When people first hear the word “blockchain”, some may feel intimidated by this buzzword or some may have never heard of it at all. It was this exact reason that led the TRON marketing team to implement the Educational Event Series. TRON aims to act as an educational leader in the blockchain space by sharing our knowledge of blockchain and cryptocurrency to the community through a plethora of channels — social media, events, conferences, and more. The very first event of this series was held in San Francisco on March 7, 2019 for more than 40 people.
So what does “blockchain” actually mean?
Blockchain is the underlying technology that powers Bitcoin. It is “a time-stamped series of immutable record of data that is managed by a cluster of computers not owned by any single entity.” The chain of blocks essentially carries all the data of a ledger in digital form where every transaction is recorded, with the utmost transparency.
The purpose of the first event from The Educational Event Series was to spread awareness and educate people on the vast potential of blockchain technology. We want to break down barriers for people to understand and use this technology in their everyday lives. TRON is hyperfocused on education and we believe this is crucial in aiding mass adoption.
We were lucky enough to invite three veterans in this space to a speaker panel at our first event:
Chris Eberle — Chief Operating Officer of Swarm, a non-profit using blockchain technology to democratize investing. Prior to Swarm, he held leadership roles in Media and Marketing at Facebook, and earlier was a part of startup exits with Federated Media and Meebo (Google). He began his career at AOL with executive roles in Product Marketing, Advertising Operations, and Content.
Cecilia Li — Communications and Investment Director at OKCOIN U.S, a leading global digital asset exchange. She leads strategic investment and partnership development in the blockchain industry with many years of experience in Private Equity and Venture Capital.
Kevin Ding — Managing Director at DHVC (Danhua Capital), a California-based venture capital fund investing primarily in early-stage technology companies, with over 600m under management and offices in the US and China. He leads the DHVC investment team, covering sectors including consumer, big data, cloud, AI, blockchain, and financial services globally.
He has been an active early-stage venture investor in category-defining technology companies — unicorns like Cohesity, Optimizely, Limebike, Survios, Hooked, Wish and more.
Key highlights from the panel:
1. There are many common misconceptions of blockchain.
- Most believe that Bitcoin = blockchain and they often use these terms interchangeably. However, Bitcoin or cryptocurrency is just an application of blockchain technology.
- People often believe that they should buy cryptocurrency to get rich fast due to the massive bull run we saw in 2017. However, many lose sight of the value of the underlying technology. As early investors, we should not forget that blockchain technology is the most promising part of this space. Token holders should also be patient and understand that it may take up to 10, 20, or 30 years to develop new technologies and products that will run smoothly.
- Blockchain is a huge buzzword and some may have heard that blockchain will disrupt every industry you can think of. Although many companies are claiming that they will use blockchain technology to revolutionize XYZ industry, it is highly unlikely that blockchain will solve all our problems.
2. The finance industry will be the first to truly adopt and embrace blockchain as we have seen in the past few years with big players such as Square and Paypal, who are already processing large volumes of cryptocurrency payments.
According to Deloitte, there are a few reasons why blockchain technology will advance the finance sector:
- The transfer of value has always been an expensive and slow process. This is particularly true for cross-border payments. Blockchain technology is able to speed up and simplify this process — and also reduces the costs significantly.
- Share trading will soon be impacted by blockchain technology. Utilizing blockchain technology allows for greater trade accuracy and a shorter settlement process.
- One of the most promising applications of blockchain technology is the smart contract. It can execute commercial transactions and agreements automatically. It also enforces the obligations of all parties in a contract — without the added expense of a middleman.
- Blockchain technology offers many benefits, including transparency and traceability of transactions. This will help banks and insurers to create a more captivating loyalty and rewards program that fits 24/7 performance management and enhances engagement.
3. We are not worried about the “bear market” because we truly believe that blockchain technology is here to stay. All parties of this industry should not follow the lead of the token prices, but rather the technical signs of progress of each project or public chain.
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About TRON
Founded in September 2017 by Justin Sun, TRON is dedicated to creating a boundary-free internet that inspires innovation across industries. TRON and its subsidiary BitTorrent give users direct access to applications, content, and media by combining best-in-class blockchain approaches with innovations in peer-to-peer sharing and other technologies. The TRON Protocol, one of the largest blockchain-based operating systems in the world, offers public blockchain support of high throughput, high scalability, and high availability for all Decentralized Applications (DApps) in the TRON ecosystem, with average daily transactions of more than 3 million. The ecosystem is governed by Super Representatives and the community. The July 2018 acquisition of BitTorrent further cemented TRON’s leadership in pursuing a decentralized ecosystem.
