I've just returned from my first Satoshi Roundtable. It was much better than I had expected. Having been to a thousand and one bitcoin conferences, I wasn't expecting to learn much . . . instead my mind was so overwhelmed with amazing debate, conversation and information that I had to take a long nap every afternoon to even deal with it.
The conference was actually an 'unconference' and, if you've never done one, you should try! This format allowed for a far more engaging experience (see comment about exhaustion above). Instead of sitting passively in the audience listening to an expert speak for half an hour or so, all participated in whatever the session's topic was and thus, of course, multiplying the knowledge thanks to the high level guests involved.
Some are against the 'elitist' nature of the event but I have to disagree that this is a bad thing. As I said above, those who have been around in the bitcoin space for a long time must also refresh our knowledge base and have our opinions challenged, our ideas tested. There is a tendency for the brain to atrophy in the face of the same old speech at a typical bitcoin conference where most of the audience will be new to the industry and so asking the same questions over and over at every event. Not that this also isn't an important part of building community, but Satoshi Roundtable serves a similar purpose to the bitcoin space that a medical conference might serve to a brain surgeon where he or she can hear new ideas and innovations happening from fellow experts in the field, or better yet, people even smarter. Always be learning. Like from this guy, Jimmy Song! One of the best 'educators' in the space.
One villain did appear, however . . . lol. Everyone loved posing with Jamie Dimon:
It was also nice to attend an event where the price of bitcoin was never discussed. That doesn't happen often at events with many new entrants to the sector.
Back to the topics discussed at the Roundtable. Or at least some of them.
SECURITIES TOKENS: One of the bigger topics of the event due to the fact that both the SEC chairman, Jay Clayton, and the CFTC chairman, Christopher Giancarlo, gave very favorable testimony to the Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs on the very day the event began. Bitcoin prices, of course, had fallen to the $5,000s the night before their testimony, some say, on fear of a more negative testimony; alas, that did not happen. Giancarlo, in fact, was so positive that he's attracted a huge crypto following on Twitter.
The session on Securities Tokens was led by Simon Dixon of BnkToTheFuture.com while Clayton and Giancarlo were giving their testimony referenced above; a lawyer who had watched the testimony, however, came into the session midway through to give an assessment: All positive but the SEC had put the gatekeepers (ie lawyers, accountants, etc) on notice. The general consensus at the Roundtable was that ICOs, as we knew them, are dead and that there will almost certainly be some SEC enforcement actions taken soon, including against some exchanges and also those ICO promoters who had offered discounts to certain investors thus, technically, making two separate offerings. ICOs from here on out will all be securities offerings and regulated as such and will, therefore, also have equity (for the most part) and not just be 'investors' making generous donations to a project without expectation of anything in return.
LIGHTNING NETWORK: While I didn't attend any sessions relating to Lightning, basically all sessions were about it and all eyes were on the developers working on deploying it. The pressure is on them to deliver!
WOMEN: Coming on the heels of TNABC in Miami where women pretty much just played the role of stripper entertainment, it was amazing to quickly discover that the smartest people at the Roundtable all happened to be women, IMO. One note is that the US certainly has a whole lot more women participating in the sector compared to Europe where we seldom met any other women at a conference there.
MINING: This was my favourite discussion. More coming soon.
TETHER: The session about Tether was, by far, the best attended. So well-attended that all other sessions were cancelled so that all could attend. Full disclosure, we are an investor in Bitfinex, so do your own research (see Giancarlo's tweet above); but I didn't really need to even hear the guys from Bitfinex speak at the event for the markets already told me all I needed to hear: Tether is legit. If it weren't, it wouldn't be trading at a buck. There is also the fact that the CFTC subpoenaed them two months ago and they are still walking around freely and some of them living in NYC. Maybe I'm wrong but we weren't wrong about MtGox which we called weeks before it happened simply because of what the market was telling us. Same here, I think the market is telling us that Tether is what they say it is.
On our last evening at the venue, we had dinner with Tuur Demeester. This is a good summary of our discussion:
Can't wait to return next year! In the end, it's all about doing what you love with whom you love.
[Signed, Stacy]