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Personal Views on the Miami Conference

Ryan Taylor

Well-known member
Foundation Member
After getting back from Miami and having the opportunity to get caught up on my BitcoinTalk, DashTalk, and Slack reading, it is apparent that the community is really looking for some feedback on the conference. And in the absence of feedback from the core team and no immediate spike in the price, I've even seen many community members speculating that things didn't go well for us in Miami. Nothing could be further from the truth, and so I'd like to share some of my unofficial views from the conference to help illustrate just how well things went and explain why you shouldn't expect immediate price spikes, but rather long-term impact from the conference.

The core team has a ton of work to do coming out of the conference, and I'm not sure at what pace we will be able to share details (both because we need time to digest everything as a team and because there is a ton of work)... we need to collate the full list of opportunities, contacts, and next steps coming out the conference, adjust our workplans and strategies as appropriate, and unfortunately that will take some time. So, official communication from the core team will come out over the next weeks. In the meantime, my personal views might help clarify just how well the conference went.

Our booth was constantly busy during both days of the conference. I personally never even got a lunch break on Day 2 and my voice was practically gone by the end. Over that time, we talked with well over 200 people in my estimation, and literally every single person walked away with very positive things to say about what we are doing. The diverse interests of the attendees included exchanges, Bitcoin investors, merchants, service providers, and reporters.

Evan has been trying to tell me that the trolls on the forums are not the real world for a few months now. The REAL action occurs in the REAL world. And there, everyone is supportive of Dash once they learn about us. But it wasn't until experiencing it for myself in Miami that I truly understood how well received Dash is. Don't expect that to impact the price overnight... these tend to be serious investors, and they plan to do their due diligence on Dash before investing. While I did see a couple of people pull their phones out and buy Dash, this was the exception. Most attendees will need to go through a process before they can add us to an exchange or make a major investment.

A sample of some of the conversations I had to help illustrate just how well we were received:
  • A merchant buying and selling digital gaming assets (think of world of warcraft assets) is suffering from fraud and wants to offer digital currencies but customers want instant credit-card-like experience, so he was really intrigued by InstantX. He wants to offer a discount to customers paying with Dash, which will eliminate fraud losses and credit card fees. He has over 100,000 customers and 20,000 active monthly. He wanted to know if we would partner to offer a discount (something Bitcoin can't do) for a customer's first transaction using Dash. Very interesting way to gain consumer adoption with a group of customers already familiar with the concept of a digital asset (but maybe not digital currency). I thought it sounded really interesting way for Dash to access consumer market.
  • An aviation fuel merchant who wanted to accept Bitcoin, but couldn't figure out how... he either had to force his customers to wait 10 minutes for a block confirmation to get some assurance the payment will go through, or he had to be willing to dispense $8,000 worth of aviation fuel to fill a plane relying on a 0-conf transation and feared he would be targeted for fraud. InstantX again was very intriguing for him.
  • An exchange that already trades Dash wanted to add InstantX transaction into and out of the exchange to provide a better user experience for traders.
  • A major bitcoin investor that stopped by our booth many times seeking more information on technology and capabilities we bring
  • A retail payments consultant that works with retailers to implement PoS solutions. Wanted to understand how we could lower merchant risks at the PoS in physical stores.
  • An investor in another coin who started asking all kinds of troll-fed questions to Evan about insta-mining and how terrible our anonymity is. He showed up as a detractor to the project and left about 45 minutes later as an enthusiastic promoter of what we are doing... "I'm going to tell my friends about you guys. Thank you for taking the time to walk me through everything. I guess those [other coin] guys are a little bit zealots."
I could go on for another 100 bullets, but the number and variety of contacts we made in Miami is mind-blowing. We have 10x the number of opportunities to partner than we have the capacity to pursue, so we will need to prioritize our efforts. But do not expect these opportunities to translate into immediate rampant buying. These are serious business people, and it will take time for these relationships to bear fruit and for investors and business partners to conduct proper due diligence. Likewise, WE need to conduct due diligence on the potential impact of each opportunity and determine how we should invest our time to best align with our strategy and roadmaps for 2016.

There will be many more conferences like Miami this year. Each will bring a new set of opportunities and hopefully lead to long-term appreciation as more investors and business partners are brought into the fold. This takes time and a ton of hard work... each person takes about 1/2 hour to really understand what makes us different, and that education takes place one person at a time with boots on the ground in face-to-face meetings. This is going to take time, but I'm telling you it is happening. I hope this helps the community understand better how well everything went and why it might take some time... but VERY good things happened in Miami. More news to come through official channels soon, I'm sure.
 
babygiraffe
A major bitcoin investor that stopped by our booth many times seeking more information on technology and capabilities we bring.

Can you tell us who this investor was?
 
babygiraffe
A major bitcoin investor that stopped by our booth many times seeking more information on technology and capabilities we bring.

Can you tell us who this investor was?
First, there was more than one. Some were indeed well-known. However, in the interests of maintaining professionalism and trust of those investors, I feel it would be unwise to disclose names on the internet. They value their privacy, and I'm sure wouldn't want the world knowing ahead of time where they are considering investing... especially if that were disclosed by the very project they were considering investing in. So you'll just have to just trust the core team on this one as it is probably in all of our best interests to treat potential investors the way they would want to be treated... with professionalism.
 
How well-attended was Evan's presentation?
Middle of the road. The second day had fewer attendees than the first day. I'm guessing that had to do with the weather expected to hit the east coast, many people may have opted to head to the airports early and get home ahead of the storm. But a very high percentage of the people that were there the second day did attend his speech. I would say about 5-10 people in an average row and about 20-30 rows. So about 200 people would be my guess.
 
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