The blockchain/crypto week in quotes

“Finance is realistically the first blockchain application that will probably achieve wide scale adoption…With finance you’re competing with banks that take five days to do something interesting. With anything that’s not financial, chances are there is some internet thing that does what you want, that’s just centralised. So it’s a bit of a harder pitch.” Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin

“Bitcoin is a technology rather than a business opportunity…I think we are facing the next wave of the internet.” Tron’s Justin Sun  

“It’s good to see the US SEC taking a more rational approach to crypto. Classifying all tokens as securities, regardless of purpose, was an irresponsible choice, which could have seen cryptocurrencies regulated out of existence.

However, we’re not quite out of the woods yet. Global crypto organisations will still be waiting to see how the US moves to regulate crypto going forward. This is because US authorities have a controlling stake in the development of cryptocurrency globally. So far this has meant crippling fines and sometimes criminal proceedings on companies, regardless of whether they are legally operating their own jurisdictions.

Looking ahead, regardless of US regulatory moves, governments must introduce more measures to protect the businesses operating within their borders, or risk the US ruling unchecked in the development of the crypto-economy.” Gavin Smith, CEO, Panxora

“I think artists in the music industry on average capture about 11 or 12% of the value in the industry and those big record companies are sucking up 70 or so %. We can replace those record companies with smart contracts on the Ethereum platform.” Ethereum Co-Founder and ConsenSys creator Joseph Lubin

“Facebook Coin could be a $19 billion revenue opportunity.” Barclays internet analyst Ross Sandler

“STOs may be the way forward as alternatives to ICOs but they do not solve the issue of delivering a high-quality project to investors. Whether pitched as ICOs or STOs, new projects must deliver value creation for investors to get a return on investment. Using STOs to tokenize existing assets adds a regulated framework to protect consumers but also bolsters liquidity, offers easy management of fractional ownership, and allows for faster settlement and immutable proof of ownership.

It is good news that the market seems to be moving towards regulation, and the emergence of STOs is a harbinger of this overall push. One would very much hope a renewed growth in STOs is predicated on projects and ideas of better quality than what we saw with many ICOs.

We believe blockchains will be required to deliver on-block KYC/AML capabilities, a challenge for Bitcoin and Ethereum but which we see as an opportunity for Concordium and other new blockchains with integrated ID-verification.” Lone Fønss Schrøder, CEO, Concordium

“The past few years have seen a growth in cryptoassets. While the cryptoasset market remains small relative to that of the global financial system, and banks currently have very limited direct exposures, the Committee is of the view that the continued growth of cryptoasset trading platforms and new financial products related to cryptoassets has the potential to raise financial stability concerns and increase risks faced by banks.” BIS

“One really important thing to remember is that people regulate eachother in their interactions with one another, and that’s the whole purpose of the Bitcoin idea, that it would be a community that would be able to regulate itself. As problems arise, people in that community are thinking about how to deal with those problems. One model would be to have a government regulator, but I don’t think that’s the only model.” US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Commissioner Hester M. Peirce