Call to boost cryptocurrency awareness
KUALA LUMPUR: Cryptocurrency is become a popular way for investors to increase their wealth but a lack of awareness and education about digital assets may prevent it from reaching its full potential.
Luno Malaysia country manager Aaron Tang said most crypto companies had trouble dealing with traditional financial institutions due to the misconceptions brought upon by the “uncertainty and risk” in cryptocurrency.
“Financial institutions are urged to have more dialogues with crypto companies and players as digital assets can add real value.
“They need to bridge the gap between traditional banks and digital asset companies,” he said at the “CryptoOpportunities and Hurdles” webinar organised by Maybank Kim Eng Research
yesterday.
Tang said the infrastructure for the digital assets, especially Bitcoin, was built in a more transparent way and that had made people somewhat uncomfortable.
“This is Bitcoin’s strength where there is no cheating or hiding. Despite the fact that cryptocurrency is still a new asset class, it has produced an impressive return.”
He said regulators faced challenges in promoting innovation while having the responsibility to protect the vast majority of the population without discouraging innovation.
“The biggest place where we can make an impact is to bridge the gap between the traditional way of doing money (finance) and moving into digital assets and cryptocurrencies.”
AirCarbon co-founder and chief executive officer Thomas McMahon said investing in cryptocurrency would be the future but investors would need to understand the methodology of the blockchain technology-driven tokenisation.
For example, he said digital assets such as Bitcoin had great potential but many people remained sceptical of its relevance in the financial system.
“The whole world is going to be tokenised in the future. Tokenisation will break the barriers of disallowing portability and interruptibility,” he said.
McMahon said although digital banks existed, their system framework is not unified.
Algorithma managing director Sankalp Shangari said a lot of money was pouring into cryptocurrency as the digital asset’s technology would keep on evolving.
He agreed that the financial system could be tokenised as a result of the increasing use of digital assets.