The Blockchain Paradigm Shift | Vechain Co-Founder & CEO, Sunny Lu @ Draper University

It's gonna be in your hands, huh? Mine? Every one of you. So, I don't, I don't need to explain what is blockchain, right? Blockchain is like a buzzword, like everybody understands that. So, yeah, I didn't bring any slides about that. I want to start from here. Actually, PwC launched a global survey in 2018, last year, to 600 executives from 15 different sectors, I mean industries, and 84% of people answered like those, the enterprises or the companies have been doing something with blockchain. Interesting. either like doing some research, doing some development, or pilot, even live. So I would say the trend has been shifting. You know, the blockchain just passed the first 10 years anniversary in 2019, right? Yes. January 3rd. So now the trend has been shifting, is more and more serious players, I mean professional players, coming into this space. So it's not more like kids' game or geeks' game anymore, it's bigger and bigger enterprises, professional players are coming to this space. So the signs, positive signs all around, not only about the technical development, honestly in the first, let's say, years about the blockchain, Everything is about technical, everything is about the TPS, everything is about consensus mechanism, all of those technical topics. But now more and more people are coming like regulators, enterprises, service providers, capital like a Dripper Fund is coming to this and see, looking for the next Google, next Facebook, next Amazon, something like this. However, the blockchain space is still in a very, very early stage. If you check the green lines here, it's NASDAQ index, NASDAQ index. You know, we see the always up, right? But if we look at the blockchain, actually this is only the Bitcoin valuation, not like entire CoinMarketCap or blockchain valuation, but we just use Bitcoin here. You can see it's still in the very early stage. So, from investment point of view, I would say, all in, right? The moon. So, if, under one condition, if blockchain is going to change the world again, like internet did in the past 30 or 40 years. As a matter of fact, most of people in the world, I believe that blockchain is going to change the world again, like internet. Why? Because the internet is a network about information exchange, but blockchain is about trust and value exchange. It goes in a totally different level. So, what I think, or what VeChain thinks, about the next decade, what is blockchain going to, what is the future of blockchain? blockchain, or if blockchain going to change the world, what we should do? How they gonna change the world? I would say it's about this. This is the logo for VeChain Summit on this Thursday in Fisherman's Wharf. It's about creating valuable transactions. And we talk about from 4 different way. Firstly, the future of blockchain must be massive adoptions. Like more and more people getting involved or getting impacted by this technology, that's for sure. And everything built on the blockchain needs to create business values. I just talked to Mr. Turner across the street. Our goal is anyone who wants to build a blockchain application on VeChain, they can make money. Or you can make money. As long as you can make money, And then you will continue to invest, continue to upgrade, continue to deliver whatever the good product or good service to your clients. And then, you know, become, you know, becoming a positive circle, positive revenue for this. And just like the internet did, it has to be driven by professional team. It has to be driven by enterprises. You know, Like 25 or 30 years ago when internet was born from laboratory, but only the enterprise drive this technology to people's life, to the mainstream. I think there will be no difference about blockchain technology as well. No matter it's a big established company or like small startup, but it has to be professional. Okay? And last but not least, if this technology goes to mainstream, change people's life, Regulation compliance is must-have. Right now, I would say, is a missing puzzle, but cannot be missed anymore. And more and more governments started to look at that. For example, Japanese government launched the crypto exchange licenses since 2017, right? They issued 16 licenses until 2018, and SEC has Lots of debates and discussions about the category of the token, is it security or not. Hong Kong start to open the gate, open the window for license holder for traditional financial licenses, like number 1, number 4, number 7, number 9. You can talk to money authorities to extend your business scope into the blockchain or into the crypto. That's all the signs like the regulators wanted to put this in a professional way, wanted to protect the investors, and then the blockchain application or blockchain technology can go to the mainstream, right? So that's about the forward perspectives. However, if we look at adoption rate, We call it massive adoption, but if we look at adoption rate, this is the internet, especially here 2001, you know, with the web, web 2.0, or e-commerce, social media, social network application, mobile apps from here, but blockchain, I don't even think that's true. I don't think blockchain is like 14%, maybe like 3 or 5%. 7%. Still a long way to go. Especially, I keep telling my fellows, my team, or my friends, if someday my mom can use blockchain wallets, then I will call it massive adoption. Right now, if I tell her, like, you gotta write down those words, or private keys, or keystores, she will definitely be lost. Right, but she can use WeChat. She can use WeChat Pay, Alipay to buy stuff. That's something we should learn from those internet giants, how to go to the massive adoptions. Still a long way to go. Thank you.