In the last few years, there have been many instances where Bitcoin and cryptocurrency have been accepted as a form of currency and payment.
In the past months, it’s clear that global adoption is in play as proven by the plethora of applications and institutions that have embedded crypto assets as a new asset class and form of payment.
In particular, the financial industry has emerged as the most successful frontier for crypto adoption. This development is due to the growing suites of decentralized and centralized crypto banking solutions designed to enable innovative and cheap service delivery systems.
Owing to the explosiveness of crypto fintech, it has become clear that cryptocurrency will play a major role in the shaping of future monetary orders.
This argument takes into account the recurring struggles of the traditional financial system to resolve agelong issues. There is no guarantee that existing monetary and banking architectures are suitable for an increasingly digitized global economy. Instead, we need a suite of services that can penetrate even the most obscure regions and propel them to a level playing field along with established economies.
This crypto frenzy has spurred regulators across the globe to introduce laws and regulations to stay ahead of developments in this terrain. Therefore, financial institutions have begun to shed some of their skepticism regarding crypto’s viability and are actively looking to incorporate it in various ways. In fact, many of the centralized exchanges around the world are still searching for their strategies by these emerging new technologies and regulatory rules that never had the flexibility to address the adoption of newer technologies.
One of the companies that has keyed into this paradigm shift is iWave Advanced Research doing business as Global Trade Exchange or globatradex, a Philippine-based financial technology company focusing on integrating innovative tools for advanced and seamless trading and banking processes. According to an announcement released recently, the Authority of the Freeport Area of Bataan (AFAB), an ecozone located in the Philippines, has issued an exclusive license to iWave Advanced Research Group, Inc. (“iWave”), to operate a digital asset exchange. With this, iWave now has regulatory backing to manage a digital asset trading platform tailored for global investors. It can also accredit, access and participate in the operation of decentralized exchange platforms that will serve as the stepping stone to more mainstream exchange listing and participation.
The licensee states that iWave, through its operations as GTX, can help foreign investors issue digital assets, earn yields on their crypto holdings, and access funds through collateralized digital assets.
In light of this development, I sought more insight into the workings of iWave and the effects that its newly approved exchange would have on (FAB) and Asia at large. Below are excerpts of the interview I had with one of iWave’s co-founders Ramon C. Garcia who has over 25 years of experience bringing forward disruption models to the Capital Market, Government, and Financial Services space throughout the Philippines and Asia Pacific region. Ramon is also the Co-founder and Chairman of DFNN, a publicly traded financial services technology company at the Philippine Stock Exchange.
**Edward Moon: **Like 2020, the new year promises dynamic changes in consumer behavior and financial trends. Which trends would have significant impacts on proceedings in 2021?
**Ramon C. Garcia: **Amid the current economic, financial, and social uncertainties; exacerbated by the COVID pandemic; it is clear that the current geopolitical models have systemic vulnerabilities that are not built to deal with the growing global crisis.
Quantitative easing is causing the devaluation of global currencies. Policy restrictions within and between countries is causing large scale capital flight. Unemployment brought about by the pandemic is causing social unrest across nations. These are just a few examples of the problems we face today.
We need policies and systems that would offer better alternatives than the existing financial and capital markets have to offer as these problems are what contributed to the problem in the first place. Moreover, more nimble, not necessarily iWave solely, will continue to change the whole Financial Industry models.
The difference with iWave is our recognition servicing the current traditional Financial Institutions and thus gaining historical trust while forging ahead in disruptive technologies and regulatory environments which are backed by legitimate sovereign nations with large economies and geographically relevant to the largest growth economies of the world.
**Edward Moon: **Since you and your company focus on identifying financial paradigms and providing support for businesses and individuals to capitalize on them, how is iWave positioning itself to deliver services suitable for the fast-evolving global economy?
**Ramon C. Garcia: **Three events will occur. The first is the migration of tokenized value. The second is the custody and storage of value. And the third is the exchange of value. We are now in the first stage and GTX intends to facilitate this process under the mandate and protection of AFAB which is protected under the constitutional laws of a sovereign nation.
We believe that both decentralized and centralized systems can complement each other to achieve the above-mentioned. We can leverage each system’s strengths and weaknesses. That is what we at iWave intends to achieve - a marriage or synergy between the two and a bridge from the traditional to the cutting edge.
#crypto #regulation #blockchain #interview #bitcoin
