Recap + Dr. Kap’s Own Video Recap of the Events 📺
The Particl team is finally back home from its US West Coast trip and hot damn was it an eventful week! As you probably already know, the team initiated its Particl World Tour by first going to the United States and attend 3 different conferences — Money2020, WCC, and SFBW’s Epicenter.
It’s safe to say that, throughout this first part of the Particl World Tour, the team has made tremendous progress on all fronts and has been able to collect a significant amount of feedback, advice, contacts, and most importantly, new friends taking part, just like the team, in this ambitious blockchain journey! Along the way, Particl met with tech evangelists, developers, capital funds, business owners, market makers, innovators, and was even able to scoop a new advisor, Bryan Woods (Spend.com’s President) to assist and support the project in making the best out of the many opportunities currently opening up within the payment and eCommerce industries. The team had the blessing of being accompanied, for most of the trip, by Crypto PR Lab, a San Francisco-based PR firm that has grown closer to the team ever since meeting for the first time at Consensus 2019. Their insight, reach, and contacts within the local SF blockchain community have proven to be an invaluable asset for the entire duration of the trip.
For this first part of the Particl World Tour, the team split into different groups and spread out on the US West Coast (San Francisco & Las Vegas) to cover multiple events and maximize results. This strategy allowed to cover a lot of ground at once and has brought very valuable connections that could then be best leveraged by the fact that the whole team ended up meeting as one for SFBW’s Epicenter. It doesn’t happen all the time that so many team members get to meet, in-person, and so the strategy was to optimize this precious opportunity and get the most done out of it.
San Francisco
While a portion of the team was in Vegas for Money2020 and WCC, another portion was already in San Francisco for the start of the San Francisco Blockchain Week. Epicenter, the week’s main and last event, is where Particl held a booth for two days as well as a 30-minute talk. But in no way was it the only event of interest!
The city was literally buzzing about blockchain and the many events attracted the entirety of the local, but very front running, San Francisco-based cryptocurrency community. It really felt home! Let’s not forget San Francisco and the Bay Area, in general, is the homeland of startups and the heart of the tech industry. People from all around the world join together with the hopes of creating the next new groundbreaking technology or project. Particl fits very much within that innovation-focused and very forward-thinking mindset.
SFBW’s particular type of schedule (having the main event at the very end of the week) proved to be an excellent opportunity for the team to initiate the first points of contact with multiple key people by attending many of the side-events and evening receptions organized all throughout the week. Then, during the two days of Epicenter, came the opportunities to capitalize on these contacts made during the week by demonstrating the marketplace and have more quality time with these people.
Before Epicenter, the Particl team attended CESC, the San Francisco Blockchain Week’s kickoff event where it set up a table at the location to improvise a quick Particl booth with a couple of computers running the Open Marketplace. As is now usual, the marketplace really impressed and gained great reactions and interest which brought new pairs of eyes on Particl and made new friends around, like the stand-up guys over at Cracking Crypto, for example.
The team also attended more than a dozen side-events (most of the time, many a night…who needs sleep?) all throughout the week such as receptions organized by Polychain Capital, Pantera Capital, Outliers Ventures, Starfish Network, eToro, Huobi, OceanEx, and more. The connections established at all these events really did set the state for when everybody would be crossing paths again later at Epicenter.
Las Vegas
And so while a portion of the team was in San Francisco for the start of SFBW, Joe Fisher and Cryptoguard were in Las Vegas, to attend Money2020 and the World Crypto Conference (WCC).
At Money2020, a Fintech conference focused on innovations within the payment industry, the focus was entirely on sealing the deal with a new advisor, Bryan Woods, President at Spend.com. Spend.com is a team that has been growing closer to the Particl team ever since meeting at the Consensus 2019 booth in New York City.
The Particl team spent 2 full days working at Spend.com’s booth (one of the big sponsors of Money2020) to discuss and work on various strategies moving into 2020. This is a direct follow-up to another in-person trip the team made earlier in October 2019 to meet up with Spend.com. Meeting once again, at Money2020, allowed both teams to initiate and walk the first steps of a long-term relationship together. More details will follow this coming Thursday in a blog post published on Particl.news. Definitely stay tuned!
Special shoutout to Nicholas Merten, aka DataDash, which the team had the pleasure to cross paths with at Money2020. His focus, dedication, and projects to help cryptocurrencies move further along the path to mainstream adoption really impressed!
Then, after Money2020, Cryptoguard flew to join the rest of the team in San Francisco while Joe Fisher stayed an additional day in Vegas to take part in the WCC conference.
WCC was the perfect occasion to meet with some of the people the team had been looking forward to meetup with again and yet another quality event to make the first points of contact with various people. Indeed, just like SFBW, WCC attracted a quality crowd as well as many leaders within the blockchain industry, some of which couldn’t make it to SFBW. In that scenario, splitting the team into two different cities really reaped a lot of benefits for Particl.
Epicenter — SFBW’s Main Event
And then came Epicenter, the main event of the San Francisco Blockchain Week. The Particl team all met as one the day before and came to the conference as a gold sponsor, had a booth right next to the main entrance, and gave a 30-minute talk on the Industry Stage.
Just like throughout the first part of the week, the reactions at the booth were overwhelmingly good and, maybe strangely enough, people still looked surprised that a fully decentralized and no compromise blockchain project is already live and looking so good, even to this day. This is the typical feedback Particl has been receiving ever since it started going to more events this year.
Epicenter’s crowd was definitely smaller than Consensus, but it was much more focused and in “business mode”. The reason for this is actually important to understand. The people who still remain in blockchain after a more than two-year-long bear market and keep attending these kinds of events are the true pioneers that will propel the next blockchain wave. They are the people fighting in the trenches, against all odds, to make sure the blockchain revolution will one day catch up on the mainstream level.
And in San Francisco, of all places, a place renowned for how many tech innovations it generates every year. The people attending these conferences don’t look at the industry with a narrow-minded view. No, they instead know the long-term potential of these groundbreaking technologies and are the ones that are making it happen.
This is actually the main reason Particl wanted to attend SFBW. The team knew the potential of this local blockchain community, thanks in part to attending the SF-based Bitcoin2019 conference earlier in the year, and knew it would be a perfectly receptive and excited crowd.
And the team was right! Particl had the opportunity to spend some high-quality time with thought leaders and experts from many different industries and received many advice and resources. For example, the Particl team had the chance to meet with Don Tapscott, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman at Blockchain Research Institute, and earn 30 minutes of his time just before flying out to Europe.
Indeed, just like with Don Tapscott, many similar breakout meetings, sit-downs, and evening-long discussions happened with several key people working on pushing blockchain forward. The team met with media, capital firms, lawyers, developers, business developers, the inventor of eGift cards, and even a guy that can solve a Rubics cube blindfolded, but more importantly, made many new friends on the way that are as passionate and dedicated to see cryptocurrencies succeed.
The team also had a 30-minute speaking slot on the Industry Stage and sent Dr. Kap on stage. Some of the people the team has met throughout the week attended the talk which further helped them understand the project’s vision and intentions. The official presentation video will be published within a few days by the SFBW organizers. In the meantime, you can check out Dr. Kap’s presentation on Particl’s Youtube channel.
The upload originally is a Periscope video taken by Particl’s Community Manager, Guillaume Benayoun. You can check out more video of the team in San Francisco by browsing Ben’s Periscope uploads here: https://www.pscp.tv/PART_BEN/1jMJgwZoNjWJL?t=1s
The team used the exposure and momentum provided by a full week of intensive networking to announce to major pieces of news that will help propel the project forward —an in-wallet integration of a Bitcoin exchange module and the official beginning of an intimate and long-term relationship with Spend.com. Bryan Woods, Spend.com’s President, was announced at the same time as a new advisor to the project.
Takeaways
Think of this whole US West Coast trip as a giant, never-ending brainstorming session with not only team members, but advisors, leaders, and experts from many different industries hungry to see any solid blockchain tech succeed.
The people the team met get it. They get the potential of blockchain and Particl both. They want to see the industry succeed and the products powered by blockchain land in the hands of everyday people.
While the team already knew about the quality of the Particl platform, it is now crystal clear from all the feedback received that the Particl ecosystem and its Open Marketplace is very advanced in terms of tech compared to almost any other end-user-focused blockchain product. The vision, mission, and disruptive potential of such a platform is also a shared feeling within all of the people met during this trip.
But getting this product into people’s hands is equally important, if not more. The best product in the world serves no purpose if it is not being used by anyone. This trip provided the team with a lot of resources, connections, and offers that will help Particl jump in with two feet into this new adoption-focused phase the project is headed to.
The team has been able to discuss, in detail and with valuable outside perspectives, the next steps moving into 2020. What’s coming next in 2020 will be very methodical and carefully planned, and it’s all about getting that adoption going. Thanks to this US West Coast trip, the team is now equipped with the best resources it could have hoped for at the best time imaginable. Let’s do this! 💪
What’s Next?
The development team has been focused on the next few items, as identified a while ago, required before aggressive adoption strategies can start getting a worthy conversion rate. Indeed, the Open Marketplace and Particl Desktop still lack a few features the team would like to have before actively trying to drive users to the marketplace.
In the meantime, the communications and strategy team is now embarking in a new phase to start the onboarding of users as soon as the platform is ready for adoption. The team will be taking part in various internal workshops in Berlin in the coming weeks along with key connections and advisors made throughout the past two weeks. That’s to craft strategies related to the user adoption of the Open Marketplace and the Particl network in general and help the project pivot towards a a more “business” focused phase in the most efficient manner possible.
It is very clear, the team is coming back from this US West Coast trip extremely motivated and hungry for success. A lot of doors are opening up, on all fronts, directly to Particl and also to the blockchain industry itself. The world is receptive to the idea of blockchain technology but cautious due to this now-very-long bear market. It is why the next steps of the way need to be very methodological to seize the most of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
As you might start to understand simply by reading this post, this trip marks the beginning of brand new objectives, challenges, and goals for the project. Think of it as the “war room phase”, the moment where strategies are made and carefully, methodically set in motion.
Next Locations of the Particl World Tour
With that in mind, the team is going to be attending, in a smaller capacity, two additional events and then conclude it’s already very worthy Particl World Tour.
Indeed, you’ll be able to find Particl at Blockshow Asia, in Singapore, and Slush Helsinki, in Finland.
At Blockshow Asia, the same boots-on-the-grounds approach as used during SFBW’s side-events and WCC will be applied. It will be all about establishing the first points of contact and reconvening with key people within the Asian market to get as much insight as possible. Don’t forget, as mentioned in a previous blog post on Particl.news, Singapore is a place of interest for Particl because of new tax regulations being proposed which would make any sale paid for with cryptocurrencies a tax-free event. It is a direct use-case for buying and selling using cryptocurrencies and a great opportunity for Particl to shine brightly. This is, quite simply, crypto having a clear shot at going mainstream in Singapore…
At Slush Helsinki, a tech startup/founder focused conference, the team will be operating a booth and meeting up with various advisors and mentors specifically going to the event to help out motivated, young entrepreneurs. The team will consist of Juha Kovanen (Marketplace Lead Developer), Gerlof van Ek (Lead Designer, Developer), Dr. Kapil Amarasinghe (UK Particl Ambassador), and Gloria (Particl’s Communications & Strategy Team).
Both these events will allow Particl to receive even more feedback, advice, and resources as it jumps right into its next phase. The timing of it all couldn’t be better!
You, Too, Can Be a Part of it!
The best connections happen face-to-face, this is simply how things happen in the space. The people you meet, in-person, by going to conferences and their related side-events are not the same crypto people you meet online. These are the active and focused people working day and night on the blockchain revolution. They are the ones that make it all happen!
For this reason, the Particl team very strongly encourages you to go out there and attend your local blockchain events. Crypto is not dead, it’s alive and kicking in a way that might surprise you! The bear market is making innovators more motivated and hungry for success, a feeling that is not always shared by the “online crypto community”. Go out there, meet people face-to-face, and be right in the middle of the biggest revolution of our times (with no hyperbole added here 😉).
After all, meeting other crypto fans and innovators to change the world is just one part of why you should attend these events. The other part is…well, it is so much FUN! Dare try it just once and you’ll be hooked!
Stay tuned for more news about Spend.com’s relationship with Particl this coming Thursday, the 14th of November. Then, on the 21st of November, Particl will be having another surprise announcement!
