Speaking at a panel today at BlockShow Asia 2019, VeChain founder Sunny Lu suggested that token value is mostly arbitrary. The panel was titled "Creating Token Value — Are Monetary Gains Hindering Blockchain Innovation?" and it also included Eddy Travia, co-founder and CEO of Coinsilium; Matthew Roszak, chairman & co-founder at Bloq; Greg Wasserman, co-head of principal investing at Galaxy Digital; and Dr. Pavel Kravchenko, CEO & co-founder of Distributed Lab. But Lu’s commentary broke through: “99% of a [token’s value] is linked to speculation, and not to the value that solution can bring to society. This causes many startups …

Experts at BlockShow Asia 2019 agree: Bitcoin is just cryptocurrency while blockchain is a new connectivity framework. Speakers at a conference panel titled “Collaboration in a Decentralized Ecosystem: Why Government And Corporations Need It” included Patrick Yeo, Venture Hub Leader at PwC Singapore; Vinay Mohan, Managing Director of ConsenSys Singapore; Veronica Tan, Director at Infocomm Media Development Authority; Alan Lim, Program Director at IBM Blockchain Technologies; and Yi Ming Ng, Managing Partner of Tribe Accelerator. All participants pointed out that the main features of blockchain technology go far beyond Bitcoin. They enable ecosystem connectivity by sharing information in trustless, decentralized …

Bitcoin (BTC) price could “crash to zero” in the event of mass adoption by institutions, an industry expert has warned. Speaking at Cointelegraph’s ongoing BlockShow conference on Nov. 14, Dr. Pavel Kravchenko, CEO and co-founder at Distributed Lab and author of “Blockchain and Decentralized Systems,” revealed a rare bearish stance on the increasing institutional interest in Bitcoin. Kravchenko: BTC will go to zero with censorship Kravchenko was sitting on a panel focusing on blockchain projects and their associated cryptocurrency tokens: “Creating token value — are monetary gains hindering blockchain innovation?” He summarized: “Bitcoin is censorship resistant money, the first in …

Elixxir President Jim Dolbear thinks the question of when quantum computing will become real is a bad one. Speaking on behalf of Elixxir founder David Chaum at BlockShow Asia 2019, Dolbear suggested that it is highly likely that whoever perfects quantum computing will use it secretly. He referred to code-cracking efforts by the United States during World War II: “In the history of World War II, if you crack people’s code, you don’t tell them. This is what happened between the United States and Germany. The United States knew a bunch of codes and secret communications from Germany, but they …

Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek unveiled his company's 2020 expansion plan in a talk today at BlockShow Asia 2019 in Singapore. The plans include launching its own exchange, shipping VISA MCO cards to almost every region in the world, and launching a non-custodial wallet. With the motto that “it’s your basic human right to control your money, data, and identity,” Marszalek spoke about Crypto.com’s vision to create an ecosystem where people can manage every aspect of their crypto holdings in one place: pay, buy, sell, trade, exchange, fundraise, and so on. He revealed the entire roadmap to get there …

BlockShow Asia 2019 hosted some big names today for a panel on blockchain scalability. All the speakers agreed: people have to choose between scalability and decentralization. The panel included Max Kordek, CEO at Lisk; Matthew Tan, founder of Etherscan; Saranya Sriram, technical lead at Microsoft Azure; and Xinxi Wang, co-founder of Litecoin Foundation. It attracted a large audience for such a super-technical discussion. Speaking about the difficulties of scaling a blockchain to the next level, Kordek said that “blockchain scalability is a tradeoff. You can’t simply scale a blockchain for free. This is why I always laugh when I hear …

In a fireside chat with Cointelegraph Executive Editor Jay Cassano at BlockShow Asia 2019, Elixxir President Jim Dolbear announced the launch of xx coin, a digital currency that will support decentralized messaging, payments, and dApps on the associated xx network. “The way this all unfolded originally had to do with privacy associated with political expression. Who are you talking to, what are you reading?” said Dolbear. “We’re trying to allow people to control their own metadata.” In a press release shared with Cointelegraph on the same day, digital money pioneer and Elixxir CEO David Chaum said, “The xx coin and …

Sopnendu Mohanty, Chief FinTech Officer at the Monetary Authority of Singapore, spoke at BlockShow Asia 2019 about the importance of blockchain for the economy, highlighting its indispensability for the development of green finance. Mohanty defined green finance as follows: “How to monitor, how to measure, and how to mobilize finance for green assets.” He said blockchain can unite all three components. Climate change is undoubtedly one of the hottest topics of the 21st century. This week Venice, Italy saw its biggest flood since 1966, and it caused irreversible damage to the city. The recent disaster reveals the inability of current …

Speaking at BlockShow Asia 2019, Hyperledger Vice President APAC Julian Gordon described the personal impact that the Chinese president’s pro-blockchain remarks have had on him: “Xi Jinping made that announcement 10 days ago. The reason I know that is because my phone is sitting on my desk — my WeChat started buzzing and hasn’t stopped since.” Hosted by the Linux Foundation, Hyperledger is an open-source blockchain project aiming to be a hub for open blockchain development across industries. It has gathered companies from different backgrounds such as IBM, Airbus and JP Morgan Chase to further advance cross-industry blockchain technologies. Hyperledger …

Speaking on stage at BlockShow 2019 in Singapore today, Alchemy Global Payment Solutions co-founder Patrick Ngan discussed some details of how his company is making it easier to pay for everyday goods and services with cryptocurrency. Ngan emphasized the power of choice to make consumers and merchants happier. Calling his company “the first unified crypto-fiat payment solution in Asia,” he described a merchant product that lets the customer decide whether they want to pay in the local fiat currency or a popular cryptocurrency of their choice. “People in this audience probably have a lot of Bitcoin,” Ngan said. “Instead of …

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ, predicted that the digital Renminbi token (RMB) would be based on blockchain. Speaking today at BlockShow Asia 2019, CZ shared his thoughts on the digital currency in development by the People’s Bank of China. The details of this currency are not officially known. It will certainly not be as decentralized as Bitcoin (as it will be issued by the central bank), but CZ thinks it is going to be a blockchain-based version of RMB. He explained his reasoning: “The Chinese government wants to push RMB’s influence globally. They want RMB to be …

Kicking off the first panel of BlockShow Asia 2019, NEO founder Da Hongfei shared his views on the current state of decentralized web: “The internet is a great invention. It looks almost perfect. But is it really?” Citing examples like the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the Equifax hack, he highlighted a critical isolation problem plaguing the Web, leading to monopoly, centralization, abuse, and single points of failure. He brought up other challenges, including vertical friction, the lack of internationally accepted Web standards, and the general immaturity of technology — these issues could postpone the coming fusion of the physical and …