Post release

Experience of crypto experts, ICO and fresh developments: results of the first Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Philippines
The first Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Philippines took place in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, on January 25, 2018. The event was held in Edsa Shangri-La hotel and was the opening of the Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference series. 

300 people attended the event, 12 booths were presented in the exhibition area, 5 companies became sponsors of the event. General sponsor was Deex.exchange, ChaoEx was Platinum Sponsor, Gold Sponsor was Ubiatar, Silver Sponsor was HotNow company.


The event was held by Smile-Expo, the biggest organizer of B2B events and projects in the field of innovation around the world. 


All participants of the conference were experts in cryptocurrencies, blockchain and ICO, including representatives of the banking industry, software developers, entrepreneurs, individual and institutional investors, lawyers, founders of startups, blockchain solutions developers and professional traders. The heads of world-famous companies and representatives of government bodies were among keynote speakers. 


Headliners of the event: 


Zach Pister is a co-founder and Chief Development Officer at Intrepid Ventures. The speaker talked on ICO regulation, identified main points for developers who want to use blockchain technology. He also noted that expectations and reality in the field of crypto industry remain far apart today: instead of creating new global systems, cryptocurrency is now just a money transfer without the participation of a third party; instead of being accessible to everyone, not many people use it. According to the speaker, the technology is still immature, has problems with scalability and is extremely difficult to use.
Herns Hermida, Business Group Lead at Microsoft Philippines, talked on the possibilities of blockchain in business and how Microsoft Azure uses blockchain-based solutions.
The speaker unveiled 4 key questions, the developer must ask himself when launching any blockchain-based project: Does blockchain fit into my development? Which technology should I use? How to implement smart contracts into workflows? What do I need to create a distributed application and connect it to an existing infrastructure? 
Herns Hermida emphasized that blockchain technology can provide greater transparency, security and efficiency for current business processes, and create new business models.


Other speakers:


Jeremy Goodwin is blockchain.syncfab.com CEO. He talked on the prospects of fintech, bitcoin and regulation in 5 years.
Vlad Sapozhnikov, co-founder and CEO at Deex.exchange, talked on decentralized ecosystems using BitShares as the future of blockchain technologies.
Nithinan Jessie, CEO and founder at Hotnow, shared her experience on how to determine quality of ICOs.
Jimmy Nguyen, Chief Executive Officer at nChain Group, discussed keys for eCommerce.
Kambiz Djafari, CEO and co-founder at Edgecoin.io, talked on the digital economy, tokenization of real assets, as well as functions and benefits of tokens.
Luis Buenaventura, Chief Technology Officer at BloomSolutions, talked on redefining money transfer using cryptocurrency.
Regulation
Although all the participants agreed that it is necessary to establish rules to control “self-regulating” and decentralized blockchain space, not all came to a single conclusion regarding the level of state intervention.
Some speakers believe the government should apply “limited” and “appropriate” rules to protect investors from fraud and illegal activities, as well as to prevent tax evasion and money laundering.
Other participants ins

isted that government should avoid any rules in the field of blockchain technologies, because “they will only destroy it”.


Blockchain-based projects


The exhibition area became a space for communication between developers, investors and potential partners. Ubiatar and Datum.org projects were the most interesting for visitors.
The Ubiatar application allows you to manage an avatar, or become one. Users give instructions to the avatar by entering commands in the chat window or simply use standard icons to control the avatar and even interact with the objects.
Roger Haenni introduced Datum.org. It is a decentralized and distributed high performance database backed by a blockchain ledger. It provides a marketplace where users can share or sell data on their own terms.


Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference Philippines was the first in a series of similar events to take place in 14 countries until May of this year.