Now in its fourth year, Barchart’s FinTech Exchange* event seems largely designed to address the specific needs of the Chicago trading community: technology and data vendors; brokers and intermediaries; and commodities, futures and derivatives markets – with an emerging thread of Blockchain and crypto.

In fact, the Keynote Speaker, Dr. Richard Sandor, spoke of Blockchain as being as significant as the invention of double-entry bookkeeping, the launch of stock markets, the introduction of electronic trading, and the creation of financial derivatives combined.

Other topics included: the evolution of global financial markets; the threat or potential of enterprise Blockchain and FinTech solutions; the role of cryptocurrency exchanges; understanding big data and data analytics; deploying AI and machine learning within FinTech; and the rapid expansion of API solutions as products and services in their own right (not just as a means of data delivery).

There was also a panel discussion with the winners of the previous day’s Startup Exchange pitch event.

On behalf of Brave New Coin, I ran a series of round-table discussions on the current state of cryptocurrencies, token sales and digital assets; and the prospect of so-called security tokens (a topic which is sure to feature in this blog in coming months).

Finally, the notion of “alt data” is gaining attention, and not just among hedge funds. In part a by-product of big data (how to make sense of all this data), alt data is set to become the high-octane fuel for generating yield (if data is the new oil).

* Declaration of interest: Barchart syndicates Brave New Coin news and technical analysis content

Next week: Corporate purpose, disruption and empathy