If there’s one thing that the crypto community has in common, it’s constant traveling. From one airport to the next, you could live your life hopping from one conference to another. One day, you’re in New York and the next, you’re flying to Paris, Amsterdam or Berlin.

So maybe you’re among the rare few who bought BTC when it was $5 and you HODLed. Or, you might’ve gotten lucky with a few ICOs, and now, you’re a so-called “crypto millionaire,” a whale, even. These days, you hop from city to city in a “Satoshi is Female” shirt to distill your wise knowledge to the average conference goer.

Why? Well, there’s something about crypto.

And one thing’s for sure: the blockchain community is flourishing rapidly in every part of the world.

Earlier this month, blockchain took over New York City and it was electrifying. The Fluidity Summit kickstarted the week-long gathering and was followed by the Ethereal Summit, Token Summit, Consensus, and more than three dozen side events.

It was unique, it was insane, but it also felt very familiar.

The crypto community isn’t short of new ideas and protocols to shill, though the stories are always the same: aspirations trump execution. Nothing is real (yet), except for the parties.

For blockchain and crypto to take the moonshot, it’ll need role models it can follow and ideas that are executed, criticized, tested, and improved on. Currently, there is an overwhelming number of ICO companies running around, but we have yet to see a project with real applications that are operational on the blockchain.

A line of Lamborghinis parked outside of Consensus 2018

The tens of thousands of people who descended onto the Concrete Jungle would unanimously agree that blockchain and crypto will change the world.

There’s no argument.

But getting there, well, that’s the hard part.

Far too many ICO’s have become hedge funds themselves, and we believe that crypto needs to evolve past wild parties and Lamborghinis. Investors need to be more diligent in their investments; advisors need to advise (less), and developers need to build decentralized applications that work.

Siglo at Blockchain Week New York