“Industrial Restructuring and Digital Finance”, founder of Hashgard, Charlie Xu, delivered a keynote speech at the Finwise Summit Hong kong

On August 10, 2018, the 2018 Finwise Summit Hong Kong was jointly hosted by FINWEX, Goldford Venture, China Ants Alliance, FUNKEY Pay, KAC, CDGEX and Hong Kong New Emerging Technology Education Association in Hong Kong. There were over 100 financial technology companies, 30 foreign blockchain companies, over 20 investment institutions, and nearly 100 guests and high-profile professionals from the field of traditional finance that came together to discuss the future development of financial technology, the application prospects of blockchain technology, as well as the most updated technology progresses.

- 01- Three Stages of the Blockchain and the Digital Age
Charlie Xu stated: The development of the blockchain can be divided into three phases. The first phase is represented by Bitcoin and Token. Since the digital assets are issued by the decentralized computer network and cryptographic algorithms, users can permanently and safely store and use their own digital currency. We call this stage digital asset era.

The second stage is represented by Ethereum, ICO, CryptoKitties, World Cup tickets, Fomo3D and etc. Users can not only own their digital assets, but also distribute their assets through simple smart contracts, participate in stocks and future trading on the exchange, own a virtual pet, generate digital tickets corresponding to physical tickets, and use their own digital currency to participate in online games. Asset storage is no longer the only function of digital currency; more applications of digital currency have been developed.

In the third stage of the development of the blockchain, the existing production relations and organizational structure will undergo qualitative changes due to the impact of the blockchain and the Token Economy. The various elements of the existing business structure will be more fragmented because of the blockchain technology and the existence of token. Unlike the fragmentation of information during the Internet age, the blockchain era will be able to keep all parties’ interests completely unified while fragmenting various business elements. The identical token will be held among shareholders, managers, employees, suppliers and distributors. Everyone will benefit from the increase in token value.

This completely overturns the business model of the shareholding structure and joint-stock structure companies where the biggest profit is often captured and swallowed by the capitalist, the owner of the equity and the shares.

For example, ordinary users can create and upload original content and videos to Weibo and Tik Tok; however, an increase in the company’s market value has nothing to do with the ordinary users.

In the blockchain era, everyone is a contributor and beneficiary. Company may not be called company, but instead, a community. The company’s ultimate goal is no longer to make more profits, but how to attract more users and increase the value of the token by carrying more data. Employees do not need to work full-time for a company; instead, they can fully contribute their wisdom in multiple blockchain projects to get candy rewards. There is no charter in the future; it can be replaced by a consensus through continuously updating the white paper. As long as the user owns the token, the user can participate in governance and decision-making process of the project and community fairly and openly through the voting rules in the smart contracts. There is no more organizational boundary, shady or hidden rules.

This new era which reconstructs business based on blockchain technology, is completely beyond the existing business structure. We call it the digital age.

- 02 — The Future of Digital Finance and Hashgard’s Vision

Charlie Xu pointed out that in the digital age, traditional finance, including the classical finance and Internet finance industries, will face great challenges.

As digital assets occupy an increasing proportion of institutional investors, home users and individual users, there will be a new industry that serves digital asset management, including a centralized asset management approach or a decentralized smart contract, to operate assets. We call it “digital finance.”

This includes asset storage, asset issuance and trading, asset management, asset insurance, and sub-sectors related to ecological services.

Charlie Xu believes that compared with the traditional financial industry, the new “digital finance” industry will represent five features.

The first feature is “trusted finance”. By using blockchain technology to create the identity chain, asset chain, data chain, contract chain, and process chain in traditional financial services, the digital finance industry can construct a “self-credit” system to achieve credible performance and commitment, and to effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of users.

The second feature is “inclusive finance”. Blockchain technology can solve timing and distance problem. As long as users can connect to the Internet, they can easily enjoy the service; While more and more users can benefit from it, smart contracts technology can reduce the cost of digital finance services and even create opportunity for smaller financial services.

The third feature is “de-intermediated finance”. The digital financial industry has removed the intermediary service providers through the decentralized computer network, which has greatly simplified the intermediate process of financial services. For example, applications such as lending will be able to be reach a point-to-point manner, which can greatly improve the efficiency of financial services.

The fourth feature is “friction-free finance”. In the future, we can place the process of digital financial services on the chain through smart contracts, greatly reducing the friction costs and expenses generated by financial services, and eventually achieving friction-free services.

The fifth feature is “programmable finance”. We can deploy the execution of financial services to the blockchain through automated programming languages ​​without prior knowledge of the counterparty while ensuring that the services are automated and complete.

Charlie Xu said that Hashgard hopes to become the infrastructure of the future digital finance market.

We are developing a financial public chain for the digital financial industry and a platform for product development and technology empowerment. Hashgard will provide users with a one-stop solution based on blockchain in the future, including asset issuance, data chaining, cross-chain interaction, smart contract deployment, privacy protection, etc. Charlie hopes that 80% of the financial products will be issued, traded and circulated on the public chain of Hashgard.

The Hashgard team’s vision for digital finance have been unanimously recognized by many institutions in the industry. Hashgard has received strategic investment of more than 80 institutions from around the world. At the same time, the Global Digital Finance Capital(GDF) co-founded by Hashgard has officially launched; and the blueprint for digital finance is slowly unfolding!