Lisbon, Nov. 14, 2024 (Lusa) - The chief executive officer (CEO) of Bison Bank believes, in an interview with Lusa, that Portugal can "clearly be the 'hub' of Web3 and 'blockchain' in the future and advocates "strategic thinking" for the country in the long term.
António Henriques is taking part in the panel ‘The fringe economy’ at the Web Summit this Thursday afternoon.
When asked if Portugal could play an important role in the cryptoassets area, the manager peremptorily said ‘yes’.
"I think Portugal can play an important role in the development of the Web3 or blockchain ecosystem", not least because "Web3 and blockchain are not just about cryptoassets", he emphasises.
António Henriques believes that blockchain [a technology that allows information to be tracked] and Web3 [which creates interconnections between various technologies] "can be highly transformative".
In the case of blockchain "we're talking about a giant database with extreme decentralised security that actually holds structured data", now "imagine what it's like to apply artificial intelligence on top of a giant database with structured data. It's an explosion of new things," he emphasises.
Asked what needs to be done for Portugal to make the ‘leap’ in innovation, he advocates "strategic thinking" for the country "in the long term".
"I often say that Portugal is so good that we don't need to do anything to attract people and foreign capital. And the question is: what if we did?" he asks.
What if "we did something to choose exactly what investment we want to bring to Portugal? Which people do we want to bring to Portugal? Which countries would we like to see investing in Portugal?" asks António Henriques.
The CEO gives the example of Singapore, which in the 1960s "was years behind Portugal and today is years ahead of Portugal" because it did "super long-term planning" and "succeeded", he points out.
"We have to have a completely different Portugal in 50 years' time," he says.
This strategic thinking would be ‘decisive’, in which the strategic sectors that would be developed in the country would be defined.
"We have to define what we want for Portugal and activate these mechanisms," António Henriques concludes.
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