Securities, Regulations, and Governance over Blockchain: A Panel Discussion

By Prashant Jha

This week, a Global presence and expertise from various fields helped to create one of the most interesting panel discussion on Blockchain Weekly. The panel hosted by Michael Noel from Blockchain Consultants saw Venture Capitalist, Vinay Nair from Nair Ventures; Dan Rakhyaman- Co Founder of Fungible Network; and Rhionna Payne from Sea Foam Media & Technology along with a host of blockchain enthusiasts and experts joining live at 2 PM EST on Wednesday.

The event started with an introduction to the panelists, and their background into blockchain followed by a Q & A Session from the attendees. Many interesting issues were discussed, we have picked some snapshots from the discussion below.

 

Michael Noel  asks

Vinay, what is your opinion, how do you think a security offering like Petro, will fare in the current cryptocurrency ecosystem?

Vinay Nair said

On a political end, Venezuela’s failure to grow is often attributed to its lack of progress in carrying out free-market reforms during the 80’s and 90’s. Remembered the fact, that Venezuela was one of the fastest-growing economy between 1920-1970 in that region.

On that note, he explained:

Hence, it is necessary for the officials to focus upon creating an ecosystem around the region by setting up Special Economic Zone (SEZ) to facilitate the growth of businesses that support the idea of Petro.

 

Michael Noel asks

Discussing on the involvement of governance in the industry, India is doing some of the interesting things here

Vinay Nair answered that:

 

“In India, we have a lot of real time use cases to showcase the use of blockchain in governance. Recently,  Andhra Pradesh, was split into two sovereign states for the ease of governance.. The state adopted blockchain technology to acquire farmland to build Amaravati, its capital city.”

Adding more examples, he noted:

Apart from that, we have states issuing Birth Registration, secured through blockchain.One another area of interest is Indian Right to Information Act, that can be implemented via blockchain

Dan Rakhyaman added on to it, saying:

On the governance part, nothing going on in US. Coming from the ETF industry, we started building a platform last year. And instead of doing the ICO , we went to wrong direction and started building the product. In November , we released a public data and software where people can connect.

Michael Noel also pitched in to say that:

Unlike here in USA, India is looking at the governance and using consensus. It’s really interesting and focus on becoming a global community. That’s why the focus of today’s discussion was to get a global look on the aspect of STO’s .

Audience asks

How can STO’S be applied to the Food industry.

Vinay Nair took this question, saying:

One possible way, I would suggest is that if we can allow farmers to offer farmland as a Security Token Offering, to investors. The Land can be cultivated for generating profits as a common enterprise.

Michael Noel also opined that:

This could be a very beneficial model, with farmers in developing countries like India, an agricultural economy benefiting as a whole. Currently this sector is the backbone of the Indian economy and contributing to more than 50% in GDP.

Audience asks

How can Transportation benefit from Blockchain?

Dan Rakhyaman took this question, and said:

This can be part of a wider network of offerings, there are limitations to bringing transportation alone on a blockchain platform and can be used to track deliveries and supply points around the network.

Vinay Nair agreed and commented:

True, transportation can be implemented as part of a Logistics blockchain itself

Michael Noel then asks

How is all this going to affect things in future? What is the end of the road for this community. Targeted ROIs for the consumer or are we just formulating pet projects.

Rhionna Payne’s answer was:

I think a lot of these early ICOs can be considered as  pet projects. And we are not at the point to achieve adoption even with funding, which is disappointing. But with further regulations coming to light in 2019, learning from the mistakes of previous year, we can actually see blockchain making an impact in various industries.

Dan Rakhyaman also added on, saying:

if you look at STO, they have more disclosure and they would be held accountable for whatever they publish. People will have much better understanding of the projects by the STO.  A lot of the the interesting projects will be able to survive in the cryptoworld.

 

Conclusively, the revolution which started with Bitcoin is actually taking momentum where we have seen that businesses are exploring newer opportunities. However, it is all the way more interesting to see that Blockchain has the potential to bring effectiveness as well as efficiency in securities, regulation and governance. What creates more credibility towards the technology is the fact that Indian Government is already applying it across various sectors. Though the session laid out many applications, we hope to see many more across different domains in the near future.