Interview with Leo Weese, Technical Content Lead at Lightning Labs

The meetup was founded in July 2012 by Kristin Low.

Hong Kong was and is Asia’s most important financial center. It makes sense that Bitcoin developed here first, driven by exchanges, brokers, traders, legal experts and journalists. Hong Kong also used to have a very favorable regulatory regime towards bitcoin.

Probably my favorite memory is from 2020 when we covered three of the iconic double-decker trams in bitcoin livery, using the slogan “Be Your Own Bank.” We even had billboards outside the HSBC headquarters.

Today Hong Kong is no longer relevant in the global bitcoin economy.

Hong Kong’s political system changed quite radically in 2020, and coincidentally, so did the regulatory environment for bitcoin. Today, nobody wants to engage in political discourse anymore, because it’s not safe.

In the past few years we have seen Lightning take a real hold on some economies, both virtual and physical. We now have a pretty good idea what the ideal environment for these technologies look like, and from here it’s just about network effects.