On March 20, Paris Blockchain Week kicked off its fourth year as one of the world’s largest conferences focusing on blockchain, crypto, and Web3. The day included pre-summit events like the Talent Fair, Startup Competition, and Investors Day, which drew over 10,000 attendees and sold out last year.
After two days of hackathons, talent fairs, and investor demos, the main event of the week, the Summit, began on March 22. Keynote speaker Tim Draper, a Bitcoin advocate, discussed the decentralization of everything and emphasized the need for decentralization in today’s time. Draper advised people to use Bitcoin to hedge against bad governance and banking, citing its outperformance of traditional financial tools during the growing banking crisis.
A panel of industry experts, titled “State of the Chain 2023,” discussed the current state of the Web3 space and how Web3-based solutions are becoming a norm during times of financial crisis. Another panel discussed the European Union’s Markets in Crypto-Assets regulation, which is set to come into effect in 2024. Industry experts and regulators weighed in on the regulation’s impact and its potential effects on the industry.
Today the recently appointed Ripple’s President Monica Long will be a keynote speaker with the “Web3 Finance: The Future Starts with Infrastructure” talk.