William Mougayar's Token Summit returns in San Francisco

Author and blockchain evangelist William Mougayar is building on the sell-out success of his Token Summit back in May, with a second edition in San Francisco's Mission Bay Conference Center at UCSF due on 4-5 December.

The event will be hosted by Mougayar and 1confirmation founder Nick Tomaino, and will focus primarily on successful business models beyond Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) and the evolution of today's token-based economy. Token Summit II will feature 40 prominent speakers and is expected to draw more than 650 attendees from around the world, according to a statement.

William Mougayar said: "Our work has always been about the token, and less about the ICO itself. We pride ourselves on attracting the best conference participants, and curating the most up-to-date topics and speakers that reflect the proper realities in the market, while achieving a balance between experienced practitioners and aspiring projects. We aim to strike an undertone of conservatism and level-headedness in an industry that is starting to see its share of bad actors."

Nick Tomaino added: "There's currently a huge gap in the market that separates the technical innovation that's occurring in the blockchain ecosystem and the average person's perception of what tokens are and why they are important. The ICO boom of 2017 seems to be widening that gap. Our event aims to bridge this gap by bringing together many of the best entrepreneurs and investors in the industry."

In San Francisco, the agenda will explore the following topics:

• Designing token-based economies
• What gives a token long-term value?
• Understanding the emerging decentralised exchanges
• Transparency best practices in token generation events
• Decentralised protocols and their network efforts
• How Gibraltar plans on regulating token sales
• The burgeoning Crypto Valley in Zug, Switzerland
• The evolving regulatory space and its latest practices
• Scaling blockchains to implement large-scale applications
• Usability and custody of tokenized assets

In May 2017 over 500 people converged on the NYU Stern Business School for the first conference of its kind; one that elevated the standard of dialogue surrounding today's token-based economy. Following that event, several speakers launched trailblazing projects including Kik, Golem, Civic, Protocol Labs, Blockstack, Sia, 0x, Brave, Zcash and Aragon.

Token Summit II will be the launchpad for significant industry announcements and presentations by up-and-coming projects, including 1protocol, Basecoin, Dether, Dydx, Lendroid, and Ocean. The event will also feature panels and fireside chats with established industry luminaries, influential CEOs, and pioneers writing the next chapter of blockchain technology. Some of these include:

• Juan Benet, Founder of Protocol Labs and IPFS/Filecoin inventor
• Oliver Bussmann, President of the Crypto Valley Association
• Nick Cowan, Founder of the Gibraltar Stock Exchange Group
• Richard Craib, Founder and CEO, Numerai
• Fred Ehrsam, Co-Founder at Coinbase and former CEO
• Ralf Glabischnig, Co-Founder Crypto Valley Labs
• Jeff Garzik, Co-Founder of Metronome and former Bitcoin core developer
• Kathryn Haun, Coinbase Board Member
• Joseph Poon, Co-Author of Plasma and Lightning Network
• Naval Ravikant, Co-Founder of Coinlist and Angelist and Metastable
• Matthew Roszak, Co-Founder of Metronome
• Ned Scott, Co-Founder & CEO, Steemit
• Ryan Selkis, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, ConsenSys
• Balaji Srivinasan, CEO of 21.co
• Shawn Wilkinson, Founder and CTO at Storj
• Nancy Wojtas, Partner at Cooley

Token Summit II is sponsored at the Platinum level by Element Group, Etherparty, Steemit, Ledger, Metronome, and Storj, and at the Gold level by Changelly, Coinbase, Etherisc, Lendroid and Silvergate Bank.