Bitcoin Beginners: Meetups as Education

The Bitcoin Wars Part XVI

Bitcoin is one of the most interdisciplinary topics humans have discovered. Every Bitcoin "expert" I know admits that there are things they're still learning about it, and likely no human alive has a full grasp of it. This is because Bitcoin involves several major fields of study, and each of them to great depth.

Topics at the foundations of Bitcoin:

• Software architecture and programming disciplines

• Monetary economics

• Game theory (an economic discipline, sure, but with an importance equivalent to, or more important than calculus is to Mathematics)

• Governance

• Finance

• Cryptography

• Information Theory

• Network/Graph Theory

• Probability Theory

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Breadth and Depth

Okay, there is something broader and deeper than Bitcoin: life. Life is the ultimate exception to a lot of rules. In this case, the comparison is constructive. How is it that people go about learning more about life?

Education. I don't mean to be a smart ass, here. Again, I'm pointing to the basics.

How do we educate ourselves about challenging topics?

Answers:

• We read.

• We watch expert videos.

• We take classes when we want to earn technical proficiency.

• We try stuff.

• We network and talk to people.

It's this last answer that I focus on in this article.

This past Friday my wife and I attended a meetup in Dallas called Bit Block Barbeque. You can find it and many other Bitcoin and cryptocurrency gatherings through Meetup.com. Over the past five years, I have attended perhaps 40 meetups, making dozens of new friends along the way. Among those new friends are programmers of a wide variety, people in various positions in finance, an Economist, cryptocurrency miners, bar tenders, store owners, etc. Friday we spent most of our time talking with two people in particular before saying hello to the host Gary and heading home.

One woman we met recently moved from San Francisco to Dallas, concerned with the direction California is headed. Her mother was a physician at UCSF, with colleagues in common with Anthony Fauci (was not a fan), and only retired in her 90s. She is beginning the journey of understanding Bitcoin.

Later we sat across from a man of Jordanian origins whose wife works or worked on Wall Street, and who began to think deeply about the economic system after the mortgage bond disaster. They no longer have trust in governments, in general. He wasn't an early Bitcoin adopter, but seemed reasonably well-equipped to talk about Austrian economics.

Some days, I find myself the teacher, and some days I find myself the learner, depending on the company. And, of course, verbalizing what you know in a comfortable environment is a good way to work out the kinks in your understanding, and other people's questions will force you to recognize blind spots worth researching or thinking through.

There are some "off the radar" meetups nowadays. These are usually among "original gangsta/old guard" OG bitcoiners, and sometimes developers who just want to talk beyond-beginner topics such as blockchain forks, block size, quantum time, smart contracts, atomic swaps, code, insider gossip, and lime green Lamborghinis. A lot of the OG Bitcoiners do stretch their legs still and go out to the local meetups, however. Some of them are the best teachers. My friend Fred, who ran a Bitcoin meetup in Uptown Dallas for several years, is one of the friendliest guys who has sat down with dozens of people and taught them how to make their first Bitcoin transaction. Just don't let him get started about playing craps with Bitcoin, even if "provably fair games" are a nifty concept.

Meetups are the lowest cost way to step into a community and get a free education. They're also fun. So, if you're one of those people who wants to take an easy step into learning about Bitcoin, it's the way to go. Do that long before plunking down hundreds of dollars for a conference, or thousands of dollars in some investment that may turn out to be the fifth iteration of a common scam. If you're going to learn about cryptocurrency, blockchain, and other digital ledger technology, learn Bitcoin first, then consider branching out.

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Conferences?

So far I've never attended an expensive conference, though I've been to a couple of local inexpensive ones. If I did start attending some, it would be for the purpose of networking, primarily. If there is enough interest in my Bitcoin education articles, I might do that once or twice a year. However, it must be said that due to its new and complex nature, the cryptocurrency world is full of scammers looking for marks. This makes a lot of conferences unsavory, or at least some aspects of them.

On the other hand, meetups are free, and the folks are friendly. And I eat barbeque like three times a month now as a result.

I am planning to attend a conference called Bit Block Boom next year. The conference prides itself on being Bitcoin-focused, and keeping the trash scammers away. That's not to say that everything that isn't Bitcoin is necessarily trash, but it's good to have an even here or there that draws a line because, truly, the vast majority of cryptocurrency projects are at best sandboxes (experiments that may or may not prove worthwhile) and at worst frauds. It's nice for there to be one or two conferences that draws a simple line so that all the conversations can take place without endless debate over which coins are scams, which CEOs are trustworthy, and which projects will survive the next Crypto Winter.

(No, this is not a paid advertisement. I would tell you.)

The gentleman who runs Bit Block Boom is just a friendly guy who came across Bitcoin a few years ago, and fell in love. He started his own Bitcoin podcast with one of his cousins, and later went solo as "The Bitcoin Boomer". He is a Hall of Fame member for Softball World Series coverage, which was his previous passion. He is a comfortable and relaxed commentator.

I plan to buy tickets for me and my wife the moment they're on sale because they increase in price throughout the year. Judging from the last minute ticket swapping, the worst case scenario might be that I quadruple my money.