Europe: a Prime Mover Distributed teams from the start As a continent made of 50 vastly different countries, Europe is accustomed to working in distributed teams as well as building with a global outlook. Developer explosion & 100s of years of academic strength Any nascent company in Europe has always recognised the need to build an The army of developers and technical talent stems from Europe’s legacy spawning 100s international roadmap from day one to avoid the traps of small domestic of years of technical academic excellence. Europe is home to 5 of the top 10 technical economies. Diverse and multinational teams have become the standard and universities in the world and is year after year graduating twice as many STEM PhDs as London, Berlin, Paris and Amsterdam have all consolidated as hubs for technical 10 the US . According to Stack Overflow, Europe houses 5.5m developers compared to innovation. We call this the “Technaissance of the European City State”. 4.4m in the US. The technical talent has always been present in Europe - but historically the banking sector was the dominant developer employer, and only after 2008 did the Entrenched Counter Culture technical talent decide to flee its clutches. And now, for the first time, with this wave Europe’s largest advantage probably roots from its history spanning over the that’s democratising access to capital, the technical talent doesn’t need to migrate past centuries. While the centralised business model fit the Silicon Valley ideals to the US to raise venture capital and build global companies. As a result, the value of dense capital pools and narrowly aligned ideologies, the decentralised created by founders coming from different corners of Europe has significantly outraced network model fits Europe’s entrenched history of political fractures and ensuing any other geographic region: $4.1bn has been raised by European projects in 2018 alone counterculture movements. Europeans have lived through two unthinkably 11 - versus $2.3bn in Asia, and $2.6bn in the US . disastrous world wars fought on home soil. Europeans have been brought up in families that lived through communist and/or fascist dictatorships. Europeans were split through the cold war for over 40 years. Europeans have lived through totalitarian regimes that annihilated the idea of privacy and freedom of speech and regularly seized personal goods and assets from their own citizens. Token sales by USD raised in 2018 European tech talent growth Decentralised networks will certainly deliver tactical benefits to individuals Based on founders’ home base Developers & STEM PhDs graduates but also hold the promise of keeping in check society-wide nightmares that 58,941 Europeans have experienced directly and acutely over the past century. Europe 5,5m Regulation: 4,5m From a regulatory perspective, the EU has been on the forefront by pushing Americas 26,959 directives such as GDPR to protect the digital data rights of the consumer, and PSD2 to open up the financial system to the benefit of the user. Beyond that, a Asia race between countries has begun to provide the clearest and most welcoming Oceania regulatory framework for the new business models and governance structures of decentralised networks. France’s Minister of Economy has openly stated that Africa France will not “miss out on the blockchain revolution” and will become a global 12 $0 $1bn $2bn $3bn $4bn hub for ICOs . Switzerland has already issued a very clear regulatory framework Developers STEM PhDs per year 13 for token based networks . The UK Chancellor has announced a crypto asset Source: Fabric Ventures x Token Data analysis Source 2: Atomico State of European Tech 2017 14 task force to create a constructive regulatory framework for tokens . Smaller countries like Malta and Lichtenstein have sprinted ahead with open regulatory Europe United States approaches attempting to become global hubs for decentralised networks and related businesses. Throughout European countries, a competitive race has begun to provide the most founder friendly & forward thinking regulatory environment for decentralised networks and their native crypto-assets. 10 12 Atomico State of European Tech 2017 https://www.ft.com/content/2e7b2778-2d22-11e8-9b4b-bc4b9f08f381 11 13 Stack Overflow https://www.ft.com/content/52820f90-1307-11e8-940e-08320fc2a277 42 14 https://www.coindesk.com/the-uk-government-is-launching-a-cryptocurrency-task-force/ 43