A new financial system in the digital era

Digitization is probably the biggest trend in our lifetime.

In the past two and a half years, COVID-19 has significantly accelerated the shift towards digital by forcing much of the world online. And now, whether you are aware of it or not, we are entering a digital metaverse, whose roots began 20-30 years ago with the advent of Web 1.0 and computing, followed by Web 2.0 with the internet and e-commerce which brought the benefits of social interaction and new economic models.

As the world becomes more digitized than ever, a new financial system enabled by digital assets and blockchain technology is on the rise. The goals of the new financial system are to improve access to financial services, reduce transaction times and costs. These changes accelerate the opportunities for global financial inclusion and equity.

The new financial system is guided by the ethos of decentralization. Within the context of finance, decentralization is a powerful concept that has the profound ability to cultivate waves of exceptional change. It makes financial inclusion and equitability possible in ways that traditional, legacy institutions cannot. After all, having to rely on centralized intermediaries that have historically and systemically marginalized communities, only serve to perpetuate these issues. Decentralization, however, promises to upend this premise with the help of permissionless and transparent technology.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) has emerged as a blockchain-based form of finance. It currently includes services such as investing, borrowing, lending, and trading. DeFi offers an alternative to the traditional financial system, giving anyone with a smartphone and an internet connection the opportunity to put their money to work on their terms.

DeFi leverages innovations in cryptocurrencies and smart contracts to build a more progressive, inclusive, transparent and sustainable financial system. Rather than have banks or other third parties act as intermediaries, DeFi empowers groups of people that have long been excluded in the finance ecosystem, putting individuals at the center of a peer-to-peer financial system that runs on open-source blockchains like Ethereum.

At Amber Group, we share a vision in wanting to transform the financial ecosystem to be one that is more progressive, inclusive, transparent and sustainable. And we believe that a progressive and sustainable financial ecosystem can only exist if access to finance is democratized. Our team is guided by this ethos and we embody this in all our products and services.

Amber Group is a leading digital asset company that provides a full range of digital asset services spanning investing, financing, and trading, servicing over 1,000 institutional clients and a growing number of individual investors worldwide. Valued at US$3 billion after the latest fundraising, Amber Group is backed by world-class investors such as Temasek, Sequoia, Tiger Global, Paradigm, Dragonfly, Pantera, Coinbase Ventures, and Blockchain.com.

For more information about Amber Group, please visit www.ambergroup.io.