Biarritz Casino was blanketed by a gorgeous sunset on August 27, bringing France’s largest Bitcoin (BTC) conference to a close. Located in the southwest of France and regulated by French bitcoin exchange Stackin Sat, Surfin Bitcoin has amassed a group of Bitcoin OGs, novices not cryptocurrencies, who never bought or earned cryptocurrency, in an environment that would rival any Hollywood blockbuster.
Network Bitcoiners hoping to learn more about the Lightning Network, land jobs at one of the many French Bitcoin companies out there – from Galloy Money to Découvre Bitcoin – or simply rub shoulders with fellow Bitcoin believers. In a touch of bear market irony, as bitcoin chips are currently in decline, the venue for the event was held at the famous Biarritz Casino.
From the primary supervisors of Bitcoin to European royalty to naturally CEOs of the largest French crypto companies, the atmosphere has been distinctly French, albeit with ambiguous international influence.
Cointelegraph and Ledger CEO, Pascal Gauthier (right) in front of Biarritz Casino and Grande Plage in Biarritz.
The maximum amount of Bitcoin was in full supply mode. Committee members and moderators had carte blanche to criticize shitcoin as the hotly anticipated discussions compared crypto-capitalists to gamblers, bragged about the merits, and questioned the limitations of Bitcoin’s Lightning 2 network. Representatives from Aave and several DAOs admired Bitcoin but remained true to their vision for the future of multiple currencies.
While there were several official commercials during the event, the speakers automatically stumbled across some overtures. During a session on mining, Riot Mining’s Pierre Rochard announced his intention to rename mining to “timestamp” to avoid confusion regarding the recovery of scarce resources from a physical location. He explained that timestamps would make education easier, which is also Satoshi Nakamoto’s way of explaining mining in the white paper.
Similarly, on the Lightning Network panel, Blockstream’s Christian Decker, aka Dr. Bitcoin, the Lightning Network as an “ant network”. In essence, he explained, the milk stick behaves like an ant colony. Much like an ant population, the LN searches for productive activity domains and congregates in spaces where efferent pathways or channel channels can be linked together.
Among the workshops and question-and-answer sessions, European Bitcoin artists such as Lina Seiche, the creator of Little Hodler, showcased their work. Konsensus, the publisher of Bitcoin books, sold French translations of popular Bitcoin books to a couple of Satoshis – the smallest denomination of Bitcoin – in the main hall. Regular Bitcoin T-shirts and merchandise can also be purchased for seating. But, for many bitcoin customers, coffee, beer, and refreshments were paid for with paper money.
Daniel Prince, co-host of the UK’s second largest bitcoin podcast, Once Bitten, told Cointelegraph that bitcoin adoption at the conference and the surrounding area has been weak:
“Casino players are not orange-billed, they only accept cash or card as payment. Despite that, I just asked ‘I want to pay you guys bitcoin,’ but no, it’s not set up.”
