BTC China Chief Executive Officer Bobby Lee and OKCoin, Inc. Head of International Jack Jiu took to the stage at the Rise Conference in Hong Kong Friday to discuss where Bitcoin was and what’s ahead for the popular cryptocurrency.

“Bitcoin can mean different things to different people,” Lee explained to the crowd at the conference which has attracted thousands from across Asia, but, unfortunately didn’t cater to the volume of people well.

“For traders that can mean that Bitcoin is a speculative tool, but as Bitcoin becomes more mainstream that can mean transfers, that doesn’t necessarily mean Bitcoin itself but the Blockchain ledger it runs off.”

“Bitcoin has come a long way in 6 years, but it will take another 6 years until it truly enters the mainstream.”

“Email didn’t take off because the post office closed, and hence Bitcoin doesn’t need a failure of banks to succeed in the future.”

OKCoin’s Liu added that transfer transactions are where Bitcoin and the Blockchain are now taking off.

“Bitcoin, and the Blockchain used for transactions will disrupt existing transfer services such as Swift and Visa,” Liu added. “Products that potentially hide the use of Bitcoin in the background, but uses the technology, while presented as a system that is quick, and even free, makes the offering far more appealing.”

Internet of Things

The conversation took a turn towards connected devices, and although we can joke about Bitcoin  mining toasters, Lee said he saw a future where IoT connected devices in the home could potentially embrace Bitcoin for micropayments, such as something as simple as removing ads from a video streaming service, through to even communications with light globes when it comes to bill payments and more.

On regulation both speakers embraced a similar argument, with Lee stating that regulation will happen eventually; “if Bitcoin isn’t useful people won’t use it, it’s moot, if Bitcoin is useful and people embrace it, Government, with regulations and laws will follow.”

Liu added that with the Blockchain being embraced by financial institutions, Government’s are sure to follow with their own utilization of the Blockchain for distributed records management.

Transactional state of play

While neither speaker went into depth about the current state of play for either of their companies, Liu did note that while transactions have been growing for OKCoin in 2015, it still hasn’t revisited the frenzy of transactions in the market in 2013.

Both agreed that interest had picked up due to both the Greek financial crisis and the volatility in Chinese stocks, there was still plenty of room for increased growth.

“More than anything what Bitcoin needs is more education,” he told the audience, “more people need to learn about it.”

Image credit: Duncan Riley