San Francisco

While a portion of the team was in Vegas for Money2020 and WCC, another portion was already in San Francisco for the start of the San Francisco Blockchain Week. Epicenter, the week’s main and last event, is where Particl held a booth for two days as well as a 30-minute talk. But in no way was it the only event of interest!

The city was literally buzzing about blockchain and the many events attracted the entirety of the local, but very front running, San Francisco-based cryptocurrency community. It really felt home! Let’s not forget San Francisco and the Bay Area, in general, is the homeland of startups and the heart of the tech industry. People from all around the world join together with the hopes of creating the next new groundbreaking technology or project. Particl fits very much within that innovation-focused and very forward-thinking mindset.

SFBW’s particular type of schedule (having the main event at the very end of the week) proved to be an excellent opportunity for the team to initiate the first points of contact with multiple key people by attending many of the side-events and evening receptions organized all throughout the week. Then, during the two days of Epicenter, came the opportunities to capitalize on these contacts made during the week by demonstrating the marketplace and have more quality time with these people.

Before Epicenter, the Particl team attended CESC, the San Francisco Blockchain Week’s kickoff event where it set up a table at the location to improvise a quick Particl booth with a couple of computers running the Open Marketplace. As is now usual, the marketplace really impressed and gained great reactions and interest which brought new pairs of eyes on Particl and made new friends around, like the stand-up guys over at Cracking Crypto, for example.

Dr. Kap Giving an Interview to the Cracking Crypto Show

The team also attended more than a dozen side-events (most of the time, many a night…who needs sleep?) all throughout the week such as receptions organized by Polychain Capital, Pantera Capital, Outliers Ventures, Starfish Network, eToro, Huobi, OceanEx, and more. The connections established at all these events really did set the state for when everybody would be crossing paths again later at Epicenter.

Las Vegas

And so while a portion of the team was in San Francisco for the start of SFBW, Joe Fisher and Cryptoguard were in Las Vegas, to attend Money2020 and the World Crypto Conference (WCC).

Particl Welcomes Bryan Woods, Spend.com’s President, as New Advisor

At Money2020, a Fintech conference focused on innovations within the payment industry, the focus was entirely on sealing the deal with a new advisor, Bryan Woods, President at Spend.com. Spend.com is a team that has been growing closer to the Particl team ever since meeting at the Consensus 2019 booth in New York City.

The Particl team spent 2 full days working at Spend.com’s booth (one of the big sponsors of Money2020) to discuss and work on various strategies moving into 2020. This is a direct follow-up to another in-person trip the team made earlier in October 2019 to meet up with Spend.com. Meeting once again, at Money2020, allowed both teams to initiate and walk the first steps of a long-term relationship together. More details will follow this coming Thursday in a blog post published on Particl.news. Definitely stay tuned!

Special shoutout to Nicholas Merten, aka DataDash, which the team had the pleasure to cross paths with at Money2020. His focus, dedication, and projects to help cryptocurrencies move further along the path to mainstream adoption really impressed!

Nicholas Merten, aka Datadash, hanging out with Particl

Then, after Money2020, Cryptoguard flew to join the rest of the team in San Francisco while Joe Fisher stayed an additional day in Vegas to take part in the WCC conference.

WCC was the perfect occasion to meet with some of the people the team had been looking forward to meetup with again and yet another quality event to make the first points of contact with various people. Indeed, just like SFBW, WCC attracted a quality crowd as well as many leaders within the blockchain industry, some of which couldn’t make it to SFBW. In that scenario, splitting the team into two different cities really reaped a lot of benefits for Particl.

Joe Fisher and Masha Prusakova at WCC 2019

Epicenter — SFBW’s Main Event

And then came Epicenter, the main event of the San Francisco Blockchain Week. The Particl team all met as one the day before and came to the conference as a gold sponsor, had a booth right next to the main entrance, and gave a 30-minute talk on the Industry Stage.

Particl Team Showing Off the Open Marketplace at SFBW’s Epicenter

Just like throughout the first part of the week, the reactions at the booth were overwhelmingly good and, maybe strangely enough, people still looked surprised that a fully decentralized and no compromise blockchain project is already live and looking so good, even to this day. This is the typical feedback Particl has been receiving ever since it started going to more events this year.

Epicenter’s crowd was definitely smaller than Consensus, but it was much more focused and in “business mode”. The reason for this is actually important to understand. The people who still remain in blockchain after a more than two-year-long bear market and keep attending these kinds of events are the true pioneers that will propel the next blockchain wave. They are the people fighting in the trenches, against all odds, to make sure the blockchain revolution will one day catch up on the mainstream level.

And in San Francisco, of all places, a place renowned for how many tech innovations it generates every year. The people attending these conferences don’t look at the industry with a narrow-minded view. No, they instead know the long-term potential of these groundbreaking technologies and are the ones that are making it happen.

This is actually the main reason Particl wanted to attend SFBW. The team knew the potential of this local blockchain community, thanks in part to attending the SF-based Bitcoin2019 conference earlier in the year, and knew it would be a perfectly receptive and excited crowd.

The Particl team with Don Tapscott, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman at Blockchain Research Institute

And the team was right! Particl had the opportunity to spend some high-quality time with thought leaders and experts from many different industries and received many advice and resources. For example, the Particl team had the chance to meet with Don Tapscott, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman at Blockchain Research Institute, and earn 30 minutes of his time just before flying out to Europe.

Indeed, just like with Don Tapscott, many similar breakout meetings, sit-downs, and evening-long discussions happened with several key people working on pushing blockchain forward. The team met with media, capital firms, lawyers, developers, business developers, the inventor of eGift cards, and even a guy that can solve a Rubics cube blindfolded, but more importantly, made many new friends on the way that are as passionate and dedicated to see cryptocurrencies succeed.

The team also had a 30-minute speaking slot on the Industry Stage and sent Dr. Kap on stage. Some of the people the team has met throughout the week attended the talk which further helped them understand the project’s vision and intentions. The official presentation video will be published within a few days by the SFBW organizers. In the meantime, you can check out Dr. Kap’s presentation on Particl’s Youtube channel.

The upload originally is a Periscope video taken by Particl’s Community Manager, Guillaume Benayoun. You can check out more video of the team in San Francisco by browsing Ben’s Periscope uploads here: https://www.pscp.tv/PART_BEN/1jMJgwZoNjWJL?t=1s

The team used the exposure and momentum provided by a full week of intensive networking to announce to major pieces of news that will help propel the project forward —an in-wallet integration of a Bitcoin exchange module and the official beginning of an intimate and long-term relationship with Spend.com. Bryan Woods, Spend.com’s President, was announced at the same time as a new advisor to the project.