We spoke at several events, lead panel discussions around crypto investing and conduct workshops in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. March and April have been quite busy. More about our upcoming plans and engagements below.
March 2018
The Blockstack Signature Fund Conference, Berlin
Being in #BerlinBlockchainCapital, we regularly enjoy interesting blockchain events. Berlin is a major hub for blockchain and digital activism, with a lot of interesting meetups, with thought leaders presenting or discussing new ideas and projects.
The Blockstack Conference had an impressive list of speakers, such as Edward Snowden (via Skype), Nick Szabo, Chris Burniske, Peter Van Valkenburgh, Ari Paul and others. Apart from these speakers, the present start-ups were Basecoin, CryptoKitties, Lightning Labs, and funds such as Andreessen and Horowitz, BlockTower Capital to name a few.
Read our dedicated post about that conference here.
Annual Summit 2018 for eGovernment in Berlin
On March 13 we spoke on a panel at the Jahreskonferenz Digitale Verwaltung 2018 in Berlin. We were on a panel with Dr. Reger, CTO of Fujitsu, Prof. Parycek from the Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS and Manfred Klein, Chief Editor of the magazine “eGovernment Computing.”
The panel discussed the importance of DLT technologies for the public administration and possible scenarios for the future. Blockchain is indeed causing a paradigm shift in the public sector. It was a unique opportunity to give awareness to achievement of Bundesverband Blockchain for putting blockchain and smart contracts in German government paper.
Digital Real Estate Summit, Zurich
At the 4th Digital Real Estate Summit in Zurich, innovators from the digital space met with representatives of the real estate industry.
Sven spoke about the ways, how blockchain technology may be implemented in real estate and showed practical examples.
Blockchain applications for real estate are indeed getting a lot of visibility lately. Multiple intermediaries, cumbersome processes with a lot of paperwork, concerns over data security. This is one of the most straightforward use-case for blockchain, where tokens and smart contracts can optimize and automate various processes as well as enable seamless ownership transfer.
We see a lot of potential in such applications.
Advisor to Elea Labs
We are excited to support as advisors the team of Elea Labs from Cryptovalley, Switzerland. Elea is working on their ICO to fund their real estate project Property DNA.
Property DNA® is a transformational enabler technology for the real estate industry. Based on blockchain technology, it eliminates the overwhelming complexity and costs associated with acquiring, operating and selling real estate property.
Elea has also developed a very interesting fund raising tool, build on Stellar as alternative to the dominant Ethereum. The tool has very compelling features and performance.
Please contact us, if you want to learn more about the investing opportunity or how to raise funds with their new tool.
Fashion blockchain brunch at SOHO House, Berlin
We had at SOHO Berlin a nice brunch with Fabian Vogelsteller, creator of the ERC20 token standard, and his wife and co-founder Marjorie Hernandez de Vogelstetter. We discussed together their fashion blockchain project lukso.io, as well as ours, which we developed in collaboration with with a renown fashion brand and a consortium of currently 35 organizations.
The discussion around distributed systems and ledger for supply chain management in fashion was insightful and we are excited to see how such projects can improve not only consumer’s knowledge about the origin of their projects, but also its authenticity, while improving sustainability and enforcing social values.
EthereumCamp, Berlin
Berlin regularly hosts hackathons for blockchain developers. The Ethereum Camp was a 4-day hackathon, where blockchain enthusiasts were empowered to transform their ideas into real prototypes and new business models.
Gleb presented our urban air mobility project Vaagnar. Apart from presenting the vision of urban air mobility, we shared our experiences of having built a blockchain PoC, combining smart contracts and IoT for a large automotive group in 2016.
Because blockchain is a back-end technology, for the organization-internal project pitching, visual aid in form of a front-end dashboard, a “window in the blockchain machinery room” is needed in our view. With it, the project team can show exactly where and which role blockchain and smart contracts are playing, providing first-hand experience with the blockchain and smart contracts, something not very common in enterprises.
April 2018
C3 Crypto-conference, Berlin
As many of our readers know, decentralized exchanges (DEX) are a very hot topic of this year. With many of the promising DEX like Kyber and Airswap being recently launched on the mainnet, some more of 0x-based (ZRX) projects upcoming and Binance announcing an own DEX, we are poised for a sustainable growth of decentralized exchange space this year. This is why for the topic for the C3 Conference keynote in Berlin we chose to compare the two distinct types of the exchanges, centralized and decentralized.
The main difference between CEX and DEX is the custody of user’s funds. While with CEX model, user gives away custody of the funds to an exchange, in the DEX concept, user remains in custody of his assets and trading them in a p2p way directly on the blockchain. Another important but quite overlooked aspect of CEX is regulation of the traded assets. This is why we believe the fast-growing security token segment will be mainly traded on the regulated centralized exchanges. There are some already in development like tZERO from Overstock in the US, the Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange GBX and Polymath protocol. This and many other developments are the reason why in the future the two exchange types are going to co-exist.
Crypto42summit, Vienna
This conference focus on regulatory aspects of tokens and investments in crypto assets.
ASTRATUM is for the second time an event partner to this quality conference, organized by the Fintech Academy and the Institute of Cryptoeconomics from the Vienna University of Economics and Business.
This year, the location was spectacular — A spaceship-like building, designed by Zaha Hadid, one of the most visionary architects of our times.
Sven moderated a panel titled “Emergence of a new VC generation”, starting the discussion whether Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) are to displace Venture Capital in the age of crypto. The panel led by Sven included Miriam Neubauer (Catena Capital), Christopher Miess (ex-CFO of TenX), Marcel Van Der Heijden (Speedinvest), Ken Berger (Cryptoexplorers) and Fabio Federici (Base58 Capital) and included a great deal of interesting discussions around the relevancy of the VCs in this exponentially growing ICO market.
After the event, we had a great time networking and enjoying the Wiener Schnitzel’s at the Schweizerhaus near the venue. We discussed our plans to move ahead and planned our upcoming activities with our partners.
Blockchain for Real Estate Workshop, Zurich
ASTRATUM was back in Zurich to speak about blockchain and real estate. This time in form of a real estate workshop, where Sven showed how the technology is disrupting real estate industry and presented noteworthy international projects in the space, ranging from land registries to tokenized real estate and token sales as project funding.
For our real estate research, we collaborated with a team of subject matter experts from various industries to provide both qualitative and quantitative assessment to a set of blockchain ventures in real estate.
We presented some of our research done in blockchain real estate. Contact us, if you want to know more about it.
Technical University TU Berlin — Drones and sustainability kickoff
Being an industry partner of the TU Berlin for sustainability and mobility, we presented Vaagnar — our venture in urban air mobility and the Distributed Sky Alliance to an MBA class. We collaborate with the university and its students on this project. The student got two challenges, which they will work during the next months and detail potential business models. The students are from sustainable mobility, energy and building programs, and will help us design a sustainable urban air mobility infrastructure.
Apart from presenting the project, ASTRATUM introduced the core blockchain components like smart contracts, tokens and ICOs and took part in the group concept ideation phase.
We are very much looking to the outcome of this collaboration with a diversified and international group of MBA students.
DZ Bank Innovation Day, Berlin
ASTRATUM held in collaboration with the ADG (Akademie Deutscher Genossenschaften) a blockchain finance workshop at the well known Axica Hall. The workshop took place within a 3-day DZ Bank Innovation Days program, held for managers and executives from several German financial institutions. Topic of day two was blockchain, new technology trends, the concergence of this new foundational layer with other technological advancements, the general status and meaning for finance in the years to come. We introduced blockchain as a basic trustless infrastructure layer for the convergence of technology and new use-cases and business models. The scope and magnitude of venture and project financing via an ICO and its scope was one vividly discussed topic. The power shift is happening due to the fact that ICOs projects bypass traditional sources of financing — banks and venture capital.
What to look forward
Token Summit III, New York. 16–17. May 2018
We are of course excited about the Token Summit III in New York. May is perfect for a trip to New York. On a sunny day, it is just exciting to eat awesome sandwiches from Dean & Deluca on some doorsteps of SOHO while drinking refreshing apple cider rosé.. all while talking crypto and watching people passing by.
Last year, we attended as invitee from EOS the Consensus conference, and the first ever Token Summit I together with Alexander Lange from Earlybird. Back in Berlin, we gave together at the Blockchain Expo a joint debrief of the awesome Token Summit I 2017.
Executive Blockchain Dine & Talk, Berlin. 23 May 2018
We will be once again holding one of our regular private “Blockchain Dine & Talks” in Berlin, which we organize since 2016 in collaboration with the innovation unit of one of Germany’s leading financial groups. The core concept aims to close the gap between the nascent blockchain space and executives from banking, insurance, real estate, investment and more. This is achieved by creating a framework, which enables an open dialogue between incumbents and the blockchain start-up ecosystem.
CMS Francis Lefebvre - DLT, Crypto Assets and ICO’s, Paris. 24 May 2018
The french office of CMS law, which is currently writing the blockchain laws for the French government, will host a crypto-assets and ICO conference. ASTRATUM and Consensys will represent the developer studios, discussing with experts from the financial markes the ICO market.
Alongside Sven Laepple (ASTRATUM), the panel will include Thibaud de Maintenant (CEO of LiquidShare), Alain Rocher (Senior Advisor, Société Générale Securities Services), Ken Timsit (Consensys France) and Yves Choueifaty (Tobam Bitcoin Fund).
Last year, we saw ethereum’s limits in capacities, with the network being cloaked by large ICO’s, and later Cryptokitties. Sven will discuss an alternative to conduct ICO’s, by using Stellar blockchain. Elea Labs developed CAIS, a Stellar-based alternative to Ethereum for conducting ICO’s.
Tech Open Air 2018. 20 June 2018
Yay. Tech Open Air soon again. Berlin invites the world again to its interdisciplinary tech conference. Unfortunately, we will not be able invite this time to a TOA event due to time restrictions.
We look forward inviting to an event with interesting projects and panels hopefully after the summer break.
Our TOA satellite events are a tradition in cryptospace, starting in 2016 with the DAO workshop and Blockchain Angels in collaboration with Outlier Ventures. For more information read our TOA16 event report. theDAO, a groundbreaking project by Germany-based Slock.it, paved the way to the ICO’s and cryptofunds we see today. Outlier Ventures is known among else for investing in IOTA and developing the convergence thesis, pioneered by Frank Diana.
Last year’s two evenings have been a blast with 300+ investors, founders, developers and enthusiasts attending over the course of two days as well as international blockchain projects and speakers in attendance. You can read our last year’s TOA17@ASTRATUM report here.
World Blockchain Summit, Frankfurt. 25–26 June 2018
ASTRATUM will be speaking in June at the World Blockchain Summit in Frankfurt. Get 20% discount on delegate passes for the event with the Promo Code: WBSF20
Frankfurt’s edition of World Blockchain Summit aims to connect global blockchain experts and technology players in this space including emerging start-ups along with regional businesses and IT leaders from across key industry verticals. This is not the first time for us to speak about blockchain in Frankfurt the last couple of month and we are looking to come back.
Blockchain Summer School 2018. 23–25 July 2018
We are really excited to organize together with ADG the Blockchain Summer School BSS18. The ADG is the Academy of German Cooperatives, being the management academy of 5600 cooperative banks and organizations, with over 19 mio. members. Some of its members form some of leading German financial institutions. The idea is that a collective of individual, smaller units can win by cooperating. Not so far away from the initial concept of blockchains and distributed networks. We foster theoretical and practical blockchain know-how transfer and its direct applications via an exciting learning process.
Format — an introduction to the theoretical basics, combined with practical “hands-on” exercises. Communication and discussions with experienced subject matter experts. Development and presentation of a blockchain strategy or an own concept in teams.
The list of participating experts currently includes the ADG, Bundesblock, Daimler, DWF, Etherisc, HUGO BOSS, Winheller, and is continuously expanded with other experts from the Enterprise and Start-Up area.
Location — the BSS18 will be in the splendid Castle Montabaur, located between Frankfurt/Main and Cologne. It can be accessed within 50mins from Franfurt with the high speed train ICE.
Below is the 3-day agenda. Most of the lectures will take place in German, with a few selected ones possibly in English.
Agenda Tag 1 (09:00–18:00):
- 09:00–09:15 Einführung in das Programm und Ausblick Tag 1
- 09:15–10:00 Blockchain I: Basis Technologie: Ledger, Smart Contracts, Tokens
- 10:15–11:00 Blockchain II: Ecosystem, neue Organisationsformen wie DAOs und DACs,
ICOs als neue Form der Projektfinanzierung - 11:00–12:00 Blockchain Workshop: Theorie und Praxis
- 12:00–13:00 Mittagspause
- 13:00–14:30 Blockchain III: Use-Cases für verschiedene Branchen
- 15:00–16:00 Smart Contract Workshop: Theorie und Praxis
- 16:00–16:30 Mit Teilnehmern zu definierende Vertiefung
- 16:30–17:00 Abschließende Experten Diskussion und Q&A.
Agenda Tag 2 (09:00–18:00):
- 09:00–09:15 Zusammenfassung des Vortags und Ausblick Tag 2
- 09:15–09:30 Token und Ecosystem mit neuen Wertschöpfungsketten
und neuen Organisationsformen sowie Anwendungsbeispiele - 09:30–10:30 Token Workshop: Token Konzeption, Cryptoeconomics
und darauf basierende Geschäftsmodelle - 11:00–11:30 Technologie Konvergenz: Blockchain und AI, 3D Druck, IoT, Big Data, VR/AR
- 11:30–12:00 Recht und Steuern: Deutschland, EU und Ausland
- 12:00–13:00 Mittagspause
- 13:00–14:30 Arbeitsgruppen Session I (Erarbeitung einer Strategie oder Konzepts)
- 15:00–16:30 Arbeitsgruppen Session II (Erarbeitung einer Strategie oder Konzepts)
- 16:30–17:00 Abschließende Experten Diskussion und Q&A.
Agenda Tag 3 (09:00–16:00):
- 09:00–09:15 Zusammenfassung des Vortags und Ausblick Tag 3
- 09:15–10:00 Aufbereitung einer Strategie oder Konzepts (Best Practice, Beispiele)
- 10:00–12:00 Arbeitsgruppen Session III (Erarbeitung eines Konzepts)
- 12:00–13:00 Mittagspause
- 13:00–14:00 Vorstellung entwickelter Blockchain Konzepte
- 14:00–15:00 Bewertung und Diskussion der Strategien oder Konzepts durch Fachexperten
- 15:00–16:00 Abschließende Experten Panel Diskussion und Q&A.
A limited number of tickets at discount are accessible by registering here. Please be aware that the numbers of participants is limited.
OWiCon Blockchain 2018 - IHK Ostwestfalen. 27 August 2018
The chamber of commerce IHK Ostwestfalen is organizing a whole day conference around blockchain. Sven will present new business models, based on distributed systems and tokens. Ostwestfalen is home of large international players like Bertelsmann or Miele. We are very much looking forward to speak in Bielefeld.
Zukunftsforum großer Banken. 10 October 2018
ASTRATUM will present new business models and be on a panel at this forum, organized by one of our clients, one of the largest German financial institutions.
Much going on. Hasta pronto and don’t forget to enjoy beautiful spring!
ASTRATUM
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ASTRATUM is a blockchain venture studio, developing value in the Distributed Economy.
We develop innovative next generation solutions, blockchain strategies, help investors with investment in crypto assets and educate with “blockchain dine&talks” the world and mechanics of cryptocurrencies and blockchain to executives and managers.
Our team rely on experts with outstanding professional experience and the necessary skillset to address the interdisciplinary challenges, coming with the cryptoeconomy. We believe that decentralized tech like blockchain is a game changer, and that a blue ocean strategy is the best approach to develop meaningful innovation. We also believe that Distributed Business is the future.
Besides corporate innovation in e.g. mobility, fintech 2.0 and real estate, we develop together with partners our own ventures. For our ventures, we are collaborating with investors and team up with exceptional individuals or teams.
We are proud to be founding member of the Blockchain Association Germany (Bundesverband Blockchain) and of the Distributed Sky Alliance. ASTRATUM is also Industry Partner of the Technical University TU Berlin.
