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20190518-criptolatinfest-bogota-colombia.md

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Cripto Latin Fest in Bogotá, Colombia

Report by @elian.

Info:

Decred presence:

  • attendees: @elian

Swag:

  • 5 T-shirts
  • 3 tote bags

Overall experience

This was the second edition of CriptoLatinFest, this is the biggest crypto event in Colombia. There were around 300 attendees, the majority of which were new cryptocurrency users. The audience was in general new to crypto and the target of the event was to make an entry level conversation into the characteristics of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. It is notable that the Colombian industry is very new and because of this the level of the conversation is very low. Unfortunately, there has been a major number of scams, pyramid and multi level marketing schemes that have used the buzzwords of crypto and blockchain to steal from thousands of people in the country. Particularly in 2017, the number and size of these scams was such that the general public now has a very bad perception of Bitcoin and crypto in general. In this sense, all the efforts to make quality content is appreciated by the crypto professionals in Colombia and Decred was mentioned by many as one of the presentations with the highest quality.

Overall, the industry in Colombia is new and unexperienced, there are just a handful of exchanges with minimum volume and lacking operations. The major source of trading is localbitcoins. In terms of regulation Colombia does not have any laws that allow entrepreneurs to start business in a regulated fashion. There are new initiatives that are looking forward to create legal frameworks to prevent fraud and allow business to operate. As mentioned before, these circumstances have led to a proliferation of scams using the buzzwords of crypto and blockchain. Nonetheless, the efforts to build a legitimate industry and to create synergies with the rest of the countries in the region are clear.

The only projects on CoinMarketCap that were present in the event were Decred, Dash and NEM. Some of the high level contacts that were present are Pedro Gutierrez from NEM Latam, George Conelly from Dash Latam, Felipe Vazquez OTC Director Latam from Kraken, Dwayne Golden Jr CEO of Coinlogiq Crypto ATMs, Lawrence Wolff from ShellPay, Jose Rodriguez Payments VP from Bitso and David Yao director of Blockchain Land at Talent Land.

The comments I got from people in the crowd is that Decred's presentation was one of the best. The majority of the companies that assisted to the event took the stage to sell their products or services. We differentiate from the rest of the companies in that we don't need to sell stuff but to present innovative ideas that I think raised the quality of the event. Overall the presence of Decred was important because I can say we were, next to Dash and NEM, the only projects with international presence, listed in all the major exchanges and on the top 100 of CoinMarketCap. I do see a case in which our presence raised the bar and the standards of what is considered cryptocurrencies and what is vaporware.

From an audience point of view it is noticeable that people want to know about prices and returns of investment more than technology. It is interesting that the quality of the discourse is the opposite from Argentina, where they are interested in the technology behind more than in price fluctuation. I think this is a sign of the immaturity of the industry and the market. I made a clear case to differentiate price and value, and invited people to not get fooled by price, which is a reflection of the manipulative forces of the market, and rather to focus on value, which is the core technology fundamentals behind any cryptocurrency project. I think that Decred's presence raised the criteria of the audience to identify cryptocurrency projects from other sorts of schemes that are taking advantage of the novelty of the technology to run scams or pyramid schemes.

Media

News coverage:

Videos:

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