As little as six months ago, bitcoin was moribund, with prices languishing at one-fifth of their record high, disappointing a mass of cryptocurrency enthusiasts who had grown use to extreme — and often upward — moves in the virtual currency.
However, the Asia Blockchain Summit at the Taipei Marriott Hotel on Tuesdday and Wednesday highlighted how volatility is back, reviving the excitement around crypto trading.
“Bitcoin is fun, but it’s a hell of a lot more fun at 100 times leverage,” said Arthur Hayes, the founder and chief executive officer of BitMEX. “That’s what people want to see in crypto, they want that high volatility.”
“At the end of the day, we’re all in the entertainment business of traders,” Hayes said.
The Taipei conference was the second annual iteration of an Asia forum that brings investors together with start-ups, financial services providers, academics and others to engage on the blockchain technology that powers digital coins.
“We’re surfing a wave here that’s very linked to the price of bitcoin and probably has taken a couple months to filter through,” said attendee Vincent Alibert of ZVChain, a business-to-business blockchain project, in an interview.
“We don’t see any more of these revolutionary ICO pitches,” Alibert said, referring to initial coin offerings, which have generally lost favor after many tokens lost more than 90 percent of their value.
A bitcoin — or rather, someone dressed as one — wandered around the venue.
The chairs in the conference hall had covers from crypto.com: “Get 8% p.a. on your Crypto,” they declared.
Much of the conference was spent on Facebook Inc’s plans to launch the new Libra cryptocurrency, which proponents say will spark more mainstream interest in virtual currencies.
“It’ll definitely bring more people into the space,” said Charlie Lee, the creator of Litecoin, speaking on a panel.
Tron, which bills itself as the largest decentralized ecosystem in the world, displayed a giant poster near the registration area about chief executive officer Justin Sun winning the annual charity lunch with Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett. The successful bid of US$4,567,888 featured prominently.
Despite the buzz, there were some skeptics.
One of bitcoin’s most prominent detractors, New York University professor Nouriel Roubini, spoke at the conference to reiterate his argument that “there’s massive, massive amounts of price manipulation” in cryptocurrencies.
He cited a lack of security and scalability, along with concentration of crypto ownership among his concerns with the industry.
BitMEX’s Hayes said that “people love to speculate. We’re trying to give them an opportunity to do it in a safe manner.”
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day