OSGA – Last weekend the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada hosted the first bitcoin expo in Toronto and while there were no easily recognizable names like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet in attendance, the conference was filled with individuals who are well versed and connected with bitcoin. Erik Voorhees who has generally been the spokesperson for the virtual currency in the United States was unable to attend so it was left to Anthony Di Iorio, the executive director of the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada and the event organizer, Andreas Antonopoulos who is an author and expert on bitcoins and Stuart Hoegner who is an international gaming lawyer as the front people for the event. The expo (which was actually more of a conference than an exposition) was held in the south portion of the Toronto Convention Centre and was attended by about 800 individuals. The majority of the sessions were held in two rooms although there was a media room and a VIP Fireplace lounge (although I didn’t see any fireplace) plus there was a small exposition with around 30 exhibitors in the back.
The expo featured the likes of Bitcoin Decentral (a Toronto based bitcoin members club) showing off their latest bitcoin ABM; Etherum which apparently is a programming platform that allows developers to build and publish next generation distributed applications; Prepaid Bitcoin; and CA Virtex (a Toronto based bitcoin payment processor) which were handing out bitcoin debit cards to any Canadians with an interest in a prepaid bitcoin ATM card. It should be noted that I acquired one of these debit cards although I have yet to activate it or buy bitcoins to load onto the card but if it does indeed work it could be a major step in bitcoin acceptance. I’ll discuss the debit cards below. The bitcoin expo had a distinct Canada focus although the information learned from the conference can be applied worldwide since bitcoins don’t belong to any country.
My reason for accepting a media pass to attend the conference was to learn more about the crypto currency and to inform gamblers. My goal was also to help offshore gambling merchants decide whether it is feasible to incorporate bitcoins into their payment platform. While I’ve written on numerous topics for OSGA, the articles on bitcoin have generated a particular amount of interest among readers as is evidenced by the amount of emails requesting clarification and more information following the release of those articles.
I decided to attend three sessions at the conference. They included one on legal issues surrounding bitcoin, one on the future of bitcoin and one on freedom of speech. The sessions talked a lot about block chains, data mining pools and crypto verification but the specifics about how bitcoins are mined or verified were of little interest to me and I’m sure to readers of OSGA. The vast majority of people could really care less how an American or Canadian dollar are created, they simply want to know what they can buy with it, how they can pay bills with it, what limitations there are on using it and how they can legally generate more of it. And the same holds true with bitcoins. For that reason I’ll limit the conversation about bitcoins to the uses of the crypto currency and not on the manufacture of them.
