Web3 Frankfurt

Frankfurt has several groups for people who work on web3, bitcoin and digital assets, and each of them has its own format and audience.

• Finance Loop is a professional network for emerging technologies in finance with more than 4,000 members, built in collaboration with TechQuartier. Its meetups, among them the Digital Assets Night, bring people from banks, asset managers and fintechs together with web3 developers. Upcoming dates are in the Finance Loop events calendar, and membership starts with the free Network Member plan on the membership page.
• GM, FFM! e.V. is a registered nonprofit association that promotes web3 technologies and decentralization in the Rhine-Main region. The association numbers its topic events, which have covered gaming, artificial intelligence, tokenization and staking. GM, FFM! also brings web3 panels to the EURO FINANCE Tech Day during the Euro Finance Week.
• The Frankfurt Bitcoin Meetup is a volunteer-run group that meets on the third Thursday of each month to talk about bitcoin in person. From September through April the group meets indoors with short talks, and in summer it moves to parks and beer gardens.
• Superteam Germany is the community of people who build products in the Solana ecosystem across Germany. Superteam Germany co-hosted the Web3 Builders Ideathon in Frankfurt, where teams developed product ideas within four hours.
• Bundesblock, the Blockchain Bundesverband based in Berlin, speaks for German blockchain companies and research institutions toward politics. Finance Loop is one of the member organizations of the Blockchain Bundesverband.

Four institutions in Frankfurt host web3 events, run research on blockchain or connect startups with the banks of the financial center.

• TechQuartier is the Frankfurt innovation hub for startups and established companies, with startup programs and coworking space at Platz der Einheit. As the Fintech Hub Frankfurt, TechQuartier is part of the federal de:hub initiative, and many crypto and blockchain meetups take place in its rooms.
• The Frankfurt School Centre for Digital Economics, formerly the Frankfurt School Blockchain Center, researches blockchain, AI and quantum computing in finance. Frankfurt School of Finance & Management runs the Crypto Assets Conference through this research center.
• Futury is the startup factory of four universities in the Rhine-Main region and counts Banking & Finance among its five focus areas.
• Frankfurt Main Finance is the industry initiative of the Frankfurt financial center and hosted the Digital Finance Night together with Finance Loop.

The web3 conferences in Frankfurt are built mainly for people from banks, asset managers, market infrastructure and supervision. Each of the blockchain conferences in Frankfurt has its own audience, from researchers and supervisors to stablecoin issuers and corporate treasurers.

• The Crypto Assets Conference at Frankfurt School brings banks, investment firms and crypto businesses together with researchers and public authorities.
• The Digital Euro Conference of the Digital Euro Association discusses central bank digital currencies, stablecoins and payment systems.
• Capital & Code is a one-day finance conference, hosted by the euro stablecoin issuer AllUnity, on stablecoins, tokenized funds and settlement.
• Frankfurt Digital Finance is an English-language conference on technology in the European financial industry, with digital assets as one of its tracks.

Frankfurt has no special rules for web3, and BaFin, the German financial supervisor, has one of its two seats in the city. A team that offers crypto asset services to customers needs a license under the EU MiCA regulation, and that license covers every EU country. A protocol that runs fully decentralized, without any intermediary, falls outside MiCA, while the company that builds its front end or sells its token may not.

Banks that work with web3 providers also apply DORA, the EU law on digital operational resilience, because a DLT operator counts as an ICT third-party provider of the bank. Transfers between crypto asset service providers carry sender and recipient data under the travel rule of the Transfer of Funds Regulation.

Yes, the web3 community in Frankfurt meets at the topic events of the nonprofit association GM, FFM! and at bitcoin and blockchain meetups. Finance Loop runs meetups for professionals from banks, asset managers and fintechs who work on digital assets.

Many web3 and blockchain meetups in Frankfurt take place in the evening at TechQuartier, the innovation hub between the main station and the Messe. The Frankfurt Bitcoin Meetup changes its venue with the season and meets on the third Thursday of each month.

Frankfurt has no hub for web3 alone, and the closest is TechQuartier, the Fintech Hub Frankfurt of the federal de:hub initiative. Research on blockchain in finance runs at the Frankfurt School Centre for Digital Economics, the former Frankfurt School Blockchain Center.

The Crypto Assets Conference and the Digital Euro Conference both take place at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. Capital & Code covers stablecoins and tokenized funds, and the EURO FINANCE Tech Day of the Euro Finance Week has hosted web3 panels with GM, FFM!.

The crypto community in Frankfurt meets at the monthly bitcoin meetup, at the topic events of GM, FFM! and at the evening formats around the Crypto Assets Conference. Finance Loop announces its own crypto and blockchain meetups in its newsletter and in its events calendar.