CRYPTO ECONOMY CONFERENCE

I am looking forward to attending another Blockchain event Friday next week on 6th of July at Crypto Economy Conference Queen Elizabeth II Centre London. It looks as we have another blockchain week here in sunny London as earlier in the week, we had London's London's blockchain Summit in Olympia that I attended and found it an excellent event with opportunities to meet with leading analysts, entrepreneurs and leaders in this exciting emerging technology.

Like the London Summit, the Crypto Economy event is also intended for professional investors and entrepreneurs who want to inform themselves about new forms of financing with blockchain technology, have access to more than 30 blockchain startups that will perform an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) or a token sale during the event.

The event is for blockchain enthusiasts that are actively looking to engage with decision makers, institutional investors, venture capitalists, Angel and retail investors and more. Many ICOs will be presenting their Token Sale in the programs. The ICO events are single-track events and are completely focused on presenters who appear on stage in 5-minute sessions. The ICOs support the purpose, objectives and key messages of the briefings. Naturally, the event is geared to give a higher profile to the initial coin offerings and token sales by the developers but for me, the USP of this event is the fact that in a single day I will be witnessing potentially the birth of the next big ICO.

Many analysts have compared the revolutionary possibilities of Blockchain technology to those of the internet, such is its perceived capacity to transform the ways in which people and businesses cooperate. Sensing this pattern, investors put billions of $ into Blockchain-related start-ups. Perhaps even more indicative of its disruptive potential. At the London Summit this week we saw how the majors like Oracle, Microsoft, EY, IBM are getting on the act so they don't lose out. EY presentation was an excellent overview of the growth when they showed that in just their organisation where they started in 2016 with zero projects in this space and now they have delivered 120 projects in Blockchain around the globe. (I will be blogging on both these events next week and show my pick of the shows)

Beyond the hype

The question I have been asking myself since the first events I attended on the subject earlier in the year is "What is the strategic business value?"

Investors can determine whether they should invest in blockchain by focusing on specific use cases and their market position. peculation on the value of blockchain is rife, with Bitcoin—the first and most infamous application of blockchain—grabbing headlines for its rocketing price and volatility. That the focus of blockchain is wrapped up with Bitcoin is not surprising given that its market value surged from less than $20 billion to more than $200 billion over the course of 2017.1 Yet Bitcoin is only the first application of blockchain technology that has captured the attention of government and industry.

Blockchain was a priority topic at Davos and a survey suggested that 10% of global GDP will be stored on blockchain by 2027. I read in a McKinsey report that in the past two years alone have seen more than half a million new publications on and 3.7 million Google search results for blockchain. The article also mentioned that a very large investments in blockchain are being made today with venture-capital funding for blockchain start-ups consistently grew and were up to $1 billion in just in 2017.

Speaking to IBM guys at London Summit, they told me that at IBM they have now more than 1,000 staff and more than $200 million is invested in the blockchain-powered Internet of Things (IoT).

In order to make sure I am not fully on the hype, I must say that blockchain is still an immature technology. In one event the speaker compared where we are with Blockchain to where we were with Internet in 1995. That is why I intend to attend as many events as possible for the remainder of the year on the subject to get a clear recipe for ways to engage and that has not yet emerged. At the event, I would like to see more experimentation of blockchain solutions and try to make a strategic evaluation of the value at stake or the feasibility of capturing the essence of the current efforts. I must agree with the consensus that many companies will not see a return on their investments. With this in mind, only attending these events will show how one can determine if there is strategic value in blockchain that justifies an investment of money and time in the technology?

I hope to see you there if you are attending and please do ping me here and let me know so we can meet up. Please also feel free to contact @artjomgoloebjev here in LI.

See you at Queen Elizabeth II Centre, Broad Sanctuary, Westminster, London SW1P 3EE

Program