Interview with Babbitt | Well-known overseas team: What does the cryptocurrency community look like in the epidemic?

"Restart 2020" is a hot word on social media platforms since the beginning of the year, and it is our protest against the unfriendly 2020. In 2020, our favorite Kobe left the world, Spain suffered a super snowstorm, East Africa was caught in a locust crisis, and the new coronavirus raged around the world.

On December 1, 2019, the first case of new coronary pneumonia occurred.

On January 20, 2020, China notified the new crown epidemic situation in many places.

On March 6, 2020, there were more than 100,000 confirmed cases of new coronary pneumonia worldwide.

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On March 31, 2020, the Central Guiding Group: The spread of the local epidemic situation in Wuhan, which is the main battlefield, has been basically blocked.

On April 1, 2020, the cumulative deaths of new coronary pneumonia in the United States and France exceeded that of China.

On April 5, 2020, the number of confirmed cases of new coronary pneumonia exceeded 1.2 million.

… Working for a month at home gave us the idea of ​​"want to go back to work" for the first time, missed the pot of meat at the work station, missed colleagues who were "tortured" by daily work, and missed the boss' personal diss.

Although the cryptocurrency community has always favored distributed offices, due to the epidemic, the Chinese community has also ushered in more or less changes: offline activities have been transferred to online; cryptocurrency has turned from a small circle to the epidemic. As well as the areas linked to the entire economic situation.

After four months of struggle, the new coronavirus epidemic has been effectively controlled in China, and everything seems to have returned to normal. And overseas, many people are still experiencing our experience a month ago: shortage of medical resources, homes, and closures. Apart from the changes in life, will the overseas cryptocurrency community undergo some changes due to the epidemic?

Babbitt contacted representatives of 11 well-known project parties and the community KOL, from which they learned the current status of the overseas epidemic and some impacts and enlightenment on the cryptocurrency community.

* Special thanks to Joseph Young, Ren Yi (Biyuan Chain), Jeremy Allaire (Circle), John Robert Reed (Multicoin Capital), Zachary Rynes (DMM), Jake Yocom-Piatt (Decred), Zhao Changpeng (Binan), Josh Quittner (Decrypt), Muneeb Ali (Blockstack), Sergey Nazarov (Chainlink), and Adelyn Zhou (SmartContract) strongly supported this interview (in no particular order).

Home delivery, takeaway, home office, overseas epidemic situation at a glance

The well-known cryptocurrency analyst Joseph Young is currently in South Korea. He told Babbitt that the situation in South Korea has been completely controlled and all activities were suspended during the outbreak.

But the United States is not so lucky. Nearly 90% of the projects we interviewed were from the United States. The United States is currently the country with the largest number of diagnoses. Ren Yi, the person in charge of Biyuan Chain, said that although the government requires people to stay at home, the number of confirmed cases is still growing, and the resources for masks, isolation suits and ventilators are very scarce.

There are also contradictions in the US policy against the epidemic. Dach Foundation partner Zachary Rynes said that the US Centers for Disease Control and Epidemic Prevention issued a batch of test strips, but was later recalled because of problems. The identification of qualified test strips was initially limited. Fortunately, standards have been gradually relaxed. Due to the state autonomy of its states, only about half of the states in the United States have issued blockades.

Like us a month ago, almost all of them are in isolation. But for the cryptocurrency community, working from home is an advantage. Almost all interviewees told Babbitt that they were in a distributed office state before the outbreak, so the outbreak did not have much impact on their work.

Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov stated:

"This decentralized (office) model has given us more advantages in this particular period. Due to the optimization of internal processes and the reduction of related activities, our work efficiency has increased and we have more time to go Finalize product launch and deployment to expand our user base. "

Nevertheless, they also took a series of measures to help employees and colleagues through this isolator. For example, Multicoin Capital will regularly check the psychological and physical conditions of employees and provide indefinite sick leave; Binance promises to provide corresponding subsidies and necessities such as masks and so on.

Crisis and opportunity: the impact of the epidemic on the cryptocurrency industry

The most intuitive change that the epidemic has brought to the cryptocurrency industry is that offline conferences everywhere have been cancelled, and most of them went online.

In addition, we also learned about the changes in various areas of the overseas cryptocurrency industry under the epidemic through this interview.

The most impressive thing is that the outbreak of the overseas epidemic has caused turmoil in the global financial market, and the cryptocurrency market has not been spared. Joseph Young told Babbitt that this will only have a short-term impact on the cryptocurrency market. With the recovery of the global financial market, the cryptocurrency market will also rebound significantly. This has been confirmed, and Bitcoin has rebounded from a minimum of about $ 4,400 to $ 6,700 at press time.

Cryptocurrencies will become increasingly attractive. This is the signal that Babbitt received from most interviewees. Decred founder Jake Yocom-Piatt believes that the Fed ’s interests are closely related to politicians, banks and large companies, so its bailout plan will only protect such people. The Fed ’s policy of issuing large amounts of loans and lowering target interest rates will actually harm the interests of all dollar holders.

This situation is not unique to the United States. Jake said that all countries affected by the epidemic will have serious inflation problems in the future.

"Inflation will weaken the value of holding assets denominated in fiat currencies, and I expect this will drive interest in cryptocurrencies, especially those with exact issuance plans and a constant total volume."

Binance CEO Zhao Changpeng also believes that in this turbulent environment, cryptocurrency will get a very strong impetus.

Josh Quittner, co-founder of cryptocurrency media Decrypt, gave more intuitive data. In the past March, Decrypt's articles received more than 2 million views. This proves that people's enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies has not extinguished.

Stable currency may be the "best show" currency during the epidemic. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire revealed that in the past month, USDC's circulation has increased by 60%, and the circulation has reached 700 million US dollars.

"In the future, we expect that more and more companies in the world want to become more digital and rely on the security of blockchain-based digital currencies. With the outbreak of the global economic crisis, trust has been eroded, and the risk of counterparties has surged. This should It will promote people's demand for the use of digital currencies, especially stable currencies like USDC. "

In addition, the investment field has also seen the changes brought about by the epidemic. John Robert Reed, chief news officer of Multicoin Capital, has clearly observed that investment and financing initiatives have shifted from startups to investors.

"Before the outbreak, the financing environment was beneficial to the founders. Now, as market liquidity shifts to a safer area, we expect many transactions to slow down, and the terms will turn in favor of investors. Now it ’s time to judge everything Too early, but we have reason to expect that industry participants will seek more funds to extend their tracks, but these funds will only flow to the most powerful and adaptable market ideas, and weaker transactions will end. "

Data and privacy will become keywords in the future. Blockstack CEO Muneeb Ali said that with the outbreak of the outbreak, relevant departments will strengthen the monitoring technology to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, so it will prompt more attention to the autonomy and privacy protection features that decentralized technology can bring.

"This outbreak will make people pay more attention to data privacy issues and data rights. These two areas have a significant overlap with the cryptocurrency field."

In a crisis, what can we do?

Under the epidemic, there were no bystanders. At this moment, all walks of life are using their strengths to help control the epidemic and help the community overcome the difficulties. The cryptocurrency industry is no exception.

Not only did Binance raise more than US $ 200,000 in the community through its charity department, the company also donated US $ 2.4 million in cryptocurrency, in addition to some masks and medical supplies.

In addition to simple donation activities, DMM Foundation partner Zachary Rynes told Babbitt that many companies are developing tools for tracking new coronavirus data; smart contracts are used to track case transparency; zero-knowledge proofs and blockchain Used to safely share health data.

Decred founder Jake Yocom-Piatt reminded that with regard to the central bank ’s monetary policy crisis, the cryptocurrency industry should take the lead and design better monetary policies. Providing resilient value reserves during periods of high inflation and economic weakness helps individuals avoid the losses caused by falling into the legal banking system.

The above is what we are already doing. What should we do in the future?

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire believes that the cryptocurrency community should do more popularization work to make the world feel the security brought by the use of safe-haven digital assets, use blockchain as a medium for economic transactions, and conduct safe voting and governance , Continue to help achieve global integration and coordination.

Organize different teams to do valuable things. The perspective of John Robert Reed, chief news officer of Multicoin Capital, is not limited to current issues. He said that the cryptocurrency industry should focus on bigger issues. After the crisis, we need to solve many problems. Many people in the industry are already thinking about how to solve these problems. Therefore, keeping a low profile and continuing to do things is their criterion.

Blockchain is promising in data tracking of IoT devices. SmartContract CMO Adelyn Zhou gave an example, when medical products reach a certain link in the supply chain, such as customs clearance or hospital, you can send IoT data to the blockchain through the oracle network to trigger smart contracts.

What will the world look like after the outbreak?

After the economic crisis of 2008, we witnessed the rise of developing emerging market countries. After this year's new crown epidemic, we will also enter a whole new world. What will happen in the future? These interviewees gave their answers.

SmartContract CMO Adelyn Zhou: Everyone will pay more attention to personal hygiene. In addition, it will accelerate remote and distributed office. Those who are considering moving out of large cities are more likely to be determined. The company also prefers telecommuting. New technologies for distance learning and office will emerge one after another.

Cryptocurrency analyst Joseph Young: We can see a lot of different habits; it may be reducing expenditures, changing the currency system, and how we interact with others.

Ren Yi, the person in charge of Biyuan Chain America: I think everything will always return to normal, but people will cherish life and health more.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire: We will experience a long and difficult economic transformation, which may also include huge social and political challenges and turmoil. This will create new opportunities to reimagine how the world connects, integrates and solves problems together. However, to realize this series of new global possibilities will take time and a lot of intense and difficult struggles.

John Robert Reed, chief news officer of Multicoin Capital: The world will return to 'normal' at some point-most likely after the vaccine was developed. However, it will definitely change and hopefully develop in a better direction. There will be a clear response plan in the future to predict and prevent future outbreaks; when government officials require citizens to control future threats, they will be better prepared; business and supply chains will gradually expand to accommodate more work at home The company will have clear policies and response plans, which were generated during this crisis to inform the next deployment and so on.

Dach Foundation partner Zachary Rynes: Everything will return to normal, but the new 'normal' will be different from before. People will be more concerned about public health and may trigger more debates about border policies. This matter will take a while to pass, but it will eventually pass, and we will face another global problem.

Decred founder Jake Yocom-Piatt: There is still a lot of uncertainty about how the outbreak will develop, so the state of the world after the outbreak depends largely on what happened. To be sure, the ability to work remotely is becoming more and more important, and this is what Decred is already good at. The economic pain points caused by various segregation policies will continue to damage business models that rely on a lot of leverage and credit. Therefore, cryptocurrencies (such as Decred) that have their own funds will continue to operate smoothly.

Decrypt co-founder Josh Quittner: After the 9/11 incident, life did return to normal, only some changes were made (such as airport security). I think there will be some changes after the outbreak. I hope that countries around the world can better coordinate to prevent the next epidemic outbreak by communicating more effectively and sharing information more seamlessly.

Blockstack CEO Muneeb Ali: The world after the new coronavirus epidemic may be more digital. As more people move their lives online, they will begin to realize the importance of ownership and privacy. Governments and companies may use this crisis and others to strengthen data monitoring and limit data privacy. But in this process, we can't give control to political and corporate stakeholders, which is very necessary. I hope that relying on decentralized technology will enable us to deal with these new issues without having to force people to give up their privacy and autonomy. During the New Crown Epidemic, despite all the inconveniences, everyone's efforts and dedication paid off. Babbitt appeals to everyone here that the epidemic is not over yet. We still need to pay attention to prevention and hope that everyone can live a healthy and happy life. STAY SAFE!

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