Tag Archives: future

Anndy Lian Speaks at Tradeup Conference: Gamefi- The Future of Crypto

Anndy Lian Speaks at Tradeup Conference: Gamefi- The Future of Crypto

As you are new to cryptocurrency trading you will have already come across and invested in the likes of Bitcoin and Ether, and started to research on alternatives such as Litecoin, which is regarded as an improved version of Bitcoin.

You’ve no doubt also decided on a sound crypto investment plan, with sufficient financial reserves to deal with losses, and set up an account with a reputable secure exchange such as BigONE to manage your trading activities.

And now having reviewed all the various options you are keen to find out what the next big thing in crypto is, which is exactly what I’m here to talk about. So, without further introduction, let’s take a deep dive into the world of meme coins, the metaverse, DeFi and an emerging exciting sector in gaming called play-as-you-earn, also known as GameFi.

But to start by setting the context, so you are the most equipped traders coming into this booming sector of crypto investment, let’s look at the rise of meme coins, created originally as a joke about crypto which have taken a life of their own as their popularity has soared and new meme coins have emerged with real world use cases since the launch of DogeCoin in 2013.

Trading tokens in the metaverse?

It’s also not hard to see meme coins use in related sectors such as music and particularly gaming, as a cross-proprietary platform currency to enable the vision of the ‘multiverse’ or more commonly known as the metaverse.

In a recent report UK-based blockchain VC Outlier Ventures sees the need to have a crypto decentralized core, with its own payment system as key to building the metaverse.

But to take a step back and explain the metaverse a little, and why it’s worth understanding from a crypto traders’ perspective. First, a definition of metaverse. In layman’s terms, a metaverse is a virtual world that exists alongside the real world. The popularity of the metaverse concept is taking serious shape in recent years, with tech titans such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and Sony joining forces to form the XR Association, which is aimed at bringing this concept of an ‘experiential reality to life.

So back to the role of crypto, or the lack of it to date, in the metaverse.
Despite the frictionless use of crypto, with low fees and decentralized P2P structures, the reality is that the commercial first movers in the metaverse space from gaming have their own proprietary currencies.

What makes DeFi so attractive to the metaverse community is that it can be automated, without any centralized intervention. It also means that DeFi has long term attractions, allowing game developers and players to invest time and money knowing the underlying blockchain platform won’t change without crypto community consensus.

Cryptocurrencies have already been successfully integrated recently into virtual worlds created by companies such as Decentraland and Sandbox. For example, users in Decentraland can purchase virtual real estate such as theme parks and monetize them using cryptocurrencies. While drinks giant Coca Cola plans to launch its own NFTs on the platform, including a ‘wearable’ jacket for avatars in the Decentraland metaverse.

NFTs
As newcomers to the world of crypto trading you may not have heard of the metaverse before, but you probably heard of NFTs and the headline grabbing rise in value of these unique digital assets.

Non-fungible tokens are referred to as NFTs. According to my understanding of economics, the term fungible relates to anything that can be exchanged for something of equal value.

Most investors know that the nonfungible token (NFT) sector has been on fire since July, and as the likes of CryptoPunks (which got even more coverage when bought recently by VISA), Mutant Ape Yacht Club and pet EtherRock NFTs fetched six- and seven-figure sums, while top NFT marketplace OpenSea surpassed $4 billion in total sales.

While the frenzy has been impressive, it’s also true that many new projects have launched across a variety of blockchain networks, and the recent decline in transaction volumes could be a signal that investors are looking to move to different pastures.

The DAO, or Decentralized Autonomous Organization, is the final piece of the jigsaw that is key to the creation of a metaverse that is open, rather than one run and controlled by the Facebooks of this world. What’s interesting about this novel form of organisation, without a central leadership or the usual management structure used for companies or other entities, is that it’s giving birth to a new way to make money called play to earn or GameFi.

In a close fit with the vision of an open metaverse, play to earn crypto games are built on the fundamental need for a place that is available to everyone and owned by no one in particular.

An amalgam of gaming and decentralized finance (DeFi), ‘GameFi’ refers to the intersection between blockchain-based gaming and decentralized financial instruments in all their guises: yield farming, lending/borrowing, algorithmic stablecoins, token minting instruments, etc.

GameFi essentially means that people are playing a game to profit with real money with payment in the form of cryptocurrencies. Some players play games and earn crypto simply because they enjoy it, and the monetary rewards simply come as a bonus. While there are other players who play to earn crypto games as their main source of income.

In some play to earn crypto games, players can start playing a game for free without paying for it. While in other cases players will need to pay to play i.e., they will need to pay for the character they want to use in game, or perhaps they may want to pay for specific items they want to use in game.

The key idea is that players play games to earn crypto, and their earning potential will increase or decrease depending on the amount of time a player is willing to spend playing the games. Likewise, as a player’s skill improves so will her/his potential profits increase. With play to earn crypto games the more you play and the better you get at the game the great financial rewards you can earn.

Concluding remarks

The Motley Fool cautious analysis of MOBOX could be seen to apply to the wider set of GameFi tokens that have rocketed in value in the last few months. While there are signs the NFT market may be cooling off, and investor attention turning to DeFi in general and GameFi in particular, it’s also right to be cautious. “With Yield Guild Games (YGG) token sale netting $12.5 million in 30 seconds, [it] shows that market participants will not hesitate to switch from one hot toy to another, no different to yield farming craze earlier in the year,” Denis Vinokourov, head of research at Synergia Capital, told CoinDesk, adding that the market is still too “nascent” to make any conclusions.

A more optimistic take is that the GameFi ecosystem has started to grow and mature thanks to a plethora of unique play-to-earn models that have seen revenue generation incorporated into gameplays. Also impressive is the amount of finance being devoted to developing the infrastructure required to take GameFi to the next level. Taking an ambitious view, with consequences for trading opportunities for the future, and not just in the short term, this arguably means global adoption that rivals traditional gaming economies.

Certainly, as the metaverse becomes more and more a reality GameFi will play an important part, helping users to access a market to trade gaming assets across their favourite platforms, in turn helping grow future inter-connected play-to-earn ecosystems. Understanding this GameFi growth trend early on will enable you to better spot trading opportunities today, as well as see opportunities for the future.

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

www.anndy.com
j j j

Anndy Lian Speaks About the Past, Present, and Future of Blockchain & Cryptocurrency on the Vietnam CFO Forum 2021 – The Optimum Reset.

Anndy Lian Speaks About the Past, Present, and Future of Blockchain & Cryptocurrency on the Vietnam CFO Forum 2021 – The Optimum Reset.

Decentralised finance (De-Fi), in its simplest form, is an umbrella term for financial services on the public blockchains Binance and Ethereum, among many others. De-Fi is a global service that is transacted on a peer-to-peer basis without dealing on a centralised system. With De-Fi, mainstream financial services that are provided by traditional banks, such as earning interest, borrowing, lending, purchasing insurance and derivatives, and trading assets, can be achieved a lot faster with much less paperwork, without the need for a third party.

 

There is a lot of confusion among the people on what De-Fi could and would do for them in this current market. De-Fi enables automated smart contracts that can be used in different sectors like insurance and real estate. Simply put, De-Fi has the potential to transform and transfer the traditional banking sector into a more decentralised model for serving clients.

 

Before the introduction of De-Fi, yield farming, which is the practice of staking and lending of cryptocurrency assets to generate high returns, was made available by traditional financial systems to institutions that wished to lend money to individuals and businesses. “Through decentralisation,”, Anndy clarifies, “making financial processes such as yield farming available to the world has the potential to deliver financial opportunities and joy experienced by the elite to the rest of the majority of people.”

 

JP Morgan, who was once very averse to cryptocurrency, is currently bullish on the staking business, which generates $9B in annual revenue and could be worth over $20B when Ethereum2.0 launches in 2022. According to analysts, $40B in 2025 is not as far-fetched as it seems.

 

There exists at least 1.7B unbanked people in the world; of which 290M people are in Southeast Asia. With blockchain technology, there is hope to create an alternative to the traditional financial system.

 

Despite the hype around De-Fi, it is most likely that the future financial system will work on a hybrid mode, connecting De-Fi with traditional banks. In this scenario, central banks, regulators, and overseers of the economy would have a vital role to play in the digitalised and decentralised finance system.

 

“It is also worth noting, in this context, the rise of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC). While the Chinese CBDC, the digital Yuan, was born as China’s answer to Facebook Libra, the recent ban of Bitcoin and the advancements of digital Yuan by the People’s Bank of China shows that the rise of De-Fi is by no means guaranteed in its decentralised form.”, says Anndy.

 

In everything that exists in the traditional financial systems, there’s always a parallel version in De-Fi – ranging from credit lending, trading derivatives, and asset management, to insurance. There is a strong belief that De-Fi and centralised finance would a middle ground, or a way to integrate with each other.

 

Vietnam has a very strong user base for cryptocurrency – a lot of good games originated from there such as Axie Infinity. During this period of time where COVID-19 has stopped a majority of key activities, there was a time of desperation where people were unable to make a living. Looking at the cryptonomics behind this, users can play Axie and make money to survive in the real world.

 

Cryptocurrencies have gained a lot in the past 2 years due to COVID-19, and have helped numerous people in different ways. The journey of cryptocurrencies and De-Fi has just begun and only time will tell if they’re here to stay.

 

The Vietnam CFO 2021 was a discussion between the board panelists – Tim Evans, Chief Executive Officer of HSBC Vietnam; Sharath Martins, ACCA’s Senior Policy Consultant; Anndy Lian, Chairman of BigONE Exchange; and Hiroaki Endo, Señor Research Fellow of Japan Association for CFO. The purpose of this forum was to promote the sharing of local and international experiences, skills, knowledge, and information in the area of corporate finance governance.

 

Elements of transitory inflation have been noted, but there are also elements of more permanent inflation. In Vietnam this year, inflationary impact may have been muted but to a great extent the economy has been impacted by a lack of consumption. “Our house view for the Vietnamese economy is that inflation should be around 3.5% next year.”, says Tim.

 

It is important to return to the positive narrative after COVID-19, but it is imperative to start looking at plans where that narrative continues to be at risk. Recently, a more deadly, new variant of COVID-19, Omicron (B.1.1.529), has been discovered. The people have voiced their concerns on when the pandemic will stop evolving but there has been no answer. “If we keep thinking that way, we’re not going to prepare ourselves and the supply chain.”, says Sharath.

 

In this forum, important topics such as inflation, globalisation, new growth strategies, blockchains, macroeconomy, and supply chain distribution were brought up by the panelists. It is imperative to understand what is impacting not only Vietnam, but also the rest of the world. The world as we know it is changing and views of the people need to change as well.

 

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

www.anndy.com
j j j

What does the future hold for metaverse?

What does the future hold for metaverse?

Metaverse has been the talk of the town since Facebook’s decision to rebrand as Meta in October this year. However, the word “metaverse”, a portmanteau of “meta-“ (meaning beyond) and “universe”, existed way before this. The term “Metaverse” is often credited to Author Neal Stephenson’s 1992 dystopic, sci-fi novel Snow Crash, and many see a more recent inspiration in Earnest Cline’s 2011 novel Ready Player One. Unlike what is portrayed in movies and blockbusters, the metaverse I’m talking about is far from the stuff of sci-fi – and we’re not unfamiliar to it.

 

What is it?

Metaverse is a hypothesised iteration of the Internet; a digitalised layer of reality that hovers around and throughout the features of the real world – or, in some definitions, is entirely separate from it. Much like Christopher Nolan’s 2014 Interstellar, don’t you think?

Originally thought of as an idea of a centralised virtual world, a “place” parallel to the physical world, Cline’s Ready Player One portrayed that idea of a metaverse down to the T. When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his intention to build a more maximalist version of Facebook, spanning social presence, office work, and entertainment – coupled with Stephenson’s and Cline’s portrayal of metaverses as reference – it sounded like a far-fetched ambition.

Critics have stepped forward and named this version of metaverse a method of public relations building using a purely speculative and “over-hyped” concept based on existing technology. But what we do not realise is that it already exists in our world.

Online communities have existed since the dawn of the Internet’s existence and grew in the 1990s with various chatrooms and the first social media sites. Does anyone remember Friendster? It’s one of the earliest social media networks that ever existed. Apart from being known as a social network game, Friendster allowed communication between users, dating, and discovering new events, bands, and hobbies.

Metaverses, in a way, are currently present on platforms like VRChat or video games like Fortnite and Second Life. Today, logging onto Fortnite, joining a chat and launching into a game with friends is, especially to younger generations, just as social an experience as most other physical interactions.

 

Is that all there is to a metaverse?

(Hint: Nope)

The concept of metaverse, also known to many as “Web3.0”, clearly means extremely different things to different people. The metaverse is currently split into two categories – a world of gaming and game creations, and a blockchain-based digital world. The former is made up of a series of embryonic digital spaces such as Facebook’s Horizon, Fortnite, and Roblox, while the latter houses Decentraland. These spaces have clear boundaries, different rules and objectives, and differing rates of growth.

The metaverse could fundamentally change the way we interact with the digital world. In the same way non-fungible tokens (NFT) have brought new opportunities to creators, artists, and gamers, the metaverse could very possibly not just reshape the creator economy, but invent it anew.

The promise of the metaverse is to allow a greater assimilation of our digital and physical lives in wealth, productivity, shopping, socialisation, and entertainment. Instead of an extension of the Internet, the metaverse is best described as a successor of it. At its core, the metaverse is an evolution of our current Internet.

 

How does crypto fit in?

At the foundation of the metaverse, there will be a demand to deliver permission less identity, financial services, and high-speed exchange. Data will have to be stored and made available to millions, if not billions of people. The solution to this lies in the technology of cryptocurrency.

Vitual worlds that integrate cryptocurrencies have been developed by companies like Decentraland and The Sandbox. The purpose for this is so gamers can create structures like virtual casinos and theme parks, and monetise them. In Decentraland, the currency used is called MANA, and is available for purchase on exchanges like BigONE. Decentraland even has casinos where MANA is used for gambling and salaries for dealers.

NFTs, most of which are a part of the Ethereum blockchain, will give people complete ownership of their characters, and accrue in-game items including virtual land.

 

Decentraland (MANA) VS Sandbox (SAND)

Ever since Facebook virtualised the term “metaverse”, everyone seems to want to get into it. This has greatly benefited the crypto metaverse platforms, especially Decentraland and Sandbox where they are the top two metaverse projects right now.

Comparing their native tokens now, Decentraland’s $MANA has rallied more than 400%, while Sandbox’s $SAND has rallied more than 300% since 28th October 2021. An analysis of token growth alone is insufficient to get a true sense of which platform will be a leader in the metaverse space. So, let’s get to discussing!

At their foundation, Decentraland and Sandbox are a virtual reality platform powered by the Ethereum blockchain where users can create an experience and monetise their gaming experience. Land and virtual worlds are permanently owned by the community without a central authority.

Both $MANA and $SAND are ERC20 tokens, where users can use any ERC20 wallet in the market for both projects. However, Decentraland has recently linked up with wallet connect, giving better access to Polygon users.

Built on the Ethereum blockchain, Decntraland and Sandbox’s scalability capacity is limited by unstable tokens and high fees. With the upcoming update from ETH1 to ETH2, Decentraland and Sandbox may not have enough scalability capacity to adapt to massive adoption.

At this moment, Decentraland has a more structured governance mechanism compared to Sandbox. Decentraland has two tokens – $LAND and $MANA – resulting in having a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO). Sandbox users, on the other hand, need $SAND to participate in governance decisions of the platform via a DAO structure.

Let’s talk teams. Decentraland has a Security Advisory Board (SAB) that acts as a guarantor of Decentraland’s smart contract security. They have important leaders in blockchain engineering, computer science, venture capital, and data analytics. In contrast, the Sandbox team is distributed in four different countries specialising in startups, software development, finance, and blockchain business. Despite the difference in pedigrees between both teams, Sandbox has more members, hinting at the possibility of having better developments in the future.

Recent developments in projects are a good indication of where the projects are headed towards. Decentraland has announced their new partnerships and developments like an open virtual gallery with Sotheby’s, accompanied by the ability for users to shoot and edit videos within the platform. On the other hand, Sandbox’s has recently announced their liquidity mining launch and its migration to a Polygon NFT layer 2 to use 100 times less energy than Ethereum. Both projects are consistently developing new features, but Sandbox’s is a critical improvement that may very well allow for exceptional scalability.

 

Who will win?

Considering the factors that have been analysed, Sandbox seems to offer a truer and more technically comprehensive platform that is ready to dominate the metaverse. But, taking into account that the metaverse is still – in a sense – an infant, it is way too early to determine who will take the throne.

Let’s use the comparison of the top two most used search engines – Google and Yahoo – as an example. Yahoo was founded in 1994, while Google was founded in 1998. Despite the head-start Yahoo had, Google has created just as strong a brand name as Yahoo. Google and Yahoo offer different benefits but users will always prefer one search engine over the other without understanding and considering the pros and cons. Through the humongous developments of the Internet, both search engines have adapted very well that even till now, their rivalry is still going strong.

Similarly, the competition between the top two metaverse projects can be viewed as such. Sandbox was founded in 2013, while Decentraland was founded in 2015. Still in their infancy stage, both projects are developing rapidly without losing to each other holistically. Their developments may set them apart but will that determine which is a better or worse platform? Who’s to say there will even be a winner?

 

What does the future hold?

With Facebook’s extravagant entrance to the metaverse, and even rebranding themselves as Meta, Zuckerberg announced plans to fund $10 billion this year on the development of the metaverse – an ecosystem of interconnected digital experiences, services, and platforms that seamlessly blend with the real world. We certainly hope to see that Zuckerberg’s ambitions become our new reality.

Tech giants of all shapes and sizes, from Microsoft, Amazon, Tencent, and Alibaba, to Disney, and even Tinder, have announced their plans towards building a metaverse. What does this entail? Similar to Bitcoin, these whales will move and develop the metaverse faster than you can say “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”.

While it’s impossible to predict exactly how the metaverse will look like, or when it has reached its peak, the importance of cryptocurrencies for its growth is engraved in stone. As technologies like virtual reality develop, and current industry leaders like Facebook gets involved, advancements in blockchain technology and the world of cryptocurrency will play an equally important role in shaping the metaverse’s future.

“The metaverse currently has an independent, whole economy of its own, indicating that cryptocurrency and digital currency will likely become the key transactional method. Cryptocurrency is not new to us but more people have begun to get into it for various reasons as of late. One thing for sure, is that such currencies will be key to trading across the worlds – real and digital – all while being supported and distributed by technologies such as blockchain.” #anndylian

 

Author: Anndy Lian

Anndy Lian is an all-rounded business strategist in Asia. He has provided advisory across a variety of industries for local, international, public listed companies and governments. He is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur, book author, investor, board member and keynote speaker.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. He is also the Chairman, Asia for BigONE Exchange.

 

Original Source: https://metaverseinsider.tech/2021/12/05/what-does-the-future-hold-for-metaverse/

Anndy Lian is an early blockchain adopter and experienced serial entrepreneur who is known for his work in the government sector. He is a best selling book author- “NFT: From Zero to Hero” and “Blockchain Revolution 2030”.

Currently, he is appointed as the Chief Digital Advisor at Mongolia Productivity Organization, championing national digitization. Prior to his current appointments, he was the Chairman of BigONE Exchange, a global top 30 ranked crypto spot exchange and was also the Advisory Board Member for Hyundai DAC, the blockchain arm of South Korea’s largest car manufacturer Hyundai Motor Group. Lian played a pivotal role as the Blockchain Advisor for Asian Productivity Organisation (APO), an intergovernmental organization committed to improving productivity in the Asia-Pacific region.

An avid supporter of incubating start-ups, Anndy has also been a private investor for the past eight years. With a growth investment mindset, Anndy strategically demonstrates this in the companies he chooses to be involved with. He believes that what he is doing through blockchain technology currently will revolutionise and redefine traditional businesses. He also believes that the blockchain industry has to be “redecentralised”.

www.anndy.com
j j j