c2c #32: Insto blockchain, Daml, GetVantage, Angkor revisited
I’m the author of Cowries to Crypto about the history of money, and the c2c newsletter is my personal take on innovation in finance and capital. In here you will find:
1.???Work from the Week: highlights from my day job covering fintech
2.???Talk of the Town: internet hot takes on tech and finance
3.???c2c: thoughts on innovation and related topics
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1. Work from the Week: Insto blockchain, Daml, GetVantage
DigFin awards open for all submissions! I hope to see your firm step into the arena, whether you work at a financial institution or a tech company. Our awards are independent and pan-Asia.
Now, onto DigFin’s latest stories.
Blockchain for FIs | Nicole Olson and Patrick Campos | DigFin VOX Ep. 37: A double-header! Trying to understand how financial institutions grapple with the impact of blockchain is always fascinating. These are the intermediaries that are supposedly superfluous. Which is true for people operating in the unregulated, speculative end of crypto.
But not for the real money managed by professional investors. In this conversation, I spoke with Nicole from State Street Digital and Patrick from Securrency, a blockchain tooling vendor. It is a good look at how financial institutions think about this space, and why they will definitely be involved.
Yuval Rooz wants language to connect blockchains: Yuval is CEO and co-founder of Digital Asset, a leading vendor in this industry. I think the difference between DA and other big firms (R3, Ripple Labs, etc) is their approach to interoperability.
Interoperability is a buzzword because everybody uses it but it doesn’t always mean the same thing. It’s also the end of most conversations about blockfin. “We’re building this thing, and someday we’ll figure out interoperability” is the gist of many conversations. DA is like that too, but it hopes its smart-contracts language becomes that connector, versus companies battling it out and hoping their widget wins through brute force.
Which is cool, although the problems at DA’s most important client, ASX, show that there is no easy street.
While we're on the subject...be sure to sign up for Thursday's webinar with DA, Broadridge and HSBC (and moi!) talking about "distributed ledger repo", and learn how blockchain is now being used in capital markets.
GetVantage expanding wholesale-lending platform: I was impressed with this Indian lending platform. I don’t have a systemic knowledge of these businesses but this is the first time I encountered their pricing model. (Feel free to let me know if there are similar companies.)
They are also a good example of the growing links in tech and VC among India and the ASEAN nations. This super-region is emerging as the next big story, now that China’s growth phase is over. GetVantage hopes to take its business into Southeast Asia. Why not?
2. Talk of the Town
Adam Neumann is back. a16z cut him a $350 million check for his new venture, Flow Works, which sounds like WeWork for condos. WeWork was such a disaster that Masayoshi Son agreed to pay Neumann $1 billion just to make him go away. This comes after a16z boss Mark Andreessen, who has publicly called on California to allow more real-estate development to solve its housing problems, was outed as leading the charge in his own community, Atherton, to block any such new building.
Twitter, naturally, had a thing or three to say about this.
Of course nothing gets to the heart of things like 100 percent snark:
While all of these views are valid, the outrage doesn't explain why a16z is doing this, or what it says about venture funding, at least in the US. Andreessen can be nihilistic, hypocritical and cynical, but $350 million is an expensive bet. And he would know the move would attract opprobrium. He was probably betting on it.
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I wouldn't call this venture capital. It's more like an expensive marketing campaign. The lines between VC and late-stage growth equity, hedge funds, and private equity has blurred. In this competition, VC is at a disadvantage because even its biggest players are relatively small. This is why firms like Sequoia have built funds that are meant to support companies after they've gone public. They need founders that still think big in order to justify their own size. That kind of vision may have been curtailed by the recent plunge in public market stocks, which has also impacted startup valuations, VC rounds, and crypto. Andreessen might be using this Neumann thing to tell founders they need to keep thinking as big as possible.
Is this good for society? We want founders energized. But for the past two decades, VC has become more about blind capital than technology or operating skill. The market bust looked like it might force VC to downsize and return to a purer form. a16z isn't buying that argument. I find this latest move disquieting because it signals that big VC is prepared to do damage because it is still focused on nothing but pumping valuations. In other words, that backing an obvious disaster could make a16z money.
Unless...
There's always hope!
3. Weekly c2c: Angkor revisited
I never really finish projects. They just reach points of execution, like, this newsletter, or that book, needs to be published. The ideas, however, continue to marinade. They become interesting again when they blend with others.
My interest in Angkor goes back to my first visit in April 1998. It was mind-blowing. Like most tourists, I had little idea what I was looking at, but the sheer and awesome scale and beauty of the lost monuments provided their own emotional narrative.
Also, back then, the site was still dilapidated, and several major monuments were not excavated. The area was dangerous if you strayed into the forest, which the Khmer Rouge had laced with landmines. In fact, I learned when I returned to Hong Kong that I had been there when Pol Pot died not far away.
It would take two more visits and a lot of research, but I published a book called The Story of Angkor in 2013. The idea was to tell the history through the monuments, the sites that people visit, in a short and snappy fashion. I began research in 2008, so it ended up being a five-year project. Professor David Chandler, the master of Cambodian history studies, critiqued it midway, an intervention for which I am grateful.
My interest at the time was political and cultural, although I realized the most interesting part of Angkor was technological – but this was not readily visible to tourists. Since the book emerged there has been more scholarship on Angkor’s engineering, hydraulic, and infrastructure. You can now view a lot of the cutting-edge research on YouTube.
My own career has also shifted with DigFin. I’m not a techie so deciding to write about fintech has been a terrific journey, an amazing learning experience. My non-fiction writing has also expanded to include the history of money and my current weekend project, venture capital.
I feel these interests in finance, innovation, and history are commingling.
The new discoveries at Mahendraparvata, a proto-Angkor built nearby at Mount Kulen, shown the ability of early ninth-century Khmers to execute on dense urban planning unlike anything else in the world.
At the same time, the rise of Angkor represented a new economic model. The Angkorians abandoned the commercial, enterprise-minded seaports and turned inward to centralized, bureaucratic, religious states that stopped using money. It wasn’t just Angkor: the same phenomenon happened in Mynamar with the rise of Bagan two centuries later.
How did this society create innovative engineering marvels without money or private enterprise? What made this model successful – and did it also hasten Angkor’s collapse?
Once I get some other tasks out of the way, I’m going to retell the Story of Angkor, but this time in video format, not a book. Stay tuned!
See you next week
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About Jame
Jame DiBiasio is a book author, financial journalist, media entrepreneur, and a speaker/moderator. In 2015 he launched DigFin, an online media covering digital finance that is now driving the digital arm of Hong Kong-based financial group AMTD. Jame is also a member of the board of the Hong Kong Fintech Association.
He is author of “Block Kong” (co-authored with Charles D’Haussy) profiling 21 blockchain entrepreneurs in Hong Kong; and “Cowries to Crypto: The History of Money, Currency and Wealth”. He is currently working on a book about the venture capital industry.
Jame has also written books about Asian history, including “Who Killed the King of Bagan?” and “The Story of Angkor”. He writes thrillers too. You can find all of Jame’s published books on Amazon.