An event dubbed the first ever ‘ICO-Hypethon’ has been announced for August the 16th at St. Petersburg’s Street Art Museum. The two-day event is hosted by Crypto Friends meetup and supported by blockchain solutions developers Waves Platform and the consultancy company Eberhard Lindfordt. ICO-Hypethon is open to crypto-enthusiasts and will include lectures and screenings of blockchain documentaries. With over a thousand attendees expected, it is anticipated to be one of the biggest blockchain conferences ever held in the city.
Daria Arefieva, founder of Crypto Friends and the organizer of the event, explained: “ICO-Hypethon is a mix between a hackathon and a festival for the crypto community. It will bring together a wide range of people interested in crypto. It’s an opportunity for people to meet with like-minded people and industry leaders, learn new content and gain new market info.”
Blockchain startups will launch their pre-ICOs with the support of domain experts and mentors and compete for the ICO Angels prize pool. The organizers hope introducing the startups to ICO Angels and experts will help the crypto community as a whole to assess token sales better. Teams will be vetted prior for quality and trust before competing.
Founding Director of Bitcoin Foundation, Jon Matonis, who will be a speaker and a judge at the event, remarked: “ICO tokens are bearer instruments held anonymously. Although less likely to be traded in US and sold to US buyers, they are not going away.”
Eyal Hertzog co-founder at Bancor whose recent token sale raised more than $150M, Tone Vays, and more local blockchain experts including Artem Tolkachev (Deloitte), Dmitry Machikin (Gmt Legal), Yuri Lobyntsev (Cindicator) Mihail Lunev (Ecoinomy), Anatoly Kaplan (Forklog) will be attending.
Eric Benz, Managing Director at CryptoPay.me who will also be competing in the ICO-Hypethon, said: “This is a really exciting time to be involved in anything blockchain related. Every day the ecosystem grows bigger. I see the Russian market growing exponentially over the coming months.”
