The cryptocurrency market capitalization is currently standing at $615 billion, said the managing director at Krypto Labs, a global all-in-one business incubator, accelerator and world-class co-working space for start-ups.

Dr Salef Al Hashemi was delivering an opening address to the thought leaders, developers, experts and guests attending the Cryptocurrency Forum themed “Krypto Labs Cryptocurrency Discussion”.

“Krypto Labs is a unique ecosystem for funding star-ups, and the place where dreams become a reality. We are honoured to have you all present in our state-of-the-art Innovation Centre. As some of you may well know that we have had the first contest in Krypto Labs and spectacularly finished the first investment transaction few days ago,” said Dr Al Hashemi.

“We have received around 2,000 applications from 75 countries and 23 sectors at the first contest. The second contest is on Innovation and Drone Technology mainly, because in our opinion, drone technology is still having a lot of industries to make inroads.

“We received for this contest 200 global applications and on May 6th we will have the contest event. The core issue of Krypto Labs business model is incubation, mentorship, networking and seed funding,” he noted.

He also spoke in depth about the security, regulations and unrealized potentials of cryptocurrencies: “News of Blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies will figure prominently with a promise to disrupt the financial and banking industry. Critics call it ‘phantom money’, while regulators fret over the anonymity of its’ transactions, and central banks advise against the instability of its currency.”

 He further opened the debate about the future of cryptocurrencies and the potential of Blockchain to usher us into a new era of financial security and reduced transactional margins.

Jean-Luc, founder & CEO of Innoopolis, who also moderated the panel discussion, said: “Cryptocurrency and Bitcoin in particular started about ten years ago at the coinciding with the big financial crises that sent a shockwave across the globe when the general populations started to show a bit of bad feelings banks and central authorities managing their finances.”

“In 2008 there was a paper issued by Satoshi Nakamoto which basically described Bitcoin. It took about two years before we had the first Bitcoin transaction for buying two pizzas, which today would be worth $100 Million. It took another year until we had the first rival currencies appear, and three years until we had a number of cryptocurrencies in the market.

“The value of the Bitcoin also raised quickly to $1,000 in 2013. That is also when we started to have the cryptocurrencies being very visible and becoming prone to hackers’ transfers. In particular, we had the major theft in Japan. In 2016, we had the emergence of ICOs. Last year Bitcoin passed $10,000 in the market and basically, Bitcoin is now one of the major cryptocurrencies being used, and there is a number of alternative coins also being developed.”

“We need to make the difference between Bitcoin, cryptocurrency and Blockchain, the technology behind it. Blockchain technology provides the ability to remove the trusted third party, that is the entities that provide a network for financial institutions all over the globe to transmit information to each other in a safe and secure network, which can a bank or any other type of third party.

“The ledger that is basically owned by the central authority is distributed across a network of notes. The benefit of this is that this ledger is cryptographically secured; it is immutable, transparent and auditable. Since that ‘Middle-Man’ is removed, processes are also simplified with more efficiency provided, and cost reduction guaranteed through cutting the third party fees,” he added. – TradeArabia News Service