Surfin'Bitcoin, the rising conference

A look back at the Surfin’Bitcoin 2022 conference in Biarritz. There’s something for everyone with four major themes : Geopolitics and economy, Mining and energy, Finance and regulation, Technology and tools. Here is a summary to direct you to the best replays to come on the youtube channel of the event.

Geopolitics and economics

This theme has been very successful. In particular, we recommend that you visit the Surfin-Bitcoin youtube channel to enjoy Alexandre Stachchenko’s conference which sees Bitcoin becoming the next international reserve currency par excellence. Title : “Bitcoin, a major new geopolitical and economic issue”.

A more topical question than ever given the freezing of 300 billion dollars and 300 billion euros of Russian foreign exchange reserves. Not to mention the fact that China and Saudi Arabia want to trade in yuan rather than dollars, among other key countries from a geopolitical point of view (Iran, Egypt, Turkey, etc.).

The debate between Keynesians and Austrians also mobilized crowds. Title of the conference: “The two opposing economic visions – Austrian School VS Keynesianism”. Those who are fond of economic theory will find their account with the very popular Yorick de Monbynes in the oven and in the mill throughout the conference:

If you think that inflation is explained rather by the availability of energy and raw materials, go instead to see the debate entitled: “WTF happened in 1971”. Your servant defended there that the rise in prices is above all a question of energy scarcity, even if it is true that States are running up far too much debt…

Do not miss the panel in which Phillipe Herlin and Yves Choueifaty participated in particular on the CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency). The CBDC is a tool of rationing and censorship worthy of the worst dystopias that will most likely never see the light of day. Title : “Central bank digital currencies, risk or opportunity”.

Technology and Tools

This second part has also been emulated by tech savvy people. Julien Guitton reminded us of the imperative need to demonstrate digital hygiene (“by uninstalling Microsoft products…”…). Conference title: “Cypherpunk: privacy and digital hygiene”.

The CEO of Condensat has followed in the footsteps of Timothy May (“The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto”), by Eric Hughes (“A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto”) or John Perry Barlow with his declaration of cyberspace independence. His praise of the toxicity of bitcoiners is worth seeing.

Elite programmers made the trip, including Thaddeous Dryja, co-founder of the Lightning Network, the second layer which brought an end to the war big block by radically increasing the transaction throughput of the bitcoin network. In English.

But still Maxim Orlovsky who introduced RGB. This system makes it possible to create smart contracts using the Lightning Network. In other words, we no longer need ethereum. Conference title: “LNP/BP technology – Why and how it will re-define #DeFi into #BiFi”.

“Imagine a world where decentralized protocols can be created without generating new tokens, where smart contracts are private, with high transaction throughput, all backed by bitcoin. Where decentralized finance protocols are censorship resistant and have no governance issues like in the ethereum world… […] »

Maxim Orlovsky

Other conferences are also worth the detour such as “Web 1,2,3…5 WTF”with John Carvalho, or even “What makes Bitcoin different from all other cryptocurrencies”with Gilles Cadignan and Kévin Loaec.

That said, these conferences are rather reserved for an informed public given the often high level of technicality.

Mining and Energy

You will have to take a look at the one man show by Sébastien Gouspillou, the French pioneer of mining of BTC. His anecdotes and broken voice brightened up the conference. We will retain from his speech that the Americans certainly made a mistake by settling in Texas. The energy mix there is in fact made up of more than 30% gas. Miners like Riot are also in competition with the population for juice…

The conference of Michel Khazzaka, CEO of ValueChain, made a lot of noise. We learned there that bitcoin consumes 80 TWh per year (to be compared with the 130 TWh put forward by Digiconomics), compared to more than 2,000 TWh for the traditional payment system. That is 27 times more.

“A BTC transaction consumes as much energy as a transaction from the banking system”, did he declare. Name of the conf: “Bitcoin energy efficiency compared to traditional payments”.

Don’t miss the debate “PoW, PoS, the war of consensus algorithms”with shitcoiners Abdelhamid Bakhta (ETH) and Mr. TK mining against maxis Gilles Cadignan and Fanis Michalakis.

We will remember that in PoS, it is impossible to buy ETH from a group of stakeholders become dominant if he does not want to sell them. But you can always buy more machines from mining if a group of miners became dominant and hostile. Not to mention that you also have nodes who had proved formidable during the big block war

The argument that the trend is toward the centralization of mining via huge mining farms was defeated by Fanis Michalakis. For the latter, the quest for inexpensive energy will inevitably end up breaking up production everywhere in the world, where there are surpluses of renewable energy.

Other conferences (in English this time) that you can watch quietly: “The ESG case for Bitcoin”, “How bitcoin mining can transform the energy industry” and, above all, Stratum V2, which is a software allowing miners to make their own blocks to prevent pools from minig to censor certain transactions.

Finance and regulation

The less sexy conferences concerned the regulation of bitcoin, a taboo subject among the maximalists who came in large numbers to the Basque coast.

The conference “The trading trap and the 1000% fantasy” will certainly be of interest to those who make the mistake of believing that the trading is different from sports betting. The panel was notably made up of Owen Simonin (Hasher) who shared the lessons of his Terra-Luna experience…

The conference “Debunking: bitcoin, money laundering and regulation (MiCa)” is ideal if you want to glean information on the sticks that the EU wants to put in the wheels of bitcoin.

For example, the obligation for exchanges not to accept BTC suspected of coming from illicit transactions. It’s as if the banks began to refuse banknotes with traces of cocaine on them…

Not to mention disguised attempts to prevent exchanges to allow their customers to withdraw their BTC on their own wallets

In addition to all these conferences and panels, there are many slightly more technical “workshops” which will soon be put online. Until they are, find their titles on the surfin’Bitcoin website HERE. And the rest of the program HERE.

The Surfin’Bitcoin 2022 conference in Biarritz has approached the standing of its spring counterpart, the Bitcoin conf in Miami. A big thank you to Jonathan Herscovicihis sidekick Josselin Cooper and their whole team.

Find:

HERE the replay of the Geopolitics and Economics afternoon (English part)

HERE the rebroadcast of the Finance and Regulation morning (English part)

HERE the Technology and Tools afternoon replay (English part)

HERE rebroadcast of the Mining and energy morning

The replays of the conference in French should not delay.

This Surfin-Bitcoin 2022 edition was a success. Beautiful weather, quality participants and a fun atmosphere on the magnificent terrace overlooking the large beach. What a joy to leave your anonymous avatar to toast with your family. We are already looking forward to next year!

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