How this founder is helping to build Taiwan’s blockchain ecosystem

Jon Jones / Photo credit: LinkedIn

This article is part of Tech in Asia’s partnership with Decrypt Asia where we publish the revised transcripts from the show’s podcast interviews related to blockchain. This is heavily revised from the original transcripts. For the full interview, go here and here.

Jon Jones is the founder and CEO of Blockcamp, a blockchain accelerator and ICO consulting firm. He is also a co-founder at Blockcity (a big blockchain and fintech event) and the president of the Government Blockchain Association in Taiwan, a non-profit that works for the advancement of blockchain in the public sector. He is also the founder of the Taiwan Blockchain Ecosystem, which gives spotlight to different blockchain companies and communities.

In this interview, Jones walks us through his journey into blockchain, how he’s building up the ecosystem in Taiwan, and the government’s attitude toward the technology.

How did you end up in Taiwan and the blockchain industry?

I grew up in upstate New York and I studied political economy at UC Berkeley. My girlfriend at the time invited me to check out Taiwan, so I came and studied Chinese.

When I graduated in 2011, the US was going through a recession. So I thought, why not go to Taiwan again? Maybe it’s a better place for entrepreneurship. Like a lot of foreigners do, I started by teaching English, and then I went into consulting.

About four years ago, my co-founder Jeremy Firster and I created an entrepreneur club where we held weekly or bi-weekly meetups. Then about two years ago, people who came to our meetups started talking about bitcoin, Ethereum, and smart contracts. It really got me interested in blockchain.

Tell us about your accelerator, Blockcamp.

At Blockcamp, we decided to move slow in the fast-moving blockchain industry. What I mean by that is that we focus on slowly building the ecosystem and the community here in Taiwan. This is why people would see us do events 90 to 95 percent of the time. This is the first stage.

The second stage is advising companies, which we’ve already started. Since we’re in a fast-moving industry and teams are at different stages of growth, we initially liked to be an end-to-end service. But we found in the short term that there are a lot of companies, projects, and teams that have certain needs and don’t need everything. So, we now help companies with their token economic models, marketing and PR, events, and roadshows.

The projects we’re working on now are under the radar, so I can’t really talk about them. I guess the ones I can mention are those whose projects we’ve helped promote: PolySwarm, Datum, Sense Token, Aptoide, Litecoin, FundersToken, and the list goes on.

In terms of marketing, we have a more organic style, doing local meetups in Taiwan. By having people come out physically to meet and talk with each other, we build a strong foundation for the community. We don’t have a Telegram group, but we’re on Line, which is popular in Taiwan.

Tell us about Taiwan Blockchain Ecosystem.

We are still building out Taiwan Blockchain Ecosystem. The goal is for it to be a self-regulatory organization for companies and communities. Hopefully, we will build out a more decentralized way of running the organization. But for now, we’re just putting the spotlight on companies and communities here to be seen internationally. I want people to see Taiwan as a place where blockchain is flourishing.

How does the Taiwanese government view blockchain?

Cryptocurrency is actually a difficult discussion in Taiwan because a lot of people, including the central bank, worry about anti-money laundering issues and such. So, it might take some time before the government could fully grasp how to regulate it in the right way. In terms of blockchain technology, the government is very bullish about its possibilities (smart cities, businesses, etc.). So, Taiwan loves blockchain; it’s just a matter of figuring out the anti-money laundering laws.

I’m quite positive that Taiwan will be able to move quickly because I feel like there’s not a big opportunity for it to actually regulate or accept blockchain and cryptocurrency. I am working hard to advise different organizations to act in the right way so we can really make Taiwan a place similar to other countries where there are good regulations.

What are the trends you’re seeing in blockchain?