2012-09-17 vice.com - IS BITCOIN THE FUTURE OF MONEY, OR JUST THE FUTURE OF BUYI

[julz]

IS BITCOIN THE FUTURE OF MONEY, OR JUST THE FUTURE OF BUYING INTERNET DRUGS?

Jake Hanrahan
2012-09-17

http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/printable-guns-grey-matters-and-masked-hackers?utm_source=vicetwitter

...we went to the currency's official 2012 Conference in London this weekend to see if Bitcoin has a future beyond letting strange people buy illegal weapons and large quantities of drugs on the internet.
...

The notion that Bitcoin could help Third World countries is strong, and I guess the idea of Bitcoins being used en masse to level the playing field a bit gives enthusiasts something solid to hold on to, but I’m still not a convert.
...
Perhaps I’m just not getting it, but what bugs me the most is that a lot of people who collect Bitcoins sell them on for real paper money – they totally undermine the hard work the diehard Bitcoiners have put into the digital currency.

This may come back to bite me, but I can’t see the theories of what Bitcoin could achieve translating well into practice.
Gavin Andresen, a developer of Bitcoin, was even quoted telling people “not to make heavy investments in Bitcoins”. This doesn’t mean it can’t become an integral part of buying online, but PayPal is an integral part of buying online and that isn't gonna bring down the New World Order any time soon. I guess if they can at least harm the greedy bastards in some way, while helping us proles gain a bit more control over our lives, then every Bitcoin spent is worth it.

Well... judging by this and what little I've seen leak out about the conference, it sounds like it was rather skewed to the libertarian/anarchist/'stick it to the man' crowd...
not at all sounding like the more practical, business and finance oriented convention I was expecting from London.

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[hazek]

Don't give this yellow page style extremely biased piece of crap your clicks, I guarantee it's not worth it.

[LordMord]

I have to agree with hazek i just looked quickly over the text and there is nothing of value there.

[kiba]

but I can’t see the theories of what Bitcoin could achieve translating well into practice.

What kind of bollocks is this?

[Technomage]

The article is decent in my opinion. There is some of the usual crap regarding Bitcoin but it's not too bad.

I was at the conference and the truth is that it was very ideology and technology oriented. I'm fairly sure the focus on ideology and technology was because of who the main organizer (genjix) is. Everything there reflected him basically.

In my opinion the next conference should put much more focus on business and practicality. There should be room for the technology behind Bitcoin and maybe a little bit of ideology, but not like this.

I liked the conference, don't get me wrong, but it was not the kind of conference I was necessarily expecting. I went there to represent a Bitcoin business mainly but I ended up talking mostly about random stuff. Although I think that a few of the discussions will lead to something on the business front, possibly something big.

I'm personally planning a different kind of conference for next year that would be held in Helsinki, Finland. It would be a sort of joint mobile payments / virtual currencies conference with a business focus, with Bitcoin perhaps representing half of the program. We already have a major partner for the other 50% from the mobile payments scene.

I'm not especially interested in a repeat of this so the next "Bitcoin Conference" can be a different one to what I'm doing. Maybe we do the big business conference in May in Helsinki and the Austrians or Germans can do the "Bitcoin 2013" in October I guess. Whatever happens, I hope the next Bitcoin Conference has more business focus regardless.

When I think about the whole conference from a Bitcoin-outsiders point of view, lot of it will definitely seem like freakish and nerdish and hackerish. It really doesn't bother me because I like Bitcoin for what it is but if we want to introduce Bitcoin to big players this is NOT the right approach. This issue might cause some conflict within the community though and that's why I'm thinking maybe two European conferences next year are in order.

[hazek]

This issue might cause some conflict within the community though and that's why I'm thinking maybe two European conferences next year are in order.

Actually what you say makes a lot of sense.

[caveden]

I was at the conference and the truth is that it was very ideology and technology oriented. I'm fairly sure the focus on ideology and technology was because of who the main organizer (genjix) is. Everything there reflected him basically.

Agreed. And I'd risk saying the focus on technology was not deep enough for the geeks among us, and the focus on ideology was maybe too far to the "left" for my taste (no wonder why the vice reporter called it a "socialist thing").

I liked the conference, don't get me wrong,

Same thing here!

I'm personally planning a different kind of conference for next year that would be held in Helsinki, Finland. It would be a sort of joint mobile payments / virtual currencies conference with a business focus, with Bitcoin perhaps representing half of the program. We already have a major partner for the other 50% from the mobile payments scene.

Cool! But please, do it during summer then.

[Technomage]

Cool! But please, do it during summer then.

Indeed. We had a meeting about the conference today and we're already looking for a Venue for May/June. The topic for the conference would be something like "Mobile payments, Virtual currencies and Gaming" or something like that. The 3 focus points would be those anyway. And the virtual currencies portion would be basically all Bitcoin, because it's the only real virtual currency.

There is a lot of planning to do but basically we are making a complete project plan right now and then we start working on the site. We will have a lot of major sponsors for the event and our plan is to get funding from then in advance. We also plan to fund it partially through GLBSE. Then the advance ticket sales will help fund the rest. Plan is to not profit from the conference itself, simply get enough to cover the costs. The big win will happen for all those Bitcoin businesses and Bitcoin in general that gets A LOT of coverage through an event like this.

I will post a separate thread on this and more details once we have them. We're still planning it and I do want to have the plans a little further along before I make big announcements or anything. But it does look like we're actually going forward with it. Our partner in this is a Finnish mobile payment company, we will organize it 50/50. It's possible that we'll have a third organizing partner because the event is going to be kinda big. Lots of sponsors from all the relevant fields are needed as well.

The sponsorship for this kind of an event is not going to be cheap so the sponsor portion will not be similar to the Bitcoin Conference 2012. Sponsorship cost will likely be a four digit number so it's not for small Bitcoin startups. I'm fully expecting some of the bigger Bitcoin companies to join us though because there is huge value in something like this. This is just initial thoughts, we will probably have 2 levels of sponsorship and the lower level could be a three digit number.

[Vladimir]

The conference was much deeper than it might look at the first glance. Yep there were all kinds of ideological talks all the way to rather extreme ones.

However, all those talks were just during daytime and many of us were rather busy clocking face time with all the right people 24/7, talking business, strategic alliances, being a paper-boy (in my case) etc... Even though, I really would like to have a chance to hear every single talk, I had no time for it. Now waiting for video/audio to come online and being edited etc.. to catch up on talk side of the conference.