Lars Seier Christensen, Chairman, Concordium Foundation and founder of Seier Capital, met with some stakeholders in the blockchain, financial, and tech space in an exclusive event held at Four Points by Sheraton on Thursday, April 14.
The much-anticipated event had notable personalities in the Nigeria tech and blockchain space, including influencers.
Lars Seier Christensen gave a lecture touching on the blockchain, the internet, Concordium blockchain, and investing, among others.
His talk stressed that the Concordium blockchain is big on compliance and working with regulators because he believes that blockchain technology regulation is inevitable.
He said regulators couldn't have worked for many years to regulate the traditional financial systems just to watch them get dismantled without fighting back or trying to regulate them.
"This opens up for a new transformation of the economy because it can both make a lot of existing processes much more safe, much more efficient, much more secure, much more trustworthy," He said.
Lars said that there will be entirely newer business models built based on blockchain. Cryptocurrencies, coins, and tokens are not blockchain's major focus or use case. The important thing about blockchain is blockchain.
You only need your tokens to encourage some things happening on the blockchain because you need a very efficient and quick means of payment. Normal foreign exchanges cannot meet that requirement at this point, and if they could, there probably won't be the need for this technology.
According to Lars, cryptocurrencies have taken much of the attention away from what blockchain is really about: improving your business model, keeping your data safe, and ensuring that people do what they agreed to do.
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He raised concerns about the anonymity in the blockchain and why it can be dangerous. From his experience in the traditional financial systems, regulators work to protect people from those who are smarter and more knowledgeable than them in the financial market or protect them from getting into something that they didn't understand.
"I think that for blockchain to be successful, it has to respect those aspects of a normal society that are exactly the same. You don't want it to be possible to cheat people who don't understand it, and there is a need to hold people accountable for bad behaviour and prevent vices like terror financing, money laundering, and so on."
According to Lars, the basic premise of concordium is a blockchain that has a better balance between privacy and accountability than an average blockchain. The bottom line is that it is built to be able to provide the building blocks for the regulations that will surely come.
Another important thing to remember about concordium is that it is a layer one infrastructural blockchain such as Ethereum, and it is something you can build your user base upon.
The use cases for blockchain are immense, and one of the use cases of a well-built blockchain is the preservation of data. Another strong use case for blockchain is the registration of ownership.
Lars also highlighted the importance of educating one's self about the blockchain and its many use cases to make informed decisions. Interestingly, according to Mr Lars, the good news is that the blockchain is not very complicated.
Giving reasons for investing in the African continent, he cited that the continent has a relatively young population, which according to him, is a good thing because it is far better to have more younger people than older generations.
It is a huge benefit, and he believes it is important to educate the young generation on business, economics, technology, and understanding of society because the higher the level of education of a society, the higher their prosperity.
It is important to educate them so they can take on the opportunities that present themselves.
Lars is very optimistic about the future of Africa and Nigeria.
He advised that people should look into the blockchain and keep themselves informed.
He added, "I look to invest in Nigeria thanks to its thriving tech culture that seems to be here."
Answering a question bordering regulation of crypto in Nigeria, he said it's important to distinguish between what is speculative crypto and what is not. Most people lose money when they trade speculatively.
Citing an example of European Regulators recognising that blockchain is important for growing the economy, and they want protection against the abuses of crypto, and that's a balance that is needed to be found.
However, he admitted to having little or no influence on lifting the ban on crypto in Nigeria.
There seems to be a focus on the negatives or things that could go wrong. However, Lars hopes that people see the positives and things can come out that will help transparency, efficiency and grow the economy, inclusive to many people. All these have to be balanced against restricting abuse.
Concordium is a blockchain that's compliance-ready with today's and tomorrow's economies.
It is a science-based proof-of-stake blockchain created for all, with unique business applications in mind.
The blockchain has identification built into the protocol to meet regulatory requirements while delivering a user-friendly platform that can handle smart contracts. They can be reached via https://www.concordium.com/
