We had some quite amazing discussions at December’s Distributed Futures Forum. The main topic of the event was “Cryptocurrencies, ICOs, and ITOs”. Members from cryptocurrency firms, government departments, banks, insurers, media, and technology firms made for a diverse audience, with one person flying in from recent research in San Diego.

Our ever-controversial Professor Ian Angell launched a wonderful attack on the ICO and ITO bubble, and kindly supplied the text - ''There’s One Born Every Minute - Black Sky Thinking About Crypto-currencies". He passed around a number of interesting items, not least a token for The Chicken Ranch in La Grange, Texas, “Good For All Night”. Ian was followed by Emad Mostaque who shared an idea cooked up with Michael Mainelli and Vinay Gupta, the PopCoin. PopCoins would be an individual currency for every person born on earth. Discuss. Indeed, both presentations resulted in vigorous discussion.

The venue was the Worshipful Company of Furniture Makers’ Hall. It was just right for the fairly large gathering. While the Hall was readied for dinner, we whiled away the interval with Mainelli-Bergs (an interesting combination of citrus, Aperol, and gin). Over dinner the discussion continued with a few remarks about the evolution of IT and the continuing centralisation-decentralisation debate that cryptocurrencies rightly generate.