Vote of Confidence: Token Fest Reflections
Last week, three members of our team attended Token Fest in the Palace of the Fine Arts in San Francisco. The event brought together thousands of individuals from all over the world to talk about the business of digital cryptocurrency tokens. The was a wide variety of different perspectives present and my coworker Jeffrey Stern and I figured it would be useful to share our biggest takeaways from the conference:
Me on regulatory buzz:
The most talked about entity at Token Fest was actually nowhere to be found in the large auditorium of the Palace of the Fine Arts. The Securities and Exchanges Commission, knowing by many in the blockchain space as the place where the buck stops, shut down Munchee, INC and their ICO for selling securities instead of tokens with utility and, as a result, became the veritable boogieman of the conference. A common refrain among speakers and participants alike was that 2018 will be remembered as “the year of regulation,” meaning the government will do its best to control
Despite no presence from any of the regulatory agencies in question, many lawyers and experts in the space issued stern warnings about ICO’s and there was a palpable anxiety in the auditorium. From our perspective, and from the perspective of many other companies conducting sales, more regulation is actually a welcome trend. Exit scams and tokens without serious utility have caused countless individuals to lose inordinate amounts of money. For those of us who are taking the necessary precautions to both protect our participants and exceed the most stringent regulatory standards, the hope is that greater regulation from agencies like the SEC will allow honest projects to gain legitimacy outside of the crypto world.
Jeffrey Stern on a crowded market:
At TokenFest, it seemed to me that the allure and hype of token sales — which as a funding vehicle have raised more than $7B for blockchain projects — touched base with regulatory reality in which they exist. It was exciting that throughout the whole conference, governance and legal considerations were at the forefront of the conversation. While the fear is that regulation stifles innovation or at least pushes it elsewhere, which was clearly a voiced concern of many speakers and attendees, it affirms blockchain’s potential and legitimacy as a technology in the mainstream economy.
While there’s a great deal of unchecked “hodling” speculation, there’s a sobering and equally great deal of companies using blockchain, not as a panacea, but as a component of their approach to solve real problems. I was proud to be there representing Votem, where we’re using blockchain to address serious technological hurdles in secure end-to-end verifiable online elections, in the company of many of these forward thinking organizations.
Overall, Token Fest was an incredible opportunity for our team to hear from all corners of the crypto space. We look froward to attending many more events like it in the future!
