Tootfinder

A panel on bitcoin treasury companies.
Because investment law makes it hard for institutions to buy bitcoin in their funds. You can't own BTC in you tax free ISA. So some companies that do hold bitcoin, notably microstrategy, became proxy investments. If you can't hold BTC you could maybe own a company that owns BTC instead.
Microstrategy started because it's ceo realized it's dollar treasury was being debased by dollar printing. So tried buying BTC instead, with fantastic success.
Copycat companies proliferated. They boomed and then busted. One panelist calls that a grift. A way to memeticly pump share price.
A line can be drawn between profitable companies just storing their profit in bitcoin Vs those raising debt to buy without having a profitable business.
Imagine a world transiting from using seashells for money to using gold coins. A company gathers seashells from investors to buy gold coins, which will do better than sea shells. Trouble is the next step where the company pays back it's investors with... More seashells.
If you own shares in the company, you do not own bitcoin. You'll just get more old fashioned bank money.
Still. It's worked as marketing, more people being convinced BTC has value.
If you do buy a treasury company, check it's bitcoin not "digital assets" including shitcoins.
#bitfest #bitcoin #bitcoinTreasuryCompanies

The conference is over now. I likely wouldn't have come for just a bitcoin thing, but I am very interested in redecentralizing the web, so it's attachment to the nostr day pulled me in.
Everyone I met was friendly and interesting and seems much more interested in making a better money system than in making money for themselves.
Our government and bank money systems are dysfunctional in all kinds of ways which are often less visible than they should be too people using them, especially to those in Europe and America who benefit from the way those systems exploit the global south.
I'm not convinced that fixing that would end wars and fix broken government as some seem to think, but I am sure our money is the source of many problems.
There are many bright, well meaning, and intelligent people building to improve bitcoin in fascinating ways with the hope of having a parallel system to transition to. With lots of work still to be done.
Can it work?
I'm sure I don't know, and I'm sure even if it's a better system it'll come with it's own unfairness and cruelty. Money will continue to be a source of suck and worry.
I'm told that the bigger conferences are often full of shitcoin scammers and suit wearing banksters who are in fact all in it too get rich and rip people off, but I found none of that here.
Here there is a real community of people trying to make the world a better place and improve the lives of their neighbours and governance of their countries.
And in the end building community is the most radical and effective way to change the world regardless of the problems of it's money system.
I had a great time. Thanks to those organising it.
#bitfest #bitcoin

Kitchen Mishap takes us through some bitcoin visualisations.
Max keiser promoted KM to buy, and he learned from antonopolis book. So he started trying to graph it since software for money is scary if there's bugs you can lose lots of other people's money.
He spirals blocks around the years, rendering views of the whole chain.
#bitfest #bitcoin #dataVis

Finally, Martin from BTC Prague wonders how to empower bitcoiners in the UK.
He's inspired by many UK scientists and artists and creators.
But he thinks it's declining. Socialism and regulation reducing freedom.
His home country had a peaceful velvet revolution, ending communism in the 80s.
And it now has a law that there is no capital gains tax on long term held bitcoin!
The UK, he thinks, needs to build new strong bitcoin based money to have it's own peaceful revolution.
#bitfest #bitcoin #uk

Geyser is a crowdfunding system.
Lots of history of patrons raising funds from the public for art works or public infrastructure.
Kickstarter and the like on the internet made this much easier. But it's all bank money which is conservative and restrictive. Not global. High fees and middle men.
So doing it freely with bitcoin makes some sense. Censorship resistance and global scope.
Geyser has been running and funding projects for a while. Non custodial and money goes to creators only if target reached in time, otherwise returned.
All open source in smart contracts on chain.
#bitfest #bitcoin #crowdfunding

The conference also has a cinema room, showing bitcoin based films. Not mine, but I'm here for "finding home" by avi burra. Who did q&a after.
A short Travelog about a visit a cypherpunk in Prague for BTC Prague. Which was a much bigger bitcoin conference.
Lots of shots of a beautiful European city, and brief interviews with the people there. Many at restaurants where meals are paid for with bitcoin.
I guess they have a circular economy there of some sort.
Conclusion seems to be that fixing the money is important but building community is even more importanter.
#bitfest #film #bitcoin

Day two introduced again by Mad bitcoins .
Then the history of art on bitcoin includes satoshi and his original logo, ASCII art in the Blockchain, Cassius coins with scratch off keys, these pictured images of fake satoshi and 200 logos.
Exploded from there, trading cards, the rare Pepe's.
What makes it bitcoin art?
Symbology. The logo. Religious symbology. Is it a cult?
Memes. Memes catch and go in a fashion which is unpredictable and fits the whole history to a timeline.
Art builds culture and heros proliferate bitcoin culture for all.
Art traditionally goes up in value but none of it seems to outpace bitcoin itself.
Some is for sale in the gallery but it'll unlikely be a better but then 30 percent discount bitcoin today 😆
#bitfest #art #bitcoin