DENVER — Whereas Colorado pushes to be the hub of cryptocurrency and blockchain expertise, the fifth annual ETHDenver occasion welcomed greater than 12,000 folks from 100 totally different nations this 12 months, which is the best attendance within the occasion has skilled.
“This line took like three hours yesterday,” Bobby Miller mentioned as he was ready in a line that wrapped across the former Denver Sports activities Citadel constructing, the place the occasion was held.
By now, at the very least in passing, you’ll have heard of the phrases “cryptocurrency,” a decentralized digital forex, and “blockchain,” a peer-to-peer community on-line ledger that helps main cryptocurrencies.
These matters had been the idea of the occasion, the place business leaders would share their insights of the way forward for cryptocurrency and folks would compete to create the subsequent massive factor.
“In easy phrases, it is the world’s largest blockchain expertise, software program improvement competitors,” ETHDenver Founder and Government Steward John Paller mentioned. “So groups come from all around the world to construct these next-generation purposes, protocols, currencies, no matter it is perhaps, which have totally different use instances round issues like social affect, cell phones, decentralized finance, digital communities.”
The contestants are competing for over $1.5 million in prizes and bounties and $2 million in funding capital, Paller mentioned.
It is an occasion CEO of Chain Secure Methods, Aiden Hyman, has attended for the final 5 years.
“The purpose right here is to empower folks to be extra financially literate, to be in command of their funds, and to truthfully be in command of their total digital footprint,” Hyman mentioned. “With out occasions like this, we actually would not have the neighborhood we’ve and our firm would not be the place it’s at the moment.”
It is folks like Hyman that Gov. Jared Polis hopes to proceed attracting to Denver.
Polis, who spoke on the occasion Friday, is pushing onerous to verify Colorado is the primary digital forex state within the union.
It is a imaginative and prescient that Paller shares.
“We might be a vacation spot of alternative for this innovation to work right here, stay right here, make investments right here, construct right here, and actually expertise the long run. Governor Polis is the founding father of the Blockchain Caucus in Congress,” Paller mentioned.
Polis additionally signed Colorado’s first blockchain-related regulation often called the “Colorado Digital Token Act.”
For many who have but to contemplate life in a digital forex world, your time could also be working out.
The governor lately shared his imaginative and prescient with CNBC, stating that paying for drivers licenses and state taxes with cryptocurrencies could also be an possibility as early as this summer season.
