El Flaco retweeted
I built an open-source chain analysis tool that anyone can use.
It requires no payment, no login, and no data you search is ever seen by Tracey’s server.
Everything you search in Tracey is processed directly in your browser.
All of Tracey’s heuristics are public and have comings. The entire website comes with tooltips explaining to you what each step does. Most of its clustering rules are pulled from the disclosed research papers, some I wrote myself to be more conservative.
I built Tracey for myself, but thought it might be useful to other people as well – especially in light of all the recent thefts of funds. It can’t help you create evidence, but it may help you find some leads on where your money is moving on bitcoin. 1/4 🔽
It requires no payment, no login, and no data you search is ever seen by Tracey’s server.
Everything you search in Tracey is processed directly in your browser.
All of Tracey’s heuristics are public and have comings. The entire website comes with tooltips explaining to you what each step does. Most of its clustering rules are pulled from the disclosed research papers, some I wrote myself to be more conservative.
I built Tracey for myself, but thought it might be useful to other people as well – especially in light of all the recent thefts of funds. It can’t help you create evidence, but it may help you find some leads on where your money is moving on bitcoin. 1/4 🔽
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El Flaco retweeted
We might witness the end of intellectual property very soon.
Good riddance.
Good riddance.
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El Flaco retweeted
Aaron Swartz Would've Been 40 Today. His 'Legacy Lives On' Says FSF ift.tt/ycLluo8
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El Flaco retweeted
This is exactly how you recognize a true cypherpunk event. Not only by the photo policy, but also how it is enforced and what's the policy for the organizers.
This is one of the things that should have been imported from hacker culture. Chaos communication Congress (the largest European hacker event) got it right decades ago.
Of course it is convenient to have videos for marketing, but it's possible to do it with consent of everyone on the video. Ccc has many videos.
And before you say it's impossible for large events, CCC is larger than BTCPrague and Bitcoin Amsterdam combined, by a wide margin.
This is one of the things that should have been imported from hacker culture. Chaos communication Congress (the largest European hacker event) got it right decades ago.
Of course it is convenient to have videos for marketing, but it's possible to do it with consent of everyone on the video. Ccc has many videos.
And before you say it's impossible for large events, CCC is larger than BTCPrague and Bitcoin Amsterdam combined, by a wide margin.
Manche im Publikum haben den Kameramann angeschrien. Ich verstehe sie.
Dieser Screenshot stammt aus dem aktuellen Livestream der Bitcoin Amsterdam 2026. Die Kamera schwenkt immer wieder ins Publikum.
Schaut euch das Bild einmal genauer an: Dutzende Menschen. Ihre Gesichter wesenheit auf einer Bitcoin-Konferenz wird live in die ganze Welt übertragen. Aufgezeichnet, gespeichert, geteilt und möglicherweise für immer im Internet auffindbar.
Vielleicht bin ich paranoid, aber deswegen war die ₿ Prague 2026 mein letztes großes Bitcoin-Event.
Und auch genau deshalb bleibe ich in den sozialen Medien anonym. Ich verkaufe mein Gesicht und die Sicherheit meiner Familie nicht für Reichweite oder Anerkennung.
Die Zeiten, in denen solche Veranstaltungen harmlose Familientreffen waren, sind vorbei.
Und offenbar haben wir immer noch nicht verstanden, was das bedeutet.
Wir leben in einer Zeit, in der Bitcoinbesitzer zunehmend zum Ziel physischer Gewalt werden.
Die sogenannten 5-Dollar-Schraubenschlüssel-Angriffe (5$ Wrench Attacks) sind längst kein theoretisches Gedankenexperiment aus der Securitybubble mehr.
Sie passieren. Frankreich ist dafür ein erschreckendes Beispiel.
Und jetzt kommt der krasse Widerspruch:
Wir diskutieren stundenlang über Self-Custody, Hardware-Wallets, Multisig, Privatsphäre und Operational Security (OpSec).
Wir erklären Menschen, warum sie ihre Bitcoinbestände niemals öffentlich machen sollten.
Aber gleichzeitig übertragen sie die Gesichter hunderter Konferenzbesucher in die ganze Welt. Menschen, die möglicherweise erhebliche Bitcoinbags besitzen. Menschen, die sich vielleicht ganz bewusst für ein Leben mit finanzieller Souveränität entschieden haben und dabei keineswegs öffentlich identifizierbar sein möchten.
Wir schützen unsere Private Keys, und andere veröffentlichen unsere Gesichter.
Ein Gesicht, ein Name, ein Konferenzbadge, ein Standort und ein paar Social-Media-Beiträge können ausreichen, um ein persönliches Profil zu erstellen. Die Verknüpfung solcher Informationen kann im schlimmsten Fall lebensgefährlich werden.
Physische Sicherheit beginnt nicht erst dann, wenn jemand versucht, an deine Seed Phrase zu kommen.
Und nein, ich bin nicht gegen Livestreams oder die Dokumentation von Bitcoin-Events.
Ich bin gegen eine Veranstaltungskultur, die Sichtbarkeit über Sicherheit stellt.
Was wäre so schwierig daran, das Publikum standardmäßig unkenntlich zu machen? Kamera-freie Bereiche einzurichten? Menschen ausdrücklich um Zustimmung zu bitten, bevor ihre Gesichter weltweit ausgestrahlt werden?
Privatsphäre sollte der Standard sein. Öffentlichkeit eine bewusste Entscheidung.
Ich liebe diese Community. Ich glaube an Bitcoin und an die Idee finanzieller Selbstbestimmung.
Aber ich möchte nicht akzeptieren, dass wir ausgerechnet die Menschen, die wir für diese Idee begeistern wollen, unnötigen Risiken aussetzen.
Nicht jeder möchte öffentlich als Teil des Bitcoin-Ökosystems identifizierbar sein.
Und angesichts der aktuellen Bedrohungslage sollte das auch niemand müssen.
Protect your keys. Protect your privacy. Protect yourself.
(Foto wurde von mir verpixelt).
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El Flaco retweeted
My LNbits instance (lnbits.btip.nl) got exploited before this announcement, 2,285,545 sats got withdrawn by new accounts that used this exploit before I could stop the server. Attack started at 9:22 and continued till 14:00 (UTC). All t.me/BitTipBot users will be made whole by me, but won't be able to access funds until LNbits has patched the vulnerabilities.
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El Flaco retweeted
New release: Electrum 4.8.4. This is another security update. Release notes and binaries: electrum.org/#download
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El Flaco retweeted
Please forward to anyone you know who might be running an LNbits instance. Patches should be merged and available within 24-48hrs. Better to be safe than sorry 🙏
Sorry for any inconvenience.
Sorry for any inconvenience.
⚠️⚠️ All LNbits users should stop their LNbits servers IMMEDIATELY. ⚠️⚠️
Please forward this announcement.
Following a wave of attacks, we have a number of security patches to push. Until then, it's better to err on the side of caution. 🙏
Updates to follow soon.
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El Flaco retweeted
⚠️⚠️ All LNbits users should stop their LNbits servers IMMEDIATELY. ⚠️⚠️
Please forward this announcement.
Following a wave of attacks, we have a number of security patches to push. Until then, it's better to err on the side of caution. 🙏
Updates to follow soon.
Please forward this announcement.
Following a wave of attacks, we have a number of security patches to push. Until then, it's better to err on the side of caution. 🙏
Updates to follow soon.
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Some personal news: after more than five years, I am no longer part of the Blink team.
In August 2021, shortly before El Salvador announced bitcoin as legal tender, I joined the small Galoy and Bitcoin Beach Wallet teams as Marketing Director and started working on bitcoin full time.
My first assignment was to help organize a bitcoin conference in San Salvador, the first of its kind in the country. The goal was to bring bitcoin knowledge and expertise to El Salvador, and to bring Salvadorans and the international bitcoin community together in the capital in support of adoption. That conference became Adopting Bitcoin @AdoptingBTC.
It was an exciting time, with many unknowns. No sovereign nation had ever declared its intent to embrace bitcoin, and for the first time since the blocksize debate, the conversation around bitcoin had turned back to its use as a medium of exchange. Our team was in the middle of it. We had been on the ground since 2020 as one of the country's first bitcoin startups, building the infrastructure that let the Bitcoin Beach community in El Zonte use bitcoin as money with ease, which President Bukele later cited as the proof of concept that inspired the nation's move.
It was also a frightening time. Travel and gatherings were restricted around the world and in El Salvador, and abroad, El Salvador was known above all for its homicide rate, among the highest in the world, and for decades of gang violence. Organizing an international conference there asked a lot of trust from everyone who came, and they came anyway.
In the years that followed, I led the rebranding of Bitcoin Beach Wallet into Blink and its expansion from a wallet built for one Salvadoran village into a wallet for everyday bitcoin payments, used today in 180 countries. In October 2024, Blink became independent of Galoy, which had incubated it since 2020, and passed to new ownership. I was one of the team members who moved over to Blink to carry the work forward.
The ideas that started in El Zonte travelled further than any of us expected. The community custody model, where a multisig holds the funds to make a seamless Lightning experience possible, has been iterated on by many other projects and companies. The idea of a bitcoin circular economy was exported to the world, and communities everywhere have replicated the Bitcoin Beach approach, many of them with Blink as their wallet of choice.
I am grateful to have been part of that work.
None of it happened alone. Many of the people I worked alongside in those early years have since returned to private lives away from the spotlight, so I will not name them here. You know who you are, and I am grateful for everything we built and every risk we took together. Thank you to the people of El Zonte and the Bitcoin Beach community, who showed the world what bitcoin as money looks like; to the Salvadorans who trusted a small team with their savings and their payments; to the circular economy builders who took the model home to their own communities; and to every Blink user.
Blink is no longer a purely custodial Lightning wallet. It now offers the same experience that helped El Zonte adopt bitcoin as money in a self-custodial model, and is in the middle of moving tens of thousands of users off custodial accounts. To the Blink team carrying this forward: I wish you every success.
As for what comes next, Adopting Bitcoin continues, and I remain on its board. The conference that began as my first assignment in San Salvador has grown the same way the Bitcoin Beach idea did, carried by local teams into their own communities. After five editions in El Salvador, Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town (@abcptza) holds its fourth edition on 26–27 February 2027, and Adopting Bitcoin Arnhem (@AB_Arnhem), hosted by the longest-running local bitcoin economy, returns for its second edition on 28–29 May 2027. Both are run by local teams and funded mostly through ticket sales, so if you want to support bitcoin as money on the ground, buying a ticket is one of the most direct ways to do it.
Beyond that, I am taking a break to spend time with my family, and I will keep building. When I started in 2021 I could not write software myself. With LLMs I now can, and I have been putting that to use on a couple of projects. More on those when the time is right.
See you in Cape Town and Arnhem.
In August 2021, shortly before El Salvador announced bitcoin as legal tender, I joined the small Galoy and Bitcoin Beach Wallet teams as Marketing Director and started working on bitcoin full time.
My first assignment was to help organize a bitcoin conference in San Salvador, the first of its kind in the country. The goal was to bring bitcoin knowledge and expertise to El Salvador, and to bring Salvadorans and the international bitcoin community together in the capital in support of adoption. That conference became Adopting Bitcoin @AdoptingBTC.
It was an exciting time, with many unknowns. No sovereign nation had ever declared its intent to embrace bitcoin, and for the first time since the blocksize debate, the conversation around bitcoin had turned back to its use as a medium of exchange. Our team was in the middle of it. We had been on the ground since 2020 as one of the country's first bitcoin startups, building the infrastructure that let the Bitcoin Beach community in El Zonte use bitcoin as money with ease, which President Bukele later cited as the proof of concept that inspired the nation's move.
It was also a frightening time. Travel and gatherings were restricted around the world and in El Salvador, and abroad, El Salvador was known above all for its homicide rate, among the highest in the world, and for decades of gang violence. Organizing an international conference there asked a lot of trust from everyone who came, and they came anyway.
In the years that followed, I led the rebranding of Bitcoin Beach Wallet into Blink and its expansion from a wallet built for one Salvadoran village into a wallet for everyday bitcoin payments, used today in 180 countries. In October 2024, Blink became independent of Galoy, which had incubated it since 2020, and passed to new ownership. I was one of the team members who moved over to Blink to carry the work forward.
The ideas that started in El Zonte travelled further than any of us expected. The community custody model, where a multisig holds the funds to make a seamless Lightning experience possible, has been iterated on by many other projects and companies. The idea of a bitcoin circular economy was exported to the world, and communities everywhere have replicated the Bitcoin Beach approach, many of them with Blink as their wallet of choice.
I am grateful to have been part of that work.
None of it happened alone. Many of the people I worked alongside in those early years have since returned to private lives away from the spotlight, so I will not name them here. You know who you are, and I am grateful for everything we built and every risk we took together. Thank you to the people of El Zonte and the Bitcoin Beach community, who showed the world what bitcoin as money looks like; to the Salvadorans who trusted a small team with their savings and their payments; to the circular economy builders who took the model home to their own communities; and to every Blink user.
Blink is no longer a purely custodial Lightning wallet. It now offers the same experience that helped El Zonte adopt bitcoin as money in a self-custodial model, and is in the middle of moving tens of thousands of users off custodial accounts. To the Blink team carrying this forward: I wish you every success.
As for what comes next, Adopting Bitcoin continues, and I remain on its board. The conference that began as my first assignment in San Salvador has grown the same way the Bitcoin Beach idea did, carried by local teams into their own communities. After five editions in El Salvador, Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town (@abcptza) holds its fourth edition on 26–27 February 2027, and Adopting Bitcoin Arnhem (@AB_Arnhem), hosted by the longest-running local bitcoin economy, returns for its second edition on 28–29 May 2027. Both are run by local teams and funded mostly through ticket sales, so if you want to support bitcoin as money on the ground, buying a ticket is one of the most direct ways to do it.
Beyond that, I am taking a break to spend time with my family, and I will keep building. When I started in 2021 I could not write software myself. With LLMs I now can, and I have been putting that to use on a couple of projects. More on those when the time is right.
See you in Cape Town and Arnhem.
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El Flaco retweeted
This practice sucks
₿ events should not film the audience
₿ events should not film the audience
The number of people being doxxed at the Bitcoin Amsterdam YouTube live stream is unreal - the camera goes every 2 minutes or so and shows people’s faces in the crowd like it’s a baseball stadium Jumbotron. Just why would you need to do that
@BitcoinMagazine ? I blurred them here for privacy
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I tried to push this a couple years back with no success – github.com/GaloyMoney/bli… – so I have an idea of the many obstacles one might face if you want to ship this, and can't applaud @BULLBITCOIN_ team enough for shipping + sharing it with the world 👏👏👏
Bull Bitcoin shipped the most based feature of the week
since Nov 5, every on-chain buy and sell in BULL Wallet is a payjoin by default, so a chain watcher can no longer assume every input is yours
on a sell, Bull adds one of its own UTXOs to your transaction
on a buy, your th the bitcoin you bought, so you end up with fewer to spend later, which can lower your future fees
privacy is a right, and Bull treats it like one
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El Flaco retweeted
Ich zahle meine Miete in Bitcoin.
Als ich vor kurzem nach Prag gezogen bin, habe ich meinen Vermieter einfach gefragt, ob ich die Miete auch in Bitcoin bezahlen kann.
Ich hatte mit einem Nein gerechnet, oder zumindest mit einer langen Diskussion.
Er hat nur gesagt: „Klar, ich schick dir meine Adresse."
Seitdem überweise ich jeden Monat den Betrag zum aktuellen Kurs an seine Wallet, und nach ein paar Minuten ist die Miete bezahlt. Ohne Bank, ohne Überweisungsformular und ohne drei Werktage zu warten.
Jeder, der sagt, mit Bitcoin könne man im echten Leben nichts bezahlen, liegt schlicht falsch. Das hier ist der Beweis.
Und Prag ist dafür vielleicht die beste Stadt Europas.
Hier gibt es Cafés, in denen man nur mit Bitcoin bezahlen kann, hier findet die größte Bitcoin-Konferenz Europas (@BTCPrague) statt, und wer seine Bitcoin länger als drei Jahre hält, zahlt beim Verkauf keine Steuern.
Die tschechische Zentralbank hält sogar selbst Bitcoin, als erste Zentralbank der EU.
Deutschland hat 2024 rund 50.000 beschlagnahmte Bitcoin verkauft, für knapp drei Milliarden Euro. Heute wären die ein Vielfaches wert.
Kann man in deinem Land die Miete in Bitcoin bezahlen?
Als ich vor kurzem nach Prag gezogen bin, habe ich meinen Vermieter einfach gefragt, ob ich die Miete auch in Bitcoin bezahlen kann.
Ich hatte mit einem Nein gerechnet, oder zumindest mit einer langen Diskussion.
Er hat nur gesagt: „Klar, ich schick dir meine Adresse."
Seitdem überweise ich jeden Monat den Betrag zum aktuellen Kurs an seine Wallet, und nach ein paar Minuten ist die Miete bezahlt. Ohne Bank, ohne Überweisungsformular und ohne drei Werktage zu warten.
Jeder, der sagt, mit Bitcoin könne man im echten Leben nichts bezahlen, liegt schlicht falsch. Das hier ist der Beweis.
Und Prag ist dafür vielleicht die beste Stadt Europas.
Hier gibt es Cafés, in denen man nur mit Bitcoin bezahlen kann, hier findet die größte Bitcoin-Konferenz Europas (@BTCPrague) statt, und wer seine Bitcoin länger als drei Jahre hält, zahlt beim Verkauf keine Steuern.
Die tschechische Zentralbank hält sogar selbst Bitcoin, als erste Zentralbank der EU.
Deutschland hat 2024 rund 50.000 beschlagnahmte Bitcoin verkauft, für knapp drei Milliarden Euro. Heute wären die ein Vielfaches wert.
Kann man in deinem Land die Miete in Bitcoin bezahlen?
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El Flaco retweeted
White Noise is now on the App Store.
The messenger with no phone number, built native for iOS, where an AI agent can sit in the chat like anyone else.
apps.apple.com/app/white-nois…
The messenger with no phone number, built native for iOS, where an AI agent can sit in the chat like anyone else.
apps.apple.com/app/white-nois…
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El Flaco retweeted
NEW: @bullbitcoin just became the first exchange to make every on-chain buy and sell a Payjoin by default.
Your coins get merged automatically and chain analysis gets harder.
Here's how it works 👇
bitcoinnews.com/p/bull-bitcoin…
Your coins get merged automatically and chain analysis gets harder.
Here's how it works 👇
bitcoinnews.com/p/bull-bitcoin…
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El Flaco retweeted
Introducing Payjoin trading : when a user of BULL wallet buys, sells or pays someone via the Bull Bitcoin exchange integration, both the wallet and exchange will now automatically collaborate to create a payjoin transaction wit by default 🕶️
bullbitcoin.com/blog/payjoin-t…
bullbitcoin.com/blog/payjoin-t…
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El Flaco retweeted
Aaron Schwartz is laughing in heaven.
> be AI company
> scrape the entire internet
> ignore licenses and copyright
> download millions of pirated books
> use them to train frontier models
> spend tens of millions buying physical books
> cut off their spines
> scan every page
> destroy the originals
> lecture everyone else about intellectual property
> we are the good guys
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El Flaco retweeted
This has always been a massively high signal conference, where people who are making real change meet and share ideas. I think the new iteration of the Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town conference will even better. Small groups of highly motivated people change the world.
Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town (@abcptza) has reached a crossroads.
For three years running, 2024, 2025 and 2026, we hosted three successful conferences, co-hosted by @Machankura8333 and ourselves, and run entirely by unpaid volunteers, without massive sponsorship. Pulling that off, s a significant milestone.
We also achieved something we set out to do: reach large civil society organizations and, through them, reach their members. And we didn't know who those organizations would be, but they showed up.
John Endres (@senderman) of the Institute for Race Relations (@IRR_SouthAfrica), Russell Lamberti (@RussLamberti) representing Sakeliga (@Sakeliga), and David Ansara (@DavidAnsara) of the Free Market Foundation (@FMFSouthAfrica) all spoke in 2024, 2025 and/or 2026.
This list is not exhaustive. And these aren't fringe groups. They're among South Africa's largest and longest-standing advocates for free market policy. And they have fought an uphill battle for exactly the kind of direction this country needs.
Our goal was to get them speaking to their audiences about Bitcoin, and that's happened.
Both The Free Market Foundation and the Institute for Race Relations have since published papers, videos and/or podcasts on Bitcoin:
freemarketfoundation.com/state-proof-mo…
dailyfriend.co.za/2026/03/05/bit…
While both organizations occasionally discussed Bitcoin prior to 2024, since then both groups have formalized and significantly expanded their public commentary on the topic.
I'm not claiming we caused that single-handedly, but we definitely contributed to it, even if only in a small way.
So why are we at a Crossroads?
In 2026, the Treasury and the South African Reserve Bank dropped regulatory bombshells that were, to put it mildly, insane.
The direction they want to take is a walled garden: you can hold Bitcoin, you can use Bitcoin, but only through a regulated intermediary they control, one that can force you to sell at a price of their choosing.
Calling that a watered down version of Bitcoin is an understatement. It isn't a watered down version of Bitcoin. It's entirely fake.
And yes, there's been a reprieve with the SA Government recently backing down under intense pressure, but it's clear that they'll attempt it again.
That leaves us in a position where we have to decide: where does this conference go next? And the answer is right there in the name.
Adopting Bitcoin.
Adopting Bitcoin implies exiting fiat. You are not adopting Bitcoin if you are not exiting fiat. And if you claim to adopt Bitcoin while weaseling your way further into the fiat world, you are not adopting Bitcoin.
It’s quite simple. But easy to lose sight of.
"I'm into Bitcoin, but the fiat world is what it is, we have to play by their rules, we have to work with them, and we have to accommodate them."
This may all be true. But it invariably turns into an excuse to not exit fiat. And that's not a position we're willing to keep entertaining. And if you don't get that, what are we doing here?
To be clear, this isn't about refusing to talk to anyone. It's about being unambiguous about our goal. Adopting Bitcoin means actively and continuously looking for every opportunity to move further away from fiat.
Adopting Bitcoin does not mean buying Bitcoin and settling into fiat more comfortably while the BTC/FIAT price goes up.
This isn't a rebrand.
It's a re-alignment, a return to where @abcptza was always meant to go, but were slowly pulled away from by the realities of running a conference.
The companies that make real money are the ones that find ways to weave themselves back into the fiat system. It's brutally hard for a genuinely Bitcoin-only fiat-exiting company to turn a profit.
The massively profitable players in this space are crypto casinos and pseudo-banks selling you the idea that gambling is good. That's just the world as it is.
For that reason, funding a conference like this is genuinely difficult. When you're the one staring at a venue invoice, and you know half your speaker list won't show up unless you cover their flights, you end up working with people you'd rather not work with. Not because you sold out, but because there was no other way to pay for it.
So yes, we drifted. Not on purpose, but because of the economic reality.
But we never drifted so far that we've lost sight of where we're supposed to be.
So are are we going?
Bitcoin is a silent revolution. If you're not willing to be part of that, peacefully, but without compromise, then you're not adopting Bitcoin, and you're not exiting fiat.
Bitcoin is a paradigm shift. Paradigm shifts are not easy, gentle, comfortable, or profitable. They are, by definition, disruptive, unfamiliar and unsettling for almost everyone.
We don't know if this will work. We have no idea if we can even fund a conference like this going forward. And, if we take this stance, most of the sponsors who might have thrown us scraps will walk away.
@abcptza becomes a genuine grassroots conference, funded by ticket sales or not funded at all. The sponsors left willing to stand with us will be few. And none of them are the biggest players in this space.
But we'd rather attempt it that way, and fail, than keep drifting toward a place where the conference does not make it absolutely clear.
Adopting Bitcoin is all about exiting fiat.
And that is non-negotiable.
Tickets for 2027:
pretix.eu/abct/2027
Conference website:
za27.adoptingbitcoin.org
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El Flaco retweeted
Bravo!
The threat to the revolution launched by Satoshi is cooption. Who cares about the price of bitcoin if we are not free? Who cares about 'success' if it means mimicking the system we profess to want to replace?
This path is so much harder, but it's the right one
The threat to the revolution launched by Satoshi is cooption. Who cares about the price of bitcoin if we are not free? Who cares about 'success' if it means mimicking the system we profess to want to replace?
This path is so much harder, but it's the right one
Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town (@abcptza) has reached a crossroads.
For three years running, 2024, 2025 and 2026, we hosted three successful conferences, co-hosted by @Machankura8333 and ourselves, and run entirely by unpaid volunteers, without massive sponsorship. Pulling that off, s a significant milestone.
We also achieved something we set out to do: reach large civil society organizations and, through them, reach their members. And we didn't know who those organizations would be, but they showed up.
John Endres (@senderman) of the Institute for Race Relations (@IRR_SouthAfrica), Russell Lamberti (@RussLamberti) representing Sakeliga (@Sakeliga), and David Ansara (@DavidAnsara) of the Free Market Foundation (@FMFSouthAfrica) all spoke in 2024, 2025 and/or 2026.
This list is not exhaustive. And these aren't fringe groups. They're among South Africa's largest and longest-standing advocates for free market policy. And they have fought an uphill battle for exactly the kind of direction this country needs.
Our goal was to get them speaking to their audiences about Bitcoin, and that's happened.
Both The Free Market Foundation and the Institute for Race Relations have since published papers, videos and/or podcasts on Bitcoin:
freemarketfoundation.com/state-proof-mo…
dailyfriend.co.za/2026/03/05/bit…
While both organizations occasionally discussed Bitcoin prior to 2024, since then both groups have formalized and significantly expanded their public commentary on the topic.
I'm not claiming we caused that single-handedly, but we definitely contributed to it, even if only in a small way.
So why are we at a Crossroads?
In 2026, the Treasury and the South African Reserve Bank dropped regulatory bombshells that were, to put it mildly, insane.
The direction they want to take is a walled garden: you can hold Bitcoin, you can use Bitcoin, but only through a regulated intermediary they control, one that can force you to sell at a price of their choosing.
Calling that a watered down version of Bitcoin is an understatement. It isn't a watered down version of Bitcoin. It's entirely fake.
And yes, there's been a reprieve with the SA Government recently backing down under intense pressure, but it's clear that they'll attempt it again.
That leaves us in a position where we have to decide: where does this conference go next? And the answer is right there in the name.
Adopting Bitcoin.
Adopting Bitcoin implies exiting fiat. You are not adopting Bitcoin if you are not exiting fiat. And if you claim to adopt Bitcoin while weaseling your way further into the fiat world, you are not adopting Bitcoin.
It’s quite simple. But easy to lose sight of.
"I'm into Bitcoin, but the fiat world is what it is, we have to play by their rules, we have to work with them, and we have to accommodate them."
This may all be true. But it invariably turns into an excuse to not exit fiat. And that's not a position we're willing to keep entertaining. And if you don't get that, what are we doing here?
To be clear, this isn't about refusing to talk to anyone. It's about being unambiguous about our goal. Adopting Bitcoin means actively and continuously looking for every opportunity to move further away from fiat.
Adopting Bitcoin does not mean buying Bitcoin and settling into fiat more comfortably while the BTC/FIAT price goes up.
This isn't a rebrand.
It's a re-alignment, a return to where @abcptza was always meant to go, but were slowly pulled away from by the realities of running a conference.
The companies that make real money are the ones that find ways to weave themselves back into the fiat system. It's brutally hard for a genuinely Bitcoin-only fiat-exiting company to turn a profit.
The massively profitable players in this space are crypto casinos and pseudo-banks selling you the idea that gambling is good. That's just the world as it is.
For that reason, funding a conference like this is genuinely difficult. When you're the one staring at a venue invoice, and you know half your speaker list won't show up unless you cover their flights, you end up working with people you'd rather not work with. Not because you sold out, but because there was no other way to pay for it.
So yes, we drifted. Not on purpose, but because of the economic reality.
But we never drifted so far that we've lost sight of where we're supposed to be.
So are are we going?
Bitcoin is a silent revolution. If you're not willing to be part of that, peacefully, but without compromise, then you're not adopting Bitcoin, and you're not exiting fiat.
Bitcoin is a paradigm shift. Paradigm shifts are not easy, gentle, comfortable, or profitable. They are, by definition, disruptive, unfamiliar and unsettling for almost everyone.
We don't know if this will work. We have no idea if we can even fund a conference like this going forward. And, if we take this stance, most of the sponsors who might have thrown us scraps will walk away.
@abcptza becomes a genuine grassroots conference, funded by ticket sales or not funded at all. The sponsors left willing to stand with us will be few. And none of them are the biggest players in this space.
But we'd rather attempt it that way, and fail, than keep drifting toward a place where the conference does not make it absolutely clear.
Adopting Bitcoin is all about exiting fiat.
And that is non-negotiable.
Tickets for 2027:
pretix.eu/abct/2027
Conference website:
za27.adoptingbitcoin.org
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