Newtopia community was present at ETHLatam

The first edition of ETHLatam took place in the city of Buenos Aires, organized by the Ethereum Foundation and, of course, Newtopia VC was present. 

This mega event in the world of cryptocurrencies received more than 4,000 people for 3 days with talks, workshops, and a lot of networking. The event was held between August 11 and 13 this year at the Buenos Aires Convention Center,and was attended by all sorts of prominent figures from the crypto ecosystem, including the renowned Evan Van Ness and Vitalik Buterin.

In this context, a series of discussion panels and exclusive presentations were given with the participation of prominent speakers, addressing various topics, including some members of Newtopia’s community. On the official website of ETHLatam you can relive the entire event. 

Protagonists of Newtopia Community

Among the exhibitors and speakers who participated in ETHLatam, there are some important benchmark companies that are part of Newtopia’s portfolio, among which we can highlight Belo, Exactly, Defiant Crypto Wallet, and SenseiNode.

Belo

Manuel Beaudroit, belo CEO and Co-Founder, and an Argentine pacesetter in the cryptographic world, participated in the panel «Crypto adoption in Latam» that was moderated by journalist Olivia Goldschmidt, and also Marcelo Cavazzoli from Lemon Cash, Santos Barrio from Let ‘sbit and Julian Colombo from Bitso. 

Manuel commented on what belo is about and explained what his main vision is:

“We seek to build a product that helps people to have control of their future and be able to thrive, that is accessible to everyone, for daily use and, that breaks the barrier of intangibility that crypto often has. We focus a lot on people’s pain points and not so much on technology.» 

In addition, he elaborated on what moved him to take his first steps in the crypto world: “When we started, a long time ago, it was because of the revolution. I think there is a revolutionary aspect of wanting to change the world and this technology can do it, we have to build products to achieve it”. 

«The solution is to empower people with a fully decentralized and global financial system where they really have control of their assets,» he concluded. 

On the official ETHLatam site, you can find this complete panel to delve even deeper and learn the opinions of the different speakers.  

Exactly 

Gabriel Gruber, founder of Exactly, was in charge of an interesting presentation about «Decentralizing the time value of money». There, he shared Exactly’s vision, where the company is headed in the future, and how it seeks to implement a «decentralized, autonomous, non-custodial, and open source protocol to bring what is missing to the DeFi credit market, allowing users to trade without friction the time value of their assets at a fixed or variable interest rate.

In addition, to continue with the development of this concept, Patricio Molina, Chief Operating Officer and Nicolás Castro Garcia also from Exactly, were in charge of the workshop «Completing the Defi credit market».

Lots of people talk about blockchain, tokens, governance, NFTs, which are very interesting pieces of technology, but we are working on Exactly Protocol because we believe there is a great opportunity to really democratize credit in a decentralized and efficient way.

Gabriel explained about the mission of Exactly. And he added: “In today’s world there are almost 200 countries and each country has a different central bank, a credit system, and in many cases even a different currency. There is an opportunity to connect all these markets in a single credit market to have access to the same liquidity, no matter where you live”. 

If you want to know more about Exactly’s presentation, you can see it on the official ETHLatam site. 

Defiant Crypto Wallet 

Bruno Calmels, Defiant Crypto Wallet Co-Founder, spoke about «Web3 mobile interoperability» focusing on how Web3 is developing for the future. In addition, he elaborated on the beginnings of Defiant and its mission. 

“Unlike Web2, in Web3 the code with which we manage and run our systems and money are intrinsically connected in the same system. Now instead of having our trust deposited in states and governments, we are basing our trust in blockchain, consensus mechanisms, validators, developers, etc.”, he explained in a simplified way about Web3. In addition, he provided an interesting fact about the knowledge that we have today about Web3, highlighting that «in 2022 we are in regards to Web3, as we were in 1996 in regards to the Internet».

On the other hand, he highlighted the objective of Defiant, indicating that “it is the gateway to the world of Web3”, and added:

“We started as a P2P Marketplace and from then on we had to move forward and make a thousand decisions. At one point we decided to be a Wallet, initially focused on Ethereum and we integrated other networks, greater functionalities, until becoming a Mobile Wallet prepared for Web3, self-custodial and multi-blockchain”.

SenseiNode

Rodrigo Benzaquen, SenseiNode CTO and Co-Founder, was present giving a talk about «Lessons Learned running a validator in Latam outside AWS», highlighting the enormous possibility of Latin America in the cryptographic world and highlighting that «nodes are centralized in the United States and Europe. Less than 1% are in Latin America.»

“Latin America is very important for the crypto world, a lot of crypto companies were born here and there is no diversification in terms of nodes, so we see it as a immense opportunity,” he explained.

And he added about SenseiNode’s objective: “We were establishing partnerships with the main data centers in the region and we began to launch nodes for all these data centers. In terms of benefits, it is cheaper to do it in more competitive data centers, there is less dependency, and we have a lot of legal jurisdictions to be better protected”. 

On the official ETHLatam site, you will be able to access this complete presentation and learn more about SenseiNode. 

Newtopia participants in ETHLatam

The event began with a welcome cocktail at Teatro Colón, in which Newtopia’s board and part of the team participated, such as Sacha Spitz, Newtopia VC Managing Partner & Co-Founder, Diego Boryszanski Maslow CEO & Co-founder, Matias Woloski, Auth0 CTO & Co-founder, Jorge Mariano Aguado, Patricio Jutard and Juan Pablo Lafosse, Newtopia VC Co-founders & General partner, among others.

ETHLatam in Buenos Aires was a total success and the innovative participation of a large number of local figures from the cryptographic world once again highlighted the enormous number of opportunities that a region like Latin America and a country like Argentina represent for its development. 

At Newtopia, we highlight the value of our community, which was once again reflected in the participation and actions carried out within the framework of this event. We are proud to continue spreading entrepreneurial energy, the values ​​and motivations that drive us to transform Latin America.