The European Blockchain Convention came to an end. It was a very intense 2 days, with many conferences, lots of merch, but above all, and the most valuable thing of this kind of events: networking.
I want to tell you a little bit about what we did in this 2nd day of conventions:
For this day we did not leave so early, as we noticed that most of the attendees did not arrive until noon, and we did the same.
The conferences of this day touched on very interesting topics: trading, custody and security of assets, the future of Web3 gaming, regulation of digital assets in Europe, US and UK; and CBDC (a topic that I think is very little talked about).
On this day many convention booths were already empty... could it be that they left because they ran out of merch? I think so, because there was a lot of it, caps, t-shirts, bags and souvenirs of all the brands.
I have been able to corroborate what many say about crypto events: the best happens in the aisles, the networking of having a coffee, a soda, meeting people having lunch, sitting close to someone and having spontaneous conversations, and that's what Aura and I did this day.
Dressed in our Zcash and Zingo t-shirts, we approached many people and handed out stickers, asking them if they knew about Zcash, and oh, disappointment! 99% of the people we asked did not know anything about Zcash, so we briefly explained the pitch we prepared: “Zcash is a private Bitcoin, it is a solution to protect your privacy”, a problem that nobody talked about at this convention.
And so, between booth and booth, between contact and contact, we met a representative of the TapBit exchange, who was interested when we told him about Zcash, and we saw that the ZEC is not listed on their platform. It would be valuable for someone from ECC to establish contact with them, as they were open to adding new token pairs. I have the contact.
We also contacted the team at the Noticia Cripto news portal, and found out that they are Venezuelan! They were very interested in the educational initiatives and the Digital Camp they read about in my social networks, and they were on hand to spread the word about the training activities we do about Zashi, Zingo and other tools in the Zcash ecosystem.
The folks at Coinex were also interested in being sponsors of some educational activity about Zcash, since ZEC is indeed listed on their platform (and in fact, it is an exchange that I did a tutorial on).
After the conferences were over, and the event was officially closed, the side events of the day followed, more than 20 events distributed throughout the city of Barcelona! Impossible to attend them all. That's why I think that Zcash should have a multidisciplinary team made up of several people who can attend several events on the same date. We have to work as a pack, not as a lone wolf!
We decided to go to the BitMex event, which was held at the Room Mate Gerard Hotel. Zcash was listed on BitMex since 2016, but currently not. Why? In that event we met more people, among them the directors of the exchanges Mexc (which does have Zcash listed!) and Biconomy (also with ZEC listed!). They did know about Zcash, and in fact showed us live that yes, they knew about the existence of Zcash.
Then, between drinks and Spanish tortilla, we met content generators, people from Spain, Venezuela (who migrated to Spain), Holland, among other countries, who only knew the Z of Zcash. We told them that we would like to do a networking event to talk to them about Zcash, and they were interested. So this opportunity arose: that we organize an event here in Barcelona before we leave for the next event in Prague. We are already looking for quotes to find out how much it costs to do a small meetup here. If we do, we will be informing the whole community.
And so the night ended: like Cinderella, at midnight and already exhausted, we decided to return to our headquarters (the hotel), to rest, and make all the reports and publications of our experience.
Without a doubt, I see the experience of being present at these events as very positive. Yes, it may represent an expense of merch and/or personnel, but the exposure it gives is very good, and that's what Zcash needs!
The next edition of the European Blockchain Convention will be in 2025, in London - hopefully there will be more Zcash presence there!
For now, that's all for today... I will continue to inform you of our next steps towards spreading the word about Zcash.
Thanks for reaching out and leaving your comments!
Here are some photos from the day:
