Eva Kaili, European Parliament: “Blockchain Has Impact Everywhere”

From October 30th to November 1st, hundreds of blockchain professionals from industry and academia are joining forces in Athens, Greece at Decentralized 2019 to engage in workshops, talks, and networking. One prominent keynote speaker was Eva Kaili, whose talk was titled Strengthening European Communities with Blockchain, speaking as a member of the European Parliament.
Kaili starts off by discussing her background in the space:
“Coming from the European Parliament, the last four years I was trying to work more with this technology and find new solutions that centralization couldn’t solve.
Since then we’ve managed to explore a lot. We already have the European Blockchain Observatory, mapping all the blockchain initiatives in Europe, which also has a great newsletter; we’ve invested 140 million Euros since 2017 in areas most interesting to the government; we also did internal projects on identity issues.”
The EU and European Parliament have set a great standard for engagement with blockchain and are seeking to foster a supportive environment for blockchain companies:
“We’re building European blockchain services infrastructure, supporting interoperability and good governance. We’re trying to figure out the problems we face: How can we help benefit citizens with blockchain?
For Europe, the main focus was the regulation for how tokenization could impact us besides FinTech. The FinTech Action Plan will be concluded in the next couple of years. We need to include sandboxes to test the technology in a protected environment with support from the European Union.”
Besides this support and regulatory sandboxes, the EU is also offering capital:
“There’s a 300 million Euro blockchain investment through Horizon.
Blockchain infrastructure is also eligible for funding. More things that combine blockchain in other ways are already happening. In that way, more than a billion Euros in governmental funding is in related areas.
There’s a 5 million Euro blockchain for social good award. Around 170 companies applied for this award. They were struggling to convince politicians that it’s not controlled by CIA or terrorists. It’s a technology that can be used for good or bad, and our aim is to use it for good.”
When combined with other technologies, the potential impact of blockchain only increases:
“There are many blockchain applications beyond virtual currencies. Blockchain has impact basically everywhere. If you combine it with IoT or AI, and fitting these dots together, you can see a bigger impact.
Fees for banking systems are increasing, and it doesn’t make sense. We have blockchain, we have the technology to reduce the hidden fees and make things not hidden. Put a greater focus on implementing this technology in the core of the system and central banks.
We moved the crowdfunding limit from 1 million to 8 million. There would be another year before there’s specific regulation for ICOs.”
A number of steps are being taken by governments to foster a better environment, but the private sector is, of course, making moves as well:
“Libra became a big event in the space. It didn’t make sense for players like Visa to be on-board. In the end, you have to adapt, and it can be difficult to see it’s an unstoppable disruption. I love decentralization, but the governments and central banks don’t.”
Libra is a hot topic at Decentralized 2019, as are IEOs:
“The Initial Exchange Offering offers tokens through a partnering exchange rather than directly to investors. It has to be treated as a platform for investors. I expect that in the next couple years, there will be even more technologies regulators need to keep an open mind to.
Once we test blockchain and manage to solve the scalability issues then we can apply blockchain to help the citizenry.”
In closing, Kaili had this to say:
“There was a bit of noise with coins and exchanges driving prices up, but now we can see the potential is there and people are ready to explore the value that’s there. Not just speculation, let’s get the best out of the technology.”
