I attended the 100x Blockchain Investors Summit and it was great! Here are some key takeaways

I attended the 100x Blockchain Investors Summit organized by Hive account@steemrollin and I absolutely loved it! I wanted to share some of the key insights and takeaways I got from it and to encourage those interested to attend future events like this if you want to learn more about cryptos, blockchain technology and how to make smart investments in the space.

One of the main reasons why I was excited to attend this summit was because I've been investing in the whole crypto/blockchain space for the last couple months now (right now investing in ICOs is my main focus) and I wanted to become a smarter investor and gain a deeper understanding of what blockchain technology was all about/some of the use cases that are out there as well as any insights that could help me be a better investor. This summit definitely met those expectations for me and I want to outline some of the key things that stood out in my mind after I reflected on each of the days:

DAY 1 REFLECTIONS

• At the end of the first day, I found myself being on a high and really inspired about blockchain technology and the kinds of things that are possible with it. I enjoyed all of the speakers and they all brought great insights and information to the event. The first day seemed to be more about a general big picture focus and then getting into the meat and potatoes of tokens and ICOs, which I really liked.
• Emma Channing was on the 'Tokens Sales /ICOs: Legal Considerations' talk and something that she said really stuck out to me and caused me to alter my ICO investment strategy. She was talking about the recent SEC ruling about whether or not an ICO is considered a security or not. She basically said that if a company gets it wrong and is acting like it is not a security but then is later found to be a security according to the SEC, the SEC will not only go after that company that issued the ICO, but could also go after the purchasers. That freaked me out to be honest...I had not idea.....but, it will make me a better investor. I decided right then and there to change my investment strategy and add an extra layer to my analysis before I purchase any more ICOs. I found a nice spreadsheet that Coinbase created to help people launching ICOs determine whether or not the ICO is a security. I will now be loosely using this as a general framework to help me assess whether or not an ICO is a security or not if I'm ever unsure.

  Here's the spreadsheet if anyone is interested:

  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CWhxzUv3OTe8FB7u1nu1PP9QsXjfwY4BSwL1uhx2TQo/edit#gid=0

• The talk titled 'Fundamental Analysis: Tokens, Altcoins, Protocols & Startups' was one of my favorites and both speakers offered excellent insights. Another one of my favorites was 'Token Sales/ICOs : Token Investment Funds'. I'm pretty sure it was during one of these talks that the point about how different ICOs are from anything else was made. One of the speakers noted that because there aren't the traditional financial metrics that would normally be available to assess a regular company, when assessing ICOs, it's more important to focus on looking at some of the intangible qualities, like the team itself, etc. I thought that was a good point. During one of these talks, somebody asked for a framework to assess ICOs. I provided a link to a spreadsheet that was created by youtuber, and fellow steemian Hive account@ianbalina where he uses data science to assess the various ICOs. The spreadsheet is awesome and I find it really helpful in my own investment strategy.

  Here's the link for anyone that's interested:

  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TCdf8Sic-IaKTCMiar7Iu4il9MOR7U2lh_QmgNMYJYQ/edit#gid=1032094084

• The ICO pitch competition was really neat and it reaffirmed one of the companies that I was already planning on investing in (unicoin gold).

DAY 2 REFLECTIONS

• The second day was more about blockchain for larger enterprise applications and then it focused on use cases in specific industries like real estate, health care, etc. They also had workshops and those typically focused on showing newbies how to do things like trading on an exchange, etc. While I tended to like the focus of the first day a bit more (ie: tokens/ICOs) than the second day, I still got a lot out of the talks. It was neat to see the different ways that blockchains are actually being used today. The spectrum of applications was quite neat and it was good to learn about how different each blockchain can actually be.
• I really enjoyed the 'Blockchain Identity' talk and it made me even more proud to have invested in Civic when I did. It also made me realize that a technological solution currently exists to allow voting in political elections....and it's on the blockchain! I wonder how long it will take before the idea of people voting for their political representatives on the blockchain will become a reality....
• The 'Internet of Things (IOT)' talk stuck out to me mainly because of how blockchain technology was credited with being able to solve an engineering problem that was not possible without it (I don't have the technical background needed to be able to explain it more than that but I suggest watching that video once it's posted if you're interested in learning more).

Anyways, I just wanted to share a few tidbits of what some of the key takeaways were for me. If anyone else attended and wants to share, please let me know what you liked about it. If you didn't attend but are interested, I'm pretty sure the videos will be available at some point so I encourage you to watch them !