GuShiio.com Author | Xiao Feng
Edit | GuShiio.com block chain
On February 20, Dr. Xiao Feng, Chairman and CEO of HashKey Group, delivered a keynote speech entitled “Block Chain: starting from the Origin” at the Web3 Voyage event hosted by HashKey Chain. The following is the full text of the speech, sorted out from the on-site shorthand, some of which do not affect the deletion of the original intention.
Hello, everyone. First of all, welcome to our live meeting today.
On August 28, 2023, we held a launching ceremony for our Hong Kong Stock Exchange HashKey Exchange at the same location, & mdash; & mdash; Hong Kong Maritime Museum. Hong Kong is a seaport city, so we specially chose this symbolic place to hold the opening ceremony. Today is the second time that the group has held an event here.
HashKey Exchange is one wing of HashKey, and HashKey Chain is the other wing of HashKey Group.
In today’s speech, I will explain to you in detail why HashKey Chain is so important to us.
Blockchain: new financial infrastructure
Starting from the origin of the Blockchain, from the first principle, and from the foundation, we need to look at today’s much-discussed encrypted assets, or virtual assets. It’s all based on blockchain technology. Therefore, we have to go back to the original mind and explore what the blockchain is.
The three elements of the evolution of human society
Before I begin my speech, I would like to quote the research results of a Nobel laureate in economics. He studied the industrial revolution for a long time and came to the conclusion that “the industrial revolution had to wait for a financial revolution. ”
His research results cover the first three industrial revolutions, and now we have entered the fourth industrial revolution & mdash; & mdash; intelligent and digital era. He believes that all industrial revolutions rely on the support of new financial services to support the development, development and growth of the new industrial revolution. On the other hand, without the blessing of the financial revolution, the industrial revolution in human society may not be successful.
Many people are ashamed to admit that blockchain is the infrastructure to support the fourth Industrial Revolution, so we often talk about making “alliance chain” or “coin-free blockchain”. But the practice of the past decade has proved that most of these attempts do not work. We must bravely admit that as a tool to adjust production relations, the core entry point of blockchain is finance. Without financial demand, we don’t need blockchain at all. This means that when mankind enters the fourth industrial revolution and innovates digital and intelligent production relations, a new financial revolution is indispensable. Otherwise, all of this may not happen, or it may not succeed.
Four “industrial revolutions”
The economist further pointed out that every industrial revolution is the superposition of the energy revolution, the industrial revolution and the financial revolution, in which the financial revolution is often the premise.
This reminds me of the research in physics: social development and scientific and technological progress are inseparable from the transformation of energy, energy and information. This transformation coincides with the energy revolution, the industrial revolution and the financial revolution in some scenarios. Along this framework, we look back on the past three industrial revolutions:
The first time it was marked by a steam engine, it took place in England.
The second time, represented by electric power and wireless communications, took place in the United States.
The third time, marked by computers, code and the Internet, also sprang up in the United States.
Another scientist once mentioned that mankind has experienced three cognitive revolutions:
The first time is to invent language and realize communication between people.
The second time is to invent words, record and pass on experience.
The third time is the code invented in the last century. As a new language, code expands the scope of communication, communication and coordination of human society countless times.
Without code, there would be no AI, blockchain, or Internet. The code creates the language of people and machines, machines and machines, which greatly expands the space for survival and economic activities. It also explains why listed companies can now have a market capitalization of $3 trillion, compared with a peak of $600 billion in the industrial economy of & mdash; & mdash; such as ExxonMobil and General Electric. Today, companies with a trillion-dollar market capitalization abound, and some even predict that Nvidia could reach the $5 trillion or $10 trillion level.
The fourth “Industrial Revolution”
The fourth industrial revolution sprang up at the beginning of this century, represented by blockchain, AI and cloud computing.
If in January, I dare not say that it has something to do with China, but now it can be said that China and the United States are jointly promoting this wave. From the Internet to AI, the research and development of the top 10 platforms and models are almost focused on China and the United States, while Europe and Japan are rare. China has taken this express train.
However, the fourth industrial revolution must be supported by the financial revolution. The United Kingdom relies on the credit and bond markets, while the United States relies on investment banks and capital markets. For the third time, it relies on venture capital (VC) to give birth to Silicon Valley and Chinese Internet platforms. Didn’t the fourth Industrial Revolution need a new financial model?
The greatest value of AI lies in embodied intelligence and spatial intelligence, which requires a large number of robots. Excuse me, what currency is used for payment between robots and between people and robots? Dollar or RMB? Only programmable currencies based on smart contracts can do the job. This means that the fourth industrial revolution is bound to call for a new financial revolution, otherwise its potential will be greatly reduced.
The fourth “Financial Revolution”
The fourth industrial revolution was inextricably linked to blockchains, smart contracts, digital wallets and programmable currencies. Blockchain is an open and transparent global public ledger, and human computing methods have changed only three times in a thousand years: single bookkeeping in Sumerian times, double-entry bookkeeping in Italy in 1300 AD, and distributed bookkeeping brought about by bitcoin in 2009. Distributed bookkeeping is born because of the cross-time, cross-space and cross-organizational characteristics of digital survival, which is the financial basis of the fourth industrial revolution.
Compared with traditional finance, the new finance has three major changes:
First, the calculation method has changed from double-entry bookkeeping to distributed bookkeeping.
Second, the account has changed from a bank account to a digital wallet.
Third, the unit of account has changed from legal tender to digital currency. This has spawned a new asset class of encryption assets & mdash; & mdash; based on distributed encryption algorithms and books.
The first principle of Block chain
What is the first principle of finance? It is the mismatch of value across time and space, and this essence remains unchanged for thousands of years. But the mode of service is changing: from no bank to have bank, from no central bank to have central bank. Some people say that the nature of finance remains the same, but banks and exchanges are just tools. Digital activities span time and space, and payments have become peer-to-peer, distributed, self-organized networks, with remittances from Hong Kong to the United States arriving in a few minutes without the need for five agencies to reconcile accounts. Which way is more humane? Isn’t it a better choice to arrive at the account in seconds and close to zero handling fee?
The nature of finance
The DeFi (decentralized finance) on the blockchain has a high yield of 10%, 20%, or even 30%, 40%. Traditional financial circles often say that returns of more than 7 per cent could be a scam, accusing DeFi of a Ponzi scheme. I have thought about it for years and come to the conclusion that standard DeFi projects offer risk-free returns, are less leveraged than banks (banks have a capital adequacy ratio of only 12%), but achieve high returns because of overmortgages.
Its core lies in the capital turnover efficiency of & mdash; & mdash; Bank 12 times a year is the limit, while DeFi can reach ten thousand times, lightning loans or even seconds to complete. This improvement in efficiency is the charm of new finance.
Digital origin to digital twins
Talk about several hot topics, the first is RWA (real world assets). A decade ago, stable currencies, such as the 2015 USDT, were monetized, with a transaction volume of $16 trillion in 2024, a mere $300 billion, far more efficient than the $300 trillion in traditional finance.
Since 2024, with the rise of monetization of financial assets, American asset management companies have minted fund shares on the public chain, and the scale will be super-stable.
The third wave is the monetization of physical assets, which needs to solve the problem of prophecy machine and realize the digital twinning from offline to chain.
Five types of tokens
There are many kinds of tokens, and different types of tokens have different functions, which can be divided into five categories: payment (such as stable coin), reserve (such as bitcoin), functional (such as ETH), securities (such as ETF share) and meme (such as Trump’s tokens).
Finally, I would like to say that we have to welcome a new era from “chain down to chain”. This trend will come in 2025, driven by legislation and the president of the United States. After the United States gives legitimacy and compliance to the encryption industry, countries will follow suit, and Hong Kong has already legislated first. Subsequently, global financial institutions will enter the field of crypto on a large scale, build a new payment and settlement system based on blockchain, or issue new financial assets based on token economy. “on the chain” will really enter the explosive period.
That’s all I want to share. Thank you.
