Sasha Ivanov, the founder and CEO of the Waves blockchain platform, was one of the speakers at "The Explosive Impact of Blockchain Technology" session at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum that was held in early June.
The declared topics were discussed at the highest state level: along with Sasha, a number of representatives of the authorities and financial institutions participated in the panel: Minister of Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation Nikolay Nikiforov, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation Olga Skorobogatova, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin, and others. The SPIEF participants greeted Blockchain technologies fairly positively, and the market almost immediately reacted to the Waves founder's speech: the price of the platform tokens almost doubled, from $2.5 per token in late May to $4.5 with a peak of $6.83 in early June.
Keynotes voiced within the SPIEF walls were the introduction of blockchain to the real world and the growing interest in this tool both from the government officials and ordinary citizens. The introduction of blockchain technologies and blockchain-based solutions, growing popularity of ICO as a fundraising tool and the paradigm of total decentralization are comparable to the development of the Internet in the 1990s in importance; the states, which were faster than others in developing this field, found themselves at the forefront of innovation and took a dominant position in the world.
However, the expert blockchain initiatives by Sasha Ivanov this year were not limited to participation in the SPIEF session only.
In late January 2017, Ivanov presented Waves at the conference "Cryptocurrency Regulation in Russia: Interim Results", where participants responded to questions from industry users and entrepreneurs. Representatives of the State Duma and other committed government agencies took part in the event, along with representatives of blockchain platforms and businesses (Sberbank, Microsoft, QIWI).
The first significant experience of interaction with political organizations of the Russian Federation was the Waves project to create a wallet for the discussion platform of "The Growth Party" called "People of growth". With the help of the Waves-powered solution, any user of the "People of growth" portal gets access to a digital wallet that allows to make transactions to other site participants in the internal cryptographic tokens, Upcoins. A loyalty program has been developed to motivate community members, based on the Waves solution within the "People of growth" platform. In the future, developers will add the function to make operations in other cryptocurrencies to the payment functionality of the wallet. The main goal of the Waves solution is to encourage activity within the "People of growth" community.
In June, Waves and "The Growth Party" agreed to launch a business incubator to raise investment for SMEs using the ICO model. After all, this way of investment raising has already proved itself by the example of several domestic projects from the real sector. For example, the "Kolionovo" farm managed to attract $500 thous. of investment for development.
After his speech at the SPIEF, Sasha Ivanov spoke at the conference dedicated to investing through ICO and held at the country's main innovation site — Skolkovo. In the course of the question-and-answer session, Sasha explained to the audience how ICOs work as a tool for raising investments, and also told about the prospects of this method and the role of blockchain technologies in the collective funding of the future.
A conference held over June 14–15 in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, was another site for discussing the future of blockchain technologies at the state level. The event was attended by representatives of the cryptographic, financial and energy communities.
The leadership of Kazakhstan, a partner state of Russia in the Customs Union, is putting a lot of effort into introducing innovation and developing the fintech industry. During his visit, Sasha not only spoke at the conference, but also talked to representatives of government agencies. Earlier, the authorities of Kazakhstan demonstrated interest in innovations in practice by issuing the bonds on blockchain in test mode. "In the future, these solutions can be used to float other securities — for example, those targeting retail investors," claimed representatives of the Central Bank of Kazakhstan.
Before the trip to Kazakhstan, Sasha also met with government officials of the Republic of Belarus in Minsk. This fact confirms that even states with more conservative leadership show interest in such innovation.
On July 4, the blockchain platform Waves signed a memorandum of partnership with the audit and consulting company Deloitte, which is part of the Big Four. The goal of the partnership is legal and tax consulting for ICOs of enterprises engaged in the issuance and crowdsale of tokens on Waves.
Blockchain technologies have gone far beyond the field of interest of enthusiasts in the past few years. The future of the financial industry and the place of blockchain in it are being discussed not only at the meetups and industry-specific conferences now, but also at the highest state level throughout the world. Waves blockchain platform plays a significant role in this process, interacting on the issues of regulation and implementation of blockchain-based solutions with government officials both on the scale of the Russian Federation and the entire CIS region
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