The Cointraffic team came back, positively glowing, last week to their Tallinn offices. Glowing with a tan, yes, but also with excitement, because they’d just returned from a number of cryptocurrency events where the people, conversations, and opportunities were ablaze with passion and ideas.

Each event was hosted in a completely different part of the world, and each had a different representative in attendance. So, straight from the source, here is the debrief on September’s smorgasbord of events.

The general market tendency (based on our teams' observations) is that the market is rapidly changing.

Overall, the time of turbulent speculation on ICO’s has passed and we’re now in a period of stable development: moving towards mass adoption, the development of technologies, and the attraction of large corporations and banks to crypto.

More specifically, the community has agreed that blockchain should be taken seriously and that the ‘wild west’ of ICO times are long gone. Instead, the future of coins should lean towards becoming Security Tokens. When it comes to investors and the major market players, an overriding sense of calm and positivity permeated every communication.

So, it’s a better time than ever to be in crypto, with a lot of opportunity and excitement for what the future will hold.

Unblock Community Conference

Hong Kong, 9-10 September

This cozy event hosted by Iskander.events was a great opportunity for networking for the Cointraffic team; in building long-term relationships with different field participants.

The event took place in Cyberport - one of the most renowned digital and fintech innovation hubs of Asia, backed by the HKSAR Government, with the main theme of the day being ‘community’: defining the value of it and reimagining the way blockchain companies should manage theirs.

Over two days, more than 30 speakers shared their experience, delivering valuable insights and strategies through presentations and panel discussions.

Despite the ongoing buzz around “community value”, very few companies actually know how to strategically work with and grow the community, so a large focus went on companies re-evaluating their approach to community management, and redefining the values they share.

Ironically, to create a proper decentralized network, businesses need to learn how to build a structured and loyal community, led by general strategic frameworks and tools that are successfully applied.

In a select number of P-2-P sessions, verified projects had a chance to personally meet with select investors, including Mae Wang, Artem Gurin, representatives of Skypath Capital, Click Ventures, Hamon Investment Group, Nexchange, J.Rotbart&Co and Diamond Capital.

All of the presentations will be shared on Iskander.events YouTube channel.

CoinsBank Blockchain Cruise

Europe, 7-11 September

We rolled onto the CoinsBank Blockchain Cruise conference last week - and as it was our first cruise, we weren’t sure of what to expect.

Because it was an entirely different format to traditional conferences, it attracted the top blockchain and crypto influencers - such as Bobby Lee, Charlie Lee, Roger Ver, and Tone Vays. The delegates spent their day on the ship gaining influence from the speakers, before later on discussing more pressing matters over a drink or dinner.

The agenda was interesting and inspiring, and panel discussions included the infamous bitcoin vs bitcoin cash debate.

Our partner blockchain marketing agency, CoinMedia, was represented by CEO, Slava Jefremov, who engaged in the panel discussion on Media for Blockchain with Naeem Aslam (Forbes), Maria Jones (Cointelegraph) and Mate Tokay (bitcoin.com), moderated by Travis Wright.

The panelist touched on the role of the media in popularising blockchain projects and provided valuable insights on working with media outlets, including using different ad formats to create brand awareness and build credibility amongst other crypto enthusiasts.

Slava noted that blockchain projects should take into consideration the importance of providing value to the users and the community - creating meaningful content that can be then used for marketing purposes, highlighting the effectiveness of native ad formats that are available on Cointraffic.

“Working with the top media outlets in the blockchain space is essential for building brand awareness, credibility, and engagement. Only showing disturbing banner ads into people’s faces does not work anymore. Meaningful content that fits into the narrative [media’s] and resonates with its audience is an essential cornerstone in today’s blockchain marketing strategy. ”- Slava Jefremov, CEO CoinMedia.

A great overview of the event has been published on Forbes by Naeem Aslam in his article, ‘Crypto-Crash: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly’.

“Our cruise continued to cut through the big waves and making its way forward, with me having faith that there is enough power in this ship to fight the storm. Thus, having faith in your investment is important and facing difficult times will only make the crypto ecosystem more robust.”- Naeem Aslam, Forbes Contributor

TokenFest

Boston, September 13-14

Lastly, we attended the TokenFest conference over in Boston. We ran Booth #300 with our North American representative and were kept busy all day.

A lot of folks passed our booth, asking questions, asking for more information and wanting to know how we could help them. We were really thrilled to hear the feedback and it inspired us with a bunch of new ideas we’re now ready to execute.

Later on in the day, our team representative also presented our recently launched native ads service from the stage, letting the audience know what we offer and what they can get out of it. We’ll definitely be back next year!