I have met more than 2000 people from the crypto industry, here is the lowdown

The last couple of years have been an absolute blur, but I got some time to gather my thoughts this past summer. Within the last 12–13 months, we at ZPX closed our financing round, hosted a 700 person conference(www.decentralize.sg) with 75 speakers (all leading investors, regulators & entrepreneurs from across the world), deployed our first crypto focussed fund, launched our crypto index (www.108token.com), launched our news & views portal www.satoshiand.co & and started work on the soon-to-launch www.zenrelay.io. All this while maintaining a very lean team of less than 15, on a total burn of around $750k thanks to our amazing team! In the meanwhile, we also had to find the time to attend the major blockchain events (NY, SFO, Seoul, Tokyo, Chicago, Las Vegas). It has been hectic, to say the least.

Within that timeline, my co-founders and I have also had the opportunity to interact with a range of crypto industry participants, and also speak at various conferences and events throughout the world.

Some of the podcasts, videos & speaking engagements we at ZPX have been involved in include:

Guest Lecture at Singapore Management University

www.decentralize.sg

https://www.gbf.world/sbs

https://sussblockchain.com/global-inclusive-blockchain-conference-in-mandarin/

BANSEA( Southeast Asia’s largest Angel group)

Infinity Ventures Summit, Taipei

http://blockchainasiaforum.com/philippines/

Vietnam Blockfair

Paypal innovation lab hosted by XSQ, Hashed & Signum Capital

World Hindu Congress, Chicago

DMA https://events.wan-ifra.org/events/digital-media-asia-2018

Podcast — https://decrypt.asia/entrepreneurs/episode16/

Interview — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxfLH-8gWaU

CFA Society, Mumbai

CFA Society, Bangalore

CFA Society, Hyderabad

Mumbai Angels

The Great Room, Singapore ( Private event to an audience of over 120 investors and financial industry participants)

After speaking at multiple venues, visiting various crypto events worldwide, launching a token & meeting more than 3500 people including protocols, exchanges, investors, journalists and service providers, here is the low down:

1. There is a massive information asymmetry
2. Most conferences add limited value: of course, this is a highly contextual statement and varies but we have found far more value in the meetings & exclusive parties around a conference than the conference itself. There is a lot of value in attending smaller, more focused meetups. Having said that, conferences such as https://devcon4.ethereum.org/ can add a lot of value towards your understanding of the space and real-world use cases.
3. It is very hard to vet the quality of folks you end up meeting at these conferences. Most people are opportunistic and looking for a quick buck without any real understanding of the underlying technology and the fundamental premise behind the same. Several folks claim to be ICO advisors or technical analysts for charting. Please vet both carefully as most ICO advisors do not seem to have skin in the game & there really is not enough data yet to create Technical charts on altcoins. Price is still largely a function of speculation on most crypto assets.
4. There is key set of buzzwords transitioning and gathering momentum from one conference to another. The current trends seem to be Security Token Offerings(STOs), Non-Fungible Tokens(NFTs) and Mimble Wimble for Privacy. This is a fantastic trend, but most folks talking about these terms have no real depth around them. We launched a STO platform(currently being white-labeled) more than a year back to trade secondary shares in leading more than a year back. However, we very quickly realized the challenges posed by regulation on a global scale. We also knew how hard it is to create liquid markets for even the most popular technology companies. Also, just because someone can tokenize real estate does not mean that fractional ownership is legal and more importantly liquid. Having said that, the ability to move shares to a distributed ledger does reduce friction costs related to compliance.
5. The most valuable discussions are happening behind closed doors in restricted groups: As ironical as this sounds in an increasingly decentralized world, more and more of the key discussions are migrating to private telegram channels and other smaller forums
6. The ability to build quality UI/UX and hire quality technology talent is a major challenge in the industry at the moment
7. Very few people are talking about the small number of dApp users across various dApps that raised money in the last year or so. There is a non-trivial possibility that Ethereum could yet go the way of Lycos/Altavista or MySpace/Friendster
8. Crypto twitter has the most unique mix of people, most running their own agenda or virtue signaling or credential signaling. There is the occasional gem that one stumbles upon, but in general, as with all social media, there is no space for any real nuanced discussion. It is best to use multiple filters & create your own thesis while using crypto twitter as a source of information
9. Most corporations are trying to build a “blockchain” strategy. But not all corporations need to incorporate blockchain solutions.
10. Most crypto funds that emerged have never really managed money in the past and LPs should be wary of such products. Most investors should look at allocating 1–3% in a risk-adjusted product such as www.108token.com or some other really cool competitive products that we admire, such as the Bitwise Index *shameless plug, not investment advise*
11. Journalists feel comfortable writing about pricing or scams because it is very hard for them to do detailed diligence. Mainly because this requires understanding across various disciplines including but not restricted to technology, mathematics, regulation, game theory, crypto economics, network effects & code analysis. They are being bombarded with multiple projects on a daily basis and choosing to ignore most from what I understand. This one to the nth family office that reaches out to us quoting scams in leading publications

If someone is new to the industry and wants a quick learning curve, they should probably start with:

1. Read. Read. Read. Get a hold of as many books and quality blog posts as possible. You can start with the bitcoin white paper & Andreas M. Antonopoulos’s entire series on the Internet of money and mastering BTC. I have found Sovereign Individual & Sapiens as excellent books to get a macro view as well. You can sign up to quality newsletters like Proof of Work by Eric Meltzer or our own Satoshi&Co( https://www.getrevue.co/profile/zpx)
2. Videos & Podcast: Andreas Antonopoulos’s has several youtube videos explaining key concepts. Laura Shin’s unchained podcast usually has some interesting takeaways as well
3. Get your hands dirty: there are multiple ways you can add value to the ecosystem especially if you code, design or build communities. There are multiple grants(https://github.com/fredexed/crypto-funding-ops) available from various projects to build and multiple roles available in the industry

We truly believe that the crypto industry is in the equivalent of Q3 2000, drawing an analogy to the first tech bubble. The crypto equivalents of the big tech titans that are so familiar to us are still a long way away, still in their infancy, or not even born. In another 10–12 years they will have fundamentally disrupted wide swathes of the existing business world as we know them today.

Also, Singapore is a great place to build any business out of, especially something on the bleeding edge like blockchain. In addition to some visionary but pragmatic regulation, there are some great community members that truly care about advancing the cause of the contribution economy that is at the heart of the Blockchain movement. Shout out to Zhuang, QCP Capital, Loi Luu, Digix, Signum Capital and SUSS amongst many other!

We are always happy to provide more insights and are planning to host bi-weekly open hours to answer any questions folks may have. You can receive a free copy of our 65-page crypto primer(view sample) by signing up here.