By Gabriel Kurman.

A few weeks ago I had the possibility to visit multiple European cities to participate in Blockchain conferences and meetups, and get to know the local Bitcoin and Blockchain communities.

My first stop was at the amazing World Blockchain Forum organized by Keynote. With more than 600 participants from more than 40 countries, London became the center of the blockchain space for a weekend.

As expected, the ICO liquidity is attracting a lot of attention from new entrepreneurs and all kind of crypto projects are flourishing from every corner and industry (do all need a blockchain? We will see…). Investors seem extremely interested and eager to explore this new investment tool that provides liquidity from day one, I hope they are doing a proper due diligence and knowing their founders (KYF).

But definitely the most inspiring was to see projects and presentations sharing the RSK vision, were the technical part of the Blockchain revolution is only one side of it, and how we build a better society with these tools is the real challenge in the space going forward.

The second stop was a politically turmoiled Barcelona. I arrived the same day that the central government block the general public to vote about the Catalunya independence referendum (we’ve all seen the cruel images online). Paradoxically, that clash between the civil society willing to democratically express their opinion and the SWAT teams breaking urns reinforced my conviction why encrypted decentralized voting solutions and Blockchain technology are so important as a censorship resistant tool. In Barcelona, I met amazing blockchain entrepreneurs such as Griff Green and Jordi Baylina (Giveth.io), Alex Casas (Shelpin), Pavel Kravchenko (Distributed Labs), Alex Puig (Alastria) among other enthusiasts from around the globe at the Blockchain Solutions Forum,

In Madrid, I was surprised by the interest of the international students at the Instituto de Empresa, who despite being newbies in Bitcoin understood its transformational potential right from the beginning. This meeting triggered so much interest that we are currently working with the IE Blockchain Club to offer a decision makers blockchain course with the help of RSK University in the near future. I also had the pleasure to meet wonderful Solidity projects when visited The Cube where profesor Jorge Vallet organized the Madrid Blockchain Meetup.

Definitely one of the landmarks of the the trip was the meetup that León Blockchain Hub organized in León… An incredible group of Bitcoiners came from all the northern cities of Spain to take over the local celebration of San Froilan, which immediately became San Froichain! By far the longest meetup since Satoshi’s genesis block, we started in the morning and finished at 5am after a memorable tapas tour through the Barrio Húmedo. While having amazing food, we also discussed the possibility of generating new educational and services projects in León, this beautiful Spanish town that is working to leverage the blockchain revolution to make real an economic development opportunity, thanks to a well developed IT ecosystem.

After 3 weeks on the road, it was difficult to ask for anything else but the Bitcoin ecosystem had two more surprises for RSK before coming back to Buenos Aires. A “secret” meetup in Paris organized by the Cercle du Coin which made the effort to understand my basic French while inspired me with their motto Parce que decentralization ne signifie pas disunion (because decentralization does not mean lack of unity). Finally, the last day of the trip I had the privilege to meet the Toulouse Bitcoin community and their beautiful city! After 2 hours of intense blockchain and smart contract conversations there was no other way to call it the night than with a traditional Thai (?!) dinner.

I couldn’t be more grateful to all the friends and supporters from all around the world who are getting involved and adding value to RSK from the technical, commercial and educational perspectives.

It seems that the decision of building technology for the most thriving and committed crypto community in the world was the right approach.

To express our gratitude, we will continue to dedicate all our energy and passion to provide the Bitcoin and Smart Contract ecosystem the most secure and low cost platform, as well as help and promote all use cases than can transform our society in positive ways. Stay tuned!!

See you all very soon in Bogota for Labitconf 2017!!

See you!!!

Gabriel.