OKX Enterprise Companion Jeff Ren Hints at Future Metaverse-Associated Bulletins

Metaverse Put up CEO Danil Myakin just lately caught up with Jeff Ren, a accomplice at OKX Ventures, throughout the Hong Kong Web3 Competition. Ren’s skilled background is various, having educated as a lawyer and labored in funding banking and asset administration. At present, he runs OKX Ventures, the funding arm of OKX, and is chargeable for driving the corporate’s web3-related strategic initiatives.

OKX is present process a consolidation course of, with all its alternate manufacturers being introduced collectively below one umbrella: OKX. Ren explains that OKX represents the alternate market for the whole lot, with plans to construct a digital market for digital items, belongings, and artwork. On this interview, Myakin and Ren focus on a wide range of subjects associated to the web3 house, together with crypto market rules, Ren’s perspective on the metaverse, and his hopes for the way AI can assist humanity enhance.

Danil Myakin: Are you able to inform me a bit extra about your self and about OKX Group?

Jeff Ren: OKX group is extensively often called one of many crypto exchanges with the longest historical past and most trusted crypto alternate. We’ve got very just lately launched a extremely acclaimed MPC pockets. After customers hook up with our pockets, they’d be capable of use totally different cross-chain bridges. We’ve got this very simple-to-use, one-click cross-chain, a gateway to totally different dApps and NFTs. And for the OKG Group, we have now OKlink.com, the on-chain knowledge product. It’s very straightforward to make use of. 

Now, we attempt to consolidate the whole lot below OKX, X being, you recognize, X.com, the primary startup that Musk began, which means the alternate market for the whole lot.

There’s one factor we are able to’t ignore on this dialog, and that’s the market developments. The monetary markets general are experiencing a reasonably excessive diploma of turbulence, even within the banking sector. However on the similar time, Bitcoin and Ethereum costs are shifting in an upward route, they usually’re exhibiting fairly sturdy motion. What do you count on from the market? How do you count on it to unfold?

In fact, value is a key indicator. This can be a 24/7 world market. It’s very onerous to search out different frequent indicators aside from the pricing itself. However the secret is in crypto; we also needs to be conscious of whether or not we see new entrants, new builders, new improvements, and market contributors with energetic wallets. We must always have a look at totally different statistics to type a view. In any other case, it’s fairly easy but too harmful, simply judging from the value motion alone. 

The monetary wraps of digital belongings are inevitable. We’ve got GBTC; we have now different ETFs constructed on high of that. The advantage of monetary merchandise and the impact of monetary markets is at all times to offer essentially the most trustworthy reflection of how the underlying belongings have been performing and attempt to extract the true worth of it and procure the hypothesis, however sadly, I believe due to the present stage, there’s a scarcity of belief amongst regulators and issuers of the monetary merchandise. 

Once we focus on subjects like this, I wish to ensure that the “buyers” or different merchants have both crypto belongings in tokens, cash, and different monetary merchandise constructed on high of that, make a distinction between the dangers and rewards in between. We additionally welcome regulation, however we wish the regulators to grasp what we’re actually speaking about. 

On the panel, I responded to 1 query saying sure regulators mentioned that they wish to regulate DeFi. However are you regulating the DeFi protocol itself, the builders, the customers, or the tokens that govern the operation or ship worth? I need individuals to be extra particular in order that the true builders and the true buyers can react to that.

For so long as I’ve been working in crypto. I’ve at all times heard that institutionalists are coming. Yearly, the identical factor. However I’d say this 12 months, because of totally different monetary and world political processes, we discover an actual change in it, and extra individuals are coming into crypto; even some institutionalists are extra desperate to take some dangers. So what do you consider the adoption of crypto? And what do you assume are crucial milestones proper now to verify we obtain it? 

In each new cycle or with new, disruptive improvements, you at all times have visionaries, builders, speculators, and those that encourage individuals to take a position. I believe it’s crucial to have sufficient incentives, tokens being the incentives for the blockchains. I believe individuals threw out a number of the concepts for mass adoption. In order that’s in all probability why you’ve gotten heard it for therefore a few years. 

We at all times discuss in regards to the use case, however what’s lacking in these conversations is, whether or not we have now very usable instruments. There’s additionally one other factor about migrating from web2 to web3. We’ve seen increasingly platforms the place as an alternative of letting individuals select A versus B, they’re truly doing issues which are frictionless. Individuals don’t see the distinction, however they’ll be capable of select. I believe you must let the blockchain win by individuals not having to make the selection. They should see the end result. They should really feel that that is one thing that addresses their ache factors. 

A few issues, for instance, safety and custody. There’s this perspective that whoever stands out to control wants to guard you when issues go fallacious. The regulation offers most of the people a false impression that since you regulate, so, due to this fact, it’s secure. When something goes fallacious, it’s not your drawback; it’s the unhealthy actors’ drawback. However generally you are feeling it’s truly your incompetence letting the hackers and these unhealthy actors truly succeed. I at all times ask the query, who must shoulder duty for the fallout? FTX? Who will shoulder the duty of the unhealthy actors like SBF and his little staff? Why does the blame return to the crypto trade normally? I believe that’s very unfair. 

I’ve associates asking me whether or not they can ship their teenage children and even faculty college students coming for summer season positions or internships. They wish to perceive it. Prior to now, they’ll attempt to say, oh, mess around with it, however deal with this like a pc sport. Good to know, however don’t contact it. Now they even wish to perceive extra. That’s an extended method to reply a query about mass adoption. However these days, the most well liked golf equipment in faculties are blockchain golf equipment. That’s mass adoption — how individuals see it and the way individuals react to it. 

Being at OKX ventures, I suppose you’ve gotten entry to a number of startups and a number of tendencies. So what do you assume are the most well liked subjects, tendencies, and niches for web3 startups?

Web3 subjects have at all times been how you can make all these on-chain actions extra cost-efficient and provides extra customers safety, and that hasn’t modified. However what I like in regards to the innovation and the builders right here is that individuals react to the new chains in a short time. We had that discuss SDK at a Dragonfly convention again in Beijing in 2019. The early guys had been making an attempt very onerous to clarify it, however now all these builders are popping out and speaking about it. I believe that’s wholesome. 

There are these “scorching initiatives,” they usually have so many contributors. Sadly, in life, you don’t get extra profitable for those who’re early, however you get extra profitable in case you are fortunate. So we’re selecting the winners, and we’re speaking to everybody as a buddy. We don’t want our portfolio to take sides by some means. We proceed to do what we do effectively, which is, constructing web3  merchandise and applied sciences and making them extra accessible to the builders. 

Within the previous days, all of the initiatives wished to get listed, so the one factor they cared about was the liquidity, the warmth that they generated. The alternate desires the customers within the very early days. However now the narrative’s actually modified. 

You must assume in another way about the way you react to the exchanges and the way you mess around with the brand new initiatives. We see OKX ventures because the connectors to those elements. As an alternate enterprise, it’s very clear. It’s very aggressive, proper? No clear winners. As a substitute of telling individuals you must generate so many energetic customers and transactions to be certified, why not inform them that you’ve this instrument you possibly can attempt to use and show to not us however to your neighborhood members that you’re worthy for them to proceed working with you. I believe that’s type of a extra constructive means of constructing, and we’re nonetheless studying.

Yeah, positively, the alternate enterprise is hard. As you mentioned, the clear winner is hard to decide on, however the losers are very clear.  Since we’re Metaverse Put up, so I can’t simply skip this query: What’s your understanding of the metaverse? 

Within the early days, once we talked about metaverse, we truly talked about totally different terminals, like the way you get into it. So we don’t discuss what it’s as a result of all people can describe that or describe the trail to that. So VR was one, and blockchain was the opposite. We talked about gaming and different issues.

The very first thing that we thought in regards to the metaverse is the communication instruments: entry to new areas. And recently, massive corporations have began crowding the house and making an attempt to set the tone. Meta and different gigantic gamers try to monopolize the time period and make it one thing that’s extra for his or her enterprise growth functions, launch their new merchandise, and rebrand. However that didn’t actually work out. Then later, they phased out, they acknowledged the failure, they usually wish to do one thing else.

I’ll say if the metaverse turns into profitable, it turns into a terminology used interchangeably for the digital world. So something that’s digital, something that’s artistic, and something that has its personal autonomy versus the precise bodily world. The metaverse virtually turns into a parallel existence of human actions. 

Except we actually recreate ourselves and begin constructing chips and react motionlessly with our machine or see and assume and talk along with your human physique into the metaverse, the following factor to fret about is how we revolutionize our machine. We’re no chip builders, however we attempt to talk our views with these startups or initiatives. Hopefully, within the coming months, you will note bulletins from us investing on this house. I believe crypto could be an integral a part of metaverse. 

Crypto and web3 are actually like the bottom layer for it as a result of you possibly can’t have the true metaverse with out the true worth alternate in it. And except you’ve gotten blockchain, you’re not going to get there anyhow. AI is one other scorching matter. We do write quite a bit about it as effectively, and we use it quite a bit. So I’m actually interested by the way you assume AI can be influenced by web3 and your corporation.

A few views. AI is just not a brand new factor. I personally invested in a number of the AI corporations; one in every of them is listed in China, and it’s not been performing very effectively. I believe that AI is simply one of many coolest issues that entice a number of consideration and expertise and a number of constructing actions. And I’m glad that they work. I believe ChatGPT actually got here out on the proper time, and possibly it’s a Microsoft factor, however I believe they offered it effectively. It’s a really cool product, a really cool advertising and marketing initiative, and definitely, it will get individuals’s consideration. 

However I by no means favored questions like, “How would this impression that?” I don’t assume AI and the metaverse essentially should work together with one another. What I do wish to see is AI coaching in sure product choices. We’re not conscious of anybody that has been utilizing blockchain on-chain knowledge to coach their protocols so we’re working with a number of the family names within the AI house. We’re feeding them the on-chain knowledge that we’ve gathered and arranged. You will note bulletins of sure growth merchandise in all probability popping out first. 

The opposite factor is that we help a number of NFT initiatives, and AIGC initiatives are actually highly regarded. And we all know a number of initiatives within the type of DAOs which are supporting different AIGC initiatives, and a few of them have change into extensively acclaimed initiatives. So we’re studying and monitoring how human organizations like DAOs would react to AI-generated content material.

I believe AI helps not simply to generate content material and wealth. It additionally helps to understand your feelings and human elements. Hopefully, AI will change into extra of an enabler for us as people to be higher selves and received’t substitute us.

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