BCNL Newsletter - May 2019
Your gateway to the Dutch Blockchain Ecosystem
Welcome!
Welcome to Substack and to the very first Blockchain Netherlands newsletter! From now on we will condense what is going on in the Dutch blockchain ecosystem on a monthly basis and update you on the most important developments, events and announcements. The items you should really read directly in your inbox.
IMPORTANT: If you are receiving this newsletter via our meetup.com community, please make sure to sign up as a member so that you continue to receive our newsletter, announcements and information about special events in the future! We will not keep sending the newsletter throught meetup.com so sign up here.
In this newsletter:
Announcing the first Dutch Blockchain Week
Level Up for Blockchain Netherlands (www.bcnl.foundation)
Co-creating an ecosystem map (Google Maps)
Important blockchain news in the Netherlands
To sign up for our newsletter please go to bcnlfoundation.substack.com and hit the sign up button. Do you want to get more frequent updates, contribute to our initiative or reach out more directly? Join our new community slack channel at bcnlfoundation.slack.com
Announcing: Dutch Blockchain Week #1
With all the momentum of the Money2020 conference and the incredible amount of people coming to Amsterdam during the first week of June, we had to take our chances and showcase the Dutch Blockchain Ecosystem.
In other words, the very first Dutch Blockchain Week is happening this year from the 2nd until 7th of June!
Existing local meetup organizers and other volunteers from the Blockchain Netherlands network co-organize a series of events across the country (!) about all aspects of blockchain technology. This week is completely community driven, and will host various events that will showcase the Dutch Blockchain Ecosystem and attract high profile international speakers as well. We are all about bringing communities together!
Of course we cannot make a first edition of Dutch Blockchain Week a succes without your help. So, if you have the time and are interested get in touch to see how you can help.
If you want to volunteer organizing events, taking care of marketing & media or help us keeping our website up to date, sign up for our slack channel
If you are interested to become a sponsor for Dutch Blockchain Week, get in touch with the team via mail@dutchblockchainweek.com
If you want to help us spread the word on social media please do so but make sure to tag us and use (#dutchblockchainweek or tag twitter.com/dutchblockweek)
What’s new with BCNL?
Deciding to launch a newsletter is a big step, but we feel there are so many things happening that we need to tell all of you about and that we can’t manage in another way.
Late last year we decided to give Blockchain Netherlands, a succesful meetup group back then, a boost and take it to another level. Using the network we have build and knowledge of the ecosystem we’ve gathered over the past few years we felt it was time to grow beyond meetups alone and work on creating a better educated and connected ecosystem in the Netherlands. So what have we done so far:
We have launched (and are still updating) a new website where you can already find a lot of information about our new activities and what Blockchain Netherlands stands for. Go check out: https://bcnl.foundation
While already operating for some and dedicating our time and energy to establishing Blockchain Netherlands, last month we finally nailed down our leadership team and made sure to register at the Chamber of Commerce as an official non-profit “stichting”.
(fltr: Wesley van Heije, Mark van de Kimmenade, Rudolf van Ee en Berit Fuss)
We have also grown our core team of contributors that help us with content creation, providing training, social media strategy, event organization and much more. We’ll add their profiles to our website soon to that we can give credit, where credit is due! Without these people we would not be able to do so many things in such a short period of time.
Finally, Q1 was hot and happening when it came to the meetups we (co-)organized. Two events are worth noting.
- We started the year of with a succesful Hyperledger meetup about permissioned vs permissionless blockchain networks with the help of our friends from Deloitte, Scantrust, Effect.ai and Ledger Leopard. The 120 seats we all taken and people had to stand in the back of the room.
- Another great milestone was the launch of a Dutch Corda community together with Axveco and of course R3, we had roughly 60-70 enthusiasts coming together in Amsterdam West and learning more about Corda technology.
No innovation without collaboration!
A statement we truly belief in. So we applied it to an important piece of value we want to add to our network, which is an overview of all that is happening with regard to blockchain technology in the Netherlands. What better way to do this than CO-CREATE a map?!
The map is fairly empty for now and that is where you come in! Since you’re reading this newsletter, you are probably somehow involved in a blockchain initiative, so let us know about it. We have made it very easy to add your initiative to a shared Google Map that is displayed on our website as well.
To add a blockchain oriented company: Fill out this form
To add a blockchain project or consortium: Fill out this form
To add a blockchain meetup: Fill out this form
The map currently looks like this:
So help us fill it up!
Join us at these events!
This month we are hosting:
BCNL Meetup #10: Dr. Phil Windley (Chairman of Sovrin) about Digital Indenties | 23rd May 2019
BCNL Meetup #11: Trading, Investing & Tooling @ Cryptohopper with Icoinic | 29th May 2019
Find more events from our partners at: www.blockchain-netherlands.com/meetups
Besides our own events we have set up partnerships with several other large event organizers and are happy to meet you at:
TNW: On the 8th and 9th of May TNW conference is taking over Amsterdam again and Blockchain Netherlands is happy to contribute content to the “Hardfork” track in the form of rountables by us and some of our partners.
We will also join the TechConnect initiative by the Amsterdam Economic Board to educate people about technology and ensure a fair representation of all groups of people at conferences like TNW.
Tokenized Amsterdam: The Future of Finance is organizing a conference about “Blockchain Tokenization - The new method of asset financing” on the 6th of June in Amsterdam. Other versions are held in New York, London and Singapore so it promised to be an interesting affair!
Dutch Blockchain ecosystem in the news
Dutch Blockchain Startup Blockport is launching an STO (link)
Hyperledger NL and other interesting meetups in Amterdam according to Crypto Insiders (link)
Dutch startup Finturi raising 2M investment for their blockchain & AI platform (link)
Amsterdam based Effect.ai moving from NEO to EOS (link)
VMC announcing an STO on Stellar in the Netherlands (link)
Accelerator YES!Delft focussing on AI and Blockchain in new center in The Hague (link)
Largest blockchain hackathon in the world took place in Groningen, the Netherlands from 11 till 15 April. See more about the solutions created here (link)
ING bank is bringing bulletproofs to private blockchain (link)