InnoKOL | Brady Luo of evriToken: Technology Is Important, But It's Worth Nothing with No Adoption

2019/09/27 Innoverview Read

On September.27th, we had great honor of interviewing Mr.Brady Luo,Co-Founder& CEO of everiToken. He shared his expertise on Blockchain technology development trends and unique markting strategies of Blockchain projects.


Innoverview: How would you describe yourself?

Brady: Motivated and positive-thinking visioner. 


Innoverview: Can you please share more about your educational and professional background? And we’d love to hear what brought you to Blockchain.

Brady: I'm a true believer in the global token economy based on blockchain technology. I’ve completed my undergraduate degree in electrical engineering at the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, received a graduate degree in finance from Brandeis University, and completed the Blockchain Strategy curriculum at the Said Business School, University of Oxford. I'm a serial entrepreneur and has successfully exited from several businesses prior to founding everiToken, including Fubon Brothers Financial Holding, HiDreamer Mobile Games, and China Credit Score Data Technology. Prior to my entrepreneurial activities, I ’ve been working as a CDO Analyst at Oppenheimer Funds in New York and a Principal for Asian M&A strategy at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities, Japan’s largest financial group.


Innoverview: everiToken is the public chain made for real business and currently reached 300+ partnership of redefining payment methods and proof of ownerships. What are your main challenges to expand the massive adoption and how do you overcome those challenges? Could you share 1or 2 use cases?

Brady: The main challenge now is a low level of the crypto mass adoption, only around 70-100MM of people use cryptocurrencies. We do a lot in terms of stimulating adoption, but we also believe that more and more people will be involved in the crypto market in the future.

We promote our technology through partnering with large traditional players like HWG for example, it helps us to involve more regular people in the crypto world. Moreover, we do a lot of activities for developers and entrepreneurs, stimulating them to get into this market, for example we organize hackathons, events, and moreover we will build up a blockchain accelerator in NYC.

 

Use cases:

  1. HWG (one ofthe largest conglomerates  inMalaysia which has issued a fully-licensed $500 million stablecoin oneveriToken blockchain for payments in their offline stores , hotels andcruise company). Their users generate around 20,00-30,000 transactions perday.

  2. Zhiyuan hui- the largest volunteer organization (71M of registered users). They alsoimplemented everiToken in their current infrastructure,they are rolling itout to 71M of users stage by stage. Their users generate around 50,000transactions daily.

Cointelegraph already covered this story (

https://cointelegraph.com/news/71-million-user-volunteer-platform-to-launch-blockchain-based-dapp).


Innoverview: From your perspective, which industry will benefit from Blockchain most? Which industry needs smart contracts and Blockchain more than others?

Brady: I think these 5 industries are the most suitable for implementing blockchain: 

1 Tokenization (tokenization of investment funds, company’s equity, revenue, real estate, etc.- any STO or DSO)

2. Payments

3. Retail (loyalty programs, logistics, data, etc.)

4. Internet of Things

5. Stable coins


Innoverview:  A conducive regulatory environment is vital to protect consumers and foster growth and innovation within the investment industry. Do you favor more of a hands-off approach or clear-cut regulations just like in traditional finance?

Brady: I think we need to find a well-balanced approach in terms of regulation. Investors should be well- protected, but at the same time, startups should be flexible enough to do their business. I would prefer to say that we need to provide more opportunities and less restrictions, but we need to regulate the market itself and to protect investors against scams. 


Innoverview: We already know that blockchain has the capability to offer a decentralized ledger system and many are already adopting the tech. On the other hand, AI and IoT also started to streamlining processes for our benefit. Do you think blockchain based AI and IoT will be the next technological milestone?

Brady: I can say that technology is important, but it costs nothing with no adoption. Take a look at VR people have been talking about it for several years, but it is still very promising and “developing” market, because now it's more technology than a business.

I think AI and blockchain are already the two hottest markets and they will be increasing their level of domination. At the same time, please note that the majority of the market players will not be able to provide a good return to their investors.  Only projects with a real adoption will survive and deserve attention from investors and customers.  This is the main reason why we (me personally and my team) spend so much time implementing everiToken in the real world.


Innoverview: The banks like JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs actively involved in blockchain technology for their operational activity. How do you think will Blockchain technology transform financial services sector?

Brady: Blockchain is doing that right now.  Financial institutions recognized the fact, that this technology can save billions every year and increase their efficiency and profitability. It is a reason why we usually have representatives from TOP -5 investment banks, traditional exchanges and others at everiToken events in New York or London, for example.

But at the same time, payment providers are still trying to save their business, they want to continue charging small business up to 8% for PoS transactions, and of course, blockchain makes some barriers for that, for example with everiToken merchants can pay 99% fewer commissions than with Visa or Mastercard.

 

I think blockchain is changing the entire financial system right now and probably after 5-7 years we will have absolutely different system, more efficient, faster and free than we have now.


Innoverview: Educating the user is an issue many startups struggle with. How did you educate users? What bottlenecks to wide-scale user adoption currently exist in your opinion?

Brady: We use 3 ways: 

  1. Events.  Every month everiToken hosts events indifferent cities (New York, Shanghai, London, Hong Long, Berlin, Amsterdamand others). We engage very reputable speakers who share their vision andprovide more information and insights about the technology to our guests.

  2. Articles. Wepublish articles about the real use cases of the technology. People cantake a look at and figure out how they can use it in their business orregular life.

  3. Hackathonsand Accelerator. We help entrepreneurs to build up their business relatedto blockchain.

 

In terms of getting a real mass-adoption, we have to solve only one problem: explain to the regular people how blockchain can improve their life today. Right after we get it done, our technology will be literally everywhere.