#24 Monday Night Konsensus: Constructive Disagreement (Presenting Blockchain Summit 2018)

Yeah, hi, I'm Markus Lehtonen, and the blockchain scenery in Finland isn't too big. We started Blockchain Forum like year and a half ago. Actually, we went in December 2017 first live. And we have been teaching blockchain topics. We have regularly, once a month, monthly meetings. And after doing this like 5 months, we decided, or we got together with ConsenSys and other ones, from which we tell more. My background is, I am an industry man, and strongly in information security. I'm running information security business, as well as being within DigiRockstars, like in Blockstream,

Awesome, thank you, Markus. And yeah, like I said in the beginning, we are planning a major event that's going to be the biggest event in Finland so far in blockchain and Bitcoin, and we have some of the panelists here planned for that. I think we are— we can publish the program today as well, later, but Max, you're gonna be one of the stars of the show, so to speak. Why don't you tell everybody— well, I think everybody, all our viewers already know who you are, so why don't you just tell what do you think about this kind of thing? I would say you're a Bitcoin maximalist, so how come you are working together with these old world people and going to the same exhibition to actually talk about Bitcoin blockchain? How does that feel and do you think it's gonna be beneficial?

Oh, absolutely. It will be tremendously beneficial. The term Bitcoin maximalism, to me, doesn't really depict exactly what I think Bitcoin maximalism stands for, which is just a fundamental understanding of the importance of sound money and the importance of having a truly free and libre money which can be used by individual and is not being inflated away from him. And that is what Bitcoin is fundamentally all about— individual power, right? Run a Bitcoin full node and don't get your money inflated away from you. And you also have to realize, though, that this is 100% about competition. Bitcoin is open source, so we want and we need to try as many different approaches towards achieving this goal as possible. So I'm all for the competition and different protocols competing, because only when we have variance, when we have anarchy in money, only then can we truly realize our goal of having a sound money. So competition and discussion and debate is fundamentally important.

Yeah, well said. Couldn't agree more. We also have Mikko Alasarella. AI expert who's been on my show as well a couple times in Finnish though. Mikko, are you still with us? Can you hear me well? Yes, we can hear you, but your picture is frozen. Yeah, same question. You are also scheduled to appear on the stage, which is awesome. We're going to be talking about evolution of money and technology, and AI is a big part of that as well. What do you think about this upcoming event? Are you excited?

Of course. Yeah, so my forte is definitely the cross-link of artificial intelligence and blockchains because, of course, I'm running this company, Inbott, that is in the crossroads of artificial intelligence and blockchains. So now what I see as the thing that specifically also relates to To my current quest of changing the tax laws in Finland regarding blockchains and cryptocurrencies, it's related to the fact that in the future when we see the artificial intelligence gain more powers, it can be implemented as autonomous economic agents that are basically running a lot of different variants of businesses on the background. They actually will require something like cryptocurrencies and blockchains to be able to function because Fundamentally, using fiat currencies usually always requires some kind of human contract in the middle. And AI is able to get us further from that. And I actually made the prediction in 2017 that by the end of 2020, we will see the first company go from zero to a billion in less than a week. And that was related to my thinking that a combination of powerful algorithms with the Tokenized APIs on the blockchains will enable us to create companies that autonomously harvest value from all over the world in a very rapid succession that defies human understanding. But that's my starting point and viewpoint of the whole cryptocurrency blockchain topic.

Yeah, that is awesome. I love to hear people talk about AI, and Niko is definitely one of those guys. And Elon Musk is another one of those guys. You guys, if you didn't watch his interview with Joe Rogan, you should. It was pretty amazing. Without going more off topic, what about— you mentioned about lobbying, which I'm glad you brought it up because thank you so much for doing that. You've been doing great work forever, and that's precisely one of the one of the things that can result in this kind of like cross-platform cooperation and cross-ideology cooperation, because we all can benefit from beneficial regulation. So that's definitely something bridging for all.

Actually, I would like to insert one thing about this. So when I started blogging about this topic of cryptocurrency taxation and virtual currency taxation in Finland, There was a lot of skeptics saying that it's a complete waste of time, nothing will change, and people will— the government will not understand, and the bureaucrats will not have any idea how this works, and it's not going to go anywhere. I just blogged about it. And then if I look at what has happened since I wrote about the topics, a lot of those blogs that I made on different social media platforms have been shared to tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. And then I've been approached initially by one of the members of parliament who actually made a written question to the cabinet about this topic, which was, of course, swiftly dismissed. But then the tax administration approached and asked me to put together a consortium to visit them to explain to them what went wrong. We had that meeting on September 17th. And I think it was a very constructive and good discussion. And then I was approached by the Committee for the Future of the Parliament on drafting a statement about this topic so that they can actually start fixing the legislation. So I think I'm actually quite optimistic that there's enough interest and enough understanding building up currently in the government that they are actually going to do the right thing. And hopefully it happens fast enough. So yeah, I mean, sometimes it does matter that you speak up. And you express your voices. It doesn't help if you just keep complaining on the forums that these bureaucrats are stupid. I mean, that will get you absolutely nowhere. It's better to talk and constructively create this conversation and try to work things out.

Well, you certainly made a believer out of me. I didn't think it will move at all that fast, and I'm positively surprised as well. And kudos for you for sticking it up, and definitely we're going to help you any way we can. And yeah, good work on that. But more about this lobbying thing and stuff, so the rest of the panel, Jussi, why don't you tell everybody what's your angle?

Yeah, sure. So nice to be here in this kind of a very great company. So my name is Jussi Simolin. I have a teacher background, 17 years in big corporations like Nokia and Airbus, and now 3 years as a startup entrepreneur. And my take on this blockchain is like a normal person. So I represent the people, the vast majority of the people that really do not know so much about the blockchain. So I'm here mainly on the interest in blockchain. But then from the, let's say, from the citizen point of view or from normal person point of view, and my ideal situation would be that there is enough education of different kinds so that people would have the awareness and interest related to blockchain as a positive thing and through that make a breakthrough. All

right, so we have one more Mikko on the panel. Go ahead and let everybody know who you are, what do you do?

Yeah, thanks for this opportunity and great company here. My name is Mikko Valiokka and I work currently on software development, software architect, but my another area is education. I set up a blockchain workshop for programmers near 2 years ago, and since then I've been not only volunteering Blockchain Forum Association a little bit, but giving lectures especially for finance industry about blockchain and speaking for blockchain and working on blockchain enlightenment. Yeah, thank you.

Blockchain enlightenment, I really like that term. That's That's fantastic. I'm going to put that on my LinkedIn profile as well, Blockchain or Bitcoin Enlightenment. Yeah, this is the crowd, people. This is basically the Finnish Blockchain Alliance you're watching right now. And if you like the idea what we're doing here, please like and subscribe to the channel, and we're gonna try and make more videos together if Markus and the gang are willing. Well, we certainly enjoy talking on camera about these things. And yeah, hopefully we can get the production quality up a little bit. I'm sorry about the choppy images. It looks like my internet connection is not handling the 6-person panel super well. So that's something to keep in mind. I hope you can hear the sound well. If not, then maybe we can try to cut the images or the videos or something. But for now, it seems like the sound is fine. So we're just going to continue like this. Yeah, let me just tell you, I'm super excited to work with you guys and we can get a lot of leverage from this kind of, for example, consensus. Our association is quite small and quite grassroots and we work mostly with the entry-level people, the regular people like what Jussi said that he represents. And whereas the bigger guys here in this panel work with the big corporations and financial institutions and banks, and we can kind of like— the leverage splashes over onto us, and we get to also present our points of view. And we've had this kind of like a 3-jump, 3 leaps forward kind of campaign in Finland, a lobbying campaign that we've been targeting reporters and politicians and people of influence and basically try to let them know how the startups of the scene are escaping, not only escaping Finland, but also we're not luring any new startups in here, and that's obviously a very bad thing in the long run. So that's one thing that we're trying to do here, and to that end, I think there's been enough teasing about the the Blockchain Summit. So I think we're gonna just go ahead and publish it here and, and talk a little bit about what we're gonna talk there. Are you guys okay with that? Should we publish it right now?

Yeah, I think that's okay. I would still like to jump a little bit into the Mikko's thing that, that we really did a big tournament after second jump and went and visited all the state offices, you could really say all of them, and with the tax authorities as well, that we are still ongoing negotiations because we still have a chance to have 3 additional days as a hackathon within this summit. The summit is the 2-day summit, the 21st and 22nd November. But it would be priorities if we get the finances together. And the topic is like the world's or Europe's best regulatory framework for blockchain. And cryptos inclusive ICOs, and it looks still that we have a chance, and we'll be reporting from this that if we get the hackathon together, so it would change our summit instead being like three days. It's a five-day event, and there is then much more to report. But still, there is plenty of report in the from the two days now that. So I hand it over to you, Niko.

Great additions. Thank you, Markus, and thank you really truly for putting in the effort to put up this event. We've been just merely helping with the program. And yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and— hold on, I'll share the screen if I can. Now you should be able to see it. If you can't see it, let me know in the chat. So this is a rough outline. It's not the times are not finalized, but the structure should be pretty much that. And this is mind you, this is the second day. I did not. I do not have the first day program here. I can of course pull it up from Marcus's website if if you want Marcus. But for now, we're just going to focus on the part that we are doing together, kind of like a Finnish Blockchain Alliance. So we have Helsinki Hall, which is going to be manned by ConsenSys Power. And also I'm happy to say that ConsenSys has secured Henri Prata from Prosos. He's going to be talking about future money. So that's going to be super exciting. So if you don't know who Henri Prata is, he's not only in Finland but in the world one of the first Bitcoin entrepreneurs. So definitely somebody who is in the know of, of this kind of digital money. So very happy to have him there. We also have Max talking about Bitcoin as the most successful blockchain, or is it such?

Well, I don't think, I don't think you can shut me up about talking about Bitcoin. So of course that is something that, that I will talk about at the conference as well. And I'm really grateful to get this opportunity because it is quite an important topic. Because yes, there are other applications for decentralized and distributed databases, and especially decentralized and distributed organizations, right? Starfish organizations. And there's a lot of integration here that can be done. But nevertheless, Bitcoin, as Niko said, is just super successful. It's working. And I I use it every day and it is perfectly, incredibly well and good money and many opportunities here. So it absolutely deserves a spot on this already really good conference.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for the addition. And maybe you can see there's kind of a theme towards the end of the second day. We start with Max's talk. about Bitcoin and if it's really the most successful blockchain. Maybe you can guess the answer to that, in our opinion, of course. Then we go into Future Money, which is probably going to be a kind of Bitcoin-ish talk by Henry Prater, and then we are going to cement the whole thing with the Sound Money panel, which is what Max mentioned earlier. I'm gonna be moderating that myself. And hopefully— I didn't get a confirmation from Mikko, I'm sorry, your name is still there— but hopefully you will be there, Max will be there, Henry will be there, Raphael will be there, you know, from ConsenSys Network, James here, and a surprise participant which we're not going to disclose right now. So super excited about that, that's gonna be super interesting. We're also gonna have some hands-on stuff here. So after the launch, we're gonna have a dApp, decentralized application workshop run by Alexi Melder, who is the founder of Weeconomy and lead developer at Blockfish and NX Solar. And he's probably going to demo the Weeconomy dApp there. Hopefully we'll be ready by then, and that's gonna be super exciting to see how it works. And at the same time, we're going to have their wallet workshop run by Anton Razanen, who is a board member of ConsenSys, very knowledgeable Bitcoin OG and very knowledgeable with the wallet technology and security technology. So he's going to— I don't know exactly what it's going to entail, but you'll have to ask him. Probably going to be interesting, and you're likely going to learn how to use hardware wallet securely. So definitely something interesting to check out. We also have the, of course, Mikko, like I mentioned, talking about AI and the Internet of Things. He's on the consensus side because he's been also working on other consensus things, and we felt like it fit the theme here. Mikko, do you want to say a couple things about your

Yeah, so I kind of already gave a short introduction when I introduced myself to this topic of multi-agent AIs and autonomous economic agents. Yeah, yeah. That's going to be definitely my main topic, and that actually directly relates to the IoT stuff as well, because when we go into these self-driving cars and all these other autonomous agents going around, we need to have an active for these things to transact with the outside world. And already today, we see many of these car companies and other players in the industry figuring out means of doing these transactions using blockchain. So yeah, it's going to be exciting. And well, let's put it this way, humanity will not be prepared for this.

Yeah, I think we can all agree on that. So yeah, and today is gonna be kicked off by me. I'm gonna kind of host the Helsinki hall for the day, and I'm gonna start by talking about starfish and spider organizations, which is one of my favorite topics. Of course, decentralized organization models, flat organizations, stuff like that. Giving some examples, like I mentioned NX Solar. I always talk about those projects, Weconomy. Blockfish, basically companies that everybody is on the same page from their free will. No massive hierarchy or anything like that, just people building stuff. So that's gonna be probably something interesting to see. I'm gonna just finish up my spiel by reading the description for the day 2. So the day 2 is gonna be, at least the Helsinki hall, is gonna be the Anarchy, money, and technology. The second day in Helsinki Hall is all about evolution of technology and money. Learn what's a starfish organization, digital sound money, and how decentralization can shape the future. Those crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do. So I hope that reference is not lost to anybody, but I feel like this is great because we need to think differently. We need to take risks and try things, and this is precisely what what the Consensus Program part is about. And now I would like to give Markus the chance to talk about the other side, so the proverbial coin, so to speak.

Yeah, actually I go still one step more back. Like, there are 2 days And the first day is kind of the corporate day, and this is now within the second day. And like—

Would you like me to pull up the first day program for you?

Yeah, actually it would be maybe good.

Yeah, I'll do that.

Bring kind of the total scope that we see a little bit that We want to kind of engage all the forces in Finland, that we have like 3 halls. The first main hall will be, is called Nordic Hall. Then we have an Industry Hall, and those are more Finnish internal business. But we have as well an East Gateway Hall that is bringing us visitors. It will be Russian-speaking hall, this East Gateway Hall, and we really have great speakers in In the first day, as well opening like the the thing that we want to show Finland like as a better place that so far Finland hasn't been taking any stance on like in the European market or in the global market though we have a Quite good geopolitical place here, and we are quite certain the soup what we are boiling here together that that will come into the attention of the in in Finland that as well the whole thing and idea why we did this event was as well that this is prior to the. European Community, the Finland is the chair from the 1st of 7th, 2019. And we still have good time before that to make a big change here in the, within the Finnish decision makers and in Finnish publics. Mind that that here is something really worthwhile to to take closer look, and I'm quite certain that that the recent days have really shown this that this is happening. Yeah, so the first day is corporate day, and you can find the full program and. All the presenters from there, and they speak to themselves.

Sorry, I'm still Marcos looking for the for the program. I couldn't find it, so just keep talking. I'll find it for you.

Yeah. Sorry, sorry. May I interrupt? Please check Blockchain Forum EU.

Yeah, that's a possibility too, that to dig it out from there. But to like to the— what you can read from the papers and what we could really do a little bit value add is kind of to talk on top of that to describe the events a bit. Well, there is a lot of things happening behind the scenes, and it is this orchestrating that, that what we do for the legislation with this hackathon thing, why we have like this East Gateway event, that what kind of design. I can just like tell that it will lead to the second day that, that we are The second day, there is as well this Helsinki Hall, and we'll be expecting a lot of startups starting in Helsinki. And we are kind of showing the current situation in 57 days when this all starts to happen. So, I can guarantee there is plenty of things really Big news around and within this week. So I think and hope, Nico, we can concentrate as well a little bit to to how to engage people to this event as well. That that what what chances we have to that that. How to really to have the community, like, maybe as well present still once more. We could do one, one more happening as well, and with live audience as well, that, that's up to you to decide. But, I think there is a great substance here that, that's what we can share. And from my point, I could hand it over that it's not me talking too much.

No, that's great. And yeah, sorry I took so long to find the actual program, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna definitely drop the links in the description. This is just out today, so it's brand new, and, and some of the scheduling and the websites maybe not working perfectly yet, but bear with us. And, and definitely, like Markus said, it's a great opportunity for all of us to get more exposure. So if you know anybody who might be interested in something like more traditional financial technology, maybe this is their gateway to the actual blockchain world. And this is our way to give the best possible education to people who are interested in that and maybe don't fully yet understand all the possibilities. And on the other hand, also to lure the people who in the first place weren't thinking about necessarily to get into blockchain but are interested in technology and finances. So this, I feel like for the day one, that would be a crucial part of the audience. What do you guys think? Just feel free to jump in.

Yeah, so the blockchain event in itself is one thing. The conversation in general about these topics is another thing. And, you know, and I think there's still a little bit too much thinking among the crypto enthusiasts that they should stay silent and in the background, you know, and not even expose their identities to the public, which kind of doesn't help if you're trying to bring awareness to these kind of topics. I realized that just by opening my mouth, there's a lot of people who are willing to listen what I have to say. And then I haven't been in blockchain nearly as long as many of you guys. I started like 1.5 years ago.

That was about the same as me. So I think a lot of us are rather new. I think maybe from this group, Max has been the longest. But Max, you haven't been that long in Bitcoin either, have you?

Oh, no, not really. Quite recently, actually. It's been only 2016, early 2016. That's when I first fell down the rabbit hole, after finally watching my first video by Andreas Antonopoulos, who really kicked me down the rabbit hole. And I fell down hard. And, you know, Bitcoin doesn't move in human time, it moves in block time. Block time is like 7 times, 10 times faster. And so this is just— yeah, you learn quite a lot in quite a short period of time if you want to, if you want to dedicate your human ingenuity to this problem. The problem of sound money and this distributed organization. So doing this is a lot of fun and definitely a wild ride.

Yeah, absolutely. This goes to show that, you know, if you want to do something, you can do something. You can do anything. If you go to ConsenSys Network YouTube channel, for example, there's a video called Short History of Cryptocurrency in Eight Minutes. That's that's made by a guy who's been in in in cryptocurrencies for two or three months, and it's a very knowledgeable, a very good video. I really really like that. So if you want to do something, you just need to start with whatever you have, whatever you know, and then just keep accumulating. And if it's something you really like, like this is for us, it doesn't feel like. work. Not really. This feels like we are on a mission, and that's precisely what we are doing here. So as long as we get to talk about Bitcoin and freedom and all those good things, then I guess we will be satisfied. But

since this podcast was about the disagreements and other things, so I'm definitely the kind of camp that thinks that Bitcoin's only reason of having its value is its gateway status for the other cryptos. So, so I'm happy to present this viewpoint, like, like I said, I say, uh, how do I say, like the contrarian viewpoint to this, uh, Bitcoin maximalist group.

Yeah, I was, I was actually going to fish for that, but yeah, thank you for bringing it up. Yeah, yeah, this is, this is great because there's like, there's no real answer, there's no true answer to any of these things. This is—

So, so my, my thesis is this, and you know, this is like a, like a regarding this topic is that the utility of the virtual currencies or cryptocurrencies in this case is dependent on the adoption of the currency in the first place. So how many people have been adopting it and then its use cases. So Bitcoin without the use case of being the main gateway currency to cryptos and the trading currency against which all of the other cryptocurrencies are being traded Will not have the value that it has today. That's my that's my theory, and of course the fact that that lots of the ETF funds are coming into play, and you know, and making creating like this kind of like external funds for Bitcoin as well will help the trading volumes as well. And you know, as long as those trading volumes are going to keep up, you know, I think the Bitcoin is going to stay and then have value. Once they go down, if they go down, I mean, I'm sure they may never go down, but you know, if if they go down, I think the value of Bitcoin will go down with it. So, I'll let the Bitcoin guys offer other opinions, but that's mine.

Max, you want to jump in?

Well, the ETF is definitely interesting, right? We're trying to intermingle now the old system with the new system. I'm curious to see how or if it is going to work out. I personally don't think it's too interesting. It is absolutely— it is interesting, but there's so much cool stuff going on in Bitcoin that, you know, I can barely keep up with the interesting stuff. And, you know, the old financial system, it's cool, but I like Bitcoin. So I'm much more excited for stuff like the Lightning Network or like, you know, more privacy, more fungibility, or, you know, just scaling improvements. That is going to be amazing. What is

I would like to go into this Lightning Network thingy. Like, so we implement— just implemented our currency on Stellar blockchain, and I've been doing a few transactions with Stellar, and, you know, it's been between 3 and 5 seconds confirmation time for all of those transactions. It feels like using a credit card, you know, it's pretty much the same experience. And when you have these kind of experiences and you realize that this actually is what you can do, on a regular basis, transferring assets from asset to other without any kind of external sidechain structures or this kind of settlement layers. It just feels that, you know, this should be the way it is. So Lightning Network is definitely an improvement, but it's not a solution for ultimately long-term use cases, in my opinion. But yeah, it does help.

But is it really a goal to be like a credit card? You know, is that something to strive for, that we have a centralized channel of payment or 2 channels of payment that we have to rely on?

Absolutely. So, so in the autonomous economic agents are doing transactions with computers, actually the speed of transaction does matter a lot because, because if you want to do transactions from, let's say, self-driving car and some other places, you want to have it a very lightweight transaction and with almost zero cost of doing the transaction. It's a very important part of those kind of economies.

If I can jump in as a granddad here, that we have been 8 years following already from the information security point of view, like what does this phenomenon blockchain do? And it does a lot of things. And yeah, we talk a lot now from the money angle, but like Like Mikko described there as well, there are really big changes coming in the all supply chains and all the things that the the strongest thing is here that that in the history of IT with the Bitcoin you can guarantee now that the integrity of the data stays. So that is like something that makes. Things work differently than earlier, and now we start to see. And in this our event, we will bring the big picture. That's why from the corporates that have already done that, what they have done, what kind of picture, and how, for example, there in Finland, steel companies produce 380 million business-to-business invoices to each others. And their average price is 65 euros. And when this stuff starts to be automated now, and we'll see in the event like steps to go to this direction and what will happen. It will happen like half of those people that work to create those bills now in offices. So there is a big change and we would want to look big change as well in the regulatory framework as well, that from which end and which way it starts to unveil this whole thing that of future, that what the blockchain changes in for the future. And this is kind of the big picture that hopefully people don't miss it, that we still can keep a clear understanding to this big picture as well. And that's why we have kind of like these 30 people or 28 people so far that are presenting their angle. And so, but just wanted to bring this angle here as well.

Yeah, that is a good point, the transactions between corporations or within a big corporation as well, and microtransactions and stuff like that. But the only thing is that, wouldn't a centralized database be better either way? What do you actually need the blockchain for? I mean, are we strictly talking about— if we're talking about just transaction speed or capacity, I mean, and if you're going to have a centralized party, like for example, Mikko, you mentioned that you, you moved to Stellar, and well, I mean, Stellar is a centralized operator. I mean, somebody picks those validators no matter how many there are. It's too little. I wouldn't call it decentralized. So if the decentralization is not the goal, What is? That's what I struggle to find out most. And to me personally, it comes out mostly printing your own money, which is understandable, which is an understandable reason to have your own token. What do you say?

I mean, yeah, so the public blockchains versus private blockchains, that's for one thing. Of course, I mean, just listen to this chairman of the IOTA Foundation in Berlin last week. And then what he was saying is, because lots of people are complaining about this coordinator thing that makes IOTA centralized for the time being, he just said that while, like, a lot of these blockchains have been evolving rapidly, they are still so early at this point that a lot of them actually require these kind of centralized mechanisms just to keep them alive until they are big enough that they don't need those things. He actually went far enough to say that even for the first 2 years in Bitcoin, there was actually this kind of centralized mechanism to keep it up and running until it was strong enough to go by itself. So he said that every blockchain kind of has it. So I see things like IOTA and Stellar becoming decentralized over time, and there's a clear target for those kind of things to go that way. I mean, that's probably not true with Ripple. That doesn't even look like they're trying to be decentralized in any means. But there's definitely lots of blockchains out there that are on the path of becoming more decentralized, but not yet far enough that people will recognize them as fully decentralized operations. Why we need the public blockchain in general is that I had this conversation with this bank blockchain guy in Finland. I don't name him now, but, you know, like, This conversation was about whether the public blockchains are useful for anything. Of course, the position of the bank guy was that no, that only private blockchains matter. And using these currencies is kind of like, in his opinion, was useless. And he thinks it goes away. And then I discuss about their own blockchain projects, which kind of makes sense, some of them. Like you have in Finland this project between banks that they can share the real estate transaction data with each other in a way that it syncs between the banks so that every bank gets the information regarding the real estate transactions that they are party to. And if they are not party to, they don't get that piece of information. That makes sense to me. But however, then I said, okay, let's say that you want to do the same repository together with Russia. How do you do that? Well, an awkward silence ensued and I said, okay, here you go. I mean, when you do decentralized systems like this, you all have to be within one specific legislation with a specific set of players that you can trust inherently. And if you don't have parties like that in the party, then you kind of have no other choice than having a blockchain under it that is public and where everybody can participate. That's the only way you can create like environment for everybody to participate irrespective of their regulatory environments or societies or countries or cultures or whatever they have. So that's why we need those.

Lovely talk, Niko. Thank you very much for that. Can I, Niko, ask that, that if we would get in the next hour a little bit into the thing that, that you're expecting kind of 500 people for the first day, to the corporate day, and 1,000 people to the second day. And in the second day, the biggest, one of the biggest thing, or the biggest thing I think for the marketing, is that we will have this Eco pitch thing, and we will have a jury in Finland. Never before that these guys have given 300 or 3,000 million dollars VC money in the past years, and so there is a very powerful team. We want to walk international. Individuals, the best ones. This is like singing contest, but who can enter, they will be directly coming to the final. So we will— I hope that it was launched today, but I didn't get the news that we have this open, that we can start to collect like people wanting to come to the Ecopits, and hopefully there is tens or hundreds of already guaranteed for those people who come and do a good pitch in the occasion. So that's the goal. And how do we get there? Like, that would be interesting topic today, for example, from this, that we get some value add. And, and as well, I would hope that other participants to get a little bit Into this discussion as well, that that in the summit that how do we do? We can't compete to do the biggest event. Like there is one just weeks or is it month before with eight thousand people going to Saint Petersburg, what's only three hundred four hundred kilometers from here. So we can compete with quality. We can compete. With other things that are special in Helsinki, that we will have the Helsinki topics strongly here, and Helsinki as one of the main supporters to this Helsinki Summit 2018. So, if you would share a little bit the things that, who would want to say something that how we can get and make amazing ICO pitch happening in Helsinki.

Thank you, Markus, for bringing that up. That totally slipped my mind. That was— that should have been a big part of this show, but I totally blanked out on that. So definitely, yeah, guys, in the program I didn't mention, we're going to have an ICO pitch session, which is going to be kind of like idols, but for ICOs. So if you have like a crazy altcoin project or an idea or anything, you can just come and pitch it to the judges. I don't know how many judges are there gonna be, maybe 6, I think. And there's gonna be 2 different batches, 40 minutes each. And I think we can fit tens at least of all kinds of projects. And there's gonna be actual VC money. And of course the judges are gonna be— So it's kind of like a lion's den, idols kind of thing. So we're definitely looking to get some marketing value out of that. So if you could just go ahead and like and share this video and let everybody know that we're going to have this kind of thing. I'm not sure if it has been done before. We're definitely going to be streaming the whole thing. So that's going to be super interesting. And if there's a chance to be a part of the event, that would of be great. Yeah, I think that's a great the idea. judges. I think we do have some talks overlapping, but that will be certainly great. Yeah, I mean, what do you guys think? I would love to hear the whole panel's idea on this. Like, let's, let's have a bunch of ICOs and these projects to pitch their idea, see if it's any good, you know, dig it apart right there and then, and then give the feedback right away. Sounds pretty good to me.

Yes, it is important to, you know, keep the conversation going and start the debate because this is, after all, right, it's an investment, it's fundraising, and we have to do due diligence, right? This is something that should not be invested in lightly. There are many risks involved and also many possible gains to achieve. So proper due diligence is very much important. And after all, this is the new type of fundraising. That is now possible. You know, ICOs are one version. There are other types as well. But this is fundamentally a new problem that we have to solve. How can we in this digital age of cyberspace organize ourselves and fund our ventures? And this is critical to talk about. So it's interesting.

Yeah. I mean, regarding this fundraising, I do think that it's probably— The time for the traditional ICO is kind of over. And I think what Finland should do is to focus on creating a flexible legal framework for security token offerings within the crowdfunding laws that there's already in. Like, Finland is actually doing quite well on the crowdfunding side compared to many other countries, I think. There's like 4 or 5 bigger crowdfunding providers. I do think that there should be flexible enough regulation that you can just file for a crowdfunding round with the proper regulator with a reasonable cost and bureaucracy. And then you should be able to do a security token offering to these things within specific rules. And I think those rules that are being created for this will make it more safe for people to participate in token offerings because then there's like some kind of regulatory framework protecting the investors. I agree. I think such an approach, when well done, could actually propel a lot of local startups both in blockchain side as well as technologically to develop the new technologies for the global markets.

Yes, I do agree that we should focus on having some, maybe even some sort of regulatory sandbox for blockchain and Bitcoin projects just to try out new things. I'm sure it is difficult to actually change legislation in any kind of a short order. Maybe there could be some kind of crypto valley that we are also trying to advocate with the Finnish Blockchain Alliance, that we would have precisely this kind of network of like-minded people building something really awesome, for example, in Helsinki. And I think we have something similar there. The startup culture is great. In my opinion, in Helsinki, and I do think that we could have a shot at becoming some sort of a crypto valley. Maybe there's going to be— I think there's going to be many crypto valleys because it's already getting out of hand. There's one in Malta and one in Switzerland. There's one in every continent soon, I'm sure. But of course, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have one. We should definitely be part of this movement, and that's why lobbying is also one important thing. But then again, I would personally— I'm directing my effort to the grassroots because I do believe also that it's important to address the regular everyday user who are going to make up the vast majority of all users. So if we can speak to those people and we can get them interested, then I feel like everything else kind of has to bend the majority ways. Jussi, what do you think? You haven't been saying anything in a while, and you classify yourself as a so-called normie, if I'm correct. Does this sound like something realistic to you?

Yeah, so, well, I think from a normal person's point of view, I think I'm not sure if really they are interested in in the technology or what is behind. I think what we want to have is services that work. And then, but then, but in order for, let's say, politicians or, let's say, governmental structures to be changed, there needs to be a certain amount of awareness and interest and positive attitudes amongst the big crowds towards any technology. And then I think that's why the normal crowds education and raising the awareness in a positive way is good for blockchain and Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, because then they are anyhow kind of electing or making the decisions that who are in power. And I think that that's one way to kind of let's say, move forward with this new technology and all good that it can bring.

I would like to jump in there, like, to— with proposals, like, in the hands-on thing that we want to demonstrate as well in this occasion, that we We have different kind of plans, like to give everyone who comes into summit their own wallets and cryptocurrencies, and that their interaction would start. Not just like we talk a lot, this and that, and so that's what's happening over the chat box internet, but when people come together, then they should do something, something like this kind of play, that they play with the play money, or they play with the real money. But the thing that they will do something what will create the change, that's important now. Have once-off situation now to start, like this thing to engage the people, and that will happen now that we do a program that everyone getting to the summit will really have hands-on. Otherwise, we would lose an opportunity that we are still designing that, and we won't decide necessarily within this hour here, within these talks now, but we can kind of start the conversation in that way and take it then further and develop and do in the publication that if you follow summit pages, you will see the, like, the idea or the red line or whatever dotted line you call it, that what is happening here now, that the thing is really happening, that that's kind of the idea. From my point of view, that view that I have, uh, like, ask all these different people to come together and we do something great together.

Yeah, I really appreciate that. And, and to that, that end, I would also call on the— we have 14 live viewers right now and we have 6 likes. So if the rest of you, uh, 6 can, uh, sorry, could also like, so we can, we can get more and we can spread the good word. And do participate. I'm sure you have some questions about the event. At least you can ask those. You can also ask us our personal stance on different blockchains or any projects. Let's keep it casual. I think we already said pretty much what our agenda was, and now I would really Like to continue this conversation about the future of of blockchain and where where we're going and what are the technologies that we can we should be focusing on. And yeah, the floor is free. So go ahead. And and yeah, the audience please keep putting their questions in the chat.

Yeah. So I mean, I'm I belong to the camp where Vitalik Buterin is as well. Is that that? The only way blockchain can become a transformative technology is that the use cases and general applications will broaden and the mass market will adopt it. And in order for the mass markets to adopt it, that doesn't come from speculative trading. It comes from increasing the use cases of cryptocurrencies to other things than that. So from my point of view, the future of blockchain belongs to those blockchains and solutions that are enabling a common person to do things, or machines to do things easier than they did before by using a virtual currency or a blockchain solution. And that is still a ways ahead. I think there's plenty of quite promising applications on that field, but none of them are yet seeing the kind of mainstream adoption that we would need to actually make a big difference. I do think that by end of 2019, we will see the first ones that are actually broadly used. It's hard to predict which ones, but we absolutely need them.

I just came back from the Baltic Honey Badger Conference, which might be one of the most interesting and most cutting-edge conferences conferences in the Bitcoin space. And talking to all these amazing developers there was absolutely mind-boggling. And there is so much innovation going on in this field of permissionless innovation where you can simply do. And that, you know, talking to Adam Back about upstreaming now satellite payments through the Blockstream satellite network, for example, it's quite nice. But then on the software side, for example, I absolutely love wallets like Wasabi. Which really focus on fungibility, which is a key aspect of any money. And we want to have anonymous money, right? Absolutely. And these— the— here, you know, further stuff, of course, coming with the Lightning Network and possible integrations here for, just as one example, paying for advertising space per pixel per second or per pixel per click, because stuff like that is now possible. And magic internet money is truly magical, and I have no clue where we will be next week.

Yeah, that's a great point about the different wallets, and I would really like to make a show about those. And you are pretty knowledgeable on those, and I'm always super curious, especially about the hardware wallets. And this is something that I do thing needs the most work as well because this is the interface that— yeah, yeah, I, I have that somewhere, but I've just recently moved, so my cold card is, is probably somewhere in transit still. So sad face for me, but it'll turn up and I'll, I'll make my own unboxing video. But yeah, yeah, definitely something that needs definitely a lot of work because that will be the most important interface, of course, for any user to use your wallet, to be able to use your Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. You need to be able to operate your wallet efficiently, safely, and most importantly, in terms of adoption, it has to be easy. It has to be super easy, like one-click full nodes kind of a situation. And we are, of course, a far cry from that. But yeah, like I keep saying, it's the internet of 1994. And before Netscape, we need the Netscape for Bitcoin, and then I think we're going to see some growth.

I think Jeroen Mikko had requested a speech for this lecture. Go ahead.

Okay, thank you. Yes, I have talked a lot with the Ethereum developers about Ethereum applications and also with those who have developed application for Finnish officials to do something, some local thing, but which requires a network of trust. And it is not very far away that they could be able to choose the public Ethereum. network as a platform. Now, if we think mostly the problems or the obstacles which have been heard so far, they are not ideological in many cases, but just pragmatic, that they think that whether they can trust that the, for example, Ethereum network stays in a way stable enough that the transaction time can be predicted and the costs does not run away. While I think many of them already see that Ethereum and especially Bitcoin are not going to disappear anywhere, that They are, they are very trustworthy. But just what comes to end-user application with Ethereum, for example, is that it's, it's very simple and pragmatic thing because there are many— the great thing of blockchain which can work as an application platform with Ethereum now to speak is that, that That as we all, most of us, this audience knows that even a small company can exercise maximal trust because of the network. But, and there are many applications which would be very useful to ordinary people right now, but there's just one little thing which makes it practically impossible. And it is so, It is just that, that you— one must pay Ether in order to pay for gas before he or she can, can do anything pragmatic. And, and that, that makes, makes it practically impossible. If someone introduces a clever to this thing, then the whole world of Ethereum application would be open to public. And because most of the applications, they are already very understandable that, okay, I can do— I can make a deal with someone and that's recorded in the blockchain and that's great. Or I can take an image and get it timestamped in Ethereum. Blockchain and such things that people need, but to pay Ether in order to enter this— yeah, thank you.

I would like to comment on— we've developed our token initially in Ethereum and then we moved it to Stellar for exactly— that is one of the main reasons why we did that, because the user experience on Ethereum was impossible to fix. You know, like, like there was, uh, like when we look at this, we already built the sidechain approach for the wallet so that the user experience can be reasonable for the end users. But then we start looking at how do we connect that with the Ethereum network, and it was just no way to do this in a way that that would make it anyhow reasonable for the end users to handle this. Um, so I think what, uh, like Ethereum is gonna get a lot of competition from EOS which is a decentralized platform that doesn't require this kind of thing. So you can do the transactions on the EOS network with those smart contracts without having to involve EOS on it. And the same is like, I mean, in Stellar's case, yes, there is a Stellar fee that is required, but the fee is so low that when you create a federated account system where you manage it for the users, you don't have to worry about it. So in our case, for example, we create wallets for our users. And if the users use our wallet, the transactions are for free. There's no charges. If they want to use the decentralized wallets, they will have to have a Stellar balance. But if they have a Stellar balance on that wallet, they will never have to worry about anything because the fees are so small that they will not eat out that balance. So the only thing they need to do is do one-time balance and that's it. And they can run it forever. So yeah. I think that that's one of the biggest problems going forward for Ethereum as a platform is that I do not see that they can fix these problems regarding the end-user experience anytime soon. Probably takes until 2020 before they can be fixed. And I think it's going to be a big problem for them.

Absolutely. That is one issue with Ethereum. And another one is that good luck trying to run a full node, right? Good using this network trustless because I don't think it's possible. Mika, you're about to say something.

Yeah, Mika, just talk. It was I think it was the other Mika that was trying to speak here, right?

I'm I'm sure that that this. this problem, as you said, that 2020, but that's almost next year. So, so, so, uh, if, if we see, if, uh, try to see, uh, long-term development for the blockchain, I, I'm sure that there will be, uh, this is my prediction, within 10 years there will be, uh, uh, few public blockchains which serve the Bitcoins and then these cryptocurrencies, but application platforms as public networks which are somehow different and serve different purposes. And of course, there will be these private blockchains which live their own life within their communities, whatever they are. But I would see that soon someone solves this. These are children's diseases what we are suffering right now, and they will be cured soon. I'm positive with that, and I would like to work on this convincing people in various positions to think that these, what we have seen now and which has been in yellow papers, they are only children's diseases. Yeah, thank you.

When it comes to these Ethereum's child problems and things, the problem is that the blockchain industry is so fast moving that my prediction is that majority of current Ethereum coins will be dead before they have fixed these problems. And as I said, you give 2 years of time and, you know, most of them will be dead. And some of them will move to other blockchains. And eventually Ethereum will probably figure out their problems. So I'm relatively positive about that. The question is that will they figure them out fast enough before the other blockchains take over as the platforms?

Yes, you are right. At least there will be a painful hard forks to be expected, I guess.

Yeah, I would also agree most of the projects will just simply go to zero. Maybe not to zero, but at least will be very worthless. I mean, kind of like in the internet, in the dot-com boom, a lot of hype. People want to make the money, the fresh money. People think first and foremost that the new technology is a catch-all solution for everything, makes everything fast, makes everything secure, when it's in fact very limited in use, blockchain technology that is. So what do you actually need blockchain technology for? That is, I guess, something that we can all disagree on. And for us, at least for me, the most important function, maybe the only function of— useful function of blockchain is censorship resistance and the fact that you can't change it. Nobody can change it. Nobody can change the total supply of Bitcoin. Nobody can confiscate your funds in any way if you take care of your private keys. So for me, if you don't need such a strong censorship resistance, I do think most times you'll be better off using another centralized, more efficient service. What do you guys think?

Oh yes, absolutely. The use case of a blockchain is really limited because after all, it is a slow database. It is a really slow database that works on thousands, hundreds of thousands individual computers, right? This means that in order to justify these tremendous costs and these huge latencies, You really need to, well, say why you need this censorship resistance. And if you do not need it for your CryptoKitty app or any other decentralized application— by the way, there are no decentralized applications— then, you know, you really need to justify these. And if you cannot, use an SQL database. There's nothing wrong with that. Not everything needs to be on a blockchain. Right? If it's not useful, the tool, well then do not use the tool, but rather use these tools that make your product the best product. Because that's what fundamentally we entrepreneurs do, right? We allocate all the resources that we have at our disposal, and then we go out and allocate them to the most sufficient need. And we try to bring the best product to the end consumer. And oftentimes blockchains are just not useful for that.

If I could have a word, for the coming back to the summit and back to the question that, that which kind of audience, that what's the most potential audience that we can attract, and what are the measures like that we can attract the, the audience that we want to attract? Yeah, I think that's a very good question. People that that I was like last week. I think it was Tuesday, Wednesday, or was it? Oh, it was the previous week. The time is going so fast. So there was the Pocket Game Game 2018 Helsinki, and. This gaming industry, they were already, they announced some competition, and there were like the 3 winners, they got like more than $100,000, or actually they got $5,000, $10,000, and $20,000 US dollars, then they got $10,000, $20,000, and $30,000 Alto dollars, and then within the games some other cryptocurrencies, they were rewarded. It was very interesting to see that, that there was like, it was first, 4th time in Finland, and it was first time blockchain and cryptocurrencies was in, in this exhibition. And people just to come and understand the thing, that this is kind of the future and that, that— They want to already to go in that direction, develop their games that they have the blockchain aspect in which way they have it and that they support it. And this is kind of the killer things to me to attract like in this gaming industry all those young people looking future, their own future there in programming and then and in different kind of things, that what could they do, or they have exciting ideas and how they could use the new technology. So, this angle, I think, a little brainstorming would be nice to our event, that especially in this Helsinki hall. So, it's one of the 5 programs, that what would you think would be the best way to attract this kind of crowds that— I understand the Aiko pitch, we could get like 300, 400, 500 people even, but still we need another 300, 400, 500 people. I'm calling for ideas, please, which audience and which ways we attract them to the Helsinki Summit 2018.

I want to first address, like, I mean, Max mentioned that there's a compromise to be made in the the long latency from the blockchain. Now that I've seen the light with Stellar, I disagree with that. Like, I mean, the latency, of course, is more than with the centralized database, but when it goes below 5 seconds, it's not a problem anymore. And so these kind of problems of latency will go away. The problem of expensive blockchain is going to exist to some extent, but when you have these blockchains that have almost zero transaction costs, or zero transaction fee, that will also go away. So now the only thing left for it to be solved is how to run meaningful applications on top of it, because those applications will require at least some centralization to be able to run. So it's very hard to see that you have a completely decentralized platform that can run large applications on it because they consume so much so much like computing power. So from my point of view, I think we need to see some kind of hybrid solutions between this. So where you can run a centralized application that is connected to blockchain in some meaningful way, and you can run this heavy lifting part of the application on the centralized servers, and then you can run the decentralized part of this application on the blockchain. When it comes to this game thing, I want to mention But Markus, it's good that you brought it up because I have this as an integral part of my statement to the Committee with the Future of the Parliament regarding the cryptocurrency taxation. I mentioned games as virtual currency platforms where currently they are not taxed as currency because in the games they are all silos and you cannot return money back game to other users. However, this is changing. Now we go into this virtual, like, worlds where people are going to these worlds to transact with each other, to buy houses in the virtual world, to buy virtual cars or virtual clothing. All of these things are coming into the play will change this completely. And we have to be prepared for that. And we have to have a regulatory environment for this kind of applications too.

Okay guys, Max needs to duck out and I think we're gonna wrap up soon as well. We have about half an hour time left. But Max, do you wanna say your final words? Maybe a short rebuttal to what Niko said? And then please, please let everybody know again where to find you and your awesome shows. Go ahead, Max.

Well, first of all, thank you, Niko, very much for having me, not just here on this panel discussion and some of the previous videos. But also to the entire team for the invitation to speak at this conference. I really appreciate it, and I'm really looking forward to it, to engage in fruitful conversations and discussions like this one. And again, this is highly important and very much needed, right? So debate and discussion is always good. Where can the people find out a bit more? My Twitter is @HillebrandMax, my personal website towardsliberty.com, and I do a bunch of content on the YouTube platform. Independent open-source news network, the World Crypto Network. And Thomas Hunt and I just finished a long, long weekend at the Riga conference, the Baltic Honey Badger conference, which was absolutely outstanding. And we got the— we had the great honor of interviewing several of the attendees and speakers. And many, many amazing projects have been introduced. For example, the new Lightning Hack Day in New York. They did their announcement on the World Crypto Network. The new Slush Pool Brains OS, which is open-source software for hardware miners, which is amazing. They also did their announcement of the new of their new web software on the WCN. The next Honey Badger conferences were announced both the next Honey Badger conference in Riga and there will be another one in Prague. Sorry, not in Prague, but in Africa, which will be nice. So lots of good content on, on WCN, and I'm glad to be a part both of the WCN and also of the ConsenSys RAI network. So thank you again for having me, and I'm thoroughly looking forward to November.

Awesome. Thank you, Max, for your participation and insight as always, and we'll see you on the next one. All right, so that was Max. So yeah, like I said, we have about half an hour here, so I wanted to go back to what Markus floated, and great idea about the video games, and also what Niko contributed. Just a quick reminder for the people who are still watching, we have 16 people, so we've actually accumulated a couple. That's fantastic. We have 10 likes, so do hit the like button. That's awesome. And do drop us some questions. We are going to address all of your questions in the last 10 minutes or so before we sign off. But before that, and while you're thinking about those questions, let's just finish up with this topic about how to get the correct people. Maybe not the— well, of course, the volume of the people is also meaningful, but moreover, I would I would want to see the correct people to arrive to this event and learn about this technology. And I do think the game industry is key here to get them interested in these kinds of— let's say that you have in-game money or in-game scarce goods, for example. I think that's going to be a very attractive way to lure gamers in the future. So I think it should be an easy sale to make. So if anybody's watching and into game industry, definitely come and check the event out. It will probably be worth your time and also spread the word on that. So yeah, I'm happy to talk a little bit more about these video games. Do you guys have any more points you want to highlight on that? No,

I think that's it. Yeah, so having background both in the games industry and blockchain industry in general, I mean, the point has to be that what is the— like, because in games currently the main monetization mechanism that they're using in the free-to-play games, which is currently about 82— was it like 82 billion out of the little bit more than 100 billion total games market size? So it's already like about 80%. of all money that is being made on the games is coming from free-to-play games. In those cases where the free-to-play is the model, the main mechanism of monetizing the game is selling virtual currency to the users. It can be also direct sales of virtual goods, but most often these games are selling the currency first, and then you can spend the currency as you wish to all of these different goods within the game. And now, if that becomes something that is not anymore individual silos that you have like these games, that are just being in silos, but there's actually some kind of interoperability or tradability of these items that are out there that goes beyond this individual game ecosystem where you can, let's say, you can create some value in the game, you can sell it back to euros in some other place, which I think will be the case as soon as we are in the virtual world kind of game modes because that's the way of creating like this kind of mixed reality worlds where you can roam between the real-world experiences and these virtual reality experiences. And this in itself will drive huge adoption of different types of virtual currencies. So I think it will be a driver of more cryptos to come into play. I mean, the implementations of those currencies could, in some cases, be centralized. But, you know, I think it's a massive opportunity for lots of different parties. And I think we have to be vigilant in pushing regulatory changes to enable this kind of business models to exist. Because if it If that's not supported with the current regulations, I think there's a big risk for the Finnish ecosystem to lose the whole game industry at some point, which is not necessarily even that distant future. So bringing in all these games people to these kind of conferences to basically talk about these topics and explain how they see the future evolving, I think it's going to be super valuable.

Yeah, well said. And the exodus has begun, like the industry is already leaving, not just game industry, but the— well, the blockchain industry never had a really chance to settle here. As far as I know, no startups really truly considered even founding here. So that just goes to show that, you know, while there might be some kind of regulation in place, it's certainly not the— you can't rely on the regulation to function a certain way, which means you simply can't take that kind of a business risk, which is fully understandable. And this is, I think, something that the regulators need to understand and respect as well, that the business people will simply not risk regulation that is not 100% clear. So I do think there's a great point there. Jussi and other Mikko, do you guys want to chip in here as well? Don't let us hog the floor.

Yes, if I may. In addition to Aiko pitching, I think because Finns are a little bit shy, And there are still many, many blockchain pilots have been running around, mostly exotic or not perhaps exotic, but surprising is that I was called from Valio, the dairy company, that they are interested in blockchain. And for a second, I was thinking that how are cows and blockchain related? But of course, it is about logistic and supply chains also. But this only tells that there was not just the financial sectors, but many other sectors who are kind of studying and making small pilots. So perhaps if we can somehow put like a a low threshold forum, like a forum for blockchain pioneers or miscellaneous blockchain pioneers to encourage them to join our conference.

Yeah, I think we are the blockchain pioneers in a way. We are the trailblazers and like what Margot said earlier, you know, the nerds are always kind of like the flag bearers. So it starts like this, and it's super difficult, and we have to do a lot of work to just get people to notice us, that there's something happening. And still, it will be difficult to build consumer-grade products. And I think maybe the demography simply isn't there yet. But that's why I feel like the game industry is the golden ticket here.

Yeah, yeah, but what I mean that like more conservative industries, because, well, also including the financial sectors, that there are many like small insurance companies which are thinking that, and perhaps they have tried something or have something So if they could just come together and share their experiences in some sort of low threshold gathering during the conference. I don't have any more specific idea, but it just appeared to me because I know that there are many who are They have never advertised themselves, but they do have some ideas of blockchain and even tried something.

If I could jump in there. So I think like what's interesting is in the Helsinki data that we will be telling like in these rounds that we did to the authorities, between the second jump and this third one now. So, we got many ideas across with the stakeholders in this country that allows like things to happen. Like, Niko, you said that there are those uncertainties. I think we can win these uncertainties in these— In computer places, if they are called campus or valley or whatever, in these places where people come together, especially in Helsinki, we have proposed ideas that we could get from the finance authorities their logos and stamps to put in the doors like Where these people are sitting together and creating these blockchain ideas, and we will have new kind of data transfer with the authorities in the way that they are interested to learn what could they regulate if they don't know how the thing functions. They they want to learn. This is a big purpose for the summit as well, that the authorities are very welcome to see what is the scenery here, how it functions, not just in this summit, but in the continuation of these different locations, specified locations that have budgets that the startups can be there in weekly places like we know Flux, And there will be others as well. Helsinki supported places. Helsinki wants to lure. That's why we have the East Blockchain Gateway as well. We want to lure from other countries as well. Plenty people start to do startups, and we are building like this scenery with the ideas. We have got together, that we are like developing here to the next level. And this, this is happening now in the coming 2, 3, 4 months, that I'm sure that there is a big difference from today. In 4 months' time, we have like possibilities to the businesses, such to the startups that that this scenery is changing here, and it's— we are helping it a lot that it is changing. Without all this do, it wouldn't change, and we just have to do even more and it changes more.

Yeah, so, you see here, one thing that how could we actually try to get more people into the— this seminar or this event is, Is basically by making a joint effort in our social networks. And then that would be something we would have, some like a social media, short social media plan that would then, you know, be synchronized with each other so that there are networks that we are sharing and networks that are mine and Mikko's and Markus's. So that if we could make kind of a plan and then just support and share other posts, so then it would create a lot of traffic and that would then might get more people into the seminar in November.

Yeah, I think those are all great points. especially since you mentioned the Asian gateway, so to speak. And to that end, I just got a call from these NEO blockchain people. They are having a meetup in Helsinki in Microsoft Flux, and I did promise to shill that meetup in this show as a favor to a friend. So I'm gonna just shill it here. And if there's anybody— I think there's some people who are still into NEO in the community. And they are looking for somebody to speak there on behalf of ConsenSys perhaps, or you can speak on behalf of yourself or your company, doesn't matter. Point is they are looking for somebody to speak. I myself, I don't think I can make it. It's the 2nd day of October. Oh, sorry, I didn't share the screen yet. Here you are. So I'm just gonna quickly show you this, and I also dropped the link in the chat so you can check out the program and everything. I used to be into NIO back in when it was still AntShares, but I sold my stack away, so I'm not that much into NIO anymore. So I'm not that knowledgeable either. But in case there's people who are into this in the, in the audience, then please consider. And if you want to speak there, just contact me and I'll definitely hook you up. I think it can be arranged rather easily because it's like one week from now. I don't know who they're gonna get. But yeah, that's the shill I'm gonna do. I'm not gonna do any more shills except for of course the Blockchain Summit, which we've been shilling basically all the time here, which is great. I'm still super psyched about the event and I do think we need more and more events like this that that have people from all sides of that because we have— this is a vast, vast topic, blockchain and this technology. You have to understand such many things such as like human psychology, game theory. You have to understand computer programming logic. You have to understand economics. You have to understand law, all these kinds of things. So definitely not an easy topic to tackle and— Yeah, we are happy to provide all the help and assistance we can. We have about 15 minutes of time left, so if you have any more questions in the chat, please do leave us a like. And I'm just gonna start the last final round for the panel, so please feel free to have your final say, and then we have a little bit of a chat, and then I think we're gonna wrap up here. So floor is free, go ahead.

So was there any questions from the audience yet? I did not see it from my screen, like anything.

I don't believe there's any questions yet. Go ahead.

Okay. Yeah, so the Blockchain Summit is one thing, but coming back to this, this like generic awareness of virtual currencies and the importance in society. One of the things that I want to raise here is that I've been thinking how these things can be made more visible. So it's quite unlikely that any of the guys who are currently applying for a— I mean, participating in the general elections In Finland coming in the coming spring that they would have a platform regarding virtual currencies. I would say that that's probably not a mainstream enough thought that it would have any effect on the elections. So rising that as a topic on the elections is very, very difficult. So I think what we should try to do is to get at least one or two, like fundamentally, like I said, like this kind of like major articles or either even like if not articles like a TV Like a studio TV discussion in Finland about the topic of virtual currencies and how they're going to shape the future. Because if we get this into the mainstream awareness, I think that will help a lot any kind of cause that we have also with the officials. And I think it's about time to do that. I mean, it's already interesting enough, you know, as a topic. You know, it can be seen a little bit futuristic for general topic, general population, but I think they will be interested about it. At this point, if you can create the right forum for this.

Yeah, I do agree we need something like CryptoKitties for it to be palatable enough for the masses. Sound money just doesn't work because to understand what is sound money, you should first understand what is unsound money. And I don't think most people understand how fiat money system works. Certainly, I didn't understand a couple of years back. So I can only imagine how it is for most of the people. So that's a major hurdle we have there with the monetary evolution. But we might be able to get the people, like I mentioned earlier, hooked into the technology with these other benefits this technology can provide besides the money. Obviously for me the money is the most important part, but for a lot of people there's more to it. Which is fine, which is all good and fun. And it's fun for me too. I'm a gamer as well, so I enjoy those things, and I really want to see how the gaming industry is going to take these cryptographic assets as a part of these games. It might actually take me back to, to playing some games, and really interesting to think.

Thanks, Niko. And coming back to Mikko, that I'll take the ball from there, what you said, that it's really important. We need some prime TV time, and you welcomed yourself into the show, and I'll look that we get few others, and we can promote as well, like the event here, but that we need this, our— Society program kind of that that to to make the society little bit more ready and it is with the during this I I have got I have got like fifty new friends in the Vero so in our tax office things following us and and your paper that that you have produced. and all these efforts, that these are exactly the right steps, and we need these public talks, like, definitely.

You know, if there's an opportunity of speaking in public about this topic, because I think I can speak about it in a clear way that the persons can understand it. I just want to make sure that the general awareness of these topics is raised, Because the thing is, when the public understands it properly, it's already too late. So it's better to have this awareness early than having it too late from the point of view of global competition.

I fully agree with Mikko. I think this awareness thing is very important. And then also, as we as a, like, let's say, blockchain forum or ConsenSys, I think this kind of educational aspect is is important, not only for the geeks, but especially for the crowds. And this is exactly— I think it's a good idea, this kind of get this TV show or whatsoever, like as a goal, and try to be as active in the media as possible. But awareness is the key. After that comes interest and desire to do something.

Yeah, definitely. And we can, if people want, we can make another video like this. We can make multiple videos with a little bit better production quality, and we can pre-shoot those and tell a little bit more about those things. Definitely, whatever it takes to get this event on the road. This was just because I had a cancellation, so we whipped up this in kind of a hurry. But I've enjoyed the conversation greatly, so thank you for the panel, for awesome ideas. Thank you. and this awesome event that is mainly organized by Markus. So huge thanks goes to him for providing this opportunity for all of us. So yeah, that's awesome. And I think we should— with that, we should start to wrap it up. So if everybody can just give their final words and then just let people know where they can find more about you. For instance, I'm pretty active on Twitter. You can find me with @omnifinn, double N at the end. you can drop me a line. I'm also active on Twitter— excuse me, Telegram. So you can find me there on Consensus RY for Finnish and Consensus EN for English, and I'll be moderating those groups. And we have several other groups also on Telegram. So, and you can also drop me a line on email, niko@omnifin.com. So yeah, go ahead, panel, final words, and then where can people find More about you.

Okay, I guess nobody took that line first, so I'll go first. So yeah, I'm most active on LinkedIn, so send me a LinkedIn invite to linkedin.com/in/allahsarlaha. And Twitter. Is at Alasarala, so I generally I can be found from most platforms with my surname, including Telegram. And yeah, you can also join the Intoken chat channel on Telegram by t.me/intoken, and that's that's the Stellar token I was talking about during this conversation. Yeah, that's it from my part. Thanks, Niko, for organizing this, and I was glad to be happy to. It's a pretty nice conversation, and I think we have plenty of more conversations to come. And looking forward to the conference in November.

Awesome. Thank you, Niko, for being part of it again. And we've been shooting videos with Niko also off live, which are still on my cutting table. Apologies for that, but you'll be seeing some more of Niko for sure on this channel.

Apologies to you. I actually, I think I still owe you one audio file for that as well.

It is possible.

But it's kind of nice to release, it's nice to release like a video from the summer during the wintertime, so it's just to like give a better vibe.

It's true. It's gonna be a nice video. I'll take my time with that. So yeah, Markus, where can people find more about you?

Yeah, I can be found on LinkedIn, the normal LinkedIn path. And Lehtosen Markus, but the easiest is like the blockchain forum, blockchainforum.fi or blockchainforum.eu. And here they are all linked that that you find from one place to the others. So there you find the summit. There you find all the information for the tickets and the reduction, reduced. prices and we'll do campaigns. There is now early bird campaigns, so please check them out. And Niko, it was awesome that it came just yesterday, I think, this cancellation, that we could step into this program. And, and thanks for our guys as well that, that you came so quickly in. So thank you very much.

Yeah, thank you. And yeah, of course, uh, We move fast in here, and I can whip up a stream in a day. It might not be the best, well-planned, but I do enjoy the impromptu conversations, and kind of like it makes it more real for me. I like this kind of fireside chat style more personally. And yeah, I would be happy to hear the audience's opinions as well. Jussi, where can people find more about you?

Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn, and well, just normal route, and then I'm in Twitter, Jussi_Simolin, and then my daily job is at InnoDuel, so jussi.simolin@innoduel.com. So making life better through participation. And yeah, I think that— I think what we've been mentioning in the end here is that this awareness campaign, I think I'm fully supporting that education and awareness learning Those are the things that I'm really interested in with blockchain.

Thank you for that. And finally, Mikko, where can people find more about you?

Thank you. Yes, from LinkedIn. I posted the LinkedIn profile link, but just Mikko Valiakka in LinkedIn. And I'm always interested in discussing blockchain. both in business and in technical level. And application development is one thing, but I've been sharing a lot of articles in LinkedIn, both in business and in technological point of view. Thank you.

All right, guys, that was awesome. Thank you so much for the panel again. For entertaining our guests here. We we still have fifteen live viewers, which is great. Do stay tuned. I hope you guys remember we have another show starting after this—a trading show at the Consensus Trading Academy. It's gonna be Sensei Elliot there for with another episode for you. He started last week, so this is episode two. It's gonna be in Finnish. So definitely check it out if you if you're into Bitcoin T. In Finnish this time. And if you're into Bitcoin TA or any kind of TA in English, contact me and I'll hook you up with an English slot on the ConsenSys network for sure. Yeah, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for the panel. Thank you for all the likes, all the love, and please give us all the suggestions. And yeah, I'm looking forward to making more of these shows and I'll, I'll see you guys next time. Bye.