So, about a month or so ago i put up an FFS request.
Monero were invited to have a presence at the third annual CryptoFinance evening in Oslo, Norway. The FFS got funded (thanks to all that donated), and so i made my way over to Norway from my home (which isn't so far away).
The event was in two parts really. The first day was the first EOS Block Producer's Summit. I will admit that i didn't know that much about EOS before arriving at the event, and by the end of the day i knew a small bit more - so in effect i suppose that was worthwhile in some small way.
Day One
There was a very large cohort of EOS converts there, and the highlight was probably the crew that had EOS styled tracksuits on.
I also got some free socks for my troubles, pics here and here.
I suppose that raising 4 Billion in an ICO allows you the priveledge of giving out things like socks.
I am not going to comment much on this first day. It was interesting to hear that the platform is having some serious technical issues that have not been solved (Historical API difficulty), and they do not neccesarily know the best way to fund the problem/devs to fix it (why this is the case when someone rasied 4 Billion in the ICO was not immediately apparant).
What i will say is that i am glad that Monero had little involvement on day one.
Day Two
This was a much more interesting day, with there being two rooms - one 'international' track, and one 'domestic' track.
I was scheduled to talk in the afternoon in the internationl track room.
I decided to stay in the domestic track for the morning, as i was intrested in a couple of the talks. The first was one by a gentleman representing the Norweigan Tax Authority. His talk was extremely interesting as he outlined, and demonstrated, a system that allowed him to easily access all activity associated with a Bitcoin, Ethereum or Ripple wallet address - through data/chain analysis and some machine learning algorithms.
He also stated quite clearly that the Norwegian Tax Authority had a 10,000 (afair) strong list of known wallet addresses and their owners.
The second talk was by a senior representative of Ernst and Young (a very large multi-financial services company). This was also an extremely interesting talk.
The main takeaway was that a lot of the regulators, legislators, and stakeholders (all EU) in the legacy financial space dont really know what they are doing - but they are trying.
They are also all aware that they dont want to harm innovation, but also want to ensure there is protection for the consumer.
There was also a very interesting little story from the talk.
A large Norwegian bank DNB (check money laundering history) were recently putting all the elements in place to be able to offer cryptocurrency and blockchain related services to their clients. They were waiting for concrete go-ahead from the regulators (they felt this would be forthcoming). They were talking to EY about them becoming auditors/accountants. EY were enthused, of course.
EY asked them to produce the code that would form the backend of the DNB system. DNB backed away for one reason or another, and the investors have decided not to pursue this anymore. Make of that what you will.
Much of the rest of the day was standard Crypto Conference Fair. Some elements were really not up my street at all, but i am sure others enjoyed elements.
I will give a shout out to both Nexus and BitHex. I may not necessarily agree with every aspect of their projects, but i do think they come from a relatively good place.
My actual presentation
My talk is available to watch on YouTube.
I am going to say now that i hope i represented Monero well.
I probbaly didnt communicate some aspects as well as i could have, and i definitely know that i messed up a couple of times (nothing massive). I was a bit nervous, as can be seen - but i think i did ok.
I also received a lot of positive feedback afterwards from what seemed really genuine and interested people.
Link to the talk (10 mins) is here. The rest of the talks are on that video as well.
If i made any massive errors, let me know - and if you think i missed anything crucial please let me know, as i will ammend if i ever do this talk or one similar again.
I will also take on any criticism and advice, so fire away!
Panel
I was also involved in a "Future of CryptoCurrency" panel at the end of the afternoon.
I have to say, i called out bullshit some of the subjects, and generally took quite a firm stance on some issues.
I don't think i crossed the line, and personally believe that if nobody calls 'bullshit' - that we aren't going to end up in a good place. I would have liked to have called bullshit more - but stayed quiet on a number of issues. Luckily i think others on the panel generally agreed with my stance.
Insights
The first main insight i have is that Monero is very respected across the board.
Whenever i mentioned that i was here talking for Monero, it was always greeted with respect. Nobody even attempted to question, or propose that a better 'privacy' crypto was out there (mileage on this insight may vary!).
Secondly, after the talk from the Tax Authority, i approached the speaker and made what i feel is a good contact. Some of you might not agree with speaking with these types of representatves, but i think it is. We spoke at length on a number of issues. If you are interested in hearing more, i am willing to go into details with any specific questions you have. Long story short is that his project is not an 'official' one, but that further research may be forthcoming. At the moment he knows very little about the privacy centric coins (as apposed to any other), but that he (and the authorirty in general) is very interested to hear from our communities to understand methods, ideologies, and technical approaches to privacy that we take. He approached me after my talk, and we spoke at length about the importance of privacy for society at large as well, and we agreed on a number of very important issues.
Thirdly - i am extremely glad that we only had a talk and panel presence at this event. I belive this is how we should always be represented at these Crypto/Blockchain like events. This is because i do not think we should be lumped in with these types of booths. Yes, you did just read that correctly.
We are a serious cryptocurrency, and our presence should be respected as such. End of.
Fourth - I met some really nice Monero people at the event. I am not going to name them, but they were cool. Monero people are cool.
Fifth - Richard Heart pays all his employees in Monero. Also, he says you can't do batched transactions in the GUI, and that is a right pain. This might be true, i actually don't know!
Sixth - Oslo is nice city. Expensive, but nice. I also had a pretty cool view from my hotel window.
Lastly - Bitspace hosted a very professional event. So thanks to them for the hospitality and the warm welcome.
p.s sorry that was so long. but i guess i felt obligated to be transparent in some way.
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