By
Svetlana Soroka
March 5th, 2019
Following Americas, “the flagship event, which has grown quickly to become the largest blockchain technology roadshow” moves to Singapore, commencing at the end of November.
For the first time Blockshow made its way to the Americas following successful events across Europe. There was plenty of heated panel discussion – quite a common thing for these conferences – and a range of exhibitors looking to sell a tangible business plan to their vision.
One of the panels focused on how blockchain stands to affect the Americas’ emerging economies – and by extension, the two billion unbanked – with views on how to foster social and economic inclusivity. The latter means improved access to financial and banking services being the type of discourse that will keep the blockchain ecosystem geared towards solving the right problems.
Plenty of notable speakers were present too, such as Bobby Lee who co-founded BTCC; Mike Butcher, editor at TechCrunch; Johanna Maska, CEO of Global Situation Room and former aide to Barack Obama; among other people of renown.
Who Else Was There?
Las Vegas was a suitable setting for one of the startups present; Qlear Protocol have plans to use blockchain to foster trust in online gambling – as well as gaming in general – which currently doesn’t exist as users have no idea how a website actually operates. This is an aim to create a ‘secure, transparent and trusted environment’ for all gaming platforms and could also hold a useful application to eSports.
Also in attendance were LiveEdu, which plan to build a token economy around an online training service. These are more or less instructional presentations, specifically targeting experienced professionals who will learn by watching projects being built. They already have around 2,000 projects ready to go on the platform which is a promising sign for the startup.
Perhaps one of the bigger names at Blockshow were Timicoin. They call themselves ‘the tokenized health healthcare ecosystem’ which pretty much equates to crypto token rewards for patients who share their medical information, to then be packaged and sold by Timicoin to clinical researchers and health insurance companies.
Lively Discussion, No Real Conclusions?
As always with such events, there needs to be a balance struck; while they bring together some of the finest minds in the space and present an opportunity to really get stuck into the practicalities of blockchain tech, they are also host to a number of crypto newcomers.
This means that panel discussions and talks will not always delve into the deep technicalities of blockchain, but Blockshow seemed to find this balance somewhat. The Wall Street vs Crypto panel was an excellent example of this and the audience enjoyed an intense debate on the future of cryptocurrency regulation.
Blockshow Las Vegas was well-attended and by a diverse crowd, says Blockshow CEO Addy Crezee:
“It’s not going down, but it’s getting mature.”
“That means more and more people come. A more diverse crowd comes. For example, in 2017, when the market was up and all the prices were up, it was more about speculators. They aren’t quite the same.”
Blockshow will next arrive in Singapore at the tail end of November. An entirely new crowd will be attending, expect to see many familiar faces in the panels and around the exhibition though.
