Opening Remarks And Welcome To TOKEN2049 - Brian Kelly @ TOKEN2049

[Music] Wow that is that's a tough act to follow and quite an introduction thank you very much uh and welcome welcome to token 2049 we are gonna have a great couple days first of all just wanted to extend a thank you to the organizers of this Raphael and Chris if you haven't seen them around they're the two guys with just tremendous beards fantastic beards and that's saying something for a crypto conference because there's some great beards here but thank you very much guys for putting this together what a great lineup we have over the next two days we are gonna talk everything from DAGs all the way up to crypto kitties and we're gonna go everywhere in between we're gonna hear about building on the first generation blockchains building on top of second generation and what those are building even third generation block change and what that means by the end of the two days you're going to know everything there is to know about blockchain maybe more than you wanted to know and it's just a great event here and we've got some great speakers from all around the world I know a lot of you flew around flew in from all around the world so thank you all for being here taking the time to travel here to this great city and thank you to the Kerry hotel for hosting us so we are gonna dig in to some of the deeper aspects of blockchain and cryptocurrency but before we did that I wanted to just kind of quickly turn back to the legacy markets the stock markets and some stuff that has gone on recently that might have some relevance to what we're doing here and what we're gonna talk about over the next two days so you may or may not seen but Facebook got itself into a little bit of trouble over the weekend they had a little company called Cambridge analytics that I don't know it was a hack but got ahold of a lot of user data and used it in the US election very controversial I'm not going to go too far into that but what I think is interesting about that and what's interesting for this crowd is that we might be witnessing peak centralization and that's not my term as my friend Miko he told it to me I said Miko I'm gonna steal that immediately but I'll give you credit so shout out to Miko for coming up with peak centralization but I didn't really understand this term right I didn't understand what what is this peak centralization why do we need a decentralized Internet and how does blockchain fit into it how do cryptocurrencies fit into it it made no sense to me right my internet worked fine yeah okay great some of my data was used but you know what I still a I'm still able to order on Amazon I'm still able to get what I need I'm still able to use Twitter but I don't really understand the decentralized web and web 3.0 until I went to a block stock conference in San Francisco last year and they had a great analogy of what's going on with the Internet today and I think it applies to what's happened with Facebook so what they said is imagine if I came to your house unlock the door walked inside rummaged all around looked at all your pictures looked at all your activities what you like to do saw that you like fishing yet all kinds of pictures you with big fishes and everything and it walked out and then next day I sent somebody to your door and knocked on your door a salesperson would you like to buy a fishing pole next day would you like to buy a fishing pole you want to buy a fishing pole and on and on and on advertising wanting to know if you want to buy a fishing pole we think that's crazy Moodle anybody in our house to do that yet on the web we do that every day every single time we look something up we get an ad serve to us on what our interests are it hasn't really been a problem but I wonder if this Facebook issue might be changing the narrative a bit you know maybe the narrative is shifting and maybe this peak centralization there's something to it and I think you know the world is waking up to the idea that there is value in our own data and that there is a technology blockchain crypto currencies that can give that value and that power back to us and we can choose how we want to use it who we want to see who we want to have that information and we can control that debt and if that narrative changes then everybody in this room is going to be at the forefront of the next technological revolution now I've thought this for a long time that this is a technical audre technological revolution I wasn't sure how it was all going to pan out it's kind of interesting because most people think well this is going to disrupt the banks well maybe blockchain is going to disrupt Facebook and Google and the peak centralization companies maybe that's how it's going to turn out maybe the banks have nothing to do with it so over the next few days as you're listening to these panels I want you to think about that and think about is there something else there is there a narrative that's changing in the world is the world waking up to the idea that our personal data is valuable and that this new technology that we're going to talk about over the next two days is a way to monetize that for ourselves we're gonna talk about self sovereignty you're going to talk about what it means to have your own identity on a blockchain what it means to hold that it's these aren't easy concepts and these are these are new things so it's gonna take a bit but think through it and think through how this is impel this is impacted on your world and the products you use today how those can change more than just banking because when I when I wrote the book back in 2014 the Bitcoin Big Bang I didn't necessarily think the banks would be disrupted I didn't necessarily think that Facebook would be disrupted but I knew that when you have a new technology that disintermediate stuff everything changes so you go back to Jeff Bezos who left a Wall Street job to start an online book store some of you may not be older as old as I am but Jeff the Amazon started as an online bookstore it nad is no way 30 years ago Jeff Bezos could have said you know what this company's going to in 30 years we're gonna stream movies to a handheld computer that everybody's gonna carry around none of this existed so I would challenge you over the next few days to break them all think outside of what what we once think outside the narrative that we have today and for those that are building and those are investing and are part of this community I would say that this is an opportunity and also a responsibility for us because this is a new technology it's up to us everybody in this room to educate the public about what this is to educate that yes there are some bad actors but you know what there's thousands if not hundreds of thousands of great people working on this technology to make new products that are going to be better for all of us it's up to us to educate people on that it's also us to up to us to police this industry we don't really have a regulatory industry yet so all of us in this room must be that regulatory agency we must say this is OK and this is an OK and it's us up to us to build it's up to us to build the products that people want to build the products that advanced society to build the products that make people's lives better it's an opportunity and I would say as a call to action everybody in this room is part of this community at the end of two days I hope you all feel like you're part of the blockchain cryptocurrency community it's a global community we trust all of us and I would just end with saying the one rallying cry for this conference I would say to you remember in us we trust have a great conference everybody thank you very much [Applause]