State of the Blockchain in Minneapolis

in #crypto2 years ago

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Last night I attended a State of the Blockchain event in Minneapolis. It was put on by the Minnesota Blockchain Initiative and took place on the old trading floor of the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. There were 200-300 people there. Live music. A catered buffet. A dude VR piloting a small glowing drone through the crowd. An NFT display with a dozen featured artists, including me.

There was a certain poetry in gathering in a commodity market from history to talk about how we're building the markets of the future. In the picture above, we're standing in front of old metals prices, on a high ledge that surrounded the cavernous space. As it turns out, we weren't supposed to be up there at all. We were consequently scolded by someone who probably worked for the building. Still, we got the picture.

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There was lots of stuff happening onstage. @fedoraonmyhead talked about Minnesota's role in supply chains and its growing importance to the blockchain community. Congressman Tom Emmer made a video for us confirming his support for crypto, privacy, and individual sovereignty. One of his staffers flew in from DC to present the video. Then representatives from Filecoin and Storj sat on a panel about decentralized data storage. After that, students from the University of Minnesota told us about their blockchain club and how they recently won a blockchain hackathon.

Following this, I could no longer take the high volume speaker I'd sat in front of. So I swung by the swag table to get a Filecoin tote and matching socks. Making my way across the room to where my NFTs were being displayed, I ran into @lovejoy and we were both surprised to see each other. Which was funny, because there's nothing at all surprising about either of us attending a crypto event.

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The NFTs were presented as slideshows, with one screen per artist. There were two rows of 5-6 monitors set up, though it took a bit for the techs to get everything hooked up. An hour into the event, everyone's art but mine was on a big screen, while my NFTs were being displayed only by a small chromebook. It was a minor disaster, but @fedoraonmyhead saved the day! In the middle of doing a hundred other things to keep an event of this size running smoothly, he got my art onto a real screen so people could see it.

Milling around in front of the art, I met a few people and mostly ended up talking about AI. One guy was captivated by Alan Turing Circuit Merge, a disturbing AI video. This is my least favorite NFT that I've ever made. I don't know how anyone can even stand to look at it. And yet, some people really like it.

The exhibition didn't result in any sales, but I did get a couple of new Twitter followers. In a crowd filled with VCs hungry for the next big thing and founders hungry for funding, I felt lucky to have no agenda whatsoever. I was just glad to see my NFTs getting some attention. And it was great to note that the Minneapolis crypto scene has continued growing and developing despite this year's rocky market conditions.


Read my novels:

See my NFTs:

  • Small Gods of Time Travel is a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt that goes with my book by the same name.
  • History and the Machine is a 20 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on my series of oil paintings of interesting people from history.
  • Artifacts of Mind Control is a 15 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.
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Awesome to hear more about the event through your stories and pictures, Mark! And it's interesting to get more of a glimpse into the crypto scene too.

Thanks, glad you like it!

Glad you said something, man. And real glad we could get that TV set up for your work:)

Thanks again for being a part of this event, @mada !

Thank you for all your hard work making it happen: )


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