BY Wendy/ Article from 8btc/Translated by Yang(Milian)
On September 24, the “In. Clusion” Conference officially held in Shanghai. As the largest fintech conference in the world to date, the theme of the first conference is “Technology makes the Future more inclusive”.
The participants of today's round table conference including Zhu Min, President of The National Institute of Finance of Tsinghua University, Xi Guohua, general manager of Citic Group, and Jing Xiandong, chairman of Ant Group. And this round table was held in a particular setting — the cafe.
Jing Xiandong said that the coffee shop has two meanings. One is that coffee represents civilian culture, and everyone can freely communicate in the coffee shop. The second is that cafes are the source of innovation, many of which come from a conversation in a cafe.
The coffee offered today, made in Rwanda, is entirely traceable using ant chain technology, and all information about the transport process can be found on-chain. Starting with such a simple cup of coffee, this round table talks about the significance of blockchain to inclusive finance.
Here is some content of this round-table:
Host: When everything is connected, and everyone with diverse attributes is an independent individual, what role blockchain plays?
Jing Xiandong: Everything will be digitized in the future, but how can we digitize everything? We need a huge trust machine. In fact, the blockchain is one, so that all the numbers on the blockchain can be trusted stored and flowed. No matter it is warehouse receipt, account receivable, or any other note, it can be circulated freely on it. In my opinion, it will be a great collaborative efficiency to let the world economy and different industrial chains on the one account. Of course, it takes time to realize, and I am very optimistic about such a future.
We know the impact of the recent epidemic. Macao opened just a few days ago, and we also have a lot of cooperation with the local government. In recent years, we have been accelerating the progress. We believe that the ultimate goal of science and tech is to have a more inclusive, participatory, and digital future. So, what did we do? We provide a solution that allows wallets from all over the world, such as those from South Korea, to be used directly in shops when visitors come to Macau. We also provide an Alipay+ solution, which enables all consumers and merchants to connect digitally, and also helps merchants and global consumers to receive payment and provide digital payment services.
In the future, blockchain and digitalization will make the world more digitally connected, it will help every individual participate in global trade, and gain participation opportunities in the global economy and market, which is extremely critical. The technology we’re developing today can give everyone that opportunity.
Today, a coffee farmer can sell his coffee to the Chinese market and get an extra four yuan for a kilo of it, because now he is retailing rather than wholesale as before. This significance is extremely huge, and it is actually the significance of inclusive, everyone’s participation, and Alipay+ as well as blockchain, through which everyone can participate in digitalization and jointly create a more inclusive future.
Host: Why do we attach great importance to blockchain when everything is connected?
Zhu Min: The impact of blockchain is still very big. We’re seeing fintech in full swing today, as we’re having this conference today, and there are tens of thousands of people here, it’s just unimaginable. Fintech is coming in, with mostly vertical segmentation, and then getting customers through the scene, which is one of its advantages. It can get customers on a large scale. The iteration of vertical subdivision technology and standardized management is rapid, so it can quickly technized the financial.
But what is the core of finance? The core problem of it is to build a trust system in your unknown world. Our traditional finance is actually a collateral culture. I have engaged in banking for many years. It is easy for banks to allow a loan through collateral, but moving from collateral to credit loans, which now small and micro business doing, is already a big leap. What is the core of credit loan? The core is to build credit. And it is to build universal, traceable, constantly changing credit, so that each individual can constantly get good financial services. So how to build credit between people who don’t know and don’t have any connections is actually the most fundamental and core idea of the financial industry. Towards this challenge, blockchain can provide a lot of help in the circumstance of today’s financial technology.
The blockchain structure, of course, can now be public chain and consortium blockchain, with decentralized and centralized coexistence, so that all transactions can be traceable and recorded completely with transparent information and open sharing features. Through this, it can provide a technical possibility to build almost complete information. In this scenario, the financial industry is completely moving from the collateral culture to the credit culture, and the world is completely changed.
At the same time, an even bigger change is taking place, it is the CBDC(central bank digital currency). Its system will also be based on the blockchain. The entry of central bank digital currency into this system has fundamentally changed the entire financial ecology. This is no longer the competition and integration of a traditional fintech institution, but the whole ecology has completely changed. So, in that sense, blockchain plays a very big role.
We are entering a completely new three-dimensional world. The first is the physical dimension. Through blockchain technology and IoT, now everything is connected. Our goal is that 10 years from now, China will have 10 billion objects that can be connected, and that’s a 100 billion scenario. Smartphones is just the scale of 100 million, this is not comparable. At that time, we will enter into a connected world of the dimension of things.
Secondly, because of the first dimension and the development of fintech, we will enter a new financial dimension, which can cover almost everything. This is the core idea of what Xiaoming has just told. In the future, we will come to this point. Where you can reach anyone horizontally, and do all the services of this person from the beginning to the end vertically. When you find a business, you will know whether it is worth investing. And that is the second dimension that we face today.
The third one is the fundamental dimension. How about the human dimension? In fact, this is a person’s comprehensive development of a complete personality. And the first two dimensions will promote the human dimension to move forward.
These three dimensions constitute a high-latitude society of the future. The world has changed, and blockchain is a very important technology among them.
Host: Blockchain seems to be recognized as a very important position to solve the credit mechanism. What is your understanding?
Xi Guohua: In fact, the application of blockchain is not far away. We, Citic Group, has already carried out the application of blockchain in the financial industry. We have set up a financing and trading platform in the Xiongan New Area. There are dozens of enterprises here, and our peers are all involved in this work. The study has processed $30 billion in transactions without a single error. In fact, blockchain is designed to solve the problem of mistrust between organizations and break up data islands between organizations. Without data exchange, it can achieve the exchange of data value. I think in the future we will be able to solve the problem of mistrust between institutions and rebuild a system of trust to serve the real economy.