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How High Will Bitcoin Go? Here's the Better Question | Flare, Hugo Philion

EO11:12Added Aug 31, 2026

Doge, Pepe, and countless meme coins flood the market, leading us to question the true potential of blockchain and cryptocurrency. In a sea of digital clutte...

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Contributed by 刘嘉琪

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  1. Intro

  2. 00:00too many of the same projects doing the
  3. 00:02same thing just about money just about
  4. 00:04Finance I think myself and my team wish
  5. 00:07we didn't have to be associated with
  6. 00:09most of the people in the industry what
  7. 00:11you see when you go to conferences most
  8. 00:13of what people are talking about is
  9. 00:15either nonon or incredibly dull
  10. 00:17development dollars could have been
  11. 00:19better spent on improving the technology
  12. 00:21blockchains need the ability to handle
  13. 00:24much more data and more computation this
  14. 00:26means that people can build rules that
  15. 00:28say you wanted to create a truly
  16. 00:30uncensorable Twitter a way to do this
  17. 00:33would be using a blockchain but you
  18. 00:35couldn't handle all of the users and
  19. 00:37data so you need to take that do that
  20. 00:39computation somewhere else if I could
  21. 00:41Truly find the score of a two-player
  22. 00:44matchup I can create a betting Market
  23. 00:46between the world's largest Gamers
  24. 00:48people started using Bitcoin in places
  25. 00:50like Venezuela to hedge out insane
  26. 00:52inflation there's not too much you want
  27. 00:54to do actually on the blockchain there's
  28. 00:55not too much you can do on the
  29. 00:57blockchain hi my name is Hugo fillian
  30. 00:59and a co- and CEO of flair Flair really
  31. 01:01is the only blockchain which we describe
  32. 01:04as third generation it enshrines data
  33. 01:07directly into the chain first generation
  34. 01:08being Bitcoin simple transactions second
  35. 01:11generation being ethereum adding logic
  36. 01:13to those transactions third generation
  37. 01:15flare adding data to the logic has just
  38. 01:17hit about a million wallet 100 to
  39. 01:20150,000 daily active users so they're
  40. 01:22bringing value from other blockchain
  41. 01:24ecosystems to flare to be used on flare
  42. 01:27with the data provision services that
  43. 01:29are provided by FL within the blockchain
  44. 01:31environment you shouldn't be doing
  45. 01:32anything based on trust because you
  46. 01:34don't know the counterparty and you
  47. 01:36don't have any legal recourse
  48. 01:38essentially what defi is doing today is
  49. 01:40it's using a trust-based model which is
  50. 01:43very similar to trafi except is that
  51. 01:45trafy are bound by laws whereas an
  52. 01:48oracle provider has no laws in order for
  53. 01:51defi or any other application that
  54. 01:53relies on data to be valid you need to
  55. 01:55have a way to secure those oracles that
  56. 01:58is clear open and provides a similar
  57. 02:01sort of safety as the blockchain itself
  58. 02:03we think the best way to do that is to
  59. 02:06put the oracles fundamentally into the
  60. 02:09chain bring defi actually

  61. Why Blockchain, For What?

  62. 02:14decentralized I grew up in London which
  63. 02:16is pretty much the world's Financial
  64. 02:18Center at the time when I was growing up
  65. 02:21very small startup Community very little
  66. 02:24technology Community the financial
  67. 02:25markets were the only choice and
  68. 02:28obviously a place where one could
  69. 02:30potentially make large amounts of money
  70. 02:32which is very interesting to think about
  71. 02:34when you're 17 I suppose the
  72. 02:36macroeconomic and that's always been a
  73. 02:38things I like to think about so I
  74. 02:40studied risk and financial engineering
  75. 02:43worked at a number of hedge funds in
  76. 02:45London after about 7 years I decided
  77. 02:47that I was just trying to eek out
  78. 02:48Financial returns in order to make uh
  79. 02:51essentially myself richer so I left
  80. 02:53Finance went studying machine learning
  81. 02:56at UCL in London and that's where I met
  82. 02:58my two co-founders and I knew knew I
  83. 03:00probably wanted to be a founder and when
  84. 03:02looking at machine learning it's heavily
  85. 03:05dominated by very large companies and
  86. 03:07therefore gives you no opportunity
  87. 03:09really if you look at open AI he ran y
  88. 03:12combinator I certainly didn't have
  89. 03:14anywhere near his Network to do anything
  90. 03:17in machine learning one of our
  91. 03:19co-founders had built inter vehicle
  92. 03:21Communications based on a distributed
  93. 03:23Network like Bitcoin and I'd had some
  94. 03:25exposure to blockchain from people I
  95. 03:27knew in the financial Community
  96. 03:29ultimately it was a very interesting
  97. 03:31idea to me that we could do everything
  98. 03:34especially Financial things without
  99. 03:36having to care about the counterparty
  100. 03:38and I think that was one of the
  101. 03:39fundamental reasons why blockchain at
  102. 03:42the time and still does promising
  103. 03:44technology so we started flare in 2018
  104. 03:47and we had a very small office in the
  105. 03:49basement someone's photography studio
  106. 03:53but as we were a team of three I think
  107. 03:55one and a half desks at the time they
  108. 03:57didn't enjoy the benefit on ethereum of
  109. 03:59smart contract essentially the largest
  110. 04:01source of Bitcoin was know as wrapped
  111. 04:03Bitcoin which is managed through a
  112. 04:05custodian essentially antithetical to
  113. 04:08the concept of Bitcoin meaning you're
  114. 04:10relying on a middleman in order to use
  115. 04:12your Bitcoin on a smart contract
  116. 04:13platform we started looking at okay well
  117. 04:16how can we get the data around Bitcoin
  118. 04:19we devised the protocols to be able to
  119. 04:21get that data from Bitcoin to build a
  120. 04:23bridge that is over collateralized
  121. 04:25meaning it has more value securing it
  122. 04:28than than the amount of Bitcoin that has
  123. 04:31been bridged using that bridge and in
  124. 04:33order to do that we needed price so we
  125. 04:34ended up with these two data protocols
  126. 04:37the first being a protocol that allows
  127. 04:39you to quickly and securely get data
  128. 04:41from another blockchain and also to be
  129. 04:43able to prove that a particular thing
  130. 04:45hasn't happened on that blockchain and
  131. 04:47that's pretty

  132. This is True Potential of Decentralized Data

  133. 04:52key so originally we designed the data
  134. 04:55protocol just to be able to build this
  135. 04:56bridge for Bitcoin ultimately we very
  136. 04:58quickly realize that there those data
  137. 05:00Protocols are much more interesting that
  138. 05:01we could bring in data from any open
  139. 05:03system pretty much any system in a
  140. 05:05decentralized way that's the key point
  141. 05:07it's decentralized and it has security
  142. 05:09so this allows you to do everything you
  143. 05:10can do in defi today but with Flare
  144. 05:12that's just the first step what really
  145. 05:14interests me is then okay what can we
  146. 05:16build with that this means that people
  147. 05:18can build rules of an application
  148. 05:21they're building second aspect is then
  149. 05:22for us off chain compute far more data
  150. 05:25from other sources than can be used by
  151. 05:27the chain so where are you going to use
  152. 05:29that very very large amounts of data
  153. 05:31that you need to be able to use that off
  154. 05:32chain in order to build applications so
  155. 05:34I think the blockchain today is at the
  156. 05:36limit more or less of what can be built
  157. 05:38until you add in further compute and
  158. 05:40that's when we can start building
  159. 05:41applications that people actually want
  160. 05:43to use so for me the first and most
  161. 05:46interesting thing to do is genuinely
  162. 05:48decentralize and make uncensorable
  163. 05:51social media or news platforms or video
  164. 05:54platforms we see an increasing set of
  165. 05:57issues in the world where there is very
  166. 05:59High censorship where people are
  167. 06:01struggling to express their opinion
  168. 06:04another set of application is around
  169. 06:06gaming ultimately the experience the
  170. 06:07blockchain has offered to gaming has
  171. 06:09been so inferior to the web 2 or
  172. 06:13existing gaming product it really hasn't
  173. 06:15taken a tool but there are interesting
  174. 06:17things you can do when you essentially
  175. 06:19financialized components around gaming
  176. 06:22if I can truly understand what has
  177. 06:24happened at in each computational step
  178. 06:26of a game then I can give people skins I
  179. 06:29can give people asset based on exactly
  180. 06:32what they've done and those assets can
  181. 06:34be real and tradable as opposed to
  182. 06:36Simply ingame I do have a third thing
  183. 06:38there suppose the last area that really
  184. 06:41interests us as a team uh is probably
  185. 06:43machine learning or as most people call
  186. 06:45it artificial intelligent there are some
  187. 06:47very interesting things you can do with
  188. 06:50distribution of users again there's a
  189. 06:52there's not too much you want to do
  190. 06:54actually on the blockchain there's not
  191. 06:55too much you can do on the blockchain I
  192. 06:57suppos the decentralized and
  193. 06:59economically secure substrate of a
  194. 07:02blockchain provides a very interesting
  195. 07:04place for machine learning to be
  196. 07:06expanded and to be made safer through
  197. 07:09having multiple

  198. A New Data Ecosystem, With Blockchain 3.0

  199. 07:15participants some people may believe
  200. 07:18that Bitcoin shouldn't have value and I
  201. 07:21understand that mentality you have to
  202. 07:23differentiate between the technology and
  203. 07:25the value it has some logic to it
  204. 07:27Bitcoin is only backed by hashing power
  205. 07:29in it's not by the ability to Levy taxes
  206. 07:32nor is it backed by the ability to force
  207. 07:35other people to use your medium of
  208. 07:37exchange Bitcoin doesn't have either of
  209. 07:39those two things but perhaps it has one
  210. 07:41other thing rather than forcing people
  211. 07:43to use your medium of exchange but to
  212. 07:45get them to voluntarily use it and
  213. 07:47that's interesting but you'll never
  214. 07:48convinc people that don't want to be
  215. 07:50convinced especially as an awful lot of
  216. 07:52people have a reason a financial reason
  217. 07:54not to be convinced about that thing if
  218. 07:57you take away the it's a monetary asset
  219. 07:59side of the equation it's fairly nent
  220. 08:02technology I think being able to
  221. 08:04distribute computation and consensus
  222. 08:07will become more and more useful over
  223. 08:09time essentially there is value in being
  224. 08:12able to come to consensus cross some
  225. 08:15item of data across various different
  226. 08:17vertical you know our biggest space the
  227. 08:19space we're most interested in
  228. 08:21researching thinking about is around the
  229. 08:23outputs of machine learning models
  230. 08:25probably provides the answer to what is
  231. 08:28blockchain useful for my exposure to
  232. 08:33finance was really post the large
  233. 08:35financial crisis the ideas around what
  234. 08:38something is worth fall apart when
  235. 08:41currency is printed people were making
  236. 08:43trades based on an expectation of
  237. 08:46government action rather than based on
  238. 08:48any fundamental strength in the economy
  239. 08:51the sort of large excess of capital that
  240. 08:54was put into the markets host the GFC
  241. 08:57really led to a position where where
  242. 08:59valuations were massively out of whack
  243. 09:02and so when you spend your days thinking
  244. 09:03about the idea of taking the fundamental
  245. 09:07thing that values assets is a very
  246. 09:10interesting thing because it removes
  247. 09:11that ability of a group of people to
  248. 09:14pervert essentially the entire
  249. 09:16transmission mechanisms of all financial
  250. 09:18markets and that's what has happened the
  251. 09:21idea that could be a technology that
  252. 09:23removes that from the equation is very
  253. 09:26very appealing people started using
  254. 09:28Bitcoin in places like Venezuela to
  255. 09:30hedge out insane inflation that was
  256. 09:32collapsing their currency crypto broadly
  257. 09:35has solved the question of how can I
  258. 09:37move dollars across the world really
  259. 09:39quickly and easily without having to
  260. 09:42enter an iban the defi that is built
  261. 09:44fundamentally around essentially a
  262. 09:46dollar based stable coin system and
  263. 09:48Native tokens because that's essentially
  264. 09:50what defi is and I think that could
  265. 09:52expand as people use crypto tokens more
  266. 09:55whether it be stable coins or the native
  267. 09:58so if we're lucky flare will be one of
  268. 10:01the key components in how people use
  269. 10:04data on blockchains that's what we're
  270. 10:06building that's essentially where we're
  271. 10:08going we're not a smart contract project
  272. 10:11focused on Ripple we have a much much
  273. 10:14larger ambition and that ambition
  274. 10:16revolves around data and offchain comput
  275. 10:19so in 5 years time I'd like to see a
  276. 10:22non-trivial percentage of the data that
  277. 10:25is used in blockchain being sourced from
  278. 10:27Flair regardless of whether it's being
  279. 10:29used on flare as a chain or whether it's
  280. 10:31being used on ethereum or any other new
  281. 10:33chain that comes up success to me would
  282. 10:35be that the data came from flare moved
  283. 10:38from flare in 5 years it's feasible that
  284. 10:42our offchain compute strategy could
  285. 10:44result in applications that go Way
  286. 10:47Beyond defi Way Beyond having value for
  287. 10:50speculative reasons and much more
  288. 10:53involved in people's daytoday lives
  289. 10:56because it's a valuable application in
  290. 10:58and of itself for