Vincent Choy on Oz Finance’s special economic zones for crypto

0:01i'm ashton addison from block west capital for investmentpitch media and today on the crypto coin show we have vincent choi the ecosystem architect of oz finance vincent welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time thank you for having me it's a pleasure you're very welcome uh you know in this increased globalization crypto companies are always finding the best places to

0:22locate and for their customers sake as well um i know oz finance is playing a great role in helping blockchain companies do this and i would love to hear uh the insights into what your team has built um and we can get an overview of oz finance to start and then we'll dive into all things oz finance sure thank you thank you so much ashton so um finance uh there's a dao uh we're

0:47transiting to a dao uh basically that is consists of four main things um we have basically blockchain technology we look at it from a set of policy framework laws and regulations in which we can engage government with we are a community and finally we are a digital infrastructure layer we then use this because we have these four things we're then able to talk to

1:13governments we're able to talk to governments to gain access to special economic zones for those of you who are not familiar with special economic zones speculative economic zones are actually countries within their countries they're able to set up their own rules their own regulations in order to bring in foreign direct investments we offer special economic zones four

1:30main things one is a master plan to develop investors that will come in our community to help market and to create growth for the special economic zone and finally additional infrastructure to connect them to a digital economy and when we do all these four things for a special economic zone we gain access to economic rights from the real estate that is developed uh within the special

1:57economic zone we get rights to any transactions that happen within the specs uh the digital layer of the special economic zone and finally we get the right to establish a digital asset exchange in the special economic zone to provide tokenize as uh to tokenize assets in order for us to gain liquidity and connect to a digital asset market which unfortunately is a lot smaller uh

2:25during this crypto winter than just a couple of months ago but we do believe we'll still bounce back and become bigger in the months to come so when we do that because we're working in special economic zones we then are able to offer a very concrete utility and a very concrete value to our users and community and that is residency we have tokenized residency to enable

2:51people to get lower tax or tax-free living to get privacy protection to be able to get regulatory cover especially if you're in the digital asset and cryptocurrency business and finally be able to grow your wealth internationally wow great intro vincent and yeah there's a lot to unpack there i feel like as blockchain continues to grow and and governments also see you know

3:20opportunities for their uh areas to grow in their gdp and their economic zones um it's also a constant battle of updating you know where are the economic zones moving what are the regulations of each country and how they're growing with the growth of digital assets into the mainstream i've heard of a few economic zones in like dubai or the philippines but i'm

3:45sure that there's many more um maybe you can talk about if there are specific locations and does it really matter with cryptocurrency companies um you know being in a specific location if they're really doing all of their business online sure so um let's unpack that a little bit so first of all um we our first partner country is the philippines right so we are working

4:07directly with the government um in this case we are working with the freeport area bataan which is a free trade zone in the philippines and that enables us to to tokenize the residency and enable our token to basically offer uh tokenized residency so we work directly with the government right you're right there are many echo zones around the world in fact there are 5

4:34400 echo zones around the world most of which are actually unknown governments set up these special economic zones but they lack the community and the to help market them to help actually attract investors and to track uh in residence to come in and grow these zones and so what we do provide is the template to work with the government to do that right and in

4:57exchange we ask for tax free living for our users our community whereas we ask for privacy protection to protect the rights of the people who are living and working and investing in these cities and finally we asked for um sorry sorry sorry sorry i'm um tax free living privacy protection and oh regulatory certainty regulatory cover

5:25um it's not so much so that we want things to be unregulated we actually want things to be regulated but we want things to be certain the key problem with the regulatory aspects of the crypto world right now is that there's so much uncertainty today this is allowed tomorrow that is not allowed today this is tax tomorrow that is not taxed so uncertainty is what is actually killing

5:50business is not really um it's not really the lack of regulations so this commonsensical um certain um regulations is what we want to put across great explanation there vincent and um i i feel like like the privacy protection um regulatory certainty are all good things um i i've heard of cryptocurrency exchanges moving to

6:19specific zones to benefit their users and their operations with blockchain companies that you're working with and that you're looking to work with um are you seeing a specific trend you know whether it's uh like a blockchain protocol itself cryptocurrency exchange uh d5 protocols or any project that's looking to do like a token sale uh yes unfortunately as the

6:46the the current trend in regulation is it's just going to get tougher and tougher to be in the crypto world especially when you're talking about um established um countries or places which has made um crypto illegal or bad um a very good example is china right they've just taken a blanket ban to everything that is crypto right now um we see the importance of special economic zones

7:14being able to create sandbox environments where governments can actually see how it's working or create a different regime in which to encourage the growth of this zone to then decide whether or not this is good or bad for the country you know without this sandbox environment without this ability to create a observational platform so to speak you know banning it is is premature we pray

7:42that's premature the technology is actually very very useful and has the ability to bring a lot of um cost savings it's uh it'll be able to reach out to the unbanked to bank underserved and but to ban it prematurely i think it's just overkill um so yes a lot of uh a lot of companies a lot of crypto companies are moving to special economic zones they're moving to

8:09uh friendlier regimes including dubai our special economic zone has under the implementing rules and regulations of the freeport area of bataan has really pre-approved 64 different types of crypto and digital asset activities so we welcome all crypto companies exchangers who are looking for a base or operation to come and invest in this in the special

8:36economic zone in the philippines very cool vincent and you spoke about the the oz living and the residency program uh i'm curious if that is mandatory you know for a resident to to move into the special economic zone or have to be there for a specific amount of time in order to have their company set up there no so the simple answer is no it's a digital

9:02residency program which means that you have the right to live and work anywhere in the philippines not the zone anywhere in the philippines for five years but you do not have to live there um you only have to go to the philippines once to take your biometrics and to take your and get your stem under your passport once kyc aml is approved and once that is done um

9:24you know you don't have to live there if you don't want to but it's a very nice place the seven thousand little uh there's 7 200 islands beautiful beaches beautiful hills great landscape and a very friendly population you know it's a good place to come definitely vincent and i agree i have spoken at a blockchain conference in manila in the philippines and it is a

9:47beautiful country so i agree with you there um and no you mentioned at the very beginning about how you know oz finance is becoming a dao and oz dao and i feel like this is the trend towards further decentralization and democratization of all companies creating a dow format can you talk about the implications and the road map for uh ozdao okay so the hostile is really our vision

10:14so we do believe that the power or the democratization of um resources should be put to our community um however we are also in recognition of the fact that we are working directly with governments with government organizations which would require us to centralize certain parts of decision making at least in the near term

10:41we do we see ourselves as building up a template for the first three four even five countries to be able to sign up to in terms of what um us wants to do with every one of these echo zones and once this update is more or less fixed it becomes a system it becomes a system it becomes a system where all the community can contribute to making it more robust

11:06we will then hand that system over to the community the community again gets to vote on projects get to vote on which echo zones to expand into get to vote on what to invest in each echo zone and this is something that no other dao is able to do right now is to be able to experiment on governance through a dow that directly impacts the living conditions and the living

11:33environment right of the people that participate in the down and that's why we're residents residents are actually residents in the physical place what gets built in a physical place how does the us governance tokens allow you to vote or allow you to influence right the physical living environment we also the os project is really about building a project that impacts the real

11:58world lives of the crypto community of the people who participate in this community and we wanna and we envision that or we wanna embody that through the dow being able to allow them to make the decisions of how to operate and how to live well said vincent and now besides moving into the dow format and you know getting more

12:25clients and blockchain projects onboarded do you have any other plans uh for in the roadmap for you know throughout this year for us throughout this year so we hope to be able to bring in at least two to three countries into the als ecosystem by the end of this year right we intend to launch our technology part of the technology part of our project in terms of building up the

12:52digital infrastructure layer for the freeport area bataan we we want to start at least in this year a little bit on phase four of our operations which is really about the people development uh we want to help to upskill the labor force within there's currently living in the freeport area of bataan will provide jobs so within the next

13:18couple of months within this year we do hope to tie up um some elements of our types of elements of us and expand to at least two to three countries very cool and for projects and crypto companies that are starting up or already existing that are interested in learning more about the special economic zones and about what oz can do and how they can work with you

13:43what is the best way for people to find out more please reach out to us i mean you can come to our website um or uh on stock finance um our contact details is here or please do reach out to me directly uh out on our telegram group um all start finance again um we're more than happy to answer any questions we're more than happy to help you you know through any um difficulties

14:07you might have or if you want to know more about specific uh countries and how um the the rules and regulations in the philippines will affect your you living in another country or setting up business there um we're more than happy to help amazing thank you so much vincent i will leave those links as well in the description box below for the viewers

14:27all the best with everything in these special economic zones and the growth of oz dao and let's follow up in the near future thank you ashton thank you for having me thank you you