Cryptolina took place this past week, and the Bitcoin Conference proved that the Research Triangle in North Carolina has quite a bit of adoption and drive in the Bitcoin space.
The event was quite the success with a strong community feel and southern hospitality from organizers Dan Spuller and Faruk Okcetin that is unmatched in the conference industry. In contrast to the hidden fees, inconvenient rules, and bare amenities that large conference organizers impose, Dan and Faruk were a pleasure to work with and accommodated our busy travel schedule and limited budget by offering to receive our conference booth materials and driving it to the showroom themselves!
Airbitz represented in full force with our CFO Scott Morgan and I hosting a booth and giving non-stop demos of our upcoming mobile wallet on iOS and Android. Feedback was tremendously positive! We wanted to share some of the great kudos we received:
Jonathan Danforth @jdanforth Aug 16
“Wow! Massively impressed with upcoming @Airbitz #bitcoin app! #Cryptolina”
Jad Mubaslat @champbronc2 Aug 16
“Look out for @Airbitz new wallet soon! Best. Wallet. Ever. #bitcoin”
If you’d like a sneak peak at our wallet on iOS, you can register for our beta program HERE. Android users, we haven’t forgot about you. Your beta launch is just a few short weeks behind. Stay tuned.
Holding down the fort at our booth kept us away from most of the other vendors, but we did get a chance to speak with Sam Patterson from Open Bazaar (@OpenBazaar), the decentralized market based off Dark Market, a project we collaborated on for the 2014 Toronto Hackathon. We were pleased to hear of an eminent beta launch in a couple months. We were also happy to hear that they’ve kept the Libbitcoin Bitcoin architecture put in place by the original Dark Market developers, Amir Taaki and our very own Damian Cutillo & William Swanson. This means further adoption of an alternate bitcoin implementation in the network. This also means more Libbitcoin (Obelisk) server nodes on the network which gives better redundancy for projects like Airbitz, Dark Wallet, and an upcoming wallet project by Eric Voskuil. Gavin Andresen, Chief Scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation, professed that the Bitcoin network needs more alternate implementations. Airbitz pours tremendous hours into the open source Libbitcoin project and we’re convinced it’s currently the best implementation available right now.
We also caught up with Jason King from Sean’s Outpost. He gave us the scoop on his upcoming “un-conference” Coins in the Kingdom. With a focus on family, kids, and fun, the event will be at Disney World in Florida on Oct 4–6. Finally a great opportunity to bring the family and friends who are sick of hearing you talk about bitcoin. You get your fill of bitcoin celebs like Jeffrey Tucker and they get to pound cotton candy.
Friday night, I got to sync up with Emily Vaughn from Bitpay and get the scoop on the Bitcoin Bowl in December. This is looking to be the biggest Bitcoin event the public has ever seen. With bitcoin rigged arcade machines, every stadium merchant accepting bitcoin, free bitcoin giveaways and wallet setup, bitcoin company logos on the turf, and over 300 merchants accepting bitcoin in the St Petersburg area, Bitpay is going to drop a Satoshi meteor in the middle of Florida. I’m sooo looking forward to this!
I woke up Saturday morning and prepared for my talk on “Bitcoin Wallet Security, Privacy, and Ease of Use”. On stage, the first three words came out of my mouth sounding like a cheap hooker… Thanks Eric Martingale and the rest of Bitpay for a great dinner and a late Friday night. 🙂 I cleared my throat and charged on about the delicate balance of security, privacy, and ease of use. Beauty, brains, or personality in women — they say you can only pick two. At Airbitz, we believe we’ve balanced the trifecta for a hot wallet.
Saturday ended with an amazing keynote from Edmund Moy (@EdmundCMoy), former Director of the US Mint. This was the longest speech to ever have me riveted in my seat. I held my bladder as Ed retold the tale of the inner turmoil faced by the US Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Paulson, during the 2008 financial crisis. “We heard him outside the boardroom puking,” was the verbal image branded in my head from the speech. That moment in 2008 had cemented in Edmund’s head that the ‘house of cards’ that is our global financial system needed a better foundation than the sloppy banks that poorly anchor the global reserve currency. A decades long, loyal, US government official, Edmund Moy pronounced in front of hundreds at this conference that Bitcoin is a necessary economic tool to save the world from financial disaster. He was on our side and wanted to help in anyway possible.
Indeed it was a great few days, and we look forward to sharing and learning from this amazing community.
Paul Puey
CEO / Co-Founder of Airbitz