Bitcoin Conference to Hit New York Today (Can it Drive up the Price?)

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A three day Bitcoin conference is expected to hit New York, starting from today 14^th May 2018. The conference which was also organized three years ago with about 400 people attending has been projected to have about 4000 attendees.

With many invited experts of the cryptocurrency to speak at the conference, Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter will be one of the speakers. Considering the hype and the expectations, it is likely that the consensus conference will be a catalyst for the Bitcoin price to break down the $10,000 wall. The ticket to the conference has been said to cost an average amount of $2000.

Tension Arises on the Ticket Price

Even though the conference has been projected to come with many benefits, its price has caused an uproar of word exchange between the co-founder of Ethereum and a media blog, Coindesk. Vitalik Buterin, the Co-Founder of Ethereum expressed his displeasure on the ticket price in a tweet. “The conference costs $2-$3k to attend. I refuse to personally contribute to that level of rent-seeking,” he tweeted. He also added that Coindesk is recklessly complicit in giveaway scam.

The statement which was a serious threat to the attendance of the conference has called for a reply by the Coindesk. The former head of blockchain at JP Morgan, Amber Baldert also criticized the price. “The irony of high-priced conferences is they’re the ones least likely to be paying speakers within the community, who are the most & need the platform to share new work. “ “Corporate expense accounts subsidize people who rarely say anything novel, ‘celeb keynotes’ extract high fees,” she added.

Coindesk replied to Buterin’s post, expressing a disappointment in the tweet. “Disappointed to learn of Vitalik’s tweet today regarding a CoinDesk reporting error, for which we apologize. One of our reporters included an unverified link in an article; we quickly identified the error and fixed it. We strive to maintain the highest level of unbiased, ethical journalism in order to provide the best possible coverage of the blockchain industry.”

The other Displeasures

The other displeasure on the conference is the fact that there have been many Bitcoin conferences in the past months. According to Michael Oved, co-founder of a token exchange called AirSwap, the frequency at which blockchain conferences are organized is “crazy”. This month alone has so many lined up conferences. He said that too many conferences will likely get people distracted. It is not clear the number of people who have this same thought, but if this is anything serious to go by, these criticisms can certainly affect the attendance of the conference.

The other side of these conferences is that they help to expose Bitcoin to people, increasing its price to the highest. In 2015, a Blockchain week organized with 1500 attendance tended to result in a 23 percent Bitcoin price rise. Bitcoin recorded its record high of $19,500 and this achievement was partly contributed by the conference despite the claim that blockchain and Bitcoin conferences are a distraction to the market. A similar one was organized on 21^st March 2018 which turned out to be a success.

According to Tom Lee, the co-founder of Fundstrat Global Research, “The rally post-Consensus has been strong and more supportive of our view that bitcoin has already bottomed for the year,” He added that:”Bitcoin has rallied 10 to 70 percent during each of these conferences.” If this conference tends to play the role it is supposed to be, it will drive the price up and cause the altcoins to rise as well. The consensus invest conference in November 2017 accelerated the Bitcoin price above $10,000 after the first TokenSummit and Ethereal Summit shot the price to rise above $2000. This will likely be the time Bitcoin investors have been waiting for.

The Ethereal summit charged $1300 for a ticket while the TokenSummit charged about $649 per ticket. It is therefore clear to understand why there have been complaining that the ticket price for this conference is quite expensive. Cryptocurrencies have been interesting assets after the breakthrough of Bitcoin. Over 1000 altcoins have been created into the market to compete with it. It is unclear what the future of Bitcoin will be. Many experts have predicted a success for Bitcoin while some others have also projected the coin to crash.

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