Fundamental Fire Pit Update: Consensus 2018

What is it?
An annual blockchain technology summit that is hosted by CoinDesk (a large digital media conglomerate).

When and Where is it?
It will run from May 14th – 16th in New York at the Hilton Midtown in Eastern Standard Time.

Who is there? (and not there!)
250+ speakers and 4000+ attendees.
Some familiar crypto-s with speakers at Consensus 2018 include but are not limited to:
SONM(heavily invested), AION, ZCASH, ARK, ENIGMA
Dozens and dozens of others are sponsors and will be attending.
There is a TON of mainstream media coverage for the event. In 2017 that list includes:
American Banker, Business Insider, Bloomberg, CNBC, Entrepreneur, Esquire, Forbes, Financial Times, Fortune, Handelsblatt, MarketWatch, New York Post, Quartz, The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Thomson Reuters.

Why not Ethereum, Cardano and OmiseGo?
Well, Vitalik Buterin listed 4 reasons that he (and by association his projects) will be boycotting Consensus 2018. To summarize his tweets, he doesn’t like what they report, how they report it and where they get their information from. He cites a conflict of interest and says that they use leading or fake news. He doesn’t like their “off the record” policy’s and to round it up, he thinks the cost of the ticket is too much.
This is significant as there is an expectation (almost across the board) that this conference will draw significant money into the market (like it is credited with doing last year). We are interested in seeing whether the projects participating in the boycott will follow whatever the presenting and participating projects do.

Why is this important to me?
As a member of the TCL community we want to help keep you informed of the major events. We try to give updates on major market changes effecting trades and prices but we also want to help you prepare and plan for the upcoming events. Consensus 2017 is believed by many to have been a catalyst for bull market that took off last year through May and June. Although, after looking at the Bitcoin price around that time it gave back 80% of the rise almost immediately. With the recent FUD, and significant market downturn, we urge you to be diligent with your trades and minimize your risk. Yes, there might be a large surge to come from this conference but remember that after giving almost all of it back it took another month to get back to and hold that market level. There’s no rush in the crypto!