By Bartosz Zwolinski, CTO, SOMA
On May 17th I represented Soma at BLOXPO in Stockholm. As Soma’s CTO, I’m usually involved with the tech side of the blockchain world; this time, I was interested in the ‘softer’ aspects. With 30+ industry speakers across 3 stages, I had a hard time choosing which presentations to attend.
One event was introduced by Ivan from YouTuber Ivan on Tech in rock-star-style entrance (even his magnetic appearance, however, couldn’t compare to crypto-Twitter’s Richard Heart’s charisma).
Ivan recalled childhood memories from Belarus, a country lacking stable currency and financial capital at the time (as i grew up in 1980s Poland I can relate). He spoke of how Belarussians fought poverty by monetizing other kinds of capital (like intellectual or social). He then spoke of how distributed government-safe ledgers and transaction protocols can exclude intermediaries that are parasitical to a value chain. All of which can allow populations excluded from traditional economy to participate in global wealth growth.
Other interesting aspect of BLOXPO was a significant presence of major corporations. Speakers such as Daniel Akenine from Microsoft, Gisela Edendahl from IBM, Catherina Geiselhart from PWC or Johan Toll from Nasdaq described real-life applications and demonstrated that blockchain is no longer a curiosity for geeks.
Even though some points were made on blockchain’s downsides (like energy consumpion or overall cost of running it), i strongly believe that industry will work this out. More green energy is coming on the market every year, and Moore’s law dosn’t seem to stop working.
Also notable was a regulatory panel with Swedish MP Jessica Rosencrantz and Minister of Financial Markets Per Bolund. I believe this is evidence that blockchain is recognized as an important technology.
As per usual, there were Pitch Competitions with proposals of using blockchain in the Real Estate market, intellectual property management, and more (this still needs some work in my opinion). My attention was drawn to a project for blockchain parcel tracking, as they use a similar tech stack to Soma.
I strongly believe that if we can get financial markets, regulators, and developers working together, blockchain solutions will help economies, society and technology grow for humankind.
All in all it was a terrific exchange of ideas.
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