BTC Media, the parent company of Bitcoin Magazine, and SixThirty recently announced a 24-hour blockchain hackathon with $25,000 in prize money will take place on June 12-13, 2016, a day before their Distributed: Trade conference, in St. Louis. Teams competing in the hackathon are tasked to build blockchain applications that optimize financial services and supply chain operations and to find solutions to problems in payments, supply chain management and data security.
The hackathon is being held at T-REX, a world-class facility in the heart of downtown St. Louis that incubates technology startups and provides resources to entrepreneurs as well as a vibrant community and working experience.
“We are excited to host this Blockchain Hackathon in partnership with SixThirty, one of T-REX’s premier resident accelerators, who are a national and international leader in finding and funding cutting-edge financial technologies,” said Dr. Patricia Hagen, president of T-REX in a statement to Bitcoin Magazine. “A Blockchain Hackathon is a result of great partnerships and a demonstration of T-REX’s role as a hub of technology innovation in St. Louis.”
RGAx, the innovation subsidiary of global reinsurance leader Reinsurance Group of America (RGA), has joined the event as title sponsor of the Distributed: Trade hackathon. The hackathon will award $25,000 in prizes for the best applications of blockchain technology.
“I believe that the next generation of insurance products and services will be built using blockchain protocols,” said Tim Rozar, CEO of RGAx. “Blockchains enable all parties to improve trust and transparency, whether that is between consumers and their advisers or policy beneficiaries and insurance carriers. We’re supporting this hackathon to start the ball rolling and get new talented teams thinking about the future of the insurance industry.”
Of the hackathon’s $25,000 in prize money, $20,000 will be awarded as a Grand Prize to the team that creates the best application related to the exploding opportunities for blockchain solutions in trade and finance. Additionally, Thomson Reuters is sponsoring a $2,500 prize, and $2,500 in prize money will be awarded to runners-up.
The panel of judges for the competition includes representatives of major players in the venture capital community actively looking to invest in new projects, as well as corporate executives and technology innovators. Represented on the panel are Blockchain Capital, Dynamo, Tally Capital and DFJ Dragon, along with technology executive Tom Niermann and Bloq co-founder Jeff Garzik.
“This competition pits teams from corporate giants, blockchain startups and the nation’s top universities against each other on a level playing field,” said BTC Media CEO David Bailey. On the academic side, teams will include students from MIT, Harvard, Cal Berkeley, Wellesley, NYU and Washington University in St. Louis.
“The hackathon is an amazing chance for these brilliant students and other innovators to come together and make world-changing discoveries,” said Bailey. “People are coming here from all over the planet in search of the next big blockchain app.”
The post Distributed: Trade Blockchain Hackathon Offers $25k in Prizes for Supply Chain and Finance Use Cases appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.
