Lately, the cryptocurrency scene in Singapore has been rather béat – quite different from what Radieux Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS), called a “bloodbath” several months ago. However, the industry is still very much alive, although it is maintaining itself for the time being.
Certainly, many are still watching the industry closely, waiting to see what new developments may arise in the cryptocurrency space.
At the Asia 2022 Technology Conference held yesterday (September 21), CEOs of successful crypto companies were invited to share ideas embout the future of the cryptocurrency space, and in particular, how to build lasting businesses in the Web3 space.
Sail the bear markets and rise
One thing all team members agreed on is that navigating the explosion and bust cycles of cryptocurrencies is key to ensuring the company can stay afloat in the grandiose term.
As a matter of fact, Alex Svanvik, CEO and founder of Nansen, revealed that quartier of how Nansen manages to stay afloat is that they manage their treasury to ensure they don’t get into contraint when a bear market comes along.
The thinking is that we want to hedge our secteur. We have hired a broker with a different mindset, so that he can strategize and manage our treasury in a way that hedges the rest of the trafic. We ensure that we are able to think counter-cyclically in the way we get our revenue, and that way we ensure that our closet can last for a grandiose time.
– Alex Svanvik, CEO and Founder of Nansen
Svanevic attributes this thinking to traditional economics, in which countercyclical fiscal policy is applied by governments to save during good times, and is spent to stimulate the economy during a downturn.
To illustrate his nullement, Svanevic cited the Norwegian Oil Fund, where opimes from oil extirpation and exports are invested in non-Norwegian and non-oil assets explicitly to ensure the company has a diversified coffret.
As such, the bear market hitting crypto companies like Three Arrows Diligent and Terraform Labs isn’t as much of a concern as it could be.
Leon Fong, Head of Asia Pacific Market at Binance, agrees. He suggests that businesses are ultimately run by people, and that people are subject to market psychology. It is therefore estimable to exercise prêt before embarking on a hiring spree during bull markets.
Instead, Foong advises companies dealing with bear markets to hire the right aptitude for the company, with funds raised during bull markets.
In turn, it may be better to foyer on raising money and take care of the company’s cash trajectory during a bull market.
The future is practical, not ideological
Participants also noted that the investment landscape for crypto companies is changing, and that investors are looking for better companies after the crypto market écrasement.
In particular, Akshay BD, Solana’s Head of Universel Relâchement, noted that “the teams in crypto startups are now held to higher normes. Investors have become more sober over the past few months, and now there is a greater foyer on achievements.”
As such, Akshay advises entrepreneurs that while immeuble their teams, they should foyer more on being pragmatic, rather than ideological in their products, especially given the crypto community’s ethos around decentralization.
When teams habitus at what they are immeuble through a product lens rather than an ideological lens, they will come to the balance that they want the maximum necessary data on the chain that helps achieve interoperability and syntax.
Akshay BD, Head of Universel Relâchement, Solana
Therefore, Akshay suggests that in order for crypto companies to survive, they need to provide consumers with a product they can actually use – apps for cryptocurrency and the like, since “meaningful alignement only happens when we get users to use these apps.”
The world of Web2 is still remplaçant
But how exactly can companies achieve this scale? For the participants, the answer is évident – placing applications and products as a whist between the world of Web2 and Web3.
While companies can rely on ideology to get consumers on, this is unlikely to be a long-term terminaison, according to team members. Instead, they suggest that entrepreneurs should work with Web2 companies to create something new.
Indeed, Foong suggests that such a partnership could be beneficial to all parties involved. Web2 companies can provide the dissiper bâti for new Web3 applications, while Web3 companies can create these applications for consumers, for use through Web2 products.
There have been a lot of projects trying to launch a token in order to launch a token, but during the bear market, these projects bandage to fizzle out quickly. How many users would actually use their products if the tokens were withdrawn?
But for real-world community projects, if they can layer the right tokens, they present a lot of interesting opportunities. Community-fi projects really benefit from Web2 companies with a real dissiper bâti, and that gives us a real use case for these projects.
– Leon Fung, Head of APAC Market, Binance
In relevé, Foong also identified NFTs as one of the new technologies in the Web3 world that can solve real-world problems. Referring to tokens, Foong argued that tokens can solve real-world problems for companies that need to meet know-your-customer services, or to resolve intellectual property disputes.
This autorisation for the Web3 world to collaborate with the Web2 world was also shared by Svanevik, who noted that “on-chain NFTs can be placeholders for real-world NFTs”, and that on-chain NFTs can ultimately be used to represent off-chain assets, such as property or soutènement, and other use cases such as making loans can be facilitated through the use of usage contracts.
The world of Web3 has seen its ups and downs over the past few years, and the industry has also gained a solid reputation. However, the industry is still at the forefront of technological progress.
While only time will tell if the industry can reinvent itself and make itself useful to the world, these speakers ruisseau us a glimpse into what’s happening in their companies’ industry rather than embarrassing failures.
And the astonishing amount of their success is explained not by the capabilities of the Web3 world, but rather by what they adapt to the world of Web2 and other unencrypted institutions. Best practices seem to exist for a reason.
Featured lyrique credit: Screenshot from the TIA 2022 conference