Gong became a technologist and, during the growth of crypto, she turned down BCC’s Bobby Lee when he asked her to help him run the exchange. She said she didn’t join the crypto ecosystem until she found out about ethereum and now her company is expanding into multiple currencies.
Tongtong Gong, COO of crypto analytics firm Amberdata, shared what it feels like to be a woman in tech and why she chose to become a programmer.
“I moved to the U.S. and when I moved I didn’t really speak English that well so when I was in college you needed to pick a degree”, she said. “I was so intimidated by English that I asked my advisor which major should I choose so I didn’t have to write papers and he said computer science.”
What’s the key thing she believes that a blockchain developer needs? “Intellectual curiosity”, she said. “First of all, I don’t believe you can be a good developer without the intellectual curiosity and in the blockchain space that’s especially important.”
In this interview with Christine Kim, Gong shares her experience as a woman in crypto and what it takes to build an inclusive and supportive ecosystem.
The State of Security Tokens in Asia
CoinDesk’s Christine Kim sat down with Dalma Capital Management CEO Zachary Cefaratti, Director of Digital Assets at R3 Antony Lewis, and Philip Pang, the Associate Director at Colliers International this past week for a panel discussion entitled the “State of Security Tokens in Asia.”
R3’s Lewis kicked off the event, speaking to the Invest: Asia 2019 attendees on the current market trends in security issuance. Lewis said ecosystem readiness, regulatory harmonization, and the need for experienced investors stand at the top of the heap of concerns.
During the conversation, Kim covered topics ranging from why security tokens to what security token offerings are finding high yield.
Speaking on security token offerings, Dalma Capital’s Cefaratti said companies are more often than not shipping low-quality products with security token offerings.
“Why would you do a security token? There’s an adverse selection problem… Unfortunately, we get approached as an investment bank by so many companies that want us to do a security token of their not very high-quality asset and think that it’s going be a solution to magically raise them a bunch of money and get a bunch of liquidity”, he said.
Colliers Internationals’ Pang said Asia real estate firms are mostly seeing security tokens in high yield assets like apartment complexes or industrial warehousing.
Wrapping up the conversation, Cefaratti and Lewis spoke on the role of security token custodianship.
“There are some situations where you can not legally self-custody and you need to for because of regulatory reasons pay a third-party custodian”, Lewis said.
“The marginal cost of providing custody of an additional dollar of assets is zero. It’s next to zero”, Cefaratti responded. “Marginal cost determines the marginal price. Yes, we will need digital asset custodians, but it won’t be a very profitable business.”
