We attended the UTXO community crypto conference in Prague over the weekend. Here is an insight into how I perceived it through my eyes. To begin with, I can say that I was very impressed by the whole event. I met a lot of great people and attended some amazing presentations and seminars. 

I also wrote down notes and as I was compiling them last night, I thought I would share a few of them with you. I want to emphasize that these are my notes. I may have misinterpreted the speakers and, of course, this is by no means financial advice. 

Czech law and cryptocurrencies 

I first attended a lecture and then later a discussion with Kirill Juran, both of which mainly addressed the topic of the Czech legal system's readiness for crypto. 

The current state of affairs is that the legal system is obviously not ready for cryptocurrencies. It is only now that the first disputes are slowly making their way to court, so it will take a few more years before case law is established. And if we talk about operations on the blockchain and how the authorities/state look at them, that is of course the talk of the future and it basically depends from one civil servant to another. 

Defi and stablecoins 

I continued with a discussion on DeFi and a talk about stablecoins. These were already more crypto-specific lectures in depth. I more or less already knew all of this information, but it was nice to review it. I will only mention the most interesting notes. 

If you interact with contracts, don't forget to remove permissions from them afterwards, for example via revoke.cash (I slack off a bit on this sometimes), or create new wallets. 

Soon Camelot, a native decentralized exchange on the arbitrum blockchain, is going to launch version 3 with concentrated liquidity. Of course, v3 is already kind of " senior high". Plus Camelot has been on the market for a short while, so there are also technological risks. But if they decide to support the arrival of new liquidity with rewards in the native token, it could be an interesting opportunity. 

The DAI cryptocurrency in its current form carries the risks of both centralized and decentralized stablecoins, so it is probably better to instead hold those stables that only carry risks from one side (e.g. USDT, USDC for centralized, and LUSD for decentralized). 

An interesting hedge for the portfolio in case inflation starts to fall significantly could be the RAI stablecoin, but it is not tied to $1. The pricing mechanism is more complicated and it is still a very unproven protocol. 

Creating a crypto investment portfolio 

Adam Kracik gave a talk on how funds build their investment crypto portfolios. Adam is a well-known ETH maximalist, so it will surprise no one that the word Ethereum was mentioned like 4000 times during this lecture. 

When you're building a portfolio it's important to have a time horizon, to know what distribution you're trying to achieve towards a certain time. 

It's good to look at this chart. It tells you who has ever held bitcoin below the price and help you realize where we are now and how many bitcoin holders are currently in profit and how many are in loss. It may signal a good time to buy/sell :) 

Artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the law 

My former law school classmate Honza Zibner gave a talk on the relationship of law to works created through artificial intelligence. I have so many notes written down here that I can't even transcribe the whole thing. 

But in short, it is on the same level as blockchain, and so the laws and courts are not ready for this at all. And by the fact that nobody is ready for it, nobody even wants to open the topic because it's like Pandora's box. 

Even the basic questions about who is the author of a digital work created using AI such as GPT chat, Midjourney, etc., are not settled. 

Banking crisis in 2023 

The last lecture I attended on Saturday was by Lukáš Kovanda, but I have to say that Lukáš is a good speaker, but he talked about the collapse of the banks in the USA at relative length. This topic is something that can be studied in 30 minutes with one good article e.g. HERE. It doesn't take an hour-long lecture. 

For example, Lukáš believes that the current fractional reserve banking system is headed for a debacle. I don't necessarily agree. But one thing must be admitted. I find it sympathetic that a bank representative openly criticizes the irresponsible behavior of banks and governments. 

In conclusion 

I didn't attend the other lectures on Saturday, but the evening cello concert, for example, was very interesting. The final highlight was the evening "party" directed by Somnium space, and focused on their disco in the metaverse. Whether this is the future of discotheques, I'll leave to you :-D 

Unfortunately, I was not able to attend the Sunday program, I had other obligations. But the entire conference was very enjoyable and you could notice a very positive atmosphere. After all, like every time lots of enthusiasts meet somewhere for a good cause. So hopefully I will see you there next year.