What if the Brazilian Carnavale featured a dancing Bitcoin? What if Mardi Gras participants threw coins instead of beaded necklaces?
Scale that back a whole lot, and you have the Blockchain Lifestyle Festival, a one-of-a-kind crypto conference to premier April 18 and 19 at Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands Convention Center, colloquially called Block Live Asia.
Burning man, it’s not – however, proponents are insisting that this public two-day festival is going to change the way we see cryptocurrency conferences – and it could change the way we see cryptocurrency use itself.
Looking at the range of hands-on experiences and workshops that are involved, it’s easy to see how participating in Block Live Asia could help average consumers to understand better how they would use cryptocurrency in their daily lives.
One of the “big rides” included in the event is the “Crypto Experience Zone,” where visitors can simulate creating a wallet, buying a token and dealing with a cryptocurrency exchange, all in a safe space.
This kind of interactive ground-level attraction can be a very effective way to get less tech-savvy or crypto-interested individuals involved in the blockchain and crypto experience that massive institutional adoption is bringing our way this year.
Elsewhere, at “F/UPS,” event planners are encouraging participants to come up with failure stories in order to brainstorm what both failure and success look like.
“The organisers created this first-of-a-kind event to clap back at the increasingly profit-driven and tired conference world, featuring only authentic, constructive and necessary discussions about real work that is being done in the blockchain space. The free-to-attend festival departs from the usual conference programme, not only answering the toughest questions that exists in the industry now, reshaping mass perspectives on blockchain, bringing the underlying technology back into the spotlight but also making blockchain accessible and applicable to the daily lives of people,” writes Sean at Hard Forking describing part of the event’s appeal.
While blockchain public events might soon be de rigueur in some parts of the world, don’t expect them to replace, say, Lollapalooza in America anytime soon. It’s notable that this unique and trend-setting conference is happening in Singapore and not New York, Los Angeles or New Orleans.
However, looking at the roster of events included in the Block Live Asia, you can see how the steady march toward popularizing blockchain is occurring side-by-side of some of the institutional events that we often report on here.
One of the key aspects of assimilating cryptocurrency into consumer audiences – and thus propping up crypto prices forever – is the idea that you have to explain how people will practically use crypto, and why it should be relevant to their lives. It looks like this type of conference is set to achieve many of these aspirational goals. Keep an eye on news out of Singapore as the Block Live Asia Festival kicks off later this month.