CoinDesk announces Consensus Singapore for 18-20 September 2018
Consensus is coming to Singapore as the blockchain facet of the now six-sided TechXLR8 event.
The CoinDesk Consensus event, held annually in New York City, has become one of the biggest blockchain industry events in the calendar. It's now announced that it will be expanding to Singapore, partnering with KNect365's TechXLR8 series of events for the first "Consensus: Singapore," and the first Consensus event outside the USA.
"Blockchain technology has fostered a truly global community and we are excited to expand our event presence internationally. TechXLR8 has gone a fantastic job with its events, and is the perfect partner for this new endeavour," said CoinDesk CEO Kevin Worth.
Singapore is a natural choice. It enjoys a relatively central location in Southeast Asia, but more importantly has become well-known as a technology and fintech hub. As an added bonus, it already hosts a TechXLR8 event, which brings together five leading tech events – 5G Asia, IoT World Asia, NV & SDN, The AI Summit and Project Kairos. This event will now join with Consensus: Singapore as the blockchain tech show.
"CoinDesk have done a fantastic job of growing Consensus over the last four years into the world's foremost blockchain event," said KNect365 EVP Gavin Whitechurch. "We believe combining KNect365's international delivery capability, event expertise, and extensive reach into multiple vertical markets including finance and technology, with CoinDesk’s great brand and community reach, create the ideal combination to grow the business."
Appropriately, Singapore Airlines was one of the first carriers to embrace blockchain for use with its rewards program, and it's set to roll out before Consensus: Singapore. There's a good chance that attendees flying on Singapore Airlines into Singapore for the event will be accruing blockchain rewards en route.
Despite sharing space with five other headliners, Consensus: Singapore isn't expected to be quite as much of a circus as Consensus 2018. All up, it's preparing to welcome only 2,500 attendees, 300 speakers and 100 solution providers and startups between the six headliners, with an emphasis on the Asia Pacific region. This is compared to the estimated 8,500 currently packed into New York from all over the world.
It might also be more affordable – at least from Australia. Consensus NYC has attracted some criticism for its "rent seeking" $2,000 to $3,000 ticket price, but Consensus: Singapore isn't that much cheaper, with advance bookings starting from $1,599 per person for Consensus alone, or $2,499 for the entire TechXLR8 Asia event.
There do seem to be significant group discounts of up to 50% though, and flights to and from Australia to Singapore for less than $100 each way are quite feasible.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author holds ETH, IOTA, ICX, VEN, XLM, BTC and NANO.
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