Blockchain Insights: Dimitar Dinev. Agora family member & ex Head of BD at BTCC
Dimitar Dinev and Leonardo Gammar met in Shanghai at the headquarters of BTCC, they had a captivating conversation about voting and blockchain and have remained friends since. Dimitar is one of the founding team members of BTCC, the first and at its height the most popular crypto exchange in China. Being part of a team launching an exchange in one of the most closed countries in terms of capital flow is definitely brave, we look to Dimitar as a progressive free thinker and enjoy having him on our Agora advisory board. Leonardo and Dimitar can spend hours discussing the potential future of the industry or secondary market strategies. Below Dimitar shares with us his interesting and critical points of view on the Blockchain space.
“It seems that blockchain development is being fueled by ever-changing narratives.
I feel we’re in movement with distinct currents of discourse that ripple independently depending on which area of the globe they source.
In the USA the narrative tends to be financially oriented, with a lot of talk on regulation, the Wall Street ETFs, the industry being SEC compliant and how growth is sustained by infusions of capital from huge institutions.
Europe tends to focus on how the technology can improve our current operations. IOT, taxes, voting, sustainable energy etc. Which is basically a form of optimisation of expenses and better synchronization between different institutions.
The Majority World centers around the unbanked and how blockchain can help people gain financial inclusion, engage in commerce and take credit loans etc.
In Asia where I’m located we hear a consistent dialogue of speculation, immutability and authorization rights on capital flight.
As conversation and development continue to flow, I feel blockchain technology presently carries with it some trade-offs. With the blockchain trilemma in mind, decentralization, security and scalability. While it’s clear the technology can bring big benefits for some of the prevailing narratives but it is not yet efficient enough for others, we should take a more profound approach into understanding our industry and its influences.
To examine more closely we can break down the tech’s users.
We have the early adopters, the innovators, the speculators the tax evaders. These guys clearly realized the huge benefits it would bring them, these users were and still are willing to suffer the inefficiencies, due to the huge benefits being provided. Where we have users attracted to things like NFT, Digital Identity etc, we see a much greater number of people interested in these solutions, but those people are not willing to suffer too much inefficiency, because the benefits which they gain by using it are perhaps seen as not as great. Then we have the final group of people, the ones wanting to purchase a coffee or social media on top of blockchain. There are a lot of other ways to pay for a coffee, so the benefit which this would bring is very minimal. Therefore that group of people (which is the majority of the population) is not willing to suffer any inefficiencies which blockchain would have.
As the industry moves forward it is interesting to keep in mind that there seems to be a correlation between those willing to suffer inefficiencies with the users who swim in the undercurrent as opposed to those dipping their toes.
We spoke about the different narratives, now how do they develop?
We get a new narrative, lets say, a decentralized collateral like maker, everybody talks about it, people start building for it and a lot of money gets invested into it. A wave begins to form because speculators are driven towards the narrative in hopes of big returns, and prices rise. The rest of the world is now too late to catch the wave and they start to look for alternative ways to create their own narratives and make such amazing gains. So the question arises as to why should people continue to work on the old projects, when the focus switches and starts looking at the new narratives which could bring the same success. Eventually one of them wins, becomes the most prominent and the cycle starts all over again. So as you can see speculators are indeed a driving force in the industry.
And then there is the price growth loop.
There are 4 key points in the rotating circle, namely: price, speculators, users, belief, price. An increase in any of these powers a positive growth circle, so here again we see that speculators play a major role.
With all that in mind I believe the projects which will survive and become successful will be the ones who can keep the largest amount of users when that circle is in reverse (everything falling). The projects who have created a balanced ecosystem in which their biggest value is the gains of their users.”
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We the team at Agora thank Dimitar for his valued insights. Let us know what you think and connect with us in our Reddit and Telegram channels.
www.Agora.vote
