The biggest names in the blockchain, fintech, artificial intelligence and alternative finance industries gathered in Vancouver late last week for the fourth annual 2018 VanFUNDING conference. This year’s theme was CONVERGE — bringing together the key stakeholders behind disruptive emerging technologies, capital market innovations, and decentralized platforms.

“We are witnessing unprecedented change that is already affecting our daily lives – how we interact with financial services, generate digital wealth, invest, evaluate, consume, vote, and store, transfer and purchase anything of value,” said Craig Asano, founding CEO of the National Crowdfunding and FinTech Association (NCFA), which organized the event.

There were more than 50 invited speakers participating in TEDx-style presentations, panels, workshops and investor pitching. Among them were Monique Morden, CEO of Judi.Ai, a configurable AI-drive loan adjudication system aimed at financial institutions; Mark Wang, director of Capital Market Regulation at BC Securities Commission; and Toufi Saliba, CEO of lead sponsor Toda Network that provides a protocol enabling businesses to efficiently and securely scale blockchain implementations without outside dependencies.

“The global penetration of [this technology] is less than 0.2 per cent, of which the vast majority of blockchains are scams,” said Saliba in a news release. He added while those looking to get involved should do their due diligence, the next wave of adoption and utilization will be, “like a tsunami, [where] you can partake in what’s yet to be the most disruptive technology in human history, or ignore it and get disrupted.”

VanFUNDING took place over a day-and-half at downtown Vancouver’s Parq hotel and casino. A couple of notable sessions included International Growth: Export Opportunities for Scale-up Ventures on day one, where David Tsui, the trade commissioner with Global Affairs Canada, talked about the federal government seeking partnerships with both start-up and established companies in the tech sector seeking to enter international markets. The second day featured Unlocking Global Growth: Cybersecurity, Digital Identity, Trust and Transparency, a panel comprised of experts in cryptobanking, blockchain software architecture and cloud computing tackling the always fundamental issues of data privacy and ownership.

For more information visit vanfunding.com.