This update will mostly share impressions from BlockCon in Santa Monica. First, though, a few words about our POC. Facial recognition continues to be a challenge. So far BioID and ZoomLogin look promising, but we just have not been able to find the raw facial map points, let alone to work with a consistent hash created by facial recognition. Other than that, we keep making progress and many core pieces of the app start to come together. 

BlockCon in an Aircraft Hangar 

Taking place in an old aircraft hangar, BlockCon in Santa Monica was definitely more of a grassroots event than others, although also sprinkled with a large number of ICO pitches. These ICOs seem like efficient fundraising mechanisms, but a whole industry supporting them has sprung up and it is a bit scary to see a “cookie-cutter” approach emerging for offering supposedly revolutionary technologies to investors. 

Key takeaways, in bullet form:

• Brock Pierce reminded everybody of what crypto-projects really are about, and why money is just a means to an end: Using technology to establish a distributed infrastructure disrupting most aspects of society, and improving it over the quasi-monopolies and huge inefficiencies, and often the injustice, of the current economic and societal structure. And above all, give and you will be given. 
• We got lots of great advice and warnings about taxes, legal aspects, and how to turn the bubble into something positive. In principle they confirmed: Do things by the book. Assume an ICO is like an IPO. Don’t play tax games. Don’t establish offshore entities; don’t even try to play “games” with the regulatory authorities. 
• Celcius presented what looked like a genuine attempt to significantly expand the Ethereum user community, and in a serious manner. This may be an interesting partner for us. 
• SIA’s co-Founder David Vorick (sia.tech) made the claim that instead of $21/month for 1 TB with Amazon WS and $50 to download that data, they currently do the same for 40 cents and 20 cents respectively. This confirms Ryan Zurrer’s Filecoin remarks at Berkeley’s CESC, a week ago.
• A presentation about Decentralized Public Key Infrastructure (DPKI) was a prime example for how distributed Blockchain technology is going to revolutionize and improve nothing less than – the Internet.  
• The billion-dollar market for video-gaming “skins” and how Blockchain technology makes it even more scalable: OPSkin’s presentation was an eye-opener. Here is a multi-billion dollar industry with tens of millions of followers and serious products and money being exchanged for services that people want: It makes you wonder where gaming and the Blockchain will further intersect. 
• Academy pitched their training and education strategy to at least start putting a dent into the huge discrepancy between demand and supply of crypto-versed technical resources. 

Adam vs. Jason 

And then there was – Adam vs. Jason. Adam Draper and Jason Calacanis did not get into a fistfight, and may not even have personally met, but their perspectives as venture capitalists could hardly have been more different. Well, Adam is not just a VC but a “3^rd generation VC” (or was it 4^th generation?)… 

Silicon Valley star-VC Jason Calacanis told everybody that the audience, consisting of “misfits” (and worse), WILL build the new and improved Internet. Then he continued that most of them (us) would be crazy, unexperienced, and just ripping off people, with kids banking tons of money without having any business experience or governance. So everybody should get out right away or would be f’ing stupid… His problem: He sold a book called “How a VC turned $100,000 into $100,000,000” – and many crypto-investors in the audience may have wondered. 1000X, is that a lot…?

As a counter-point, Adam Draper had his 10 points, which were as generalizing as Jason’s but optimistic and full of enthusiasm about the industry and its potential…

The final point that sticks to my mind is the presentation about how crypto-currencies are building the “new Internet” and how a group of (mostly) white males (including Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World-Wide Web) were trying to re-invent it in a decentralized, more robust and more secure fashion. They are aiming for more diversity and therefore want to move locations between Europe and the U.S. East and West Coast. 

Well, be really inclusive and go to the heart of Africa! 

The final point that sticks to my mind is the presentation about how crypto-currencies are building the “new Internet” and how a group of (mostly) white males (including Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World-Wide Web) were trying to re-invent it in a decentralized, more robust and more secure fashion. They are aiming for more diversity and therefore want to move locations between Europe and the U.S. East and West Coast. 

Well, be really inclusive and go to the heart of Africa!