Takeaways from Bitcoin Amsterdam 2024
The bitcoin conference in Amsterdam to me is my typical yearly check in with the crypto scene. From a distance, not much has changed since last year. What struck me most was the correlation between the exchange prices and the amount of visitors, I had the feeling the crowd was about twice as big as last year during the opening and high profile talks.
From my personal experience, the increase of audience also brought some dilution to the hard core maximalist anarchist-ness of the event. The overall vibe amongst the attendees was more friendly and open. This also increased the value of the event for me, as I try to broaden my network, get different perspectives and learn more about what interests people in the crypto space.
This year was also marked by my involvement in the Nostr side events, I was asked to give a live performance at the Nostrdam Meetup October 2024 which went over very well and also acted as a nice conversation starter during the rest of the conference. I was also slightly involved in the organisation of the Nostr booth, but credits go to the awesome volunteers that made that happen. It was a bit of a shame that the Nostr booth was tucked away all the way in the back of the (commercial) expo hall, it would have been nice to promote the Nostr initiative to the social community area next to the satoshi radio / connect the world community area
For me the biggest takeaways were the insights I got from the people I’ve met, all from different industries with different perspectives on both technology and involvement. I tried to specifically reach out to (former) CTO’s, which led me to write and share this piece on that particular role. Of course shaking hands and catching up with people I only see once a year is great, and reminds me of the vibe and my experiences at the Fronteers conference.
From a technical point of view I was most inspired by the advancement of AI agent technology and the possibilities of programmable micropayments via de lightning network. Michael Levin showed us that the http spec already has a 402 status of “payment required” and that basically all the required infrastructure is already in place to allow both humans and ai agents to use the lightning network to pay for access to compute or resources using this statuscode and an api gateway such as lightning labs aperture.
talk: HODLing Is Hard: Fundamentals, Cycle & On-Chain Analysis by rational root
- bitcoin is already competing in market cap with other currencies
- amount of euro is exponentially increasing
- from 8 to 16 trillion euros since 2009, but having a real hard cap in btc is fundamentally different
- inflation
- euro lose 20% in 5 years
- bitcoin also loses purchasing power, but only 10%
- in current system, we always need to take on maximal debt, instead of saving
- two things can happen
- we get into overvalued price levels
- we get into recession
- recession would only mean a shift in the start of the 4 year cycle
panel: Endless Possibilities: Reusing Heat From Miners
- people
- 21energy Maximilian (obwexer)
- Bert de groot (bitcoin Brabant)
- Brad Tom (mara)
- perspective: coming from energy to bitcoin is very different and much faster with implementation than the other way around
- 95% of heat can be captured from miners, much higher in comparison to AI
- being able to balance the grid because you can turn off the bitcoin miners
- ”heatbuffers” → heat is still available when power source goes down
- common objections:
- Crypto is hard to understand
- for large industrial clients, heaters, public image of bitcoin (often a door closer)
- people don’t see that miners consume electricity and pay for it.
- If mining is closed down in Europe, the energy prices will spike because the energy will not be payed for anymore
panel: How to Guard Privacy Tools & Developers
- Dorien Rookmaker & Sjors proviost
- chat control
- topic keeps returning, and is highly distracting for progress
- Parliament wants Netherlands to speak against chat control
- initially they want to just, scan messages now want to install malware before encryption
- it is distracting Sjors from working on bitcoin
- samurai and tornado are different cases
- tornado cash is harder because it is also a smart contract with custody over funds
- samurai is easier: if you don’t have custody, are you responsible for the results of the code?
- will decide wether whether non custodial systems are ok or not
- micah interpretation is quite vague
- the current Denmark case:
- if you are rebuilding an interface for a smart contract, you are responsible for implementing all the legal guardrails that apply to securities governance?
panel: NOSTR: Freedom of Algorithmic Choice
- will casarin, mcshane, martti malmi (Sirius iris.to)
- arc (alternative layer on top of bitcoin, like lightning but without channels)
- aha moment: when seeing the unsiloed experience between nostr apps
- were trying to create a town square, so we need to deal with spam
- social media platforms have stagnated a bit, nostr is innovating far more quickly
panel: Transactions As Bitcoin’s Key Growth Metric
- Stephan nilov
- classical developers don’t know about money and bitcoin development is harder
- total addressable market is highest in btc, biggest number of possible users
- bitcoin companies don’t benefit from tokens that are typically exchanged for vc money
- users are not looking for payments, they are looking for digital property and other things that Ethereum network offers
- Stephan Livera
- there is a known, slow pace at which bitcoin will be adopted
- btc market is only 1.2 trillion dollars compared to USD 30 trillion
talk: Making Bitcoin Quantum Resistant by hunter beast
- surmount.systems
- explaining the threat of quantum computing
- problems
- key size: larger signature required
- proposal: transaction field attestation
- 256 bit number key, possibility to factor the private key out of this
- introducing p2qrhash
- segwitv3
- satoshishield
- in layman terms:
- quantum safe upgrades to bitcoin protocol are proposed
- we need to introduce a software upgrade
- requires a soft fork, opt in
- possible advantages of quantum in crypto
- allow us to sign signatures in a way that is unbreakable
- 514 qubits are needed to break something
talk: Lightning and AI: Where the Bots Pay You by michael levin
- two use cases for bitcoin adoption
- people that don’t have access to fiat
- things that can’t be handled by fiat systems
- large language models
- current phase: big adoption
- next phase: agentic ai
- costs of ai
- compute 400% more (ben bajarin)
- algorithm training excess 10 billion dollars
- data
- costs implications
- cost of serving answers is 0
- cost of serving ai query is not 0
- cost for everyone in the world
- payments in AI
- now
- pay per call
- data
- accessibility
- agents
- agents must be able to do things that cost money
- now
- payment system for AI
- globally accessible
- near instant
- final settlement
- internet native
- authentication mechanism
- personalise access (simple queries for lower tier model)
- easy to implement
- L402 protocol
- 402 payment required in http spec
- reverse proxy to have 402 in front of APIs
- aperture is lightning labs implementation
- all available right now, adoption starting
- fewsats, sulu, open agents / plebai
- pay with lightning
- challenges
- do these payments with stablecoins instead of lightning (hence taproot assets protocol)
- cases
- agent bots can pay for real world resources
- taproot assets issue assets on bitcoin allow transfer of
- references
- L402.org
talk: Bitcoin is Cypherpunk by Aaron van Wirdum
- is bitcoin still Cypherpunks ?
- on one hand we see a push to regulation and frameworks to govern btc
- on the other hand we are arresting developers for writing code
pitches: Bitcoin Amsterdam Pitch Day: Presented by GoBTC
- umoja
- ceo Robby greenfield
- LST smartcoin, deflationary by design
- competes with pools such as lido and rocket pool, but supports multiple coins, including liquid hashrate
- 30% liquid hashrate returns (!)
- compliance micah
- disaster scenarios
- black swan event → automatic exit out
- magisat
- trading tools for mempool snipers
- support for runes
- volume on bitcoin nft’s is on certain days higher than nft’s on ethereum
panel: Crossing the Boundaries Between Bitcoin & Fiat
- Christian Rau (Mastercard) & Remi destigny (bitrefill )
- liberation is great, but protocols don’t take customer service into account, chargebacks and rewinding mistakes etc
- we aim to smooth process by issuing cards that sell your Bitcoin just in time on the backend
talk: Gold & Bitcoin: Friends, Not Foes by Paul Buitink
- premise “the financial system is crumbling”
- there is too much debt
- emerging markets lost confidence in western currencies
- freezing Russian assets is shooting ourselves in the foot, as it shows the world you might not want to hold too many dollars that can be easily seized
- record gold buying by central banks in 2022 2023 2024
- gold: 17 trillion marker cap, compared to bitcoin 1.3 trillion
talk: Austrian Economics, Hard Money & Bitcoin Cycles, Willem Middelkoop
- ”we are on the road towards hyper inflation and collapse of financial system”
- central bankers are pretty smart and very aware
- this is why they accumulate gold
- when system collapses, central bankers will play the gold card, not the bitcoin card
- US is preparing for big conflict with Russia and china
- then you can’t use IMF monetary reset
- Asia leadership is the same as US and Russian leadership: they want to stay on control
- all have about similar gold (per Capita) in their central banks vaults to avoid hyperinflation
- IMF said to el salvador: you need to reign down your bitcoin position
- once central bankers start diversifying (e.g. to bitcoin ) they will strain their own system. The incentives are against adopting bitcoin
- watch out for when on and offramp get blocked / repressed
- think about diversifying to Dubai, “the new switzerland"
- "bitcoin is the best money ever. fact”
- superior to gold, because you can store your wealth independant of location
- more scarce than gold
- but from central bank point of view, gold is superior to bitcoin
- younger generation gets this from the start
talk: The Future Will Be Bitcoinized by Elizabeth stark & Rockstar Dev
- stablecoins
- taproot assets protocol
- there is a demand for stablecoins and apps on stablecoins
- 11 trillion dollars in stablecoins
- protocol allows payments in other assets such as stablecoins that use bitcoin/lightning liquidity
- Elizabeth believes this allows stablecoiners to get interested in the underlying bitcoin layer
- Available now:
- bridging tether and lightning
products stumbled upon
- Meshtastic
- Flipper
- Noderunners led matrix panel
- 21energy bitcoin heater (1k s9, 3,5k s19)
- angor.io by dangershony on nostr
- bitcoinclock by Djuri
canonical link: https://notes.peterpeerdeman.nl/Bitcoin-Amsterdam-2024