In 20 12, the co-founders of kucoin exchange and I devoted ourselves to the emerging encryption world. At that time, the encryption industry was just emerging. For most people, bitcoin sounds like a crazy idea for geeks to exchange assets with each other. I remember when I first bought Bitcoin, my friend said, What do you need this for? Buy gold (gold is the hottest investment in 20 1 1-20 12). Today, the value of bitcoin is 4000 times that of 20 12, while the value of gold is declining.
The prospect of the encryption world makes us at the forefront of technology full of enthusiasm and pride. We believe this will be the technology of the future. Part of the reason why we think so is that we have noticed how similar the development of blockchain technology is to the development of the early Internet, and this time we have the opportunity to contribute to this development.
Blockchain: the future infrastructure of the world
In the early days of development, the encryption industry was driven by adventurers who loved technology and innovation, just like early Internet developers. Although there are various problems and confusing challenges, the growing market size and number of users in the encryption industry make me confident that the underlying blockchain will become an indispensable infrastructure in the future, just like the Internet serves the modern world.
Today, the Internet allows us to meet our basic needs, because with the development of the world and the expansion of the demand for digital infrastructure, we no longer need to worry about food or clothes, we no longer need to queue up to pay water and electricity bills, and we can contact anyone in the world immediately. It is entirely possible that one day, we will see this system in the movie "The First Player". However, given that we still face many challenges in technological improvement, this situation will not be realized in the near future. Take the Internet as an example. Although the process of information sharing has been greatly accelerated, it is still impossible to store and deliver value.
Today, data or value is stored on the servers of companies and organizations and actually belongs to them. However, the second law of thermodynamics states that all entities have an end point. This means that if your value is stored in a centralized online organization, it will face the problem of lack of transparency and security-the Internet cannot solve this problem.
The emergence of blockchain on a global scale provides an answer to this question, because it allows us to store data or value on infrastructure, which can be widely shared and does not belong to any individual, company or organization. In my opinion, this is the real value of the encryption industry. In the future Web 3.0 infrastructure of the Internet, it will be effectively implemented based on blockchain technology.
Progress is driven by people.
Looking back at the history of the Internet, it is not difficult to find that a technology that changes the world needs people's continuous participation, constantly developing and updating products, and attracting more and more users. Similarly, Internet giants such as Google and Facebook are launching satellites and hot air balloons into space to provide network services at a lower cost. Although some products are designed as temporary solutions, they can still help people better understand and use this technology. Just like in the late 1990s, the most popular application at that time was email. In people's minds, it's all the Internet.
Today's new concepts and products, such as those provided by defi or NFT, may no longer be popular with virtual worlds or metadata in the future. However, we can't deny their value in our time, because they help us better understand encryption technology and industry.
However, in order to achieve large-scale adoption in the encryption industry, its products and services must better meet the needs of the public. Large industry participants such as regulators and software companies can promote this process by making it easier for more people to enter the decentralized world.
Take the early Internet as an example. Because there was no search engine at that time, people had to go through all kinds of troubles to access the Internet, such as manually entering URL. Only after the emergence of smart phones such as Google and iPhone, can the public surf the Internet easily. The lowering of entry barriers has also stimulated the further development of the industry.
Back to encryption technology, decentralized public chain or blockchain technology can be used to provide underlying data support. However, the basic public chain platform cannot give birth to a public service platform like Google. Therefore, tools must be based on data to meet the needs of more people.
Infrastructure must meet the changing needs of users.
As more and more people enter the digital asset market, their needs will become more complex and personalized. The new solutions in the encryption industry will only be welcomed if they provide demanding, convenient and high-quality services that meet the needs of users.
This may include defi and NFT, as well as crypto swaps, spot trading, options, futures, exchange-traded funds and many other products. In addition to providing cutting-edge financial products and focusing on simple entry procedures, industry participants must also put social responsibility first and provide users with promising new project services, any of which may become the next Google in the world.
User-friendly products are synonymous with healthy and high-quality customer and community services, providing a high degree of user experience and satisfaction. This adaptation to the needs of users determines the future of the encryption industry, which requires all its infrastructure components to remain stable and constantly improve its products and services.
The combination of these efforts may lead to faster entry speed and accelerate the transition to Web 3.0. Only in the familiar and adaptive services, the popularization of tokens as useful tools and the education of users at the same time as integration can the blockchain become the future infrastructure of the expanding digital environment.
From a financial point of view, blockchain and digital currency are actually a new generation of digital financial systems. The digital financial system is built on the financial infrastructure of blockchain digital currency.
How to understand the digital economy from the perspective of enterprises?
We know that the industrial economy is driven by fossil fuels and the digital economy is driven by data. So, how does data drive business? I sum up as follows: use computers to model data, use algorithms to organize data, use computers to program business processes of enterprises, and then string together algorithm models to turn business processes into computer programs or smart contracts. This is digital technology. This digital economy is not what economists think it is.
How to integrate these things depends on a series of digital technologies. A series of digital technologies, such as Internet, Internet of Things, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and blockchain, constitute the digital economy or digital commerce.
Digital technology has three characteristics. The first is that it spans time and space, because data naturally has the instinct of infiltration. For example, cross-border and cross-organization data circulation cannot be blocked by boundaries, so it is cross-time and data is penetrating. It can penetrate the market vertically, melt all the intermediaries and strata in the middle, and then make the transaction point-to-point, and buyers and sellers no longer need intermediaries. It can penetrate the market vertically and shorten the industrial chain horizontally. Point-to-point, there is no middleman to guarantee transaction settlement.
The core of digital finance is point-to-point payment settlement and unsecured transaction settlement. It is no longer a peer-to-peer transaction to buy things at the mall with a bank card. It takes time for the merchant to receive the money, and the bank is ensuring that the transaction can be completely settled. But if these intermediaries disappear, how can the transaction be settled in real time? At present, blockchain and digital currency are the best technical solutions to solve these problems, and no other better solutions have been found.
From a commercial point of view, blockchain technology has its own characteristics, that is, it is digital enough, it is cross-border, cross-time and cross-organization. The data stream has no boundaries, so the blockchain is distributed at the same time. It is self-organizing and decentralized.
Therefore, the origin of blockchain and the application of any new disruptive technology have always had two routes, or two methods. One way is to use it as a tool to improve the traditional business model and obtain a marginal income. The other is to regard it as a system to reconstruct the underlying logic of the business.
These two application methods have had good cases in the past few years. When Internet companies are promoting "internet plus", we also see that many traditional commercial organizations are not talking about "internet plus" but "+Internet". So where are those people shouting "+Internet" now? Some people think that the Internet is just a technology for improvement, and some Internet technologies can be added to traditional things, such as using the Internet as email. If you set up an email system, you think it is the Internet. But some people regard the Internet as a system, reconstruct their business from the bottom, and finally you will find that you are unemployed.
The second is decentralization. Why go to the center? The regional center technology in business has brought about the decentralization of business, which is an inevitable trend in history. Where is this trend? I think it is two o'clock. One is economic globalization, which has entered version 2.0. Now, through the Internet, it is not that the company is globalizing, nor that the company has turned itself into a multinational company, but that any personal Internet can empower it to sell its products to the world through the Internet in a small county in China. When economic globalization develops to personal globalization, solving peer-to-peer transactions and peer-to-peer services has become a prominent problem. Then the characteristics of real-time clearing and settlement and peer-to-peer transaction settlement brought by blockchain technology can just help the globalization of personal business activities.
The third is the digitalization of the economy. When the data is collected to a certain extent, its circulation basically spans time and space, and the financial payment demand in business activities can be carried with you anytime and anywhere, but it can't provide you with scene and virtual payment and settlement services anytime and anywhere, and will eventually be eliminated by technology and market.
# Ou Yi OKEx# # digital currency # # Bitcoin [Chaohua] #