Bixin Dialogue with Nic Carter: Bitcoin’s Zodiac Year

textFidelity’s crypto journey actually started around 2014.(Although blockchain as a technical term was not really widely used at the time). Fidelity's strategic planners at the time believed that innovations like tokenization on bitcoin had the potential to impact its clearing and settlement business, a large but uncompetitive business unit. In fact, it was a low-profile threat in that exercise, but CEO Abby Johnson said she was interested in blockchain, so other executives raised it to the highest threat level.

Therefore, starting in 2014, Fidelity made many attempts to enter the blockchain industry. They issued bitcoin wallets to senior executives and let them buy things in stores in Boston. But it turned out badly: Most store clerks didn't know how to accept bitcoins, even though the store said "Bitcoin payments are accepted here." They finally managed to pay with Bitcoin at the cafeteria at the headquarters at 245 Summer Street.

textFidelity has backed a number of venture funds targeting crypto and bitcoin strategies.They joined many private blockchain initiatives, but without success. Fidelity held a weekly meeting called the Steering Committee where Abby and senior executives brought in key figures from the cryptocurrency industry – Vitalik, Gavin Andresen, etc. Importantly, unlike other financial institutions, Fidelity's top management believes in this technology.

textFidelity eventually realized that the best opportunity was in the custody business, where they already had a large enterprise-scale line of business.Fidelity Digital Assets，Therefore, in 2019 they formedis now an important business unit of the company,text

at last,at last,That's what I was hired to help manage (I was also educating executives in-house at the time). So I'm not technically the first employee at the company to focus on crypto, because they have an Incubation Labs division, they have a product team that works, and they have a strategy team that works on crypto, but I'm the first Buy-side investment analysts working in the field. In 2017, our managed funds were the top performing funds of Fidelity funds.

textFidelity has taken off so quickly, thanks in large part to CEO Abby's aggressive attitude. But despite this, it took five years for their first customer-facing product FDAS to launch.In 2017, the most common question asked by Fidelity customer service was: "How do I get access to Bitcoin?".text

The story of Fidelity's exposure to Bitcoin sounds really interesting. Thank you very much for sharing so many stories behind it with us. Fidelity's early exposure to this industry really deserves our respect. One of your current identities is a partner of Castle island. Why did you decide to start building Castle island after leaving Fidelity? What is the investment thesis/strategy for Castle island?

We left Fidelity in June 2018 with the decision that we wanted to pursue an early-stage venture strategy specifically for the crypto market. Unfortunately, we are somewhat limited in what we can do and what we can say due to the confidentiality requirements of working in a large institution and the constraints of making investments. We wanted to be completely independent, so Matt Walsh (my former boss at Fidelity) and I left the company and raised a seed stage venture capital fund. To our credit, Fidelity became our early lead investor and remains our largest investor today.

textOur strategy is simple:We believe we are in a multi-decade "period of monetization of new money commodities," with Bitcoin being the largest and most attractive currency.We believe that a large amount of financial infrastructure needs to be built to support the development of encrypted digital currencies, andThe cryptocurrency industry and the conventional financial services industry will complement each other and become one with each other in unprecedented ways.text

In the past two years, we have begun to see the dollarization of stablecoins from USDT, USDC to Libra in the market. In addition, Bixin also has a stablecoin USDS. Do you think the use of stablecoins will increase in the future? What are the main differences between stablecoins and central bank-backed digital currencies?

textThe rise of "stablecoins" or "crypto dollars" is the most important phenomenon happening in the crypto industry right now.Fundamentally, they are a better financial rail than the traditional financial system, and we are now seeing regular commerce starting to be denominated in "crypto dollars", which is no longer limited to crypto or verticals.

textI think stablecoins will continue to grow unless they are restricted in the US or EU.The U.S. dollar provides a lot of value to the strategic position of the United States, and the U.S. dollar maintains a central position in the financial system through the SWIFT system. About 97% of stablecoins denominated in U.S. dollars are not beneficial to the United States. In the future, there will be many stablecoins denominated in U.S. dollars that will not be controlled by the United States. butThis is good for consumers, as many people around the world want frictionless access to dollars.Whether these stablecoins can prove their resilience will be a major concern for investors.

textStablecoins offer users the ability to regain cash in a digital environment, meaning privacy and the freedom to transact with anyone without political sanctions.on the other hand,on the other hand,A CBDC may have strict monitoring and may not provide true transactional privacy.text

Speaking of regulation, regulators have been quite active in the past few quarters. We have seen that many major exchanges and projects in the industry are in contact with SEC, CFTC, FinCen and NYAG. What do you think about the future our industry will face? What are the forecasts for regulatory challenges?

textIn the U.S., the business model of token sales to the public to fund blockchain projects is over.text

text

texttext

Do you agree that blockchain development is similar to the early internet? What's the difference?

text

First,First,text

second,second,text

third,DeFi . As far as I know, there may only be about 100,000 people in the world actively using DeFi products. I think these will eventually make their mark on trading in financial services and DEXes, but there hasn't been much development beyond that because they are difficult and complex to use.

texttext

2020 has been a full year for all of us. The global economy and environment have experienced instability. The Federal Reserve recently announced that they will start buying back corporate bonds. Coupled with the endless quantitative easing policy, Do you think we will actually see a recession in the near future? Do you agree that Bitcoin can be a safe-haven asset during a recession? Especially in the case of hyperinflation.

textThe Fed may be able to successfully stave off a recession by inflating asset bubbles and propping up businesses,Bitcoin will do well in both, and it will shine especially brightly in the case of inflation.

What is your favorite public blockchain and why?

textDefinitely like Bitcoin the most, I am a believer in Bitcoin, becauseIt's been going for eleven years, it has its own story, it's not going away anytime soon, and it's very stable.If it is to be a global currency, the base layer should be stable and predictable. I think there are a lot of interesting innovations happening on Bitcoin, including Bitcoin smart contracts, that are underappreciated in the industry. There are many other areas where different innovations are happening,I can't say the same for many other blockchain projects.

I believe that many people in Bixin have the same belief in Bitcoin as you. One of the most exciting things about the overall industry is its cross-border and global nature. When looking at global projects at Castle Island, what do you see as the main differences between the Eastern and Western ecosystems?

textThere are a lot of retail-oriented dapps, payments, and gaming use cases in Asia, but not in the US. In the West, there is a greater focus on investment use cases, new L1 protocols, and in some cases DeFi experiments.

I would also say that mining and PoW is not so much focused in the West, which makes sense since most mining is happening in China, Central and Southeast Asia. In the west, some people feel that PoW may be outdated and PoS chains are the future (I disagree), so mining has been given less emphasis, which in my opinion is a shame. In the end, people in the US were very suspicious of Tether and thought it was a scam, wondering who was using it and why. Because of the academic and news coverage here, many people think it ended in destruction.

textI think it is trusted more in the East and has more uses. therefore,Although public blockchains are global, we will definitely see people in different regions have an affinity for some projects and what they are trying to achieve with the technology.Like anything, there will always beYes, that's what makes this industry so special.

first level title

Under the current economic development environment, the sovereign currencies of some developing countries will gradually disappear. How do you view this issue? When such a situation occurs, can the digital currency industry replace banks and provide them with services, such as storage functions?

textBecause of the blockchain, the sovereign currencies of many countries are slowly being affected.But the impact of weak sovereign currencies in the next decade will be great.

textThe demise of sovereign currencies in vulnerable countries has the following three factors:The first is that their country's debt is too large compared to GDP,Therefore, in order to repay the debt, the currency can only be devalued or a crisis will occur;The second point is that the continued growth of the U.S. dollar will gradually depreciate the sovereign currency;The third point is that the encrypted digital currency industry can provide these countries with a better frictionless financial system,

More and more products, such as Bixin Wallet, can support fast on-chain and off-chain transactions and storage of cryptocurrencies.

The new products of Grayscale and Fidelity have been a very popular topic in China recently. What do you think of the products of these two organizations? What are the differences between them? What does their product mean for investors?

Grayscale is the issuer of GBTC, and the buyer is actually a retail user. Institutions do this mainly because GBTC will generate a premium compared to BTC, and they use this method to absorb all the bitcoins on the market.

textGBTC is currently more like a financial product, and consumers can purchase it in their own name. Fidelity is more for the custody business of large institutions, helping them store Bitcoin, and they have a very complete supervision mechanism.

texttext

The price of Bitcoin has not risen significantly after halving. Does this have anything to do with the current epidemic situation in the United States?

textKnowing that this is going to happen, prepare ahead of time. But also because of these operations, the price of Bitcoin has not increased significantly.

texttext

We can see the correlation between the encrypted digital currency market and the US stock market, so if the US stock market continues to fall, will the price of Bitcoin also get lower and lower?

textThis correlation was very high in March this year. After March, we can see that this correlation is getting weaker and weaker, and we can also see the Fed's determination to support the US market. So in the future we can see that the U.S. stock market will gradually improve, and Bitcoin will also get better and better.Therefore, there is no item that can completely resist market risk.

In the future, if there is a banking system based on encrypted digital currency, is it any different from the current banking system or the gold standard system?

textIn fact, we now have banks based on encrypted digital currency, that is, exchanges.The exchange has issued a stable currency, which can be equivalent to a multinational bank.

textGold is actually more difficult to authenticate, and the storage is centralized, which is difficult for us personally to access. and; This is different from the current traditional banks.

Will incidents like 312 continue to occur in the market in the future? Does the digital currency industry have a solution?

I have discussed this issue with the CEO of Bitmex. Take them as an example. Bitmex did not have a good circuit breaker mechanism at that time, and Bitmex used Bitcoin as a margin, so liquidity was also a problem. Then when the price falls, the value of the margin will become less and less, which will become a vicious circle. And like other exchanges, they use stablecoins or other currencies as margins, so their margins will not shrink as the price of Bitcoin falls. This is a problem for them to solve.

(The content of the live broadcast is the personal opinion of the guests and does not represent the position of the platform)

Bixin is a blockchain asset platform that integrates wallets, transactions, and social networking. Currently, it is open to fiat currency transactions, one-click instant swaps, loans, leverage, co-management wallets, guaranteed payments, mining machine malls, YBay, and Bixin Group Live streaming and other core functions.

Bixin is a blockchain asset platform that integrates wallets, transactions, and social networking. Currently, it is open to fiat currency transactions, one-click instant swaps, loans, leverage, co-management wallets, guaranteed payments, mining machine malls, YBay, and Bixin Group Live streaming and other core functions.

Bixin, a safe and easy-to-use blockchain wallet.