TEDx Salon: Blockchain Beyond Bitcoin

On May 9th Oxygen’s CEO Alex Grebnev spoke at a TEDx conference ‘Blockchain Beyond Bitcoin’ organized by Fidelity International in Hong Kong. Alex spoke alongside Cindicator’s Co-Founder and CTO Yuri Lobyntsev and Fidelity’s UK Program Director Jason Webb about blockchain and its future.

While describing the industry, Alex Grebnev spoke about the hype one encounters in it, “The most evident example of it was seen in December 2017 when Bitcoin hit $20,000. But we need to look through that hype in order to see amazing uses of the new technology, ways of disrupting some old business models and creating new ones”.

He compared production processes in high-tech spheres with traditional sectors. He said, “I was speaking at Markit conference in London in March and State Street was part of the panel for future market infrastructure. State Street was asked, “How long would it take you to create a new product and bring it to production.” And they said, “3 to 5 years.” Whereas in our case we are building it in 6 to 9 months. I think that’s one other advantage of today’s technology that allows us to build things much faster. If you look at Binance, it was built in 8 months and right now it’s one of the biggest exchanges”. Alex talked about the increasing scope of regulation in the crypto economy as one of the most important trends. He explained that disruptive technologies also have to play by the rules, even if it implies creating new rules. Alex said, “Regulation helps manage and address risk and find an acceptable way for society to understand that, yes, these guys are dealing with that risk in an appropriate way.”