niftynei() 🇺🇸💸🧡's avatar
niftynei() 🇺🇸💸🧡 2 weeks ago

bitcoin++ in 2025 and what to expect in 2026: nifty does a braindump

Published: 2 weeks ago

Eight conferences is far too many conferences for a single, four person organization to take on for the year. Well, to be fair six was way too many for a tiny, basically one person and a motley crew of game-time ride or dies to take on. But we did it.

I don't know how well we did it, but we did it. We pulled it off. We got an impressive slate of bitcoin developers together in six different countries at six different times. We captured as much as we could of it on film (we should have caught more). We invited as many people as we could (we should have invited more). We had a great time.

Insider Edition

I tried starting a newsletter/newspaper/interview series in 2025, bitcoin++ Insider Edition. In addition to running all the events. The reasoning was that there's so many good stories and projects that we're getting together. Let's try to tell some of that to the world. Both in the lead up to who's going to be at the events (why you should come, and why you should care about the topic that we're featuring) as well as in the aftermath, the reporting of what's happened. What did the people at home miss? We did livedesks at or side interview recordings at most of our events this year (Taipei this past December might be the one exception).

I don't think we've quite hit my goal of having a great reporting arm yet. We just started in June. @tuma was the first to join as our Open Source Reporter. He's been faithfully attending almost every developer open call for six months now, and reporting on it every Monday. We've got an enormous treasure trove of his notes from the calls that we're (for better or worse) sitting on. What you get is the six bullet point rundown on Monday mornings.

@kevkevin also joined us in helping report on what's happening, specifically in bitcoin core land. He's been relentlessly shipping a Friday newsletter with notes about what's happening in the biggest open source money project's github repo for us for six months now as well. Huge thanks to both of you for your consistency.

Looking ahead this year, I want to get more video content going from events. In addition to the livedesks, adding more actual reporting feels to what we're producing would be cool.

I'd also love more contributions from devs and thought leaders in the space. I've got one awesome post from @yashraj that I need to schedule and send; a promise of a book review from @dangoulddev (?); a 2025 year end review survey that I need to finish sewing together and get posted (mea culpa).

We had janusz helping out as an editor in chief, but he's gotten increasingly invested time-wise into his startup projects. I could really use some more hands on deck figuring out our content shipping strategy, and who's able to pull narratives and articles together for publication ahead of and after our events. If this is you, hit me up!

Events

We ran six incredible events last year. We started with hacking edition in Floripa, Brasil. We did a pool party and mempool convention in Austin in May. We talked privacy at the Latvia National Library in August. We had our most cryptography focused event of the year in Istanbul in September. October, we went back to Berlin for our 3rd ever event in the city, for our first every lightning++ (RIP Lightning Conference). Four weeks ago, we wrapped up the final event of the year, talking about sovereignty and wallets in Taipei, Taiwan.

Let the record show bitcoin++ got to Taipei before the CCP did (yes this was a real worry!).

Taipei was probably my most challenging event yet, thought I'd say Istanbul was a close second in terms of ticket sales and local community outreach. Though we probably had more locals at each of those than we had at the Riga, Latvia event in August -- I think the only local Latvian at the event was a volunteer. Which was ironic because the library bookshop had a bitcoin book in it! And a technical one at that.

One downside to being a (mostly) one-man* show is that I can execute on speaker outreach, venue and catering, logistics, swag, volunteers, A/V coordination fairly well. But it starts to break down when there's new skills or patterns I need to branch in to, like figuring out how to send press releases or do outreach to local clubs etc.

*I put a star here because I did have more help last year: @exfrog did an incredible job running the A/V and managing to get everything recording. We had Murphy making the mainstage livestreams look incredibly professional. @kikidesigns joined us as a volunteer in Austin and did such a kickass job I invited her back to help out with logistics for Riga, Istanbul, and Berlin. She crushed it. Zoe from shopstr helped wrangle volunteers for almost every event this year; Walton came to MC and generally keep the vibes high for 5/6 events this year. We didn't find enough sponsor funding to get him out to Taipei for our last event in December so I got to MC and man that is not an easy job by a long shot. Isabel Foxen Duke was a crucial part to making the Istanbul event a success -- we wouldn't have had such a star studded event without her help tapping into her network. Finally big shoutout to Matthew Vuk from the Bitcoin Student's Network for showing up to so many bitcoin++ events to help out with check-in and setup; recording people's experience and just in general being an enormous support at events. Along with every other volunteer that came through and made each event possible. Really, we couldn't have done it without you.

@AlexLewin came to every bitcoin++ this year and ran a hackathon. He also ran a virtual hackathon for Vegas. And came to Austin, TX during SXSW to help run our first ever single day 'vibeathon', that went super well. The hackathons are a huge part of what makes bitcoin++ magic, so big thanks to Alex and every sponsor, judge, and participant for really making our year just so incredible. bitcoin++ consistently has the most interesting bitcoin hacking projects I've ever seen. I mean, we minted at least two new Knots contributors at the mempool edition event alone, probably the biggest net growth in contributors to the project ever. I couldn't be more blown away by how many people participate, and the level of execution and ambition that comes out of them. Like, oh yeah our winning team from the Berlin lightning conference was the Signal messaging app fork that added cashu instead of their internal MOB coin. iiuc it was such a big success that @calle, lead dev of the Cashu protocol, started getting non-specific cease and desist-ish communications from the actual Signal project's lawyer.

I owe an enormous thanks for this year to another set of people as well: all of the locals that helped bring bitcoin++ to six different countries in 2025. That'd be Carol and Kaká of Area Bitcoin for helping be the local org for the Floripa event; Anna of HodlHodl for helping find a venue and catering for the Riga event along with the entire Baltic Honeybadger team for suggesting we come do a conference there! The CItrea team, especially Feyza for her help with negotiating with the local venue and making sure that everyone got paid (and on time!) in Istanbul as well as Aytek from Voydis office space who made sure we had an amazing spot for our speaker's dinner; Jeff of FULMO in Berlin for his support for the third year in a row; and finally Evan Lin and Xini from the OCF for helping with venues, visas, and general moral support for Taipei, along with Mike Lin of Tempo House for digging in to getting the local community to show up for the event.

Finally huge thank you to NYDIG who was our biggest sponsor for 2025. We couldn't have pulled it off without your support!

Local Editions

In addition to six events, starting a (baby) media org, running a virtual and irl hackathon; bitcoin++ also partnered with @vnprc and the Triangle Bitdevs in Durham, North Carolina to bring our first ever one-day, single track bitcoin++ "Local Edition" to life on November 15th. Most of our flagship events bring together devs and collaborators from around the globe; I'd say 40-60% of attendees at most of our conferences come from other places.

Durham's local edition was special in that most of the featured talent, as well as the attendees, were local to North Carolina. I think we had one speaker that flew in from neighboring Atlanta, Georgia to talk. The rest were all locals. The attendees were mostly local too. A bunch had driven in from all over the state, but 90% of the people who showed up for the event were from North Carolina. We had over 50 people and eight speakers. I was blown away by how many people North Carolina had. One of the attendees was a Base58 student who came to two of my in-person classes over two years ago and lived in a nearby city. He had just gotten a job working full-time in bitcoin as a developer.

Enormous thanks are owed to @vnprc for making the first ever bitcoin++ local edition happen, along with his wife who made sure that the catering came through and we had coffee for breakfast. That also became the event that we pulled Josh Brown in, who's starting the year here in Austin at bitcoin++ headquarters to help run the local Pleb Print Shop along with stocking up the bitcoin++ merch store and swag situation for all the events we'll be running this year.

Into 2026

Ok that's a mountain of text already, but there's more to the story for upcoming 2026. We've made a few hires and have some people coming back to help out in a larger capacity for this year that I want to call out.

First off, we're now working with Kevin Rooke, who's taking the lead on our sponsorships and partnerships. He's also the reason there's now a bitcoinplusplus territory on Stacker News, and probably the reason that I'm making this post at all. I couldn't be more thrilled to have him onboard to help bitcoin++ provide more value to all the projects, companies, orgs, and communities in the space. Please feel free to reach out to him (or me!) if you're interested in figuring out how you can contribute to what we're building for 2026!

I've also brought @exfrog on in a more full time capacity to help with logistics for events and media production. We haven't done a very good job with cutting and shipping videos from events. Exfrog is now leveling up to help us publish our backlog of talks as well as making sure that going forward we have a sustainable and engaging production not just of the videos but events as well. He's probably been to more bitcoin++ events than anyone at this point (self excluded), so it makes so much sense to give him more responsiblity.

On the social media side, we've been working with M from El Salvador who's been keeping the content on our x.com feed fresh. He's working with @exfrog to get out content now as well. If you haven't followed us on x.com yet, you should!

I've also hired Josh Brown away from a print shop in Alabama to come help out with merch, logistics, and general physical shenanigans at the bitcoin++ office in Austin. He just arrived in Austin this week and I couldn't be more thrilled about having help. If you're looking for some stickers, or t-shirts, or bags, or posters, or canvases, or ... printed and want to pay in bitcoin give us a holler.

What We're Planning

For 2026 we've got eight events on the schedule. I think seven of them are public; the eighth one we're working on exact details and venue before making an announcement, but it'll be at the end of August and for a new developer cohort than we've previously hosted.

Ok here's what to expect:

Hope to see you at one (or some??) of our events this year! We're looking for more volunteers for everything, as well as speakers, and sponsors! Please come and check out how to get involved!!

We're also looking to expand our reach with more local editions around the globe; get in touch if you're interested in running a one day bitcoin++ popup in your village, college, community etc! You can always reach us at hello@btcpp.dev, DMs on x.com or the telegram group etc.

OK that's an enormous brain dump. I'm stoked about 2026!! Can't wait to see you all, wherever you are in the globe, this year!!

~nifty

https://stacker.news/items/1411249

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