#225 Anson Zeall: Blockchain in Singapore and South East Asia

Transcript

[Music] this episode of epicenter is brought to you by shape-shift Oh the easiest fastest and most secure way to swap your digital assets don't run the risk of leaving your funds on a centralized exchange visit shapeshifter IO to get started hi welcome to epicenter the show which talks about the technologies projects and startup stuff decentralization and the global blockchain revolution my name is Sebastian Cujo and my name is Baron Fabien clain we're here today we have

Anton seal he is the chairman of the Association for cryptocurrency enterprises and startups in Singapore so also access it's quite quiet quite a name but yeah basically Association for four kind of blocks in startups and companies in in Singapore he's also the CEO and co-founder of coin pit which is a blockchain start-up out there and a co-founder of info Corp which is doing some interesting things about another kind of blockchain projects out there so Hansen is joining us today to talk a bit about some of these projects but also about you know blockchain in Asia what's going on there what's going on in

Singapore we know of course everyone reads about that lots of activities over there but it's something that we have not covered a lot on the podcast I really look forward to timing a bit into that so yeah it's it's good to have you on the show Hansen thank you for having me so I guess we get started here right so you have been involved in the blockchain space also for quite a while how did you originally end up becoming involved in the abortion industry so my background is in computer science be working at a accounting software for him for quite a while and I founded my own hedge fund and then 2013 got to know about Bitcoin whilst playing a game what

a Warcraft is back then and then I wasn't I was quite shocked I thought it was just another sort of gay in currency but once actually read the white paper I was actually very interested in it so being in computer science and also in finance Bitcoin was just right at the intersection FinTech for me so from then on it was a lot of work working as a start-up and working talking to the government engaging with the government it's been yeah it's been quite a while already so at that time I guess you lived already in Singapore was there anything going on were there activities so the startup activity was already brewing so I I am

originally from Hong Kong and then because my family's here in Singapore so we moved over here but we were already comparing the different startup ecosystems because as a hedge fund perspective we're seeing a lot of activity a lot of money going into startups instead of going into stocks especially back then with all the Facebook's you know the Google is raising all the funds I thought we should have a look into this space so we have seen that the sample government has been really pushing for a lot of different grants a lot of VCs coming into Singapore back then even in 2013 before FinTech became big so innovation was basically the key for the earth for

Singapore whereas in Hong Kong we I don't really see it only until recently Hong Kong has always been a hub where fund management traditional companies gateway to China that was all the main marketing words but where Singapore its innovation lead the Singapore to become a very different sort of Singapore to the old generation that was what I was marketing and it they do what they talk here and just so to clarify but that's a time in 2013 what was there in terms of startups I mean I do remember that was a company called it bid no in Singapore can you talk a bit like what was there were there different companies what was

the connectivity what was the interest it's like meetup startup like asbestos pacifically around Bitcoin and blockchain yes so back then there were a few companies including a big so if it was actually not the first Bitcoin exchange back there now cryptocurrency Bitcoin exchange back then there was actually another earlier one started by a local here and the activity back then was actually very how do you say it even the government thought this is nothing that big that these guys have a look but if it was trying very hard to talk to the government to explain to them the NICS the big potential of cryptocurrencies this was back in 2013 but the government here was still I

guess not even at the learning stage they were just thinking that it was just another sort of startup trying to come to us to explain what it is little did we know that they started learning quite a lot until in around March 2014 that was when the central bank here mas first issued a note announcement saying that we will start looking and regulating virtual currencies that was the term that they use but in terms of regulating it's mostly on the anti money laundering and the counter-terrorist financed sort of a framework with regulating not as a currency itself so back then even when access which started in May 2014 when we spoke to the government then they were

still in a wait-and-see mode they I know they were already researching but they were not really seeing any big implication affecting the financial system here in Singapore so back then was just all research and even when the hex happened in elsewhere for example in mount GOx and many different exchanges Singapore only just issued notices but it was very obvious in 2015 things were ramping up governments now I'm doing the Singapore government now is doing their own trying out their own East Singapore dollar which is their project open so definitely they're using this project to understand the blockchain ecosystem even

more but to answer your question back then it was the entrepreneurs that started trying to approach the government first but the government was only just starting to see a glimpse of it but they weren't really active back then in 2013 and 2014 okay so it sounds like the the Singapore government and sort of has a you know a very hands-off approach to regulating these these new technologies and and and more of a proactive approach at least that's the impression that that we get from here is is this historically sort of how they've also looked at fintechs even in the early 2000s are there similarities to how these authorities are handling sort of blockchain with

regards to other technologies that may come before it you're right so Singapore is a very pro-business sort of country even in the recent national budget how they explain where the money will be spent the whole stance was being very pro-business Pro innovation and the managing director of the central bank here already said very clearly that innovation will always front run regulation so in terms of if you compared to other central banks yes the fear here doesn't set in quickly they're not fearful of new change they just want to make sure that when there's new systems or new innovation that comes in

once it becomes very big then they want to make it more orderly but if there's people trying out new things they're very happy for people to try things out as long as it follows the framework that was Singapore wants to wants to do you have any insights like in the sort of like coming from Europe that's that's a very interesting standpoint right like from the European perspective can you talk about maybe what economic or cultural reasons are behind this sort of approach yes so everything about it Singapore was basically if we know that history just in short was sort of like a break away from Malaysia back in the 1960s

so Singapore does not have any natural resources the only thing that they had was nearly less than three million people so people were the only resources so how the founder of the country mr. mr. Lee Kuan Yew founded it was trying to make sure that people do work hard protect the country need to find new ways of attracting more capital so now that our founder has just of the country is this pastor in 2015 now with the new leaders of this country are trying to push it to the next level by saying what can we do that is different so a Singapore is doing things

not on the perspective because they want to take advantage of it but it's more like they have no choice no choice what I mean by that is they have to innovate if they are just staying still doing doing nothing only plain old investing they basically sing Singapore would not have another chance no one they would not get a bailout so that the point here is that if they see an opportunity it works well Singapore would want to take advantage of it so that's that's why it links to the part where we're saying innovation definitely has to trump regulation because the if regulation comes up in front of everything then they can't see any new sort of innovation that may help the country in the long run interesting and can you also talk about

the role that Singapore plays I mean I like historically Singapore has been positioned very much as as a trading hub and as a hub for commerce you know dating back centuries now with the rise of FinTech and these other technologies can you talk about you know it's Singapore's particular role as a hub moving forward so it's actually on the national agenda for FinTech to grow big but as we know FinTech has many different legs blockchains only one of them so there's like crowdfunding Robo advisory even a bit of cyber security so the whole thin tech leg is what the government here wants to push because

they see it's just the next evolution to themselves because they are the financial center in in Asia one of the financial centers so the next step obviously to the government is to push financial innovation which is FinTech okay so blockchain definitely is one of their pushes but it's it's also the reason why access for example doesn't merge like in a very blunt way of saying with singer pantech association is because blockchain is not only just it's not only FinTech you can't go into insure tech gaming or whatever you want is just a it's just a platform where simple FinTech association is focusing on that different areas of in tech and only blockchain is a subset of the whole

whole layer that they have so basically what's singapore wants to do is the NIC they trying to push the next step after now the financial after the financial crisis we could have seen the fun flows into private investments much more even be for example their sovereign wealth fund here caught a massive many of the investments are basically large unicorns and they are seeing that the IPOs and all that was definitely be delayed would definitely grow less and seeing how things are moving they are also looking into how the crypto space of people using the crypto space to raise money and not just looking at the old ways of

doing things so basically not only for capital fundraising but also how to make Singapore as a smart nation which is also the main agenda as well so Singapore has this reputation that it's a favorable place for blockchain startups in terms of regulation can you speak a bit about you know what are some of the you know are there particular regulatory policies or what are the kind of approaches that Singapore takes so I need to because everyone is saying the same thing so I need to get the context right Singapore looks like it's a very favorable place for for blockchain startups the main reason is because for example when they talk about the

Securities and Futures Act what is concerns as a security what's not they they will say ABCD is a security but EDF G is not they will be very clear in their actual legislation unlike the u.s. US has this line that we all know if it smells like a security looks like a security it is it is a security this dance is very different with the US where they are being much more blurred in thing what a security is they keep him blanket the whole thing so it's just that a for Singapore they are very active in saying what what a security is and therefore we people know and a clarify to know what it is and for example all the utility

tokens that come in it will not be within as long as then they don't function as what the Singapore law says however however even though they are being very upfront with the legislation on the Singapore Securities and Futures Act they have been very clear in saying that anti-money laundering law arm of frameworks and policies must be in place for anything in virtual currencies so most of the access members that did I cos actually nearly all know would have to do whitelisting have to do kyc not like the very first i ce o--'s where you just put in an address and then you can start putting in your investments this

is this is a no no no because if you just do that it's very hard to fulfill the AML standards that singapore once so singapore is happy to see new innovation like i'm in very close chat with the central bank colleagues i to the point wait we even use whatsapp to ask questions too so that can get the information they can get the information very quickly from me even with the enforcement agencies as well so we'll at that level when we're speaking but obviously when we are have something more serious we have to sit down and meet with them they face to face but yeah the thing about singapore which i find super interesting is that they were actually come down to the grassroots to meet with the people to understand

what's going on not many central banks are actually like this so the main difference is you can see is one they are very clear in what they say it's um for example security is they would not blur the line and to is once there's something new that comes about they actually come down to talk to you so we're great that's why we've in terms of whatsapp casually just to understand what's going on we talk to central bank talk to the enforcement's very normally on whatsapp you talk to the regulars on whatsapp it's they actually do because Singapore has a very different way mes is not just the Central Bank mes is has many different arms where in a way in u.s.

there are many different regulators that you need to approach whereas in Singapore once you approach mas mas is yes okay then basically everything is a goal okay so within mes there are many different pockets for example there is the fin tact ecosystem fin tech innovation group which they will do with all the fin tech developments and within that there are three groups there is the ecosystem development there is the regulation development so develop developing new regulation and there's a compliance okay so the compliance is obviously complying with all the new regulations that come about okay so what I'm trying to say is it's basically a

one-stop shop once you can talk to them they understand from the top down then everything can be very smooth so obviously the trade-off is because they are and be everything it sometimes can take longer to go to every single level to get what you want okay but in on the other hand like the u.s. there are many different regulators you need you need to go to if you have one regulator that says yes maybe you can go with go with that regulator and start doing your startup according to that regulation but unlike the u.s. right now is many different regulators have different regulations and different definitions of what blockchain is so this is this has become has become a very challenging

point for the startups there yeah yeah yeah no I think that's a very great that sag rate point right and it just as you bring that up right in the last days they were you know I think the ICC is saying basically everything is a security at the same time like FinCEN says okay token sales can be money transmission CFTC is saying they're commodities right and and all of them being mutually exclusive right so I think the u.s. is is actually going to become a bit of a nightmare to run any kind of auction startup and it's interesting the point you made about - because Switzerland is actually a similar thing right where they have kind of clear you know pretty clear rules okay this is security this is non

security and of course that staffing it was also one of the main reasons why a lot of projects a token sales from terror because they could basically have this clarity that you know okay it's not a security and also that people don't like later change their mind or that you have some kind of certainty if there's a decision made so yeah that's a that's very interesting so today at this point Singapore is still like a popular place to do a token sales and and you think that's gonna remain like that there's a lot going on behind but in the long run yes I am pretty sure from our dialogue and all the conversations they are very

I see it as quite a positive thing that that they want the startups here to stay in terms of the blotching startups even the ones that do i SEOs and stuff they just want to make sure people are doing it properly that don't violate the existing regulations so this because this is this is an opportunity because a 4xs more just for last year the access companies that did I cos a total to around two hundred and twenty million dollars of I cos that was raised and these are just access members that did I SEOs and because access has a very I will call it a unique position we're

very different from the chamber of digital commerce even though we're partners are we focused on grassroots we focused on the startups and become a be the voice for the startups whereas for example CDC they're focusing on the large corporates and working with them to get the blockchain up in a way up in the layman way as to say legitimize but for the large corporates we're doing it through the startups that were super small now after they do I cos they became pretty a pretty big know and from them that's how we speak to the government and they are government and government not only the mes at different so the government has seen that crypto is a very good potential for Singapore

as well that's really fascinating and encouraging so what would you say I guess to say an American or European looking for a favorable jurisdiction to launch their I see like what kind of advice would you give them if they're considering Singapore so first is Singapore definitely if they want to be based here for example must understand the laws that that still is the most important thing so if you want for example most Europeans will still consider Switzerland as well as a base for doing icos

but what I'm seeing in the long run where Singapore would move towards 2 will be quite similar to to Switzerland in a way where they the guidelines that come up from the government will be the guideline that everyone would be working towards so it's a to answer question how if Americans and Europeans want to come in definitely we all welcome all the international startups International blockchain startups simple is here to become like an ambassador which I'm not not trying to be but what I'm trying to say is it's actually very like comparing to the jurisdictions even in Asia I think Singapore still is a very favorable place as long as you follow what they say look at the audience

Monteux kate the legislation's and just follow the rules here basically so should people contact you directly should they part of the community at access we welcome everyone we have foreign membership we have local memberships as well and then we have a group for all the different members I have to say our members are super helpful especially for the ones that did I see us in helping out the ones they are doing so we do we do welcome everyone and for example the when the Chinese band i ciose back in september we do have many more chinese members joining access as well so in a way the more countries that that different

countries band seems that gets more favor was for Singapore but at the same time we need to make sure Singapore is the start of CI doing the right thing when they are doing the icos and half post i ciose as well so let's talk about access a little bit so you're you're the chairman of access now how many how many members are part of this organization so we have over 190 members now and over 100 corporate members in total just just as a comparison the first year we only had 10 members no one wanted to join the one actually care what crypto was and obviously in 2017 was the number the number of members actually increased

exponentially but so we are the voice for the whole community so for example when governments here especially mes when they need to issue consultation papers this is the first step before they actually put a passed a new law in the parliament they would usually ask different industries to see to give comics so what access has done is we have given comments aggregated all the comments from members and submitted it to different regulators to tell them what our association what our members think so we are the voice for them we are also the basically trying to get the education up for the laymen working with

different partners local partners here and obviously as a whole promoting every to everyone the use of blockchain good use of blockchain and cryptocurrencies so you said 190 members so that's 90 startups right so it's a 100 and 100 enterprise and then perhaps 90 startups is that right yes no reach 100 now yes so their individual membership as well okay and so the these startups when they come to you are so you mentioned there were Chinese startups that had started flooding into Singapore after I cos were banned there are they mostly Singaporean companies or are you seeing a lot of influx coming from outside of the

country so setting up a company Singapore is actually relatively easy so many of the even the Chinese startups set up as a Singapore company so - and then get a local membership unfortunately Singapore is it like it's a finance center it's a business center anyone can open a company very quickly as long as they follow the follow the rules so once they have a company set up then they can just apply as a as a local company but we know that they are actually from China setting up their new bases here and so you said that you had a number of partnerships with the Digital Chamber of Commerce and and and I believe you're personally also a member of the the Singapore Fame Tech

Association and you have a partnership with them yeah you know as an organization that is sprouting up in this in this new space you know I think I assume the Singapore FinTech Association has been around for quite a while and they probably had to deal with a lot of the same things that that you're now dealing with in terms of in terms of dealing with the regulator specifically can you tell us like what you've learned from them and sort of what types of insights they're providing you as an organization actually it's the other way Singaporean tech Association is actually much younger than us they started back in November 2016 thousand sixteen yeah yes so it's more like once they first started writing up the

constitution access actually gave input to them so what happened was that there was many different associations like there was a fin tech consortium there was next money there were many different tech associations and what what we wanted to do as a community is basically consolidate all of them so yes FinTech associations has been around for a long time but a single United Association only started back in late 2016 but the things that they're going through now like obviously because FinTech is the national agenda they're working more closely with government relatively to what axis is on many many different

matters how they interacting with the government we're learning as well because I'm also on the board of the FinTech Association as well which I'm helping to lead the blockchain agenda there so in to answer your question the things that they're learning for example what how how do how the expansion is done throughout the globe like FinTech sociation has done more than 40 mo use with multiple FinTech associations and I think even non FinTech associations as well so from there or or them learning also is where I'm passing along to the access community there this episode is brought to you by shape-shift the world's

leading trustless digital assets change quickly swap between dozens of leading cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin ethers e cash gnosis manera golem or cur and so many more when you go to shape-shift dot IO you simply select your currency pair give me receiving adders sent the coins and boom shape-shift is not your traditional cryptocurrency change you don't need to create an account you don't need to give them your personal information and they don't hold your coins so you are never at risk from a hacker or other malicious actor shape-shift has competitive rates and is even integrated in some of your favorite wallet apps like Jack's so you can swap your digital assets directly

within your wallet just as easily as putting on your slippers whenever you see that good-looking fox you know that's where shape-shift is so to get started visit shape-shift I owe and start trading and we'd like to thank shape-shift for their support of epicenter so one of the stories that came out some point last year was that Singapore had tokenized the Singapore dollar can you talk about you know what happened there you know what kind of was that project and what do you think will come out of that for the future so that project is called project Ubben ubi n I don't know what Obon came from but I know some places in Singapore is also called Obon so like there's some small

parts of the places they can go in Singapore but anyway so that project is not merely as easy another that is made from that project is not for mainstream use it's the test for financial settlement between different financial entities so in a way what would come out of it with it's still not clear but the central banker like the chief content officer said many mohanty I said we will see more mainstream use in will see more big news cases for project Obon around 2020 so they're still taking the time to do more research and understand what's

going on but yes the easting dollar that they tested was a chain done on top of aetherium so about what are the use cases that will happen we're not we're not sure yet but Eastern dollar right now is not for retail use okay but there was use of that between financial institutions or yes so they've got multiple banks to come together to test the use of it yes so are they actually in alpha beta mode like to test between yes I believe they are but it's still very tightly knit between the banking institutions themselves

okay cool yeah I mean I guess that's also pretty pretty interesting and pretty cool kind of first attempt what I do you think is that it's maybe for that kind of use case it could happen quite quickly right you have some kind of settlement type thing between institutions I mean personally my feeling is for you know actual kind of cryptocurrency that like end-users will hold issued by central bank that is probably quite far away yes I mean in the way I've been thinking like the question what happens if every Central Bank issues their own digital currency so number one in my thought is definitely it won't be just restricted to banks okay because that's that's the

whole point they want to reach out to more than just the banking institutions so if all the different central banks started issuing their own may be very soon different fintechs can connect to the different central bank currencies and and do something with it so in a way is actually a much better environment for fintechs overall but it can in my view it can actually hurt banks if banks don't continue to add value because a def for pretty sure these digital currencies you may need to apply a license or something similar but definitely it won't be just restricted to banks in the long run cool fantastic well so you're on Singapore forces a lot of activity in

different countries as well in Asia you know one point where a lot about South Korea Japan China can you talk a little bit about you know what do you think is most interesting which country and that people may not be aware of in terms of what's happening there well I think most of us in the worldwide community has been reading the news in China for example when we say the Chinese banning I SEOs kicking out all the exchanges but if the trend is very interesting where these Chinese exchanges are coming out after the ban and growing even bigger than than before as we have seen for finance ok eggs and

all that but overall in Asia is a very very interesting story where we cannot combine a whole Asia as as one whole ecosystem because China's problems are very different to for example Southeast Asia's problems for most of the Chinese today are a bank now if they don't have a bank they definitely can use Ali pay or which have paid to make payments or to store value Japan is also the same Japan has been looking at decentralized currencies actually back then since to a 1999 so I was at a workshop with the Asia Development Bank which the top

levels in that in that Bank of Japanese X central bankers and they were saying when Bitcoin came into the sea it had the right ingredients they were already in the process of trying to trying to legitimize Bitcoin even when become was already around 2009 so that that was Japan in Korea as we all know super tech anything tech basically that it will get into the hands of of the Koreans where is this part of the world in Southeast Asia Singapore second Oh Asus more nearly the whole country is banked we have more mobile phones per person than in the whole region outside when you

step even into Malaysia you have at least 40% that don't have bank accounts and when you step in the whole region Myanmar Cambodia in total there's over seventy seventy or percent that do not have bank accounts so that's why blockchain is a use case the government's here are actually very favorable because they do want to connect all the or the unbanked whereas in China they already have a very big banking system of FinTech system already in place they they would have a different mindset into thinking how to treat their Kryptos and the blockchain companies so you can say from in a way from all the way from China down towards India it's like a

spectrum of very developed countries FinTech wise and down to super not developed which is Southeast Asia and India for example so we we basically even in this region we learn from the Chinese a lot of Chinese come here to do the talks we go to Shanghai to to meet them definitely they have a lot of new ideas and they need a test bed to test all these Financial Inclusion projects hence that's why many of them even from Japan are coming into Southeast Asia even pre blotching days many Japan VCS are investing in Southeast Asia already interesting so this sort of ties into to

our next topic which is specifically your activities and the different companies you're in you're involved in so we'll touch on each of them one is coin pip so you're the founder and CEO of a company called coin pip and you're also involved in another project called Sentinel chain so we'll also talk about that and these two projects sort of tie in to this idea of helping the unbanked but also payments so can you describe maybe starting with coin pip and and what's problems you're solving there like in in in the in the context of this of this region what does the payments infrastructure look like you know especially when you're cross-border is

going from Singapore to like Malaysia or Cambodia or China or any other country in the region yes so this part of the world Southeast Asia the payment landscape is super fractured for example you cannot have like PayPal using in all all the different Southeast Asian countries yep because many people don't have bank accounts and if you want a PayPal account you need a bank account to get verified so many different entrepreneurs are trying to find a way to link up the different countries for example we have ubers competitor grab which is the largest car sharing company in in Southeast Asia to me now I

considered them as a fin tech company more than a car sharing company because they have a wallet that can be used throughout the whole region and partnered with the different banks that working working with them and also listening to a Roy when I worked a Reuters CEO of info Coffman Sentinel chain it was very obvious to me that the banks are having a hard time to link up the whole region because that the tech talent is different very very sparsely different the languages the different is very hard to link everything so what coin Pape was trying to do and then Sentinel it was actually part of this whole story coin Pape was trying to

serve the under bang what wasn't really the unbanked because especially one use case is the travel industry there are many travel sharing sites for example there is room filler it's another company is similar to Airbnb call room o Rama back then they need to send very small payments into Indonesia Thailand and so on because many of them don't have one the the PayPal accounts so you actually have to worry the money to them but the amounts can be as small as $30 yes or 30 US Dollars and then if you actually do a bank wire 30 US dollars is not possible because the fees is already 30 US

dollars so what comp it does is we leverage on cryptocurrencies as a rail working with the different exchanges we are able to find leverage on all the different exchanges including make monetizing on the arbitrage obviously and then charging the customers are the very low rate for example if they want to send $30 we can do it we only will charge 30 cents definitely you can do that through the banks and many of the payments are of this sort of amounts and what they only have is a bank account and not extra payment services or added value services on top what what types of customers do you have are they mostly

like small businesses or were they located geographically so to be honest most of c-clips customers that actually singapore-based international customers so most of them for example are companies that exist maybe in Japan but they want to take advantage of the Southeast Asian market and so they set up a company here in Singapore and then we are basically helping them in a way to deploy capital so that the money that they sent to us we helped them send to the employees in different parts of Southeast Asia even amounts as small as even hundred hundred dollars sent to their employees and also sent to their partners and the people that are that the companies yes they are

usually small businesses and high growth high growth startups especially in the travel industry because when you the travel industry has a big problem with foreign exchange where most of the recipients like the partner hotels boutique hotels travel experiences they want to receive local currencies they do not want to take the risk of a foreign currency so we are able to help them convert into a local currency and send straight to their bank account but the problem with obviously for coin flip is we can only target people with with bank accounts but they under Bank without the services here's where Sentinel then comes in where they can target people without the bank accounts

cool yeah I mean that's a that's such a you know straightforward and and good business right we recently did an episode with Elizabeth for CLO right of it pacer is quite a similar model it seems so there is another project called Sentinel chain can you talk about that yes so I know Roy for quite a while he's been with us since quite early access days all he talks about which I love about it is Financial Inclusion because he has been working he has he was the director for doing the payments infrastructure for Singapore he was also

the advisor for the payments local payments infrastructure for time and they was telling me about all the different problems that he's facing he he was not he wants to unite the whole region even that's what the ASEAN countries want to do but he's saying that from top down it is very hard to do in order to actually unite the whole region you need to go bottom-up in the cheapest way or the most efficient way to go bottom-up is to leverage on blockchain technology okay so one of the main use cases here is actually a big population here is also are the farmers so one of the main use case main use cases when I where explain to people what Sentinel does is basically where

farmers today in this region most of them do not have bank accounts they either have their normal local cash or they may have a few livestock for example a cow a pig a goat and so on okay so what usually happens today is like this when a farmer needs to harm farm in harvest let's say it takes them 12 months on the 12-month they usually don't get the harvest because they maybe rain the soil may turn bad something goes wrong and then there may be delays it's during that delays that's where the farmers get into serious debt so what usually happens is they either go to a loan shark to borrow more money at a

very high interest rate or they have to sell off their life stop at a very low rate at a mockery because there is actually no market bear to do the do the exchange okay or even get a like bring the life stuff to someone and they can lend you money there's actually no facilities today the only thing they can do is if the cowardness is worth five hundred dollars they have to sell it for a very low price even and at this kind of at least fifty percent for example okay so what this project is trying to do especially this use case which is one of many is that we can actually make tokenize the livestock for example we use the cow as an example see the cow is worth five

hundred dollars we make five hundred cow tokens out okay but the farmer only needs two hundred and fifty so instead of selling the whole cow for the cash the buyer now can just buy 250 tokens what he then gets is portion of the meal portion of the profits from that cow so this is a collateralization process and then afterwards let's say all the harvesting is done he gets back out the money in buy back or the tokens up and then you can start the whole process again he doesn't need to pay the profits to to the buyer but now what we're not only trying to do is just to help the farmer but we'll linking all the different local communities within

Southeast Asia to the whole as their whole network that can communicate with the crypto world so basically what we're trying to do is bring the crypto money to help the unbanked and this is the project that well as I see because we already have projects on the ground they're doing it they can actually make this happen so this project is as being is being launched by a company called info corp and so what are what are the other types of use cases you mentioned that this is one use case of many can you talk about some of the other applications for sentinel chain yes so one of the main things if you understand explain the context when we

say FinTech we usually just link to payments which is not true there is a payment there's wallets we also need loans we also then also need insurance as well so it's like a whole triangle of services at Value services in order to actually provide the whole framework for them so what we also what this Sentinel chain offers is a b2b marketplace and we already have some partners that are in insurance for example crowd OH a bank that can help out on the loans and we can also have community projects that can happen so not only just for collateralization crowdfunding insurance

payments cross-border payments as well but basically these are only all the use cases that we only can think of right now the thing is because sentinel chain is a platform for all the B Dobies meaning that later on if another financial service wants to come in and want to talk at the farmers or the unbanked they can think of new services and just join join our community to serve these unbanked people okay interesting so we'll link to the there's actually a white paper called the cow chain Kathy okay yes there's couch couch okay yes which which I was I was skimming through earlier and sort of interesting so can you tell us about you know the sort of

state of that project you know where were you at and what's the road map okay so right now we have the project's already on the ground working in so you can see on the sentinel - chain dot org that side we have we did a demo on how we use the rfid tag on the livestock on the actual cow itself so we're developing all these tags whoever they sign em we use with the different community owners to get this project started we also have a project in Singapore itself where if you come to Singapore you see many of these buildings built by people as from

Bangladesh from Myanmar from India for example we have this term calling them construction foreign workers so there's this dormitory that we work with in the West part of Singapore called the twice dormitory where we are going to make the the whole dormitory cashless so Donna she is not just for sleeping what they do is they all the shops it's like a whole ecosystem there but just that we once they finish work then they actually will go and travel back there to sleep to sleep and that they daily things and so one of the use cases is one of when this whole ecosystem becomes cash flows and let's say at home they have a family member of the other farmstead needs to

collateralize a cow then instead of just sending money to them or a project that someone baby they may know of basically they can leverage on the central chain send send from the block the sentinel chain from Singapore into Myanmar for example because the main power center no chain is that we can actually create multiple small local chains for different communities and for example there may be different communities within Indonesia so they may be three different local chains and those three different local chains could connect to our major main Sentinel chain send the tokens over to someone in Myanmar for

example the whole pie what Roy wants to do is to make every transaction across at least across Southeast Asia to be free once it's free then basically you will have much more commerce done within the whole region so in short to answer your question what projects we have it's the the twice dormitory which is going on Mima which is working with the MOU signed with the insurance and with the different community owners there we also have projects that were looking to working to in outside of ASEAN as well Bangladesh for example great interesting there's one one topic

I want to I want to touch on which is sort of unrelated but you wrote in your blog that I think it was on the coin paper blog that for that you felt that public blockchains were not necessarily the right solutions for financial inclusion and that I think you wrote that private blockchains would be served for the last so the last mile right so between the blockchain the public blockchain and the and the user did you expand on on your reasoning behind that so a use case for me myself would be good for public blockchains I can hold Bitcoin either I actually don't mind the the bullet volatility and do my

spending just based on the public chains but the thing is when someone earns an income of $500 or less which is for most of the countries here the rural parts of the countries in Southeast Asia movement of a single dollar can be quite a lot to them and so when I say private chains is basically having the the denominator denominator currency being linked to that local national currency so for example it's a II Indonesia rupiah where it's backed by real Indonesia rupiah's okay that can be connected to the public

chains because once it's like this then they don't need to they already don't have a bank account so they also need to onboard themselves with with real like digital currency and that's already a education cost there and then if they have to deal with volatility that's another step for them to take so that that's what I mean like the full financial inclusion for the unbanked public chains that still too volatile I know I to me okay I I know a lot of you I was very a lot of arguments here today because a lot of people have said that our big coin in the long run will become less volatile or even cryptocurrencies in in general in the long long run I

actually disagree we have stock markets here for like over 400 years we haven't seen that being actually less volatile at all by definition because public chains are by the public to actually price what the what the token is worth you bouncing a volatility and then this may be something like base coin or Tefo or something like that but if it's a free-floating coin your bounty of volatility and volatility may be very too may be too sensitive for the unbanked yeah I know I mean I think that that's that's absolutely true right there if you have small amounts and of course you're the only way that you could have you know real mass adoption

from public cryptocurrency would probably be some kind of stable coin type thing well I think volatility is reducing but it's not as high as it used to be but it's of course still very high and I agree with you that it will remain you know substantial and probably more than what many um you know relatively poor people can tolerate so before we before we wrap up the show here the the I want to talk about a conference and that conference is decentralized Singapore and so this is a conference that where I'll be speaking and where Anson will also be speaking and so it centralizes is a conference

that's being organized on April 5th and 6th it's happening in Singapore and it will showcase the watching the blockchain ecosystem in that country and also in the region so you know who will attend entrepreneurs in the region also investors regulators and what people can expect learn there is some of the regulatory aspects sort of the market dynamics the applications that are being built in that region will be talks about blockchain and AI watching and Financial Inclusion and so if you want to attend that conference again it's happening in Singapore on April 5th and 6th you can

go to decentralized SG so it's decentralized spelt with a Zed and you can use the code epic 10 that's epi C 10 and you will get 10% off early bird tickets and the early bird pricing ends on March 15th so if you're interested in Singapore maybe you know you're considering Singapore as a place where you'd like to do business and you want to you know get more involved and understand the ecosystem a little bit better you know if this is a great opportunity for for you to to learn more about that country and how potentially you could start your business there so do do attend if you can it would be great to meet some of you there and and something also really looking forward to

meeting you at the conference a very good food in Singapore as well great I'm looking forward to that and I've never I've never been to Singapore in fact I've never been to Asia so this will be a very interesting experience for me up and I've been learning all about Singlish on YouTube and and hopefully I'll be able to speak a little bit of English after I leave great so thank you so much for coming on and was a great conversation and again looking forward to meeting you in a few weeks thank you so thank you so much for joining us we release new episodes of epicentre every week you can subscribe to the show on iTunes SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts on iOS or

Android you can also watch the videos on YouTube and if you're interested we would love it if you would join our community on get er that's epicenter dot TV slash Kidder's more and more of you joining us there and there's starting to be some conversations that we're excited about that and if you want to support the show of course the best way to do that is to leave us an iTunes review it helps people find the show they're always happy to see your reviews so thanks so much and we look forward to being back [Music] [Music]