Events

The Bolt-A-Thon Sequel to Spark Lightning Innovation

18/11/2019 by Idelto Editor

From December 6 to 8, 2019, the second edition of the Bolt-A-Thon will take place in the natural habitat of Bitcoin and the Lightning Network — the internet. The Lightning-centered hackathon and conference is a follow-up to the inaugural event in April 2019, where many creative ideas were presented and many Lightning-focused projects made tangible progress — for instance, after the multi-platform payments service Bottle Pay won the Bolt-A-Thon, it went on to raise $2 million to boost development.

Speakers at the event, who will be making their presentations via livestream, include Lightning Labs Infrastructure Lead Alex Bosworth, Blockstream researchers Christian Decker and Rusty Russel and c-lightning developer Lisa Neigut.

A Decentralized, Inclusive Conference Fit for the Technology

For a participation fee of only 100,000 satoshis (about $8.30), Lightning enthusiasts from all around the world can purchase single-session tickets to watch these presentations via Zoom. The event has eight sessions (one for each speaker), so the total cost of watching all presentations will amount to 800,000 satoshis. The event’s ticket page allows attendees to choose sessions individually.

In the true spirit of the Lightning Network, signup only requires payment to generate a participation code used to join the livestreams, with the option to submit an email address as well. There is no mandatory KYC process, no requirement to use a real name and no way to discriminate among potential participants. The price is low enough to encourage enthusiasts from all around the world to learn more and engage with the Lightning community.

“Our goal here is to offer an alternative to physical conferences,” Bolt-A-Thon co-founder Andrew Yang told Bitcoin Magazine. “I’ve witnessed situations where tickets were very expensive, and I also had to take into account housing and travel costs — these were usually more expensive than the ticket. The Bolt-A-Thon allows people from all over the world to participate either by creating a Lightning project or attending sessions.”

Building Innovation at Bolt-A-Thon

Participants in the hackathon will need to pay just 100 satoshis (about $0.0083) and also prove that they’re running a Lightning node. In the final day of the event, they will have to make five-minute presentations about their projects and vote for the participants whose work they consider to be innovative and game changing. Criteria for excellence include theme adherence (must use the Lightning Network for payments), applicability as a real-world use case (the practical dimension) and “wow” factor (an aspect that may woo mainstream audiences and spread adoption).

The winning efforts will be awarded with prizes that amount to 0.45 BTC: 0.2 BTC for first place, 0.15 BTC for second place and 0.1 BTC for third place. Furthermore, the hackathon could serve as a platform for interesting projects to secure external funding from investors and companies interested in innovation — as Bottle Pay did.

The decentralized and merit-based nature of the event means that an innovation from anywhere in the world could receive a spotlight.

“During the first conference, we had attendees from Brazil, South Africa, Thailand, Spain, Argentina, Nigeria and the U.S.,” Yang said. “Bitcoin events, presentations and hackathon opportunities shouldn’t just be for the first-world countries. Bitcoin is for the whole world and that’s why we think making it virtual enables us to reach and foster the global development of Bitcoin and Lightning.”

The post The Bolt-A-Thon Sequel to Spark Lightning Innovation appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

Cutting Edge Ideas Converge at Money20/20

05/11/2019 by Idelto Editor

This is a sponsored article on behalf of Money20/20.

What’s the next milestone for fintech? How will the latest wave of financial products and services alter the worldwide money landscape? When will cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology achieve mass acceptance in the payments industry?

These were among the many questions explored at Money20/20, a global conference on the future of money held from October 27 to 30, 2019, in Las Vegas. Featuring prominent thinkers and experts in payments, banking, fintech and financial services, this conference provided ample opportunities for engagement and discussion between attendees.

Among the topics that received major attention at the conference were cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. A series of well-attended workshops targeting this space was facilitated by Elizabeth Rossiello, CEO and founder of BitPesa and co-chairperson of the World Economic Forum’s Global Fourth Industrial Council on Blockchain.

But arguably the biggest attention-getter at this year’s conference was the news surrounding Facebook’s leap into the global digital currency world via Libra. Discussions were ripe throughout the event in terms of the viability and purpose of this solution.

As part of the second day lineup of keynote speakers, David Marcus, co-creator and head of Libra, discussed the complicated scenario his team is facing in getting this much-ballyhooed initiative off the ground.

“We’ve been asked and criticized for not having banks at the table from the get-go,” Marcus said. “I just want to clarify that this was not our decision; we did have conversations with banks. I’d say that a lot of them are really interested in joining, but given the very regulated nature of their businesses they want to have more regulatory clarity before joining.”

Marcus went on to say that Libra is hard at work in addressing the regulatory, licensing and oversight realities inherent in garnering approval for launch. He noted that once this occurs, bank involvement in Libra is almost certainly guaranteed.

Nevertheless, questions remain as to how the fintech space will evolve over time. Future innovation will require deft navigation on the part of business leaders, policymakers and investors in this space — and a willingness to solicit input from end-user consumers. It is at this very inflection point where Money20/20 can serve as a catalyst for change, spurring us to venture beyond current offerings and to embrace the global future of money.

Regarding next year’s Money20/20 conference, which falls in the year 2020, conference president Tracey Davies noted high enthusiasm.

“So, to be absolutely clear, Money20/20 sets out to bring everyone together to debate, shape, to reinvent the future of money,” she said. “We have always been about vision, a vision of the future — the 20/20 vision. You’ll be pleased to know, I hope, that we are going nowhere in 20/20. We’ll be here (Las Vegas), back here on this stage.”

The post Cutting Edge Ideas Converge at Money20/20 appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

At Bitcoin 2019, Scientists Cited in White Paper Weigh In on the Future

04/07/2019 by Idelto Editor

While crypto fanatics have been buzzing with news about bitcoin price surges and Facebook’s introduction of its digital currency libra, the Bitcoin 2019 conference brought together some of the most significant people in the BTC community for a two-day event to discuss the current and future state of Bitcoin.

Among the conference speakers were Scott Stornetta, chief scientist at Yugen Partners, and Blockstream CEO Adam Back, the creator of Hashcash.

These two crypto scientists are particularly notable because they were directly cited by Satoshi Nakamoto in the Bitcoin white paper. At Bitcoin 2019, they came together for a discussion with Bitcoin YouTuber Naomi Brockwell about their contributions to the creation of Bitcoin and where they foresee the original cryptocurrency going in the years to come.

Naomi Brockwell, Scott Stornetta and Adam Back at Bitcoin 2019

Stornetta’s Contributions to the Development of Blockchain

Stornetta co-authored three papers cited in Bitcoin’s white paper and was one of the first people working on creating a system that did not require people to trust a central authority. In the early days of Bitcoin, Stornetta realized there was a problem with recording transactions, so he suggested the creation of immutable records in order to track all bitcoin transactions.

“We’re going to not be able to know the difference between an old bit and a new bit, and all of the world’s records are going to be in bits, and that’s going to create a crisis of credibility,” as Stornetta described the problem during his conference panel.

According to Stornetta, he and Stuart Haber, who is also credited with the creation of blockchain technology, were struggling to solve the problem, so they decided to create a publication that would prove it is impossible to build an immutable record without a central authority. In writing it, Stornetta said they were able to figure out how they could build an immutable record with the use of a blockchain.

Back’s “Proof-of-Work” Concept

In 1997, Adam Back introduced Hashcash, a “proof-of-work” system that would help users of the internet detect and avoid spam email. Hashcash worked to ensure users were only accepting emails from others who provided proof that an effort was made to send the email.

The “proof-of-work” concept was carried over into the world of Bitcoin to enable competitive mining of blocks. By using a trial-and-error method to mine bitcoin, miners that are able to verify proof of their work and successfully mine a block are rewarded with bitcoin as payment.

“Satoshi made use of the hashcash idea to create the mining,” Stornetta said. “It’s easy to see in hindsight huge incentives were needed to kickstart (bitcoin).”

The Future of Bitcoin

For Stornetta, the future of Bitcoin is broad and diverse. Stornetta told the audience at the conference that he is a “fundamental believer” in crypto technologies and their ability to level the playing field.

“I am not a crypto anarchist, but I certainly am a crypto libertarian, and I think we are going to get the world that we want and that we deserve, we just need to find a path that leads from A to B,” Stornetta said.

Stornetta said he believes distributed ledger technologies will continue to advance and diversify in the future, and that he sees a potential for other currencies besides bitcoin to flourish.

“It doesn’t all just have to be about money, of course,” Stornetta said to the crowd. “I’m a big fan of the distributed ledger and how that can create quantization and tokenization of assets … I just think we’re gonna see such a broadening and diversification of this.”

“A New Paradigm”

Back also touched on the quick development of cryptocurrency technologies and the challenges of keeping up with the pace of new ideas and implementations of them, even for technical people. Back discussed how there are still areas of innovation that have yet to be realized. He further noted that blockchain and bearer electronic cash are new building blocks that have implications with smart contracts.

“Basically, it’s like picking up a new programming language with a new paradigm, and it takes a lot of people to natively understand it and reach the conclusion of what kind of conclusions you can build with it,” Back said.

Back mentioned the development of the Lightning Network and state chains to further his point about how advancements within crypto technology are being made at a rapid rate. He also discussed his reasoning for why multiple cryptocurrencies may not be a necessity in the long run.

“In terms of coins, I tend to view it as sort of like TCP/IP — that there’s one interoperable standard,” Back said. “Any kind of innovation can be adopted in layers or, ultimately, people can import Bitcoin’s UTXO set to another data structure if a new data structure is found.”

Bitcoin 2019: Fireside Chat with Adam Stornetta and Adam Back

Disclaimer: Bitcoin 2019 was produced by BTC Inc, the parent company of Bitcoin Magazine.

The post At Bitcoin 2019, Scientists Cited in White Paper Weigh In on the Future appeared first on Bitcoin Magazine.

How to Find a Bitcoin Cash Meetup Near You

24/06/2019 by Idelto Editor

Cryptocurrency community meetups are a great way to learn about merchant adoption in your local area, talk to like-minded people and just have some fun. Here’s how you can easily find a Bitcoin Cash (BCH) meetup near you.

Also Read: Chess.com Lets You Pay for Membership With Bitcoin Cash

Local Bitcoin Cash Meetups Available All Over the World

On Bitcoin.com’s Events section you’ll find many local bitcoin cash (BCH) meetups available all over the world. You can use the map tool to zoom in on your area to see what meetups are available nearby or just search the directory listing them by continents, countries, cities and so on. Groups are listed in Australia, Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas, from Tokyo to Kenya and Silicon Valley.

How to Find a Bitcoin Cash Meetup Near You — Global BCH meetups map

If you can’t find an event or a group already established in your specific area, you can create a new bitcoin cash meetup yourself. If required, on the Events page you have the option to contact the Bitcoin.com team for support in setting up your new group and getting more people to join meetings based on their experience.

An additional way to find bitcoin cash meetups or to see how successful ones are organized is to follow @BCHMeetups on Twitter. This profile routinely publishes posts on BCH gatherings happening in many different countries, information on where people can find meetups in their area, as well as pictures and stories from events that have already taken place.

Alternatively, if all you want is to do is find someone nearby to exchange cryptocurrency for fiat with, try using Local.Bitcoin.com. The recently launched global marketplace for peer to peer bitcoin cash trading is focused on privacy and anonymity.

Have you ever taken part in a cryptocurrency meetup? Share your experience in the comments section below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Verify and track bitcoin cash transactions on our BCH Block Explorer, the best of its kind anywhere in the world. Also, keep up with your holdings, BCH and other coins, on our market charts at Bitcoin.com Markets, another original and free service from Bitcoin.com.

The post How to Find a Bitcoin Cash Meetup Near You appeared first on Bitcoin News.

North Queensland’s Bitcoin Cash City Is Hosting a BCH-Focused Conference

22/06/2019 by Idelto Editor

North Queensland's Bitcoin Cash City Is Hosting a Two Day BCH-Centric Event

A BCH-centric two day event is coming to North Queensland Australia, dubbed the Bitcoin Cash City conference, on Sep. 4-5, 2019. The massive Australian state has a densely populated region of around 78 BCH accepting merchants and a large number of bitcoin cash supporters residing in the area. The Bitcoin Cash City event will host a wide array of BCH developers, luminaries, and business executives in order to support the idea of providing peer-to-peer electronic cash for the masses worldwide.

Also read: Hayden Otto Discusses the Rise of North Queensland’s Bitcoin Cash Movement

North Queensland’s Bitcoin Cash City Two-Day Event

BCH has had a profound impact on certain regions globally and the northern part of the Australian state of Queensland has been one of those areas. North Queensland (NQ) is home to a large swathe of BCH supporters and roughly 78 brick-and-mortar retailers that accept BCH for goods and services. Over the last few years adoption has really picked up in the area and news.Bitcoin.com recently spoke with NQ resident Hayden Otto about the bitcoin cash phenomenon taking place within the state.

Now BCH proponents from NQ are hosting a two-day event to promote BCH and adoption on a global scale. The Bitcoin Cash City conference will be held on Sep. 4-5, 2019 in North Queensland and will have a slew of well known BCH entrepreneurs and engineers scheduled to speak at the event.

Bitcoin Cash City speakers will include Bitcoin ABC software developer Amaury Séchet, Bitcoin.com’s director of developer services Gabriel Cardona, OB1 developer and Bchd maintainer Chris Pacia, Cointext CEO Vin Armani, Coinbase senior software engineer Josh Ellithorpe, Code Valley CEO Noel Lovisa, and the Lexcode Legal director Tony Hockings. The conference will be hosted at the Quayside Terminal in South Townsville. The urban center in North Queensland called Townsville is home to many of the BCH accepting merchants in the region. Conference participants will find merchants in NQ by using the application Marco Coino, which hosts geographical coordinates of each retailer in the Australian state.

North Queensland's Bitcoin Cash City Is Hosting a BCH-Focused Conference — **North Queensland is home to a large number of BCH supporters and merchants who accept bitcoin cash for goods and services.**

The conference organizers believe that it’s a good time to host a BCH-centric event after all the events that took place last year. “The time for global permissionless money is now,” the organizers remarked. “Come build the foundations with us at Bitcoin Cash City.” The conference website shows it will focus on driving real-world use cases and adoption to every section of the planet. In contrast to the crypto conferences that rely heavily on shilling vaporware blockchain projects and worst of all don’t even accept cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin Cash City will seek to cement the notion that BCH is the best form of money around. The plethora of BCH accepting retailers in NQ help cushion this reality and participants will discuss how other regions across the globe can emulate NQ’s growing Bitcoin Cash City.

Enjoy the Conference, Scenery and Spend Bitcoin Cash

Bitcoin Cash City organizer and Coinspice.io Chief Media Correspondent, Hayden Otto told our newsdesk he’s thrilled to host a BCH centric event in NQ. “Poised to be the largest crypto conference in Australia’s history, and one of the largest on the Bitcoin Cash circuit, Bitcoin Cash City is the only major crypto event with a heavy focus on growing adoption and increasing economic activity on our blockchain with real business use cases,” Otto explained. The organizer continued:

The city is home to the planet’s largest concentration of true Bitcoin Cash merchants, who take bitcoin cash directly in a wallet where the business owner controls private keys. We are encouraging people to come here to both enjoy the conference and spend bitcoin cash. You can live off bitcoin cash here for as long as you’d like, without having to touch fiat currency.

Otto detailed that the event is a community funded initiative in Australia and not a for-profit event. Tickets are on sale now and there are three types of Bitcoin Cash City event tickets available for between $299-699. Tickets must be paid for in bitcoin cash and each specific package explains what is included. Bitcoin Cash City will have exhibitions, a developer workshop, talks, and some after parties as well. VIP ticket holders will also be able to enjoy a 30-minute helicopter tour during the event. The North Queensland event will be fueled by individuals who actually use cryptocurrency and the Bitcoin Cash City conference aims to unite these BCH fans in order to help push adoption to the next level.

What do you think about the Bitcoin Cash City conference in NQ coming this September? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.

Image credits: Shutterstock, Bitcoin Cash City conference, Pixabay, and Marco Coino.

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The post North Queensland’s Bitcoin Cash City Is Hosting a BCH-Focused Conference appeared first on Bitcoin News.