How much was Bitcoin a part of the recent London Blockchain conference?

I recently attended the Blockchain conference held in London in February 2023, so you didn’t have to. 

I went primarily to understand the the focus of the industry and whether Blockchain has found new uses, as well as finding out if the Bitcoin Logo used in the invitation and opening sessions translated to actual Bitcoin content. 

The entrance hall contained a handful of stands promoting some form of blockchain based solutions, ranging from UAE based property, commodity and green solutions to trading platforms and the main sponsor OKX who run a crypto exchange. The admirable exception to the lack of Bitcoin was Essatoshi selling candles and giving out free sats..kudos to them!!

Session Overviews:

I didn’t attend all sessions for both days – life is too short – but the following is a summary of what I did see.

The opening session was from OKX, who gave a passing mention to Bitcoin, but the primary focus was on how to rebuild trust in the industry after the last few years. This they expect to achieve through proof of reserves. 

Alibaba discussed its public cloud platform it has put in place to enable Blockchain development, with a brief case study using the Polygon chain. (Competitors such as AWS have similar solutions in place to help companies build blockchain based solutions).

Lisa Cameron gave an interesting insight into the work of the voluntary group she chairs looking at promoting crypto generally to the UK Government. The scope of the group has expanded as the perceived potential for Blockchain based solutions in areas such as Healthcare has developed. 

From a digital currency perspective, she discussed the ‘Brit’ coin and even a ‘Commonwealth’ coin, the sense from the Government being that there will be multiple digital currencies on offer to customers including Bitcoin, that they will navigate to the best solution and the Government is most likely behind in developments – hence a need to foster innovation.  Her group has visited other jurisdictions including Switzerland and is heading to France soon, to understand other developments and to foster collaboration.

On the positive side, the group are looking at education and apprenticeships to help build knowledge in this area.

Overall, there seems to be a major disconnect between the Government rhetoric about wanting the UK to be a hub for innovation in the crypto space and the lack of momentum in terms of attracting companies through friendly legislation, too much focus on CBDCs and the current high tax rates, an area expanded upon in a later session. This was also reflected in the questions from the audience. which were along the lines of ‘as a young developer in this space why would I stay in the UK when other countries are more attractive?’. The answer to these questions was that the group that she represents doesn’t own policy but can only try to influence. 

The next presenter discussed how, through the use of Enterprise investment schemes, the UK does have a very attractive tax regime (for accredited investors to invest usually as this is used to shelter large capital gains is my understanding) which provides an incentive for companies in this space to set up here. 

Trading was discussed - with presentations from the companies having stands at the exhibition, discussing the size and opportunity of the decentralised trading market. There was also a round table discussion, with three traders discussed the opportunities in this space. Here Bitcoin was mentioned as a superior store of value than any other crypto assets but they were essentially there to sell their trading channels. 

The outlook for Bitcoin was described as expecting a short-term dip to the low20’s, choppy for the rest of 2023 but long-term very bullish, hence using it as a store of value. The next bull market was most likely to start in Asia as money is moving East,  driven in part by the positive regulations in places like Dubai and Asia compared to the UK, which also has too high tax rates, doesn’t like to give out licenses to operate and generally makes life difficult for anyone in the Bitcoin or DefI/crypto space.

NFTs and Web3: Various speakers and roundtable discussions were selling that nirvana future we have all heard about of everything riding on blockchains, ‘tokenising’ assets from water to insurance and enabling collective ownership through a DAO managed via smart contracts. There was some discussion about the use case of a universal asset underlying global financial transactions and begrudgingly admitting that BTC and Lightning may just be it. Algo-based stable coins were also mentioned as impossible to ever implement.

NFT Gallery: There was also a small NFT gallery, where I was informed by a couple of guys from Satoshi solutions – a crypto recruitment firm walking the crowd – that one had sold for around 60 Eth. I take this as a sign that the bottom may not be in for crypto.

Summary:

For a mainstream event in its’ sixth or seventh year, the number of companies taking stands and presenting was very light. The emphasis seemed to be more on speculation (NFTs and trading) and what may be possible in the future than building today (e.g. case studies of companies using Blockchain to deliver value to the business).

Bitcoin was discussed but wasn’t a major part of the overall content.

From a personal perspective,  I am only interested in Bitcoin and the potential platforms that can be built on it, but, as I have a technology solutions background, I wanted to approach the event without preconceptions to see if, after a number of years, the underlying technology is finding uses in other areas. I’m still waiting.

This is a guest blog by David Pool / @fbjtrades. Views expressed are David’s own, and do not necessarily represent the views of Bitcoin Collective.