{"id":4148,"date":"2023-06-27T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-27T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci02c2640730002707"},"modified":"2023-06-27T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T12:00:00","slug":"bitcoin-conference-summary-from-btc-prague","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/culture\/bitcoin-conference-summary-from-btc-prague","title":{"rendered":"Things Are Brewing In Prague"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is an opinion editorial by Joakim Book, a research fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research and contributor to HumanProgress.org and the Mises Institute.<\/em><\/p>\n

The first thing that met attendees when entering the venue at BTC Prague\u2019s inaugural conference was the smell: a strong, new-rubber-type of scent that permeated most of the main stage area. The second was the light \u2014 or the absence thereof: it was dark, with massive screens at regular intervals and neon lights shining elegantly across the ceiling. <\/p>\n

What likely remains etched into participants\u2019 memories is the dim, purple haze and those comfy, white VIP sofas in the front (paying up for VIP tickets has its perks!). A large BTC logo and slowly bobbing lamps hanging above the panelists on the main stage brought a spooky, somewhat nauseous feel \u2014 like the whole stage was slowly twirling. As if I weren\u2019t already lightheaded from my travels, endless conversations and lack of sleep that I wholeheartedly blame on the many pre-, side- and after-events going on in Prague\u2019s thriving nightlife.<\/p>\n

As I took it all in, I pulled out my notepad and scribbled, \u201cThe techno raves of my teenage years called and want their ambience back.\u201d <\/p>\n

For the first few sessions of all three days, it was empty in the main hall. Eerie, even. Where is everybody?<\/em><\/p>\n

Meandering Paths<\/h2>\n

The expo hall<\/a> seemed to be where most of the cool kids hung out; the rest perhaps basking in the morning sun along the river in downtown Prague. <\/p>\n

Littered with hundreds of Bitcoin companies and thousands of participants, the expo hall was dominated by a two-story centerpiece booth occupied by SatoshiLabs. It reached out, symbolically, into the four corners of the space with each section dedicated to its four business brands, one of which, Vexl Foundation\u2019s KYC-free, peer-to-peer bitcoin app<\/a>, launched during the conference. Around it, lining the edges of the football-field-sized hall were miners, hardware wallet makers, a dozen or so different backup-on-steel products, book publishers and plenty of merch and consumables. There were so many booths hidden behind something else, in fact, that after several walkthroughs I still<\/em> found new companies or conference booths I hadn\u2019t noticed before. I live and breathe the Bitcoin space and yet I didn\u2019t know half of these companies or their products: Bitcoiners truly are prolific, new products and companies popping up like mushrooms after the rain (to anglicize a Czech saying<\/a>). <\/p>\n

The official language of the conference, by the way, was broken English of that comical and vaguely European kind; it was a nice change from the avalanche of Americanesque that otherwise dominates the Bitcoin space<\/a> and Bitcoin conferences. <\/p>\n

What was not different about this event was that the audience mostly consisted of pretty fit dudes in the primes of their lives. Some brought their wives and kids, too, giving the venue a somewhat family-friendly vibe. It\u2019s palatable that self-responsibility in money also translates into self-responsibility in other domains. In the age of Jordan Peterson<\/a>, Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro, it\u2019s not too surprising that this message resonates most powerfully with young(-ish) men. <\/p>\n

Somewhere between the venue and the stop at the end of the red metro line went a clear transition from the fiat world to the Bitcoin world. As I traveled toward the conference each day, I started seeing colorful wristbands, Bitcoin-themed clothing and the kind of fit, confident and extravagant clientele that outs us as Bitcoiners. Upon entering the venue, I switched out my Google Pay for a Lightning wallet app since absolutely everyone accepted Lightning. Once in a while, a merchant politely asked if I wished to pay with card or Lightning, but most of the time, they just presented me with an invoice. Exchange of monetary energy can be precisely this simple; never does the difference between the Bitcoin world and the outside world feel more pronounced. <\/p>\n

The coffee barista at the grand El Salvador booth diligently made the conference\u2019s best coffee, all day, every day \u2014 for anyone with the patience to stand around and watch him carefully brew it, anyway. Then again, if you wanted to buy <\/em>coffee from one of the food trucks outside, have fun staying in line for 20 minutes. But the food was great, as were the benches and beanbags for socializing and soaking in the Prague summer heat \u2014 until the humid summer cascades shoved the thousands of participants inside, crowding everything into festival-like proportions. <\/p>\n

Among the many impromptu meetings and reunions, scheduled or happenstance, some stood out: the selfie with an idol, thanking a podcaster or author for their valuable work, connecting in real life with personas or nyms that before were nothing but words, voices or profile pics. <\/p>\n

In the middle of the expo hall, I suddenly felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see a tall, slick, dark-haired man about my age. The face was familiar \u2014 very<\/em> familiar \u2014 but from another time, another place. \u201cDo you remember me?\u201d<\/em> My brain worked like an overclocked ASIC to find the solution to this cryptographic puzzle; in the five-second block time expected for this sort of interaction, I couldn\u2019t quite do it. He reminded me that we studied economics together at university in what felt like a lifetime ago; we were on the same study abroad program to the same city but hadn\u2019t kept in touch since. He returned there for a few years after we graduated but was now back in his native Prague. He told me that he finds the money broken, the runaway prices absurd. He\u2019s a new arrival to Bitcoin, having won his ticket to the conference at his first Bitcoin event just a few months back. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m learning so much,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Two meandering paths, united by Bitcoin: Everyone comes here eventually, in their own way, at their own time. It\u2019s a beautiful thing. <\/p>\n

The Rockstar Moment<\/h2>\n

For the oversized main stage to be filled up, we would have to wait for Michael Saylor\u2019s two appearances. Saylor, who\u2019s rapidly approaching rockstar status in the Bitcoin world, gave an absolutely mesmerizing keynote speech<\/a> on the third day, but the hall had also been clogged up for a fireside chat he had with Eric Weiss<\/a> the day before. The overflowing room that had echoed somewhat empty for many previous sessions was now so littered with spectators that the air conditioners running at max capacity couldn\u2019t keep up. As his characteristic \u201cBitc-oing<\/em>\u201d echoed across the hall, Saylor\u2019s talk literally took our breath away. <\/p>\n

Bitcoin is an ethically good thing, it\u2019s a moral imperative, he pointed out. Bitcoin and Bitcoiners carry a superior ideology that we \u201cdon\u2019t have to apologize for.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tour de force that was the keynote lecture dealt with the U.S. dollar\u2019s collapse against hard assets. That\u2019s not a revolutionary notion in these circles, but the way Saylor packaged the message might be: By holding cash, you\u2019re \u201con the wrong side of an economic war.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThere\u2019s an endless economic war raging worldwide and it\u2019s been raging since the beginning of time and it\u2019s going on right now. That war is over the redistribution of economic energy, and we call that wealth<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cNo amount of hard work is going to solve the problem of being on the wrong side of that economic war.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Technology is an order of magnitude more important than hard work; it doesn\u2019t matter how hard you dig or how good you are with a shovel when the next guy shows up with an excavator. What Saylor added is that government policy<\/em> is an order of magnitude more important than technology. On a decadal or centennial timeframe, the gains from technology \u2014 always in competition with the next thing that makes it obsolete \u2014 are siphoned away, drowning under the never-ending money expansion at the root of society\u2019s many troubles. <\/p>\n

The energy in the room was as fever-pitched as during the \u201cSatoshi Rockamoto\u201d concert the night before. The uncomfortable realization began to shine through: \u201cMaybe your work doesn\u2019t matter as much as government policy.\u201d I can\u2019t outwork the pernicious effects of a crumbling money inflating away my economic contributions. <\/p>\n

The conclusion, blatantly obvious to most participants, is that you need to exit \u2014 physically as well as monetarily. Erik Dale<\/a>, the Norwegian influencer and podcast host of \u201cBitcoin For Breakfast<\/a>,\u201d told us as much in his opening lecture<\/a> the day before: The week of the conference, \u201cmight have been the first time we have seen net immigration of Bitcoiners to<\/em> Europe,\u201d he said. Usually, we Europeans just take our \u201cFU money\u201d and exit our crumbling museum of bureaucrats and overburdened, public Ponzi schemes. <\/p>\n

But perhaps we overlooked the Bitcoin hub that is Prague \u2014 home to SatoshiLabs<\/a>, to Braiins<\/a>, to a company behind Bitcoin ATMs<\/a>. Martin Kucha\u0159, the co-founder of the conference<\/a>, kept praising the Czech Bitcoin scene every chance he got: \u201cI see BTC Prague as another Czech project that confirms the importance of the Czech Republic for Bitcoin,\u201d he said in a pre-conference interview<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Things are indeed brewing in Prague. Perhaps not all is lost for Europe.<\/p>\n

This is a guest post by Joakim Book. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At BTC Prague, techno ambiance permeated, meandering paths collided and a rockstar moment stole the show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2620,"featured_media":3137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[452,304,185,59,1456],"class_list":{"0":"post-4148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture","8":"tag-conference","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-michael-saylor","11":"tag-opinion","12":"tag-prague"},"author_data":{"id":2620,"name":"Joakim Book","nicename":"joakim-book","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Joakim_Book_Author_Image.jpg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/aa-btc-4.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2620"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}