Last Thursday afternoon I was going through some of the crypto and blockchain Telegram groups I am a member of and found out that there was actually an event taking place in Amsterdam that evening, the Square5 Blockchain Investment Summit. Since I had nothing planning yet, I decided to register and check it out.
The event was organised by three Dutch companies based in Amsterdam: digital asset fund Icoinic, ICO consultancy and management company FairBitShare and growth agency Spike. In total there were roughly 60 people attending. The location was great: the building of the oldest stock exchange in the world at Beursplein 5 @ Amsterdam. Well, it was not literally at this place in the year 1602, but you get the idea ;-)
The set-up was simple. A brief introduction by the organizers, pitches from 3 Dutch blockchain projects and some networking afterwards. I personally like these events better than the events that take a whole day. Listening to a few (interactive) presentations, getting to talk to some people you’ve met before and having interesting discussions with like-minded people is a great mix.
Below I briefly describe what the presentations were about so you also have an idea what is going on here in this tiny country :-)
Pitches by three projects
In chronological order these were the projects that took the stage: SafeGuard, BrickEx and Victor.
SafeGuard (https://safeguardtoken.com/)
This project focuses on a great goal: accident prevention. Their blockchain and ecosystem will form an open-source base on which others (organizations and developers) can build for specific safety use cases and it can be used by anybody. It will use artificial intelligence fed by external data sources and data collected by the SafeGuard app to recognize and predict potential dangerous situations so people can be alerted and accidents can be prevented.
From their website:
“The Safeguard Protocol: An ecosystem that combines Machine Learning and data input sources to predict various types of workplace accidents and hazardous situations. With this system, company personnel can notify others of the prediction through the decentralised Safeguard crisis communication platform, thereby facilitating the outcome of accident prevention.”
CEO Ingmar Vroege presenting SafeGuard
For more details check out the interview at the event by Bitcoin Magazine NL with Ingmar Vroege, co-founder and CEO of SafeGuard:
BrickEx (https://www.brickex.io/)
BrickEx is creating a decentralized marketplace that creates transparency, accessibility and liquidity for real estate owners and investors. It will enable real estate owners to list properties and small investors to own a small piece of for instance a big office building (fractional ownership) and enjoy recurring revenues they would otherwise have no access to. The blockchain-based digital ownership certificates can also be traded on the internal exchange.
“The real estate industry is long overdue for a shakeup. Not only is one-third of the industry running on technology that was first released over 30 years ago, but it continues to put up barriers to transparency, preventing the release of locked up liquidity and eliminating standard services. With the help of the blockchain, we know that the real estate industry can move into a new, more democratic age.”
CFO Bas Bergmans presenting BrickEx
For more information watch the interview at the event by Bitcoin Magazine NL with Jeroen de Leijer, co-founder and CEO of BrickEx:
Victor (https://vctr.io/)
Victor is a decentralized shopping data platform that focuses on bridging the gap between merchants and consumers. Basically they transfer ownership of personal data back to the consumer and provide incentives to share that data (temporarily) with merchants by rewarding the consumer with VCTR tokens that can be used as a discount at webshops. For the merchants this can be interesting since they will be provided with the most accurate data about you than can be used to improve your shopping experience (leading to a higher conversion) and to for instance prefill the correct shipping information on the checkout page.
On their website they state:
“Victor is on a mission to ignite the thrill in shopping by creating an ecosystem where both consumers and merchants win. We empower shoppers to manage, secure, and monetize their data when sharing it with their favorite eCommerce brands. This seamless exchange of data facilitates better user experiences and richer customer profiles.”
CEO Rodger Buyvoets presenting Victor
Read more in this Medium post: https://medium.com/victor-platform/presenting-victor-the-blockchain-technology-where-everybody-wins-ecb586b12cd4
Quite some diversity in projects with some potentially interesting use cases. It will be interesting to see how these projects develop in the next 12 months :-)
The biggest challenges for these projects that come to mind after hearing the pitches:
- For SafeGuard potentially the adoption/network effect creation combined with making the product reliably intelligent.
- For BrickEx potentially the real world enforceability (legally) of blockchain based property ownership.
- For Victor potentially also the adoption/network effect creation combined with facilitating the unavoidable returns refund process in the online retail space.
What do you think?
I hope you enjoy these kind of posts. Let me know what your first thoughts are about these projects based on what you just read!
Cheers!
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Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor, trader or developer. I am just a blockchain & cryptocurrencies enthusiast. Make sure you do your own research, draw your own conclusions and do not invest any money that you cannot afford to lose.