A Tale of Two Conferences

The last weeks have been an exciting time for meetups and conferences. Last week the much hyped Bitcoin Conference in Amsterdam took place and I managed to watch most of it on YouTube thanks to the live stream provided by Bitcoin Magazine. The re-run I have linked at the end.

The previous Bitcoin Conference 2022 was in Miami, Florida if I remember correctly and I dont remember much of what came out of that, possibly nothing. There was a Bitcoin car there, but we were deep in the bear market and people were not feeling so pumped possibly.

This time, there was a pretty good atmosphere with everything orange and you had the feeling everyone was doing fist pumps and getting really excited for the ETF release to pump their bags.

I have been told that during a bear market you turn more Bitcoin Maximalist but have no experience of this to draw on, but do like to follow the going ons of the Bitcoin community, I mean it is gags a plenty with chicks in Bitcoin panties, laser eyes and Bitcoin Fixing everything non-stop.

Whilst most people are out there doing real life work, the Bitcoin community is spamming Twitter X hard with memes to ensure your day passes by with a chuckle. I mean, we are all in a great mood because after the next bull market we can anyway retire. It is not just about money, it's about saving the world.

The Bitcoin conference kicked off quite techy with the talk of the moment, The Bitcoin Lightning network and what challenges it faces. I was hearing sounds, but could not comprehend the words entering my ears. Something about thru-put, layer 1, layer 2.. round of applause.

The vibe was really good though as this is the camp of the good guys. The banks and their evil fiat are going to be disrupted through technology. This is going to be like the time the music industry was brought to it's knees by Napster and MP3s.

I really thought some of the hosts were really good. There was a very passionate vibe about the conference and people were there to have a good time and share their passion for Bitcoin you got the feeling.

As I was watching, I had printed out a bingo card with some of my favorte Bitcoin sayings. I was happy to cross off Fix The Money, Fix The World quite early on.

At the conference was a satellite call to one of the Bitcoin heroes. I am not sure of his tie -in with Bitcoin, but he has become a Bitcoin advocate. Sadly, the signal wasnt so great or my internet started playing up so I missed the theme of his presentation.

Luckily McShane tweeted it after so I didn't miss out. Something about the permissionless nature of Bitcoin which we all love.

If permission-less was the theme of the Bitcoin conference and it had a fun, laid back, freedom-orientated and young atmosphere, the Crypto Assets Conference in Frankfurt had the opposite theme. This was a conference held this week at the Blockchain Center which is part of Frankfurt School of Finance & Management.

It was a very stale corporate/bank/regulator type meeting and there were lots of buzz words thrown around but you had the impression everyone was bewildered or trying to sell you something that you don't need.

With many attendees from the big banks around the world and many offspring companies/projects they have founded to take advantage of the crypto space in attendance, it was a serious affair but the main focus was how to recreate the fiat monetary system with crypto.

I dug a little deeper into some of these projects and they included a tokenised Asset Foundry by BNP Paribas which seems to just have 1 tokenised bond on it.

There was also a representative from JP Morgan's Onyx project that claims to be the worlds first bank led P2P network. Yes it is full of great things like KYC, centralisation and ability to freeze your assets.

Throughout the conference, regulation, authorised and permissionless were key words repeated often. The idea that you need first to be authorised, KYC'd, secured and gain permission for using or transferring Crypto assets are problems they are trying to solve or create whichever way you look at it.

Sending crypto assets across borders without permission was another bugaboo, especially for the EU commission in attendance. One has to wonder if we already have CBDCs with the current fiat system with all the controls and regulations etc and controls over what you can and can't do with your own money.

Meanwhile at the Bitcoin conference, there was talk of parties, catching up with friends and searching for the hidden Bitcoin panties... Where could they be and who would find them? Would the person who found them, wear them at the Satorini Halving Party?

Excitement was running high with the further development of Nostr and increased usage of Lightning. More small countries like Madiera were now saying they are a Bitcoin friendly country. Where is Madiera? I have no idea, but it's adoption.

Talk and buzz around the imminent ETF approval was fresh in the air and in everyone's mind. Is it a good thing? What could go wrong with Blackrock getting their hands on lots of Bitcoin?

Julian Assange of WikiLeaks fame was represented by Stella Assange. I am not sure how the link of Bitcoin and Julian came to be and how he came to be an advocate. When I heard there was some wikileaks many years ago, a quick glance of what was leaked didn't hold my attention very long and therefore I can't really say what is the big deal with him.

Some of the Bitcoin influencers that were not in attendance were of course Jack. I am not sure if he was out in the jungle somewhere or working on his latest ASIC rig with his Block company.

Also Saylor was not there and I was surprised he turned down the opportunity to go to Amsterdam and try some of the coffeeshops.

After the conference, there were rumours of many waitresses being really annoyed by people trying to pay for food and drinks with Bitcoin instead of with fiat. I am not sure if many people are using the Binance Visa card that allows you to pay with crypto, but today I received notice that I cannot use this debit card anymore as they are closing it down.

Did you watch the Bitcoin Conference in Amsterdam?

Link to stream

Credits:

Title image created in canva using my own photo of my Bitcoin sticker.

Ecency Waves banner by @irisworld.

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