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IVS Beta CEO Summit : Discussions on Crypto, Stablecoins and Taiwan Dollar Coin
Hosted by the founding partner of Headline and IVC, Akio Tanaka, and celebrated MC Catherine Lu, this year’s IVS Beta event featured industry leaders including Leo Seewald from MaiCoin, Evan Spytma from YGG SEA, Samson Ellis from Bloomberg, Chris Lin from OurSong and blockchain influencer Mr.Block.
Headline and Infinity Ventures Crypto (IVC) hosted an offline event in Taipei, IVS Beta CEO Summit, on December 21st of 2021. This blog series will share what our industry-leading speakers talked about at the event, which brought together more than 150 guests in attendance.
Hosted by the founding partner of Headline and IVC, Akio Tanaka, and celebrated MC Catherine Lu, this year’s IVS Beta event featured industry leaders including Leo Seewald from MaiCoin, Evan Spytma from YGG SEA, Samson Ellis from Bloomberg, Chris Lin from OurSong and blockchain influencer Mr.Block.
The speakers took turns taking the stage to share their perspectives on some of the larger discussion topics regarding blockchain, as well as what 2022 holds for the crypto industry.
We will first take at look at Leo’s outlook on crypto, stablecoins and the upcoming Taiwanese stable coin: TWDC.
First, Leo talked about how he first got into the blockchain industry. Despite coming from a traditional finance background where crypto is not very welcomed, after seeing the world’s adoptions of crypto and working as the chairman of MaiCoin, he started to believe that crypto will indeed be the future.
I don’t think you have to be a “tech guy” to appreciate what’s going on with the world. I think the best example would be China - although very concerning in many ways, it is leading the world in terms of cryptocurrency when it launches e -RMB, now forcing companies to adopt. Whether or not you believe in Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency is the future.
Leo then went on to talk about where he thinks the issues with the industry arise from:
It has been my impression that a lot of the issues with the industry have been the gap between the traditional finance and the crypto world. And that’s what I am trying to bridge.
Leo believes that early adopters benefited from the fast-and-loose regulations and grew the whole industry to where it now stands. However, for crypto to grow more mainstream, the industry has to move in the direction of becoming more regulated.
He also shared his thoughts on why there is a real need for stablecoins:
If you look at the volatility you experience from many cryptocurrencies, those are good for investing. However, you still need a tool that can open up whole bunch of doors in this industry.
In this spirit, MaiCoin is planning to launch a Taiwanese stable coin - TWDC. Leo thinks that the Taiwanese banking system is too out of date, and that TWDC is the way to see Taiwan move multiple steps ahead.
In the process of launching TWDC, Leo mentioned that they found the Taiwanese regulators to be more open to innovation as compared to US congress. But when dealing with the lack of crypto-related laws, the company chose to engage with the regulators instead of ignoring this absence of regulations.
Compared to the US congress, the Taiwanese regulators are actually more open. For example, Tether started their custodian business in Taiwan. So, the regulators here are trying to embrace innovation. However, just like in most places in the world, there’s a huge vacuum. There are no laws that govern crypto here. And rather than just ignore that, we have engaged with the regulators and told them we are going to do this very carefully.
He then went into detail about TWDC and how its mechanism is different from other stable coins:
The Taiwanese regulators want to see innovative technology, provided that it doesn’t destabilize an existing economy and that it protects the underlying investment. And by doing TWDC in the most conservative way, we will accomplish this expectation.
Within TWDC, when a user provides one dollar, that dollar will go into the bank in a guaranteed account. One of the TWDC coins will then issued to the user. It will be an entirely 1-to-1 ratio, which is a greatly conservative approach.
On the other hand, Tether USD, a US stable coin, has a cash rate of 2% up until this year. This is very aggressive compared to what TWDC is trying to do.
They (USDT) were buying commercial papers and stuff that no bank would be allowed to buy. And you will see the regulators in the US shutting that down and moving them more towards the direction of the banks. We are anticipating that here and we are not even going to try that.
Leo also discussed the kinds of business he is in touch with to give a basic sense of TWDC’s potential utilities.
First, he is talking with large credit companies - as credit card companies including Visa and MasterCard are already using stablecoins to allow customers to send money. TWDC is also talking to online payment platforms and banking corporations, as they will be the ones to handle the 1-to-1 issuing ratio.
Last but not least, Leo and his team are also discussing with numerous tech firms that may use stablecoins in their supply chain settlements.
Following the discussions surrounding TWDC, Akio introduced JPYC, the first regulated stable coin of Japanese Yen:
JPYC is a properly licensed stable coin in Japan. Even though it’s under different license category from Taiwan, it has been existing since the beginning of 2021. So today, you can already purchase goods on e-commerce sites like Amazon JP with JPYC. You can use the stablecoin to buy everyday things and even convert them into mobile payments like Apple Pay. So I think it is probably not very far from imagination to have a similar application diversity in Taiwan.
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