I decided to fly to Las Vegas to attend Blockshow, a 2 day conference focused on the future of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. It was a smaller show but had a good lineup of speakers like YouTube influencer and trader Tone Vays, Alex Mashinsky of Celsius Network, Jeremy Gardner who lead the first Ethereum ICO, Bobby Lee of BTCC, Nouriel Roubini who is an outspoken critic of Cryptocurrency, particularly Bitcoin and Initial Coin Offerings, and several Twitter influencers.
2 Days of Blockchain Discussion
I enjoyed some of the debates, particularly between Nouriel Roubini and Tone Vays regarding Bitcoin. Several months ago I attended “Fluidity” a small summit that took place at the historic Williamsburg Savings Bank in Brooklyn, New York and Nouriel was on stage debating Joseph Lubin of Consensys. He is very passionate about his beliefs and does not seems to believe in Bitcoin or Initial Coin Offerings. Tone Vays agreed with him regarding “Alt Coins” and ICO’s, because he is more of what they call a “Bitcoin Maximalist”. I have to say this debate was the highlight and I enjoy watching naysayers go up against the bulls.
Impressions of the Conference
Las Vegas is a good venue for conferences although in the summer its excruciatingly hot outside. Since we have been in a bear market for most of 2018, many conferences have suffered a downtick of attendees. This wasn’t the case for Blockchain week in South Korea, which had very high volume. Consensus which was held earlier this year in New York City was rife with FOMO (fear of missing out) and had an explosive number of attendees regardless of the high ticket price. I think we will continue to see a huge growth in the Cryptocurrency arena regardless of negative press about prices. I think Blockshow was very well put together, I liked the venue (Palazzo Hotel) the food was excellent, they had brought in a good line up of speakers and the attendees were interesting. I also enjoyed exploring Las Vegas a bit. As far as new projects included in the show, I can’t say anything really caught my attention this go around.