Zhang hui, ant financial: exploring the issue of digital assets in "some form of token currency"

Source: DeepTech

Original title: "zhang hui of ant financial: blockchain is crucial, exploring the issue of digital assets in" some form of token currency"

Need to sell a car or pay a freelancer? Need factory production management? You may soon be using blockchain to do these things, but you may not even notice.

At the MIT technology review's third Business of Blockchain (BoB) summit on May 2, everyone from Charley Moore, CEO of Rocket Lawyer, the us online law firm, to zhang hui, head of ant financial's Blockchain division, made similar claims.

According to the MIT technology review, zhang hui, who attended BoB's presentation, said,Ant financial is exploring how to issue digital assets on the blockchain in "some form of a token." These assets are linked to some value in the physical world, such as fiat money or other types of assets. But he did not say he had any specific plans.

Mr Zhang said alibaba and ant financial continued to invest in cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain, with the aim of building an "industrial Internet".

He says 600 million Chinese consumers have gone online in the past decade, but there is still a lot to be done with digital services tailored for industry. And blockchain technology, combined with the Internet of things and artificial intelligence, will enable companies to connect and exchange valuable data more efficiently, thereby increasing productivity. "We need a better collaborative network," he said, and ant financial believes blockchain technology is crucial.

However, Charlie Moore, CEO of rocket law firm, who was also present at the blockchain business summit, said the company has been struggling with the complex payment schemes that people often face when signing up for legal agreements.

Rocket law firm is an online law firm that provides a super simple, inexpensive way for people to create legal contracts and access legal services.

Automating contract creation, and providing people to review and sign electronically, is relatively straightforward. But, as Moore told his audience at the MIT media lab,"What's really lacking is automated payments -- paying for things that are important enough to put into a contract."

What Moore wants to change is to integrate smart contracts from Ethereum into the company's products. According to him, the new product, called Rocket Wallet, USES a "stablecoin" cryptocurrency that can be used to transfer money between parties when the relevant conditions of a smart contract are met.

Moore gives the example of two people, Karen and mike, who are going to make a deal to sell a car. Through the rocket wallet, buyer Karen could set up a contract: she would pay half the price of the car immediately, and the other half after a 15-day waiting period to make sure it was on schedule. Regular funds are then converted into stable money. Half will be transferred to mike immediately, and the other half will be paid automatically when the terms of the contract are agreed.

If the payment program works as advertised, it could be the first mainstream application. Despite all the hype and enthusiasm surrounding cryptocurrencies, no one has yet integrated cryptocurrencies into mainstream, consumer-facing applications. By using stability-currency pegs, cryptocurrency guarantees and algorithmic central Banks to keep their currencies stable, Moore and his company believe they have found a way to avoid being trapped by cryptocurrency volatility.

Moore didn't elaborate on rocket wallet's details, but noted that his company is in beta testing with about 100 users. The product will be fully disclosed to the public later this month.

The company is good at providing people with simple legal agreements, as its 22m customers can attest. What we are still waiting to see is whether the company can deliver the same performance after intervening to process the funds.

MIT technology review has been cooperating with MIT media lab to hold the first "blockchain business summit" since 2017, making it one of the first large-scale technology summits in the world to make blockchain technology a special topic. As early as then, scholars, experts and entrepreneurs from industry, academia and government predicted that blockchain technology and its related applications would soon be taken seriously and bring earth-shaking changes to the world.

Mr. Chang and Mr. Moore were among speakers this year, including Gary Gensler, former chairman of the commodity futures trading commission; Neha Narula, director of the Digital Currency Initiative at the MIT media lab; and Thaddeus Dryja, a research scientist; and Aya Miyaguchi, executive director of the ebreum foundation.

In an interview at the conference, Mr. Kinsler said that in order to scale, the encryption market needed to be regulated because consumers had to be protected.

When it comes to hosting for encryption assets (custody) and currency exchange traded funds (ETFs), and other products and services, perkins said, in order to market and stimulate the potential of its growth, development and prosperity of should be sure to let investors know that when faced with the problems such as market manipulation, or loss of the private key, they have for the law dual protection of the investors and consumers.

Mr Kinsler says it is important to ensure that markets are properly regulated and mature enough that the opportunities for manipulation are small or limited. He also stressed that before actually approving an ETF, the SEC needed to ensure that the market and the bitcoin or ethereum behind it were not suspected of being manipulated.

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