Blockchain and finance and investment

1.

On August 6, 2018, Mr. Cai Yi, financial instry consultant of Huawei Company and founder and CEO of Huaxuan technology, was in daga | blockchain & amp; AI (core group) made a special topic sharing, the theme is: the current situation and Prospect of blockchain finance. The following text is arranged according to the speech of the lecture and has been reviewed by the author

Cai Yi: Consultant of financial instry of Huawei, founder and CEO of Huaxuan science and technology, founder of shared reading association, member of China Writers Association, engaged in financial science and technology research for more than ten years, and is a senior expert in digital transformation of banks

good evening, everyone. I'm very glad and honored to share some thoughts with you here

let's make a simple self introction: my name is Cai Yi. I worked as a writer in my youth. I wrote some books, magazines and novels in the 1990s. At that time, there was no Internet. After work, I have been engaged in the information work of financial instry, from financial channels to data centers, from outlets to technology, witnessed the development of financial technology, and also found some problems. After 2014, I worked as an investment partner and in recent years as a financial instry consultant in Huawei. From the cognitive level, I worked as a consultant for the talent development of digital transformation in the financial instry

in 2015, I started Huaxuan technology and sharing reading club. At present, we mainly focus on the cognition of blockchain and the implementation of financial technology solutions. At the cognitive level, interactive sharing and knowledge management are carried out in the way of book club. At the technical level, the process and scene of the financial instry are reshaped by combining blockchain, big data and AI technologies. I am interested in blockchain and often study and discuss with some friends. Of course, some views are still superficial. I hope you can exchange more criticisms and corrections

the elite think tanks in the United States once believed that the core of maintaining global leadership is science and technology, which must rely on economy, and the core of economy is finance. So what is the future of finance

today's topic is: the current situation and Prospect of blockchain finance. I would like to introce it mainly from three aspects:

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briefly introce finance and financial system

the current situation of blockchain finance

prospect of blockchain finance

First of all, let's talk about the concept of finance. The word "finance" originated from Japan after the Meiji Restoration (1868), which is somewhat related to the gold standard established by Japan in 1897. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was introced into China from Japan. It was first proposed by Finance Minister Liang Qichao in 1902. At that time, Zhang Zhidong raised his objection. Therefore, after the Sino Japanese War of 1894, China remained in the silver standard, but it also made China avoid the Great Depression of 1929

The original meaning of finance is "money accommodation", which refers to the circulation of funds in the society. Later, its meaning has been expanded to indicate transactions and economic activities related to money and credit. In fact, there is another reason: gold used to be the only medium in international trade, and its value and wealth were based on gold. Therefore, when making standard gold bars, people need to melt gold into shape, which may be the original meaning of the word "finance", that is, to melt metal

Finance is the general name of currency circulation and credit activities and the economic activities associated with them.

let's look at the definition of Finance later: finance is the general name of currency circulation and credit activities and the economic activities associated with them. In a broad sense, finance generally refers to all the economic activities related to the issuance, custody, exchange, settlement and financing of credit currency, Even including the trading of gold and silver, the narrow sense of Finance specifically refers to the credit currency financing

In short, the contents of finance can be summarized as the issuance and withdrawal of money, the absorption and payment of deposits, the issuance and recovery of loans, the trading of gold, silver and foreign exchange, the issuance and transfer of securities, insurance, trust, domestic and international currency settlement, etc. To put it more bluntly, finance has two-way feedback. The institutions engaged in financial activities mainly include banking, insurance, securities, trust, financial leasing, etc. We all know this better and have frequent contact with it. Therefore, to understand the meaning and institutions of finance, we also need to understand China's financial system

2 China's financial system the development of China's financial system can be roughly divided into five stages:

initial formation stage, the first five years (1948-1953): the establishment of the people's Bank of China (1948). At this time, the PBC is far from what we want now. But it marks the beginning of new China's financial institution system

In the second five years (1953-1978), the people's Bank of China (PBC) is the only financial institution in China that deals with all kinds of banking business, integrating the central bank and ordinary banks. In fact, reunification means that we the model of foreign countries. I will not talk about specific countries

In the third five years (1979-1983), the Bank of China (established in 1912), the Agricultural Bank of China (established in 1951) and the Construction Bank of China (established in 1954) were restored or established one after another, but the people's Bank of China still integrates currency issuance and credit. We can see that after the reform and opening up, China's financial instry has developed very fast

the diversified financial institution system has begun to take shape. Ten years (from September 1983 to 1993): it has formed a financial institution system with the people's Bank of China as the core, the four major professional banks of instry, agriculture, China and construction as the main body, and other financial institutions coexisting and cooperating. After 1987, there were Bank of communications, China Merchants Bank, Shenzhen Development Bank, CITIC and Hengfeng. In 1988, Ping'an, Guangfa and Xingye appeared. Everbright, Huaxia and Shanghai Pudong Development Co., Ltd. appeared in 1992, and the Securities Regulatory Commission was set up in the same year

the stage of building and improving the social * * market financial institution system (since 1994): it has formed a relatively complete financial institution system with "one bank, three meetings" as the leading role, large, medium and small commercial banks as the main body, and a variety of non bank financial institutions as the auxiliary wing. In 1994, three major policy banks (China Development Bank, Export Import Bank of China and Agricultural Development Bank of China) were established. In 1995, Minsheng Bank, the first private commercial bank, was established (which is of great significance). In 1998, urban commercial banks emerged and CIRC was established. In fact, the CBRC appeared relatively late, and it was only established in 2003. Since then, the pattern of "one party, three meetings" has been formed. However, not long ago, the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission merged into the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission. You can pay attention to this

from the perspective of evolution, the normative research of finance is often linear

that is, we often take a certain evolution form as the standard (usually developed market economy system, such as the Soviet Union, Germany, the United States and even Japan), describe the progress path of the financial system from non marketization to marketization, from inefficient allocation of financial resources to efficient allocation, and focus on explaining the gap of the standard form and the reasons

In fact, we can find from the development process of China's financial system just now: since 1978, China's financial system has evolved in the direction of marketization, standardization, diversification and internationalization, All kinds of financial institutions show a "network" and "strong connection" business form, that is, the connection degree between banks, banks and other financial institutions, as well as financial sub markets has increased significantly, and the credit connection is increasingly close, mixed and complicated

the ecological environment of financial instry has also undergone some obvious changes. On the one hand, traditional formal financial institutions seek to speed up transformation and innovation, and strive to seize the opportunity in business strategy, market positioning, management structure, format and proct innovation. On the other hand, a large number of emerging financial institutions have emerged

financial format also presents new characteristics such as real estate financialization, non bank institutions "banking" and asset securitization

The above changes are beyond the imagination of the instry, regulators and policy makers, and will bring a series of impacts:

on the positive side, the scale and composition of the financial system have been expanded, the business expansion and financial service capacity of financial institutions have been improved, the financial market has been developed, and innovative payment has developed rapidly. That's what we're going to talk about in financial technology

in a common saying, when the forest is big, there are all kinds of birds. The negative aspects are mainly reflected in the following aspects: the interaction between the

financial system and the real economy tends to be complex, and the role of the financial system in promoting and amplifying asset bubbles is underestimated. p>

the reticulation and strong correlation of the financial system widen the gap between the financial instry and financial supervision, and weaken the effectiveness of traditional supervision. China's current financial supervision system has only been in operation for more than ten years

the transmission path and mechanism of monetary policy through the financial system have changed (the transmission chain of monetary policy has been lengthened or deformed, the conctivity and effectiveness have declined), and the initiative and effectiveness of regulation are facing new constraints. Since its establishment in 1996, the current monetary policy framework has been constantly improved in response to the development of economy and financial market, but the complexity of the financial system in recent years has put it to a new test. Broad money M2 is also impacted by financial deepening, electronic payment and other factors, and further weakened by the shadow banking system

all kinds of cross market, cross business and cross-border behaviors to evade supervision make a variety of risk factors intertwined, such as: capital pool operation with serious mismatch of maturity and procts hides large liquidity risk, proct nesting leads to risk transmission, insufficient shadow banking supervision, local debt, real estate, external shocks, etc., all of which bring great challenges to the stability of the financial system

without comparison, there is no harm, and China's financial system as a whole is relatively backward. This kind of backwardness is mainly reflected in the backwardness of bank innovation: the people's Bank of China announced in October 2015 to abolish the "interest margin protection", while the interest rate of the United States had been completely marketized as early as April 1986, and China was nearly 30 years late

3 the institutional framework and basic problems of China's financial system

Second, the * * third party acts as a credit intermediary to guarantee the realization of asset transfer transactions

the third is the transaction settlement and clearing completed by the centralized clearing organization

Based on this, there are also four problems:

1) credit system and trust mechanism. Traditional finance must have strict transaction records to accumulate credit. Without transaction records, it is difficult to achieve financing or loans, because there is no technical means to ensure the safety of transactions between the two sides

(2) transaction settlement takes a long time. The time of traditional financial transactions has been speeding up, but the settlement time is still relatively long, especially for cross-border transactions, which often can not arrive immediately

(3) the cost of intermediary service is high. The traditional financial transaction system is very important

2.

Blockchain technology has the advantages of being difficult to tamper with and easy to trace. It can play a role in identity information management, trust mechanism construction, and credit information chain of small and micro enterprises

here is an example of a bank in Nanping:

e to the outbreak of online business, the original offline signing method has been unable to meet the needs of the rapid change of the banking business, and the bank's digital construction is imminent, but the bank's risk control department has strict compliance requirements:

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online business data sensitive privacy, Is the transmission secure

does the electronic signature have legal effect

can electronic evidence be accepted by the court

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these concerns have become obstacles for banks to introce e-contracts and carry out business digital transformation

after adopting the unique ENA initiative forensics patent technology of the "real hammer" trusted electronic evidence platform, a bank in Nanping, through the clean server of the notary office, online carries out real-time preservation, storage and certification of the electronic data of the target system, records the whole process of the electronic data from generation, transmission to storage, and finally the notary office issues the forensics preservation report with official seal, The effectiveness of the documents is notarial documents, which can be directly accepted by the court. Because the report is issued by the notary office, it has more credibility than the self certification of the third-party E-contract platform, which solves the concerns of the risk control department of the bank at one stroke. The whole process is online and automated, and the front-end customer operation has no perception

at the same time, combined with the back-end case system of "real hammer" and the outsourcing execution service, the bank realized the rapid dispute resolution of Internet business. It not only ensures the compliance and effectiveness of the electronic contract signing process, but also solves the problem that the bank cases are scattered all over the country and the cost of legal business trip is high; The litigation cycle is long and there is no efficient disposal channel

3.

Blockchain finance is actually the application of blockchain technology in the financial field

blockchain is an underlying technology based on bitcoin, and its essence is actually a decentralized trust mechanism. Through sharing in distributed nodes to maintain a sustainable database, the security and accuracy of information can be achieved. The application of this technology can solve the trust and security problems in the transaction, and the blockchain technology has become an optional direction for the future upgrading of the financial instry. Through the blockchain, both parties of the transaction can carry out economic activities without the help of the third-party credit intermediary, so as to rece the cost of the global transfer of assets

extended data:

since 2016, the major financial giants have also heard the news and launched blockchain innovation projects one after another to explore the possibility of applying blockchain technology in various financial scenarios. In particular, Puyin group took the lead in creating a "blockchain +" standard digital currency. Standard digital currency refers to the process of assets identification, evaluation, right confirmation and insurance completed by a third party organization. After careful digital algorithm, it is written into the blockchain to form the standard corresponding relationship between assets and digital currency, which is called standard digital currency

in order to realize the great leap forward development of blockchain finance, promote the new development of China's economy, accelerate the global asset circulation, and realize the dream of rejuvenation that has been struggling for generations, Puyin group will hold the Guiyang strategic development ceremony of Puyin blockchain finance in Guizhou on December 9, 2016, at which the discussion on the realization of digital circulation of assets, block chain financial transaction mode, and block chain financial transaction mode will be held It also discusses the application of blockchain service and social public instry

4.

Fried coins or something

at present, the application of blockchain technology is virtual currency. Therefore, virtual currency is also known as the first real birth proct of blockchain. The popularity of virtual currency is also obvious to all, which has set off a frenzy of investment in many countries. According to foreign media reports, the number of virtual currency transactions in the United States has reached 5 million; South Korea is estimated to be the craziest nation in the world, with one in every 50 people speculating, and 31% of the working class buying and selling virtual currency; Venezuela has also issued the world's first virtual currency with the nature of national sovereignty - oil currency

with the popularity of virtual currency, market investors are not only satisfied with the conventional trading mode of buying low and selling high, but also actively seek more simple and convenient trading ways to obtain more profits. The virtual currency trend trading method was born and successfully captured the hearts of investors in a short time, becoming a major mainstream trading mode

according to

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, the trend trading method of virtual currency is exclusively launched by speedxo, an international financial service provider with deep experience. It mainly deals with the currency pair composed of virtual currency and real currency, and it can make profits as long as it is bullish or bearish. For example, if an investor trades in "bitcoin / US dollar", he or she only needs to judge whether the price will rise or fall after 30 seconds, and buy up or down according to the trend. If he or she buys in the right direction after 30 seconds, he or she can get 93% of the net income of the investment amount. It is this kind of rise and fall are profitable, time-consuming, no need to take advantage of the market, the trend trading method quickly swept the entire currency circle

5. EBay insurance (EHS) face insurance. Now the blockchain project is too complicated and messy. Finally, there is a project with guaranteed security issued by Qing blue ocean Silicon Valley blockchain Instrial Park.

6. Blockchain is a revolutionary underlying technology. Its original function is bookkeeping. As a distributed general ledger, it can solve the credit problem, notarization problem, audit problem, right confirmation problem, etc. of the ledger, as well as the digital demand of physical assets. Blockchain application scenarios are characterized by "new database, multi business entities and mutual distrust". The financial instry has the characteristics of low trust among participants and high requirements for transaction record security and completeness, which is very consistent with the application characteristics of blockchain technology. Therefore, the financial services instry is one of the instries with the most blockchain technology landing projects and the most abundant scenarios, such as supply chain finance, asset securitization, credit reference and risk control. In the financial field, blockchain technology can not only reform the financial infrastructure, but also play a synergistic role in the scenes of supervision, transaction, credit reference, virtual currency and so on. For example, in the traditional financial environment, supervision is managed by reporting data from various business organizations, which will cause many disadvantages, such as "black box" operation, decision-making delay and so on. However, under blockchain finance, with the advantages of information transparency and penetration and regional centralization, the regulatory authorities can grasp all business information at the first time. At present, Internet financial companies such as fox financial services are vigorously developing blockchain technology. Through the characteristics of decentralized blockchain technology and distributed storage, they can enhance user information management and enhance regulatory efficiency.

7.

1. Most people don't know what a blockchain is

compared with traditional stocks, real estate, bonds, gold, etc., blockchain assets are a very abstract and virtual form of assets. Blockchain assets represented by bitcoin are a very specialized computer language and program running mode, There is no credit endorsement from any country behind it, nor does any enterprise give it securitization income, which completely depends on the mutual consensus trust between strangers. In this case, although the operation logic of decentralization has been completed, its experiment is only in the initial stage and development stage, and participating in relevant investment is actually a kind of brave adventurer behavior

2. The price of blockchain assets fluctuates violently

because there is not much support from the use level of entities, many blockchain projects are completely dependent on community operation and market speculation, so it is difficult for investors to hold blockchain assets from the perspective of value investment, which leads to frequent capital flow, and the situation of price fluctuations has become a normal. A blockchain related token can soar by 500% in a day, or fall by 90% in a few hours. This kind of drastic price fluctuation is not affordable to ordinary investors

3. The uncertainty of national policies is too great

as an underlying technology, blockchain has basically accepted its value all over the world. However, as the "companion proct" of blockchain, there are still great disputes on national policies, and with the continuous increase of digital currency trading volume, the impact on the global financial market is also increasing. At present, the daily trading volume of the whole digital currency field exceeds US $60 billion, which is comparable to the trading volume of China's Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, or the average daily trading volume of the New York Stock Exchange. It is impossible to continue to operate outside the supervision. There is a very large regulatory game cycle, and the policies of various countries in this regard may be introced one after another, The impact on the market cannot be ignored

4. All kinds of blockchain projects are good and bad

blockchain technology is originally a very basic architecture technology. At present, e to the global pursuit of funds, many project parties who have nothing to do with blockchain begin to use the concept of blockchain to design procts, And can complete the writing of the white paper of blockchain in a very short time, and then raise market funds. In this case, the technical threshold of the whole blockchain has been lowered. Many companies without the strength and willingness of blockchain development have developed the concept of blockchain purely to obtain financial support, resulting in the flooding of projects. The gap between projects is widening, but ordinary investors are difficult to identify and easy to fall into the trap

5. Currency speculation is not equal to blockchain investment

at present, there are many views that blockchain and digital currency are a whole. You can't develop blockchain technology while suppressing digital currency. I agree with this logic, but currency speculation is not the same as blockchain investment in the real sense. The thing with real investment value must be the thing with scarce supply. If any digital currency is issued, it can represent the application value of the blockchain and bring some innovation to the society. Then any blockchain technology team that can issue digital currency can issue dozens of digital currencies and change its name in a very short time. Therefore, digital currency itself has little logical relationship with blockchain assets. Blockchain projects must be a market with obvious scarcity, but digital currency does not have great scarcity. This is like saying that any Internet company can develop a chat software similar to wechat, but the chat software itself does not have much value. The real value lies in how many people participate in the chat software. Digital money is just a chat software. The current situation is that everyone is frying the software, and few people are concerned about what is on the software. p>

6. Short term overheating, easy to be used by lawless elements

the particularity of the blockchain instry is that many of the ecology has become very financial, in the whole process of operation, capital will be very concentrated, and most of the links are related to capital. From raising funds by ICO to sending tokens to investors, to online trading of exchanges, and trading of tokens by users in exchanges, the whole process is almost full of financialization. If the practitioners are not professional enough, have no self-discipline ability, and lack of supervision, then every link may be used by criminals to manipulate the market, Obtain all kinds of illegal income

In order to catch up with the next round of financial technology and digital revolution, Japan holds a very open attitude towards bitcoin and other transactions. Digital currency transactions denominated in Japanese yen occupy half of the whole legal currency trading area in the world, Japan hopes to use digital currency to revive its financial competitiveness. The United States hopes to use mainstream financial markets, such as futures and options derivatives market, to tame bitcoin and make it another powerful tool for us dollar hegemony. And China is also trying to promote sovereign cryptocurrency, one of the important purposes is to promote the internationalization of RMB. The field of digital currency and blockchain assets is likely to become the next big country's game and contention point, which will virtually increase the systematic risk to investors. It's hard to know what unexpected policies appear behind this big country's game and what impact they will bring to the whole market

8. The threat of quantum computer

blockchain generates a set of self-motivated system to ensure that it can run on its own under decentralized conditions. Most of them use asymmetric encryption, and use the corresponding public key to verify the transactions signed by the private key, so as to ensure that bitcoin and other blockchain assets can only be used by legitimate owners. But quantum computer can solve the problem of asymmetric encryption. Quantum computer can calculate the private key from the public key in a few minutes. After knowing all the private keys, people with quantum computer can spend bitcoin and other digital currency at will. Of course, when the quantum computer will come out is also a problem. The digital currency protocol is constantly adding new encryption standards, but the potential threat brought by the quantum computer has to attract the attention of investors

9. There is a possibility of a big reversal in the supply and demand level

the market value of the blockchain token market has hovered around us $trillion. Although OTC funds are still pouring in, the stability and growth rate of the capital inflow are questionable. The supply of encrypted digital currency is a very embarrassing thing. From the perspective of a single digital currency, the total amount is strictly limited. For example, there are only 21 million bitcoins, but the threshold of issuing encrypted digital currency is getting lower and lower. Anyone and any organization can issue encrypted digital currency anytime and anywhere, and the supply is almost unlimited. On the other hand, the increasing transaction cost is restraining the demand side. At present, investors in the transaction link need to pay the transaction fees in the exchange, and also pay the miners' fees when transferring money. If countries begin to tax digital currency transactions in the future, it means that this market will have to bear more operating costs without generating its own profitability, If coupled with the increasing supply level, the overall market supply and demand expectations may reverse in a moment

10. Lack of legal protection for blockchain assets

it is not uncommon that global digital currency exchanges have been "hacked", and in the process of all kinds of over-the-counter and on-the-spot transactions, fraud also occurs from time to time, and the legal protection for investors is very limited. Especially for domestic investors, once they are stolen or cheated because of trading digital currency, it is almost difficult to recover effectively. Due to the lack of intermediary guarantee from banks and other levels, the security of digital currency is entirely under their own responsibility. Although this is in line with the logic of self preservation of private property, it also brings greater uncertainty to the storage and transaction of digital currency assets. Before there is no complete legal system to protect the rights and interests of personal digital currency assets, the legal security of investment in blockchain related assets is a very serious problem

8. Hello, there is a public service platform of SMIC blockchain (Changsha) in 2020, which seems to have cooperated with Bank of Changsha.
it is an application case of bank blockchain in Hunan, you can check more information to understand
hope to help you.

9.

From the perspective of the history of human technological development, real scientific and technological innovation is often suspected at the initial stage, even Einstein's theory of relativity. However, it seems that blockchain has not experienced this kind of scientific query, but has been hyped since the concept was launched. However, several years have passed since its launch. People have not heard of any country or company that has really solved practical problems with blockchain technology and created new value. If a technology has few practical effects, but many people say it is good, we can not rule out the suspicion of hype

at present, China's prevention and control of systemic financial risks has entered a new stage, with tight time and heavy tasks. However, whether it is to improve financial efficiency or prevent and control financial risks, blockchain may not be a good helper. In this sense, in order to prevent emerging financial risks, it is better for blockchain to stay away from finance

content source: Economic Daily