Yat Siu, co-founder of Hong Kong-based venture firm Animoca Brands, has argued that on-chain digital property rights are the main aspects of blockchain technology that will drive a more decentralized society.
Speaking at Korean Blockchain Week 2022 (KBW), the Hong Kong entrepreneur noted that we’re all “digital dependents” and “data is the resource of metrics” that bring value to platforms like Apple, Google and Facebook, Sui said:
“The most powerful companies in the world today are not energy companies or resource companies, they’re tech companies and they’re not powerful because they make software. They’re powerful because they control our data.”
But, unlike the Web2 platforms that we’ve become accustomed to, blockchain-based applications allow us to control that data and not be subject to “digital colonization,” said Sui, adding:
“The powerful [thing about] Web3 is the fact that we can take ownership and we can make a big change with this because we have distributed and decentralized ownership for these assets.”
Sui also reinforced the importance of property rights by making the point that countries that afford strong property rights to their citizens enable their society to thrive. Sui pointed out the correlation between the International Property Rights Index (IPRI), and the Gross Domestic Product Index (GDPI):
“Places that have almost no property rights […] You can see [are in] the bottom 20% [of GDPI] But the countries that have very…
