The COVID-19 pandemic has no doubt had a great impact on the global economy, but it is also paving ways for the mass adoption of blockchain technology and digital currencies.
Some positive impacts of COVID-19
In an AMA session organized by Crypto.com on Thursday, Sunny Lu, CEO and co-founder of VeChain, a public blockchain project focusing on real-world businesses, revealed some of the positive impacts of the novel Coronavirus outbreak to the blockchain and crypto industry.
He first acknowledged that the pandemic has made many more people realize the importance of digitalization, adding that the global economy may even enter a new form that is quite different from the existing one.
Lu added that COVID-19 has stressed the need for data transparency and product authentication and this is especially vital in industries that are in urgent need of data sharing, transparency, and verification such as food safety, and health care.
Read: How Blockchain technology is disrupting the healthcare industry.
He expressed his conviction that blockchain technology is an ideal tool for enabling a transparent and open platform to collect valuable information, thus, establishing trust between different parties and countries all over the world.
Speaking on the most recent move made by the Chinese government, to introduce a digital currency, he stated that DC/EP is not open-sourced and can be likened to a digital version of MO of RMB, thus, categorizing it as an e-Cash rather than a cryptocurrency.
He cited a report by Dr. Ren of VeChain’s Research and Development team which stated that DC/EP does not make use of blockchain technology but it might consider integrating it into its system in the future.
However, he expressed his optimism for the project, saying,
I believe it’s a positive sign for digitalization… the best part of DCEP is to support global collaborations in a faster and more efficient way. It’s still unclear how to integrate or collaborate with DCEP for any blockchain project, but DCEP will definitely support digitalized business activities for sure.
Post-pandemic effects of the Coronavirus
Concerning the post-pandemic effects of COVID-19, he stated that there will be a change in the behavioral pattern of everyone in the world, adding that it might become a “new normal” for people not to see each other as much as before and to have more online social meetings.
This is exactly where digitalization becomes an utmost necessity, he said while emphasizing the efforts being made by the entire VeChain ecosystem to offer support for this new trend of digitalization.
As an enabler for builders to create business applications for different sectors, VeChain intends to make use of its ToolChain to help “certification issuers such as DNV GL, PWC and thousands of other issuers and inspectors to do DISTANT process via the ToolChain’s blockchain solution which can be easily integrated to other tools/platforms.”
