Blockchain technology is one of the fastest growing technologies in human history. In just the past 4 years, the total global market value of blockchain based digital assets has increased by more than 350 times. Since 2013, the market cap of cryptocurrencies has grown from tens of billions of dollars to several hundred billion. And when the regulatory environment opens up to institutional investors, which it will, we will witness an explosive increase in the size of the market. Therefore, there shouldn’t at this point be any disagreement that the global digitization and tokenization of value and assets is, and will be, a continuing trend far into the future. This fiercely rapid trend will become a multi-trillion dollar market with an extremely diverse constituency numbering in the hundreds of millions and even billions.

Despite the bumpy history of the blockchain industry thus far, as well as the continuing sensationalized journalism surrounding it that’s more focused on making headlines, the reality on the ground floor, is that there is heightened excitement, more investment and greater innovations taking place now than ever before.

Examples: VC Industry investment, Banks adopting blockchain, NFL Players Tokens, Off the banking grid villages now have banking.

Now, in an industry environment where there are hundreds of millions of constituents, from it there will undoubtedly emerge a wide variety of products and services all, potentially, serving and supporting 10’s of millions of users. What I’m sharing today, is what we believe could be the most likely segments in the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry that will experience user communities of such scale.

Speaking of communities: Why do we talk about communities so much in our industry and why are they important? To put it bluntly, it’s because community is one of the two foundational elements to blockchain technology’s development and evolution. The other one, rather obviously, is technology, which maybe thankfully to some here today, we won’t be discussing in much detail at all. But that’s very much part of the point why community is so fundamental to the industry. Historically, and I’m speaking Internet historically here, users have been primarily passive consumers of products and services built through technology. Brands and technology companies produce or develop a product or service, market it, and the idea is that users will buy it and/or use it. In more recent years, in the mobile internet era, we’ve begun engaging in more interactive relationships with companies through heavily data driven mobile ecommerce, social media, and reviews.

However, and not discounting all of the innovation, progress made, and value created through these models, they’ve still remained fundamentally rooted in the traditional one-way directional model of brand/company and the user. What we’re witnessing today through blockchain, is a paradigm shift from the one-way relationship to, not just a two-way bi-directional one, but to?multi-directional relationships. For example, let’s say a so-called user of a particular blockchain project developing a decentralized insurance service, in addition to being a future consumer of its services, may also be a contributing developer to its technology, a marketing voice spreading the word about its benefits, AND a token holder, in essence a shareholder, ALL at the same time! In other words, a member of a community. A community in which, when all members contribute to the best interests of the community and share in the success of that community.

This is why entrepreneurs starting blockchain ventures invest so much time, energy and resources towards the development of their communities, since their success ultimately depends on them. In the blockchain era, technology may the cornerstone of the gateway to its future. But community is the mortar that holds it together.

We need to look at how the blockchain and cryptocurrency ecosystems have developed in order to have an idea of where the next 10 million users are going to be. In doing so, we see that four very distinct segments of the ecosystem have emerged in the form of products or services and continue to evolve. The first is mining which includes both the hardware and software required to perform this essential part of the ecosystem. The second is media that includes traditional news media, social media like facebook and reddit, and messaging media including whatsapp and telegram. The third element are the exchanges on which cryptocurrencies are traded. And the fourth is wallets, the personal repositories for crypto assets. These four elements are unique in terms of how users and communities interact and participate in them.

Mining is a niche segment with a high barrier to entry and participation requiring a relatively high level of expertise in both hardware and software applications. Therefore, as important as it is, it will continue to be a specialized field with minimal mass user participation.

The media segment and all its subsegments reached user readership in the 10’s of millions very early on but, in contrast to the niche characteristic of mining, this population is extremely diversified and incohesive ranging from people reading headlines about negative happenings in the industry to someone’s facebook post about their surfer uncle who bought an entire surfboard company with the money he made from buying bitcoin in the early days. Generally speaking, the consumers of these kinds of media information, while numerous, are not actively participating in the direct development and progress of the ecosystem.

The third segment, cryptocurrency exchanges, have had the most direct impact on the growth of the blockchain ecosystem because they acted as the primary doorways for capital inflows that entrepreneurs, new ventures and developers need. In spite of the challenges that the exchanges have experienced, which its important to note, is not unlike any other newly emerging disruptive technology sector, the exchanges have been essential to the progress and development of the entire ecosystem and was the first segment to reach participation in the 10’s of millions.

The fourth segment is cryptocurrency wallets, or what we now prefer to call digital assets wallets, Just wallets for short. Wallets have served an equally essential and critical function?in the overall blockchain ecosystem as that of exchanges and as a segment have achieved 10’s of millions of users over the past 3 years. As such, we believe that the NEXT 10 million users will also result from innovations and advancements in wallet technologies and uses.

What exactly is a wallet in the blockchain ecosystem? At its core, and in its current stage of development, a wallet serves as both a gateway for simple peer-to-peer payments and value exchange (exchange not in the trading sense), AND as a storage safe for digital assets.

As the applications and use cases for blockchain technology begin to proliferate, as they are beginning to, wallet features and functionality will also rapidly increase to provide practical uses and value to users participating in the blockchain driven ecosystem and communities. The digitization of real-world assets is revolutionizing how we participate in the economy on every front. The old paradigm of holding paper deeds to real-estate, car titles, wrist watches and some cash in an iron safe or safety deposit box is dying. Therefore, the wallet will continue to evolve and to attract the largest number of new users into the blockchain ecosystem for the foreseeable future.

We believe that in order for wallets to achieve the type of scale that we envision, that is 100’s of millions of wallet holders and 10’s of millions of active users, they need provide ease of use and true value in practical every day use, especially with regards to payments. Furthermore, by incorporating innovations that make the user experiences extend beyond just easy use, and into the realm of entertainment, the viral adoption and usage of wallets will almost be guaranteed.

So how does this take place? We see it happening through the simultaneous development of 4 separate but complimentary parts:

1st, Infrastructure: The fundamental underlying operational infrastructure and technology of wallets needs to improved and ultimately perfected to ensure security, speed and usability. Without these basics in place, there can be no critical mass of trust, without which of course, nothing else can happen.

2nd, Interactivity: Wallets have to move beyond just being mere storage devices and become tools that?facilitate,?encourage?and?incentivize?interactivity. We can be sure to see continuing innovations and applications in the wallet space that stimulate human actions and interactions through the incorporation of methodologies and processes such as game theory and crowd play. The evolution of user experience as it relates to the entire blockchain ecosystem will undoubtedly lead to exponential growth in wallet usage.

3rd, Openness. Wallets need to be open. They need to be open to things coming in. And they need to be open to things going out. By doing so, the overall digital assets ecosystem growth and remains healthy. Blockchain technology, by it’s very nature is a decentralized, democratic, and open one. By remaining true to this ethos and the dream of what it can accomplish, not only wallets, but the entire ecosystem can flourish. With regards to wallets, opening up through SDKs and API’s, 3rd?parties can empower users to both give and receive value, which fosters win-win transactional relationships, ultimately resulting in larger and larger numbers of wallet users.

4th, Communities. Here, we are talking about bringing the global communities discussed earlier into the wallet. While communities around different projects and digital assets are unique, by aggregating and sharing them with each other using the wallet as the conduit, more commonality, more opportunities for collaboration, and more value creation can be realized. Once again, it’s Communities, this very unique and fundamental element of the blockchain ecosystem, lies at the core of reaching the next 10 million users.

There are actually already many different wallets out there today. Users probably feel like they have as much variety of choice as choosing a wallet at TJ Maxx. And they will probably all share the same 4 fundamental parts that I just described, just like how real-world wallets all have theirs. However, the differences in approaches and philosophies on how those parts are developed, will in the end, determine in which wallet the next 10 million users end up.

Before I conclude, I’ll take just a moment to share some examples of our approach towards developing wallet technology, products and services. In addition to creating a highly secure product for basic storage of digital assets and a convenient transfer tool, we’ve also begun developing what we hope users find as fun applications. For example, we’ve built and released something that we call Candy Packs which, if you’re familiar with the WeChat application you may also be familiar with the digital Red Envelope (hong bao) that has become popular with 100’s of millions of users in China. The Candy Pack is somewhat similar in that community members of a blockchain project can send project tokens to others through right from their wallet. It’s received tremendous attention and usage from thousands of our users. We also worked with a partner to launch an crypto powered World Cup game that paralleled the World Cup in real time and resided right inside our wallet. Again, we received tons of positive and encouraging feedback from users saying, “Please give us more of these types of apps!”

Now, in conclusion, and as I’ve shared, there are many areas of innovation and growth taking place within the overall blockchain and cryptocurrency industry. Each providing their own important and unique value and benefits. However, when it comes to the majority of people around the world that are going to truly going to have their lives changed by this revolutionary technological movement, it won’t be the mining sector, the media sector or the crypto exchanges that aggregate the and serve the global communities, indeed, it will be the wallet, where in the not so distant future, we’ll see the next 10 million users.

Thank you very much for your attention this afternoon!