During Luxembourg’s first Blockchain Week (26-30 April), Prime Minister Xavier Bettel announced that he wanted Luxembourg to continue being a “digital frontrunner” and “keep taking risks” when it comes to innovative technologies such as blockchain.
Organised by Luxembourg’s Blockchain Lab, along with its five founding members Infrachain, Lëtzblock, The LHoFT, LIST and SnT, the Luxembourg Blockchain Lab functions as the single point of contact aiming to consolidate and federate the Blockchain Ecosystem in Luxembourg.
The Luxembourg Blockchain Week was an opportunity to assemble Luxembourg’s blockchain and crypto experts as well as a wide range of diverse specialists from the following sectors: Supply chains & Logistics, Health, R&D, Technology, Finance, Public Sector, Digital Assets and SDGs/Climate. Apart from the first day, which mostly included opening talks and keynote speeches, the daily schedule consisted of interactive sessions, learning sessions and pitches about the different streams.
Well attended, the event included a keynote speech by Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Xavier Bettel as well a speech by Pierre Gramegna, Luxembourg’s Minister of Finance during Thursday’s Finance talks. Furthermore, it was supported by the Ministry of State, the Ministry of the Economy as well as the Ministry for Digitalisation.
For the launch edition of the Luxembourg Blockchain Week, a unique program regarding the potential for Blockchain applications was presented. Although Blockchain applications have been discussed a lot in recent years, the scale of this event is reflective of the diversity and growing popularity of Blockchain.
As Xavier Bettel, Luxembourg’s Prime Minister put it: “Blockchain is not only about cryptocurrencies, but also about helping us reach our sustainable development goals, securing our health data and enabling more resilient supply chains. I’m excited to see Luxembourg’s blockchain success stories during this year’s blockchain week. It is amazing to see what we can achieve when we bundle up our forces behind an alliance like the Blockchain Lab!”
“Together we will continue to move blockchain technology forward, strengthening and improving our local economies, as well as the global economy.”
Boston joins Luxembourg’s Blockchain Week
Interestingly, the Luxembourg Blockchain Lab also welcome the City of Boston as a special guest at the event. The Boston Blockchain Association contributed their rich experience and an insightful talk by Silvio Micali, researcher at MIT and founder of Algorand. As a community of innovators, collaborators, and entrepreneurs, the Boston Blockchain Association helped with putting together the programme and getting in touch with exciting speakers.
“The Boston Blockchain Association is honored to be the partner city for Luxembourg Blockchain Week. Just as Luxembourg is a financial and technology leader within Europe, Boston is a financial and technology leader within the Americas. Together we will continue to move blockchain technology forward, strengthening and improving our local economies, as well as the global economy,” said Eric Roux, one of the board members of the Boston Blockchain Association.
Despite the recent plunge in the price of bitcoin and the doubts raised about the energy costs associated with Blockchain technologies, Luxembourg remains optimistic about the potential of the latter to create more more value and better solutions in the future.
We for one are already looking forward to next year’s Luxembourg Blockchain Week.
