Free Upcoming Blockchain, Bitcoin and Crypto Events in 2018!

In 2018 there are literally hundreds of blockchain and cryptocurrency events going on around the world. Popularity is growing at an exponential rate and 2018 sees a substantial growth in the number of events compared to 2017.

With such a growing demand, it’s understandable that event organisers want to charge a fee for visitors looking to learn more about the cryptocurrency world.

But it doesn’t have to be the case!

There are many free blockchain and crypto events in 2018 all around the world that you can attend for free!

Free Blockchain Events in 2018:

CoinfestUK:

Location: Manchester, England

Date: 5th-7th April 2018

Cost: Free event!

Cryptocurrency Investor Summit:

Location: Furama City Centre, Singapore

Date: 10th March 2018

Cost: Free event!

Internet Of Things World:

Location: Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, USA

Date: May 14 – 17, 2018

Cost: Free event!

Funding Your Startup via ICO with Alexandra Damsker

Location: Nasdaq Entrepreneurial Center, San Fransisco, CA, USA

Date: 14th March 2018

Cost: Free Event!

Blockchain Expo

Location: Olympia, London, England

Date: 18th – 19th April 2018

Cost: Free Event!

These events are free to attend, but the vast majority do charge fees anywhere from $20 up to the tens of thousands of dollars per ticket.

Coinmarketcap have a huge list of pretty much every upcoming event there is. The 5 above were the only free ones we could find, but keep checking as new ones are added all the time. Click Here for full list

On average, the blockchain event tickets usually go for around $1000, with early bird discounts on offer, but for the average investor, $1000 may be a lot of money to spend on an event.

Cheap Bitcoin & Blockchain events 2018:

The below events are some of the cheapest upcoming bitcoin and blockchain events ones we could find.

Cryptocurrency World Expo:

Location: Berlin, Germany

Date: 21st-22nd March 2018

Cost: €129 (early bird deal)

Crypto Conference:

Location: Berlin, Germany

Date: 5th – 6th April 2018

Cost: €49 – €75

State of Digital Money:

Location: Los Angeles, USA 

Date: May 5th 2018

Cost: $195

Don’t forget to keep checking Coinmarketcap for more events as time goes on. We will try to keep you updated on more free and cheap events in the near future!

We hope to see you soon at a blockchain event soon!

 

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Blockchain Meets the Gaming Industry

Over the past year, we have witnessed a huge surge in the popularity of blockchain technology.

It has found its way into what feels like almost every nook and cranny of our society, and has already manage to revolutionize many of our everyday processes.

It’s no surprise that it’s making its way into one of the biggest industries in our society…the gaming industry.

 

The Boom in the Gaming Industry

As it stands, the gaming industry generates approximately $100 billion per year via microtransactions, game purchases, additional downloadable content, in-game advertising, and subscription services.

A whopping 80% of American households contain a device specifically to run video games, and more than 42% of Americans have stated that they spend at least three hours per week playing video games.

Opening the Door to Decentralized Gaming

The focus is on empowering both gamers and developers by removing middlemen and third parties from the process.

For fans, it will provide them with the opportunity to communicate directly with developers of games they love and form a deeper connection with people they admire.

Perhaps even more notably, the application will empower developers by providing them with the opportunity to crowdfund their game, thereby speeding up the development process.

The platform will even provide access to SDK developer tools designed to make the make game development easier than ever. As a result, almost anyone will be granted the ability to make a quality game that people will enjoy playing.

 

Shifting the Power Back to the Hands of Developers

Right now, most game companies take a large cut from developers in order to allow them to sell games on their platform.

Steam, for example, takes quite a substantial cut of 30%, leaving developers with only 70% of the revenue from their sales. For most companies – especially small indie developers who rely largely on the platform as a way to make money – this means a relatively large chunk of their revenue is lost completely. For many new companies, this can even drive them out of business.

By cutting out the middle man, a decentralized platform would take a significantly smaller transaction fee from game purchases, thereby letting them keep a larger percentage of the profits for their hard work.

There has also been a huge surge in the popularity of indie games over the past couple of years, with the release of breakthrough titles such as Fez and Minecraft that continue to rake in hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

However, raising capital for indie game projects is the #1 roadblock faced by developers creating new projects. The lack of funding is a major reason why many projects have been cancelled.

 

The Decentralized Game Store and Fundraising Platform

Game Protocol is one new blockchain-based game store that developers can use to sell their games and connect directly with their fans.

It is based on the Ethereum blockchain. As a result, all transactions are 100% transparent, and the system is virtually unhackable.

The team behind the platform includes a small group of game developers, along with gamers and fans, and blockchain and statistics experts. As a result, the application has been created with the needs of the developers at the forefront of the list of priorities.

Unlike many centralized gaming stores that often have ulterior motives that are driven by profit, Game Protocol will display games according to feedback from users. This will guarantee that the best games are displayed more prominently, providing an enhanced user experience and ensuring that the highest quality games get the most exposure.

Fans will also be able to partake in an active community that will allow them to give direct feedback to developers in order to help them to create the best games possible that people will enjoy.

 

A Huge Opportunity for Indie Developers

Decentralized gaming is definitely something to be excited about – especially for indie developers – and it could be here sooner than we’d thought.

We could be about to enter a brand new era of gaming that finally puts indie developers on a level playing field with gaming giants.

The result? Better leverage for smaller companies, and higher quality, more engaging content than ever before for their fans.

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PickioChain – Take Back Control Of Your Data

The use of blockchain is not limited to a finite amount of sectors, and as of late, an increasing amount of projects have cemented that notion further.

One of the latest entries in this segment is PickioChain, which aims to revolutionize personal data management by using blockchain technology.

PickioChain aims to offer these personal data management services to individuals who want to maintain a digital version of their personal data, so that it can be accessed remotely. The platform will help users share their personal information with targeted and relevant entities in a timely manner, while also ensuring that their information remains safe and secure.

 

What is the problem that it aims to solve?

The company points out that the way data is shared in today’s day and age makes it highly vulnerable to hacks, such as the widely reported Equifax hack in 2017, which saw the information of more than 143 million customers being stolen, including Social Security and driver’s license information. The data breach is termed as one of the worst instances in recent history, and its effects keep growing.

The other problem that PickioChain refers to is the lack of regulation over companies in terms of recording users’ personal data.

It seems that individuals have had enough and want to take back control of their data. Users all over the world are now asking for complete control over their own data, where they want complete freedom to make the choice of sharing or not sharing information with a company or its partners.  An example of which is the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), an European legislation – starting in May 2018 – that will allow users to remove their data from a company upon their discretion.

PickioChain also mentions how customers’ data is monetized without their express permission, where companies share it with their partners or within their own services to promote their offerings or model them according to user segmentation.

Furthermore, there are other inconveniences in this realm of data. Take for instance the way that personal data has to be shared on multiple sources in today’s day and age. It takes a lot of time for user to go through such procedures and processes– think about the last time that you had to sign up for something and all the information that you had to manually type out. How may times have you done so, Pickiochain is willing to bet that you’ve done so many times. You’ve signed up with bank accounts, various services, providers and institutions and had to continuously share the same information because there is no present streamlined way to do so.

By offering its solutions, PickioChain aims to resolve the many present problems in this space.

 

How will their solutions work?

By the usage of blockchain technology, PickioChain will ensure that its users’ data remains secure by using the utmost technological advances available. By the usage of decentralized solutions, PickioChain also aims to employ measures that will allow users to share their data when they want, and how they want it to be shared with specific parties, “selling” data where applicable.

Through the utilization of solutions such as verification proofs, PickioChain will be redefining how data is effectively maintained in a place that is controlled by no single company, and thus provides complete control to the owner of said data through its processing engine, MatchUpBox.

This will not just provide security and peace of mind, but ease of use and convenience too. PickioChain also aims to utilize the offered solutions in real world settings, where users could even store their medical records on the blockchain, which can then be accessed by any medical institution upon the users’ discretion, regardless of the location or the setting that either party comes from. This will ensure that proper care could be provided to patients who – due to any emergency – would be rendered unable to describe their past medical history themselves.

One more use case that PickioChain defines is how pre-verified data could be shared with parties that would otherwise need verification of such data, preventing the need to go through redundant steps. PickioChain suggests that if user data is already verified with relevant proof in the blockchain, then institutions such as banks might not need to verify it again, saving time and costs that arise due to such operations.

This verification model will also work towards enhancing the effectiveness of cryptocurrency settlements through smart contracts, where, organizations offering initial coin offerings (ICOs) through the platform will be able to back up their credibility through verified data, and also complete know your customer (KYC) procedures for these ICOs effectively. For this purpose, the PickioChain platform will be using its PikcioTokenSaleWallet (TSW), which is meant to facilitate easy execution and management of ICOs.

To summarize, PickioChain will provide solutions that allow users complete control over their data, and where organizations looking for such data could purchase it directly from users (where applicable). It will also allow businesses to trade and exchange their own data, while ensuring that users’ interests are not compromised. The added functionalities of ICOs with verified data, also add to the basic data management solutions from the platform.

The operations will be fueled by the network’s native token, PKC, currently available for purchase through its ICO.

 

Where does the project stand for now?

PickioChain has a team that brings together individuals with experience from different industries.

While its founder and CEO, Didier Collin de Casaubon, holds 15 years of experience in business and banking industry, one of its co-founders, Fabien Bucamp, who also serves as the company’s CTO, has worked at the French Department of Defense in its Network Security division. Its other co-founder, Jorick Lartigau, holds a PhD in Computer Science and is an expert in Data Security and Big Data algorithms.

The project has received funding of $3 million from NEO, another blockchain network.

PickioChain currently has its ICO running with a scheduled date of completion on March 31, 2018. It has a hard cap of $30 million for the ICO, where 36,009,716 (around 36 million) PKC will be distributed against a total token supply of 83,088,000 (around 83 million) PKC.

Learn more about the Pickiochain project

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Following Its $57.5 Million Investment, Uphold Acquires Cortex MCP for Mobile Payments

It seems that Uphold is very keen on using the investment amount of $57.5 million that it recently obtained from its funding round, since it has just acquired Cortex MCP, a secure mobile payments processor, as part of its expansion plans.

Uphold aims to utilize Cortex MCP’s mobile payment platform, using its existing wallet technology to build upon it and enhance it further for its own customers, so that it could provide safe, secure, and fast wallet services to the users of its cryptocurrency exchange platform.

As part of the acquisition, the cryptocurrency exchange will also own Cortex’s patent portfolio, an ability which will allow it to start working on new IP solutions that would focus on its own services ranging from verification to other blockchain-specific functions.

This would all lead towards Uphold’s expansion towards the mobile market, as more and more cryptocurrency exchanges are now focusing on providing solutions that prove to be more accessible to their users on the go.

Elaborating on the key points from the acquisition, Uphold mentioned that it will be utilizing collective technologies of its own and those of Cortex’s, to expand its operations to Mexico and Latin America, while also working on a new payments feature that would comprise of fiat and cryptocurrencies.

Uphold further mentioned that it will be using new digital verification functions and will work on ensuring that it provides top-notch security to its users.

It was also revealed that Cortex’s founder, Shaunt Sarkissian, will now spearhead Uphold’s payments team.

In a released statement, Sarkissian mentioned that this would certainly allow Uphold to expand as it planned since the firms’ collective technologies and infrastructure would bring together an unsurpassed level of service for its users.

“We are thrilled to be part of the Uphold team and journey, and look forward to the great things we will accomplish together.” He stated.

While Willian Dennings, Uphold’s COO, had similar comments.

He mentioned that the technologies which Cortex brings to the table, such as its “closed loop payment,” would greatly help in enhancing the functionality and security of Uphold’s own platform.

“It additionally brings new commercial offerings and opportunities to our enterprise division, Uphold Solutions.” He concluded.

Details of the previously obtained investment for Uphold

The investment of $57.5 million mentioned at the start of this post came to Uphold from Greg Kidd, who besides being an early investor in Twitter and Coinbase, also worked for Ripple as a chief risk officer for two years.

It had been reported at the time of the investment that Uphold will receive 20 percent of the investment in cash to be used for funding its own research operations.

This move seems like a part of that research and points towards Uphold’s focus to obtain its outlined objective, which is a very positive thing, as it shows that the Uphold team is on track and might prove to be very capable in the future at the level that it is aiming to play with bigger exchanges.

All in all, it spells good news for the cryptocurrency community, as healthy competition between cryptocurrency exchanges could very well mean better services for their customers.

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Ethereum Governance Is a Hot Topic Once Again, Vitalik Buterin Shares His Stance

The cryptocurrency industry grew exponentially within the last year, but those who had been associated with it for a few more years would remember the infamous DAO incident, of how it led to a heated debate within the then-green Ethereum community, and how it led to a hard fork of Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.

The hard fork allowed users affected from DAO to get their funds back, and those who supported this action went to Ethereum, while those users who were against it went to Ethereum Classic.

Since then, Ethereum’s governance has been quite peaceful under the leadership of Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders who also spearhead’s the development team of Ethereum.

However, it seems that the peace is getting disturbed.

Welcome EIP 867

Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 867, a proposed code change, will allow any users who have lost their funds to theft, code errors, or any other possibility due to which they have lost access of their funds without their consent, to submit a retrieval request to Ethereum Foundation developers, who could then look into the request and start working on retrieving the lost or stolen funds for the user.

The concept seems eerily familiar to the DAO incident once again, as it asks for developer actions to retrieve lost funds.

While this would seem simple enough to pass considering Ethereum’s decision in the past about such an incident, people who are against the proposed code change think that this does not only constitutes as a bailout but violates the very concept of cryptocurrencies by involving a mediator in case of a transaction gone wrong.

 Propagators of the bill present the community’s stance by mentioning that the decision had actually been taken when DAO ICO happened, and the people who were not in favor of the principle of returning lost funds should go to Ethereum Classic.

It has been almost a month since the recovery proposal had been submitted, and since then, the threads for Ethereum on almost all platforms are ridden with passionate comments about the issue. The debate has grown heated to the point where intense words are freely used, but the team of Ethereum developers has not been able to reach an agreement.

Buterin and other core developers are not unaware of how crucial this decision will be for the community, with Buterin tweeting a link to the EIP to draw attention towards it.

“To those who thought that the DAO fork set an unbounded slippery slope and lasting precedent, I encourage you to see the reactions on this thread.” He wrote.

The EIP is still in its “draft” mode and has not been merged or implemented, but it has started having tangible effects on the Ethereum team structure while still being in stages of discussion.

Due to the EIP and the changes it proposed, one core developer on the EIP team left to work in another capacity within the platform, citing risk management regarding not wanting to be liable for potentially breaking the law.

What is the way forward from here?

Speaking to the team of core developers, Buterin mentioned that the draft would remain under consideration for now. It was further mentioned that it has neither been approved nor denied.

However, seeing the influence that this change embodies, other drafts are also being considered to be merged under EIP 867 to address the concerns of all users.

Once such draft is the Immutability Enforcement Proposal, which would allow a standard set of conditions to be followed when fund retrieval proposals are submitted, this would allow the developers to follow standardized steps when processing these requests.

That being said, the picture remains unclear, and the debate continues to grow.

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Eidoo: a New Cryptocurrency Exchange and Wallet

The ever-growing nature of the cryptocurrency industry has allowed new coins, ventures, business models, and opportunities to be introduced every other day.

While some of them offer ambitious features that they have yet to develop to be used tangibly, others kept their offerings simple yet directed at real-world usage, for functionalities that are very clearly required by the everyday user.

One such fairly new business comes in the form of Eidoo, which aims to establish itself as the “blockchain-to-human” interface to help and facilitate new users of the cryptocurrency world that do not know about the backend of cryptocurrencies, but who appreciate this new financial phenomenon and want to be a part of it.

By providing a slew of services, including cryptocurrency exchange functionalities and wallet facilities, Eidoo aims to develop a one-stop shop not only for such new users but also for those proficient and established users that want to benefit from an easy to use platform while performing their everyday tasks.

To achieve that goal, Eidoo intends to operate as an integrator of technologies to allow its users to benefit from a never seen before experience. Building upon that notion, the platform will utilize technologies from two of the most famous and effective cryptocurrency platforms, Bitcoin and Ethereum, and aims to improve upon the collective functions that these entities bring to the table.

The Eidoo platform intends to be operated optimally through mobile devices to provide the utmost accessibility to its target users so that they can utilize the platform’s cryptocurrency exchange services right from their phones.

The cryptocurrency exchange which Eidoo intends to run will leverage from the security and safety of a blockchain network without the added requirements of accessing one in its conventional setting. Through its mobile platform, Eidoo aims to make the process of accessing blockchain to be as easy as opening a regular app on your phone.

Among other cryptocurrencies, the cryptocurrency exchange will also allow cross-trading between Ethereum and multiple ERC20 tokens, translating to what it calls an “atomic outcome.”

Whereas, Eidoo’s wallet services will provide storage for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and all ERC20 tokens that will be accessible from any users’ phone. The wallet does not need a full node and assures its users that their private keys will remain encrypted through the app.

Along with those features, Eidoo aims to revolutionize the process of cryptocurrency trading by allowing artificial intelligence (AI) suggestions to its users to invest and trade in cryptocurrencies. For this feature, Eidoo has joined hands with ORS SA, the Swiss branch of leading AI company ORS Group. Through the AI protocol which is dubbed as “Hypersmart Contract,” Eidoo aims to provide its users with unbiased, analytical and logical advice.

By its practical yet much-needed offerings, Eidoo aims to become one of the primary platforms of accessibility to blockchain functionalities. With over 200,000 worldwide downloads of its app, it seems that the company is well on its way to achieving its plans of doing so. However, it remains to be seen how well the company can do in a year or two when it faces strong competition from other companies of the same stature and functionalities.

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Comparing Bitcoin to Ethereum Is Like Comparing Apples to Oranges

While the cryptocurrency industry is being held witness to tens of new cryptocurrencies every week, it is getting harder and harder for even a seasoned cryptocurrency user to keep track of all the new names that keep cropping up from this financial market.

That is why, when you ask an everyday cryptocurrency user about the top 10 cryptocurrencies by usage or market value, you will get varied answers according to the best of their knowledge.

However, two names will remain constant and will always be integral to that list (at least in the present), regardless of their fluctuation or their current market conditions.

You guessed it. Bitcoin and Ethereum. Two names that will remain synonymous with cryptocurrencies to almost everyone.

But then the question of the “better” cryptocurrency pops up, and many users are not able to decide how to pit the two against each other.

They are not at fault either, since the comparison itself is not between two parallels. It is between two networks that seem similar at first glance, but which actually are not.

While both of them operate as functional, high value cryptocurrencies at the surface while also ensuring that they maintain competition between each other, deep down, they serve different purposes, so comparing Bitcoin and Ethereum would mean that one is comparing apples to oranges.

Bitcoin’s apparent functionalities and purpose

Created by Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin came to surface in 2009 as the first “cryptocurrency” of the world. It utilized the concept of blockchain and brought it to life in a never seen before manner with any technology.

Marketed as a means of “digital cash” that would break the barriers of conventional currency and would allow cross-border peer-to-peer transactions, the concept gradually yet certainly started to grab the attention that it wanted.

Furthermore, with the high level security, transparency, and usability that it provided, Bitcoin went on to become an invention that garnered the interest of other developers and similar minds from all over the world and opened doors to a whole new aspect of innovation, which in its evolved form would go on to become the cryptocurrency industry that we have all grown so passionate about.

One such product of that innovation was Ethereum itself.

How is ethereum different than bitcoin

Developed by Vitalik Buterin and others, Ethereum was launched in 2015. Unlike Bitcoin, its primary purpose was not to serve as a means of “digital cash,” but to provide a platform to allow more use cases of blockchain through its  Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

The platform allowed its users to create their own coins through its blockchain. This particular functionality holds the most important part of the current cryptocurrency climate: most of the new coins that we know are created on the Ethereum platform.

Ethereum also introduced the functionality of smart contracts, which are used by several non-cryptocurrency based blockchain platforms.

Therefore, Ethereum established itself as not just a cryptocurrency, but a platform which happened to have its own cryptocurrency.

So they are different? What makes them complement each other?

Ethereum did for new cryptocurrencies what Bitcoin did for Ethereum.

Both cryptocurrencies, while differing largely in their purpose, introduced possibilities for innovation that had not been covered by anyone before them. This is one of the most similar aspects of both networks.

Furthermore, while Bitcoin holds its distinction as the prime cryptocurrency with a value like no other and is thus considered an asset, Ethereum does not only serve as a cryptocurrency – with about tenth the value of Bitcoin at press time – but also provides its own development platform.

Both networks in their own right serve different purposes. While it is easy to label both of them as just cryptocurrency platforms and pit them against each other, it is important to remember that they are both serving a different purpose with their focus set on different offerings.

In addition to both networks resolving their scaling issues, where Bitcoin aims to develop more as a cryptocurrency with lower transaction times and costs, Ethereum is aiming to revolutionize the financial world in various ways, one of these ways is through initial coin offerings (ICOs).

With the rumored and some planned updates of side chains and interconnectivity, if both platforms can integrate within each other in some manner, then it will allow further development possibilities where Ethereum could benefit from Bitcoin’s network, with Bitcoin benefitting from Ethereum’s innovation capabilities.

In the world of technology and especially in this niche of cryptocurrencies, healthy competition is necessary, especially when it comes to cryptocurrencies that have different purposes set at their core. The same holds true in this case.

While they can be compared to an extent to maintain competition as cryptocurrencies, a fair comparison could have only been possible if they served the same purpose at their networks’ end as well.

Furthermore, as with most technological innovations, the parallel success of both of these giants is integral to provide better end services to their users (take Apple and Samsung as an example, or IBM and Microsoft for their enterprise solutions). Therefore,  one should be encouraging competition between them rather than comparing for comparison’s sake and bringing one of them down.

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