finance: an autonomous future
TRANSCRIPT
Finance: An Autonomous FutureTom Ding
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Episode 1 From Internet 1.0 to 2.0
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Most powerful tech companies are sophisticated networks & protocols
w/o offering service directly
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they out-compete with superior network scale, cost-efficiency & user experience
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… while making themselves very rich via intermediary fees
AirBnB: $26b (15% fee) Uber: $62b (28% fee) eBay: $40b (10% fee)
Google: $500b+
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Yet we pay a huge price for this revolution: 1. Loss of privacy
2. Monopolistic pricing 3. Innovation deceleration cycle
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Traditional industry = Greedy Human (+ Network)
Internet 1.0 = Greedy Human + Code + Network
What about Internet 2.0?
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Internet 2.0 = Decentralized & Autonomous
DAOCompany as a Protocol
Run by logic Augmented by Human
Fully Transparent
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To achieve that, however, we need a new computation architecture that makes …
Robots with a Soul
Title TextTHE WORLD COMPUTER POWERING
INTERNET 2.0
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A decentralized Cloud powered by millions of
individual nodes
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This computer is unstoppable , always
honest, and never shutdown.
1. Produce App ($$)
2. Fight regulation ($$$$)
3. Educate market ($$$$)
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Unbundling Uber
1. App: startup + contributors ($)
2. Regulation: Converted (thanks to Uber) & Hard-to-regulate P2P anyway
3. Market education: Done
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DAOify UBER
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Decoupling Operation, Control & Profit
Driver Passenger
open source, developed by contributors
controlled & profited by voting token holders
Autonomous Transportation
Protocol
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And soon not even drivers …
Autonomous Transportation
ProtocolAutonomous Car Passenger
open source, developed by contributors
controlled & profited by voting token holders
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Letting go of the control is the hardest but crucial bit to reimagine new business model
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Episode 2 - Reimagining Finance
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Yet Financial Access & Innovation remain prohibitively expensive
We have 3 billion people connected online and $4 smartphone available.
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Half of the world unbanked 2.5 billion with no access to savings,
interest, remittance, loan or investment.
And the remaining half … vastly overpay for access or permission
to innovate
Latin America: 65%
2000 2005 2011$5,000$500,000
$5,000,000
despite general technology cost dropped 100x since 2000 …
East Asia & Southeast Asia
59%
Central Asia & Eastern Europe
49%
Middle East 67%
Sub-Saharan Africa 80%
High borrowing
interest
Expensive Banking
relationship
Outdated Bank API …
Cost of a technology startup
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Why can’t finance be a public infrastructure, just like transportation or water?
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A parallel autonomous financial system
Decentralized applications /
smart contracts Ethereum world
computerautonomous
finance protocol
developed by string, partners and contributors
controlled by community
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TRADTIONAL FINANCE
D-BTD-AAPL
LONDON: BT
NASDAQ: Apple
AUTONOMOUS FINANCED-EURO
D-GOLD
Synthetic asset tokens Tokens whose values reliably “mirror”
those assets around world
Global financial programming layer Enable low cost creation consumer finance,
business and risk management d-apps
Build consumer
finance Dapp
Lock the price of fertilizer
Create a trading bot
Financial programming the easy way..
if autonomous finance becomes reality, what happens?
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Micro deposit/
withdrawal
Micro investment Free
Remittance
A Freedom 251 smartphone, priced at 251 rupees (less than $4)
1 Global Access to
Assets For Free
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2 Getting back our deserved interest
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A Freedom 251 smartphone, priced at 251 rupees (less than $4)
3 New form of organizations and funding
paradigm
Crypto bonds DAO BondsDAO Equity
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Venture capital highly centralized and not much IPOs for the public
source: a16z
Under US Securities Act, startups can only solicit and take investments from accredited investors ($1m+ net worth).
That excludes 97% of Americans from startup investing.
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4 Engineers become the new bankers
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Lesson for Decentralization: Trade-off transactional inefficiency for
removal of rent-seeking