Part #18

Mr. Sakolkorn Sakavee, President of Blockchain Capital Group Holdings Co., Ltd. , shared his experience about Crypto Trading and risk of investment in Cryptoassets and Crypto security. He has related working experience in digital assets exchange, namely BITKUB Online and Garena, gaming & digital platform

Photo Source: ICORA

Background

He has started to know Cryptocurrency since 2013. He told us that most of the exchange which was hacked was not because of Blockchain but from other factors, such as the websites in use, or even the transparency of the owner. In 2016-2017 Bitcoin was banned in China. He suspects that because of the attempt without success to stop people to transfer money out of country via bitcoin. In 2017 there was a skyrocketing in Bitcoin’s price. In 2018, he does not recommend to buy during sideway or downtrend.

Risk

The market opens 24 hours thus he doesn’t recommend to place the stop loss as it can be big loss in case of flash crash.

Lessons learnt

He recommended from his experience to 1.store Crypto in hardware wallet to avoid risk of hacking, and should not keep much at the exchange as it may be bankrupted. 2. Most of ICO (90%) is scam. 3.Don’t use margin & stop loss.

How to value Crypto

1.Worthwhile (consider its value whether it’s worthwhile in term of consuming utility or not)

2. Scarcity (limited of supply – resulting in price)

3. Percieve value (study from white paper; consider information such as roadmap).

Areas to look for

1. Follow news from Coinmarketcap.com; Twitter, ICOdrop, Telegram, Reddit

2. Check what can be disrupted, changes, teamwork, influencer view and community.

Photo Source: ICORA

Part #19

From theory to practice, this week we sat down with our friends in LTC group once again to join a pleasant Cryptocurrency workshop by Dr. Thuntee Sukchotrat, CEO of JIBEX. Our special gift this week is Nano Ledger, which is regarded as our first digital wallet. With kind help from Dr, Thuntee’s team, we all can set up this wallet successfully on our notebook. We received digital money worth THB 3Million in (THB/BTC/ETH). Our assignment for this coming month is to work as team to try to win against other teams in our class.

Photo Source: ICORA

Part #20

The dinner Talk this week was about “Crypto, ICO, Blockchain: The future of Money, Finance or just Fads” by Dr. Santitarn Sathirathai, Advisor of ICORA Co., Ltd. He has 8-year experience with investment banking & financial services company, Credit Suisse, then recently decided to change to new journey by joining Garena, the gaming & digital platform.

Story (Episode1) about a Family

Dr. Santitarn told us an interesting story about a family consisting of Crypto (big brother), Blockchain (his younger sister) and ICO (the youngest brother). What all of them have in common is their preference for “revolution”. His father is Bitcoin and his mother is Ethereum.

Blockchain (younger sister)

He compared “Blockchain” with Super Girl, who has the greatest potential, but there are still many unclear points & lots of questions regarding scaling and interoperability. She can make a difference in many industries, with the most popular one in the finance industry because of its ability to change from a Centralized to Decentralized System. This can draw lots of attention from many giants such as Amazon, Google, and Bloomberg, to join in this game with the focus in Enterprise Solutions. Even in China, where they ban ICO, they still favor Blockchain.

Crypto (big brother)

Next is about big brother “Crypto”. Crypto believes that the current system doesn’t work well because of the monopoly by central banks. Crypto would like to disrupt the central bank. However the question is whether Crypto can be the future of money without a central bank or not. In Dr. Santitarn’s opinion, Crypto is difficult to be real money with current technology as there is no means to control the money supply to reach the balance, while the existing system can be manipulated by interest adjustment via monetary policy.

Lesson from Free banking era

Assume all commercial banks issue coin. In case that one bank fails, this could make people loose confidence resulting in domino effect and if without central bank then no last lender resource is available. Thus, the situation of not having any central bank is unlikely.

Twisting point

Some central banks in other countries started to consider adoption of the coin, the so called Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). This kind of CBDC should be able to gain more trust than commercial banks, thus eliminating the need for commercial banks. However, after public hearings some countries like Switzerland concluded that this practice enables too much power by central bank over the financial ecosystem. Thus to strike a balance, there is an idea of a hybrid solution. In case of Thailand, BOT is in the process of testing their own cryptocurrency for more efficient settlements among banks.

ICO (the youngest brother)

He could address the gap which the current financial world cannot address. Some banks don’t allow for loan as they don’t understand all of the projects. In case of IPO or VC, the stake could be diluted. This set of problems could be solved by crowdfunding on blockchain, which is ICO. According to paper from MIT, ICO has advantage in term of the opportunity to test the market whether what we think does work or not. The fast growing pace we will see that crypto is challenging BOT while ICO is challenging SEC. Successful rate of ICO is less than 10% thus SEC in most country tries to make it align with Security Exchange Regulation. Thailand is among very first countries having the digital assets laws to govern ICO.

SEC in attempt to turn Bad Boy to Good Boy

ICO is like bad boy and SEC is like teacher trying to change ICO to comply with rules and become a good boy. But a good boy might be lacking in excitement. In order to gain advantages from ICO, both excitement & discipline will have to be balanced.

There will be more Security Tokens that comply SEC regulations while maintaining the benefits of using contracts. Too many rules could make ICO less viable for the small companies(start-ups), which have higher cost of regulatory compliance. On the other hand, good boy (as tokens become more matured assets) should get attention from the large investor, crypto fund, VC and CVC to increase the investment resulting in the increasing of smart money. Dr. Santitarn viewed that ICO could support monetary reform, not monetary revolution. In the future, ICO could be tools employed by established firms, or large VC backed start-ups for an expansion phase. It could be part of financial raising steps such business may issue ICO first then IPO.

ICO& Blockchain (the winner)

Crypto would like to be money while ICO would like to be financial assets. If the value increases continuously – what will happen is that no one sells, thus it should be financial assets, instead of money. Crypto as money may not be successful if central banks develop their own Crypto. Blockchain will certainly be applied in various fields. If the regulators could strike the balance, Thailand could be in position to be Hub of ICO in the future.

In sum –The tales of three reformist brothers: which ones will bring about revolution?

BLOCKCHAIN: Revolution somewhere (but not sure where)

CRYPTOCURRENCY: empire strikes back but only with limited form of CBDC

ICO: Reform in finance, not revolution

Photo Source: ICORA

Author: Waleeporn Sayasit, Corporate Communications Director, TCC Technology
Advisor: Dr. Karndee Leopairote, CEO, ICORA
Editor: John Bickel, Senior Consultant, TCC Technology
Source: ICORA ‘s class, CryptoAsset Revolution (CAR) #1