Last month, I attended all three days of the Bitcoin conference in Las Vegas. I’ve only attended smaller conferences before, like BTC++, BitBlockBoom, and my own academic conferences on Bitcoin, so this was on my bucket list. This is much bigger, with 20,000+ attendees, many concurrent sessions, and hundreds of sponsors and booths. Here are some of my major reflections.

First, bitcoin is getting noticed. The scale of the crowds was impressive. Broadly speaking, there are three primary communities: Miners, developers, and capitalists. They had separate sessions for each of them. The general stage was aimed at the general public, mostly for people who were new to bitcoin or for speeches that pertained to all Bitcoiners.

There were plenty of newcoiners at the conference. Some flew in from all over the world, and many knew little about bitcoin. And finally, there were a bunch who don’t go to any of the smaller, more specialized conferences, like Ed, who operates excavators and has followed bitcoin for years, now planning on starting a small mining operation.

The best speech was by Ross Ulbricht. He talked about his time in jail for the last decade, and how he essentially lived in a time capsule. In his time, bitcoin was priced at less than a dollar, and there were no altcoins, major mining operations, or AI. His story is remarkable: he got into jail because of bitcoin, but then it was bitcoin that let him out. It was the unity of the entire community that rallied around his freedom that is the most remarkable proof that Bitcoin is a movement, more than just a technology.