My Ark Con attendance started with a long train journey to Geneva Airport. A talkative French Taxi driver shortened the last part of the traveling. Not so sure what he was talking about though. I checked in at the Hotel the evening before the conference.

Travel

It turned out I was arriving in right in time to have drinks with the team and join their evening program. It was really fun to get to know the real persons behind the chat nick names. I was warmly welcomed by everyone. They were all in a good mood even though most were pretty tired from the long day. I understood that they had been working on a lot of internal and legal stuff that had to be done in person. They even had a short board meeting before hitting the cushion. (Unfortunately, I could not sneak in.)

Swag

It was a really good evening talking a lot about Ark and Crypto. The diverse team and founders have an impressive pool of combined know-how and experience. I didn’t know that the Ark CTO plays piano that well. Looks like he does a good job on any kind of keyboard. We also delved quite deep into DPOS history and everyone had some good stories to tell.

Conference Sign

The next morning started with a “healthy” breakfast. I was happy to meet some more community members and discuss our involvements in Ark with them. People were traveling to Ark Con from all over the world.

Ark CTO FX Thoorens

The official part started the talk of our Ark Ecosystem CTO FX Thoorens. He explained the fundamentals of Ark and Crypto in easy to understand terms. I think he did a good job in making everything as generally understandable as possible. There was not much news for long term community members though. I guess we should organize a Ark Dev Con soon.

Persona by Stefan Neagu

Persona was presented by Stefan Neagu explaining Identity Management and the advantages of a blockchain solution. I understood that they still have some work to do concerning the definition of their fee model. Persona is currently running a test network to fine tune all the details.

Revolut got a short slot to present their card solution. They are not really into crypto but the team seems to use their card as company cards until there is a solution with better Ark integration. Revolut was marketed as low fee digital virtual bank which you can use as a lightweight multi currency travel solution.

Digital Cooperatives by Bernard Lunn

There was also a short talk about digital cooperatives and which of them work well to provide value for users and employers. The lunch was really interesting to network and talk with all the different participants.

Camera (stay tuned)

The first talk after lunch was by the French economist Olivier Delamarche. It was a bit harder to follow this one as it was in French (sorry if I mix up some things). I understood that his prediction is that fiat will run into a serious problem sooner or later due to the current financial debts and the population growth. His favorite scenario was that either the Japanese Yen or the Euro will loose trust almost instantly at some point. He described a similar scenario like it happened in Argentina. The most likely outcome would be that big investors would try to flee into dollars as it is the only currency with a big enough liquidity. For all other options you could simply not swap currencies fast enough to save a big chunk from a crash. In his opinion gold and cryptocurrencies just don’t provide enough liquidity to act as exit route for money trying to evade complete devaluation.

#WhoIsDave — Is it his car?

The final discussion and round table was about ICO legislation. A French lawyer, a Swiss lawyer and FX answered questions about the situation for ICO’s in Switzerland and France. My take-away was that both countries try to find a balanced approach. They try to get startups in their country but also want to provide enough protection for investors. It will mean that ICOs are very likely encouraged to provide much more documentation and explanations. Hopefully this will result in less scam ICO’s.

The Ark Team

A lot of participants stayed after the the official program to keep discussing crypto in more detail. It was a great experience and all the talks and networking between the official presentations were my favorite part.

Delegate Jarunik