This is my short take on Asia Invest Singapore 2019

I traveled to Singapore last week. The flight there was 18 hours non stop. You land, go to work at the conference, fight jet lag, three days later jump back on the plane, get home and a week later I’m still not right. Sleep disruption is torture.

Exchanges — There are an incredible number of exchanges starting up. You could argue there are as many exchanges as there are tokens this is impossible. There will be a ton of carnage here.

Options & Futures — The innovations happening around futures and options trading are what is most interesting in terms of our interactions at the conference.

Sparrow — is a new options exchange out of Singapore that is getting attention. There are very few options for trading options in crypto today. Options will be part of the future for sure.

Tagomi — is another notable company. They have an institutional-grade trading platform that sits across the major crypto exchanges. Per their website — “Tagomi’s offering includes: seamless cross-market execution, a library of advanced algorithms, post-trade reporting, one-click settlement and custodial solutions. By reducing frictions related to operations and infrastructure in an end-to-end trading solution, Tagomi allows clients to focus on their alpha and maximize their returns.”

DeFi — was a common thread in most of our hallway conversations and meetings with projects like Compound Maker, Dharma and dYdX most frequently mentioned. I see this as the mushroom explosion that is happening now in crypto. This area is one of the only new use cases with value. Lots of people believe in this and are excited about it. Much of this is happening in San Francisco. Silicon Valley missed the boat? Not.

Depression — on the perhaps depressing side are there far too many companies out there that don’t really know what they’re doing, don’t have a good sense of their direction, don’t see much revenue or any revenues insight or who are outright engaged in fraudulent activity. Fraud in crypto, however, is peanuts compared to our President, parts of our government, Wall Street, Big Pharma…etc.