Swiss Blockchain Ecosystem Panel / Claudio J. Tessone, Marc Degen, Nicolai Reinbold

Transcript

foreign [Music] it is great to have here a mark and Nikolai who are very important members of the community here because they are representing two very important initiatives activities that are taking place in this country one of them is a I started from you Nikolai you are a community a leader from civil Labs Global Health Global head sorry because we were promoted last year right yes after leading the CV Labs exactly

exactly yes thank you very much and then Mark Degen who is the CEO from trust Square so welcome buddy can you please introduce a little bit yourselves and the activities that you are performing in Russia Square Market is a sub with you Yeah so basically trust square is a is located in three locations in Zurich more or less around 5000 square meters we have where we have three different activities so basically we provide a co-working space for uh Tech innovators we run a series of events we also had two side events yesterday and the day before uh to to uh this event here and also we provide a series of different services to help entrepreneurs operate

operate their core operating system and Trust cuevos established end of 2017 the idea came together that we need some here somewhere a space where all those crypto innovators somehow can meet and interact and why was this so important because at the end of the day also from from the own entrepreneurial Journeys we learned that there's so many accidents that happen somehow that evolve into big things everybody of us has somewhere in their past in their history this small little thing that happened a person you met and

now you're married and you have kids a person you met and now you you you just created a company and you had a great idea somebody that told you this is and and you you avoided doing it and and went for something else it's also completely changed your life and this is what what I call a little bit this entrepreneurial butterfly effect and this has to happen when people come together and this is this is the purpose the core purpose of trust query is at the end of the day we want to bring all those like-minded people together in an entrepreneurial spirit that want to expose themselves to New Edge Technologies like blockchain being one of them and and go through those

middle all those little accidents that have to happen to create something big that not only changes their life also eventually over time also impacts all our lives and this is more or less what we stand for fantastic thank you very much we also have accompanied their Journey starting from Bank of stress and now to this new place also now growing into the lake as well Nikolai CV Labs then and cvvc and CBBC right so we have two Brands start with the first one with cvvc stands for crypto Valley venture capital so we are VC investing in blockchain technology on web3 technology um established 2016 but starting to invest in 2018 we invested in roughly 60

projects globally 41 went through our acceleration program and the rest was direct Investments but on the other hand we have something similar to trust Square because we believe that just investment is not enough we need to support the startups a bit more and that's why we founded CV lamps which is so to say the ecosystem ecosystem builder of cvvc under this brand we have multiple activities and services so one would be a co-working co-working spaces we have one in souk with roughly 150 tenants and blockchain tenants so everything what I'm talking about is blockchain or web free um

in Berlin in in Lisbon Lisbon and in Cape Town as well we do a lot of events community events at these hubs we have a flagship event called CV Summit roughly 1000 500 attendees per per Summit it's the next one is will be in October where we have a lot of corporate partners because we're trying to build a bridge between corporates and startups so you know last year's event we had like Visa Citibank Google um part of the pro of the event we do as well Regional reports uh where we kind of showcase uh what's happening in the different regions that we're in

in the web 3 space last but not least on the brain of CV Labs we have our acceleration program where Claudio is as well doing workshops yesterday no Wednesday Wednesday you did the workshop our program because we are at our fifth batch at the moment um it's a hybrid program going three months uh when we have roughly 150 mentors and experts from you know all key players in the industry you know from the l1's near polygon cardano you know you have to the exchanges market makers auditing companies who you know support our startups throughout this journey

um yeah and then you know in a nutshell we are a venture capital with a plus CV Labs is the plus and on the this brand you know next investment we do uh we give startups a space to work a voice throughout our events and activities and the whole network and community building part thank you very much I think that in a way also your activities are complementary because you have been building together and we have done a lot of collaborations with you we have the lecture series together with drastic Square we always welcome as well the students from our programs as well to a city lab so it is a fantastic community that we are building here and perhaps the first question that I have with

respect to the suicycle system which is an important thing we were mentioning today if there is there are a lot of startups there are a lot of associations a lot of initiatives now with people from nft Association is here but there have been several over the years spanning and and flourishing so if you are talking to an international crowd so why should Switzerland be the location for a web 3 Venture mark well I think there are under multiple reasons I mean one one is from my uh perspective the most obvious is is the the easy Clarity you have basically in the foundations of your company so um we have a very accessible ecosystem

also from from a governmental legal compliance part where you have a predictable outcome I mean whether you like it or not it doesn't matter at the end of the day at least what the outcome is it is what it is and it's day the way it is and this is something where you have a foundation on this Foundation you can build and also there is the whole regulatory space is also a little bit in a weight and see let's say um principle so basically they also let stuff happen and and basically just make sure in a certain aftermath that it's that it's somehow in a good let's say

compliance and I think that's a very very important foundation where you can build something on and then you have of course all the other attractive reasons uh uh why why being here from from having access to talent in in all different things in in being used working in in international settings um that basically it's it's totally clear that you have that you have a mesh up of of of of a high diversity Workforce that's here Switzerland is used to work with a broad collaborators so you have you have a very easy way to operate because yes of course we have

extremely high cost level but I mean there is basically no company that has percent of their staff here and also the whole ecosystem supports this and I think this this combination made it quite unique a couple of years ago that you could start something and it still exists and it could be built on here uh and and as a actually then flourishes into what it is today Nikolai you a then I think that perhaps you share the the view of a mark but which are the key players that you think that are needed in order to have such a strong ecosystem I mean you always I mean I totally agree Mark what you said right the foundation

it's a government that you talk to which is important you can talk to the government and they set rules and it's clear right that outcome is clear at the end and this is one important player right so the government needs to be active or kind of you know wants to learn and Implement rules right then you need to have obviously um talents right so you need to work with with universities in universities active in ecosystems especially when you talk about tech you know doing uh research and so on you need to have Founders so he needs to have startups who obviously start building um that you need investors because you always need Capital to fool the whole ecosystem um you need corporate who are looking

for Innovation um to work together with startups working on pilots and that in Switzerland if you look in Switzerland you have that right as well when you look in Circus you know we are based in souk which I can talk a bit more there you have for example Siemens um right around the corner and this as well active in our acceleration program supporting the startups right so I think these are kind of the key uh players that you need to have involved in a strong ecosystem where you can build the strong ecosystem thank you very much like you know that a few years ago you mentioned Mark 2017 when you were founded one of the I always remember that you were in the

Bank of stress just in front of the SMB and in that original night in which the there was the lounge the there was this projection of the Bitcoin logo on they send me back don't remember this thing but then yeah what the thing is we have been living for quite some years and you have been present we have only been present and seeing how the ecosystem evolved over time can you please try to build up for the people that do not know it a little bit of the history of how the ecosystem grew over there and how did you get involved actually it's also it's a very interesting thing that I always want to learn um how I got into the ecosystem yeah well that was um an accident exactly one of those Butterfly Effects and it's also I mean what you also said

I mean this accessibility Foundation when they were looking for a managing a director that was some kind of a sentence up there that catch my eye and I was like what what the heck is this and uh went somehow down the rabbit hole I mean of course I only understood about Max one third of the blog post of italic back then I mean wasn't even launched yet yeah but I was somehow uh I was coming from from uh e-commerce transactional Telco payment background so for me this transactional issue was totally clear and I totally

bought in and what I did then is I mean I cannot code so what I did I just wrote to some professors and asked whether I can do diploma thesis um with an idea and this is also how I then over some accidents met yeah Thomas is here I was working at the University and this collaboration actually then led to the establishment of a company uh modem back then we we established uh made an Ico in 2017 uh had a great success all over the time and with the whole timeline of course I mean there were a

lot of button divs in between but at the end of the day I mean that's that was the accident that caught me into into those whole thing and exactly the accessibility also that it was it was possible back then that yes you could basically call up call up the tax authorities and ask them how do you do an Ico and as long as you didn't talk about tokens and just said well just think in Excel sheets and if it's doing an extra sheet then that's basically it um and and this is how we we basically constructed this whole this whole concept and it worked and we and I think this this quadruple play about you have to involve governmental bodies academics corporates

and startups because I was our first big client was the Swiss post where we actually launched uh the the I guess the world's first uh Enterprise product in the market launch that was using a blockchain actually for silly reasons if you look back today but it still did and you had I mean everybody dared to do this uh and this was 2017-18 I mean that was yeah uh very very early and I think this is where this old and evolved I mean back then um it started and so we were focusing also from atrocious side only on startups and then we saw okay well

startups in the co-working might be not the perfect cohort of customers because they're dying by Design either because they grow out so for example Signum was established at the first office at trust Square back in 2018 uh now they have a couple hundred people when we had b3i in us they don't exist anymore so I think this all happens and that's also why we involved our service portfolio around that because we saw well on the one side just banking on co-working startups we saw what happened with rework so okay we might we might also think about let's

let corporate in because in the beginning we declined all corporate requests because we thought we have to be pure um uh and then we added all those those events because we got just requests to do events it wasn't a plan it just happened and then well okay we could actually also charge for that um and the same was also them for the services so where we saw okay all the startups have issues with insurance and v80 and then how to how to get the bank account how to get the accounting right especially if you mix 10 Fiat with crypto and we also had the problem ourselves so we solved it for us the more I talked about this the more clients we got and this I think this is

the evolution and the accessibility which is especially simple in Switzerland because it's still rather small so you can access everybody somehow at least via one or two connections yeah absolutely Nikolai thank you very much Nicola how did you get into um how do I how did I get into um so I was a student my bachelor I was doing a lot of startups since I'm 17 so I had like a co-founder which I'm doing all these projects and then one day he told me about Bitcoin um there's Bitcoin Swiss um I think I'm going to join them as well so I was still in my study so he became

the fifth employee at Bitcoin switch so for those who don't know Bitcoin Swiss uh it's a broker who has ins was one of these first company in Switzerland founded in 2013 um have now roughly 250 I believe employees here in Switzerland so he became like the fifth employee I got more interested and then I did actually my bachelor thesis with one of the two big Banks or now there's just one so I did it with the one that still exists I did a blockchain framework for them 2017 um for for the foundation they have and like this I kind of you know got into the space

um I used to do in my last year of my batches um I did an internship at uh a firm called inacta it's based in souk and one of the the two Founders founded and cvvc and CV labs and I was then the first employee building up the acceleration program from scratch that's how I get in it thank you very much and and what how do you think because you were mentioning is this space is always characterized by turbulent periods we have been there in 2016 we have been there in 2019 we have been there as well last year and perhaps as well this one but specifically with respect to the last one the one that we are still perhaps experiencing

how do you think that the current a financial turmoil has influenced the suicycle system and it is I am you're staring at me so I start with you um well I have I had exactly this discussion basically yesterday night over dinner um where we were a little bit trying to this statistic discussion about uh was it not good was it bad I mean the outcome the true outcome on the economy uh I think I think we know maybe in five years because if you see all this cross

effects that are happening uh now it's talking about those two click Banks I mean uba is now doing uh insane insane uh revenue or everyday reporting which has a crazy tax impact which again offsets other effects or due to the just some some legal details that there is an ownership change in the in the real estate portfolio of one of the biggest real estate owners credits with there is a vast amount of taxes that have to be paid so is this now offset with a with the social impact I mean I don't know probably somebody at the University of Zurich will soon figure this out but I think there

are so many cross effects the only thing you can do you can just take the fact and move on and this is basically also same uh and it's the same behavior that I'm not that shocked by that because I mean I saw now seven eight years crypto uh well you just take it and move on yeah that's the only thing you can do and uh everything else just makes you nut I mean if you if you go and try to to figure out all those variants what might happen I mean you can also take another theory I mean how can it be that somebody that that we are all talking about a huge Market with huge volumes where the biggest liquidity provider on Earth nobody knows who's who owns it

whether they they they uh omitted some sanctions or not whether whether where the domicile is and all this I mean how can such a market even be seen as a market as long as this thing exists um so there are so many variables you can you can look at where I usually get to the point where relax Max focus on the fact and move on take it where it is yeah Nikolai and I specifically with respect to all the crises that were triggered in in the blockchain ecosystem itself last year yeah what do you think that is that do the represent the threat or an opportunity for the suicycle system so uh so I think it's an opportunity right

it's again an opportunity and you know what's what happens with FTX and so on at the end you know what shows is there's Bad actors it's not the bad technology you know we're back in the days uh blockchain is bad popular crypto is bad no that's not true it's it it's the the guys behind it right and you have this in every industry um but it's it's there's a lot of trust again in Switzerland obviously the the the bank situation doesn't help that much but in the space there's a lot right so you know Foundation wise you know as we said before at the beginning having clear structure we know the outcome you know we are regulated we have rules a lot of we see a lot of

startups coming internationally asking again more to set up something here in Switzerland you know set up a foundation I have this call almost weekly to set up a foundation in Switzerland um from from the states a lot of people want to move out in the States from the states to Switzerland move the company or to Europe I would say to Europe not just Switzerland right um and obviously you know crypto crypto winter was here maybe we are now in Autumn uh spring you know it's spring um but you know important this is this is not our first crypto winter right and what's what's important to know especially you know for you guys who hack it's the time to build the best projects come out of this crypto winter

right and I think that's something we need to you know to have in mind and you know going the right direction but yes I would say I think it's a good it could be a positive outcome for the Swiss ecosystem yeah thank you very much uh once again we are here in ethereum theory so which is the role that you think ethereum has had in all this history but also is currently which role is it playing now well I think the vision duration and also the execution behind ethereum was the main Game Changer and for me also coming a little bit out of a let's say

a little bit idealistic touched world of let's let's let's let's remove Fiat from from the ecosystem more to this uh combined I can transform or transact the value and information and and and the ownership representation at the same time within one transaction and I think this is this is the key thing with all the flavors that evolved out of it um and you also see this basically at atereo Mafia I mean as the PayPal Mafia exists those are the other one exist there were so many incredible other things

let's say grew out of out of this initial thing and at the end of the day I mean they are still the king what it's all about uh adoption and usage everywhere so I think that was the event in the last 10 years and I think important to to for the history of our ecosystem here I think crypto value would not be crypto Valley if ethereum didn't set 2014-15 yeah right I mean that's but why we have crypto Valley it's because if you build up the foundation here in Switzerland yeah actually it completely changed the landscape because also they said completely transitional point before that it was much more a let's say disorganized communities or

governance communities and right becoming to everything that was created afterwards comes also with a legal entity in a way that is trying to Steward the things absolutely let's go to the labor market here the situation here in Switzerland for the last a few minutes how do you see that it is the labor market in Switzerland how easy is it first that it for startups companies to find the talents that they need your perhaps so um so in Switzerland we have around 1 200 blockchain companies active right um roughly six thousand or there was last year's number right so um

6500 employees in these these companies which is is a growing Market if you compare it to like you know two two years ago where I think employees number were like a thousand thousand five hundred so it grew quite a lot however um even if we said that you know build a company here set up the company here Switzerland is super expensive you feel you will find a lot of good talent which is a super expensive for for the startups that's why you have a lot of companies looking in Berlin or in Lisbon to find talents there um to um you know to support the company but you see a lot managers marketing ctOS

here based here in Switzerland so like the high levels are still based here in Switzerland but the rest because we're still decentralized right at the end it's still about decentralization people have their laptop and they can work from everywhere um which you know it's just the new way that you know people are working my in my opinion but however the whole ecosystem supports the labor market so it grows and grows and grows fantastic thank you and what do you think that the government because you started with this clear regulation yes and this is the last one how can the federal government or the Continental governments like sub or Siri it can contribute to improve the situation

don't interfere you know I think no no I mean to be honest I'm not a big believer in governmental programs especially not in a in a working environment and I would consider Switzerland as a definitely working environment and if if anything starts happening in in in in starting interfering in some punctual support here and there I don't think that truly helps uh this this more helps getting keeping keeping stuff alive that shouldn't be alive and I think the best the best area where where you find whether whether your idea whatever you build whatever whatever you want to do has value is if if you have a market

that uh that that that pays you for the for the for the pain or the problem uh yourself and that's it and you can do this in a small scale you can in a large scale and there are plenty of opportunities where I don't see the any governmental interaction that can help at any point in time fantastic thank you very much and this is very much in line with the notion of community that we are trying to bring here thank you for this nice panel [Applause] thank you everybody