Q&A with Yubo Ruan: Prospecting the Blockchain Landscape for The Future’s Hidden Gems
The Crypto bubble has popped but like the .com bubble that produced Google, Amazon, and others – we are now seeing the survivors emerge from the ashes. We sat down with one asset manager in an exclusively Crypto fund from Asia to hear his thoughts on the market and we asked him some pointed questions. Although that US readers are skeptical about Crypto as it has pretty much crashed and burned to the ground here, we must remember the world is a big place and in Asia and Europe there still is a budding Crypto community. In fact, readers of our past posts may think we are skeptical about Crypto as an asset class but that’s not the case. The problem has been that 99% of ICOs went down by 99% and that’s an indisputable fact. But even in our mandate for project Crediblock we maintain that we will evolve niche markets, one of them being Crypto.
The blockchain and crypto ecosystem globally has long since grown out of its Wild West phase and has started to resemble something more akin to the broader tech sector.
One of the biggest milestones in this evolution is the enthusiastic entrance of institutional capital into the market. As traditional venture capital firms turn to crypto, the sector has started cultivating its own VC funds, helping blockchain expand its reach and thrive.
Even so, the past year has been rough for crypto. An extended bear market continues to sap the sector of many promising projects and has weighed heavily on crypto’s overall value. Nevertheless, things are not as bleak as they may seem, according to some industry experts.
Since we have founded Pre IPO Swap we have been inundated with requests of all kinds, but we have often crossed the VC community – and that community is hot into Crypto.
So we had a unique opportunity to sit down with Yubo Ruan, the founder of 8 Decimal Capital, a VC fund that invests in both blockchain equity and tokens. He shared his views on the current state of the market as well as where he believes it’s headed.
Can you share a little about your investment strategy? How do you determine the projects which are worthy of capital allocations?
Generally, the team behind a project is our most important criteria. Some of the backgrounds we look for include previous experience at tier 1 tech companies like Facebook or Google, as well as tier 1 crypto firms like Coinbase, Ethereum, and EOS. We also look for entrepreneurs who have successfully exited previous endeavors, or who simply exhibit strong knowledge and familiarity (what we would call “geniuses”).
The second criteria we look for is the size of the market being disrupted—the larger the potential, the better for us. Of course, there are other factors we consider: market fit, competitive advantage, business model, “painkiller vs. vitamin”, forward projections, and so on. Overall, we look to invest in projects that could shape the industry’s future, and eventually, the world.
Are you concerned about the viability of blockchain projects as the current bear market drags on?
There’s no doubt that the bear market is a formidable challenge for many blockchain and crypto-related projects, but it is also an opportunity for entrepreneurs and investors to really focus on fundamentals and uncover the use cases that are truly viable. This is an interesting period in which the successful use cases and proofs-of-concept in blockchain will begin to emerge and drive innovation in the period ahead. We are anticipating the release of several more dApps over the coming years, with some representing true breakthroughs. That will help gradually restore faith in the sector and drive adoption back to positive levels.
How do you view the current coin ecosystem? Who are some winners and losers?
The losers in the sector are those that have completely shut down, either due to failure to deliver the product, a lack of viable use cases, or simply a poor business model. The winners are more often those that follow their roadmap, delivered their products and expended or even produced significant revenues during the bear market. Binance is a great example of a company that released multiple products and kept expanding through the current down period. Other examples include protocols that promised a mainnet and delivered, such as Cosmos and Ziliqa.
Which five coins do you believe, with good certainty, will still exist in five years?
First and foremost, Bitcoin—it’s the first cryptocurrency and has received the most PR over the past decade. Even if it fails to reach real adoption, people would still probably collect and trade it as an artifact. Ethereum is too big to fail and is also the most mature and widely used blockchain in the industry. It already has a thriving ecosystem of tools, developers, L2 solutions, and protocols. It is also backed by a large number of supporters, including Consensys, and will likely keep expanding its reach while concurrently upgrading its tech.
Stablecoins are also likely to survive, as they are purposeful and necessary for the ecosystem. I can’t really comment on specific coins as they all involve some degree of risk due to their centralization or failure to peg their price close enough to $1. Even so, stablecoins are an essential component for traders to mitigate volatility, and in dApps to be used as programmable payment currency (for instance, many DeFi apps already use Dai for transactions).
It’s hard to pick out other ones. Looking at it historically, Litecoin and Ripple have steadily been among the top 10 coins in terms of market capitalization since 2013, while several others have lost their position. From this perspective, they may remain popular five years from now.
How is the Silicon Valley investor community reacting to the stream of wrongdoings and ethical violations that emerged at the peak of the ICO craze?
Many of the projects that popped up during the ICO craze were pure marketing ploys—they were based simply on ideas and whitepapers. Naturally, this created an opportunity for bad actors to enter the market and hide their wrongdoings and violations, as most retail investors stopped questioning teams’ legitimacy at the height of the ICO rush. Silicon Valley has largely focused on building the technology and adoption, instead of pure marketing.
Talk about your current portfolio—which projects are you most excited about?
We’re equity token holders—along with Pantera Capital, DHVC, Breyer Labs, and a few others—of Coinsuper, and we recently invested in the company’s exchange token (CEN). We’re excited about our investment as CEN has transitioned from an inflationary (transmining system) to a deflationary (burning mechanism) model. This fundamentally alters the token’s value, especially as more utilities and scarcity are introduced to CEN over time.
Additionally, Coinsuper CEO Karen Chen comes from a strong financial background (she’s the former president of UBS China, CEO of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in China, and the Managing Director of Standard Chartered Bank), and she’s’ currently working on making Coinsuper one of the first and most heavily regulated digital asset exchanges in Asia.
Considering the team, the backers, and the company’s roadmap, we think CEN token is undervalued compared to several other exchange tokens in the space, and we see significant potential for future appreciation.
What is the most exciting blockchain project, currently?
We think Cosmos is an interesting project, as it utilizes Tendermint’s BFT consensus protocol, allows for staking, and is a potential solution for cross-chain transactions through a peg zone. Binance built their DEX using Tendermint and the Cosmos SDK to provide near-instant finality and potentially allow for cross-chain exchanges in the future. If the solution proves to be viable, it could be a game-changer for the DEX world, but could make other DEX’s, protocols, and even some DeFi projects obsolete.
What are blockchain’s remaining challenges in terms of mass adoption?
Crypto currently has less than 1% global adoption (there are between 50 and 100 million crypto users worldwide), which puts the sector closer to the “innovators” bracket than the “early adopters” bracket. The main challenges preventing adoption include education, user experience, scalability, and killer use cases.
In terms of education, the general population may have heard of Bitcoin, but they rarely understand blockchain as a concept. Moreover, cryptos have received a lot of negative coverage over the past few years, and there is a real need to educate the broader population on the benefits and positives the technology is capable of delivering. Already, companies like Coinbase and Binance are actively creating content to educate and convert the next wave of crypto users.
User experience still varies too much from project to project. The technology still needs to be abstracted to be more accessible for mainstream users. The current process of interacting with blockchain creates a lot of friction and requires a deep well of foundational knowledge (what are public and private keys, terms like gas and transaction fees, and more). Compared to traditional payment methods like Venmo or PayPal, they still pose too many roadblocks, and have significantly higher risks that accompany key management and transactions.
When it comes to scalability, blockchain remains a tough puzzle. The technology needs to expand more rapidly and effectively to handle the amount of transactions needed for mass adoption, and to allow more complex use cases to realistically emerge. Finally, the sector needs a killer use case. We need a project or product that is ten times better than any existing solution to truly incentivize users to learn and eventually adapt their behaviors.
Global Intel Hub 4/20/2019 Basel, Switzerland — Zero Hedge Exclusive — This may sound like a sci fi movie plot – but as you read on, you will see that this story will prove the adage that often truth is stranger than fiction. Before getting into the gory details, we need a bit of history so let’s go back to the year 1984. In this year two movements began which at the time were not likely connected, which will be the topic of this article.
What happened in 1984 Major News Stories include Indria Ghandi assassinated, DNA profiling developed, Virgin Atlantic Starts Operations, Grand Hotel Brighton Bombing, Union Carbide Pesticide plant in Bhopal India leaks lethal gas, McDonalds Restaurant Shooting Leaves 20 dead. The Aids Virus is identified it is not the worldwide problem it is today. Following on from the PC Apple releases the Macintosh computer. Following the Widespread Famine in Ethiopia many of the top British and Irish USSR pop musicians join together under the Name Band Aid and record the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas”. Following the boycott by the US of the Moscow Olympics the soviet block boycotts the Los Angeles Olympic games. Recession continues to be a problem in the US and 70 US Banks fail in just one year.
Note the historical use of the word ‘profiling’ – a term that wouldn’t be heard with DNA for another 30 years. The Human Genome Project was ostensibly about mapping your DNA which is, at least scientifically – all of who you are.
The Human Genome Project was a 15-year-long, publicly funded project initiated in 1990 with the objective of determining the DNA sequence of the entire euchromatic human genome within 15 years.[5] In May 1985, Robert Sinsheimer organized a workshop to discuss sequencing the human genome,[6] but for a number of reasons the NIH was uninterested in pursuing the proposal. The following March, the Santa Fe Workshop was organized by Charles DeLisi and David Smith of theDepartment of Energy’s Office of Health and Environmental Research (OHER).[7] At the same time Renato Dulbecco proposed whole genome sequencing in an essay in Science.[8]James Watson followed two months later with a workshop held at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 1990, the two major funding agencies, DOE and NIH, developed a memorandum of understanding in order to coordinate plans and set the clock for the initiation of the Project to 1990.[16] At that time, David Galas was Director of the renamed “Office of Biological and Environmental Research” in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science and James Watson headed the NIH Genome Program. In 1993, Aristides Patrinos succeeded Galas and Francis Collins succeeded James Watson, assuming the role of overall Project Head as Director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Center for Human Genome Research (which would later become the National Human Genome Research Institute). A working draft of the genome was announced in 2000 and the papers describing it were published in February 2001. A more complete draft was published in 2003, and genome “finishing” work continued for more than a decade.
Many have heard about the project but there are a few facts you probably don’t know that we’d like to elaborate on here. First, did you know the entire thing was sponsored by the US government with a final bill of about $5 Billion USD? You’re probably asking why the US Government wants a map of your DNA (well, some of you may be asking – others know why). The second thing you probably don’t know is that the project was headed by accused racist James Watson the profound scientist who actually discovered DNA in the first place.
James Watson is a great example of the irony of how the Elite twist science and opinion to mold public consent. Chomsky calls this “Manufacturing Consent” which really should be the motto on the door of various TV editorial offices. James Watson is a scientist that’s not politically correct. He has been revoked of all his credentials because he stated the facts, that there are 3 human races which are genetically different, each with their own peculiarities. Of course it was only offensive when he said Africans are less intelligent:
Dr Watson’s remarks “in full”. Dr Watson told The Sunday Times that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”. He said there was a natural desire that all human beings should be equal but “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. …
At a conference in 2000, Watson suggested a link between skin color and sex drive, hypothesizing that dark-skinned people have stronger libidos.[65][90] His lecture argued that extracts of melanin – which gives skin its color – had been found to boost subjects’ sex drive. “That’s why you have Latin lovers,” he said, according to people who attended the lecture. “You’ve never heard of an English lover. Only an English Patient.”[91] He has also said that stereotypes associated with racial and ethnic groups have a genetic basis: Jews being intelligent, Chinese being intelligent but not creative because of selection for conformity, and Indians being servile.[92]
In a politically correct world, you can’t call a man a man – a man is a ‘non-woman’ and all people are equal. This is the same twisted double speak that applies to the degradation of our education system, with the policy that ‘everyone deserves an A’ which is possible when you lower the testing standards. This is the same Elite group that has twisted “Paternity Science” into “Paternity Ethics” that means it is ethical to lie to children about who their parents really are. In this brave new world, it’s a crime to tell a child that your father is actually not your father. It’s better to let them live with the lie.
And now we come to the second phenomenon that has been metastasizing since 1984 – The Bradley Amendment:
In United States law, the Bradley Amendment 1986, Public law 99-509 42 U.S.C.§ 666(a)(9)(c). Requirement of statutorily prescribed procedures to improve effectiveness of child support enforcement. Bill Bradley requires state courts to prohibit retroactive reduction of child support obligations. Specifically, it:
automatically triggers a non-expiring lien whenever child support becomes past-due.
disallows any judicial discretion, even from bankruptcy judges.
requires that the payment amounts be maintained without regard for the physical capability of the person owing child support (the obligor) to promptly document changed circumstances or regard for his awareness of the need to make the notification.
But, like any other past-due debt, the obligee may forgive what is owed to them.
When past-due child support is owed to a state as a result of welfare paid out, the state is free to forgive some or all of it under what’s known as an “offer in compromise”. The state and government agencies are non-profit organizations. … Bobby Sherrill, a Lockheed employee in Kuwait from North Carolina, was captured by Iraqis and spent nearly five months as an Iraqihostage. Sherrill was arrested the night after his release for not paying $1,425 in child support while he was a hostage.
For those in Finance, it will shock you to learn that under the Bradley Amendment, child support is the only thing that you can go to prison for – debt related. Although the ACLU is again on the hunt with twisted agendas about Debtors Prisons, by matter of fact and law, child support is the only debt that can cause a bench warrant to be issued for your arrest and you can be imprisoned (even if you finally pay!):
Consequences for Non-Payment of Child Support: Because child support is essentially a court order, a non-custodial parent who is not making these payments will be found in contempt of court. They are informed of the contempt charge in writing and ordered to appear in court. If the parent does not appear, a bench warrant for their arrest will be issued. Even if the parent does appear, they may still be sent to jail if they cannot provide adequate proof that they could not make the child support payments, rather than simply being unwilling to do so.
“Adequate Proof” of being held captive by Iraqi warlords during time of war wasn’t a burden of proof in the case of Bobby Sherrill. It’s also the only way a court can garnish your wages, seize your assets, take tax refunds, and even suspend your driver’s license! Let that sink in a little. Only the IRS has similar powers, but unlike Bradley claims, the IRS provides a set of rules and methods to avoid things like asset seizure and wages garnishment. For Bradley cases there ARE NONE. It’s important to understand this difference. As powerful as the IRS is – there is an entire industry built around dealing with the IRS and in fact it’s possible to negotiate big tax payments down to reasonable levels. There are a number of options. For child support cases there are NONE.
Now like with all draconian laws an argument will be made that it’s just a way to get deadbeat dads to pay what they owe. Who can argue with that? Well let’s use the argument about the IRS. The IRS gets people to pay. They will even send the jackals to Switzerland and corrupt an entire government just to shake down 100 seriously delinquent taxpayers. So the aggressiveness of the Bradley Amendment is not only unconstitutional it’s much worse – it’s modern slavery. Because it’s not about the cases where parents are guilty – it’s about cases where they are not; or where they are NOT EVEN THE FATHER. Imagine this scenario:
In the late 1990s, Andre Chreky already was a star hairstylist with his own salon. But he reached new heights after he was profiled in Washingtonian magazine and it became known that his clients included first lady Laura Bush. Soon after, Chreky said, a former receptionist began showing up at his shop on K Street NW, demanding money.
“You have a child,” the woman, Adele Doudaklian, 43, of Gaithersburg, told him — a teenage son he had never met. He ordered her out. Doudaklian did not return phone calls to her home. Chreky said he dated her several times in the early 1980s but stopped long before Doudaklian’s son, Andrew Lucas, was born in March 1986. When the paternity action was brought in early 2003, Chreky said, he thought the DNA test would end the whole episode. Instead, Chreky was ordered to pay $1,715 a month in child support, plus health insurance premiums, after LabCorp’s report said he was the father. By the time Lucas turned 18, Chreky had paid $25,000. (Even after he won the case, Virginia law did not allow him to get the money back.)Chreky pleaded his case to the Virginia Division of Child Support Enforcement and then in an appeal to Fairfax Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court. But LabCorp’s “99.99 percent” finding was too tough to overcome. In fact, under Virginia law, 98 percent is automatic proof of paternity. This spring, his case landed in Fairfax County Circuit Court in a full-blown trial. Douglas S. Levy, one of Chreky’s attorneys, said Chreky offered to take another DNA test before his trial. But the state rejected the offer, he said. So Chreky’s attorneys hammered LabCorp’s experts, mostly about what the lawyers saw as two errors on the lab report. The director of LabCorp’s DNA identification testing division, Gary M. Stuhlmiller, said in a sworn report that he had arrived at his conclusions after comparing Chreky’s DNA with a database of the Moroccan population. Chreky is a native of Morocco. But at trial, Stuhlmiller acknowledged that LabCorp did not have a Moroccan database. Chreky is no scientist. He said he just knew that this was something he needed to fight. Most people don’t have the means to contest a “99.99 percent” finding. His wife, Serena, said the couple spent more than $200,000 to fight the case.
So after this poor guy spent $200,000 to fight this – only to win what they always knew was the truth – this woman was a lying financial criminal attempting to steal money from someone she knew who she felt had money. Is Chreky able to get legal fees or anything back? No. Is this woman prosecuted for fraud? No. Can he sue for damages? No.
IN ANY OTHER SITUATION – HE WOULD BE ABLE TO SUE FOR RELIEF.
The connection between these 2 events
Scroll forwards 30 plus years into the future (today) and we’re seeing people thrown in jail for sitting on a park bench or being picked up by an Ambulance. Fortunately, many of them have been released. But the US justice system in particular, is a Dinosaur in this field – perhaps intentionally. Yes, it appears this is all part of a greater plan. While rights activists have been partying and congratulating themselves, the Elite have been busy shaping and developing a more sinister and more subtle method of control: A global DNA grid backed by Draconian undefendable laws like the Bradley Amendment, enforced on a county and city level. Heck, it’s a great way to control men – because all it takes is a crazed accusation by a woman (and who doesn’t believe a victimized woman in today’s world) – to ruin someone’s life whether it be financially, a character witness, or something even more complex such as the case against Julian Assange.
“Hitmen” used to be mostly male, mostly olive skinned, mostly with a particular accent – but no more. Those days are gone. The Vinny you once knew is now poolside at the Tropicana living life (permanently retired). Now the “Hitman” has become the “Hitperson” which is politically correct speak for “Hitwoman.” Basically, the Elite have created an Artificial Intelligence net in order to control you. The basis of this net is a Matrix-like DNA network so intertwined in our society the Department of Justice (DOJ) has its own Commission on the topic, the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence. The National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence was established by the Attorney General to maximize the value of forensic DNA evidence in the criminal justice system.
The National DNA Index (NDIS) contains over 13,674,427 offender1 profiles, 3,435,350 arrestee profiles and 915,052 forensic profiles as of January 2019. Ultimately, the success of the CODIS program will be measured by the crimes it helps to solve. CODIS’s primary metric, the “Investigation Aided,” tracks the number of criminal investigations where CODIS has added value to the investigative process. As of January 2019, CODIS has produced over 451,781 hits assisting in more than 440,381 investigations.
You’re probably thinking – how do they get my DNA? First, they are getting it when you are arrested (not always, but there is a growing law enforcement participation in Rapid DNA). Second, they are getting it if you are incarcerated for ANY crime. Third, they have wholesale agreements with companies like 23andMe, Ancestry.com and others.
“The science-fiction future, in which police can swiftly identify robbers and murderers from discarded soda cans and cigarette butts, has arrived. In 2017, President Trump signed into law the Rapid DNA Act, which, starting this year, will enable approved police booking stations in several states to connect their Rapid DNA machines to Codis, the national DNA database. Genetic fingerprinting is set to become as routine as the old-fashioned kind.”
Referred to as “magic boxes,” these Rapid DNA machines – portable, about the size of a desktop printer, highly unregulated, far from fool-proof, and so fast that they can produce DNA profiles in less than two hours – allow police to go on fishing expeditions for any hint of possible misconduct using DNA samples.
But it’s not only that. You can be a fake father victim in a paternity fraud scam that not only dupes you out of hard earned money there are far deeper implications. Or you can be stopped from becoming a Supreme Court Judge (that didn’t work though, as we exposed the fraud).
Many believe that the Elite practice various forms of the Occult. Because they mostly control the media and obviously if these Secret Societies really are a Secret than as George HW Bush said “I can’t tell ya because it’s a secret” they probably have a mechanism to keep the secret, and certainly aren’t broadcasting details of their goings on ‘tonight at 11’. We’re not going to delve into this topic but we just need to mention one example in the greater context of things. What is Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, and a bunch of other powerful people (all male) doing for 2 weeks in the forest of California at Bohemian Grove dressed in animal suits dancing around a huge bonfire? On July 15, 2000, controversial radio show host Alex Jones and his cameraman, Mike Hanson, snuck in and shot footage of the Cremation of Care ceremony.[25][26]
The Grove is particularly famous for a Manhattan Project planning meeting that took place there in September 1942, which subsequently led to the atomic bomb. The breadcrumbs lead to a Global plot dominated by [unknown] business leaders, government agencies, and various dark forces.
It is for this reason why we mention Bohemian Grove at this stage of the article, because this was the birthplace of the Manhattan Project, one of the most game-changing projects in the history of the world. We will reveal in further articles how complex the spider web is woven – how millions of people are impacted on a personal level – and how this is just the beginning of a Terminator style Artificial Intelligence grid which has nothing positive in mind. Our alternative history thesis is that since the French Revolution, the Elite have employed a number of subtle and less tangible methods and systems to profit and retain control at the same time. This has been evolving later with the abolition of physical slavery, only to have this replaced by the industrial revolution, whereby millions were economic slaves with absolutely no workers rights. During time the social control paradigm employed by the Elite evolved even more – and hit a peak in 1970. It was at this time they employed a number of non-violent methods developed in the 1960’s such as Manufacturing Consent (via the Media), and even direct mind control via Television (TV) and non-lethal weapons such as beam weapons, genetically modified foods, aerial spraying, HAARP and HAARP v2.0, and finally what we are faced with now – a complete grid of your DNA which is who you are.
When a plane crashes or is about to – they don’t say ‘people’ they say ‘souls’ (we have 22 souls on board) regardless of your beliefs, your DNA is who you are. Not only the government is using this DNA grid without your permission that is just one bright example, there are many others. Corporations are now using this data and developing products which are genetically designed just for you. Unlike genetically modified foods which are benign compared to this – we are talking about something very personal! And the fact is that no one forces you to eat GM crap (which is by the way illegal in the European Union) – there are many organic stores that sell healthy alternatives even in rural America. But the DNA fraud is forced down your throat, such as the case when you are either:
Accused by a stranger of being the father of a child that’s not yours .. OR
Being randomly accused of a crime that you didn’t commit.. OR
A political ‘soft’ assassination such as was tried with Julian Assange and Brett Kavanaugh
And of course it doesn’t end there. Even if you don’t submit your DNA – according to their flawed methodology – they don’t need it. They have a ‘statistically sufficient’ sample of the Global population because enough of your cousins and 2nd cousins have already submitted.
Years ago people were concerned about tracking via chip implants. It never took off. But DNA surveillance is much more powerful and much more scary. Imagine a world where your every movement is tracked, not by your electronic communications – but by the natural shedding of your own DNA through microscopic skin flakes and more.
Ironically, the Rapid DNA Act of 2017 was signed into law by a President who previously was afraid to shake hands (as is common in American business and social life).
We’ve had whistleblowers for Military abuses (Chelsey Manning) when will someone come forth about the above? In further articles we are going to expose the DNA fraud which includes paternity fraud and abuse, privacy abuses, and abuses a new science that hasn’t been around long enough to have laws evolve around it (Genomics).
Something good did happen in 1984, Phil Collins wrote some of his best classics. This one steals the Gestalt of the time, and now too:
In conclusion, there is at least one place where you can get unbiased tests, which will be revealed in further releases of this information. This article is just a teaser of things to come. With Julian Assange now in custody, the world needs a new army of the next generation wikileaks which is about information, nothing more.
In honor of DNA day we will be celebrating and giving credit where credit is due.
Gary and other Satanists involved in this plot to steal your soul will be in good company in Hell. While this is being perpetrated on a global scale by a US publicly traded company, the main HQ for operation steal your soul is from the South. Maybe these folks just need some Jesus in their life. Or less drinking (or more). They say in the South you’re either a drinker or a Bible beater. Well Gary, we will see.
