Wang Yongli of LeEco Finance: Look at blockchain technology positively and rationally

On August 21, the "China Blockchain Industry Conference" co-organized by the Global Sharing Finance 100 Forum and Contemporary Financier magazine was held at the Beijing National Convention Center. Wang Yongli, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Global Sharing Finance 100 Forum, Senior Vice President of LeTV Holdings (Beijing) Co., Ltd., and CEO of LeTV Finance, attended and delivered a speech.

The following is the full text of the speech:

Wang Yongli: Hello everyone! First of all, on behalf of the Global Sharing Finance 100 Forum and the Blockchain Research Alliance, I would like to extend a warm welcome to all the guests, ladies and gentlemen!

I would like to take this opportunity to have a brief discussion. I have made some preparations before. I will summarize them. There are two main topics. First, the Internet has entered the ecological era. As you know, the Internet has been around since the 1960s , mainly as a communication technology, and then widely used in the social field. Today, the Internet has been widely used in the field of commercial applications, from the networking of PCs to the networking of things. Now we have entered a time when everything can be connected anytime, anywhere. When the Internet entered the field of commercial applications, it brought about a new change. We connected things that we originally divided into very fine parts and thought were not very related through the Internet platform. After connecting them, we suddenly found that many intermediate links can be removed, which can greatly improve your efficiency and reduce costs.

When some of the boundaries are removed, people suddenly find that a lot of content can produce significant collisions, new sparks, and chemical reactions. This is not just a simple physical addition, but a chemical change, which in turn gives rise to a new form of business for the entire related things. This is the so-called era of ecology.

In this era, the traditional division of labor is not denied, but at the same time, integration is carried out at the grassroots level of the division to form a situation of strong alliance, reaching the limit of technology and experience, but it may create a new situation with increased efficiency and reduced value.

Let's take a further look. When the Internet enters an era of cross-border integration and ecologicalization, where will it be most widely used in the world? Now there is a relatively consistent view that the most widely used will be in China, because China has become the world's second largest economy. Our industrialization and urbanization development have already possessed strong global competitiveness, but the degree of openness of our market is still not enough, and the decisive role of the market in resource allocation has not yet been played to a good level. Because of this, many links and processes in the operation of the economy and society need to be optimized.

Therefore, it is possible that China's precedent in the field of commercial Internet applications will exceed the sum of other countries in the world, and commercial applications should drive the training of personnel, the opening of ideas and the improvement of capabilities. If our applications can lead the world, China's influence in the world will be incomparable. So this is a very exciting and exciting scenario.

When the Internet enters an era of commercial applications, it brings a very urgent problem that needs to be solved, that is, the identification of the parties in the commercial exchange process, identity collection, identity verification, transaction confirmation, fund settlement and continuous record, as well as traceability and verifiability factors must be solved. According to traditional practices, we will push various offline rules and methods online, such as the five elements of account opening, plus fingerprint recognition and other elements that everyone is discussing, to ensure the authenticity and uniqueness of the identity.

However, if we bring these elements online, can they meet the world's demand for fast transactions? This is a huge challenge. How can we do this? We need to think seriously about this. This is the first aspect I want to talk about. The Internet is pushing human society into an era of ecology.

Second, we need to look at blockchain technology in a positive and rational way. We know that after the advent of Bitcoin in 2009, Bitcoin was not widely accepted as a currency, but the blockchain technology applied to Bitcoin has gained more and more attention. Bitcoin is a completely simulated gold that is free from the various constraints of the real society and forms a result of a unique operating law. The important thing about the following blockchain technologies is that they have created a unique set of online identity authentication, fund liquidation, and traceable and verifiable method systems, which must meet these requirements.

This provides a very good example of the problem that I mentioned earlier, which must be solved after the widespread commercial application of Internet finance. I personally think that this is a major enlightenment impact on our thinking about problems, and its significance is not insignificant. Therefore, we must look at blockchain technology positively.

However, we should also look at it rationally, because many people do not understand that we can use blockchain technology to create something similar to Bitcoin, so coin mining is very popular now. Everyone must pay attention to this kind of so-called digital assets that have no legal protection and no value support, and are created only by labor consumption. Whether it can be recognized by society is facing huge challenges. Therefore, I think it is very risky to use blockchain to create coins and trade virtual assets.

More importantly, how to apply blockchain technology to a series of tasks such as so-called online identity authentication, transaction confirmation, etc. in the future is the focus of blockchain application.

So I have the following requirements in our own laboratory. Our requirements for blockchain are, first, that it should be mainly used for online and offline docking. For example, we have a set of offline identity confirmation methods, including our facial recognition and iris recognition, which I define as offline identification methods. However, after offline identification, the identity of the person is confirmed. When it is online, the blockchain method should be better applied to transform it into a unique online identity of the blockchain. This identity no longer has too many weak, biological elements, that is, digital, or with letters. Moreover, it cannot only consider the application of one country, but also the application of many countries in the world. If there is only one thing for identity verification when it circulates all over the world, its cost will be greatly reduced. Of course, this requires O2O connection and network management to transfer offline to online. I think there is huge room for development in this area.

Second, it may be more used in transactions and business, which involves a regional issue. So there is the concept of business district currency or simulated currency. I personally think that this is not legal tender, it can only be called business district currency, the currency used in the business district you set, its issuance cannot be obtained through mining like Bitcoin, it must have a corresponding value, and there must be a corresponding right. Moreover, the rules for issuing this currency must be open and transparent, and strictly monitored, and it cannot be adjusted at will by a few people. Only in this way can this currency be accepted. Without certain guarantees and value support, it is all virtual assets and virtual currencies, which is also very dangerous.

When these two problems are solved, blockchain technology will be widely used, especially in the field of frequent cross-border transactions and fund settlement. I think it is gratifying that although Bitcoin blockchain did not appear in China, blockchain technology may be more popular in China than in any other country. People are paying close attention to it and have begun to conduct in-depth research and extensive exploration.

I personally believe that the advent of the Internet is changing an important trajectory of financial development. As we all know, since the emergence of currency and the concept of finance, finance has been developing along the trajectory of de-materialization, specialization, and independence, forming the concept of virtual economy corresponding to the real economy. However, when the Internet entered the ecological world, it began to cross-border integration. As the lifeblood of the modern economic operation, finance must become an important part of cross-border integration. So today, you can see that third-party payment, consumer finance, supply chain financing, etc. are increasingly integrated into the business ecological scene, and no longer independently looking for third parties to do such work. Therefore, there is a trend of finance starting to de-virtualize and return to the real economy. I think this is a very important and major change in the history of financial development.

In this process, China will have a huge application scenario, and with the development of China's Internet and information technology, we can completely overtake and lead the world. Some people say that the yesterday of American finance is the today of Chinese finance, but further, some people say that it is possible that the tomorrow of Chinese Internet finance will be the day after tomorrow of American finance. This is what we call overtaking and leading the world! So I hope that through such a conference as today, we can look at blockchain technology positively and rationally, and promote the development of more extensive and healthier commercial applications of blockchain!

Finally, I wish this conference a complete success! I hope that the industrialization of blockchain in China will lead the world! Thank you all!