, another boom was overwhelming. In the new boom, a billion dollars in two years was like a joke that couldn’t stand up to a young man in his early 20s. This boom is called “blockchain”. Blockchain projects can create an ecological empire of tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars with only a vague outline of the idea, without any capital or technology or product capability.

A post-90s investor who is quite established in the blockchain field said that blockchain is an empire game.

浅谈：区链与通证

What is blockchain and passwords?

According to the definition of Baidu Encyclopedia, blockchain is a distributed ledger in which blocks of data are combined in a sequential manner into a chained data structure in chronological order, and are cryptographically guaranteed to be tamper-evident and unforgeable.”

Simply put, a blockchain is a set of structured data generated by a set of rules – a bunch of machines guessing numbers according to a set of rules, and whoever guesses the closest gets a position and a reward, and a time stamp, and because everyone is comparing with each other, they will write down other people’s answers, too. In this way, the “distributed bookkeeping” is realized. The reward for grabbing a position is “coin” (or “pass”, Token), and the process of grabbing a position is “mining” (or “arithmetic Competition”, Proof of Work), this set of rules is a kind of smart contract, each machine to grab a position to extend a unit of data backward. Thus the order is linked, traceable, and untamperable.

It follows that the pass is the product of the whole process and is used as an incentive for blockchain bookkeeping; in order for the incentive to have an effect, it is necessary for the pass to gain value for use, and so there is a connotation of the transformation of the pass into a digital currency.

Currently the most common Tokens in the world are Bitcoin and Ether.

Bitcoin (BTC) is seen as the leading digital currency, leading the way in the function of digital currency payment medium. one of the targets of the U.S. futures exchanges, breaking into the traditional financial trading market.

Ether (ETH) features smart contracts, and ordinary programmers can easily create their own Tokens through Ether’s smart contracts. on Taobao, you can get a set of Ether-based Tokens for $3,000. but what is the value of these Tokens? This is the question that the creator needs to solve.

What is the relevance of blockchain and pass-through design?

The way a blockchain is structured determines its natural properties: distributed, decentralized, traceable, and immutable. These terms may seem banal on their own, but they can be disruptive and innovative in some industries. Some use its “traceability” and “immutability” to develop registration applications, others use its “decentralization” and “decentralization” to develop “distributed” applications. Distributed” for cross-border trade settlement. Therefore, it will create new solutions to the financial settlement system between countries, and to the accumulation of many industry giants and data bloat, which will also shake up the pattern of many traditional interests. For example, it is believed that one of the reasons for the simplicity, efficiency and humanity of WeChat’s design and operation is precisely Zhang Xiaolong’s insistence on individual equality and decentralization; but the basic rules of this universal communication product, built almost on top of the values of such a soulful figure as Zhang Xiaolong, are both legendary and fragile – after all, commercialized organizations have their positions and are profit-seeking.

In addition, the principle of automated operation of smart contracts is also reconfiguring the trust model. Combining decentralization and tamper-evident features, the upgrade of the trust model from acquaintance trust, to intermediary agency-style trust, to trust based on programmatic protocols will bring about an unprecedented reconfiguration of relationships. The impact of this reconfiguration is no less than that of Alipay’s three-party settlement model on commodity transactions, and no less than that of Ali Sesame Credit on leasing, consumption and many other industries.

And the product of blockchain operation – passwords, also known as crypto-digital currency, has gone beyond its basic attributes of community incentive to become a new means of capitalization, which is also the most controversial part of the blockchain application field. This is also the most controversial part of the blockchain application field. The degree of controversy is so high that there are two types of blockchain-related practitioners, the “chain circle” and the “coin circle”. “The “chain circle” advocates studying the technical characteristics and application scenarios of blockchain itself, while the “cryptocurrency circle” advocates changing production methods in the spirit of blockchain.

Practice: opportunities and humanity under the new wave

In the blockchain field, the popular fundraising method is called ICO (Initial Coin Offering), which was originally limited to geeky community users, based on community contributions and trust relationships, to support early stage projects by means of digital currency subscriptions. In mid-2017, information about ICO (Initial Coin Offering) began to spread to a more popular scope, and a photo of Li Xiaolai and Xue Banzi ignited mainstream public opinion on digital currencies.

Everyone is a central bank

The essence of an ICO is that ordinary people can issue a digital currency that circulates within a scenario they define, in exchange for a certain value. the basic process of an ICO is based on a community vision, and the core team of the community prepares a white paper, and through improvements to existing smart contracts, or with the help of the existing ETH The core community team prepares a white paper and issues new pass-throughs (digital currencies) by improving existing smart contracts or leveraging the existing ETH contract system. The team then seeks the approval of angel investors (aka “cornerstones”) andThey use digital currency to close early stage investments at a relatively low discount, and then angels assist the launch team in closing a larger share of the private placement together at a higher price. Typically, the percentage of external lending should be 50% or more. With the “funds” raised, the team can apply to go live on an exchange and engage with more users. Then, like a public company, they can use the “funds” contributed by the market to implement business scenarios while maintaining investor communication and market capitalization management.” The

new wave is not so much a “blockchain” wave as it is a “digital currency” wave. According to 36 Krypton statistics, 430 ICO projects were born worldwide in 2017, raising a total of $4.6 billion. The wave field project operated by the Chinese team issued a total of 100 billion digital currency TRX, with a total market value of 150 billion RMB at the peak, all of which happened within just two or three months, and wealth creation myths abounded.

The question is, if everyone is a “central bank”, does humanity stand up to the test of interest? What kind of structure is sufficient to monitor the power of these “central banks” and to measure their ability to do so? Are these “currencies” creating excessive bubbles by not only being used to carry value, and not only for circulation transactions, but also to leverage capital in the market for more fiat currency (legal tender)?

A number of listed companies at home and abroad are taking advantage of the blockchain theme to speculate and influence the share price with a slight hint. With PlayCoin, Xunlei’s share price doubled 5 times in 30 trading days; with RRcoin, the share price of Renren, which has been dormant for years, soared 78% in two days; …… was urgently called off by the regulator.

A number of listed companies shelved their listing plans and turned to research blockchain and digital currency fundraising methods. There are even many small and medium-sized Internet teams who see blockchain as a historical opportunity to bend the curve, especially entrepreneurs who have not been able to make a dent in the traditional Internet startup approach, turn to blockchain projects and rush to fundraising with their hasty understanding of blockchain.

The low threshold for issuing digital currencies has led to many players entering the field to hunt, and the participants are of mixed quality and chaos.

| List of recent popular blockchain projects of listed companies

A globally renowned technology-based company laid out blockchain in the early days, mobilizing the company’s elite technical talents for specialized training, and as a result, two years later the team from executives to the grassroots all left and invested in the issuance and fundraising of digital currencies.

There are many promoters who do not have technical and team support, but only with a paper idea to get the “big brother” stand, and then start fundraising, and the funds raised (mostly for digital currencies with strong circulation, such as BTC or ETH) are neither regulated nor verified, and often leave the field in a hurry.

elite carnival or “loser” rebellion

early blockchain applications are mostly initiated by technical geeks, January 3, 2009 by the IT field elite formed a private circle “cryptopunk mailing list “On January 3, 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto, a member of the “Cryptopunk Mailing List”, a private circle of IT elites, drew on the design ideas of several members of the circle to create the most famous blockchain application, Bitcoin, which was headlined on the front page of the Times that day as ” Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks” was written into the creation block, full of mockery of the old financial system, and then chose to retire in 2010 when Bitcoin’s fame was rising, showing the elite’s usual high-mindedness.

The current style of the chain is similar to this, even if the technology has been pushed into the limelight, but still a matter of calm and composed, occasionally for the ensuing business or salary increase and rejoice, but do not care to rush the project to raise funds to obtain wealth. Of course, there are some techies who eventually could not resist the temptation to join the trend of digital currency issuance, but on the whole they prefer to use this technology to really change part of the world.

The situation in the cryptocurrency world is more complex, with the presence of these blockchain technology bulls, while the “big boys”, exchanges, investment institutions, media and other upstream resources have also formed schools and relative monopolies. And when people pay attention to this industry, they find that most of the “big names” behind the industry are originally unknown except for a few celebrities who used to be famous in venture capital and economic circles. When mainstream investors and media people try to approach them, they find that they are self-contained, closed, and inaccessible. In fact, quite a few of them were once active members in the domain name circle and webmaster circle, or serial entrepreneurs in the Internet circle, keen, grounded and ambitious, but they had not been successful in the traditional Internet industry, and the difficult and risky beginning of the cryptocurrency circle finally became their new opportunity. “They seem to be determined to give vent to their pride and joy. There are also a number of star projects and star institutions at the helm of the new generation after 95, fist bullying, dare to think and do. As with every big change, they are not afraid to lose, so they seize this opportunity.

To understand their spiritedness figuratively, imagine the scene in “Shanghai Tang”, where a luxury car comes, the attendant opens the door, and in front of him appears Xu Wenqiang, once ambitious and once pressed down by fate, now finally fighting his way to the top. He cloaked in a heavy designer coat, cold and full of intention to come, followed by several Ding Li general equally cold and fierce, dusty, imposing. The opening is full of oppressive speed of speech and attitude, coldly throwing out a surprising price, you do not know and can not refuse, because continuous combat he must always be cigarettes, cigars to refresh; because always aiming at the next destination, the conversation is always fidgety, talk like a barrage of 300 words a minute, in order to achieve the purpose of a thousand dollars. Domineering and quick, is their common nature, easy to like and easy to anger, full of strong control and tension.

Their accumulated sharpness and intent to stretch, worth more than a billion, more than a billion, more than ten billion. However, the dramatic increase in wealth did not bring sufficient satisfaction, the desire for power and respect is still expanding. You say it is a reversal or a hero’s triumph, finally turned over the big man, it is difficult to restrain to continue to run wild, with overwhelming energy, vindictive mentality to return to their long-awaited admiration and status.

The role of various factors, the digital currency industry chain is noisy and impetuous, but also full of fraud and lies, big brother trust deficit, “air coin” (no actual value support of digital currency) rampant; various links of participants in the rush for quick profits, with several times, dozens of times the cost of traditional investment and financing, harvest ICO projects; projects go through the The process, will pay high costs, become the follow-up so-called ecological construction of the “original sin”, bad money expel good money, a vicious circle.

On July 25, 2017, the National Internet Financial Security Technical Expert Committee released the “Report on the Development of Domestic ICO in the First Half of 2017”, which shows that the scale of ICO financing and user participation is on an accelerated upward trend, with a cumulative participation of 105,000 people. Up to 90% of ICO projects are suspected of fraud.On September 4, 2017, the People’s Bank of China and seven other ministries and commissions issued the “Announcement on Preventing the Risk of Token Issuance and Financing” on September 4, 2017, which clearly prohibits any organization and individual from illegally engaging in token issuance and financing activities.

The lure of huge interests around ICOs, scams and bubbles, and the swift response of regulation have put a layer of caution on digital currencies. Subsequently, a large number of practitioners turned overseas to seek policy gaps to continue their operations. in January 2018, screenshots of the well-known investor Xu Xiaoping in the WeChat group flowed out, and he called on the CEOs of invested projects to pay attention to the blockchain, and later emphasized in his speech at the Dark Horse Camp that “the impact brought by blockchain technology cannot be overemphasized”, making blockchain technology The major Internet companies are almost all on blockchain projects, studying the combination of their business and the new technology.

At the same time, the market for regulatory attitude speculation wait and see and tired of air projects accumulate, Warren Buffett, Li Ka-shing and other celebrities in the global business community renowned for denying the value of digital currency, the market turned cold after January 20, BTC, ETH and other mainstream digital currency prices plummeted, a large number of ICO projects broke.

Thinking: the situation and development of the post-wave stage

In the field of blockchain technology research, public chains, alliance chains and other branches of the genre began to appear, based on the underlying protocols and infrastructure to explore the establishment of a number of global and nationwide blockchain alliances. Many well-known enterprises in the field of Internet, technology and finance actively participate in the development of standards, and Wanxiang Holdings has become a rather conspicuous force among them.

In terms of commercial layout, a large number of companies with technical capabilities and industry resources have made a move to recruit a large number of technical talents on the one hand, and actively research market entry opportunities and regulatory space on the other. Traditional investment institutions are cautiously contacting while watching and picking. With the further clarification of the regulatory attitude, each company will successively clarify the layout in the blockchain and digital currency industry chain.

In terms of regulation, China is the first to clearly warn and control the risk of ICO and continue to be vigilant, while other countries are divided into two factions: clear support and ambiguous attitude. Japan was the first major economy to explicitly support blockchain and ICOs, followed by Thailand, which expressed its support, in addition to Singapore, Canada, Russia, Belarus and other countries that expressed support for ICO projects to land in their countries. The U.S. financial community strongly supports the interface between digital currencies and traditional finance, strongly supports blockchain technology research, and is not opposed to ICO projects, but reminds the public to evaluate ICO projects carefully, as well as suggesting that the promotion of ICO projects by celebrities or other individuals is subject to regulation under the “securities laws. The South Korean people are very common to participate in digital currency investment, and in mid-January the South Korean government tried to ban digital currency trading and was opposed by the people’s petition, and then successively introduced regulatory measures such as exchange taxation and account real name system to maintain positive regulation.

There is no doubt that there will be continued investment in blockchain technology development globally, and governments will keep the process and risks of ICOs under review. This policy tightening will lead to market volatility in the short term, and in the long term is a real support for technology application and value return, and after the de-bubble will filter out a more competitive and socially valuable digital currency system.

In the post-wave phase of blockchain, we can expect the industry development trend in blockchain-related fields to show the following features:

Globalization

From a global perspective, the distributed and decentralized characteristics of blockchain projects and the regulatory situation of digital currencies have led practitioners in related industries to exhibit a more forward-looking global layout. From the formation of teams, to the layout of business and integration of resources, all will be reconfigured based on a global perspective.

Thanks to the large local market space, and a generally strong enterprising spirit, China has already achieved a multiplier overtake in the field of Internet applications, with travel tools such as Drip and Mobay going out of the country, e-commerce settlement tools such as Alipay popularizing to neighboring countries, and WeChat becoming a worldwide instant messaging tool. This phenomenon will also be played out in the blockchain field, and the process will be further accelerated.

Overseas ICO landings and digital currency transactions will provide new types of fundraising channels and industrial space, while China, with its large population, resources, market demand, and computing power, will become a huge market for the supply of technology, consumption, resources, and nodes for blockchain applications.

Division of labor refinement

At present, in the field of blockchain and its pass issuance, basic industrial divisions such as mining, coin issuance, trading and investment have gradually developed, and there are also a large number of intermediaries between each main link. However, limited by the quality level of projects, the basic standard of practitioners, the regulatory situation and other factors, the industry has not yet formed a segmented brand with recognition and appeal.

As the quality of projects entering the blockchain field continues to improve, the practitioners’ ability to win and lose, and the regular army gradually gains the right to speak, the industry will be further segmented, with opportunities to generate specialized blockchain underlying protocol teams, infrastructure-based teams, segmented application-based teams, digital currency investment banks, digital currency underwriters, digital private equity institutions, quantitative management teams, coin market PR marketing teams, business strategy consulting teams, and more diversified specialty mining pools, exchanges, media, etc.

Trust Reconstruction

With the ebb and flow of the market, investors of digital currencies and blockchain followers will gradually build an identification system for projects, and project initiators, endorsing celebrities, investors, cooperative media, exchanges and other related parties in the blockchain field can be traced back to credibility, gradually forming new agreed rules and processes for high-quality project screening.

In addition, blockchain-based information collection and the automatic operation of smart contracts will further reconstruct the credit system of the entire society and change the existing social management and credit collection on this basis, and will also change the way of collaboration and settlement between people and people and enterprises.

resource reconstruction

In countries and regions where ICOs are legalized, the issuance and exchange of digital currencies will become a new way of raising capital to support the development of the real economy in addition to IPOs. This approach bridges the gap between the primary and secondary markets, lowers the investment threshold for ordinary people, and accelerates the fundraising channel for innovative projects. This fundraising approach will change the traditional way of operating in the venture capital circle and will require investment institutions to have more efficient information gathering capabilities and process response capabilities.” How will the digital assets raised by

feed back into the development of the real economy? The business layer of resources and assets swap, capital layer between the two subjects of mergers and acquisitions for shares, will be a viable way.

gives an example of a Japanese technology company, Omise, which has received investment from Softbank and other well-known institutions, and whose main business is to provide payment management system services for enterprises to accept payments through mobile applications or online stores. The company owns BitFlyer, the world’s leading bitcoin trading platform and Japan’s largest, and raised $25 million by issuing a token, OMG, in June 2017, through which it acquired Paysbuy, an e-money business operator authorized by the Bank of Thailand and one of the top three payment service providers in Thailand, thus obtaining Trustmark (DBD certification) recognized by the Thai Ministry of Commerce and providing OMG with a a large source of users.

AriseBank, the world’s first cryptocurrency bank, has reportedly announced that it has entered into an acquisition agreement with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to acquire an FDIC-owned bank that has been operating in the U.S. for more than a century.

In September 2017, the parent company of South Korean gaming giant Nexon acquired Korbit, South Korea’s second largest cryptocurrency exchange, which was valued at $120 million in the transaction.NEXON is a South Korean computer game company whose current major titles include Dungeons & Dragons (DNF), Adventure Island, and more.

After the de-bubble, capital will return to the entity to serve the entity. Blockchain technology will still be favored for a period of time, so the integration of traditional enterprises and new blockchain projects will increase. The proceeds from the issuance of digital currency will likely be used to acquire more resource interfaces; traditional enterprises will have the opportunity to serve their own business and also serve the capital market’s favorable response by embracing blockchain’s cutting-edge technology.

intelligent

blockchain’s distributed attributes and smart contracts are inherently scalable and machine-readable. This will create the conditions for intelligence in many areas such as financial settlement, identity identification, and social relationships.

People will access the “network” in a richer way and participate more actively in the network’s computation and application. After decentralization, the integrity of this information is further improved; after traceability, the redundancy of information is reduced; timestamps and smart contracts are designed to be more suitable for machine participation instead of human judgment. These features will give opportunities for the integration of AI applications, semantic learning, image technology, IoT, sensing information collection, and other technology modules that can be used more efficiently to achieve intelligent applications.

In the near future, blockchain may be relevant to ordinary people, and sensitive people want to grasp the brand new opportunities. People have the desire to chase wealth, the desire to chase trends, and the desire to change the world. Different goals and different choices will lead each person to different directions, either to benefit society, or to do harm to one side, or to return to silence.

There is no evil technology, only people who use it maliciously; there is no good technology, only people who use it to spread goodwill. Blockchain technology will inevitably change some industries and reconstruct the way of social production; it belongs to this era, which is both great and dangerous, both a gift and a trial. For individuals, for companies, for countries, nothing is different.