What’s Coming Up?
2020’s not quite gone, but we’re already looking forward to what’s next with Terry Angelos of Visa, Economist Niall Ferguson, and more.
Ethereum 2.0 launches, DeFi matures with its first M&A, and the egalitarian ideals of crypto keep struggling in practice.
Digital currencies continue to dominate, as the ECB mulls over a digital euro and ever growing crypto markets.
A Note from Us
This month we announced a new phase of growth for dGen. We have expanded our leadership and launched a public funding team to support dGen as we continue on our mission to grow Web3 for the Decentralised Generation.
Personally, I am thrilled to join the dGen Community as the first Managing Director of the organization. And, I cannot wait to share more about what we have in store for 2021!
Reid Yager, Managing Director at dGen
Latest dGen Report
The economic effects of Covid-19 are already making waves, and the bill for the €750 billion EU stimulus plan is coming.
Repaying these grants and loans will require greater harmonisation between EU member states, faster and clearer tax filing and collection, and better use of taxpayer data - already mandated by the DAC6. This report explores the role blockchain and AI could play in improving an integrated EU tax system, and ensuring this burden doesn’t fall to the next generation.
6 Trends Shaping the Next Year in FinTech
With Covid-19 accelerating growth and adoption of FinTech applications, Terry Angelos looks at credit, real-time payroll, finance embedded in software, neobanks, digital currencies, and digital wallets as the next generation of FinTech. These developments could improve community, speed, and services in finance, and act as a bridge between traditional finance and crypto. Read more…
Bitcoin Is Winning the Covid-19 Monetary Revolution
With bitcoin prices soaring to all time highs earlier this week, Niall Ferguson discusses the potential for bitcoin to act as a digital replacement to gold - scarce, sovereign from any national government, and liquid. He argues it must be folded into economies as a ‘digital gold’. This, not a new payment method, is the greatest use of blockchain-based assets. Read more…
Governance Minimization
In this piece Fred Ehrsam and Dan Robinson discuss the future of governance. Namely, the ‘credible neutrality’ provided by protocols for governance is held up for the potential to align stakeholder interest without hampering innovation. Removing human decision making mitigates external influences or decisions that will negatively impact the organisation or other stakeholders. Read more…
The Modern World Has Finally Become Too Complex for Any of Us to Understand
With growing globalisation, automation, and content/data creation, many decisions now filtered through so much automation and layers of management the exact source is unclear. Tim Maughan looks from supply chains to the stock exchange, explaining that while it might be necessary for daily functions, ‘[c]eding control to vast unaccountable networks not only risks those networks going off the rails, it also threatens democracy itself’. Read more…
Top Headlines
🌍 Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain Goes Live as ‘World Computer’ Begins Long-Awaited Overhaul
✊🏾 ‘Tokenized’: Inside Black Workers’ Struggles at the King of Crypto Start-Ups
🤝 DeFi’s First M&A Deal? Yearn.finance and Pickle Finance Are Set to Merge
👩🏻💼 Biden to Nominate Janet Yellen as US Treasury Secretary
🚀 S&P Dow Jones Indices to Launch Cryptocurrency Indexes in 2021
Tweets of the Month
European Ecosystem News
ECB & the Future of Money
The ECB was busy this month, issuing several statements touching on stablecoins and a possible digital euro. In a speech, Fabio Panetta, Member of the Executive Board, ECB, said:
‘As private money goes digital, sovereign money also needs to be reinvented’.
However, he stressed the need to keep money ‘available under all circumstances’, and therefore the need of cash, even with a digital euro.
Christine Lagarde, President of the ECB, was more direct in her letter. She claimed that stablecoins still ‘pose serious risks’, while reiterating that sovereign money functions on trust. Like Panetta, she reiterated the continued need for cash, even as the ECB must keep pace with the digital economy.
Is it time for a digital euro?
What is a digital euro? What would its benefits be and how would it affect the way we make payments? When could it be ready? Host of the ECB Podcast, Michael Steen, discusses these questions and more with Ulrich Bindseil, who is responsible for market infrastructures and payments at the ECB.
EU Blockchain Ecosystem Latest Developments
This is the first thematic report prepared by the new team leading the EU Blockchain Observatory and Forum, aiming to present the latest updates and developments within the EU blockchain ecosystem. The aim is to reflect on the latest trends and developments and discuss the future of blockchain in Europe and globally.
🎥 Panel: CeFi vs. DeFi
Hosted by John Salmon of Hogan Lovells for Global Digital Finance, Tim Grant, SDX, George Zaray, Bequant, and our own Jake Stott discussed developments in DeFi, how this differs from traditional finance, and the proposed regulations - Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA).
🎙️Should We End the Data Economy?
Ownership of personal data is a form of power – and that power is concentrating in the hands of governments and big tech. Should we be worried? Dr. Carissa Véliz, from the Institute for Ethics in AI at the University of Oxford, joins Azeem Azhar to discuss her new book “Privacy is Power.”
📹 Yahoo Finance presents: Paul Tudor Jones
Yahoo brings to us an exclusive conversation with Paul Tudor Jones, the CEO of Tudor Investment Corporation, to share his views of the market and the broader economy in an unprecedented 2020.
Democracies struggled this year, with no way to safely cast a vote, or even protest, in many countries. While US election results have finally been accepted, clearly voting needs to be updated. But, beyond providing an online voting mechanism, what if democracies re-evaluated their core workings to look at how voting could even further improve representation.
While these changes are likely quite distant, we look to the innovative governance models being developed in blockchain communities, their use-case in government, and the success and risks of online voting.
Join Our Ecosystem and Contribute to Research
dGen is an independent non-profit research institute focusing on how emerging technology can contribute to a decentralised future in Europe. We envision what this might mean for people, society, private entities, and the public sector.
We are always looking for new corporate and start-up partners and contributors from across the globe.
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dGen is a non-profit Think Tank based in Berlin focused on how emerging technologies might contribute to shaping a decentralised future in Europe. Our research reports aim to educate and foster discussion among decision-makers in the ecosystem.
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