COTI’s successful visit to Japan, the land of the rising sun
The COTI team headed to the Far East to attend this year’s Japan Blockchain Conference that took place in Tokyo 26–27 June 2018. It was a week immersed with new friends, community members and innovative ways of exploring COTI’s technology.
Speaking at the conference
In his presentation, CEO Shahaf Bar-Geffen covered everything from COTI’s vision and the Trustchain protocol infrastructure all the way through to our Arbitration System and future applications of the Trustchain.
“As it stands, exchanging value today is not free.. at all. When you look at traditional payment systems and ways in which we exchange value, you will find high fees and slow settlements. You will see that two billion people around the world can’t use these systems and have no access to them. This means that merchants are losing money and losing the potential of commerce around the world. These systems have been ruled by a duopoly of Visa and Mastercard for the past 40 years”, explained Bar-Geffen.
COTI was also in attendance at the Tokyo FinTech Meetup, discussing cryptocurrency challenges, such as the lack of scalability and absence of regulation and buyer-seller protections. “Cryptocurrencies are completely unequipped to deal with situations where trust is broken when someone doesn’t deliver on what they say they will. Or maybe it’s a simple mistake, I wanted to press two, but I pressed twenty-two. This lack of protection is crucial when someone considers whether or not to pay with something,” commented Bar-Geffen.
The Japanese market is exciting
What a week it was in Japan. The conference was filled to the brim with blockchain newbies and large institutional companies like Toyota, Telecom and universities researching blockchain technology. We met over 8000 crypto enthusiasts in Tokyo who were all eager to find out how new technologies could be integrated into their daily lives. No doubt that the Japanese market is one of the most curious and innovative markets around — if anyone knows how to adopt new technologies it is Japan.
COTI’s meetings
Our days were packed with meetings, discussing creative ways of adopting COTI’s Trustchain algorithm. While COTI is poised to revolutionize the finance industry, it also has countless other applications, including IoT, logistics, smart contracts, data transfer and storage and more. We had the pleasure of meeting with Rakuten’s impressive team at their head offices in Tokyo. Rakuten is one of Japan’s largest conglomerates.
Moreover, we had the opportunity to meet the team from DeNA Co. LTD to examine interesting ways of solving real-world problems. We also networked with a handful of merchants and social organizations to discuss how the COTI Trustchain could be integrated into their business models.
Thank you Japan! Our first round of the Japan Blockchain Conference was a hit and we’re looking forward to next year. If you didn’t catch us in Tokyo, then gear up for our next conference in the far East taking place next week at Beyond Blocks in Seoul, Korea. See you there!