Experience it firsthand: Zichain team talks about the Asian roadshow
Over the last few months, the Zichain team visited numerous exhibitions, conferences, meetups and summits dedicated to blockchain and investment. Most of them were attended by Andrey Kurkin — International Business Development. We asked Andrey to share his thoughts on the events, cities and the industry in general.
— What is the most memorable thing for you out of all the conferences you attended?
Almost every conference is memorable for something in particular. For example, the meetup in Shenzhen, where we came on stage almost immediately after our plane landed. Without an interpreter, preparation and a ready presentation. We organized everything in literally an hour, and still, Igor [Igor Basko] did it perfectly and gave a wonderful presentation. And it was funny that after the event when everyone started to join us on WeChat, the first thing that our subscribers saw was not our photos, but a picture of the co-founder and CEO of Zichain, Khachatur Gukasyan. Apparently, the new subscribers expected to see either me or Igor on the avatar.
— How does the audience react to your projects?
I’m very pleased with the audience’s interest in Zichain and the platform products at all conferences. Especially in China. For example, people who wanted to learn more about our project literally lined up in front of the Zichain booth at the Global Blockchain Leaders Summit 2018.After each presentation, we gain new investors and new members in the Zichain groups, chats and blogs.
— What makes the regions (cities) that hosted the conferences important for the crypto market?
China surprises by its attitude towards new technologies. The conference attendees always listen to speakers’ presentations with great interest — very few people leave the event before it actually ends. Also, it is astonishing how different technological centers of the region can be. For example, Hong Kong is the place where almost all the Chinese money or even of the entire Asian continent is concentrated. Singapore can also be called a financial center. But compared with Hong Kong, in Singapore crypto finance is still not so tightly integrated. We may say it remains an unexplored territory. [AM2] The blockchain community has just started to form there, and this city is now a good place to look for investments.
— What regions have impressed you with their developed technological market?
Shenzhen is a Chinese silicon valley with an incredible number of IT projects. You will find either an IT company or a fund literally in every shopping mall. The technological market and the community are huge, indeed! In Shenzhen, it’s easy to gather a subject conference for 5,000 or more people. It’s a very advanced city, which even statistically has been the leader in China in the growth and development of IT for the last 7 years.
The second important IT center is Hangzhou — the birthplace of Jack Ma and Alibaba Corporation. All the largest conferences are held there at a large exhibition center. These are not only IT-related events — Hangzhou also hosted the last G20 summit. In September, we plan to return to this city and give a presentation [AM3] at one of the blockchain conferences.
— And what about other cities?
What to say about other cities … Shanghai is a financial center, a Chinese hub of stock exchanges, money and indices. Beijing is more governmental. People in the city are interested in the blockchain technology, but not in cryptocurrencies. Initial coin offerings (ICOs) are not mentioned at all.
Guangzhou is an industrial center with factories and companies engaged in manufacturing. In terms of the crypto market, Guangzhou is still a mystery to me. We held several meetups here, but there were not as many attendees as in other cities. I am sure that if Guangzhou hosts a great conference, the audience will grow.
— Tell us about the conferences that took place in other Asian countries.
I remember South Korea among other countries of the Asian region. The cryptocurrency market is very overheated there. At some point in the country there were too many projects ending with «Chain», and every Tom, Dick or Harry zealously invested in them. People invested through syndicates, syndicates collected pools and closed everything with pools. And the market has dropped. Previously, funds and syndicates easily raised over 35k ETH (Ethereum). Now they don’t even invest but are engaged in consulting. That’s why people’s confidence in blockchain projects in the country has shattered a little. Nevertheless, everything is not so bad: the country continues to develop blockchain. On July 16 we will return here to attend Korea Blockchain Week, and from July 17–18 we will be participating in the Beyond Blocks Summit.
