33+ Binge-worthy Consensus 2018 Recaps + Our take

Consensus 2018 was a massive Cryptocurrency gathering, event and conference of people-veteran and noobie alike. Powered by Coindesk, Consensus first began in 2015 with a much lower level of interest and attendees, since then it has grown into a record-shattering 8500 attendees raking in a massive hodl stash of 17 million buckaroos.

Consensus has become a sort of Consumer Electronics Show (CES) of Blockchains, attracting a cornucopia and who’s who across the board from fledgeling start-ups trying to get their ICO off the ground, to established OGs.

Even the lobby at Consensus was poppin’

What’s really cool about Consensus is just how so many people are here. It wouldn’t be uncommon for you to scan the crowd and see such legends as Charlie Lee (founder of Litecoin), Jimmy Song (Bitcoin developer) or even Ricardo “Fluffy Pony” (of Monero). In fact, we actually saw both Charlie Lee and Fluffy Pony at one of the after parties. (Of which there were a ton)

CoinStructive was in the house this year and it was really exciting for a few reasons:

We made next level connections – Everything from top-level Media like Crypto Trader from CNBC Africa and CoinCentral, to investors and VC funds to OG developers like Eran Tomer who worked on the original zk-snarks proposal when it was still a brainchild of academia
We shared space with legends and OGs – People like Dr Whitfield Diffie, a co-creator of public and private key cryptography, Charlie Lee of Litecoin, Ricardo Spagni of Monero and Erik Voorhees of Shapeshift
We had 2 previous clients present as exhibitors – We were ultra proud to see Gcoin and Kowala Tech with booths at Consensus and feel honored to have contributed to their early stages of growth and now see them out in the marketplace spreading the Blockchain in their unique ways.
We are now partnering with Edge (formerly Airbitz) – Over a later dinner in Manhattan, Paul Puey, revealed the new Edge security platform they are releasing into the wild which includes a white label, secure “single sign-on” (SSO) style functionality for a variety of Blockchain services (like wallets).

Chris Groshong, CEO of CoinStructive with G Coin — **Chris Groshong, CEO of CoinStructive with previous clients GCoin who had a booth at Consensus 2018. Congrats to the GCoin team**!

While we could spend time re-hashing, the fantastic recaps that everyone has already posted, we would prefer to share our thoughts on the event and collect links so you don’t have to (see below).

Crypto Trader at Consensus 2018 — Adrian Baschuk (left) making the magic happen with Ran NeuNer (middle), host of Crypto Trader

Check out our discussion on LAB Radio about Consensus: LAB Radio Episode 21

A lot of people were really pissed about the event due to long lines, expensive tickets and superficial, rudimentary content while others hailed the event as THE Blockchain conference to be.

Happy Hour at Consensus 2018 — **The Happy Hour was well attended**

Noteworthy was a beer vending machine with your identity verification provided by Civic and their app.

Our take was, although it was crazy busy, we couldn’t deny that just about everyone was there. (Ok not quite…Vitalik and crew etc.) However, beyond that, there was a veritable who’s who of people. And for that reason, we got a lot of value out of the event.

**Til next time, HOUDL! (Hold On Unicorn for Dear Life) | Source: Gem Booth**

Also, great parties for Blockchain week, shout out to ZenCash for their awesome 1st year anniversary party:

Fun times at the #zencash 1st year anniversary party #blockchainweek #ny #crypto @coinstructive @realcoincentral

A post shared by Aaron Mangal (@themangalmasala) on May 14, 2018 at 10:16pm PDT