Exclusive Interview With Igneus Terrenus, Head of Communications at Bybit
Q. Can you please introduce yourself?
Hi, I’m Igneus Terrenus. I’m the Head of Communications at Bybit crypto exchange. We are one of the leading global exchanges. In terms of web traffic, we are number three in the world. In terms of trading volumes, sometimes we are number four, sometimes number three. I’m really excited to be here at the Future Blockchain Summit.
Q. How are you finding the event so far?
The atmosphere is just really galvanizing. I think we have all been missing in-person conferences, and really coming here kind of reminds me what we have lost in the past 12-18 months. It’s really good to just meet people whom we have been talking to over zoom calls in person for the first time, in some cases, and meet new friends. Really loved the atmosphere and the gathering of brilliant minds in this space.
Q. That’s really great. So is there any project which you feel is more interesting?
So today, I’ve basically just been here for the panel, but I heard a couple of other panelists speak, and I heard some keynote speeches. I think just like other entrepreneurship in this region has been very interesting to us. We are based in Asia, but we have several offices all around the world. And we actually have more volume coming from Europe. So there might be some synergy or chances of cross-pollination with some of the exhibitors and some of the keynote speakers who are here today.
Q. That’s really good. So I would like to ask you about the DeFi and NFT market. So what do you think and your
personal opinion as well as the professional time?
Sure, I think Decentralized Finance (DeFi) is really, truly a revolutionary sector. It tries and sometimes succeeds in building a parallel system to the traditional legacy system. However, it works for the wealthy. It still just does not include the underserved population. To this day, after many decades, there are 30% of the people in the world who do not have bank accounts. And the number is even more extreme in developing countries. Whereas the threshold for entry for DeFi is just very low. And people are able to take out loans without a credit score, because the loans in DeFi are collateralized. So I really think, there’s, of course, it’s still early stages, it’s very nascent. And there’s still a lot of kinks to be ironed out. We still hear scams and rug pulls every other week it seems. But the promise that DeFi holds, you can arguably say that it has a bigger total addressable market than the entire financial and banking system, and we are very bullish on that. In terms of NFT, people like to think it’s a new phenomena, but like we have collected stamps. People have loved songs and art, people purchase out of auction houses, it’s not something new.
It’s just now it’s moving more and more into the digital realm. When we look at some of the aspects of life around us, if you imagine the 1950s, you have a desk, you have the Rolodex, you have the calendar, you have the notebook and pen. Now we have folded that into the computer. And then like when we used to listen to music, you can serve the first 200 million by using a medium like a CD, a physical medium. Same for video content: to serve the first 200 million you can use something like the DVD, but to really reach the next 2 billion or even more, you need to dematerialize it. So, Bitcoin itself is dematerializing money and property. And, in a way NFT is just the natural step in the early stage.
Q. Do you think in future NFTs will play a major role?
Definitely, I think so. Like it could be just any collectibles. People no longer need to hold the physical item, they can hold the digital item, then they can send in the digital token to redeem a physical item if they wish. But basically the non-fungible tokenized version can live on the blockchain.
Q. What do you think will be the next big thing in the crypto market?
I think it’s always perilous to predict what’s the next big thing. Everyone can look very stupid in three years, But I do think kind of like, the decentralized world is something that has a lot of value to add. Decentralization shouldn’t be an end to itself, but it’s a process that can bring better security, there’s no single point of failure, it can just empower more people and elevate more people out of poverty. So I really think kind of like, we have had this kind of centralized authority in the government, centralized authority in corporations, and centralized authority and organizations. Perhaps it is time that we can fully embrace the decentralized aspect of blockchain and create organizations in missions that are backed by a number of people who are passionate about a cause and blockchain and then it could be a decentralized autonomous organization or you have a doubt.
Q. So what do you think about the regulations which are happening around the world? So your opinion on the US
and China, so you can say your own thoughts?
I think regulations in the long run are very positive to the industry, because you have more recognition, you have more acceptance. And for people who are still on the fence, with regulation, like putting on the guardrails and removing the guesswork, are more able and ready to test out this newfangled crypto internet, magical money thing. China has been sort of reining in on trading and mining while the U.S. even though there was a lot of criticism and skeptical opinions before now that China has really kind of laid down its card, the U.S. is actually becoming more progressive and more welcoming of crypto, because it’s a geopolitical game as well.
If one of your geopolitical rivals is going one way, it does make sense to go the other way. And regulation is actually a space where smaller countries have about as much say as bigger countries of course, the U.S. they have reverberations across the space, but smaller nations like El Salvador, or Singapore and and U.A.E. itself, because kind of smaller nations are able to be more agile and enact regulations much faster, they are able to actually kind of front-run to other governments in a sense that they are able to allow the technology to flourish in their own jurisdiction, and really make sure that the mind and the resources is concentrated in those havens.
Q. So your thoughts on Solana as an “Ethereum killer”?
Well, when you define yourself as a killer of something else, that kind of says a lot about you basically, if you want to kind of have a mission statement. I think it should be something that is truly your own instead of basing your success upon the demise of another protocol. But Solana definitely has a lot of benefits. But it always comes down to the trade off security, scalability and low cost, you can have two. You cannot have all three. So Solana is definitely over indexing on low cost and scalability. But in terms of security, it still does not beat, the apps that are tapping into the layer-1 security of Ethereum. And I would argue that many of the layer-2 roll up solutions, such as Abitrum, such as the ZK rollups, or the other optimistic rollup Optimism can offer some very compelling alternatives to Solana itself. So I think it’s still very early stages. But if it’s a project of my own, I wouldn’t identify it as the opposite or like the alternative or something, I want it to be something that is truly yourself.
Q. Any last thoughts? Or something you want to share with people in the crypto world?
I think we are just really happy to have this conversation and am really, really glad to reach out to a new segment of the audience. We have traditionally been pretty focused on Europe and in Asia, where most of our customers are, but we’re seeing amazing growth in the middle eastern region. And we just sponsored the biggest crypto events in the world’s first Crypto Fight Night. And yeah, hopefully there will be many happy returns. We are really excited by the electrifying atmosphere here in the crypto space and I think there’s so much potential and we want to come here and then have an operation and build on the kind of amazing success that everyone has been contributing to.
Q. So what are your thoughts about Dubai as a blockchain hub? So soon Can we see the Bybit office here?
If we can get a license here, we are definitely going to have a big old presence here. It could be the co-headquarters of our operations.
Read more: https://coinquora.com/exclusive-interview-with-igneus-terrenus-head-of-communications-at-bybit/
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