Bo Wang, Founder of Delphy, delivered a visionary key note speech at the Blockchain Investment Forum in Shenzhen, China on April 7th, 2018 Ada Gao Follow Apr 24, 2018 · 6 min read

Bo Wang, Founder of Delphy, the first prediction market platform in China, emphasized that making predictions is not only a recent fad but also a basic, on-going human desire; humans crave fairness, justice and pursuit of effective knowledge. The blockchain technology has accelerated it’s progress, that is embedded in the ecology and mechanism of prediction markets. Bo gave an enthusiastic speech about Evolution of Blockchain to the audience of Blockchain Investment Forum in Shenzhen, China.

In 2009, when Bitcoin whitepaper was first published on Hacker News, it was indeed the must-read paper for all technical geeks. At that point in time the paper did not resonate with the most readers as most perceived it to be a fantasy of a few enthusiasts.

When Bo came back to America in 2013, one of his friends told him that he was a was a true believer in Bitcoin and not only bought Bitcoin at $10, he went all in, when the Bitcoin price was $500. After that realization, Bo began researching into blockchain technology and Bitcoin. After research, he understood that it could really fix real problems.

Let’s take a look at Ethereum, the two most meaningful tasks Ethereum has accomplished are:

Smart contract to automate some very simple tasks on smart contracts.

The other is to create the ICO. Actually, the first ICO was done by MasterCoin, but Ethereum made an innovation to ICO. Vitalik hired the best lawyers in the world and created a whole set of legal framework in Switzerland. This legal framework can both protect investors and founders of projects. So they did ICO from July to August 2014. This ICO was a legal fundraising act under a real legal framework with bitcoins, rather than fiat. During the process, Ethereum had crowdfunded around $17 million worth of Bitcoins.

The ICO model ignited a wave of funding for blockchain projects. In spite of the fact that last year ICO’s were banned in China, many projects have the chance to get investment under legal conditions, which helps the blockchain industry to facilitate the product launch faster and easier.

News is all about reporting on past events or events that are happening, but in fact what we are most concerned about what will happen in the future and the value this news event will have in the future. If we know in advance what will happen in the future, we will know what we want to do and what we should do. Delphy, the prediction market platform, is a tool to help you predict the future and realize the future. Today, I will not talk about Delphy, but I’d like to share with you my learning from my recent trips global-wise. Maybe these will be some opportunities for you.

Bo just came back from Japan and one thing he noticed very interesting is there’s no one dominant media in Japan. Even with the huge population in China, there are several dominant multi-media outlets which could provide one-stop global-wise information for the users. But it’s totally a different story in Japan. The Japanese media landscape comprises of many small or medium sized influential media which could dominate an industry or a region, but there isn’t one media conglomerate that can cover it all. This might be a huge opportunity.

Bo also met and discussed with some projects who focus on quantitative trading in Japan and Russia, that have very strong technical backgrounds. Additionally, both projects comprise of experts in quantitative trading who’ve had experience in making a fortune in both the stock market and cryptocurrency world. In China, the market is even bigger, therefore, experts in China blockchain industry needs to work very hard to catch up with these top techniques.

During Bo’s trip to Russia, he noticed a trend in blockchain industry. Russia would like to invite and help move the mining companies from China to Russia, because the cost of electricity is very low in Russia. They spoke with many mining companies in China and even offered to disassemble the mining machines into parts first, transport them, then assemble them back, which could effectively avoid the high taxes. The reality is some of the Chinese mining companies have moved to Russia, while others are still speculating.

Another strategic move in the blockchain industry in Japan is focusing more on mining than before. Actually, Japan is very famous in strong chip design capability, but in the past they looked down on mining. But finally, they are awakened and have started to design chips with very high quality standards. With the developing of the mining industry, Japan begins to regard it as a renewable energy. One disadvantage of mining industry in Japan is that 55% of tax will be levies on the value cryptocurrencies mined, which is an appalling rate!

Finally, it’s been well accepted that mining, wallets and exchanges are the most important strategies in the blockchain industry. Hope this speech can give you some ideas which could help you with your exploration in the blockchain industry.

Thank you for your continued support!