FSC Chairman Koo,
NDC Minister Chen,
MOEA Deputy Minister Wang
MOST Deputy Minister Hsu
Friends, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen
Good morning. Welcome to Taipei! I am Legislator Jason Hsu. Or you can simply call me Crypto Congressman!
If you look around the world today, what you often feel is a deep sense of gloom. You read about terrorism, armed conflicts, fake news, slow rates of growth, unemployment amongst young people in many parts of the world.“It is doom and gloom out there.
But I would like to submit the otherwise and the answer does not lie in right-wing or left-wing political ideology but a longing for advancement of humanity as a whole. The reality is that we are now living through a technological revolution.
Today, Satoshi Nakamoto’s White Paper of Bitcoin is nearly a decade old. The impact of Nakamoto’s ideas on a decentralized,
peer-to-peer electronic cash system has been nothing short of monumental: decentralized currencies like Bitcoin reached a market capitalization of 100 billion in 2017. But Nakamoto’s White Paper is more far-reaching than market value numbers — it has dramatically altered the way we perceive money in the modern age. Decentralized currency, which is not reliant on trust and omits the need for a third party, offers a revolutionary alternative to the traditional and untrustworthy banking system. Cryptocurrency has often been called the “people’s money” for this reason.
The technology of Blockchain, the more complex step after Bitcoin, has compelling possibilities. Because it offers a decentralized
approach to money, blockchain has potential to promote and achieve fairness and democratization. Blockchain also has the ability to transform numerous sectors: in the financial sector, it encourages people to take initiative in innovation; in government, it creates greater transparency and makes the process of providing services more efficient. These are important developments that are worth pursuing — not for the few, but for the many.
For the past two years I have been working and advocating an open, progressive and fair environment for blockchain and cryptocurrency. I hold a series of public hearings and invite industry experts and government officials to discuss what kind of regulations are needed for a nascent industry like blockchain and cryptocurrency. On this front, I believe too early regulation is not good. Government and regulators must evolve as the technology evolves and develop a trustable platform to communicate with the industry and the general public. Therefore, in June this year I launched Taiwan Blockchain Self-Regulatory Organization as a way to work with government. The SRO has three functions: No1. serve as a trustable communication platform between industry and regulators; No 2, offer code of conduct for we must make sure industries come together to self-regulate and inform the consumers of investment risks involved; No 3.,study and research regulation and legislation. I also launch Parliamentary Coalition for Blockchain to recruit legislators on both isles to get behind the initiatives and work together to build consensus and develop well- rounded legislations for blockchain and cryptocurrency.
I believe the use case for blockchain is tremendous and opportunities are abundant. On the public governance, imagine citizens casting votes on blockchain; politicians record their campaign spending and receive donations on blockchain, which I will be the first one in Taiwan to champion; medical data recorded on blockchain reduced the cost and increase efficiency; using blockchain to trace food source to protect our children’s health.
During the last 24 months, I have met with top industry experts, successful entrepreneurs. Some of you are here today in this room including CZ of Binance, Vitalik Buterin of Etherieum, Charlie Lee of Litecoin, just to name a few. I have also spoken and attended conferences around the world. Notably, in June I represented my country to attend Blockchain for Impact Summit at United Nations in New York City.
I passionately believe Taiwan can be a blockchain tech hub. Why Taiwan? Taiwan has the world’s most solid engineering talent and we boast an integrated force of hardware and software. Taiwan can lead a breakthrough in developing itself to become a blockchain island and crypto nation. Despite the current geopolitical constraints, we must be innovative, imaginative and resolute in bringing our ideas into actions. Fortune favors the bold. Imagine: Taiwan becomes a crypto nation issuing Taiwan global ID, attracting skilled workers like engineers, artists, activists, designers to register digitally as Taiwanese citizens and put all the digital identity data on blockchain, tied to a digital wallet. We must be inventive. Imagine Taiwan uses part of its huge foreign reserve accounted for 70 billion dollars to issue Taiwan Digital Currency as sable coin backed by fiat currency, which can be used in trade finance, supply chain and etc. There are so many things we can do.
However, much is needed to be done. We must relax the existing laws, de-regulate and get rid of red tape by making it easy for foreigners to work and start business and make investments here.
We must not shun competition. In fact, healthy competition is good. We must upskill our workforce and increases courses on and encourage entrepreneurship in society. We must open up to others bringing businesses to Taiwan.
Finally, I want to end by making this point. I started off by saying the world is going through a tough time. There is gloom and doom in many parts of the world. There seems to be a lack of opportunities and anxieties about fairness — but the real diagnosis is that we are living through a digital revolution. This revolution will give huge opportunities to the people who get it and who understand it early.
What we are trying to do in Taiwan is create the most conducive environment for people who get it, to be able to build it so that — in the future — people will come to Taiwan and they will say ‘I have seen the future, and it works!’
We must embrace a dream-and-do combination that soars with high vision and yet walks on earth with practical results. History is marked by the rise of new technologies and the ingenuity and creativity they unlock.That is our challenge and I hope that this room, and indeed this country, will rise to it. So today let us ask ourselves if our children should live to see the next century
What change will they see, what progress will we have made… This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time.
Welcome to a wonderful future. It is a privilege to be alive and to have a front seat to the revolution of our lifetimes. Thank you very much.
