We ask the buidlers within the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for his or her ideas on the business… and throw in a number of random zingers to maintain them on their toes!
This week, our 6 Questions go to Tongtong Bee, co-founder of Panony — an incubator, investor and adviser for blockchain and Web3 enterprise.
I’m Tongtong Bee, the co-founder of Panony and founder and editor-in-chief of PANews. I began my skilled journey as a journalist at China’s conventional information shops, together with China Information Service, Jiemian and Cailian Media Group. Since 2015, I’ve been protecting blockchain and fintech information as one of many few journalists in China to concentrate on these sectors on the time.
My concentrate on financial points and rising applied sciences led to me being chosen to report on the “Two Periods” (NPC and CPPCC) in 2018. And that’s the 12 months my enterprise accomplice Alyssa and I began PANews. We’ve revealed over 20,000 articles with a median of over 5 million web page views per 30 days, grew to become a steadily cited supply in crypto and blockchain journalism, together with Forbes, Caixin, CCN, and we’re an official information supply of Tencent Information.
1 — Trying on the prime 100 initiatives in crypto by market cap, which of them stand out to you — and for what motive?
I’ve to say Bitcoin. Being a journalist eager on financial analysis, I acquired blown away when realizing about its idea for the primary time.
Bitcoin is designed to be a considerable step ahead in earning profits safer, in addition to a major deterrent to many sorts of monetary crime. It’s the first decentralized peer-to-peer fee community pushed by its customers with no central authority. Bitcoin now has modified the world and can proceed revolutionizing the monetary techniques in lots of international locations. It stays the inventive end result in all of its current and limitless future makes use of.
2 — What’s the single most modern use case for blockchain you’ve ever seen? It will not be the one likeliest to succeed!
Being a part of Panony and PANews, we at all times really feel excited to fulfill and work with lots of of sensible, modern initiatives worldwide. For instance, I’m personally intrigued with what they’re doing at Cudos, a decentralized cloud computing platform. We all know that the cloud is costly and centralized. As well as, as much as 50% of the time, the {hardware} is inactive or switched off, leading to low return on funding for enterprises and an unlimited carbon footprint. Thus, the present growth trajectory is unsustainable for the planet.
The Cudos community, utilizing its cloud-based distributed computing strategy that features blockchain help, permits organizations to avoid wasting as much as 10 instances greater than centralized hyper-scale cloud platforms and {hardware} house owners to offset (and doubtlessly revenue from) the price of their {hardware} by renting out their computational energy to the community.
The blockchain business could be exuberant. I’m glad there are many skills on the market constructing a greater future collectively.
3 — What does decentralization imply to you, and why is it necessary?
Good query. The decentralized net is the unstoppable way forward for the web.
Within the present model of the online, also called Web2, folks can’t overlook the outcomes of massive companies controlling what occurs on-line: private knowledge being tracked and bought with out our permission, lack of energy for our contents, being dominated by advertisements… A lot of the net is centralized. Web3, which seeks to drastically reimagine how we design and work together with apps from the bottom up, will repair many of those points. There are a number of elementary variations between Web2 and Web3, however decentralization is on the coronary heart.
The Ethereum community is presently the most important decentralized community, with entry to 1000’s of decentralized purposes. With a concentrate on digital possession, the incomes potential for content material creators and the innovations of latest methods to take a position has elevated. And in a decentralized net, people can management their knowledge, not some mega company or anyone else.
4 — Record your favourite sports activities groups, and select the one most memorable second from watching them. In the event you aren’t a sports activities fan, select a number of motion pictures and a second!
As a winter recreation fanatic myself, my reminiscences of the Beijing 2022 Olympics are nonetheless recent! Eileen Gu profitable two gold medals and one silver at a single recreation is unquestionably a free ski sensation. Not simply watching her lovely strikes is jaw-dropping; I additionally admire her fixed efforts to encourage ladies. I’m additionally honored to have made the Forbes China 30 Beneath 30 in 2020 along with her (completely different record)!
As a feminine entrepreneur, I love her spirit of sticking to targets, difficult the established order, pursuing desires with ardour and fixed onerous work. It gave me power when my enterprise accomplice Alyssa and I began our enterprise collectively.
5 — In the event you didn’t want sleep, what would you do with the additional time?
I actually want I don’t have to sleep so I can do extra issues that curiosity me. I’d most likely learn extra books as a result of I at all times discover it fascinating to get to know one thing new. Throughout the two-month lockdown in Shanghai, I grew out of a behavior of indoor badminton train and can carry on doing that, doing it correctly outdoor.
I’m tremendous grateful that my husband and I share many hobbies, and one in every of them is to jot down a guide collectively on promoting in Shanghai. We’re additionally fairly excited about making documentaries for Chinese language people artists and hope the world might see them at some point.
6 — What’s the way forward for social media?
We envision the way forward for social media is owned by content material creators, communities — not sure platforms that management the narratives. That is what Web3 brings us. Decentralization could possibly be the blueprint for the way forward for social media: Customers might have direct entry to the decentralized platform; no centralized authority can dictate the principles of engagement and monetization; social media will develop into a freer house whereas additionally granting content material creators full possession of their belongings.
Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) are a novel manner for on-line social group that can have far-reaching implications. Properties of DAOs are prone to have an unlimited affect on the enterprise of social media. Blockchain tokens have the potential to alter that association by permitting creators to monetize their followers utilizing most of the identical strategies that DAOs use to reward their members for contributions.
We now have seen pleas from customers that Twitter might have the potential to shift the facility stability and to be reworked right into a Web3 platform. We’re additionally grateful to see a number of the initiatives, together with Only one and Rally, are dedicated to reshaping social platforms and rebuilding the social and creator financial system.
A want for the younger, bold blockchain neighborhood:
Our neighborhood wants extra builders who’ve a heat coronary heart and a cool mind. Much less FOMO, extra endurance. And confusion is nice: It makes folks consider themselves.