This week I got back from LibertyCon in DC, and pretty much went straight into Bitcoin Oasis here in Dubai. While there have been Bitcoin events in Dubai before, I’d say this was the first bitcoin-only event, at least of this era.
It was a great chance to catch up with friends, and I was also involved as an MC and speaker at the event.
The second day of the event was actually on a yacht, which was something different!
It was cool to see that a flag is being planted here in Dubai, in the UAE and the Middle East. There are more businesses entering the space either as exchanges, brokers, and miners. Most of the feedback on the conference itself was pretty positive, and I think the scene here will continue to grow.
For this episode I caught up with Mike Peterson from Bitcoin Beach (El Zonte, El Salvador). This conversation took place before Bukele was re-elected, but I believe still holds up very well anyway. A few highlights for me:
El Salvador has rapidly improved since 2021 and the Bitcoin Law. Crime rates are now among the safest in the western hemisphere, there is an attitude of optimism and building and growth. Tourism is up, and development is up. There are still some difficulties and areas for improvement, such as getting access to fiat banking.
The Bitcoin scene is growing and there is now a new ‘circular economy’ in Berlin, El Salvador, to add to what already exists in El Zonte, and the bitcoin scene in El Salvador.
I personally believe the $1M citizenship program being offered by El Salvador is on the high price side, but Mike does present a case for why it is still attractive to some HODLers.
Mike’s perspective on custodial spending wallets is also a pragmatic one given the fee spikes we’ve been seeing recently.
In this podcast I pulled together some smaller conversations with speakers at Bitcoin Oasis. Some of the themes that came out:
Bitcoin Spam conversations - As many of you will know, Luke Dashjr and Giacomo represented the stronger anti-spam views, while Rizzo from Bitcoin Magazine had a different take and we clashed a bit more in our discussion. My personal view is to call it spam, but that attempts to filter it will likely not work, and it’ll probably be a stalemate. But lots of commenters online found it useful to hear different views on the same question.
Stratum v2 - Both Alejandro and Luke are creating and running mining pools that will support Stratum v2, which is good for bitcoin and mining decentralisation. And importantly, both pools will be allowing choice to individual miners in what they want to mine and include in their block template.
Nation state adoption - Prince Philip explained about the efforts to push bitcoin adoption from a top down perspective, in addition to a bottom up perspective. This includes nations like Suriname, Montenegro and others. Helping them understand the difference between Bitcoin and cRyPtO as an example, or perhaps having some nations onboard via Bitcoin mining.
Also let me know if you like this style of episode, and I will probably do some more mini interviews like this when I’m at Bitcoin conferences.
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BitBlockBoom April 11th-14th 2024 in Dallas, Texas - code LIVERA
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See you in the citadels!
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