I first dove heavily into blockchain in 2014 when I joined Cointelegraph. To set the stage, this was right around the time of shadow projects, bitcoin casinos, and the infamous Mt. Gox crash. Almost everyone with a media badge was negative about the budding industry, and those who weren’t were typically working anonymously. At that time, there were probably fewer than 1,000 people in the core community, and those were the people I was interested in.
They were building projects, and truly believed in the concept behind crypto and blockchain technology. It was around this time that I first thought of doing a conference -- offering those dedicated individuals and teams an amazing experience that not only gave them a platform for showing the cool things they were working on, but also a platform to celebrate them for their innovative ideas surrounding a technology that could truly change the world.
Fast forward to 2016: our team at Cointelegraph started working on the first conference. We looked at the bigger picture -- not just Bitcoin and how to make money with it, but the underlying blockchain technology as well. Our first conference, held in Helsinki, was attended by approximately 200 people, and there had been only three of us prepping for the conference just two months prior. We then set our sights on Munich, where BlockShow 2017 was held. With this conference, we experienced a rise in attendance to more than 500 people.
Both of these conferences were great successes. Now, however, we are planning to hold three major events that will be attended by more than 10,000 people. We hold meetups around the world for communities, and within a few years, we plan to host three major international BlockShow conferences for tens of thousands of people across Europe,
