What I learned from attending a Bitcoin (BTC) event in Silicon Beach
After waking up at 4:30 A.M. for another day full of classes, I headed to the gym for another workout, and then rushed over to my lectures which lasted from 8:15 A.M. to 5:45 P.M. During this day of classes, I browsed the Meetup app to search for an event happening later that day. In the past, I used the Eventbrite app to look for events, but over the last year, Eventbrite seems to have been bombarded with spam events. These spam events or webinars are ones that seem to be posted multiple times in an attempt to probably lure people into buying their products. So recently, I have come to the conclusion that it is best to find events on the Meetup app.
This event lasted from 6:30 P.M. to 9:30 P.M. and was located at Phase Two in Culver City, which is a coworking space. The parking was free but a bit confusing, so be cautious if you ever visit. Overall, I thought this coworking space was very well designed and seemed to have a blue-colored tech vibe. Phase Two also has a green room and often hosts events. Upon exploring this coworking space, I stumbled upon a Hologate, which is kind of like a mini arena that has 4 virtual reality headsets for people to play VR games with each other. Another thing I stumbled upon, was the free pizza and beverages that were provided for the event. Shockingly, some tension occurred during the panel when an audience member had some opposing views. The panel and audience member then entered into a heated debate, which was pretty intriguing and entertaining. Then after the panel, someone pitched his crypto idea.
“Shockingly, some tension occurred during the panel when an audience member had some opposing views.”
There were four speakers on this panel. Their names were: Tone Vays, Willy Woo, Austin Davis, and Ramak Sedigh. Tone’s opinion on Bitcoin is that he is big on Bitcoin and sees Bitcoin as financial freedom to disconnect from banks. He also believes the U.S. dollar is not devaluing that much.
Some opinions from the other speakers:
▶️He believes Bitcoin is useful
▶️He believes everyone got in late, but it is still early
▶️One of the hardest decisions is eventually buying Bitcoin then regretting not buying it earlier
▶️Buying forks doesn’t benefit anyone
▶️You’re much better off buying Bitcoin than Bitcoin Cash
“It’s like the late 90’s of the dot-com”
▶️Bitcoin is the best distribution of all coins
▶️The technical idea of Bitcoin still wins
▶️All these Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin, and other coins are fighting with each other
▶️How much stronger would it be if it all crypto was one [only one crypto coin]
▶️People are promoting fake Satoshi, Zcash
▶️People are trying to get merchants to accept their scam coin which is slowing down adoption
▶️He still thinks Bitcoin is impossible to stop, but adoption is taking much longer
▶️He is pretty sure all the Silk Road coins have been sold
▶️They draw from the grid 2 cents at night to mine cryptocurrency since they can’t use solar panels at night and believe that any second you are not mining crypto, you are losing money
▶️For large amounts of money transfers, no one works with anything else than Bitcoin
▶️He thinks centralization is a bad thing and the more people compete the better blockchain will get
▶️He thinks that Ethereum and other smart contracts will be used on the Bitcoin network
▶️ERC-20, tokens that are only designed for the Ethereum network
▶️His bigger concern was miner centralization
▶️With mass adoption, there will be a more natural step-by-step process
“The dark money can do whatever it wants”
▶️The way he pictures Bitcoin is a triangle in which there is mining on one node (computer) then core development, he believes these core parts can still be decentralized
▶️The code for coin development is one of his least concerns
▶️There are Bitcoin ETFs
▶️Plouton is the largest solar mining farm in California and is 90 miles north of LA, a lot of large solar companies are moving up there
▶️He said that the U.S. would love to go fully digital since they think we are all criminals and tax evaders but they can’t because it would crash the world
▶️This audience member does not think forks are bad and that the lightning thing is bad
▶️He said India has more internet users on Facebook than the U.S. since India has 200 million users on there
▶️Some tension began between the speakers and the audience member
▶️8-megabyte block
“He said that he has virgin Bitcoin (BTC)s that have never touched another wallet”
▶️The audience member doesn’t think Bitcoin Cash is bad
▶️Money has stored values and a medium of exchange
“People give Bitcoin a hard time since it is not a medium of exchange”
▶️Fork Bitcoin: some people think it is the real Bitcoin when it isn’t, such as when people think Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin are the same things
“He tells his friends to buy their 4-year-old kids a couple Bitcoin (BTC)s and just let it be”
▶️His friend ended up accidentally buying Bitcoin Cash instead of Bitcoin
▶️A lot of people try to scam with Bitcoin
▶️We are in a much more connected world now so there are a lot more people to scam, like what happened with Bitconnect
▶️He thinks price manipulation is a huge threat
▶️He thinks the U.S. is after Bitcoin and could wipe it out over 2 hours
▶️Price manipulation with cryptocurrency can happen with $50–100 million dollars (although this amount varies with each different crypto coin) since it could triple the price of a more popular coin if that much is bought at once
▶️There are scam coins
“When they talk to hedge funds, their biggest concern is how easy it is to manipulate the price of Bitcoin”
▶️People could do pump and dumps with Bitcoin
▶️When talking to funds they want to make sure they don’t get wiped out with someone who has small amounts
“Even with Apple stock, it is illegal and much harder to manipulate it on the stock exchange than Bitcoin is, since there are regulations around how much people can buy at once”
▶️They worry about price manipulation and Bitcoin going to zero
▶️What if the U.S. tries to buy all the Bitcoin and shut it down
▶️If the U.S. and European government decided to ban Bitcoin that could be a problem
▶️Although, a ban would be subject to lobbying and votes
▶️There is a vulnerability to Bitcoin in years to come, the more the block size is increased the less the security there is
▶️The only concern is the centralization of Bitcoin
▶️He believes the biggest threat is misinformation, Bitcoin forks and Bitcoin Cash probably set back Bitcoin’s adoption by years
“There are people publicly lying like Bitcoin.com, this makes people confused and still slows down adoption of cryptocurrency”
▶️His answer about the biggest threat of Bitcoin back in 2014 is the same now
“There was an issue in which people were only allowed to withdraw 20 Euros a day and it didn’t matter how much money someone had, this is the kind of thing Bitcoin prevents”
▶️Money in the bank is not your money, it’s their money
▶️He had to make two attempts to get his $25,000 back, and they took $1,500 from him because of “fees”
▶️When he asked about the fees they wouldn’t tell him who took it because they didn’t know
▶️This past Monday on a new account of his they froze $3k
“They simply freeze your money with no heads up”
▶️On Harvard Business Review, there is an article about physical cash and why governments want to eliminate it. Since governments can create any monetary policy that they want, they would want to do this so there are no more bank robberies, etc.
▶️Now we have something that cannot be copied which is Bitcoin and it is a big black hole that keeps sucking in more capital, it is basically digital gold
▶️9 employees accounts were frozen which cannot happen with cryptocurrency
“In 2017, he had the #1 store on eBay with some product that had close to half a million in PayPal and they froze it”
▶️Car registration and other things can be solved through blockchain
▶️If Bitcoin doesn’t win, he believes it will be something else since we are going into a digital world and need something digital
▶️The Chinese now have a digital currency, and he thinks within the next 14 or 7 years the U.S. will have its own digital currency too
▶️Both India and the U.S. will have the hardest time eliminating cash
“He thinks all of Europe will go digital before the U.S. does since so many people have U.S. dollars in cash, even outside of the U.S.”
▶️The ratio of digital to physical dollars will continue to expand
▶️He thinks the Euro bill will be gone by the end of the decade
▶️2042 is the year they think the last Bitcoin will be mined
▶️Mass adoption was pushed back 3–4 years because of Bitcoin Cash since most people don’t understand it and are worried
“If we hit 5% of the population using cryptocurrency, there is no turning back, currently 1% of the world population has exposure to Bitcoin”
▶️Over the next 2–8 years Wall Street is going to apply their best people to future markets
“If someone has the right algorithm he or she can accumulate the most coins, and once someone goes over owning 50% of all the Bitcoin (BTC)s in existence, that person would own the whole Bitcoin blockchain”
▶️Bitcoin may no longer be secure in the future
▶️If you go back in history, you realize all wars were created by kings or people, today we have military equipment but the wars are fought on economic terms
▶️In 1996, they forced you to trade your gold in for gold certificates
“More than 2,000 cryptocurrency coins have been made since Bitcoin”
“Bitcoin exists on the internet and is decentralized, so he believes it will lead to a more peaceful future”
▶️The U.S. dollar is 98% digital
▶️All three facets of Bitcoin: store of value (store of value since only 21 million bitcoin), censorship resistance (since don’t need permission to send), unconfiscatable (can’t take away)
▶️Bitcoin is almost scalable, almost incredibly cheap
▶️A fork is a software upgrade, two types: one is not backwards compatible and the other is
▶️If you want to upgrade the software and it is not backwards compatible, it splits like an egg, into 2 eggs, then you need to figure out which one you are paying into (which is a fork)
▶️For Bitcoin, the software updates have always been backwards compatible
▶️They were saying that the miners control the hash
▶️The bigger the block is, the longer it takes for that miner to validate the block
▶️You can’t get above 100-megabyte blocks before the speed of light comes into it
▶️When you look at other blockchains with 2 developers, that blockchain is not decentralized
▶️Centralized core development is not enough to centralize the entire thing
▶️In Bitcoin, all of the three points are still centralized, a bigger block makes it harder for a node (computer)
“There are over 20,000 posts an hour on Bitcoin”
“When you go to countries in which they don’t have a banking system, all they know is Bitcoin”
▶️Australia really uses Bitcoin there, there are lots of stores in Australia that accept bitcoin, it has lightning accepting crypto
▶️His friend told the bartender in Australia that he wanted to pay in Bitcoin, but his friend was paying in Bitcoin Cash. Then his friend tried to pay in Bitcoin Cash to a Bitcoin QR and it didn’t arrive. So the Bitcoin Cash was gone. Basically, his friend paid twice for a drink. This is bad because some people could get mad about this type of situation and not want to accept crypto. The bartender pulled out the Bitcoin Cash QR code the second time and it worked.
“In India, they believe that up to 45% of tax revenue is not being collected”
▶️A large part of India is still living without technology in third world conditions
▶️He thinks India was motivated to go digital to get the tax money
▶️In 2015, a lot of people had to take their cash from their mattresses since India went digital and eliminated cash
▶️India claimed they would give a 2,000 rupee note but a lot of banks did not have them
Overall, the speakers at this event were actually really great and knew a lot! It was definitely better than I expected! A man also pitched about his company called LunarCRUSH. People then mingled after and enjoyed some more pizza.
1️⃣ I did not realize how much cryptocurrency is used in Australia
2️⃣ There is a lot of misinformation about cryptocurrency, so make sure to triple check your facts
3️⃣ Most people in America do not realize why people use cryptocurrency since the banking system is pretty good in the U.S.
4️⃣ A lot of people get confused with cryptocurrency which has slowed down its adoption
5️⃣ There are a lot of scams with Bitcoin since a lot of people don’t understand it, so it makes it easy for someone to scam with it
6️⃣ When they talk to hedge funds, their biggest concern is how easy it is to manipulate the price of Bitcoin
7️⃣ If we hit 5% of the population using cryptocurrency, there is no turning back, currently, 1% of the world population has exposure to Bitcoin
8️⃣ When you go to countries in which they don’t have a banking system, all they know is Bitcoin
9️⃣ In India they believe that up to 45% of tax revenue is not being collected
🔟 Australia really uses Bitcoin there, there are lots of stores in Australia that accept bitcoin, it has lightning accepting crypto
1️⃣1️⃣ Cryptocurrency leads to more freedom 🌟
▶️There is a lot of misinformation about cryptocurrency, so always check your facts
▶️Be an early adopter of new technologies even though it may seem scary and confusing at first
▶️Always be cautious of someone trying to scam you with a new technology you don’t understand
▶️Always think about how other countries may be using new technologies and not just your own country
▶️Always think about all the different possibilities a new technology could be used for
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Published at Sat, 08 Feb 2020 00:31:03 +0000
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