"It was interesting because adding Minteo that you mentioned, she used the word internet nation states which kind of triggered all the economics and politics side of me, but I thought it was a perfect encapsulation of both the upside, but also the challenges. The upside obviously is that, like you said, there are digital economies that are happening because if you're spending in aggregate millions of hours in a game and there's real value, right? If you spend millions of hours digging holes in the ground outside, that is a real digital economy, especially if I'm trading the fruits of digging real ground. So I think there is, you're right to say digital economy, value being generated and value being appreciated by other folks. The point of currency is that different nation states have to recognize each other's currency, and that's a big problem." - Jeremy Au
"The stablecoin use case is actually one of the best use cases in crypto.You don't have to think very hard about people who have experienced crazy inflation and are victims of their country's monetary policy. They have no control and basically they see their purchasing power getting eroded, and it's very hard for them to save. So I think case in point is like in the US, when everyone was trying to sell crazy amounts of yield in Latin America, which obviously has a long history of inflation, the startups there weren't selling any yield. They were just selling like, ‘Hey, you can keep the value of the thing you earned?’ That was the value proposition. So that's the difference in the setup. We don't even have to go to Latin America. If you look at Pakistan, the thing is devalued half over the last year. So, giving people ways to save, easily convert in and out of something that can actually retain value but also get paid, it's case in point." - Shiyan Koh
"The interchangeability of all these currencies was tough, and a big part of it was that because there's no law that governs the property rights, the currency rights, and the conversion. They created to some point, that there was some level of portability, but no true conversion. And you need military force to enforce the law. That's the interesting dynamic of these internet nation states. They don't have soldiers and so they can't have a court, but there's no way to enforce any of the judgments around property. Some of the digital, smart contracts are supposed to provide that dynamic where you can provide law without force, because it's all done automatically, but we see that over and over again, like FTX, when something really goes wrong, we end up defaulting to some extent, or at least the real life nation states come back in to step in and try to sort it out." - Jeremy Au
In this episode, Jeremy Au speaks on the $4B Singapore chip fabrication plant, regional Web3 investments, and corporate VC funds.
Keywords: Singapore Chip Fabrication Plant, Regional Web3 Investments, Corporate VC Funds, Singapore, Southeast Asia, VC, Thought Leadership
