CEO and Founder at LCX — Liechtenstein Cryptoassets Exchange. Monty C. M. Metzger is an internet veteran and acclaimed thought leader on the future of digital. LCX is a new category leader in blockchain — establishing an ecosystem for the new financial world one step at a time. Enabling professional investors to trade, invest and manage crypto assets: Trading Platform for Digital Assets, building an Exchange for Security Tokens and other crypto assets.
Monty found his first Internet company back in 1998, since then he co-founded several tech companies, co-founded a future technology consultancy with offices in Beijing, Tokyo, Munich and New York, then founded a registered Venture Capital Fund in Luxembourg as General Partner and invested in outstanding technology companies globally.
Shawn Flynn: Lichtenstein, the Blockchain Act, and Crypto- Can you go a little bit deeper into what’s happening right now? What should the world know?
Monty Metzger: For me, Liechtenstein is the most exciting jurisdiction for cryptocurrency and blockchain overall. The key reason is that they took a holistic view on regulation. It’s a lightweight legal framework, which gives entrepreneurs a good way to breathe and to be innovative, while having legal clarity. When I say legal clarity, I mean that it’s not regulating one piece of the puzzle, but the whole value chain of blockchain and crypto tokens. They have different roles in the LCX. They got approved for eight registrations under the blockchain- that’s more than any other company in the country. We are a token generator. The token is born, then you need to hold it so the whole custody roles are regulated and part of the regulation as well. It goes to trading, price services, identity service providers, and so on. It’s a holistic approach alongside the value chain, which makes it very unique. It’s the perfect playground for us to enter the European market, out of this little country.
SF: So, why do you think Lichtenstein is so open and progressive when it comes to FinTech?
MM: Lichtenstein has always been a financial powerhouse. Liechtenstein has the highest GDP in the world, I think 260,000 per capita, even higher than Switzerland. It’s a small country, and the data gets mixed up with the Swiss data very often. However, it is home to many foundations. IKEA Foundation is headquartered there, lots of gas, Russian oligarchs, and family offices, and venture funds are based in Liechtenstein. So it is a financial powerhouse. Within the last 20 years, it shifted from the European tax haven into a highly regulated and transparent environment. In the 80s it was known to be more of a tax haven, and now it’s really turned upside down. It got a triple A rating extended boost- the highest rating a country can get. They have an incredible reputation that they are trying to protect, which makes our daily lives difficult at times because they’re asking a lot of questions. They really go deep, and try to understand our business. It is more complicated than paying for a registration or a license. It is really a lot of work to not only get into it, but to maintain it as well.
SF: Regarding Crypto, what are some of the biggest possibilities? What’s already been imagined, what’s happening now in that space?
MM: Given my background of being a futurist and a trend scout in terms of the latest and greatest technologies, I’ve seen a lot of things happening in the past 25 years. I remember when the mobile internet was coming. We hired a team, and we opened the office in Tokyo to find out about the latest feature phones. We hired some students at Philadelphia University, and at Howard University to send us screenshots of this new Facebook social media website, which was in 2007.
With technology trends we see the hype fade a lot, but there are other very fundamental technologies. When I looked at blockchain, AI and Bitcoin and all these cryptocurrencies, I discovered that this is really a fundamental technology. It’s here to stay, and it will disrupt a lot of industries that we can’t even imagine. This technology development can’t be taken away from us anymore. It’s here in the market. Now it’s about when adoption or disruption will happen. It’s not a question of if it’s only when, especially when I look at the financial markets. There are the biggest immediate opportunities there. Blockchain is to money as to what email was to the letter. It’s really a fundamental shift, and Web3 is coming. It’s the next evolution of the Internet. With the first age of the Internet, we had the internet of information. We could send a letter quickly from A to B with an email. Now we’re using WhatsApp or other social media and messenger systems to make it even faster, but it’s all about sharing data and information. Now, Web3 is all about the internet of value. So, as easily as sending an email, you can now send money from Lichtenstein to Silicon Valley, Venezuela, Turkey, whatever you want. That’s really revolutionizing all businesses globally, but as a first start to financial and capital markets. Everything that can be tokenized will be tokenized. It is just a matter of time.
SF: I’ve heard a lot about the term “Internet of Value.” What does that mean to you?
MM: To me, the IoV is really a global revolution, where the power of financial and capital markets is shifted. There are different dynamics, which we currently see. I’ve been a technologist and in individual markets for many years, and have been doing a lot of speeches as well. When I’ve been speaking about cloud computing, AI, mobile internet, I’ve been invited by directors of companies or heads of different departments who are into doing digitalization or digital transformation. When I dived into blockchain and Bitcoin and learned more about it, I did talks, and it shifted. I was suddenly invited by heads of states, people in government, and I was sitting next to the Foreign Minister. Or for example, the CEO of the Bank of Oman was sitting right next to me, once. It was a completely different set of people who were interested in the space. When you talk about money, you talk about power. You talk about different currencies and what money is, and I had all different kinds of experiences around it. But the overall impact is much, much deeper.
Another example is that I was speaking at a Russian bank, and I was invited to Moscow. I went to this meeting room in the hotel, and there were 50 bankers. There was an innovation team within the bank who invited me, and so I started to talk about incident value, Bitcoin, and blockchain, and all these kinds of things that are happening and are relevant. And then, some people stood up and said, that’s all bullshit. They jumped up and then started to speak in Russian. It was almost like a fight was going on. Because it’s emotional. It is disrupting many middlemen business models, and it is risking the power of financial institutions (or at least changing, or really disrupting their businesses.) That’s what we’ve seen with digital information and documents with the internet of information as well, that a lot of middlemen had been cut out. That’s what’s happening with the Internet of Value and Web3 as well. For me, it’s the start of a big transformation over the next few decades, really.
SF: Speaking of current crazes, could you talk about the history of NFT’s? Do they have any substance?
MM: I see NFT non fungible tokens as a substantial evolution of assets on the blockchain. The unique thing about an NFT is really that there’s only one of it in the world. It is non fungible compared to fungible tokens. So for example, if you have a $1 bill, you want to have all the dollar bills look the same. These are fungible, they’re all looking the same, with the same functionality. But if you have one art piece by Picasso, then that’s the only one, hand drawn with a signature. You don’t want 1000 copies of it. That would dilute the value. For some assets, NFTS make total sense, and it’s not nothing new. For example, ERC 721. Most tokens are ERC 20s and do a smart contract, which makes sure that within this on the blockchain, there’s only one piece out there. What we see now with all this craziness in the art space is that it has been created for people selling digital art, tokenizing pictures, or specific drawings, and then selling it. Of course, now the big art auction houses have been jumping on it as well. We’ve seen some craziness going on over there. I’m not sure how sustainable it is. I’m not an art collector, and I’m not an art insider!
However, I do see that the technology itself can be used in a lot of things that are non fungible as well. At LCX we thought about a similar project, and we’re now doing diamonds. They are also non fungible. Each diamond has a unique certificate number, and it has this different size. There’s only one of that particular diamond in the world. We thought that it was perfect. We’re taking this into the NFT space, and we’re tokenizing. We can now purchase tokenized diamonds, and become an owner of a virtual, asset-backed NFT.
SF: Who are some of the crypto, blockchain, or FinTech people or companies that are on the rise other than LCX? What other ones out there should pay attention to in the coming years?
MM: If you look at the market as a whole, there are different categories which you have to look at. One bucket is really these blockchains themselves. There’s Bitcoin as the fundamental digital gold, but the blockchain itself is very slow. It’s not scalable, and needs different solutions. And there’s Ethereum as a blockchain, which enables first time smart contracts. It’s programmable money, so you can program some things into digital financial products, which is exciting. And there are a lot of new rivals from Solana, to Avalaunch, to Cardano, who want to beat Ethereum on many levels. That’s it. These are the blockchains, then there are the infrastructure players. A lot of mining companies were mining Bitcoin or staking companies who are super highly profitable, who were part of this proof of stake blockchains where you need to put some of the tokens on the side to gain extra rewards on it to create high yield and good returns. Then there are these B2C or even B2B market makers or market platforms like LCX, where I would count Coinbase or Kraken as key players. There are a lot of innovations, things like from Defy decentralized exchanges, to new things which are created where you don’t fully understand what it’s all about. These are like meme coins or meme tokens, or fun things.
There is one last super exciting thing, but I have not seen it in action yet. It is something that will turn Silicon Valley upside down. The decentralized web in general, and Web 3.0 is changing a lot of the applications that we are seeing. One example is the next evolution of social networks. There are decentralized social networks being built right now, which might replace current Facebook’s and Snapchats. This is because the content producers are actually owning the content, and it can be manipulated or censored, which are the pros and cons of such a system. Additionally, there is an evolution of data storage. So, imagine having a digital ID which you actually own. If you’re going out to a club, for example, then you’re typically asked how old you are, and you have to show your full ID. But the question actually should be- Are you old enough to enter on the blockchain? This question could be entered and the result could be yes or no, without even disclosing how old you are. Another example could be healthcare applications where you share some information with doctors, but only the relevant parts. Basically, this decentralized Web 3.0 is revolutionizing all different kinds of industries from logistics, healthcare, data, etc.
SF: Regarding vision, what are you looking to accomplish in 2022?
MM: 2022 is a tipping point for us, because we’ve seen much development in the last couple of months around adoption, mass markets and a growing user base. For us, it’s about gross traction and profitability. Growth means we are expanding in different jurisdictions. The attraction is that these users who are coming in also love our products, they use them more and more. We focus on local law, we listen to our community, we focus on things our community wants, and then we pray for good revenues and profits, by making something that is useful. As I said, it’s a tipping point in 2022 because we are still at the early days, and when we started out there were probably 10 million active wallets in the crypto universe. Then it grew to 30, up to 50 million- imagine the internet with 50 million users. That’s where we are right now. Due to all the NFT hype numbers have risen, but we are still not at 1 billion. I think the next big jump will happen in 2022, in addition to new applications being launched from WhatsApp and Novi. These are all signs that there is more happening, and that 2022 will be big and exciting!