Bitcoin Forum

I just got back from PorcFest 2012 near the White Mountains in northern New Hampshire. I believe this was the biggest experiment in person-to-person bitcoin usage to date.

What's PorcFest

PorcFest (http://freestateproject.org/content/porcfest) is the annual Porcupine Freedom Festival, organized by the Free State Project (http://freestateproject.org/). Hundreds of libertarians take over a campground in northern New Hampshire, pitch tents, eat, drink, trade, talk and party.

https://p.twimg.com/AwGtH5QCAAIRbF4.jpg

What does this have to do with Bitcoin?

This year, lots. You could wake up, have coffee, then breakfast, lunch and dinner at different vendors, and you could pay in bitcoins at all of them. Want something sweet? Get some ice cream and pay with bitcoins. Somebody was selling a used car for bitcoin. It's been reported that 80% of the vendors accepted bitcoins. I talked to some of the ones that didn't, and even they knew exactly what I was talking about. They were interested in doing it, but just hadn't gotten set up yet.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2102055/bitcoin-car.jpg

The BitInstant bitcoin booth was a huge success, with people streaming in all day, every day, asking about bitcoins, getting set up to accept bitcoins, and buying bitcoins for FRNs, copper and silver. There was a panel on bitcoin which packed the big tent with about 100 people. There were interviews about bitcoin and the new bitcoin card on Free Talk Live, an award-winning radio show which was broadcasting out of PorcFest for the week.

As a Bitcoin fan, this was hugely exciting for me. There were a lot of alternative currencies at PorcFest and internet was spotty, but I think Bitcoin really shined. If there's a better place to see bitcoin in action, I'd sure like to hear about it!

https://p.twimg.com/Av3oYszCMAA4BcD.jpg

I like the ice-cream names.  ;D

Glad it was a success.

THIS...WAS...THE...BEST...WEEKEND...OF....MY...LIFE!!!!!

The whole team came out! Roger, Erik, Ira, Ayaka, and it was a pleasure meeting Zach and Josh.

EVERYONE loves Bitcoin! This was by far the largest meetup ever.

The coolest thing? Bitcoin transactions were happening without us! People told me how they used Bitcoin to buy stuff, exchange and get change as well.

Staying up late, educating people about Bitcoin, our campsite was fully stocked with Bitcoin, Beer, and NEFT Vodka!

Our Bitcoin panel was STANDING ROOM ONLY! The tent was packed!!

Looking forward to next year!

As the free staters say, Live Free or Die!!!

-Charlie

Oh man.... If I saw Mary Ruwart buying ice cream with Bitcoins..... wife would've preemptively slapped me. Thanks for sharing!

I personally set up at least a half dozen vendors and a couple dozen individuals to use bitcoin. I know Roger and Erik were even more on top of things. I did not talk to a single person throughout the week who hadn't already heard of bitcoin. Of those who didn't know much, almost every one was eager to learn. The Free State is thrilled about bitcoin. I can't agree more that this was the biggest bitcoin event in terms of use that I've been to or heard of.

It was great meeting y'all there. The panel was fun, although I thought it was a bit too geeky and not enough about "how can I fit this into my existing business processes". Next year will be even better.

OMG I want to go!! However I'm still recovering from vodka soaked fruit, but I had a great time too! Tell me this happens again.  :'(

How they accept bitcoin? Through a smartphone app?

This is brilliant.

I may have to take a flight next year.  I haven't been to a Bitcoin meet-up yet, but I haven't met a campsite with beer I haven't liked and Bitcoin in the woods would only make it that much greater.

Dude, thats exactly what it was. We literally had a revolving dozen people hanging out, drinking beer, talking and learning Bitcoin.

We stayed up really late, and had a glowing Bitcoin LED sign!



Yes, we helped the merchants get set up via Bitcoin Spinner app for Android or Instawallet and QR code scanner for iOS.

Some merchants we printed the QR codes for their signs, so anyone can just scan and pay!


Was such a pleasure meeting you as well! Thanks for hanging out and looking forward until next year  ;D

This is just Awesome new to hear!

fuck and i missed it!

you guys doing it again next year?  :P


edit: why didn't i get an e0mail about this  :(

Sorry! We keep making this mistake of doing this last minutes.

Yes, they do it every year!

I saw the baklava guy sent quite a number of orders through.  How was it?

What alternative currencies were present there in the camp?

Hahaha yes he got tons of orders via his Bit-pay QR code card. I bought three of my meals from him, he had a full cafeteria to sell from.

Nice!

next year I will definitely make it up there for this event.  Sounds like fun!

Looks like a pretty cool event.  Also really cool to see that BTC in a "real world" market working pretty smoothly. 

I agree that this was by far the biggest Bitcoin meetup ever.

Here are some additional photos from the event.

http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/25983303/1/New%20Hampshire%202012?h=69dc71 (http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/25983303/1/New%20Hampshire%202012?h=69dc71)

So many exciting developments happening with bitcoin.  Nice to meet you all.

Any backup instructions?

Given that Bitcoin transactions take a few hours how does someone pay for something like an ice cream that requires the payment up front before the goods are handed over?

Presumably, they accept at 0-confirmation.

Wonder how long till theres an airline flying out of NH that accepts btc

As well as bitcoins, there were silver dime cards ( donttreadonmeme.com ), copper rounds, "suns of liberty" (a hand made thin silver bullion ingot), some junk silver, plenty of barter, and of course my own Shire Silver (http://shiresilver.com). This year I didn't do much advertising beforehand and most people accepted it, but then I've got a few years of experience and history so I didn't need to.

For anyone interested in coming next year, keep an eye on http://freestateproject.org/content/porcfest for the details.

Please do understand though, that this is a very libertarian event. People attending are expected to live up to the non-aggression principle. If seeing lots of people walking around open carrying bothers you then you won't be comfortable.

Here's a view of the kinds of people attending. Two years ago when I was watching my 3 month old son I really had to go to the bathroom bad, and his mother was off somewhere. I handed my son off to a total stranger for a few minutes. The next year I handed him off for an hour to someone who I only knew through Facebook. These are the kind of folks you like to deal with.

Now we need similar event to europe  ;D I love camping.


If this means guns, I'll stay away :P

Ya, let's hope there was nobody attempting any race attacks or Finney attacks.  In the lab the success rate of an attack is pretty good (unless the merchant takes proper precautions) so this could have been a bad user experience for some merchants.

This is a catch-22 problem that is going to need some attention.  How does a small / mom and pop accept bitcoin (e.g., on mobile or tablet) yet lessen the vulnerability to race attacks and finney attack?

Roger, can you post this again? Link is broken

How much was that Vehicross selling for in BTC?

More Pictures:

https://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/243747_663459240378_1133149291_o.jpg

Bitcoin Alternative Currencies Panel


https://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/198387_4184752777021_217074848_n.jpg

Group Photo

More photos:
(Size Fixed)



http://i.pgu.me/PTBOC4dh_original.jpg




http://i50.tinypic.com/14ahf2e.jpg




http://i47.tinypic.com/33jps0p.jpg

Thumbnails man, thumbnails!

i find it rather curious that in one of the most religious first world countries people can be patriots and at the same time have a philosophy that closely resembles satanism. ok la veyan satanism mostly, and he was american and basically an atheist, but still...

So sweet any bears?

"[img width=640 height=400]" is your friend.

Bitcoin transactions are instantaneous. There is no need to wait longer for payment confirmations in 99.99% of transactions.

I can't get the BB code to work for it.
If you can,  please feel free.

Here is the current image locations

http://i.pgu.me/PTBOC4dh_original.jpg


http://i50.tinypic.com/14ahf2e.jpg



http://i47.tinypic.com/33jps0p.jpg

Click Quote to see how I did it. Imgur.com will generate clickable thumbs to the full size pics, to reduce wasted bandwidth.

You have a very distored view of Americans.

how so?

New Hampshire does have a significant head start as far as Bitcoin becoming a routinely used currency:

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=66832.0

In October in San Diego is Libertopia 12 (October 11-14, 2012).

http://libertopia.org/2012/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/libertopiaheart.png  http://libertopia.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/2012-Reason-ad-e1337472706821.jpg

 - http://libertopia.org/festival

I've only talked with one person who will be a presenter there, and I failed to get past the "Bitcoin isn't gold or silver therefore it will never be money" bias.  That was, however, before Erik Voorhees' Bitcoin  - The Libertarian Introduction (which appeared in the April 2012 issue of Freedom's Phoenix) and *now* at least Bitcoin has become a topic worthy of discussion.
 - http://evoorhees.blogspot.com/2012/04/bitcoin-libertarian-introduction.html

Are there any other gatherings or clusters of Bitcoiners?

Pretty much the entire part I highlighted.

EDIT: Or, perhaps, a very distorted understanding of Satanism?

Disregarding the "most religious first world country" bit, I'm confused how a gathering of a few thousand people can be representative of a country of 350+ million people, as well.  I can gather 5000 hard core atheists, does that represent the rest of the country?

I mean... it was a libertarian festival.  What did you expect to find there, conservatives?

Satanists are anti-drug. There were lot's of drugs at Porcfest.

Satanists are anti-drug.
[/quote]

Can't say that our definitions of the term are even close to each other.

Read Anton LaVey's The Satanic Bible. Those Satanists are anti-drug.

the highlighted ones seem to fit the libertarian heavily armed non-aggression principle pretty well.
which leaves us with my statement of the usa being one of the most religious first world countries.


so i dont see where my view is so distorted. maybe you misunderstood me.

@inaba

i didnt say it was representative. but to me it seems most libertarians are no less religious than other americans and they consider themselves patriots. i might be wrong about that.
i admit that i am a bit struggling because the whole movement has no equivalent here whatsoever.

@daily anarchist
i am not really an expert but i dont think thats really a superimportant part of la veyan satanism.

I'm not sure what the breakdown of libertarian vs religious is... not something I've ever looked into,  but I would agree it's probably reasonable that a similar percentage of libertarians are religious as the rest of the country.  So that particular fact aside, I don't see how religion, liberatarianism and patriotism directly relate to each other.  One does not go with the other in any combination.

You can be one, two or all three or any combination, I don't think one has any bearing on the other.  There may be some minor correlation with libertarian and patriots, but I don't see it as being a strong one.  In fact, I would tend to thing it may be just the opposite... the more libertarian you are, the less patriotic you are, on average.    That's just purely my conjecture though, I have nothing to back that up with.

I've never seen those rules anywhere in my life, and don't coincide at all with my own understanding of the term.  That said, even if I were to agree that the above highlighted rules are an equivilent to the non-agression principle (I don't), any such similarities are coincidental.  Every religion on Earth has some kind of general principle that seems similar on it's face, and I think that even Satanists would be offended by the comparison, since part of the defining rules you cite would explicitly exclude most Americans & most libertarians.

Apparently I did, but my argument stands.  You have a distored view of Americans and satanists.

you claim a lot but you never present any argument or facts.
i get that you disagree with me but neither how nor why.


what argument? "no" is not an argument in my book.
i have met with actual satanists and did quite a bit of reading on related philosophy.
i might have a distorted view of americans but i think i share that with the americans  ;)

I can confirm 100% there were plenty drugs at the event  ;D

I met zero satanists at the event (though perhaps I missed them). I did, however, meet dozens of christians, a few jews, and a few muslims. The most religious of all were us Bitcoiners, who set up a bright LED Bitcoin sign on a tree and prayed to Satoshi every six blocks from sunrise to sunset.

Observationally speaking, if this was a satanic event, satan wouldn't have been pleased with the turnout.

Oh, sorry.  I guess I'll have to spell it out.  By definition, a satanist is a person who worships Satan.  Any version of a set of mores, whether or not they might resemble those of another group or not, notwithstanding.

Therefore, if one doesn't worship satan, how can one be a satanist?  To make the claim that Americans appear to be both christian and satanist, lacking the semantic qualifications that you later presented, seems to me to be an obvious case of culture bias.


You've met with actual satanists?  Who self describe themselves as satanists and worship Satan?  Or just some people that you assume fit that discription?

and in conclusion, no.

The only people who do are people who talk to the media and want the attention.  As in, real satanists are as rare as hens teeth.

see, that wasnt so hard. now that you did spell it out, i can inform you that your definition of satanism is very outdated. modern satanism turned from literal inversion of christian morality (christian evil = their good) to inverting the underlying principles. very prominently among them the inversion of reliance upon a higher being to relying only on yourself as a source of ethics and meaning in life. even those that you can describe as theistic dont worship satan as he is depicted in christian mythology - thats pretty much exclusive to teenagers and total nutjobs.



i met with people that describe themselves as satanists and did fit one of the many forms of modern satanism. mostly atheistic and unaffiliated with any particular organization, but similar in their views to either la veyan satanism or setianism.


that very much depends on your definition of "real". and that might easily turn into a true scottsman. for me, what sets a "real" satanist apart from an impostor or attention whore is the disliking or even hatred of christian ethics and the will to define an intentionally contradicting ethic. depending on the individual that might be anything from "RaaarRR i wanna hurt cute animals and listen to black metal all day" to a complex and well-reflected philosophy.

Hey guys it was awesome meeting you all. Porcfest was fantastic.

but I FORGOT MY BITCOINS AT HOME!!!! You guys tried to help me get them and I finally found a long lost instawallet account on the last day.

Its too bad the internet really sucks at Rogers campground.

Hey Charlie, I didn't put two and two together but I have done some business with you here on the forum. You guys were great representatives of bitcoin and I watched you set up people who didnt have a clue with bitcoin. Great job!

See you next year?

-josh

I don't necessarily disagree with the idea behind your statements, but to label it satanism is, frankly, preposterous.  Satanism is, by definition, centered around Satan.  Satan is nominally a Christian ideal, at least the commonly accepted definition of Satan.  You can make the claims you are making, and give them another label and I would likely agree with you... but labeling what you are calling Satanism is just plain wrong.  Satanism is previously defined, we can't just redefine words willy-nilly and have them mean whatever we want them to mean.  Satanism is the worship and/or belief in Satan.  If you are doing neither, you are, by any definition, not a Satanist.  Just because your world view and rules for living your life might coincide with another groups ideals does not mean you are part of that group or that you should be labeled as such.  

This is very similar to the problem of atheism.  Everyone, everywhere is an atheist... doesn't matter what god you believe in, there are gods you do not believe in, thus you are an atheist.  Most atheists, especially the rabid ones (who are, by the way, just as ridiculous as theists), fail to understand what true atheism is.  The real atheists, such as myself, have coined our own description: Apatheist.  If you really are an atheist, then you simply won't care whether or not God exists (or Satan for that matter) and the question as to whether he exists or not is functionally meaningless.  Most self labeled "atheists" care very much and have a vested interest in trying to prove he does not exist, which puts them squarely in the same camp as theists, they just believe in something different, but both require an equal amount of faith directly proportional to your belief.  

You'll never find a true atheist saying "Hey I'm an atheist, you are an idiot for believing in god cause he doesn't exist."  A real atheist will respond to religious topics with "Don't care. Lets talk about something that is actually meaningful."

But I digress and have taken this thread WAY the F*CK off topic and I apologize.

OK, so, besides being completely out of left field, I might suggest a different take on this: I find it rather curious that Satanists follow a code so similar to the Non-Aggression Principal. Of course, those rules you mentioned are quite a bit more ruthless than the NAP, especially that last one.

Satanist: When walking in open territory, bother no one. If someone bothers you, ask them to stop. If they do not stop, destroy them.

Pretty harsh, if you ask me. Especially if you compare it to the NAP: No one has the right to initiate the use of force, threat of force, or fraud on another person.

Oh, and to get back on topic: I hope to be able to get to next year's Porc-fest. Fingers crossed!

well, queen elisabeth doesnt actually rule england and satanists dont actually worship satan. times change and so does the meaning of words. language is not logic. look it up if you dont belief me. its long been redefined, and it wasnt me  ;)

what you describe as "true" or "real" atheism would be classified as an agnostic worldview by most people.
if you get off your true horse you might see everybody claims whatever he thinks is important is the real thing, failing to recognize that very often 99% of the rest of the world doesnt give a shit about his definition of things.
in that respect, the true scottsman is not just a rhetoric figure. many people dont realize that they incorporate their perspective into their language to a point were opposing opinions are discredited by design. as all self-immunization strategies this rather dangerous if you like to do some occasional independent thinking.
of course, strong atheism is just as ridiculous as the theism it is derived from. thats the nature of every direct negation.
 

difference is that la vey was a showman and the harsh formulation is very likely a result of that. makes the whole thing sound more "dark" than it actually is. while the non-aggression principal combined with open carrying is quite the opposite: sounds very peaceful but it seems to cry out "oh pleeeeease, fuck with me, shooting someone would really help with my anger management issues." but maybe thats just me.

Yeah, that's you projecting. Open Carry is about asserting their right to, not about hoping to shoot someone. If they want to shoot something, there's plenty of targets down at the range.

Pleassssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss discus bitcoin?  :-\

Carlos Santana was there?!

I also see in Las Vegas, July 11-14, 2012:

Freedom Fest
 - http://freedomfest.com/keynote-speakers/
 - http://freedomfest.com/all-other-speakers/

Looks generally focused on banking, investment and politics.

Some interesting presenters, including:
 - Tom Woods (@ThomasEWoods)
 - Jeff Berwick (@DollarVigilante)
 - Bob Prechter (@RobertPrechter) (Elliot Wave theory creator)


Then in August in Florida right before the RNC are two Libertarian events:

 - http://musicians4freedom.com/2012/06/ron-paul-supporters-now-working-on-two-pre-rnc-festivals

On August  24, 25 and 26, 2012 at the Fairgrounds in Tampa:
 
 - http://paulfestival.org

Also on Augh 24-26 in Polk County (near Tampa):

 - http://www.freedomfestival2012.com

^this

Then they aren't satanist.  That's pretty simple to understand, I'm surprised you are having a hard time grasping that.  They may be something else, but they aren't satanists.  I'm not sure what Queen Elisabeth has to do with the discussion, as the analogy is not even vaguely similar.

Yes, language changes, but the definition of a descriptive term does not change, otherwise it's not a descriptive term.  A "satanist" is defined as one who worships satan, go ahead and look it up if you'd like.  If you aren't worshiping satan, you are not a satanist.  I suspect, though, that you are just using that term to garner attention and be inflammatory.


Wow, you really have no idea what the definition of words are, do you?  Agnosticism is nothing like apatheism.  Agnostics are the undecided.  They do not know whether a deity exists or not.  That is very different from not caring or the question being completely meaningless.  There's a thing called the Agnostics prayer, you might want to look it up.  It describes agnosticism fairly well.

I have absolutely no idea what  "true horse" or a "true scottsman" is, nor do I see how it relates to anything being discussed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanism#Atheistic.2FDeistic_Satanism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanism#Atheistic.2FDeistic_Satanism)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism#Types_of_agnosticism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agnosticism#Types_of_agnosticism)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Scotsman_problem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Scotsman_problem)

catch up on your reading.

The first sentence of the page you linked to proves my point
You also linked to a link that proves my point:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apatheism

As for Satanism, you also linked to the article that proves my point.  I'm not sure which point you were trying to make with the link, but since you mentioned LeVey, I will pull the relevant portion from that section of the article:


See that "Who regard Satan" bit?  Yeah... so, you were saying?

Thanks for the True Scotsman link, it is interesting.  But what's a "True horse?"

I think Aristotle has a solution to this problem.

satan = imaginary
porcfest = real
libertarians = real
guns = real
bitcoin = real

ergo

satan != porcfest
satan != libertarians
satan != guns
satan != bitcoin

Please go hijack some other topic. Isn't there a paranoid evangelical forum somewhere on the internet where they're all too happy to discuss satan and his 20 followers?

If there is, it's probably European.

Here are some more pics (thanks Vanessa), for those interesting in coming next year:

https://i.imgur.com/lJV86s.jpg (http://imgur.com/lJV86)	https://i.imgur.com/LzoONs.jpg (http://imgur.com/LzoON)	https://i.imgur.com/C3aC8s.jpg (http://imgur.com/C3aC8)
https://i.imgur.com/dMMsVs.jpg (http://imgur.com/dMMsV)	https://i.imgur.com/sh0vws.jpg (http://imgur.com/sh0vw)

Why is religion everywhere? I've had a hard long day and I come here to geek out over science, nerdy stuff and bitcoin and there is a bloody raging religion conversation in every single place. I want some peace. Blaa blaa God metaphysics - no one cares.

Actually, there was barely any religion at Porcfest. I was expecting to have alot more conversation about it as well.

You missed the Christian Anarchist meeting.

As I recall, there was also a Shabbat meeting on Friday.

At least we made the daily atheist drinkathon.

I have nothing against religion. It's just depressing when people get focused on the fine details and differences between peoples, instead of looking at the bigger picture and thinking how we can make things better for all. Details that cause killing between one group of brown people that pray to a wall and another group of brown people to pray to a black rock - both the same people.

Well Carl Sagan says it better than I do, and this video often tears me up:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pfwY2TNehw

oh shit I missed the Shabbat thing....I think we were NEFT'ing

Ask the Church of Satan if you want to know what Satanism is, you'll find a great many people they kicked out for expressing belief in an actual being named Satan - because he is after all not a real being but instead merely a symbol.

LaVey Satanism is extreme individualism.

AynRandism is extreme individualism.

Hence the connection I guess.

very good video.
there is however no "all", not for the people we are right now. we look for every possible way to distinguish ourselves from others and form groups. religion, ideals, race, football club, it really doesnt matter. as long as there is "us" and "them" and we belong somewhere. somewhere way smaller than a pale blue dot. because that is how small humanity is right now.
you could strip us all naked of all religions, cloth, ideals and opinions and we would scratch As and Bs into our skin and the alphas would fight the betas and vice versa.

Stop discussing Satan!  >:(

Let discuss bitcoin! Like, why didn't the bitinstant guy record a session? Next time, record some video!

> Perhaps most are unaware of the connection, though LaVey wasn’t shy about admitting his debt to his inspiration. “I give people Ayn Rand with trappings,” he once told the Washington Post. On another occasion he acknowledged that his brand of Satanism was “just Ayn Rand’s philosophy with ceremony and ritual added.” Indeed, the influence is so apparent that LaVey has been accused of plagiarizing part of his “Nine Satanic Statements” from the John Galt speech in Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

Devotees of Rand may object to my outlining the association between the two. They will say I am proposing “guilt by association,” a form of the ad hominem fallacy. But I am not attacking Rand for the overlap of her views with LaVey’s; I am saying that, at their core, they are the same philosophy. LaVey was able to recognize what many conservatives fail to see: Rand’s doctrines are satanic. <
  - http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2011/06/the-fountainhead-of-satanism

Yeah... not likely. Once a thread is derailed, it's as easy to get it back on track as is a train.

There certainly is someone at JP Morgue tasked wtih keeping an eye on Bitcoin and this thread is probably going to be exhibit #1 in their next report describing why Bitcoin isn't a threat to the banksters bonuses just yet.

But that's how decentralization works.  And that's why Reddit is useful (downvote the comments from trolls) and Facebook is useful (censor the trolls) and Twitter is useful (follow those who don't troll), and the Bitcoin-development mailing list is useful (no trolling) and IRC is useful (where nearly anything goes). 

We aren't forced to use BitcoinTalk, but because some of the most engaging and necessary conversation occurs, this is where we spend a good amount of our time.  (averaging over 300K page views each day, lately.)

This religion trolling sucks

Bring your religion spam elsewhere please.

Final write-up on the event:

http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/6/27/porcfest-2012-bitinstant-and-the-bernanke-bitcoin-exchange.html (http://blog.bitinstant.com/blog/2012/6/27/porcfest-2012-bitinstant-and-the-bernanke-bitcoin-exchange.html)

I left out the satanism  ;)

In the multiverse we're all Gods!
Fuck every other idea or die in a Closed Time Loop.
Apatheists are much more fun to party with anyway!  8)

Good one - I reposted it to Free Keene.   8)

Nice post!

Can't wait to listen to the interviews. FTL + Bitcoin always gets me motivated.

How the fuck did I miss this thread, and why didn't I put it on my calendar when I first learned about this event a few months back? Chances were that there was no way I could have gotten away from here to attend, but that's besides the point. I'm glad to hear that it was a successful event and look forward to reading this entire thread, as well as evoorhees article and the audio/videos.

~Bruno~

Your losing it Bruno!!



you have let me down old friend...

And I almost forgot, ... there's probably a few Bitcoiners that are gonig to be at Burning Man:

http://legacy-cdn.smosh.com/smosh-pit/082010/burningman01.jpg

 - http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=74963.0

I thought you were talking about the bit-pay model, but a climate change skeptic?! No thanks..

Looks like a lot fun. Though I'd be a little worried about getting into drug-fueled political/religious discussions with people walking around "open carrying" :D

Wat?

I didn't know who you were talking about and assumed it was one of the bit-pay spokesmodel girls (http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/bitcoin+girls). But when I looked up Mary Ruwart (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Ruwart), I learned that she served on the board of a chapter of the Heartland Institute (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartland_Institute), and concluded that she's a climate change skeptic. Big turn-off, even if she doesn't look bad for her age.

I was curious about this... (could this thread possibly go more off-topic?) so looked into this, being unaware of the Heartland Institute, but fairly familiar with Mary Ruwart. She serves as a policy adviser for their healthcare issues, which makes sense given that's her primary focus and I've never in my life heard her speak on climate change.

With what is hopefully the last digression on this line, at least, her book, “Healing Our World” can be found, along with other very good ones, for free here: http://freekeene.com/about/books/

You buy into all that government fear mongering? Global warming fear mongering for the left, terrorism fear mongering for the right. Government growth for all!

I sense a DERAILMENT!

Derailment is actually quite apropos for topic. If you were a Porcfest attendee you'd understand.  ;)

True is this. Govt. fear mongering was the order of the day at porcfest. One day we were sitting at the Bernanke Bitcoin exchange, drinking beer, talkin' about oppressive states, and a black helicopter flew over the camp ground. Everyone stopped, looked up, and laughed.

Now, I don't know who owned said helicopter. The obvious connotation was entirely too funny to ignore.

I think I was playing poker when that happened. I didn't see the chopper, but heard it loud and clear and knew a lot of people would get a "kick" out of it.

Maybe so, but they won't be openly using it, since the Burning Man people forbid the use of money at their event.  Also they forbid advertising.

Burning Man is very different from Porcfest in those two ways.

Probably a bad idea to setup an exchange at Burning Man due to possible bad publicity. It's lot easier to set it up at various physical libertarian gathering.

There will never be a bitcoin exchange at Burning Man. The event is explicitly anti-money in all forms. I've been to Burning Man and it was fucking awesome, and certainly many of the people there would love the Bitcoin idea, but it's not a venue at which Bitcoin can be openly promoted in any way.

I had a thread about this:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=74963.0

Basically, I'm down to go and give free things away sponsored by Bitcoin people/companies

We should get tickets for next summer as soon as they go on sale via lottery system

At the future of money & tech summit, Jered and I met Mr. Michael Michaels the founder of Burning Man.

I asked him for some free tickets, but he put on his top hat and walked away  ???

could be some giveaways, though.  Right?

So, let me get this straight: An event who is anti-money on all forms charges you money for entrance?

This pretty much sealed the deal. I'm going to stick to watching the videos of the giant flaming octopus and its cousins. Look for me at PorcFest, but not at Burning Man.

It's one of those typical cases of do as I say, don't do as I do ::)

I buy into good science, it doesn't matter who funded it. The US government (other than funding some science) is doing nothing to prevent global warming, in fact they are doing much to accelerate it. Such as invading foreign countries (which increases the likelihood of terrorism, incidentally) to keep the oil flowing. The oil companies fund the climate change skeptics, but that's corporate propaganda, not science.

Corporate tyrrany is just as harmful as government tyrrany. Actually, its hard to know which is the bigger problem, given the revolving door for power-brokers between government and corporations (public and private). I think the real power structure behind the government is the private sector (eg the Federal Reserve, a private corporation whose board-members are all CEOs of private banks and companies).

Am I still a libertarian anarchist?  ;D

Yes. You still sound like a libertarian and/or anarchist. The current form of government, which mixes corporate interests with public, is closer to mercantilism or fascism. Wanting corporations to play by the same rules as individuals is in fact necessary for capitalism to function properly.

If you're not a sceptic, you don't believe in good science.  Time will show the truth, but it largely has.  The computer simulation models used to support GW politics have been consistantly wrong in the short term, who in their right mind would believe that they could be inaccurate in the first few years and get more accurate in 100 years?  Predictive simulations don't work like that, proven by the 'butterfly effect' theorm.

The irony is that the best long term weather predictive models that we have today are pencil/paper models developed in the early 1800's.  The track record of The Old Farmers' Almanac makes these modern supercomputer aided models look like they were developed either by amatures or frauds.

Governments are corporations.

Bitcoin meetup at Burning Man?  I might be in for that... 

Isn't curious that a community form around promoting some kind of money, which by then should be booooooooooooring no brainer? It's like forming a community around promoting a kind of concrete.

And you are here posting about it....nuff said  ;D

Concrete Engineering general discussion Forum (http://www.eng-tips.com/threadminder.cfm?pid=592)

your prove his point, it's not as busy as here

Hey, folks! I am the "baklava guy" and I wanted to let you know that we had a total of about 45 BTC transactions during PorcFest! Eight were from physical BTCs and the rest were via QR code on my BitPay deposit card. I think it's safe to say that George's Famous Baklava is the largest agorist business at PF. We took silver, barter, cash, BTC, and gold. There were a ton of pics taken during the event, but here are two of my favorites.

I'm a little silly :P
http://mandrik.com/pfest2012/mandrikmenu.jpg

I was given the coolest shirt ever!
http://mandrik.com/pfest2012/baconfreedom.jpg

I made a meme out of this image and Epic Meal Time retweeted  (https://twitter.com/EpicMealTime/status/211585769733758976)it a couple weeks ago:
http://mandrik.com/pfest2012/emtweaves.jpg

That's 180lbs of bacon packaged and weaved into 320 5x5 bacon weaves. We ran out by Saturday morning! That's why we have this sign at our stand:

http://mandrik.com/pfest2012/bacongrease.jpg

We filtered and saved all the bacon grease from the weaves we made and ended up filling our frier up with it for a couple days. So yeah, we are kinda crazy about the bacon!

Just wanted to thank everyone who came out to PF - especially our BTC customers! I'm a huge fan and am so happy we had so many transactions during PorcFest.

One final note - BTC payments were less than 2% of our transactions so we have a ways to go. I'd say we got about twice as many payments in silver. I think cash will always be king at these events, but I'd love to see more growth with BTC.

Uhh huh! 180 LBS of shrink wrapped "bacon." I'll BET you were the biggest agorist business at Porcfest!   :D

Haha! Just kidding! I ate some of that bacon and it was deeeeeeeeeelish!

Hopefully next year I'll have a smart phone and can pay in BTC.

I for one bought a half dozen meals from you with FRNs because I had neither cell service nor internet down in the barn. :(

Yes Burning Man, as an organization, has little concept of economics and money. It comes from their hippie roots, and is made highly apparent in the hypocrisy of banning money yet requiring payment of money to attend the event.

But it's worse then that. This year, because they are so ignorant of price mechanisms, they set a cap on the price of tickets and because there was (predictably) a shortage, they set up a lottery system to doll them out. This meant that groups of people got all messed up, because a group of 10 friends is not going to win 10 of the lottery tickets. It was a huge crisis this year, and a great example of why prices ought not be fucked with - if there are too many people who want to go, then charge more! Problem solved.

With that said, Burning Man is absolutely awesome as an event. I would love to go again, perhaps next year with a bunch of bitcoiners. Topless women everywhere and the best house and techno music I've ever heard.

It's really quite staggering how that the free-market hasn't yet toppled economic ignorance. Bitcoin gives me hope that it will.

Don't even joke about it! That shit took forever to weave & wrap up, LOL!

additional article
http://sussexcountyangel.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/porcfest-is-a-free-state-of-mind-or-an-ode-to-alternative-currencies/ (http://sussexcountyangel.wordpress.com/2012/07/03/porcfest-is-a-free-state-of-mind-or-an-ode-to-alternative-currencies/)

Nice!

I took a bunch of pictures at PorcFest myself. These (http://imgur.com/a/76ht1/all) are the Bitcoin-related ones. I even got a shot of the black helicopter. Enjoy!

Better late than never:

Here are the Bitcoin interviews done by myself and Erik Voorhees on Free Talk Live while at Porcfest 2012

Roger Ver:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDmAm5wbasU (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDmAm5wbasU)

Erik Voorhees:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvRRrJRhrlA (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvRRrJRhrlA)

This post has now been translated into Spanish:

http://elbitcoin.org/en-porcfest-bitcoin-es-moneda-corriente/


Thanks, elbitcoin.org!