Dr. Aleksander Berentsen, Professor of Economic Theory and Dean of Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Basel, said that blockchain applications such as bitcoin have grown beyond their initial use case as cryptocurrencies, and are now being applied in industries such as shipping and logistics.

The technology is also being used in the “tokenization” of assets, which will allow for a wide variety of assets – from buildings to art works – to be traded in small portions, making it more accessible to investors. However, he noted that blockchain is still at a very early stage of its development, and that public interest in the technology was sparked prematurely because of the hype over bitcoin.

Henri Arslanian, FinTech and Crypto Leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Asia, is an expert on cryptocurrencies. He is bullish about blockchain’s impact on financial services, and sees its use most recently in interbank transfers. He also believed that when combined with other digital tools such as artificial intelligence, blockchain would become exponentially more powerful.

The third panelist, Gavin Brown, Associate Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University and Co-Founder and Director of Blockchain Capital Limited, raised the prospect of multinational corporations with strong brands and loyal customer bases issuing their own digital assets.