Ten years ago a financial technology event of this global scale taking place in Belfast Northern Ireland wasn’t even seen as a reality. Yet from Sunday we have saw the leading members of the FinTech industry descend on a mass scale to the city from all corners on the world.
MoneyConf is the sister event of the world renowned Web Summit which has been held in Dublin over the last four years and organised by founder Paddy Cosgrave. The attendance has grown from an initial 400 to last year’s staggering 20,000 in attendance.
Beginning on Monday morning the sun beamed down over the North of Ireland as Paddy Cosgrave gave his opening speech at the T13 which is where the event was held in the Titanic Quarter area of the city.
It was a defining moment for Belfast as a global competitor base in the Financial Technology arena as the city was showcased to attendees from all around the globe and some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs. FDi Markets, a service from the Financial Times, ranked Belfast as the Number 1 city globally for Fintech investment.
Leading figures from the traditional financial world including Visa, PayPal, Western Union, Santander, MasterCard and American Express as well as representatives from numerous banking institutions were all in attendance in what has been dubbed the “Glastonbury for nerds.”
Then from the digital currency industry there was a superstar line up of speakers including the CEO and co-founder of Bitpay Stephen Pair, Nicholas Cary co-founder of Blockchain, Charlie Lee founder of Litecoin, Koinify founder Tom Ding, Elliptic COO Tom Robinson and Patrick Murck from the Bitcoin Foundation to name but a few.
http://cointelegraph.uk/news/114581/belfast-hosts-global-fintech-industry-at-monyconf-2015
