Regulation and security to affect demand for Blockchain
Edward Chen, CEO of Huobi Singapore, a global digital assets trading platform, participated at the Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF) this year and shared his views on the growth of the blockchain market in the next few years.
In a speech on "Digital Assets: From Fringe to Mainstream," Edward provided an overview on the crypto landscape from the 2010s to 2020s and mentioned that the industry has shown significant growth over the years. For example, there are now more than 77 million global users and over 6,000 global coins in 2021 as compared to only 0.89 million global users and 66 global coins in 2013.
Research has also shown that this demand for crypto and blockchain will continue to grow in the next few years, with the blockchain technology market size estimated to grow exponentially from US$3 billion in 2020 to US$39.7 billion in 2025. Blockchain technology will also continue to provide value-add to businesses (mainly in the finance, private, healthcare and retail sectors) by an estimated US$3.1 trillion by 2030.
Chen strongly believes that factors such as regulation, security, price stability and risk management play an important role in shaping user adoption, and these are catalysts within the industry that can usher digital assets into more mainstream acceptance.
"The crypto market has witnessed tremendous growth in 2021, and yet we have seen just the tip of the iceberg. With concepts like Metaverse, Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), DeFi 2.0 and Web 3.0 gaining more popularity and attention, next year could be an exciting year for the whole blockchain industry," said Chen.
"As one of Singapore's leading digital assets exchange platforms, Huobi Singapore is excited to be part of this journey. We look forward to working with the local regulators as well as ecosystem partners to elevate Singapore's status as a digital economy," he added.
Huobi Singapore has applied for a Major Payment Institution Licence under the Payment Services Act ("PS Act") from the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Currently, Huobi Singapore is granted an exemption from holding a licence under the PS Act while the application is under review. To provide users with a safe and secure experience, its digital assets exchange platform has been designed to comply with global regulatory standards set by financial regulators, with a strong focus on implementing a rigorous anti-money laundering (AML) program, and a robust Know-Your-Customer (KYC) framework.
Huobi Singapore is also an advocate of blockchain education and will be participating in an educational workshop on Metaverse organised by the Singapore Blockchain Innovation Programme (SBIP) at the end of November. Speakers include Professor Yu Jia Ning from Huobi Education (formerly Huobi University), Professor Ooi Beng Chin (Lee Kong Chian Centennial Professor at NUS and Lead Person-in-charge of SBIP), Lakshminarayanan (Lux) Anantharaman (Group Leader – Systems Security, Cybersecurity Department Institute for Infocommunications Research, A*STAR), and Dr Zhu Feida (Associate Professor of Computer Science at SMU). This is a free online event and you can register here: https://sbip.sg/metaverse/