Saint Petersburg will soon host a major international IT event: the ICO-Hypethon. This event will be hosted by Crypto Friends and sponsored by the Waves Platform and Eberhard Lindfordt.

Hypethon is expected to draw more than 1,000 visitors over a two-day period and will feature workshops, meet-and-greets with industry leaders and presentations from promising startups. These startups will be competing for Angel funding in order to get their projects off the ground, and ultimately intend on hosting ICOs to sell their tokens to crypto investors.

Saint Petersburg is already home to several important online software technologies such SEMrush, IQ Options, Veeam and many others.

Additionally, international corporations such as Microsoft, Google and VK have long had offices in Saint Petersburg because of the number of skilled programmers residing there. The city recently hosted the Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference and is proving to be an ideal locale for Blockchain meetups and events.

Mentors and industry leaders

The Crypto Friends organization has already received significant recognition, having been showcased on Nasdaq.com following their successful “ICO Trends” Q&A session at the Blockchain & Bitcoin Conference. The company has invited a number of industry experts to serve as mentors to conference participants.

The speakers and mentors include:

* Jon Matonis - Bitcoin foundation

* Sasha Ivanov - Founder and CEO of the Waves Platform

* Tone Vays - Crypto trader and founder of LibertyLifeTrail.com

* Eric Benz - Director at CryptoPay.me

* Eyal Hertzog - Bancor co-founder

* Vít Jedlička - the president of the Free Republic of Liberland

* Artem Tolkachev - Deloitte

* Anatoly Radchenko - United traders

* Vladimir Dyomin - an adviser on blockchain and digital economy to Chairman of the Board at Vnesheconombank (Bank of Foreign Economic Activity)

* Dmitry Machikhin - Gmt Legal

* Mihail Lunev - Ecoinomy

* Anatoly Kaplan - ForkLog

Eric Benz, Director at CryptoPay, states:

“Crypto Friends is building one of the most exciting communities throughout the Blockchain and crypto ecosystem. The Hypethon event taking place in Saint Petersburg...will be the first of its kind and definitely is not to be missed.”

“At the public event,” Benz also comments, “CryptoPay will launch our ICO exclusively via the Waves platform to further develop our Blockchain payment gateway services.”

Daria Arefieva became a shining star in the European and Russian crypto community after the success of the past two events. She is inviting everyone to attend, saying:

“Hypethon [is] a mix between a hackathon and a festival for the crypto crowd, where guests will be able to personally meet Blockchain industry leaders, learn new content through workshops and gain new market info through Q&As. There's also going to be films, music, food and beverages available.”

The ICO hype

ICOs have become a great resource for crowdfunding projects that are planning to release products and services with the Blockchain space.

Unfortunately, the unregulated nature of ICOs has led to criticism and created negative connotations. Much of this reputation will soon be dispelled, now that the SEC has determined to regulate the space.

Until such a time as regulations are complete, investors should be wary of new ICOs and do their due diligence. The projects presented at Hypethon have all been thoroughly screened by Crypto Friends in an effort to lower investor risk and eliminate any obvious scams.

Attendees should use the promo code “Cryptograph” in order to receive 25 percent off their ticket price.