Dear Students, Everything In Bitcoin's Way Is Your $1 Billion Opportunity

Taken in total, the conference in West Philadelphia felt mainly like a day of recruiting pitches by crypto luminaries.

Throughout the day, presenters emphasized there's lots of opportunity for all kinds of talented people to work in the cryptocurrency and blockchain ecosystem.

Not legal advice, but.... Probably no other project exemplifies the industry's hidden treasures and pitfalls as much as Tezos, whose co-founder Kathleen Breitman was on hand for a panel about ICOs.

Last summer, the project raised more than $200 million to build what Breitman said was a blockchain that could "Self-amend" in a way, in an effort to put a stop to the contentious upgrading debates most cryptocurrency communities have struggled with.

Caitlin Long of the Wyoming Blockchain Coalition echoed that sentiment, telling CoinDesk in an interview that selling crypto tokens is the best way for new projects to bootstrap their business.

Cornell professor Emin Gun Sirer had similar things to say during the event, telling the students that based on layer-one demands, the industry is doing fine, but also prodding them by pointing out that if Venezuela shifted entirely over to bitcoin, "Every adult in the country could only make one transaction every 36 days."

For his part, Paul told the students that while people will try to tell them that cryptocurrency won't amount to anything, there are billion-dollar businesses in building tools for interacting with the technology.

Speaking in much the same way to blockchain's potential to surprise, Amber Baldet, reminded the audience that the most lasting ideas are sometimes discovered by someone just playing around with a technology they find interesting.

Sometimes the most important ventures aren't born from serious people building serious companies or noble people taking on noble causes.

CoinDesk is an independent operating subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, which invests in cryptocurrencies and blockchain startups.