DeFi app 1inch, perhaps most famous primarily as a crypto wallet, today announced a partnership with the Bruce Lee Foundation, from which it takes its name (the 1inch punch).
During this first day of the ninth edition of Hong Kong Fintech Week, the co-founder of the crypto wallet 1inch, Sergey Kunztook the stage dedicated to blockchain.
His talk focuses on the topic of financial institutions and how they can benefit from DeFi, which is decentralized finance and therefore all these blockchain-based applications.
Eliminating the need for intermediaries, these are systems in which financial transactions are automated via non-custodial, trustless, always-accessible and composable smart contracts (see LEGO DEFI).
As Sergej explains, the numbers are small compared to the traditional financial market: 90 billion total value locked (TvL) in DeFi dApps, 2.3 trillion market capitalization and $40 billion circulating daily on centralized exchanges. Figures that seem huge but are actually very small compared to, say, the $300 billion in daily trading volumes on the Nasdaq.
Challenges and Opportunities of DeFi Applications
The co-founder of 1inch explains to us how, thanks to DeFi, institutions could save on operating costs, access new markets, and thus acquire users.
There are certainly also challenges around regulation, compliance, and therefore KYC, AML and complexity in terms of code.
But there is a solution which is 1inch Pro, a company based in Switzerland which next year will be able to start helping institutions with a platform providing access to all crypto markets and helping them, among other things, to comply through KYC and AML. systems.
The main feature of 1inch certainly remains the non-custodial wallet platform, but now the company has expanded and also offers, for example, chain trading without gas fees.
Tokenization and oracles
Additionally, during the press conference, the co-founders announced that 1inch Pro will include a marketplace to purchase tokenized assets (RWA).
“We have been working on an oracle connected to Nasdaq for two years and maybe next year we will launch it to easily buy tokenized stocks via 1inch in self-custody mode. This is not easy because there are no specific regulations on this subject yet. »
explains Sergej.
1 inch and Bruce Lee
1inch, Sergej explains to us during our interview with him after his speech, is here in Hong Kong to announce a partnership with the Bruce Lee Foundation.
1inch has always been inspired, starting with its name, by Bruce Lee and his philosophy of surpassing himself and dedication body and soul to a goal.
The motto of this marketing campaign is “take crypto seriously”, playing with the actor’s last name (seriously = seriously).
This is why, for the next marketing campaign, the 1inch crypto wallet has decided to enter into a collaboration with the Bruce Lee Foundation.
A partnership whose negotiation lasted, for reasons we do not know, 3 full years. It is in fact since 2021 that Sergej has been working to be able to announce this collaboration with the Bruce Lee Foundation.
The actor is particularly famous in Hong Kong, which is why 1inch decided to make this announcement during this fintech week.
“We share the vision, the philosophy of Bruce Lee. He was not only an actor but also a philosopher. He studied philosophy at Seattle University. He’s a much deeper person than most people think,” Sergej tells Cryptonomist. “He said you have to be like water and adapt, be efficient, eliminate the superfluous. And that’s what we do at 1inch, applying its philosophy.
“The more complex the world becomes, it becomes more and more important to rediscover its simplicity and cut out the superfluous, the noise but to understand what is fundamental for us in relationships as in business. This is the philosophy we should adopt in the future. Finding that simplicity is important to us as people so that we feel more focused,”
explains Bruce’s daughter, Shannon Lee during the press conference.
The music videos feature actors fighting like the famous martial artist. A little curiosity: the co-founder of 1inch has practiced martial arts practically all his life.
Why Hong Kong Fintech Week
Hong Kong has entered into a partnership with the Swiss Crypto Valley, with which it wishes to partner to have an efficient and clear crypto hub from a regulatory point of view.
According to Sergei:
“Hong Kong is an interesting place where regulators are open to new technologies. From our perspective, we are the next evolution of traditional finance because we have a more efficient environment for financial products. We are launching 1inch Pro here for institutional clients and I think we will be successful in a few years. Scaling takes some time. Next year, we plan to raise capital to raise $5 million and attract new stakeholders to support us.
The next technological innovations beyond 1inch x Bruce Lee
Also during Hong Kong Fintech Week, a panel was held with 1inch’s other founder, Anton Bukov, who shared his thoughts on the next technologies that will emerge.
“The tokenization of shares of liquidity protocols or even more traditional ones such as in the real estate sector, but also of decentralized exchanges, trading protocols and Yield Farming”,
explains Anton.
“AI is becoming more and more important and AI agents will need access to payment services and so there will be a need for payment solutions like ours, without intermediaries,”
adds Sergej instead.
