Jeff Huang, Vitalik Buterin, and Jason Hsu discuss the future of cryptocurrency Tuesday evening. (Courtesy Unsplash) Jeff Huang, Vitalik Buterin, and Jason Hsu discuss the future of cryptocurrency Tuesday evening. (Courtesy Unsplash)

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Tuesday evening the co-founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, Congressman Jason Hsu (許毓仁), and L.A. Boyz rapper, Jeff Huang (黃立成), met to discuss the future of cryptocurrency in Taiwan and the rest of the world.

The meeting took place in Taipei Nangang Software Park's CDIB Capital Accelerator and was hosted by Maicoin. The event was filled to capacity and most of the audience stood for the two-hour discussion. The title of the evening's event was Interactive ICO Protocols: Making the Process Fair and Transparent.

Each of the three main speakers came from different professional and personal backgrounds, though they had (at least) one major aspiration in common: a deep desire to see the success of digital currency throughout Taiwan and the world.



Jeff Huang, Vitalik Buterin, and Jason Hsu discuss cryptocurrency. (Courtesy Jason Hsu's Twitter account)

"Vitalik Buterin is worth more than all of the banks in Taiwan combined," introduced the host, much more indeed. Buterin, now 23 years old, helped invent Ethereum in 2013. He graced Fortune Magazine's 2016 40 Under 40 list and is soon to grace the Forbe's 2018 30 Under 30 list.

This is Buterin's sixth visit to Taiwan. He also participated in the Beyond Block Conference in Taipei over the weekend.

Buterin continues to return to Taiwan as he finds "the people here are involved in this sector for the right reasons."

Congressman Hsu: Freedom and Fintech for all

Jason Hsu opened the discussion by announcing the Fintech Innovation Experimentation Act, which he penned personally. If the Act is passed Fintech startups will be able to apply for review come February 2018 to operate for a three-year trial period. The audience cheered.

The process of de-regulation is tumultuous and slow in Taiwan, Hsu explained in his talk and in a more in-depth interview with Crowdfund Insider. He is doing all he can from inside the Executive Yuan and elsewhere to hasten the progress.

Ultimately, he is pushing for the legalization of cryptotrading to create a safer environment for these transactions.

Hsu emphasized three goals for the financial environment in Taiwan:

First, that an attitude and legal standpoint of "radical openness" be adopted towards burgeoning industries like blockchain. Second, that the everyone from organizations to individual investors open themselves up to experimentation with these new technologies. Third, that notions of de-regulation are replaced with "re-regulation," or RegTech, meaning regulatory technology, to again minimize the initial risk of ICO and crypto-transactions.

In fact, the Chairman of the Financial Securities Commission in Taiwan, Wellington Koo (顧立雄), announced last Friday that the group will send an official to China this December to renegotiate financial regulation issues, the first time since 2015, reported ETHNews. What's more Taiwan's approach to crypto-regulation will shadow Singapore's model.

L.A. Boyz are back: justice for the entertainment industry

The L.A. Boyz are considered Taiwan's first rap group and group member, Jeff Huang, is first once again, this time as one of the first Taiwanese musicians to publicly advocate for blockchain.

Huang is the founder and acting chairman of 17 Media, a live streaming platform similar to Youtube with over 30 million users.

Huang sees cryptocurrency as a more fair and reliable way to distribute earnings across media platforms.

Vitalik gives a PowerPoint presentation, explains tokens, and why he likes Taiwan

Keynote speaker, Vitalik Buterin, rounded out the evening with a simplified explanation of tokens, "a digital thing which is transferrable and which has economic value," and walked the audience through hypothetical situations for approaching and experimenting with them in the future.

Buterin introduced mathematical equations for understanding personal coin value, the net present value, and equation of exchange. He then offered his interpretation of the rapid value fluctuation over various platforms, Maidsafe (2014), Ethereum (2014), BAT (2017), Gnosis (2017), and Raiden (2017).

The inventor reiterated that cryptocurrency ultimately exists in uncharted realms, and that while mistakes have been made in the past, like not regulating the lockup period for ICO founders, this is a continuous process of experimentation, presently with DAOs, a kind of investor-oriented fund.

The democratic, merit-based theories upon which the cryptocurrency movement is built are rampant in Taiwan, according to Buterin, and have extrordinary development potential.

In reference to one of the overarching themes of the forum, which was increased transparency, Buterin concluded his presentation with the catchy phrase, "Let's make tokens sane again."