Since 1 January I have been part of the Crypto Expo Europe team as a strategic advisor. Crypto Expo Europe is a business event dedicated to crypto and blockchain, held in Bucharest. When I told a few friends, the first question was not “what is it?” but “why Bucharest and not London, Berlin or Lisbon?”. Fair question. And honestly, it is exactly the one I asked myself before saying yes.
So I want to explain, as plainly as I can, why I think an event like this makes sense here and now, at the start of 2022. No get-rich promises, no charts going up forever. Just the reasoning of someone who has been in business since he was 18 and who has looked at this market with interest, but also with a healthy dose of suspicion.
Why Bucharest
The first part of the answer is about people. Romania has had an excellent reputation in IT for years. Romanian developers work for companies all over the world, and plenty of products used globally have teams in Bucharest, Cluj, Iași or Timișoara behind them. I once wrote about building a global SaaS from Romania, and the conclusion still holds: technical talent is not our problem.
The second part is about community. Over the past two years, more and more Romanians have discovered crypto: some as an investment, some out of technical curiosity, some because they heard at a barbecue that “the neighbour made money on some coin”. There are developers building blockchain projects, there are startups, there are very active online communities. What is missing is a place where all these people can meet, seriously, with the partners they need.
A gap on the map of Europe
Look at the crypto conference calendar and Western Europe is packed. There are big events with well-known names that everyone attends. Central and Eastern Europe, on the other hand, has plenty of good meetups but few events built around business: investment, partnerships, regulation, products that actually work.
That is not a criticism of anyone. Markets simply evolve that way: first come the enthusiasts, then the companies, then the need for structure. I believe our region has reached that third stage. And I believe Bucharest, with its talent, its costs and its location, can be a natural bridge between East and West.
Why now, after two years of screens
In the autumn of 2020 I wrote about how an events company survives without events. The industry moved online and did what it could. Webinars were useful, but we all learned the same lesson: trust is not built on Zoom.
In crypto, trust is everything. When we talk about money, digital assets, partnerships with banks or funds, people want to see who they are dealing with. They want to ask awkward questions over coffee, not in a chat box. They want to find out who is real and who is just a nice logo. After two years in which we all lived inside video-call windows, I think the need to meet face to face is bigger than ever.
Education, because the hype is everywhere
Let us be honest: crypto has more than its share of scams. Projects that appear overnight, promises of guaranteed returns, “influencers” paid to praise coins nobody has heard of. Last year I wrote that crypto is moving from curiosity to asset class, but also that every investor has to do their homework. I also wrote about NFTs, somewhere between art and speculation. My view has not changed: the technology is fascinating, but the noise around it is deafening.
That is why I think a serious event also has an educational mission. Not to tell people what to buy, but to help them ask the right questions:
- What real problem does this project solve?
- Who is the team behind it, and what have they built before?
- How does the business model make money, beyond the price of a token?
- What happens to the project if the market drops by half?
- What does the law say, here and in the European Union?
If an attendee goes home with those questions in mind, the event has done its job.
Regulation is coming, and we should be at the table
In 2020 the European Commission proposed a common framework for crypto-asset markets, known as MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets). The text is still being negotiated between the EU institutions, and nobody knows exactly what the final version will look like or when it will apply. But the direction is clear: crypto is going to have rules in Europe.
For entrepreneurs, that is mostly good news. Clear rules attract serious money and keep the adventurers away. The trouble starts when rules are written without listening to the people who build things. That is why I think it matters to get regulators, banks and crypto companies into the same room, talking openly. Not as opponents, but as people who need each other.
The market is falling? All the better for serious conversations
After the highs of November 2021, the crypto market is in the middle of a correction. If you bought at the top, that hurts. For a business event, oddly enough, it is a good moment. When everything goes up, everyone looks like a genius and nobody wants to hear questions. When the market cools down, the people who are actually building something are the ones who stay.
I started Floria, an online flower shop, in the middle of the 2009 crisis, and ever since I have believed that hard times sort things out. I do not make price predictions; that is not my job, and this is not investment advice. All I am saying is that a correction shows you who has a product and who only had a trend.
What we want Crypto Expo Europe to be
In short, we want it to be about business, not hype. In practice, that means a few things:
- Serious content: discussions about products, regulation, security and business models, not sales pitches in disguise.
- Real networking: time and space for entrepreneurs, investors, banks, regulators and developers to actually meet.
- A bridge between the Romanian ecosystem and international players, in both directions.
- Standards: not every project gets a stage just because it pays for one.
As strategic advisor, my role is to help the team stay on that course, bring in the right people and resist the temptation to put on yet another show full of lights and promises. We will announce the details of the event soon.
Instead of a conclusion
I have lived in Cyprus since 2018, but I was born in Bucharest and I come home often. I would love Bucharest to be known not only for great developers and fast internet, but also as a place where the industry’s important conversations happen. I think we have everything we need to make that happen.
What would you want to hear at a serious crypto event? What would you ask if you had a regulator, a banker and a blockchain founder sitting in front of you?