Spokesperson Report, November 7th 2018

By: Annemieke Dirkes
Global voted Spokesperson BitShares Blockchain

BitFest in Amsterdam

For those of you who were unable to attend, you missed a great opportunity! After the start in Shanghai in May, once again everyone with an interest in Graphene Technology and the BitShares Blockchain was grouped together, this time in the city centre of Amsterdam. With an early sold out limited possibility to visit the live environment of Euronext, the Amsterdam Stock Exchange, the Friday kicked off. After which we went on a boat tour through the canals of Amsterdam. Hardly anyone looked outside! So engaged they were! The evening was spent with people meeting in small groups to eat and catch up. Saturday was an early start with a full day of high level technical presentations from all corners of the world. China was represented with a large team which caught my personal interest with a project on what I would call ‘interlisting’ between the various Graphene-based blockchains and the BitShares Blockchain. Apparently, there are already around 30 projects of all sorts in the wider community that are based on the Graphene technology stack.
Also a functional ATM has been presented and could be tried out. It supports BTC, BTS, ETH and other crypto currencies. The integration with the BitShares Blockchain has been fully sponsored by DasCoin.
A very inspirational day closed off with a walking dinner through the Old City. On Sunday, @roelandp baked typical Dutch pancakes for all who were there to say their goodbyes. We thank our sponsors, our volunteers and all contributors and attendees, because the atmosphere of close collaboration and the uniqueness of our Community was once again very visible.
An entire recap of the event can be found here. Besides that, the slides of all BitFest speakers are available on the BBF website.

Bittrex Listing

What a storm this topic raised again. After we did submit the legal opinion letter it went very silent. Our lawyer went after comments or response several times. Also with their counsel. It simply was silent. Then a list came out supposedly delisting BTS. Luckily it turned out that there was a misunderstanding. Due to internal matters we fell in between the cracks as we say. After we reached out the matter was settled. I am happy to report we filled out the formal listing application contract and I signed for it. I would like to say that before people start raising their comments from a keyboard in a fashion that compromises the respect of our BitShares Blockchain Community in general, as we look like a group of bickering toddlers, it might work to just mail us and ask? The parties we talk to these days expect professionalism, and we have a hard enough time to compete as a decentralized Community.

Other Listings

Lykke is live and enables on-and off-ramping into Fiat. We are working on getting listed on Coinbase.Pro as well. However, we have to say all parties asking for enormous listing fees are not seriously pursued. The Community has excellent listings with good volume and liquidity as of today and spreading across too many exchanges also entails a risk. Less volume makes BTS less interesting. At BitFest, in a smaller group, the growth of BitEuro and BitUSD was discussed about following the excellent example set by BitCNY and we are looking to bring more volume to the BitShares Blockchain itself.

Legal

Due to the broad regulatory insecurity worldwide and the constant changes, we stay on our guard. We have to. The brand needs promotion in order to have better safeguarding and that is besides expansion one of the other reasons to come in at institutions which have a reputable name, like the United Nations. When we get help from within the Graphene Community to get in, we use the opportunity to establish the BitShares Blockchain. Up until then, I can assure no one had ever heard of us in New York. Now, we have a visit planned to the Director of UNESCO in Paris to explain what we could offer in emerging economy.

At this state, it is of utmost importance to establish a professional fundament for ongoing and future businesses on the BitShares Blockchain and we see that in 2019, BitShares will make a difference. There are still plenty of lessons to be learned but the past has already taught the entire Community. With that said, we would like to emphasise that the BitShares Blockchain Foundation has a strong desire to stay legal representative of the BitShares Blockchain. However, we recognize the fact that the Community would like to become more active alongside the BBF to promote the BitShares Blockchain and thus we would like to propose setting up ambassadors (Worker Proposals) that can fund individuals and support them in their desire to educate about BitShares, Graphene on conferences etc.

General Assembly United Nations

After a 14-days in advance Security screening, and all that unfortunately goes with it these days, there was the opportunity to participate in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) panel part of the General Assembly in New York. This was a follow up on Blockchain for Impact which was attended in spring at the UN. As earlier reported, The United Nations is very interested in Blockchains and Tokenization. There are 17 SDGs, ranging from gender equality to financial inclusion. The topic of Blockchain has its own driving force in the United Nations by Amir Dossal. The panel discussion evolved around whether tokenization will change world economy and whether Blockchain technology will enable better economic chances, also focussing on women as they often are the key to development in the third world. The costs of the visit has been covered by DasCoin.
As the BitShares Blockchain is very much fitting the SDG Goals we are looking to not only support these goals but to get recognition for it. This is undertaken, as we would like to legally use the logo.
The BitShares Blockchain is of high interest as it is freely accessible, cheap and anyone can use it. On the topic of easy access and use of Blockchain and Tokenization on November 16th, I am a speaker at the Ministry of Education and Technology in Warsaw to explain entrepreneurial women how to use the BitShares Blockchain to tokenize their business. We will do that with a package of instruction. The costs of Warsaw are covered by Blockchain Projects BV.

Code of Conduct United Nations

There is a possibility to acknowledge the UN charter on responsible business conduct in Blockchain related technology. One can do so by applying to the Secretary General of the UN. After screening, one gets accepted on a list and is required once a year to report on it. Rules range from no child labour to non-pollutive behaviour. In short, our company will apply and so will the BitShares Blockchain Foundation on behalf of the BitShares Blockchain. As we have a natural person to sign, that is possible. There is now a basis of people to contact within the UN to enable this. As a small entity minimal registration fees are applicable which will hopefully be covered by the blockchain’s self-funding worker proposal system.

Delta Summit Malta

The world of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency was assembled in one of the world's leading Summits situated In Malta. This one is very much supported by the Prime Minister and the government as was shown in their involvement and opening address. The country is one of the smallest EU member states and has sought its economic future in this new technology. Counting on 1200 people, they ended up in selling 3700 tickets. The internet was not very prepared for this load of high volume users at the same time….. The crowd and speakers were however of excellent visions and presentations. Malta has self-imposed a regulatory institution that will deal with new companies and ventures on the level of compliance and registration. As perhaps known the gaming industry has already an association, rules and regulations and is therefore very large in Malta. The fact that a hard effort is made by the government to provide a regulated but very innovative platform to grow this industry, showed clearly in the number of attendants. ICOs are a possibility in Malta as well and there is already a set of compliance rules to follow to do them legally. In a lot of plans and solutions the actual creation of a working environment was not a fact, and the BitShares Blockchain and its Graphene-based sisters were hardly known. Next year, we definitely should search for an option to present the technical solution that can be provided.
As a remark, the costs of attending this conference have not being charged to the Spokesperson Worker.

X-prize Foundation Event Los Angeles

By invitation the opportunity was there to participate in this annual event. Originally started 15 years ago by the wish to enable people outside of governmental organisations (very few of us get to join NASA) to go to space. After that success, nowadays, it is an organisation that focuses on problems and situations that are unlikely to be solved by a government or a company. Either because of their sheer magnitude or because the commercial interest is not there (yet). The model was very recognizable! Everyone there on the spot, votes by majority to pick the pitch that moves to the next level in a general meeting. X-prizes must also be measurable by result and have impact. Before the pitches are performed, everyone joined workgroups that are firmly led on time around the topic of your choice. People pitch their idea and the voting with your feet starts right after; by majority. In the end, the workgroups each pitch two of the plans in the general meeting, where those through pitches and panels are cut down until there is a winner. The group of people were scientists, wealthy supporters, groups from around the world with passion for a problem and most significant for me personally: A vast part were women. Problems like saving the world’s heritage in coral reef (which turns out is dying off fast), CO2 extraction from polluted air, financial inclusion of 3.2 billion unbanked people, global sunscreen in space, autoimmune diseases as cancer source, economic growth through technology. A prize means a team motivates world-wide others to come up with answers, models and prototypes in a certain period. Some run for two years, others even five. A winner is then supported to get a purse to roll out the solution. This time, a project came out with a winner that produced 2000 litres of water from air in 24 hours in under 2 dollar cents a litre with sustainable energy. They got 1.5 million dollars to get it market ready. Blockchain technology is very much in all of these issues, whether for registration purposes, for riskless trading without banks, with tokenization, everywhere. X-prize is looking with a team into tokenization. I must confess, it was an extremely inspirational event with an extraordinary assembly of out-of-box thinkers. This was at no cost to the Worker.

Worker Management

It is most rewarding to see that all the hard work that is being put in to professionalise the model is paying off. The level of definition as well as preparation is definitely at a much higher level and that serves the overall results. That the model works, is proven by continuous development and most importantly, a better internal organisation of work and results. With this in mind, a thank you to all contributors.

Next Conferences attended by the Spokesperson

Speaker SteemFest in Krakau, November 7-8
Speaker Decentralized, Athens, November 14-15
Speaker Ministry of Education, Warsaw, November 16

BitShares Blockchain Foundation
spokesperson@bitshares.foundation
https://www.bitshares.foundation/

Official Public Face and sole Spokesperson of the BitShares Blockchain {more}