It’s good to back in the Kafkaesque embrace of crypto conferences
Conferences are back! Not least last week’s Crypto AM two-dayer and it was a ‘great honour’ to be invited to moderate a couple of panels.
When I say that, they were panels that I had to do twice with the same panellists, one at 9.30am and the other at 2pm. It was Kafkaesque and torturous to do so and the panellists were great, but my utter exhaustion afterwards was completely unknown.
After 18 months of moaning about the sensory deprivation of Zoom calls, it was weirdly tiring to be in a place of humans and to relearn skills of keeping a conversation going when 18 months ago it came so naturally.
In an age where wages are going up (although I did the Crypto AM gig for love alone), it’s high time moderators were paid in line with keynote speakers whose reputation might be up there, but they don’t really do the work. #paymoderatorsmore
Still, it’s always better after the first time (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) so last night’s BVNK event at the Ned after Token2049 was back to normal, but this time it was the audience who were probably tired.
A long day’s conferencing and then an hour or so standing listening to keynotes and fireside chats would exhaust anyone, but the response was positive and this time, like before, I felt euphoric, not exhausted. Good people, great audience questions and, again, excellent panellists.
BVNK was new to me, I thought it was an acronym until somebody pointed out that the ‘V’ was just an upside-down ‘A’ so it was a clever brand that clearly meant bAnk. They’re smart, these brand maestri.
For those unfamiliar with BVNK, it’s a London-based digital asset financial services platform that is seeking to ‘bring treasury and payment solutions together for the first time to serve businesses and partners’.
Simplifying the experience
A bit of a mouthful, but any platform that wants to remove barriers and connect financial service providers with the benefits of cryptocurrencies has my (provisional) vote. Not only that, simplifying the experience for institutions without frightening them too much is to be welcomed.
Or, in the words of Jesse Hemson-Struthers, BVNK CEO: “Existing crypto platforms only serve the extreme ends of the customer spectrum – small-scale retail customers or multi-million dollar institutional clients. We want to become the ‘go to’ choice among fast-growth international businesses and partners for digital asset financial services”.
Effectively BVNK wants to be a crypto bank that wants to fill the gap between mid-market clients, retail customers and multi-million dollar institutions – and that’s obviously a huge market opportunity, but maybe there’s another market they could be looking at.
As on last week’s Crypto AM panel (twice) on Web3, DeFi and Metaverse, one of the loud-and-clear messages for the audience was that the kids get it more than most financial services companies.
Playing video games, or especially mobile games, since they first sucked their thumbs, they know all about rewards and games payments.
So it’s not a big Mario-jump to understand digital currencies and moreover to realise they can make more money learning about crypto than doing a paper round, stacking shelves in a supermarket or the jobs I did when I was a kid.
There are dangers, of course. Young minds being overinfluenced by crypto TikToks, YouTube influencers raving about this pump-and-dump and that pump-and-dump. But I would say they know how to avoid losses more than traditional finance that is starting to dip their callow toes into the crypto water.
BVNK will undoubtedly be swamped by competitors as crypto financial services evolve and sometimes it’s all about the language. Mention crypto to a banker and they’ll laugh in your face, but say digital assets and they might do something different entirely.
Yes, it’s all about the language, and since somebody pointed out that BVNK is not an acronym and it’s another way of saying bank, I just can’t get BVNK out of my head. As I said, these branding experts are very clever so-and-sos.
I’m off to get BVNK out of my head and watch the Bond movie to reset my brain. Maybe hosting conference events is tiring in another way… but I’ll get used to it. Pay moderators more!