CNBC-TV18, with WazirX, concludes the 1st edition of The IC Summit 2021

The cryptocurrency space, as an asset class, is catching the interest of the investor community thus turning it into a trillion-dollar investment opportunity. And with the expectation of the Cryptocurrency Bill being tabled during the winter session of the Parliament, the excitement around this is palpable. Encouraged by the rising interest among its viewers, CNBC-TV18 and WazirX successfully concluded its first edition of ‘The Indian Crypto Summit 2021’, providing exceptional insights on the key fundamentals of the fastest growing asset class.

Held on 24^th September, this virtual summit gave industry experts a platform to discuss the emerging trends in the Crypto industry and connect with investors and leaders of the Crypto market. The leaders discussed varied topics spanning investment developments, measuring the benefits, global market conditions and scope of funding in the Crypto industry that will help attendees and CIOs explore the smart and secure alternative investment opportunities in the market.

The summit commenced with a welcome note by Manisha Gupta Editor – Commodities & Currencies, CNBC-TV18, leading to a fire side chat with Charles Hoskinson, CEO, Founder – IOHK, USA and Nischal Shetty – Founder & CEO WazirX. This was followed by series of panel discussions, the first being on ‘The Global Crypto stage’, that saw Siddharth Menon - Co-founder & COO, WazirX, Saeed Al Darmaki - Managing Director, Alphabit Digital Currency Fund, Charles d'Haussy - MD, ConsenSys APAC region and Rajeev Mantri- MD, Navam Captial participate in it. The second discussion centred around the topic of ‘Tokenization of the World’ featuring Nischal Shetty – Founder & CEO WazirX, Siddharth Singhal – Director Enterprise, Parity Technologies, Shailesh Lakhani – MD, Sequoia and Nitin Gaur Director – Financial Sciences & Digital Assets. The summit concluded with an interesting panel comprising “Pranav Sharma – CIO, Woodstock Investment, Darshan Bathija – Co-founder and CEO, Vauld, Sandeep Nailwal – Co-founder & COO, Polygon on “India Startups in Crypto”.

Each of these sessions concluded with a Q&A where attendees could get their queries addressed by the panelists. 

The insightful event witnessed some key takeaways from industry veterans such as Charles Hoskinson, he stated, “A lot of consumerization, especially amongst verticals that were unanticipated, for instance, NFT's, have been an incredible growth area. Cardano has been a very strong player in the NFT space over 100,000 NFT's have been issued on Cardano thanks to our native multi-asset standard and there are a lot of NFT platforms that are supporting and migrating to Cardano, so we think that's going to be a very strong area in 2022 in our ecosystem.”

Speaking on the disruption phase Nischal Shetty mentioned, - “Today, there are roughly 120-230 million people on the internet who are into crypto. Now that's less than 3% of the global crypto population out of 4.7 billion people on the internet. Hence, it's still early and we are in that disruption phase. Secondly, the markets are still highly inefficient in terms of the way it operates, and the way investors get access to crypto tokens. The regulatory environment is still very new, and most people are still confused about the various classifications of crypto. So that’s, again a sign of disruptive things.”

Saeed Al Darmaki advised, “Before trading or investing in cryptocurrencies, an investor needs to be aware of its extremely high-risk asset class. It's an upcoming technology that's still very nascent and developing over time. Eventually over a period and as the market cap of all the existing cryptocurrencies in the market starts rising, the volatility will decrease over time. In order to achieve high returns, one must do proper research and be aware of the risk involved before making any decision if they have a long timeframe for investment.”

Nitin Gaur emphasized that “The biggest debate in the industry has been, to control and regulate technology versus to regulate the instruments and the activities that surround it. In my opinion, it's virtually impossible to control technology, any claim in terms of having a transactional control on these systems is a futile exercise. I think it would be in the best interest of most countries to be able to understand the technology. Embrace the potential and adapt to transform the financial services industry.” 

Speaking of the roadblocks Sandeep Nailwal highlighted “Regulatory uncertainty is a larger danger for India as it will lead to a lot of talent outflow due to the start-ups who are not building for Indian geography, so they don't have any physical stores or delivery areas compared to the web. They don't need bank accounts to process the payments, hence they might simply move their base out. Government should come up with having special economic zones or special crypto zones where the entrepreneurs can work.”

Viewers can watch the entire summit on: https://www.cnbctv18.com/ms/crypto/cio-summit/