Hundreds of investors packed into the Queen Elizabeth ll Conference Centre in Westminster, London, for the annual Crypto Investor Show, the largest event of its kind in the UK.
This year saw queues around the block and ticket holders having to be turned away because of the numbers seeking to gain entry.
The gathering provided an opportunity to get up close with some of the teams behind a wide range of blockchain project exhibitors.
Conference participants were to hear from Fabian Vogelsteller, author and developer of open source projects such as the Mist browser and the Ethereum Wallet. Together, Vogelsteller and Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin jointly proposed the ERC20 token standard, but he was unable to attend [updated from original]
Stephan Tual, from Atlas Neue, addressed those assembled.
Other speakers included Linda Leaney, chief financial officer of stablecoin play Globcoin, Galia Benartzi, a co-founder of the Bancor Protocol, crypto exchange Cobinhood’s chief executive and founder, Chen Tai Yuan, Brian D. Evans from logistics disrupting platform ShipChain, social trading cryptocurrency exchange Coindash’s chief executive Alon Muroch and William Knottenbelt, Professor of Applied Quantitative Analysis in the Department of Computing and Director of the Imperial College Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering (IC3RE) at Imperial College London.
Ethereum World News spoke to eToro UK managing director Iqbal V Gandham. The trading and investment platform has seen success in the space after adding exposure to crypto to its market offerings over the past couple of years. eToro is the main sponsor of the event.
“Gathering today, I was not expecting the turnout that we had on a Saturday morning. Shows the appetite for all things crypto,” Gandham commented.
What did he think about the composition of those taking part in the event? “It was a mix of those who were doing ICO and also those looking to invest and understand this new industry.”
Gandham was underwhelmed by some of the exhibitors. “As for the quality of projects, I’m unconvinced. Many of them do not require the blockchain nor its attributes. They are merely using the ICO mechanism to raise funds.”
The sheer number of initial coin offerings and the profusion of fraudulent or otherwise poorly thought through projects in and around crowdsales is probably part of the reason why this year’s turn out is as large as it is, with investors hungry for quality curated information.
Also the fall in token prices has concentrated minds. And what better way to get a handle on the potential worth of a project than to come and see for yourself the projects making their pitch and hear from industry experts.
Gandham continued: “As with all things, investors need to understand a little more of what the blockchain does and the value it adds.
“This can only happen if we start to distill the messaging into bite size chunks which users can understand. More events like this, more education and less hyperbole is what is needed.”
