Interview with Babbitt 丨 Yu Yangmo, Chairman of RockTree: The application of non-currency blockchain to be verified by the market; Libra will be difficult to go online next year

In the 1990s, Zhongguancun, as China's innovation and entrepreneurship base and "China's Silicon Valley," after "reconstruction" by the earliest batch of Internet entrepreneurs in the 1980s, even though it was still "overwhelming", even the roads were "fluttering in mud." , But it is also “prosperous,” more and more foreign investors are looking at China ’s gold rush, including Ouyang Mo, a Chinese at first glance. In fact, Ouyang Mo is Omer Ozden ’s Chinese name. The Jewish foreigner was invited by the two founders of New Oriental Yu Minhong and Xu Xiaoping to start a business in China, that is, the "foreign sea turtle" that Xu Xiaoping called a "new species" has since witnessed and helped China's Internet industry take off.

When Ouyang Mo talked about his entrepreneurial experience in China, the most commonly mentioned was the "well cover story" of Zhongguancun. One day, as he passed a dirt road in front of the Zhongguancun office, he accidentally fell into a shadowy well without a manhole cover and got stuck in it. Fortunately, Yu Minhong saw him from upstairs and quickly pulled him downstairs. Up, this experience also makes people feel the difficult conditions of starting a business.

• China Blockchain Investment and Financing Census Report: The financing amount is only a quarter of that in the United States, and the most popular in digital asset related fields
• Blockchain landing application inventory: five major areas of application tell you "what can the blockchain do"
• Regulatory review: China reorganizes, US expands regulation, India delays decision

Xu Xiaoping, Ouyang Mo and New Oriental Team, Beijing, 1997

Twenty years later, Yu Minhong and Xu Xiaoping have already achieved fame and reputation. Ouyang Mo also witnessed the rapid development of China's Internet with his own experience, and also obtained multiple identity tags: Chairman of RockTree, international partner of Zhenge Fund, partner of DGroup / DFund, and Youku Workshop Founder . Since 2006, Ouyang Mo has served as Facebook's legal counsel, and attended two hearings on Libra in the US Congress in July and October this year.

Sharp eyes, preemptive layout

At the helm of Ouyang Mo, Shimu Capital is now continuously deploying new economies such as the blockchain industry. According to the information provided by Dr. Ouyang Mo, Shimu Capital has invested in 25 other new economic projects and 75 blockchain projects, including quantum chain, PI Network, etc., and has invested in Ethereum 3.0 projects Casper Labs, Renrenbit Wait. And their investment objects include not only equity but also tokens. And Shimu Capital has also been favored by other investment institutions, including Huobi Ecological Fund and Zhenge Fund.

China regulates exchanges and clears up, Ouyang Mo: This is a good thing

As the blockchain industry is promoted to the height of national strategy, the advent of the blockchain boom is also accompanied by the prevalence of some hype and speculation. In order to prevent the “resurgence” of cryptocurrency trading fraud, many Chinese regulators launched exchange crackdown operations. Ouyang Mo said that it is good for the government to start paying attention to and clean up the exchanges. Of course, some exchanges are also trying to communicate with the government, such as Huobi. He considers it important for the government to support cryptocurrency projects and exchanges that want to work with the government. However, the current number of exchanges is even more than the number of projects. For unregulated projects and exchanges, timely cleanup by the government is a positive signal for the sustainable development of the entire industry.

Ouyang Mo: The development of the currencyless blockchain needs market verification

The existence of cryptocurrencies, while providing incentives for the popularity of blockchain, has also contributed to the prevalence of market speculation. Therefore, the concept of a currencyless blockchain is gradually being valued and tried.

In Ouyang Mo's view, there are indeed many applications for the currencyless blockchain, but in the United States, some people have tried the application of the currencyless blockchain in the past few years. So far, there have been no successful examples. Looking back at the history of the development of the Internet, the purpose of using the Internet is to obtain information. Obtaining information through the Internet is the source of power for users to use the Internet, because this information itself is valuable, and the blockchain is a digital transmission of value. Although we do not deny that Coin blockchain can have many applications, but in terms of transmission value, if there is no token, the entire blockchain industry has yet to be developed and tried other equally open and transparent ways to provide incentives. The success of this experiment has yet to be verified by the market. .

Libra is unlikely to go live in 2020

Ouyang Mo was a New York partner of Baker McKenzie, the world's largest law firm. And since 2006, Ouyang Mo has become Facebook's legal counsel. On June 18 this year, Facebook officially released a white paper on Libra stablecoin. Since then, it has dominated the global news headlines for several months. The US Congress held two Libra hearings in July and October. The Libra wallet company established by Facebook Calibra director David Marcus and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg attended the hearing one after another, and Ouyang Mo also attended as a Facebook legal counsel and participated in the negotiations between Facebook and the US Congress.

According to previous reports, Libra is expected to be officially launched on the main network in 2020. However, Ouyang Mo is not optimistic about this time node.

Ouyang Mo said, I don't think so . I think more time is needed to persuade US regulators. I participated in the Libra hearings in July and October this year, and we held meetings and public hearings with members of Congress. A public hearing is more like a show, and what really matters is a closed meeting. Many people in the U.S. Congress and the government support cryptocurrencies and blockchain, but more people don't like Facebook because of privacy issues, so they don't like Libra. Libra's problem is its relationship with Facebook.

How Libra overcomes existing regulatory challenges for a smooth launch. Ouyang Mo has suggested that Facebook must make Libra's structure simpler. Currently Libra is based on a basket of currencies and the US dollar has the largest share, but we recommend that Libra should be changed to a single US dollar. Because in the United States, you cannot approve this for the same project without approving another. He also emphasized that Libra is not a cryptocurrency, but it can help improve the application of cryptocurrencies.

"DC / EP can let China show its economic influence and challenge the status of the dollar"

As Libra is in full swing, the People's Bank of China is steadily advancing the central bank's digital currency (DC / EP) plan.

Ouyang Mo said that DCEP will be a major step in the development of blockchain and enhance China's economic influence. Based on the way DCEP will be used overseas in the future, it will have an important impact on the trade economy in various fields. DCEP will provide China with an opportunity to demonstrate its global influence. I think one of the original intentions of Satoshi Nakamoto was to believe that the world should not be ruled by a single currency (that is, the US dollar). DC / EP will challenge the status of the dollar.

"The impact of STO is greater than Bitcoin, Ethereum and stablecoins"

STO is the issuance of tokenized securities. Under the established regulatory framework, legal and compliance tokens are issued publicly in accordance with the requirements of laws, regulations and administrative regulations. To many, STO will be an effective alternative to private asset securitization and venture capital financing.

Ouyang Mo has accumulated a lot of experience in the securities field. He led the RockTree LEX team to complete more than 120 public securities and utility token issuances in 18 legal jurisdictions around the world, and hundreds of securities private placements.

Ouyang Mo said that STO has many advantages. He believes that blockchain has brought 4 huge disruptive things: 1. Bitcoin; 2. Ethereum (ERC-20); 3. Stablecoin, I think this year is the year of stablecoin, like Libra; .

He believes that the impact of STO will eventually be greater than the first three, but it will take a little time, because the areas that STO disrupts are highly regulated. We had predicted that the STO would make some particularly significant progress this year, but it has not. However, STO will eventually become the standard securities model, which may take 30, 20, or 3 years. The current securities trading requires a lot of paperwork, takes a long time, and is very inefficient. T = 2, T + 3 brings a lot of tedious work. And the blockchain can make this process instant, very fast, and run around the world 24 hours without tedious paperwork.

Ouyang Mo: The development process of blockchain is very similar to the Internet. The Chinese government opened the door to the Internet at first

Ouyang Mo, who has been in the Chinese market for 20 years, has a deep understanding of China's supervision of new things. Regarding the current regulatory environment of China's blockchain, Ouyang Mo said that legal compliance is very important and that it is socially responsible. Whether you do something that contributes to human society and whether it helps people's living standards is very important. So you have to be as compliant as possible, because the current regulations are not clear, so 100% compliance is also a very controversial topic.

Regarding China's current crackdown on virtual currency exchanges, Ouyang Mo said that there are some exchanges defrauding users and these exchanges should be cleared. He believes that if you want blockchain innovation, you need a good regulatory environment. For example, Singapore, they have very good laws and regulations, and many blockchain companies are stationed there. And Switzerland, where they have clear regulations, like Facebook's Libra Association.

As a person who experienced the entrepreneurial wave of the Chinese Internet industry in the 1990s, Ouyang Mo emphasized that the development process of blockchain is very similar to the Internet. What happened to the Internet in the 1990s was that almost everything about the Internet was in a gray area or illegal. But that was the case at that time. The services provided by the Internet were not properly regulated, but people were still doing things, even though they were grey or illegal. Later, we created the VIE ("Variable Interest Entity") architecture, and the gray areas of the Internet became legal. But around 1999 and 2000, the winter of the Internet came. In the very long winter, the government decided to quickly open the door to help development and allow ICP and ISP to come in. If the government didn't move quickly to open the door, companies like NetEase would not be able to get enough funds at the time, and they would have to wait at least 2005 or 2006 to get investment. So after 20, in retrospect, if the Chinese government did not open the door quickly and support the development of the Internet in 1999 and 2000, today BAT may be another situation.

Ouyang Mo: Real innovation comes from startups

The prosperity of the Internet gave birth to the controversial giants of Baidu, Ali and Tencent. Will the blockchain industry give birth to its own BAT? Does the development of blockchain require only those well-funded giants?

Ouyang Mo thinks that startups and SMEs represent real innovation. In Silicon Valley, they call it "breaking things" and don't use old ideas. Real new ideas and fast-growing innovations come from startups and small companies. In the software development process, working with small teams is easier than working with large teams. Wal-Mart had a good platform 20 years ago, but they failed to do what Alibaba did. He feels that governments around the world need to realize that if they try to hand over blockchain business to large companies, they will not be able to get innovation, they may fail, they may not be able to move forward, they cannot be competitive.

Supporting corporate innovation has been one of China's major policies over the past four years. On the other hand, Ouyang defaults that many large companies with funds have encountered problems in creating a pure blockchain (non-currency blockchain), so they are looking for cooperation with small businesses that can truly create innovation. Even traditional industry giants such as JPMorgan Chase cannot compare with the innovative capabilities of American SMEs. Facebook is also unable to create blockchain innovations as good as small businesses. Most large companies spend too much time in the Comfort Zone. For them, it is very painful to step out of the comfort zone, accept new things, and establish a new corporate culture. Although these large companies have a lot of money, this is not a question of money, but a social trend of thought (ETHOS) or a culture.

Jia Nan Yunzhi listing is a good thing, but it still belongs to the traditional corporate listing

A recent new milestone in the blockchain industry is the successful listing of Jianan Yunzhi on the NASDAQ. As the first share of the blockchain, Jia Nan Yunzhi's successful listing has given many blockchain startups a glimpse of the industry's dawn and even believes that the blockchain listing wave is coming. Ouyang defaults that Jia Nan's successful listing is a good thing, which reflects the opening of Nasdaq to blockchain companies. However, as Ouyang Mo, who has been listed on the NASDAQ and NYSE for many times, he believes that Jia Nan is an ASIC chip and hardware production company, not a blockchain software company, so it is still a traditional enterprise. ASIC belongs to tradition. Mining is more like the real estate industry or related to energy resources rather than technology companies. ASIC belongs to the field of technology but is still hardware. It is a good thing for Jia Nan to go public, but it is different from what is usually called a blockchain company.

We will continue to update Blocking; if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us!