It’s Day 3 at Consensus!

This week is Consensus, CoinDesk’s biggest event of the year, featuring panels, workshops, keynote speakers, fireside chats, networking and more, all exploring the evolution of digital finance and blockchain technology. The Node will bring the best of Consensus to your inbox in special morning and evening editions from May 24-27. There's still time to register for Consensus here.

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–Cameron Hood, newsletter editor

Hi, David Z. Morris here. Welcome to Day 3 at Consensus! And to another special Consensus edition of The Node.

The third day of the year’s most important blockchain and cryptocurrency conference is focused on digital currencies created by central banks, Bitcoin and crypto-based payments.

The morning kicks off with a series of panels that should help get you up to speed on central bank digital currencies, or CBDCs. An early session features insights from U.K. economist Lord Meghnad Desai and Bank of Mauritius head Harvest Seegolam. It’s followed by an Exploration session (9:10 a.m. ET) to introduce you to basic concepts and terminology and a discussion of the potential advantages of CBDCs with Ian Putter of Standard Bank.

The day also features a truly can’t-miss morning panel focused on Bitcoin. Leading Bitcoin Core developers including Matt Corallo and Dr. Adam Back will give an update on the state of BTC and the roadmap for upgrades like privacy and scalability. Later, teams working on layer 2 Bitcoin scaling solutions are slated for a similar discussion.

The afternoon’s focus is on payments, which have proved a frustrating moving target as the cost and limitations of current blockchain solutions come into focus. An Exploration session considers why payments are slipping off the crypto radar, while a panel including Mastercard blockchain exec Raj Djamodharan will consider whether blockchain can still deliver on the payments promise. Other appearances by execs from Visa and Ripple round out the payments fiesta.

Finally, this evening, famed sci-fi novelist and tech commentator Cory Doctorow joins Orchid CEO Dr. Steven Waterhouse to discuss internet freedom, digital surveillance and the potential of Web 3.0 to change the status quo.

-David Z. Morris

It’s the third day of Consensus and we’re still going strong. Today will feature lauded speakers such as former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, Bahamas Central Bank Governor John Rolle (the man responsible for bringing the Sand Dollar to market) and privacy activist Cory Doctorow, among many crypto-natives.

In addition to nearly assured breaking news events, there will also be a ton of informative workshops ranging from learning how to use Polygon to avoid record-high ETH fees to maintaining your privacy online. Here are a few of the sessions I’ll definitely be attending.

See the full schedule here:

8:00 – 9:00 a.m. Polygon
Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal, Aave’s Stani Kulechov, Curve Finance’s Michael Egorov, among others, will join this Ethereum layer 2-focused panel. In this session, designed as more of a workshop, attendees will learn how to navigate Polygon’s growing scalability suite and how to leverage the system for lower fees.

10:05 – 10:15 a.m. Six Months In: An Update on the Sand Dollar from Gov. John Rolle
The Bahamian Sand Dollar was the first full-fledged CBDC. Governor John Rolle joins to discuss how the project has fared since its 2020 launch, what his team has learned and what's next.

11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Getting the Best of the Bull: Crypto Fund Manager Roundtable
Digital Currency Group Director of Investments Matt Beck, Volt Capital GP Soona Ahmaz and Dragonfly Capital co-founder Alex Pack join other venture capitalists to discuss how to make sustainable investments during frothy markets.

12:00 – 12:20 p.m. School of Hard Knocks: 1:1 with Brad Garlinghouse
CoinDesk Managing Editor Nik De will interview Ripple’s chief executive, covering everything from the company's ongoing entanglement with the SEC to its plans to relocate abroad.

1:25 – 1:55 p.m. Crypto, Global Payments and Emerging Markets

Executives from Visa as well as a former architect of the Diem stablecoin project will discuss the realities of using crypto as a form of payment. This theme will be picked up again at 2:35 p.m. with the Pay Me in Dai panel.

4:00 – 4:30 p.m. What You Hear vs What You See? Bitcoin, the Federal Reserve and the "Two Percent" Inflation Doctrine
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal join CoinDesk’s Noelle Acheson to discuss inflation and the Federal Reserve’s commitment to letting the economy “run hot” as we emerge from the pandemic crisis.

8:00 – 8:25 p.m. Surveillance Capitalism, Internet Freedom and You
Novelist and EFF advisor Cory Doctorow joins Orchid CEO Dr. Steven Waterhouse for a discussion about online privacy and how to maintain it. Protocol Labs general counsel Marta Belcher joins in the next session to bring the conversation closer to privacy coins.

–Daniel Kuhn

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This Week at #Consensus2021

The quixotic dream of crypto has always been personal financial freedom without reliance on traditional intermediaries. Today, more than ever, these technologies are offering individuals a self-sovereign financial future.

This week at Consensus by CoinDesk, our virtual big-tent conference, we examine the trails being blazed and the people leading the charge.

Join our Explorations track "Dimension C: Life in the Parallel Financial System," sponsored by eToro, with Brooklyn Nets point guard Spencer Dinwiddie, eToro CEO Yoni Assia, Venrock's David Pakman and more at Consensus by CoinDesk, running to May 27. Register today.

MONGOLIAN MINING: China’s highest economic planning agency has issued draft guidance on how to ban crypto mining in the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia. The guideline includes specifics on monitoring and punishing companies and individuals involved in crypto mining, and many see it as an advancement on a ban first floated in 2019.

STANDARDS STRATEGY: MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor said the Bitcoin Mining Council he set up with Elon Musk is designed to “manage concerns, especially from uninformed parties” about the cryptocurrency’s energy usage. Speaking at Consensus, Saylor said the council is a loose organization of miners that will form industry standards around publishing energy usage data and advocating for renewables.

REAL-WORLD USE CASE: TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is selling an apartment in Kiev via a non-fungible token (NFT). Arrington purchased the apartment in 2017 through the real estate platform Propy, using Ethereum and smart contracts to settle the deal. In a sign of how the industry has evolved in the intervening four years, Propy will be auctioning the same property, but this time as a real estate-backed NFT. The starting price is $20,000.

MEDIA SUBSCRIPTION? Russian digital artists will sell NFTs to support Meduza, a media outlet designated as a "foreign agent" by the Kremlin. Eighty-one artists from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan will participate in the creation of two collages, made of video clips and pictures dedicated to Meduza. The NFTs will be sold on Rarible on May 27.

–D.K.

CoinDesk has issued its very own rewards token, $DESK, in an effort to make Consensus feel more like a festival... or like a Chucky E. Cheese. The results have been interesting, to say the least. Although it is an ERC-20 token that exists only on an Ethereum testnet – and therefore has no monetary value – it's become something of a "hot commodity." The people want $DESK.

In the comment section running along every Consensus panel or workshop, there will be at least one person clamoring for the next $DESK drop. These tokens are not worthless. They can be traded in for CoinDesk swag and Consensus-themed NFTs. For 50,000 you can have coffee with Justin Sun. It might also be seen as a badge of honor: A bigger $DESK bag means one has time to attend more Consensus events than someone else.

It's a living study in the powerful forces that run throughout all monetary systems – from perceived scarcity to gamification. And a reminder, perhaps, that all money is a shared illusion. Here are a few examples. (Names redacted for privacy and personal safety.)