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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Crypto Fans Converge for Convention

About 2,800 people turned out for the Crypto Invest Summit at the Los Angeles Convention Center this month. The twice-yearly event put on by Goren Holm Ventures, a Westlake Village blockchain accelerator and incubator, drew entrepreneurs, investors and others with an interest in blockchain technology to the convention center on Oct. 15 and 16. Among the speakers on the conference’s first day was Ted Ross, chief information officer for the city of Los Angeles. Ross spoke about how blockchain can be used to create a smarter city. “We may be a big physical city but also a big digital city,” Ross said. Following Ross was a discussion with Tim Draper, founder of Draper Venture Network of which Goren Holm is a member. The network is also a seed investor in the summit. He was interviewed by Peter McCormack, host of the What Bitcoin Did podcast, about his experiences investing in Bitcoin, a digital currency that is created by blockchain technology. Asked by McCormack what advice he had for doubters of Bitcoin, Draper said they should get on board. “This is when you have an opportunity to transform the world the way the Renaissance did, the Iron Age did, the computer age did,” Draper said. “This is bigger. It transforms society into being one big open globe.” Ross returned to the main stage as the host of BlockTank, a “Shark Tank” style pitch contest in which tech startups gave presentations to a panel of judges that included Draper, and representatives from Oracle Corp., Microsoft Corp., Google LLC, IBM Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and the office of Mayor Eric Garcetti. Streetcred ID won the contest, which included a $25,000 pilot program with the city and an additional $25,000 from Goren Holm. The startup has a platform that allows individuals and organizations to exchange secured digital credentials through the use of a custom-built digital wallet. “This is an interoperable wallet built with open standards in mind,” Streetcred ID co-founder Michael Boyd told the panel. “You should be able to choose who your providers are with this kind of technology.”

Mark Madler
Mark Madler
Mark R. Madler covers aviation & aerospace, manufacturing, technology, automotive & transportation, media & entertainment and the Antelope Valley. He joined the company in February 2006. Madler previously worked as a reporter for the Burbank Leader. Before that, he was a reporter for the City News Bureau of Chicago and several daily newspapers in the suburban Chicago area. He has a bachelor’s of science degree in journalism from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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