A converted airplane hangar is not the first place one thinks of when thinking about blockchain technology. However, that is precisely where over a thousand entrepreneurs, investors, and industry enthusiasts gathered on a sunny October day in Santa Monica at Block Con to advance the conversation about cryptocurrency and blockchain. What emerged from these two days of insightful panels, intense discussions, and innovative pitches is a clearer look at where the technology is headed and how people create and follow blockchain trends. These are the four most important blockchain trends we saw at the event.
A difference in opinion has been growing between whether tokens issued on the blockchain during a token sale should primarily hold monetary value like a currency (security tokens) or provide a unit of service to their holders (utility tokens). Read more about the differences in this blog post.Many blockchain entrepreneurs envision the tokens attached to their products or services as utility tokens, with more and more founders hoping that those who purchase their tokens truly believe in the technology and the vision of the project as well as the benefits the tokens bestow on project’s participants. Perhaps out of ideology or out of caution of legal repercussions, more blockchain companies are announcing utility tokens.However, some purchasers—especially institutional investors—still largely value tokens for their speculative value and view some tokens as securities, regardless of the founder’s intentions. This means this particular audience for a blockchain company’s token sale still cares greatly about the speculative value of the token over its utility. Companies offering a token sale must therefore also consider this audience if they want the sale to be successful.
