Bullish World Blockchain Roadshow in Amsterdam Hit by Bears.

The World Blockchain Roadshow – for some reason all the blockchain and crypto events are currently called “World Blockchain” and then something – in Amsterdam at September 5 was still packed. Despite the slump in annual ICO token returns to -4% in Q2-2018 and the decreasing quality of ICOs in terms of success rate, as Kilian Krings reported in the most interesting presentation of the event organized by IDACB.
It will not get better in the near term: the very same day of the event, the bitcoin took another major hit of -12% to below $6500 at the time of writing this post, with some popular altcoins like Ethereum and Bitcoin Cash suffering  24 hours decreases of around -20% even. The crypto market is still a bear market, and there are no signs of bulls returning. Some market analysts expect the bitcoin now to fall soon below $6000.

Bullish ICOs still lining up despite the Bears

Despite hardly any recent ICO being able to list its token on a major exchange – only a few percent make that happen – there were still plenty of ICOs lining up to present their tokens for more or less unproven solutions to the market. It feels a bit weird, as major ICO quality concerns are still not fixed: Is there a real and registered business to invest in? Why do window dressing with famous advisors who are not really involved in the project execution? Is there a MVP (minimum viable product) that is able to generate traction and business? Can some real shareholder rights be attached to a token, and is there a regulatory approval or exempt acquired? Why would we need the new token to begin with? Is there proof of any of the -often false or over-optimistic – claims made by the founders?

DLT is here to stay

Nevertheless, the industry expects that Distributed Ledger Tech (DLT) – of which blockchain is one eye-catching example – is here to stay. The current crisis in the crypto and blockchain market leads to a healthy clean up, after which the most fitting DLT solutions will survive and thrive. Major scalability issues like transaction cost and speed will need to be resolved by mainstream DLT and blockchain platforms, before the technology platforms will be adopted by serious businesses. We can be long-term optimistic about that.

Martijn Hoogeveen

Founder and CEO of Icecat NV. Investor. Ph.D.