypt Asia 2023 held at Singapore. Here are some random set of notes from the event

Signs of Spring

• Need for importance of self-regulation
• Coinhako
  • No lending
  • No margin trading
  • Greater clarity on regulation needed
• Custodian
  • Segregate wallets
  • See the transactions on the chain
  • It is an opportunity as self regulation might not be enough
• Coinbase will have a single entity responding to US regulators and most of the business will come from other regions
• Regulators are going after money crypto while tech crypto is suffering because it is also getting tagged along
  • Shrinking of Binance and Coinbase platforms in US
  • Lot of technology is being built by US tech folks - What will happen to the job market ?
  • Can one side be allowed to thrive without dependency on money crypto ?
• Regulating operational risk instead of going behind entities
• Regulating technology is futile as the tech is changing at a rapid pace that keeps regulators
  • Regulating at contract level is difficult
• Coinhako head of institutional trading
  • private banker from Credit Suisse
• Prospect of things happening offchain is happening onchain
  • Onchain infra - DeFi is a tough game to figure out
  • Ability to UX for people to start
  • Consensys - Fiat On Ramp in Crypto
  • Alpha Impact - Copy trading
• How do we get institutional money onboard ?
• Consensys: Metamask
  • Infrastructure related Blockchain software will see innovation in the years to come
  • Social recovery
  • Building metamask that has everything that you need without the need for
  • Indian payment network in to Metamask
  • Moving assets from one Blockchain to another
• Alpha Impact
  • Buying for long term

Web3 gaming

• Create game that can attract users every day
• Change the player experience via Blockchain
  • What does Blockchain bring to the table ?
    • Interoperability
    • True ownership
      • You own the characters and the tokens
  • Ownership is the defining characteristic of web3 gaming
  • Transparency is another transformative feature of web3 gaming
• Pixelmon
  • Gamification of finance vs. Use of Blockchain to gaming
  • True wave that brings in non-speculators comes from Blockchain application in gaming
    • Traditional measures of gaming - How does one use Blockchain ?
  • Earning by improving the ecosystem for other players
    • Not an ecosystem to be present there
  • Developer driven rather than Product driven industry
  • Developers want to build everything from scratch. Natural inclination is to build everything from scratch. Product focused people will focus on what to buy and what to build
  • Challenges for web 3 gaming
    • Image problem - Stigma attached to web3 gaming. VCs are shying away from Web 3.0 gaming
    • User funnel - Currently onboarding process to a web3 gaming is about 30 minutes
      • Easy onboarding
      • Earn the right to bore the user
      • Lot of games are putting Web 3.0 onboarding after playing the game
• Ethlas
  • Web 3.0 in its current form does not attract real gamers
  • Introduce fun games and make sure fun
  • Show up and I will pay you - Current structure unsustainable
  • There aren’t enough road builders in this space
    • BOT solution - SDK for protecting attacks
  • Games are using the Layer 1 and building solutions on Layer 2
  • Is there a unit economy ? There are buyers and sellers
  • Game builders do not get paid for their content and effort
  • Lot of treasury wallets are getting hacked
  • Alios labs is a company that offers wallet protection
  • Need for security layer
  • Acquisition is a challenge. Web 3.0 has no part here. Really bad roads for Web 3.0 gaming. There is no good security solution for Web 3.0 gaming
  • Lot of big studios are coming in.
  • No body wants to play on Mobile - This was the initial feeling. But now 50 pct of gaming is taking place on mobile
  • Fun experiences and security features in Web 3.0 space
• Play to Earn vs Play to Own
  • Show up and I will pay you - Play to Earn
  • Current trending terminology is Play to Own
    • When obtaining the assets, the player has a claim of ownership on the digital IP
    • Earning comes from a new player’s need for what the other person has
    • Develop a character and sell the character
      • Makes sense
      • It has a platform
    • Minecraft: People develop spaces on servers that others can use
    • People could own the space and then you can micro leverage on the space based on the usage of other game players
• ABCA
  • Web 3.0 is a 2 or 3 year industry. For the builders, there is a knowledge gap in terms of what the gamers really want.
  • Knowledge gap for builders coming in to Web 3.0 space directly
• 70-80 million USD worth Web 3.0 gaming will hit on consoles
• Majority of the gamers do not even have to know about Web 3.0 gaming
• Most Web 3.0 gaming companies are not making money.

PurpleFi - Alex Goldsmith

• London, Dubai and Vietnam based company launched a year ago
• Tokenizing the world
• Save invest and borrow for as little as 10 usd
• Investible opportunities for as little as 10 usd
• Invested in tokenized assets Real estate, shares and luxury goods
• Workflow
  • Proposal submission
  • Reviews the proposal
  • User pledge crypto to achieve asset price
  • Acquisition begins price target price
  • Ownership tokens are issued to the fractional owners
  • Assets will be maintained by a third party custodian
• Curation done inhouse
• $PURP token - utility token to navigate across ecosystem
  • rewards users for staking it

Redefining Crypto Finance with Speed, Security & Innovation

• coinstore.com

Web3 Mass Adoption: Challenges and Opportunities

MegaNode

• Scalability
  • How many chains have achieved more than 1 million active users ?
    • 6 L1 chains
  • Asset peak 20 million transactions per day
  • >500k Daily active users
    • Which chain should you use?
  • Game focused optimistic roll up
• UX
  • Not only end user experience but also developer user experience
  • coinbase blog - simple guide to the web3 developer stack
  • Onboarding
    • Social Login (MPC/TSS) - Particle Web3Auth
    • Namespaces/Identity - Domain Name and Decentralized identity
  • Blockchain connectivity
    • Account abstraction
    • Blockchain interactions
• Data Economy
  • Most of the people are focusing on tokens but read-write-own data
  • a16zcrypto - state of crypto report in 2022
  • permformant, convenient and friendly decentralized storage
  • Data-focused smart contract synergy
  • Filecoin came up with their own VM
  • Greenfield - Arweave
  • Personal Data Market - Social media - publishing - Personal Data storage
• Web2 to Web3 transformation

DeFi Lending & Leveraged Investing in Crypto

• Stablecoins, DEX, Lending and Borrowing, Insurance and Margin Trading
  • Do not disclose the holdings and hence the stablecoin might not be as stable as portrayed
• DeFi Lending and Borrowing: No maturity of payment, leveraged lending, overcollaterization and flash loans
• Do HFT traders use flash loans ? If so, what is the way they do that ?
• Post margin based on a specific token and use the capital to trade other tokens
• BIT MARKETS

Institutional Adoption of Crypto

• AWS supports Layer 1, Layer 2 and Layer 3
• Exchanges, Web3 infra, NFTs and Gamefi, DeFi and CeFI, Developer tools and Metaverse
• Use cases
  • 1inch Network is a DEX aggregator that aims to solve the liquidity problem of Blockchain
  • Ava Labs
  • Coinbase
    • ML for image analysis that recognizes mismatches and anomalies in sources of user indentification
  • Chainstack
  • Crypto.com
  • Amberdata
    • provides market data and insights
  • Coinhako
  • ADDX
• Top Web 3.0 use cases
  • Hosting a Blockchain node on AWS
  • Securing Blockchain key management with AWS Nitro Enclaves
  • Indexing, managing and processing large volumes of data securely
  • spin up full nodes on public and testnet as a managed service offering
  • Create, maintain and secure APIs at scale

Role of Crypto Payment Systems in Global Tourism

• 6.3 million tourists in 2022 - 1/3 of the number in 2019, before international travel came to a halt in 220 due to the Covid-19 pandemic
• Tourists receipts 13.8 billion - 50 pct of 2019 levels
• Total contribution to travel and tourism to the global economy in 2022 was 5.81T usd
• Global leisure travel spend was 2.1T usd
• Problem facing travel agents
  • Transfer times
  • Bank fees
  • Unfair exchange rates
  • Delays and Lost money
• Onyx Arches Payment gateway
  • Instant transfers globally
  • No Fees
  • Market Rate and Exchange Rates
  • Never been more secure and transparent
• Launched OXA token
  • Want to give the same power to consumer as a travel agent
• If you use this token, you get the same rates as a travel agent
• Marriott hotel discounts rates for travel agencies

The Power of Collective Wisdom: Copy-Trading and Social Trading Communities

• Trade exchange feature
  • Fastest growing crypto exchange since 2017
  • 9 million users worldwide
  • 6 million active users
  • 15 billion usd trading volume with in 24 hours
  • 1000+ listed tokens
  • 1200+ pairs
  • 8100 busd quarterly volume
• Features
  • Perpetual futures
  • Swap trading
  • TF trading
  • CoinW earn
  • Off the counter trading
  • Fansup
  • Copy trading
  • Grid trading strategy
  • CoinW App Community
  • COINS
• Evolution of copy trading
  • Early adoption
  • Tech advancements
  • Expansion to crypto currency
  • Social trading communities
  • Enhanced customization and risk management

The Next Frontier of Asset Tokenisation

• Julian Kwan ( Investa X and IX Swap)
  • Big companies are building asset tokenization doing by themselves
  • Other companies can use asset tokenization software from Investa X products
  • Began in 2018 - ICO’s poorly executed
  • SCO’s did not work
  • 2018 - First infrastructure using token issuance companies. They missed broker dealer licenses, custodian services etc
  • 2020 - First security exchange token coming up
  • Industry is 4 years old - Very different type of assets issued
  • Licensed venues and infra to trade tokens
  • People don’t care about protocols. All they care about is whether they can trade the tokens in a secured environment
  • All the players need to be licensed. Most people are doing this in private blockchains
  • Focus on fees is wildly out of proportion of what people are really looking for
  • Firms have licenses to issue a asset tokenization that can be subscribed across the world
  • Looked at 3000 STOs and worked upon 6. Worked with UBS and other private equity companies as they feel comfortable issuing assets via tokenization route
  • Each stock, bond in the future will be traded on dexes.
  • Tokenizing carbon funds, thematic products
  • Future for raising money for startups will be a combination of traditional startups + what we learned in the ICO phase
    • Startups need a nice community. Do you want a million dollars from one VC or a a few hundred dollars from thousands of the community members ?
  • Investa X has tons of material to know about asset tokenization
  • You will never learn everything unless there is a skin in the game
  • You should go and buy something or sell something. Sitting on sidelines will not help you
• Peter Sumer (BitMarkets)
  • There is a requirement for Blockchain to be more developed to handle more transactions

Crypto Accounting - HQ.xyz

• Chart of Account
• Categories
• Cost-basis point
• Type of activity
• Source of Data
• On-chain blockchain ledger to financial statements
• Accounting for digital assets should not be a hassle
• HQ.xyz - goodbye to spread sheets
  • Toggle between multiple Blockchains
  • Across wallets
  • Assign to chart of account
• Sharon Lourdes, CEO

AI, Blockchain, and the Metaverse: Challenges and Synergies(Dr. Jianing Yu)

• AIGC(AI Generalized Capabilities) boosts efficiency, while Blockchain ensures fairness
• Sam Altman started another project called Worldcoin, with the objective of leveraging Blockchain to create a equitable financial system
• UBI is a social welfare proposal which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a guaranteed income in the form of unconditional transfer payment
• Web 3
  • Internet of Value
  • What can we own ?
    • Identity, Data, Asset, Platform, Protocol
• The basic business model of metaverse changes from traffic economy to value exchange, and token replaces traffic as the basic element of the Internet
• All content will be priced and only the content that someone buys will be meaningful
• main usage scenarios for crypto assets will be in transactions between AI, as well as AI-human transactions
• uweb.ai
• Innovation in infrastructure drives the emerging
• Four inflows of the next wave
  • Fund
  • Talent
  • User
  • Technology

The next era for Crypto, AI and Blockchain

Speakers

• Wilson Chye Director & Secretariat Asia Blockchain Association (ABA)
• Jianing Yu icon UWEB Limited
• Amjad’ur Rahman CEO Onyx Arches
• Suleman Kazim CEO
• Alex Teo - Chief Operating Office- Headquarters (HQ.xyz)

Notes

• Difficult to differentiate between a rug pool and a genuine service
• There will a lot of companies that will set up in the Asian region
• Next year - BTC halving event - can trigger a bull market
• All tokens should be attached to something substantial - something physical.
• Mining has stopped for many coins. Will it start ?
• Ethereum mining - What’s happening in this area ? Why are speakers saying that mining has stopped ?
  • Mining is not profitable now - Why ?
• Are we creating centralization again ?
• Self custody applies to only a certain percentage of crypto users.
• New legislation for HK
• Crypto assets will be more valuable than the current money infra because the former is programmable

The Institutionalisation of Blockchain Staking

Speakers

• Anndy Lian Advisor Intergovernmental Blockchain
• Anuj Shankar Anuj Shankar CEO Luganodes
  • Swiss operated non-custodial staking
• Igneus Terrenus Head of Communications & Business Development Mantle Network
• Chen Zhuling CEO and Founder RockX
  • RockX - Working on helping devs and firms for the 4 years
• Ken Nizam Founder & CEO AsiaTokenFund Group

Notes

• Anuj
  • Risk management starts with the due diligence of the network such as security, governance
  • Diversification when it comes to multiple staking providers.
  • Regulatory Compliance
  • Traditional banking firms are also showing interest in staking eco system
• Ken Nizam
  • What are the risks in terms of staking ?
    • What is the crypto volatility ?
    • Network stable
    • Platform security
  • When you stake, you are reducing the supply and you are making the tokens becoming more valuable ?
  • Mitigate risk
    • Custodian service - layer of protection for crypto
      • Newer HNW coming in through the route and hence having custodian service is good
    • Some insurance for staking is needed.
  • sense of security is paramount for institutional investors
• Chen
  • If you are looking at staking, then the yield is like a bond on the network
    • Do you believe in the network ?
    • How robust is the network ?
  • You need to really understand who is holding the principal. Are they trustworthy ? Are you doing in a self-custodial way ?
  • Who manages the reward for you ?
  • Diversification is important.
  • Staking is not a new concept. It is a new type of mining mechanism in the Proof of Work area
  • From an institutional perspective, a lot of public listed companies are getting in to mining
  • Staking is another kind of fixed income asset on the network
  • We are getting in to era - validating the validators
  • If you are staking - you are securing the network. Staking signals that the network is stable
  • The ease of using the technology is important
  • Institutions need less of incentives and more of assurance
  • Staking technology did not fail last year. Staking is the fundamental mechanism
• Igneus
  • The next area of focus would derivativefi. You can use derivatives for gas in a larger eco system.
  • This area will grow a lot in the future.
  • KYC model for liquid staking

Enterprise Adoption of Blockchain Via Low-Code, Interoperable Networks

Speaker

• Pradeep Goel Founder & CEO Solve.Care

Notes

• Health care spending is about 15 million dollars a minute.
• 8T per year is spent by Healthcare
• Enterprise criteria for adoption
  • Compliance
  • Cost
  • Time to market
  • Adoption
  • Data and Consent
  • ROI
• Single largest economy where there is no Blockchain application
• Three reasons why Blockchain is not being utilized
  • Build a solution in healthcare and get it through compliance and regulation
  • Think of grandma using Blockchain
• Three fundamental issues in healthcare that needs fix
  • Identity
  • Data security, consent and compliance management issues
  • Roles, relationships and event management
• Blockchain application in healthcare
  • Access interface to Wallet
  • Payments
• Sometimes we pay more to pay the money
• 20 min - 300 million usd would have been spent on healthcare
• 200 bln a day spent by healthcare
• care.wallet
  • digital assets
  • payment assets
  • identity assets
  • Based on the
• as long as doctor is willing to do a handshake by wallet, then there is a way to transact records
• Create an open chain
• How does one company solve global health issues ?
  • Care.Wallet
  • Care.Cards
  • Care.Node
  • Care.Protocol
  • Care Network
• 90 pct of healthcare will move out of the hospital. Healthcare should be where the patient is.
• Solve.Care - 100+ employees - aa locations
• Learn to build solutions on chain
• This company has built a network and relevant protocols

Book Flight & Experience the fun of gamfiled flights

Speaker

• Jaiana Cuttari CEO Satoshi Airline

Notes

• Travel booking with crypto
• Easy to use - fly to earn program
• Buy travel reward NFTs
• Biz model is on rewards program
• Control nodes at different locations
• Traction based on twitter and discord metrics
• Flight booked worldwide - 3.5b usd
• Budget and Crypto Markets - 1b usd
• Features
  • OTA booking engine
  • Crypto payment
  • Fly to earn
  • Travel to earn
  • Web3
  • NFT game
  • Crypto travel insurance
  • Staking
• SAT Token
• Rent out Rewards NFT to your friend and you can earn travel points .
• NFT Airport Node system

The Power of the Crypto Community

Speaker

• Sebastian Zilliacus Managing Director EMURGO Media

Notes

• Human evolution
  • Prehistoric humans
  • Web2 Humans(Me/I) Individual important
  • Web3 Humans(We/Us) Community important
• Identity approach
  • Web2.0 individualism
    • Only if you have a ton of followers,you can make an impact
    • Fragmented identity
    • Value is locked in the platform
    • Measured by engagement generated
    • Using “I”
    • Personal brand is built of your own word
    • No ownership and its not composable
  • Web 3 - Post - Individualism
    • Diversity - Intersectionality - Minds accomplishments and choices - Ownership - Shared identities and values - Using We/Us
  • Do we shape our online personas based on our identities or we shape our identities based on online personas
• Start building community before you start your project
• Social coordination is as important as tech work
• Expectations from project owner
  • Provide feedback
  • Support in scaling
  • Advocate for a project
• Expectations from community
  • Involvement
  • Decision power
  • Rewards
  • Mutual Ownership
    • DAO structure
    • Governance tokens
• Salesforce, Atlassian, Github - Community lead development
• Web3 - Community owned development via DAOs or governance token
• As of Feb 2023, there are ~8500 crypto currencies
• Case studies
  • Empowa - Unlocking Affordable climate-smart housing opportunity
    • Use Blockchain and NFT that global markets could buy and lend it to Mozambizue
    • 10k USD per house funding
    • People who have access to home loan is 3 pct - That changed to 60 pct
    • Community helped to grow the home loan market
    • Community enabled them to build 4 pilot houses through funding of NFTs
  • World Mobile
    • Aim to bring identity and connectivity
    • 3 billion people not connected- reason is that telecom companies do not find it profitable to extend connection to the last mile
    • Many people in Africa do not have identity documents
    • Providing digital identity to all Cardano’s users
    • Local business owners could operate affordable nodes that connects local communities in rural areas
    • Focus on Tanzania
    • Delivered wireless networks using renewable energies
    • Mesh network partner with local telecom companies
    • Fishermen have access to digital identity, financial access and mobile connectivity
  • So many events in many networks that it is difficult to figure out what is happening with the communities
  • Cardano spot - social enthusiasts in Cardano ecosystem
    • To empower and connect Cardano enthusiasts to do things together