KuCoin Attends TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 Highlighting Social Is the Key to Empower Industry Development

2021/09/24 08:26:32

On September 21-23, TechCrunch held The Disrupt 2021 online. Johnny Lyu, CEO of KuCoin, delivered a keynote speech on “The Missing Block to Bring Crypto to the Masses” on September 23rd to discuss the outlook of the evolving crypto market and how to achieve better trading experience for cryptocurrency investors.

The TechCrunch Disrupt 2021 provides an early-stage platform that gathers hundreds of promising startups across a variety of categories, where they talk about the latest progress of cutting-edge technologies and how the emerging technologies might set the new rules to change the future tech games. Key attendees include Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, Founder & CEO of Dapper Labs Roham Gharegozlou, Managing Director of Dell Tyler Jewell and Developer Advocacy Lead of Google Cloud Dave Elliott.

During the speech, Johnny shared his insightful observations on will the development of the blockchain follow the path of the Internet, what role does KuCoin Play to help crypto reshape the world and bring crypto to the masses, as well as how to create a “killer app” for the crypto industry.

He believes that Social and trading can be combined and somehow create a magical synergy. This is also what KuCoin is doing to transform into a Social Trading platform, which is still blank in the crypto industry.

Known as the “People’s Exchange”, KuCoin is visioned beyond a crypto exchange, which will focus on integrating both social and trading features to make trading itself easier, as well as bring crypto one step closer to the masses.

The full transcript of speech is attached below or click here to access to the speech video.

The Missing Block to Bring Crypto to The Masses

Q1: Tell us about you and your company KuCoin

Hello everyone. My name is Johnny, and I’m currently the CEO of KuCoin. KuCoin is a global crypto exchange founded by a group of early blockchain adopters and tech geeks in 2017. Often known as the “People’s Exchange”, we aim to develop a crypto exchange to serve the masses and facilitate the free flow of digital value around the globe.

We are now a top 5 crypto exchange globally, and we provide one-stop crypto services to 8 million users from 207 countries and regions around the world. In 2018, KuCoin secured $20 million in Round A funding from IDG Capital and Matrix Partners. In 2021, Forbes named us as one of the Best Crypto Exchanges of 2021. 

I’m happy to share with you today that we will soon celebrate our 4th anniversary. We’ve established ourselves to be a reliable and accessible crypto exchange to the masses, and we will continue to BUILD to make KuCoin a better place to start your crypto journey. 

Q2: Some said Blockchain is the next revolutionary technology after the Internet. What’s your opinion on that? 

Every major shift throughout human history is led by a technological revolution, which changes how we think and live. For instance, human civilization grew out of the discovery of fire; the Industrial Revolution was fueled by the use of steam power; the Internet has altered the way we communicate and share information; and a decade ago, the Bitcoin founder brought blockchain to the public. Let’s think about whether this new technology that underpins crypto will reshape our world to the next era and how?

The adoption of the Internet has hugely reduced our communication costs in many aspects. For instance, if we want to get our voice heard or opinions shared, we can simply post it online with one click instead of seeking a publisher to do it on our behalf. As more individuals are running their own social media accounts, anyone can become a media or publisher on the Internet.        

Therefore, the Internet simplifies the spread of information, then crypto technology will add another layer to it, which is to simplify the exchange of value. 

For example, I don’t know if you have ever thought about a personal IPO, I have. It means we can IPO our own ideas, which we can hardly achieve based on a centralized IPO platform prior to the emergence of blockchain. Luckily, we can now realize it with blockchain technology, which allows us to issue tokens, enables a whole decentralized community to support our ideas, and interact with us without any intermediaries. What I am talking about is how blockchain will facilitate the free expression of personal thoughts and the value of creativity, which will hugely influence our life in the future. And what crypto technology can advocate is far beyond that, whether in terms of traditional finance, supply chains, the traditional Internet, etc. 

Q3: What Role does KuCoin play to help crypto reshape the world?

Although crypto technology is seen as a world-changing revolution after the Internet, as well as a restructuring of the old order of things, throughout the past decade, we still see that crypto is yet to be widely adopted by the masses. The new industry is still in its infancy compared to the 4 billion global user-base of the Internet. 

KuCoin, in this case, was founded to realize our vision to bring crypto to the masses, just like how Google and Facebook drove the wide adoption of the Internet, and we have been devoting ourselves to achieve the vision throughout the past 4 years. We believe that crypto will reshape the creation and distribution of value based on blockchain technology and help every user around the world get easier access to crypto trading, wealth management, financial derivatives, and services. 

Q4: What do you think hinders the mass adoption of crypto?

The core of technological evolution and development is to constantly satisfy human needs, from material to spiritual needs, which is in line with Maslow’s theory of needs as well. The rapid development of the Internet has greatly satisfied people’s spiritual needs after their material needs have been met. 

The development of the crypto industry is following this path as well, and it is in a very early stage now. As the crypto industry has strong financial attributes, the biggest demand of people in the early development of the industry is the transaction. We can say that TRADING is one of the most basic needs of the crypto industry. Therefore, the entire industry focuses on providing trading tools while lacking diversified applications, especially “killer apps”.  

Q5: What might be the “killer app” for the crypto industry? 

We can try to find answers from the Internet industry. Currently, four of the top ten websites are social media, such as Facebook, Twitter. Other top-ranked websites include search engines like Google, e-commerce websites like Amazon.

E-commerce and search engines mostly meet our material needs. For example, I feel satisfied when I buy my favorite shoes or find a suitable travel destination. While social media meets our spiritual needs through interaction with others, we often say that people are social animals. Social is indispensable for sure. In the early days of the Internet, we barely interacted with others when everyone browsed news through individual websites, and therefore the Internet was not yet popular until the social network platforms emerged. Then, we see huge growth in the number of Internet users.  

As I mentioned earlier, if we just focus on developing trading tools, that could be a major dilemma for the development of the crypto industry. I believe that the best way to bring crypto to the masses is to better meet people’s social needs. From the recent trending topics in crypto, NFT, for instance, we can see that they are also related to the facilitation of social interactions and self-identity in the crypto world. In addition to collection value, some rare NFTs can also represent the owner’s social identity.

Q6: Maybe social will be a new trend in crypto, then what is KuCoin’s plan to react as a crypto exchange?

Like almost all crypto exchanges, TRADING is currently the core service that KuCoin provides to users. But we believe that SOCIAL and TRADING can be combined and somehow create a magical synergy. KuCoin is transforming into a Social Trading platform, which is still blank in the crypto industry.

As the industry is still new, we have our own jargon and subculture. Technical terms like DeFi and NFT and jargon like FOMO and DYOR often scares newcomers. This is also why SOCIAL matters to the crypto field.

I always support the point that the best way for a person to learn something new is from someone he trusts and in a way that he can easily understand. And this is exactly what we do in our everyday interactions with others. By sharing information and answering questions, social interaction can help eliminate the fear of facing new things and the loneliness of learning new things on your own. This is the first value that SOCIAL can bring to the crypto industry.

The integration of SOCIAL and TRADING can make trading itself easier. Imagine that you can learn from others’ trading strategies, get to know them through portfolios, and even have a program to place orders or take profit for you. Crypto trading is no longer a game for a small group of professional investors. Instead, everyone can do it easily and confidently. And through the information and interaction services provided by the platform, even a newcomer will have a bigger chance to win. 

In Q4 this year, we will continue our march in making KuCoin the biggest social trading platform in the crypto world. Lots of new SOCIAL features will be launched, allowing users to better understand and trade crypto on KuCoin, and find global crypto investors who share the same interest. These changes will directly benefit users, and in the long run, we believe that Social Trading will be a new trend among crypto trading service providers. Just like how the iPhone brought smartphones to the masses and contributed to the prosperity of the mobile internet industry, crypto exchanges, as an important infrastructure in the crypto world, will move from a pure trading platform to a Social Trading platform and drive the prosperity of various decentralized applications.

Ending: Before we let you go, do you have anything else to say to our audience today?

As one of the leading crypto exchanges, KuCoin is always taking the responsibility to expand the boundaries of the crypto industry. As stated in our vision, we believe that one day everyone will get involved with crypto, and all people who join today will be pioneers in the future. We welcome more like-minded people to join in and build for the industry together. Thank you all!