Lisk Asia Tour 2017 Recap
Disclaimer: We met with more than a dozen Blockchain projects and exchanges during our Asia tour. At Lisk, we believe in transparency but due to the nature of the conversations we had, as well as specific requests not to, we cannot divulge many details about these meetings.
After returning from Asia, we couldn’t be more excited to share details from the tour. Our two and a half weeks in China, South Korea, Japan and India were filled with conferences, meetings, networking events, as well as newspaper and television interviews. We met with numerous Blockchain projects, cryptocurrency exchanges, developers, investors and community members from many different backgrounds — ranging from young to older, developers to investors. We feel invigorated by Lisk’s overwhelmingly positive reception in Asia, as well as the community’s strong anticipation for what the future holds.
But before we tell you all about the tour, we would like to answer two key questions.
What was the purpose of our trip to Asia?
Asia is increasingly becoming a large target market for Blockchain companies and cryptocurrencies. Across the continent, nearly all payments are being conducted online, therefore the barriers to entry for cryptocurrencies are much lower than other regions around the world. By visiting Asia, we sought to strengthen our already-existing connections in China and enter the South Korean, Japanese and Indian markets where we see huge potential for the adoption of Lisk.
The rapid development and high-growth economies which Asia has produced in recent years has inspired and enabled a large generation of risk takers, fuelled by an entrepreneurial spirit. This can-do and know-how attitude is precisely what we envision an individual should possess in order to create Blockchain applications on the Lisk platform.
What do we believe is the future of Blockchain in Asia?
Asia has a reputation of embracing new technologies, placing the continent at the forefront of innovation. Therefore, we believe that the future of Blockchain in Asia looks very bright.
In China, we are currently seeing a crackdown on cryptocurrencies. However, we believe that this is all part of an inevitable transition towards a sound legal environment for Blockchain, cryptocurrencies and ICOs. Once these initial issues are addressed, we will continue to see more and more young entrepreneurs creating very promising Blockchain startups. They will disrupt Asia and the rest of the world. In South Korea, we are already seeing many Blockchain startups and Blockchain-focused TV shows and podcasts. It is truly an exciting time for tech entrepreneurs specializing in Blockchain.
Shanghai, China
The tour commenced in Shanghai with Wanxiang Blockchain Lab’s third annual Global Blockchain Summit. We spent the first day attending keynote sessions and meeting other Blockchain professionals, learning about the cryptocurrency landscape in China, South Korea, Japan and Australia, especially in regards to the current regulatory environment. A great deal of time was spent networking with and educating investors, capital funds, press and media. Among them were Remington Ong of Fenbushi Capital, Ronny Boesing and Aviva Õunap of OpenLedger, Johnson Zhao of NEO, Oleg Ivanov and Andrew Yudin of Crypto Bazar, and many more. BTC Media conducted a short interview with Thomas about Lisk and the future of Blockchain technology. Thomas also spoke to Bryce Wells of BTC Media regarding a possible collaboration to co-host Blockchain events and hackathons around the world. Most keynotes and conversations were related to two popular topics: ICOs and regulation. Many people asked us to share their opinion on the regulatory situation in China and in the rest of Asia. We believe that the current situation in China is proof of how big of a topic Blockchain and cryptocurrencies have become. With something so disruptive, regulatory hurdles are simply inevitable. Our industry, including Lisk, should focus on two things: enhancing the technology of disruptive projects and provide extensive education to governments so that they can introduce proper regulations.
China’s regulatory announcement came right before we arrived in Shanghai. Due to resulting uncertainties, we had to cancel the Lisk Meetup in Shanghai which had been organized by our Chinese Lisk Ambassador. We spent our second day in Shanghai meeting with Lisk investors and delegates at a traditional teahouse in the center of town. Huddled around a table full of tea and snacks, we got to know each other a bit better, shared future plans and gave one another feedback. We enjoyed finally meeting these faraway Lisk delegates in person. Among them were developers, as well as big investors and Blockchain entrepreneurs. The developers shared with us what they plan to do with the Lisk platform. Most of them came to Shanghai to see us from cities in eastern China. All of them have been involved with Lisk since the very beginning. It is so humbling to know just how large the Lisk community is in Shanghai.
Originally, the Token Summit was slated for our final evening in Shanghai, but due to the regulatory situation, a dinner party was organized at the Shanghai Tower Mall instead. Over delicious seafood and live music, we networked with many interesting people. Just to name a few: Gordon Chen of FBG Capital, Tony Tao of NEO, Daniel Zakrisson of CoFound.it, and Jani Valjavec of ICONOMI. Given the casual and informal setting of the dinner party, it was easy to chat, exchange thoughts and pitch Lisk to as many people as possible.
Seoul, Korea
A few hours after touching down in Seoul, we met with The Blockchainers. See Eun and Younghoon are two talented Korean developers with a great passion for Blockchain technology. Their YouTube channel aims to educate people about Blockchain and projects like Lisk. Due to their strong anticipation for Blockchain to play an important role in the future, they quit their day jobs to focus full-time on their YouTube channel and Blockchain projects. They let us crash at their apartment during our time in Seoul in exchange for an in-person interview with Max. The interview was more in-depth than Max’s previous remote interview with them in early September. The Blockchainers truly jumpstarted our entrance into the emerging South Korean Blockchain industry by putting us into contact with local projects, crypto enthusiasts, investors and major exchanges. Lisk exchanged thoughts with people from other local Blockchain projects such as Youngkun Kim of 3K Software, Saehan Park and Bokyung Min of MediBloc.
During our short stay in Seoul, The Blockchainers informed us that cryptocurrencies are quickly saturating the South Korean market and that ICOs have been increasingly gaining traction since the beginning of this year. However, The Blockchainers see the lack of Blockchain comprehension as an obstacle to quick adoption. Fortunately, many people do understand what Blockchain technology is capable of. Both See Eun and Younghoon are also professional translators and have even offered to help us translate the Lisk Academy content in the future to help educate the public in South Korea.
On our second night in Seoul, we co-hosted the Blockchain Korea Meetup with The Blockchainers and Ash Han, co-founder of the network for Blockchain interoperability Cosmos. After pitching the Lisk project, we were gladly overwhelmed with questions from the audience, which mostly consisted of developers. The upcoming SDK was the main topic of discussion. The questions we received regarded scalability to modularity of the SDK, as well as the evolution of the currently informative website to an application platform.
Max was also invited to be a guest on Korean television program Coin №1 to discuss the future of Lisk and Blockchain. The show was broadcasted on national Korean television. He explained that “usability factors play an important role for Lisk” and “current implementations are too complicated to be used in today’s society”. Lisk’s goal is to address and solve these problems.
On the last evening, Hans Lee invited us out for dinner at his restaurant The Jell in downtown Seoul. He has two passions in life — wine and cryptocurrencies. He has travelled around the world to select the best wines to import to South Korea. His restaurant has a huge wine store in the cellar. He accepts several cryptocurrencies as payment. Could we create an application on Lisk that wine connoisseurs like Hans Lee might benefit from?
Tokyo, Japan
Only a few hours after touching down, Lisk co-hosted its first of two meetups with Charlie Taka and Akihiro Sakei of Blockchain-Labo. We are incredibly thankful to the local Lisk community for helping us connect with the greater Blockchain community in Tokyo.
Due to the outstanding interest received by the first meetup (350 sign-ups!), a second meetup was added to the roster, which again saw an attendance of over 300 people. Both meetups were so crowded that a second screen was added to the back of the room so that the entire audience could see our presentation slides. Our Japanese fans were very welcoming and even created a signature hand sign for Lisk. The crowd was so diverse — from young developers to older investors. Both of us were interviewed by journalist Ohori Tatsuya of The Weekly Economist. We discussed what motivates us to work in Blockchain as well as the Lisk ecosystem, upcoming products and plans we have. Lisk pitched to major exchanges in Japan and we met with many investors. We also met a number of local Blockchain projects, including the likes of Asamitsu Kosugi, Kazuya Fujimori and Shunsuke Kubota of Advasa. The potential for them to build their application on Lisk was discussed.
It was quite a whirlwind meeting so many interesting people in only two days, but we did make some time to sample the local cuisine that we were most looking forward to — sushi. We discovered a small sushi restaurant where we depended on local guests to let us know which different fish we were eating. Typical of sushi restaurants in Tokyo, this place could only seat up to 10 people, so we felt really fortunate to have gotten spots. The sushi was easily the best we’d ever had in our lives. We had such an amazing time in Tokyo. This trip to Japan is definitely our first of many. Due to the success of our time in Tokyo, we will be returning next month.
Mumbai, India
Our time in Mumbai was short and mostly spent at the conference India Blockchain Week, which was co-hosted by Ish Goel, CEO of Somish. On the first day of the conference, Max sat on a panel alongside Goel, Mike Costache of Krowdmentor, Anirudh Rastogi of TRA Law and Saju Abraham of RightMesh called “ICOs — What’s the heat all about?”.
On the second day, Lisk was featured as one of the key presentations, where we gave a status update and an overview of future plans. After the presentation, we were overwhelmed with questions, suggestions and photo requests. We were approached by several people interested in working for Lisk in India. We met many people in the Blockchain community in India, such as Akshay Aggarwal, Manav and Kumar Anirudha of Blockchained India, who will help us out get Lisk off the ground there. We also met people from more traditional financial services companies, including Prasanna Lohar of DCB Bank and Stefano Colombu of Yes Bank Limited.
We also had the chance to meet with one Indian exchange that expressed deep interest in Lisk although we can’t name the exchange just yet. Through them we’re hoping to give millions of people in India access to our utility token through the fiat currency of Indian rupee in the next few months. We even planted seeds for potential partnerships after meeting Harvard Medical School healthcare researcher Alexander Peters, MD and Avishma Matta, an innovator at PwC. Harvard University is interested in potentially working together with Lisk to develop Blockchain applications that tackles the issue regarding the lack of interoperability between different medical records. There was talk of a potential hackathon with MIT once the SDK is released.
TKI Dinalog program manager Martijn Siebrand also gave an interesting presentation at the conference. He is implementing Blockchain solutions for bigger firms. He was interested in discussing the potential to utilize Lisk as an application platform.
On our last day in Mumbai, Max was interviewed by Sudhir Khatwani of CoinSutra. After that, we set out to explore the city with the only free hour we had on the trip and stumbled upon a scarf shop with beautiful, hand-crafted creations. We noticed that the store accepts Bitcoin as a payment option. The lovely store owner, Shobha, told us she herself holds several cryptocurrencies. Of course, we took the opportunity to tell her all about Lisk. Yes, we pitch our project even to locals in India. People like Shobha inspire us to work even harder to bring the benefits of Blockchain technology to everyone.
So there you have it, our long-winded account of our Asia tour. One thing we can say with utmost confidence is the world can’t wait to interact with the Lisk platform and everything that will be built on it. Thank you to everyone we met in Asia and to our global Lisk community members for the continued support.
About the Author
Thomas Schouten is Marketing Lead at Lisk. He has great interest for disruptive technologies and the potential of Blockchain technology. After working as online marketing consultant, he made his entrance into the Blockchain space as one of the first non-developers on the team. With his background in business and marketing, he is responsible for the ideation, development and execution of marketing strategies for Lisk.
Contact Details
Email: thomas@lisk.io
Twitter: @thomelsch
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasmschouten/
If you enjoyed reading this, please log in and click “Recommend” below. This will help to share the story with others.
