The best of the Blockchain Visionnare Summit in Berlin

For a long time, I feel that attending conferences makes sense for me to learn the latest information and at the same time consolidate the information, connect the bridges and gain a broader perspective. There are too many blog articles and videos, and there is a lot of noise not only on social media, but also among the crypto community itself. Although July was more of a holiday month, I managed one foreign blockchain conference in Berlin: the Blockchain Visionnaire Summit.

This blockchain conference didn’t have super-famous names on the spec panels, but I was intrigued by a topic that wasn’t for beginners and went in depth. I wrote down some interesting ideas from this event.

The most interesting ideas from the conference

The Airdrops technique is being used more and more by ICO (Initial Coin Offering) and seems to be working. It’s one of the marketing channels to get attention. More than 100 ICOs are created every month , so of course there is a big fight for investors. ICOs have been struggling with regulation for a long time (gray zone qualification of tokens for security and utility tokens). There is a view that Airdrops will not be more marketing-effective and will not replace retail participation with ICOs for retail investors.

What does this mean for us?

Currently, the situation is such that a small investor does not get very good ICO. I can confirm a number of unsuccessful attempts to move from a whitelist to the list of qualified investors. Pooly and syndicate are an alternative, but I don’t like the conditions here either. Although they operate on trust through a programmed smart contract, the conditions under which you enter the ICO are worse (ie the set price of etherea is eg 550 USD / 1 ETH, while the real price of ETH is 430 USD, which means that you pay more).

ICOs are becoming an increasingly dominant feature for medium and large investors (ie from 50-100 thousand USD per project). The Airdrops are gradually finding their way to small investors. We can probably expect a change or division of the Airdrop function. Within 2-3 years, they can become one of the strongest channels for “money crowdfunding”.

At the same time, however, let us realize that although the Airdrops are provided to us relatively free of charge, their trading and subsequent profit-taking may already be taxable. The task of the state is one, and that is to tax the increasing property of individuals / entities.

Institutional money began to flow into the cryptocurrencies

If we look back to the beginning of 2017, we can say that the institutional world was not interested in any cryptocurrencies. From the end of 2017, however, we can read one novelty after another, which report the entry of banks, investment funds and large companies into experimenting with blockchain or directly investing in blockchain start-ups and specific cryptocurrencies and ICOs.

Today, in mid-2018, we can say that institutional money has adopted bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Fiat is transforming into cryptocurrencies at very high levels of our old (fiat) world.

ICO problems

According to public statistics, it is clear that most ICOs are generated in Singapore, the USA and Estonia. What crypto start-ups often do not realize is that the choice of jurisdiction (according to which the law must work) is not only within their registered office. In today’s world, we must operate as a business in a model where we comply with the laws of the country from which our client / customer comes. This is very problematic for all ICOs because their clients and customers are from all over the world.

There is no global boxing solution. The ICO must determine in advance where its largest client base (ie customers) is and establish its headquarters accordingly. It is not correct to say that the best headquarters for the ICO is Singapore or the USA. The determination must be individual depending on the business plan of the particular ICO.

A misleading example of successful decentralization of Wikipedia

Wikipedia is often presented as a decentralized solution and a business that has grown on a decentralized structure and still works. Individuals add articles, produce content and wikipedia grows as a website (encyclopedia of the world) and as a community.

Although wikipedia has certain elements of decentralization, its critical structures are centralized. And thanks to them, it is able to present quality and correct (non-misleading, no fake news) content. An example is deciding whether to delete content (incorrect, advertising, misleading, unsubstantiated). There is no 51% consensus on a decentralized wikipedia structure. There are administrators who decide this. Centralized decision-making also works within the further development of wikipedia. Although signs of choice and recommendation from the wikipedia community are evident here, the green flag is raised by the central authority. This way of doing business is more and more reminiscent of traditional business than DAO (decentralized organizations).

Decentralization is gradually coming to us

Decentralized organizations already exist today, but they are so-called timeless. They are ahead of their time and the momentum is not (probably) ready yet. However, where there is momentum, this is the debate on decentralization.

And this must be considered a great success and a leap forward. From this discussion, we will move on to a structure and solution that will move the current company forward.

Ethereum will still be the No. 1 platform

The rise of Etherea and its royal position in infrastructure blockchain solutions is indisputable. Yes, there are other platforms that are cutting off pieces of the market (eg EOS, NEO, etc.), but we see a working Dapps today more or less only on Ethereo .

Nevertheless, we are already aware that a new platform may come that will overtake everyone with its technological and user solutions and gain a majority market share.

Whether this is possible and probable is not much discussion. But they are over the deadlines when it comes.

Few expected the success of Netflix. It is not talked about much here in the Czech Republic, not even in the context of equity investment . Damage. It’s overlooked and people tend to look at Apple and Amazon. However, Netflix has an incredibly strong business model… but we would be off topic.

Although we accept the idea that a new platform will emerge that is rolling over current projects, does that mean that Ethereum will be completely out of the game?

Probably not. When Google Chrome entered and gained a majority share of the market within a few years, did that mean that Mozilla Firefox was quit and people didn’t use it? Certainly not, people still use different solutions.

Competition and diversity is what works in our world. And although we are striving for disruption, there will simply be no radical change in 2-5 years (unless an asteroid hits the Earth). Our company operates in certain cycles – idea, research, experiments, adaptation, expansion, improvement, mass use.

Quick thoughts

The telegram group has 50,000 users. The only thing they deal with is when they get the token. When will it be listed on the stock exchange. And how will the moon go. What kind of community is this? This is not a community!

5% – 8% of investors bring the most money to the ICO. So the Pareto rule 80/20 does not work here, but rather 92/8. The obvious interest of ICO projects is to contract private investors and groups of investors. Crowdfunding for retail investors plays a role more in the sense of democratization, decentralized element and advertising. Yes, it’s PR too!

The telegram is rated as the best marketing channel. On the contrary, it forgets Medium, which can do direct conversions in many ICO projects.

With a several-month ban (ban) on crypto ads on Facebook and other social networks, interest in so-called Influencer strategy marketing is increasing .

But Ban was also content, many of the world’s magazines did not accept articles about blockchain and crypto start-ups (TechCrunch is an example), not even those that concerned a company already published on the portal in the past.

95% of people are not interested in the product or service that the blockchain / crypto project brings. They just want it the moon!

Blockchain was a big buzzword in 2017. It also works in 2018. It is not enough to blockchain now, but it is also necessary to VRkovat, to have some AI (artificial intelligence) involved there and, of course, everything is based on Big Data . This combo of 4 elements will ensure attention. No wonder we see it in every other whitepaper. This is also why some call it the Pancake industry . Well, who wouldn’t want pancakes for breakfast?

Berlin has a huge move on blockchain

I was at the conference for the fourth time in Berlin and I am already planning further events. Personally, the city fits me very well, it is much more dynamic than Prague in terms of business, you can see a huge move to the goal and really emerging projects. Plus, everyone speaks English, which is great!

The best event of 2018 for me so far was the Blockshow Europe in Berlin, the C3 Crypto Conference and the ICO meetup with Ian Balina were also great .