Event Vendors Go from Cash to Crypto in San Francisco

San Francisco Blockchain Week (SFBW), an event on blockchain innovation, is partnering with Squarelink, a blockchain account platform, and Terra, a payment network with a price-stable currency, to offer event vendors the opportunity to accept payments in cryptocurrency. By utilizing Squarelink's Event Pass DApp, paired with Terra's price-stable currency, food trucks, retailers and other vendors at SFBW will now be able to transact payments in cryptocurrency with instant liquidity easily and without risk.

In its second year, SFBW will host more than 5,000 attendees from across the globe. The event spans six days across multiple venues and includes the Crypto Economics Security Conference (CESC), Epicenter (Main Event), a Blockchain Career Fair, and a DeFi Hackathon. SFBW aims to offer an immersive and educational experience for attendees. Consistent with that aim, this year’s SFBW is encouraging attendees and event vendors to use and accept cryptocurrency.

“San Francisco Blockchain Week was created to stimulate conversations about the possibilities of blockchain technology,” said Ronen Kirsh, SFBW organizer and Dekrypt Capital co-founder. “We’re starting to see the use of cryptocurrency in the real world and this year’s event reflects that. We’re excited to take steps to involve our vendors in the cryptocurrency experience and continue to drive mainstream adoption.”

Through Squarelink’s Event Pass, event-goers will be able to use Terra’s US dollar-pegged stablecoin to make purchases from food trucks and other vendors at SFBW. Squarelink’s easy-to-use interface is powered by patented cryptography that enables users to securely recover lost private keys, which are not kept custodially by Squarelink. Squarelink’s Event Pass also lets event organizers quickly set up a user-friendly, crypto-based point of sale (POS) economy.

Terra offers users a basket of stablecoins, each pegged to major fiat currencies, including KRW, USD, SGD, and IMF’s SDR. Terra’s currencies are further collateralized by a second native token called Luna, ensuring the price-stability of their Terra UST, which is pegged to the US dollar, will be used as the main currency at SFBW. Terra has been pushing mass adoption of its stablecoins and blockchain payments network through a formidable e-commerce alliance that includes Asia-Pacific giants such as TMON (e-commerce, Korea), Baemin (food delivery, Korea), Carousell (C2C, SEA), Qoo10 (e-commerce, SEA), and Tiki (e-commerce, Vietnam). Through these partners, Terra recently launched its Korea-based payments app CHAI, gaining over 500,000 users in less than four months. Most recently, Terra also announced partnerships with Korea’s largest convenience store chain, CU, and their largest payment processor, BC Card, to power both online and offline transactions in Korea.

“We’re thrilled to be working with Terra to introduce attendees at SFBW to a new way of making purchases,” commented Squarelink CTO Alex Patin. “Last month, at ETHBoston, Squarelink Event Pass was used for over 1,500 food truck transactions. We can’t wait to share our user-friendly POS system at San Francisco Blockchain Week.”

Squarelink’s Event Pass provides a means to securely generate and distribute wallets to attendees, fund these wallets, and set up merchants to accept crypto payments and convert these payments to dollars.

Event Pass also includes other functionalities, such as allowing organizers to create and circulate cryptocurrency with customizable features, enabling unique, streamlined experiences.