It is Tuesday evening and the Inside Bitcoins conference has been concluded. It was very interesting & it was great to meet up with our friends in the digital community. We also made a whole lot of new friends and contacts at this great conference. We will give a short comment about the sessions,most of which will get an additional article about the various subject at a later date. Nevertheless, we wanted to give you all some preview of what was said at day 1.
The first day started bright and early with registration and networking with coffee in hand at 8 am. The first person we encountered was Mr. Stewart Quealy, Director of Content at MecklerMedia and the organiser of the Inside Bitcoins event. We were very fortunate to meet him and have a nice little chat about Bitcoins and digital currency.
At 9 am. Mr.Quealy and Mr. Gavin Wood kicked off the event with “Crypto-law. what is it and why should i care? Gavin Wood did a sublime job about sketching the strong points and the weak points of Bitcoin and how laws could make Bitcoin a more stable an versatile platform. However he also thought that the current legal system is a difficult place to create a good law or laws about Bitcoin because of pressure groups, influence of big business that do not like Crypto ( mainly because these anti-crypto elites do not understand what Bitcoin and Crypto is).
After the fabulous presentation of Mr. Wood, Michael Geike took the front stage for the “ Is blockchain technology the solution to the world most urgent issues?” Mr. Geike, CEO of Smart Equity AG, gave some interesting viewpoints about Bitcoin and the solutions the modus operandi could give to your current dilemmas.
During the coffee break we struck up some conversation with: Michael Morris, our longtime friend and director of the Blackcoin foundation (among other things, like Heliopay), the lovely ladies at CEX.IO and GHASH.IO, etc. to name a few.
After the coffee break it was Bob Swarup’s time to speak about his book: “Money Mania, a history lesson for Bitcoin”. It started reasonably well but the more Mr Swarup talked the less the audience was interested. We even heard some name calling in the back. Personally we find it a bit harsh because we respect the speaker’s views, even if it is completely wrong. The interest dropped when Mr. Swarup mixed up some of times (like telling us that Lydia, the first city state/region that first minted ‘coins’ in the world somewhere around 700 BC, and “the roman empire” are from the same period). There were also other slip-ups which made it not such an interesting session for nearly everyone.
After Mr.Swarup it was the Lukas Gilkey’s turn to give his presentation about “Bitcoin in the cloud”. As you already guessed by the title of the session it focused on cloud mining. Mr Gilkey is the CEO of Cloudhashing and as such he gave us some interesting perspective on what is possible with cloud mining.
The next speaker was the CEO of Coinometrics, Jonathan Levin. In his presentation, “ the Bitcoin economy visualised”, Mr. Levin talked about the state of Bitcoin economy. He focussed on the strong points and gave some hints on how the weak points need to be changed.
The last session of the morning was:” Europe and Beyond: emerging issues in regulatory compliance and Law enforcement efforts”. This panel, consisting of 6 prominent people (lawyers and CEO’s alike) talked about the recent developments and tentative steps that some governments have taken to limit Bitcoin and other digital currencies.
After the lunch and networking opportunities, the afternoon sessions started with a panel about: “Bitcoin ecosystem investing. Do’s and don’t”. It was interesting to hear the panels’ views on the do’s and dont’s. Nevertheless investing is something personal. What person A thinks it is a “don’t” could be a “do” for person B.
The two following sessions were: “Decentralized technologies:lifeboats for society” and “Emerging markets versus developed markets”. Both were interesting to a certain point but again these were the views of the speakers. Though informative it were more opinions and own interpretations.
The fourth session of the afternoon was given by Peter Greenhill who is: Director of e-business and CEO of e-Gaming Development, Isle of Man government’s department of economic development. It was informative and quite gratifying that some regions are more open to the whole digital currency concept and Bitcoin than most countries.
The last three sessions were about: “How to stop Bitcoin theft; Bitcoin and e-commerce pain points” and “ How to win in the Bitcoin ecosystem”. Suffice to say it was ok but we found it not as interesting as it was a bit dryly presented, full with own opinions and generalizing. It may be different if they did it like Coinsummit last July concerning the sessions.
So day one of the Inside Bitcoins conference was great, even with some less interesting sessions. We did a lot of networking at Inside Bitcoins and at the CoinScrum after party.
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