Got in first this place was full once the meet got started
From the Meetup Site:
In this month's instalment of Blockchain Beginners we will be taking you on a journey through the cryptosphere, starting with how you can get into blockchain / cryptocurrency but then also looking beyond this and into what the different tokens actually do, and some examples of the use cases that blockchain technology empowers.
Our first confirmed speaker is Hans Lombardo! Hans is the CMO of Blockpass IDN (a blockchain technology company focused on self sovereignty), a successful entrepreneur and enthusiastic evangelist of blockchain technologies who has been investing in cryptocurrencies since 2014. Hans speaks at blockchain and fintech events globally. He is also co-founder of Chain of Things – a Hong Kong-based startup integrating blockchain & IoT devices. In 2012, he sold his previous company, a data collection and analytics research firm focused on mainland Chinese high-technology industries. He is an Internet industry veteran with APAC regional management experience. During the Internet boom, Hans provided due diligence support for the internet.com Venture Capital Fund in Asia, investing in a number of Internet startups in Greater China.
We will also have Birdchain presenting. Joining us from their organisation will be Joao Martins, who has been with them since their inception 1 year ago and has been instrumental in defining the use case of their DApp for real world users. Birdchain’s team consist of core members from VertexSMS - an A2P (Application To Person) marketing company that has delivered more than 2.6 billion SMS messages globally for various international brands, including Western Union, Uber, SalesForce, TransferGo and many others. Using their knowledge they have gained over any years in this field they are now using blockchain technology to reward users that support their networks by allowing them use of their unused SMS messages in their mobile phone plans. Birdchain releases unused value that you have been paying for, and Joao will be teaching you all about how they're going to do it.
The evening will be introduced by Alastair Band (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alastairband/), Global Community and Events Manager for Sweetbridge (http://www.sweetbridge.com/) and Co Founder of Blockchain Beginners (https://blockchainbeg.in/), and then we will have a host of speakers covering various areas around this topic.
We will have Angus Maidment (https://www.linkedin.com/in/angusmaidment/), the other Blockchain Beginners guy, giving a talk bout the nuances of blockchain and cryptocurrencies (more detail to follow) and we are waiting for the last two speakers to be finalised, but things are looking very promising to have an ex Ethereum Project speaker as well as a very influential woman from within the blockchain space. Keep your eyes peeled, those who have attended before will know that you will not be disappointed.
Alastair Band kicked the session off
Ran through how you buy Crypto
How to buy alt coins
How to store
How to invest in an ICO
Do your research on the team the project - basic stuff but often overloooked
Stage of an ICO
In summary do your own research
Believe in the product
Dont send the funds to the wrong place
Dont get scammed
"go the moon"
BIRD Chain Jao Alberto Martins
Had a quick chat with him at the end and snagged coin with a discount code for their upcoming ICO.
Jao stated that :
They have an established Business 10 years
Social network with 1 Mio users
A SMS Business
So the proposal is selling selling your unused text messages to others that need them.
An SMS can cost between 1 - 6 cents for companies who use mass communications in this way
A common use is for password resets
The idea is that you tap into other peoples unused text plan and pays you in tokens the the firms dont have to pay
Also tokens for promo videos selling content
Why Blockchain -
Transparency of market - Proove the sms sent which Jao says you can't do today and this leads to shady goings on
Went on to talk about the "creativity stage" we are at with regards to Blockchain and the issue with the available platforms right now
Ethereum issue not scalable, IOTA was hacked ,so waiting for other solutions to come a long. Hopefully ethereum maybe something else ?
Jao said they have a MVP - An App already to go / everything else in place but need a token platform to launch on and are waiting for the right one
He wrapped up with saying that the other merit of the app is that you can gain tokens though it without the usual hassle of a Blockchain which would encourage its use , not too unlike the Steemit platform you can create an account and start using it without needing to know you are on the blockchain.
Blockpass
So this was interesting , I have been speaking to a colleague about the world of Blockchain and he used the analogy of "finding the shovels"
In the gold rush selling shovels was much more lucrative than actually mining in most cases, I caught up with Guy Davies who spoke about GDPR and said I saw them as the shovels and he said to me I was the 4th person this week to use that analogy, think they may use it in their marketing so here I am claiming the idea on the Blockchain first.
Hans Lombardo CMO was up first
He talked to Self Sovereign Identity - SSI
And the fact that we dont have this today and that this is one of the core aims of Blockpas
Progress to user controlled identity rather than centralized
Centralized - Governments
Federated - Facebook google etc
User centric - Still dependent on oId technology
Blockpass looking to achieve SSI using this using the blockchain
Users use an app and control it
Crypto user verification is a big use case - KYC expensive and takes time estimated that at Coinbase its 20% of their cost
It is ironic that with the ICO activity out there all the sign up ou have to do is all legacy email and password sign up and the blockchain is the perfect solution to this problem statement
Guy Davies
As mentioned he spoke to GDPR
Went through the background of GDPR
Impact of the act
Impact to the map of data that Companies are now required to know
The rights of citizens that now come into play and what does this mean to blockchains
GDPR came in after the Blockchain revolution and actually many of the challenges as a result can actually be solved by Blockchain - bit like the email sign up issue already mentioned
Went on to explain using Blockchains
What lies ahead develop based on GDPR and use Blockchain as to do this
Meets compliance laws of GDPR and the path they are on
Richard ODEM - See EC6 they presented at the Sweetbridge meetup
On Demand Education Marketplace
Student Exec training 9 countries
Small % of the world gets a Uni education
Spoke to the supply chain involved and this is much of the expense
Connect student with the professors
Passionate speech about the risk of the robots to low value jobs and we owe the less fortunate an education - then played this you tube video
Richard did then use some volunteers really well to demonstrate the challenge of the supply chain - you had to be there my scribblings won't translate it.
MyHealthRecord Natalie Furness
MedicalChain
https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/medical-chain/
https://bitscreener.com/coins/medical-chain
https://medicalchain.com/en/
Natalie is a really good speaker and was really connected to the project , she has a medical background and has personal stories that drove her to get involved
Access of records to health information is a challenge your details ae spread across multiple agencies and not in hand for you or the multiple clinicians that you may deal with
Natalie spoke to her close friend whose condition took years to diagnose and wh had to repeatedly answer the same questions , her Grandfather who following a heart attack abroad nearly had his insurance cover denied due to a "iregular ECG reading that they were stating meant he had not been honest on declaring the condition. Fortunately his daughter was a lawyer and proved this was not the case.
The point here is that complete and controlled medical records would avoid these challenges
Then there is the issue of your data being sold on without your knowledge
Medical chain blockchain layer
a Hash that links to the data - in GDPR compliant storage
Natalie then ran through some of the features which then drew out many of the problem statements they are looking to resolve
Telehealth an additional app that you can utilise to have a consultation on and use your tokens, you get the option to share your data and benefit directly instead of the current model where an unknown 3rd party does and you can use the tokens to then access services such as Telehealth
Insurance integration is planned
Telehealth launch in july
You could use it for a pre consultation before you fly to get healthcare in another duristicion for example
link between clinitions - paper reduction
The data itself is not stored on blockchain it will be kept on secure nodes which will be accessed via private key on the blockchain.
another use case informed consent
Less insurance fraud / errors that relate to death due to errors in data
Natalie said that medical data is worth 10x more than credit card - you cant cancel medical data
You can earn tokens on the platform by sharing data in the same way the third party deos today without your permission and then as mentioned use them to access health services
Their ICO has completed and now trading on several exchanges - see the bitscreener and coinmarketcap links