Speaking to EAK TV at Decentralized 2018 in Athens, Eva Kaili, a member of the European Parliament, said blockchain gave every small business and enterprise the opportunity to operate on their own terms and to put their own ideas into practice.
She said there’s a fear among established industry of blockchain, but said the parliament wanted to work with all businesses to make sure they were ready for the coming revolution.
“There’s a resistant environment in terms of industries and intermediaries that are afraid, they are right to be afraid, they’re going to be disrupted,” she said.
“But disruption is something you cannot stop, like innovation. Which means they have to try and adapt, we will try to give them enough time … so that they can accept and implement the changes to what they do.”
Eva, who is the Chair of Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) committee of members of the European Parliament, said: “You can open new funding for ideas and support SMEs with blockchain and ICOs.”
“You can see ideas that could not [normally] get liquidity or cash, now being able to test the limits by using ICOs as a crowdfunding platform, so I think the potential is there to change many things.”
She said the European Parliament is running the Blockchain for Social Good contest, which would award five lucky winners with €1 million each as a prize.
The contest aims to find the best and brightest blockchain start-up ideas, and the deadline for entries is September 2019.
Urging people to participate she told: “If they have a good idea they should proceed, nothing will stop innovation. If they have an idea that blockchain can solve they should proceed.”