Time for another post (Steemit exclusive) as part of a mini-series about all the stuff I picked up at the two-day DagVanDeCrypto (Day of the Crypto) Conference @ Amsterdam (Jan 29th and 30th). The event featured 70+ speakers and 30+ ICOs and themes ranging from legislation and the future of blockchain to panel discussions and investment and research tips.

Since attending a conference like this gives me an opportunity to create some unique content for Steemit, here it is! I share with you my most interesting insights and pieces of information. This time I share with you some interesting stuff Cypherpunk, thought leader and blockchain expert Nick Ayton talked about during his presentation.

Nick founded an ICO platform Chainstarter and started the 21Million project. 21Million is a tv mini-series about the Bitcoin revolution. Nick says they are doing the project because they don’t want Hollywood to f*** it up and tell the lies. They don’t want Hollywood to whitewash it, so they want to get in there first.

Thoughts on ICOs

Nick starts of by going into North Korea, who are becoming one of the worlds biggest miners. Nick:

Because if you have tanks are on your lawn threatening you and you have enormous access to electricity and you are cut off by most parts of the world, you’re going to start mining crypto aren’t you? It is a way of fighting back. The people are starving but Kim Jong-un has invested in mining equipment. There is a message there for a lot of people.”

According to Nick 75 is the percentage of ICOs that fails to reach their soft cap. Most important reasons for this are:

• A bad idea (most of them)
• They are Russian and desperate for the money. They don’t give themselves enough time to propagate the message and the story to their target audience.
• There is a lot more competition than there used to be and they have to fight for the investors’ attention.

Nick goes on with the question to the audience what ‘XRP’ is. Of course, most in the room know that it is Ripple but nobody answers. ‘Dogshit!’ is Nick’s answer. Ripple is dogshit. It is centrally mined, it is owned by a company, and the agent of Satan sits on its board, Ben Bernanke. - insert loud applause - . Ripple, if you buy it, sell it quickly because it is on the way down.

Cryptonomics vs. Tokenomics

These two terms are often used interchangeably, but are very different things. Nick:

“Cryptonomics is the relationship between the network, the asymmetric cryptography and the underlying consensus algorithm. It is at the heart of blockchain. Tokenomics is about how to program a store of value that can be exchanged, in code. How it can be distributed, bought and sold, wrapped up as a store of value.”

The banks and other financial institutions took the financial alchemy too far. That is why cryptocurrencies come at a vital time. It is an opportunity to us to rebuild trust into a capital market that is failing. Fractional reserve banking does not work. We have more than 30 banks with negative interest rates. The bankers don’t know what to do, we’re off grid and they won’t admit it. QE is bad too. It goes on the balance sheets of the banks and it bolsters them up. 2008 was about banks being too big to fail. Blockchain is our change to create the capital market that we want and that is not controlled by the 1%.

ICO’s are new capital markets raising in front of our eyes. Don’t believe it when people say the market is only around $400 billion. It’s well over a trillion when you look at the value of all the blockchain companies out there, not just the coins. All of a sudden governments and banks are starting to take is seriously.

The Howey Test is complete rubbish

It was designed in 1945 to catch everything. It is misleading.

“If you are issuing a token and you are getting a tick from the Howey test, you could still be wearing an orange jumpsuit by the end of the year and eating one meal a day.” - Nick Ayton

Predictions for 2018

Some predictions Nick does during his talk about 2018:

• A series of ramps will be created for institutional money to flow into crypto
• New generation of ICOs: existing companies with existing products and services will do an ICO (Kodak, Telegram etc.)
• Bigger size ICOs
• 5000+ ICOs totalling $20bn+ of investments
• 99% of the tokens are security tokens
• Exchanges closing (because they listed securities without a license)
• Total market capitalisation of $4 trillion
• Bitcoin will reach 25k-100k fairly soon

In the last few minutes Nick makes an interesting statement, which is a bit controversial and a lot of people don't like it:

“If you are trying to convince buyers that your taken is a utility, you have to be able to use it on a platform on day 1. If you are using a token as a way of raising capital, to bring into your project and you haven’t built it or haven’t finished building, it is a security.”

So, as you may have noticed, Nick Ayton is somewhat of a rebel. He likes to shock and create controversy. I like that and there definitely valuable stuff in there!

I hope these posts deliver value to you and help you sharpen your ideas about the world of crypto :-)

“This technology, if it were an opera, we would be in **act 1 scene 2**. It is very early days.” - Nick Ayton

What are your thoughts on all of the above? Let me know in the comments!

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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.