CryptoFinancing Europe’s first conference and exhibition opening the lid on the emerging world of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and Token Sales will take place in London on July 7, 2017 at the spectacular Level 39 venue at One Canada Square, Canary Wharf in London.
With some twenty exhibitors and sponsors, the inaugural event will bring debate about the nascent industry’s effect on Blockchain startups, venture capital, regulatory environments, as well at talks from ICO projects of the past and the future on methodology and design.
Come see some of the leading players in the space discuss how tokenomics has overtaken venture capital as the main financial driver of innovation for Blockchain projects in 2017.
Who should come?
Startups – would you like to learn how other young projects have raised millions of dollars in minutes without giving up a lick of equity?
Imagine open sourcing all your software and structuring the company as a non-profit foundation bypassing the VC route, designing your own currency and assigning a value to it and selling it… raising millions such as Bancor and status.im who recently raised half a billion dollars in their token allocation events. (email for special startup rate!)
Investors – Welcome to the new world of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) – a phenomenon born from the Bitcoin community that is rocking some parts of the venture capital industry, who are now beginning to take a good, hard look at this new financial instrument which has both its benefits and its disadvantages as well as threats and opportunities to their own business model.
This new fundraising phenomenon is fuelled by a synergistic convergence of Blockchain technology, new wealth, clever entrepreneurs and crypto-investors backing Blockchain-fuelled ideas that are raising funds by creating their own cryptocurrencies and offering discounted rates on digital assets before they hit the cryptocurrency exchanges – sometimes up to 40 per cent. The investors can then opt to cash out to a fiat currency early via Bitcoin or Ether or wait for the currency to rise.
Venture capitalists, who generally have been standoffish to the ICO phenomenon are now becoming more interested for a number of reasons.
One is profits – cryptocurrency investors are making huge returns on not only Bitcoin and Ether but also emerging cryptocurrencies born from ICOs. Liquidity is the second reason VC are interested. Rather than tying up vast amounts of funds in a startup or Unicorn and waiting for the long play – an IPO or acquisition – they can see gains quicker in ICOs and pull profits out easily.
Government and Regulators – ICOs are the Wild West of financing – they sit in a grey zone where the SEC in the USA and many other regulatory bodies are still investigating. The main problem is, most ICOs don’t actually offer equity in the venture, therefore are outside of traditional legal frameworks when it comes to securities. They only offer discounts on cryptocurrency before they hit the exchanges after the ICO, therefore do not fit into the current definition of a security.
Secondly, they are global instruments, not national ones and they are funded using Bitcoin, Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies which are not controlled by any central authority or bank. Anyone can invest and they can even do so pseudo-anonymously.
Who’s speaking?
- John Clippinger – CEO ID3 / MIT Media Lab (USA)
- Ryan Zurrer – General Partner Polychain Capital (Brazil)
- Vinay Gupta – Founder Hexayurt Capital (UK)
- Jane Zhang – CEO Shellpay (China)
- Ransu Salovaara – CEO TokenMarket (Gilbraltar)
- Michael Terpin – CEO Transform Group (Puerto Rico)
- Jake Vartanian – Partner, Cryptoassets Design Group, Director Cryptodex (USA)
- Eddy Travia – CEO Coinsillium (Hong Kong)
- Richard Kastelein – Publisher Blockchain News, Partner Cryptoasset Design Group (Netherlands)
- Dan Larrimer – Founder EOS (USA)
- Dana Coe – Founder Cryptocrest / Aureus (Malaysia)
- William Chun – Doublechain / Hyundai (South Korea)
- ….and more
Tickets are available at http://www.crypto-financing.com