🔗 Irony & Serendipity at Paris Blockchain Week Summit
IRL + NFT = WAGMI
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Last week, the crypto community descended upon Paris. In what can only be described as Fashion Week for decentralized computing enthusiasts. Paris Blockchain Week Summit was quite the spectacle. The conference itself was hosted in the Palais Brongniart, the former French stock exchange — an apt location for a community looking to dismantle traditional finance. The summit's mission can be described as follows:
Paris Blockchain Week Summit gathers more than 3000 attendees, 70 sponsors, 250 speakers and 100 media partners.
During two days, PBWS will host sessions about traceability, leveraging blockchain on the innovation journey, digital governance, what's been built in 2021/2022, the state of digital asset liquidity, international regulatory cooperation and much more!
I had the — unexpected — opportunity to attend. One of my best friends from home was in town for the event with his partner. She, unfortunately, came down with covid, which granted me counterfeit access and anonymous exploration capabilities, in true Web3 fashion.
I was pretty excited for my imminent onboarding to the metaverse. But upon arrival, the experience felt… kinda corporate. After ten years in the tech industry, I've seen my fair share of conferences (Dreamforce being the largest — the annual Salesforce event — more akin to Coachella than a SaaS event) and PBWS met all the baseline expectations: booths, bartenders and a beautiful venue. When the marketing site urges you to join us in the metaverse, however, expectations shift. That's not to say it wasn't a quality event — just not the alt, burning man-esque, mystique cultivated in certain corners of Twitter that I anticipated. The attendees ranged from the suits looking to capitalize on emerging tech they don't understand to the red-pilled, freshly minted Bitcoin millionaires living their pseudonymous dream in decentraland. Despite mismatched expectations, the conference was educational and I got to connect with a few leaders from predominantly European-based blockchain enterprises.
It did feel novel to be at an in-person conference for the first time in a while. That feeling was only accentuated by the fact that I was among a crowd largely advocating for a future in which human contact remains in the realm of virtual reality (ok… a slight exaggeration, but you see the irony). My favorite moment, by far, was one of serendipitous, clumsy, human interaction. Taking a break from the action, my friend and I went to an empty amphitheater between breakout sessions to connect to the public wifi and catch up on some email. The 500 seat auditorium was practically empty when a woman plopped herself down on the chair next to me…
Perhaps it was my pandemic instinct, or simply my anti-social sub-conscious, that immediately thought: of all the seats, she chose this one. Fortunately, my gregarious friend reached over and introduced himself only to discover she was the Chief Legal Officer of a leading B2B crypto company. The conversation was fruitful and we exchanged information — much to the chagrin of my unfriendly subconscious. On second thought, maybe I've just finally become a real Parisian. In any event, it took a crypto conference to remember the value of serendipity, accidental encounters and cross-pollination of ideas. A worthwhile reminder.
To cap off the week, Binance announced a €100M partnership with Station F, opening up a crypto-innovation space at the giant incubator as part of its objective moon initiative launched in 2021. All signs point to Paris (and France) becoming the crypto-hub of Europe!
As a casual observer, light-weight/passive investor and overall optimist re: all most things Web3, it was great to ape into this event. For a comprehensive list of Web3 terminology (including ape) check out this 🧵:
Also, I brought home this Willy Wonka style golden ticket for a chance to win €50 worth of Bitcoin. The Web3 gods granted a win to my girlfriend, who's had a Coinbase account for all of 3 months. I got nothing 😢
If you're itching for more Web3 content, might I interest you in a Web 2.5 appetizer?
If you haven't already, check out my previous interviews with these impressive EU tech leaders & investors:
