Blockchain Startups Going Public: From Tees To Ties

A new blockchain conference gathered some of the most ambitious and potentially successful startups in the field and make them wear suits – at least for a couple of days. The event was hosted by GMP Securities LP and is meant to raise capital through a more traditional route – the TSX Venture Exchange.

What’s important for this conference is that many blockchain startups went public and many of their founders shared their two cents on the rise of Blockchain. They clearly pointed that the virtual currency market has blossomed over the years – and that Bitcoin, once a curiosity, is nowadays a thing of main interest to almost everyone.

Some of the blockchain startup founders even predicted that cryptocurrencies are shaping the form of the new Internet and will be equally transformative in years to come. However, GMP’s executive Harris Fecker had a say about the entire situation from a different perspective, claiming that he saw an opportunity to help startups go public using a mechanism that is familiar to Canada’s mining and oil industry.

“The real opportunity has been to do what we always do. And that connects really good entrepreneurs with good management teams and good boards with really smart people who want to invest money in them.”

With governments and authorities still grappling on how to regulate blockchain and cryptocurrencies, the crowd is still not sure whether cryptocurrencies are a good idea. However, most of the public is buying Bitcoin as we speak and seeing it as an investment in just that – technology that will improve the world.

While this conference mainly spoke about blockchain from a startup’s perspective, it also aimed to go public in the old-fashioned way of raising money, showcasing blockchain startups with great vision who are ready to raise money through coin offerings, opposing to the risk governments, institutional money managers, pension funds and endowments that most startups are troubled with.