The PreMoney Conference 2018: The cryptocurrency Projects Aiming For Development Rather Than ICOs

The recently concluded PreMoney San Francisco 2018 conference held on October 2nd 2018, brought together various stakeholders in the blockchain communities including blockchain development team leaders, cryptocurrency corporations’ officials and other investors in the field. The conference raised various helpful points to the industry was it experiences the changes in technological development and also in the market side of things.

This marked the fifth year running of the PreMoney conference bringing together over 60 speakers at the conference to discuss issues regarding crypto and blockchain as well. The panel had a discussion on the overall developments seen on projects who are trying hard to fix the bugs in their systems before raising public funds. This is quite different from the scene this time last year when ICOs were being rapidly launched with no developmental roadmap or solid project yet. This sentiment was echoed by one of the panelists who said,

“The mentality in the cryptosphere has changed, Earlier investors used to follow a ‘quickly in-quickly out’ method to cash in on their earnings. But I think right now, they have realized it makes more sense to stick around for the long run for bigger payouts and developments.”

One of the high profile guests at the event was Ripple Inc. Senior Vice President, Ethan Beard who offered a positive future for the world of blockchains and cryptocurrencies in general. The huge amounts collected by various coins through ICOs towards the tail end of the year has started to be utilized with the developmental climate changing at the moment. He continued asking investors and other stakeholders to give time to the projects as they get their developmental stride going. True to this, the year has seen multiple blockchains launching their Mainnet showing the rapid development rate.

He further spoke on the xRapid feature that will make cross-border transactions cheaper, efficient and instant. The product was recently released commercially and the current environment is looking suitable for Ripple to initiate global cross boarder payments, said the SVP of Ripple.

The cryptocurrency industry is currently in a ‘cool off’ phase as the cofounder of Scalar Capital, Jordan Clifford explained during the event. The market went on a frenzy in the last quarter of the year in 2017 as prices skyrocketed, ICOs were launched at a tremendous pace which caused a valuation pump in the cryptocurrency industry. This was however short-lived as Clifford termed the crypto boom unsustainable and was bound to come down to levels currently seen. Additionally he said the industry still looks bullish even as the industry crosses its ‘Netscape’ phase.

The massive amounts raised in ICOs continued to raise questions leading to an official from 500 Startups, an investment company based out of Hong Kong, to ask investors to understand that the process to build a successful project comes after the financing not before. She said,

“The people involved in a company need to realize that if the finance is not managed well, it not just affects the company’s expansion plans but also creates a dent in the emotional spectrum of the entire team.”

The official further stated that investors are gearing towards private funding rather than ICOs.

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