More Industries Open with Blockchain and Web3

The BEYOND Expo technology exhibition and conference has been reopened since yesterday (10/5). For three days, hundreds of speakers, panelists, and exhibitions were held highlighting the three hottest industries: healthcare, sustainabilityand consumertech.

Each conference is filled with a busy schedule of panel discussions and product exhibitions that explore the latest technological innovations. Special in consumertech, speakers from leading companies share their views on topics ranging from unmanned vehicles, Web3, to the generative impact of AI on the retail industry.

The first day starts with keynote address on “The Web3 in the New AI Era” by Yang Wang, VP for institutional advancement of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

He said, "Hong Kong [and China] have made it known in the world: we want to develop the digital economy, we want to develop Web3. There is a very strong commitment to this."

Wang explained that the emergence tools Generative AI creatives, such as ChatGPT, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion have offered crucial momentum to the true emergence of Web3, by enabling more people to produce content, and own the content they create.

“This technology has made possible many tasks that were inaccessible to even the most highly educated people,” he said.

He also closed his speech on a note of optimism, that China's open embrace of technology indicates many opportunities to take advantage of Web3.

The future of Web3

Then, the next discussion raised the theme "The Future of the Metaverse" between Unity China CEO Junbo Zhang and Phoenix Technology Editor-in-Chief Liu Yukun.

"Will [AI and Web3] technologies bring about revolutionary change?," Yukun asked Zhang.

Zhang replied, "I think we will see very big changes in the next three to five years." According to him, disruption does not always have a negative connotation. There are still many who think that if queues generated automatically, so human labor will no longer be needed for much programming in the future.

“But AI technology is a helpful tool developer unleash their creativity to a higher level, and developer others will only benefit [as the industry develops].”

This topic then continued in a panel discussion with the theme "Investing in Web3", moderated by Chinaventure's Technology Editor-in-Chief, with panelists CMC Capital Partner Xu Chen, LingFeng Capital Founding Partner Ma Ning, and UpHonest Capital Managing Director Rex Zheng.

Ning said, now is the right time to invest in Web3 companies. Although he remains bullish because there has recently been a downturn in the global market for companies in China, especially those working in the but sector, the potential for exponential growth remains. "When other people are pessimistic, it's better to be active," he said.

Chen added that China has an inherent advantage in its internet ecology, citing the large number of internet users and the increasing demand for web3 products driven by the younger generation who are interested in the internet world. "As the technology matures, the opportunities are huge," he added.

Banking is increasingly open

Emerging technologies such as blockchain are not only limited to new and technology-based companies, but traditional players such as banks are also seeing the benefits of such technologies.

“Even though we are a traditional bank, we have strong expertise in technology and many of our services have incorporated Web3,” ICBC Macau Deputy CEO Zheng Bin told a panel on the theme “Crypto Finance: Risks and Rewards”.

Even though ICBC is a traditional bank, Bin explained that his institution always invests in emerging science and technology. According to him, blockchain has quickly shown that it can solve many problems for its clients and customers, by making banking more efficient.

It has worked with the Macau government to use blockchain architecture to issue consumption cards to local residents, increasing the convenience and efficiency of the process. Consumption cards refer to electronic consumption vouchers issued by the Macau government to support citizens during the Covid-19 pandemic in the last three years.

Zheng and another panelist, lead of Web3 ecosystem development for Alibaba Cloud Leo Li, agreed that oversight is necessary for Web3 development. However, cryptocurrencies and other financial technologies require some form of regulation to increase trust in them.

As well as agreeing that the sandbox approach really allows governments to test cryptocurrency regulations, which can provide solutions and encourage financial institutions to adopt them.

“This is an inclusive technology, but without oversight and a compliance framework, human greed took over, [leading to last year's crash],” Li said.

The consumer tech conference is one of the BEYOND Expo conferences which will be held for three days in Macau, on 10 May-12 May 2023.

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Disclosure: DailySocial.id is a media partner of BEYOND Expo 2023