The Big Picture - Gabriel Francesch @ TOKEN2049

[Music] hello everyone my name is Gabrielle Francaise I'm the managing director for company called Catawba we provide language services so that's translation localization specifically for blockchain and crypto projects so today I'm here to give my perspective on the space from the point of view of a service provider working with blockchain start-ups on a daily basis so I want to answer three questions today so building a business in the crypto space is it worth it let's say you have a business today you provide services to let's say tech companies would you want to focus more and more on the blockchain encrypted space next one is is there demand and what kind of services are most needed last one what are the best opportunities that I see in the space and what are the challenges as well so for my presentation I'd like to use two fictional characters so these are Bob and Alice they are pretty famous in the blockchain space so when they don't you know appear in white papers Bob actually runs a marketing agency down in Singapore mostly focusing tape tech clients he's pretty successful and Alice is based in Hong Kong and she runs a recruitment firm here so first I want to look at the specifics of the crypto industry because it's very particular market and let's explore why frankly going all-in and blockchain in crypto space might and just saying might be a terrible idea so bob has heard about these blockchain companies raising millions on the blockchain through initial coin offerings or token generation events whatever you know you want to call them he's wondering whether he could get a few long-term clients you know and start working in the space so as a responsible business Bob goes online and does some research he logs in and finds a few headlines which are quite troubling it reads Facebook bans cryptocurrency adverts because so many are scams then we have Google banning cryptocurrency ICO advice exchanging news from just a couple days ago this company jumped on the Bitcoin train just as it derailed that feels really bad for Bob and then Bitcoin to end up like all bubbles so after reading all that Bob is slightly worried but then there is more there's this guy who says 90% of all I SEOs will fail and that's some credible source but then there's that other guy who says bitcoin is going to 1 million so that's extremely confusing from someone who's not from the industry so you see one point when working in the crypto space is that every day you have a constant flow of negative news and positive news pushing the prices up and down and that's can be really hard to stomach just because it will change the mood your mood the mood of your clients the market as a whole and as an example like if you take payments in crypto currencies you might agree in an amount with a client but by the time they transfer the amount to you the feared value of it might have gone up 10% or down 10% so that's something to take into consideration same for the payments you already received you cannot just leave them there because of the exchange risk you need to automate conversion and manage risk something else that Bob learns is that some companies are keen to pay in native tokens so these used to be called bounties or pre ICO tokens and now they have fancier names like saft which basically means token that have not been issued yet or listed on an enemy and that can be an even bigger risk because because no one knows the value that they will have upon listing so because of all that Bob is getting a bit worried but there is more here he reads that in January a project that was supposed to allow the tracking of fruits and veggies on the etherium blockchain wiped out the whole page and left only one word on their page so if you haven't come across the story I'll let you google it and find the word and the fact is because of the nature of the space being decentralized and mostly online it's sometimes really hard to know who you're dealing with you know you just have a webpage to build all your your trust you know in a project so these ones these guys look very legitimate but who knows same for these guys you know it looks like a proper team diverse Ryan Gosling's on it legit right so as you can see the token economy is an extremely exciting space but it comes with a certain number of risks the main ones being regulation price volatility the lack of transparency and the success rate of projects so having having said that it's still an extremely exciting space and other people like Alice and not deterred she thinks it is still worth oh that's Bob by the way you know bob is going to reconsider his involvement in the crypto space bob is not feeling good right now so why would it still make sense to work in the new crypto space is it maybe the opportunity of a lifetime so Alice goes online as well and does some research too and she finds data from the past three years so as we can see in 2016 we had 64 major I cos they raised a total of 300 million USD we had very famous one like waves Liske : and shares and what we should point out to Bob is that all these projects did really well they had tremendous growth they created large communities of investors users and developers in 2017 which is really when things exploded we started seeing monster icos such as Falcone teasers or yo s all raising above 200 million dollars and in 2018 although the year started with a broad correction it seems that token sales are as attractive as ever in the first three months of the year we've seen very large project like telegram will be or Dragon raising very large amounts so you can draw a similar trend looking at corn market cap at the end of 2016 we had 644 coins or assets listed end of 2017 that number was up 1355 coins or assets and today we have just a bit shy of 1,600 different coins or assets so is the market size enough to accommodate more and more service provider I think so when I tell my friend about what I do they're like but it's not a market Gabriel it's just a few coins no it's not not anymore that it's actually a true ecosystem but although people like to say that all the coins are going to the moon right all the work is done down here and I know for a fact that launching an ICO is extremely demanding a few of my friends launch their own eyes years last year and basically they just disappeared you know I would run into them at conferences but they would say hi and then go back on their phone answering their telegram messages and why is it so demanding because when you launch an IC o---- you have to manage a lot of things at the same time not the least is investors expectations traders expectations building your team building your user base building their product hiring marketing but the flip side of this is it also creates a lot of opportunities for people to get involved so we've seen in the past couple years some very good companies emerge and for example provide ICO launch services such as ICO box for example providing legal and advisory services so now we have KPMG EUI all advising icos on how to structure their offering properly we have more and more exchanges coming online every week and all of them raise the bar in terms of user experience I know at least a dozen marketing and PR firms who launched dedicated services only for blockchain event management event like the one today very successful one we'll see more and more of them and I see also huge needs in terms of training education and community management so what I mean to say here is that because the launching and ICO is so demanding they are needs that emerge at every level so a more personal point of view is that it's important to go beyond investing I think a lot of us in the room already have steaks in blockchain assets or crypto currencies but actually working in the space can be more fulfilling and gives a different perspective on on where the space is going so Alice concludes that the market is big enough there is strong demand and it's an extremely exciting time to get in it now I would like to share what I feel are the most interesting opportunities in the space at the moment the first one not translation okay is token economics I'll borrow that quote one of my idols in the space Kartik and he says what is a token a token is a unit of value that an organization creates to self-govern its business model and empower its users to interact with its product while facilitating the distribution and sharing of rewards and benefit to all its stakeholders I think that definition is very complete so what it means that we issuing top new tokens every day we're close to 1600 token now and it's basically a sea of tokens that people can choose from so they need to be strong reason why people would want to hold the token why is it desirable so for example I feel that going forward token that just serve as loyalty point or just to pay transaction fees and platforms membership fees even was just one of fundraising tokens just because you need the money will not do well in the long term but on the other side tokens that enable other projects to prosper enable true value sharing and appreciate through network effects will do really well so I think more and more people will turn to the study of token economics and build better models for all these tokens and that's going to become basically the most valuable skill in the industry second is research and analysis we have some good research today done internally by some companies or publicly by influential individual or companies but the quality of research should improve dramatically as much in assets become a real asset class for retail investors and institutional investors next something I'm really excited about is partnerships because 2017 was mostly fueled by expectations regarding blockchain technology and 2018 is going to be very interesting because we're gonna try to close the gap towards these expectations as some of the icos that launched last year will have real-world used and develop partnerships with existing companies so connectors and people who have a one-foot in both the crypto space and the traditional industry will be in high demand also community management I'm always surprised by how intimate communication is between blockchain developers and their communities it's necessary but at the same time it's very demanding to manage relations with thousands of people and across all channels so I see more and more teams outsourcing that part of their work and then it goes without saying but hiring like any team that we've worked with is currently hiring so there are huge need of talent to jump in on the industry so some practical advice from Alice and Bob so things I wish I had known before crypto and blockchain space is actually a very small space so it's important to build excellent relationships conference is a great way to network and meet clients don't underestimate the bitcoin meetups it's also great for each major to make friends and meet clients communication join the slack discord and telegram channels of every coin you work with also nobody uses email anymore so you have to use telegram now and then managing risk because of the nature of the space it's important to manage the only currency risk exchange risk but also reputation so do not work for any suspicious projects and report them to your partners because that's really the only way to carry out proper due diligence ok so to conclude this presentation I hope that at least one person in the room will feel more confident to jump on the space and bring the best set of skills to the industry it will make you lose a lot of sleep your wife or husband will hate you your kids will ask what you're doing your Bitcoin thing again but I think in the end it's really worth it and yeah thank you for your attention do not hesitate to reach reach out to me after the conference or follow me in telegram or Twitter thank you and enjoy the rest of the conference [Applause] [Music]