Yesterday I have been to ICO RACE, a ICO competition hosted in Lugano.
First of all I want to say it was a great event, I have seen good projects and I had the honor to talk to Paolo Ardoino, the Bitfinex CTO. The prices were really hight: 1 million dollars divided in three prices.
You can see the full program and site here:
I will not explain all the projects but I just want to focus on what i find more important. This because I am not a journalist or a pro blogger but just a little investor sharing his point of view. For this reason, never invest basing on what I say and do it at your own risk....
First: the winner is Pigzbe:
and gets 600 K Dollars prize. I found it one of the least interesting icos in my opinion, and not really original also but maybe the judges know more then me as seen they studied the project better. It is like a wallet and game for children whit a phisical device, I report the summary from the Ico race site:
"Pigzbe is a part physical, part digital piggy-wallet for children, powered by Wollo, a family-friendly cryptocurrency. Pigzbe uses the blockchain to make money transfers within families borderless, safe, and instant. By unlocking the potential of globalised families as micro-financing networks, Pigzbe teaches children about money in the 21st century."
Again, i didn't like it a lot and I was surprised it won, but I don't want to say it is not good. It is a very hard world to understand.
The project that i liked more is Younk, and I think this one is very interesting to follow, it's a new way to found the singers and produce them on the blockchain:
"Younk is the first blockchain-based community label where artists get noticed and supported directly by the community. Its priority is to modernize the music industry and make sure artists get heard and get fairly paid, and community is actively involved in funding the up-and-coming hits in exchange for partial ownership of the end product."
It looked good to me for the idea and also for the very good team.
It had no price, as many projects that I liked.
Other important infos i received: the bullish general sentiment about EOS.
Talking to Paolo Ardoino I had another confirm about the EOS value because he is a fan of it as me.
Now this part is edited by Paolo Ardoino who asked me to change a little what i wrote and write this:
He confirmed they will build EOSFINEX as a new exchange which will not replace Bitfinex because even if EOS is very very fast, it will be quite complex, at least in the beginning, to integrate leveraged positions, funding market and especially a latency < 10ms that high-frequency traders expect. EOS market cap is likely to reach ETH market cap soon if EOS will keep working hard as they're doing now to deliver the enhancements that they planned.
Now again me:
My opinion is that even if Eos should work better then ETH for many reasons (more fast, more cheap, more easy to code) ETH is still a must have because it's transactions should be more irreversible. Looks like In EOS, in some circumstances, some sort of judges will have the power to revert a transaction if it is proved that it is not fair, this is something I will have to study better to undestand more but it is something that someone may not like. More, the Dpos in some way may be seen as less decentralized (but faster), so Eos could be the faster but a little bit less safe then Eth, which is less safe then Bitcoin. So, they are good instruments for different situations.
Paolo is a very nice and smart guy who was also very kind to answer my question, as I said he is very positive about EOS and ETH and Bitcoin which he consider to be the today’s gold. On the other side, he doesn't look excited about the Steem future as he is about EOS, that said, we didn't really talk about it and he didn't talk bad about Steem or any other currency, he just expressed some preferences. He also said a couple of other names he likes: Stellar and Monero, Zcash again doesn't look as one of his best picks.
At the conference, the speaker Paolo Barrai also managed a little discussion about the present world economy system in which he told the Deutsche bank shares value and he asked if we are in Bitcoin bubble or in a debt bubble.
We all know that the traditional economy may have some big trouble and the public debt is in big growth, which is not a good sign for the economy, but I found some of his arguments a little confusing. First, the Deutsche bank share value passed in the last years from around 90 to 9 dollars, while Bitcoin passed from nothing to around 7500, but this is not a good comparison: many banks have a primary bullish trend and not all of them are going the same way of Deutsche bank. Bank is a very big word and in it there are several types of banks, they are private entities which can change and for instance, they can also invest in cryptos. Ok we are all thinking that cryptos will probably replace many of the banks roles but I find just not fair to compare one of the worst bank (talking about the last years results) to Bitcoin. I think Paolo is a honest man and he really thinks what he says but I just think that this comparison is not well placed and when he asked to the audience what they thought about it, none really knew what to say and they tried to answer politely and prudently.
Also in this situation Paolo Ardoino had a very smart and balanced position.
My opinion on it is that the present economic system will have to change.. the banks have been saved many many times by the states whose public debts are getting bigger and bigger. A catastrophic end is still not the only possible future.
What can i say more: the delegates attending to the conference were all serious people and didn't look as bubble victims but expert people and professionals. It showed me that the ICO system is becoming very mature.
We will have more Ico races in the next years and the staff is building a real Ico district in Lugano. Switzerland and Lugano are really involved in it (also the politicians) and try to develop the best possibile environment for cryptos. This is something really different then in many other countries and all the organizers and Paolo Barrai and all the judges did a very great job.