The success story of Blockchain/Distributed ledger technology continues to speed up.
We remember very well the first year of our company Blockchain Asia. Everybody was asking the same two questions: What is blockchain? And what are the use cases?
Reaching maturity
In the meantime, Blockchain technology has left the proof-of-concept world and arrived in the real economy. Our cooperation partners use it for storing digital identities, managing health data, paying for services in the Internet of Things, for remittance and for making automobiles and drones safer.
We reached the point-of-no-return last year, when big corporates started to use Blockchain on a broader scale for improving their business processes. Nowadays, Blockchain has become a necessity, a core element in corporate toolboxes. That said, Blockchain as a tool is not appropriate for everything, of course.
But if you handle digital assets in a trust-less network among equals, if you need permanent records of transactions, if you don’t need to store large amounts of data and if you don’t need ultra-high transaction processing, Blockchain might be a good idea to consider. And even if Blockchain is the right technology, we have to answer further questions, e.g. to find out whether we better use a permissionless or a permissioned Blockchain and what is the most appropriate consensus algorithm in your case.
Global competition
On a global scale, Asia is slowly taking the lead in Blockchain, after the US and Europe dominated the first years. Blockchain groups, developer teams and alliances in China are growing exponentially. And South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan have become strong in Blockchain as well. Cryptocurrencies, mining and ICOs played a major role, despite regulatory set-backs and bans in some of the countries. All nations have in common, that the plain usage of Blockchain technology was never questioned, but is rather welcome in all countries in Asia. Asia is very competitive and fostering innovation as well as attracting talent is key. Nobody wants to be left behind in the race of developing a key technology like Blockchain.
Standards
Standards will become key, as we have mentioned it many times in public and private conversations. The ISO/TC 307 committee works on standardisation of Blockchain technologies. And 22 EU countries have formed a partnership for “avoiding fragmented approaches to the technology by sharing technical and regulatory expertise”. In parallel, the financial industry promotes its Corda solution via R3. And on the consumer side Huawei takes swift action by partnering with Sirin Labs on a “Blockchain smartphone”.
Our work
With Blockchain Asia, we are active both, in Asia and in Europe. Our three most-favoured regions for Blockchain in Asia are the Pearl River delta, Seoul and Singapore. We see there the best talent, strong government support as well as very active communities and entrepreneurs. In Europe, our favourite is Germany, not only because of its rich community of more than 120 Blockchain companies, but also because of its strong real economy and global trade relations.
We bring blockchain projects, experts, providers and investors together.
We support Asian Blockchain companies to start in Europe and in the same way we support European companies to find the right markets in Asia for their Blockchain-based products and services.
