Memory: London 2012 – Second Bitcoin Conference

Abstract: Looking back at the history of Bitcoin, we can trace it back to the 2012 London Bitcoin Conference eight years ago. This report summarizes the speeches of the main speakers and reveals the radical anti-establishment political views that dominated the Bitcoin community at the time in the anti-terrorist movement. We will also introduce some early pioneers of technologies such as smart contracts and distributed exchanges, the main focus of the time, and the optimistic message given in the 2012 "State of Bitcoin" speech.

In this article, we review the 2012 London Bitcoin Conference, which took place in the United Kingdom (Russell Square) on September 15-16, 2012. The main conference organizer was Amir Taaki (Genjix), who was probably the most personal thought leader in the universe at the time. This was the first major Bitcoin conference that this author attended, and the second major Bitcoin conference after the 2011 Prague conference, which was attended by many of the attendees. Up to this point, my interactions with the Bitcoin community had been either over the internet or in one-on-one meetings, so this conference was a new and exciting experience. The event was by far the most interesting cryptocurrency conference I have ever attended, and I believe this report may provide useful insights into the cyberpunk culture of the time.

Tickets for the event cost £50, which you could pay in cash at the door or in advance in Bitcoin. “Pay cash at the door” was just too outrageous for me! If you don’t spend Bitcoin when you attend a Bitcoin conference, then when will you spend it? So I sent eight Bitcoins to the organizer and bought my ticket.
This report is based largely on memory, and some notes I took at the time, so it may contain some inaccuracies. There are several talks available on YouTube, and where these are provided I have provided references.
Speaker
Jeff Garzik and Pieter Wuille (The State of Bitcoin)

The most interesting talk at the event was given by Jeff Garzik and Pieter Wuille. Entitled “The State of Bitcoin 2012”, it provided insights into network statistics and the prospects for the technology to develop. This is the only talk for which I have taken extensive notes to this day. Most of the other speakers at the event were interested in Bitcoin, but usually from a specific angle: activism, anarcho-capitalism, or a general interest in distributed computer networks. Both Pieter and Jeff at this point were clearly deeply rooted in the seeds that Bitcoin had planted, working on what would later be called the “reference client” software, or simply focusing on Bitcoin research. I remember Pieter introducing himself in an extremely humble way, saying that he was introduced to the Bitcoin community by Mike Hearn, who worked at Google (and was the speaker the day before).
The presentation began by explaining the challenges of Bitcoin’s development, comparing Bitcoin’s rapid development to repairing and upgrading an airplane flying through a storm at 300 mph. Pieter and Jeff then detailed some of the key software improvements they are making, including:

P2SH
Make block downloads faster
A more powerful P2P network
IPv6 and Tor support
New User Interface
Increase transaction fees
Add support for signing messages with private keys
Importing a private key
Raw Transaction RPC API
P2pool Support
They also provided some statistics that indicate the strong growth and health of the Bitcoin network.
Network Hash Rate
2009 0.01 Ghash/second
2010 103 Ghash/second
2011 8,000 Ghash/second
2012 19,000 Ghash/second
Number of transactions
2009 219
2010 100,000
2011 2,000,000
2012 5,000,000
Bitcoin Price
$0.03 in 2009
$0.3 in 2010
2011 $5.0
2012 $ 10.0

The next positive comment was a mention that Deepbit no longer has over 50% of the hash rate share, which indicates that the Bitcoin network is maturing and becoming more decentralized. Despite these positive statistics, their tone at the time was somewhat moderate and cautious, with both speakers warning that the Bitcoin system is highly experimental and fraught with risk.
Friendly reminder: Don’t invest your life savings in Bitcoin

—( Pieter Wuille and Jeff Garzik at the 2012 London Bitcoin Conference)
Mike Hearn (Developer)
The clearest speaker was Mike Hearn, and the dense 30-minute session was filled with many exciting ideas that were already on the horizon a few years ago. Mike explained the mechanics of smart contracts, smart property, security contracts, P2P decentralized bond markets, P2P decentralized exchanges, and P2P decentralized investment funds. The ideas mentioned were the forerunners of many technologies and systems that we have developed in the field over the past few years. Some of these have failed miserably due to fundamental flaws, while others are still being researched, and some have only recently begun to gain traction and have achieved some success. For example, Ethereum (smart contracts), Slockit (smart assets), Uniswap (p2p decentralized exchanges), and The DAO (P2P decentralized investment funds). There were many visionary ideas at such an early stage, and many of them were the forerunners of the final technologies and systems. I remember that Mike's speech was excellent at the time.

It was clear to me that Mike sees some things differently than Amir and some community members who, like Amir, see themselves as “real radicals” or anti-establishment anarcho-capitalists. Mike seemed sympathetic to the disintermediation and decentralization of these political visions, but it was clear to me that his style was very different from Amir’s. I did find some tension between the two and their respective approaches, but it was definitely not the main feature or takeaway from the conference.
Just three years later, in January 2016, Mike Hearn announced in his famous article “Resolution of the Bitcoin Experiment” that he would quit Bitcoin, mainly regarding issues related to the blockchain war. At that time, the “real radical” Amir was not involved in Bitcoin trading, but was fighting with the Kurdish militia in Syrian Kurdistan.
Max Keiser (Max Keiser financial critic)

Russia Today TV host and financial journalist Max Keiser was one of the star attractions of the conference. While not going too deep into the technical aspects of Bitcoin, Max’s presentation provided an intellectual background to the financial and macroeconomic environment in which Bitcoin exists, which he believes is very favorable to Bitcoin. He repeated many of the anti-bank, anti-establishment themes found on the TV show, slamming several high-profile bankers like Jon Corzine and Jamie Dimon for a list of crimes such as re-assumption, “negative reserve banking,” robbery, money laundering, and fraud. Max began his talk about Bitcoin by mentioning that PayPal censored his “ Pirate My Film ” website because it had “Pirate” in its name, which prompted him to adopt Bitcoin as his only payment method.
Richard Stallman (Richard Stallman Free Software Advocate)

The speaker was free software advocate Richard Stallman. Richard is an outsider to the Bitcoin community, like Max, and provided context for Bitcoin from his areas of expertise. In his case, he spoke about digital copyright, free software, digital privacy, and electronic surveillance.
Birgitta Jonsdottir (Pirate Party)
Another notable speaker was Birgitta Jonsdottir, an anarchist and member of the Icelandic Pirate Party, which she co-founded. Like Max and Richard, she is not an expert on Bitcoin, but she has an anti-establishment political ideology that many in the community share. She talked about Julian Assage (whom she met in Iceland a few years ago) and WikiLeaks.

Cody Wilson (3D Printed Gun)
Another self-proclaimed activist who spoke at the event was Cody Wilson. Cody spoke about his project to produce an open-source 3D printed gun, which was only two months old at the time. Despite the anarchist nature of the audience, I remember Cody being asked quite challenging philosophical questions about his ideas, such as where the line is for potentially dangerous technology.
In 2015, Cody ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the Bitcoin Foundation’s board of directors, with his main campaign message being that he wanted to destroy the foundation because, in his opinion, Bitcoin didn’t need such an organization. In 2018, Cody was arrested in Taiwan on suspicion of sexual assault and was eventually extradited to the United States for a crime he committed in Texas.

James McCarthy (GBLSE)
Another presentation that stood out to me was that given by James McCarthy (Nefario) on the Global Bitcoin Stock Exchange (GBLSE). This platform could be the subject of another full report. GBLSE is essentially a capital market for stocks and bonds, where people can raise money for projects in Bitcoin in exchange for shares. James explained that the advantages of his platform (potential real-world anonymity for issuers and issuance costs) would be greatly reduced. For example, one could raise a few hundred pounds instead of millions on a major stock exchange. He also explained that Bitcoin needed capital markets and other financial infrastructure to succeed. At the time, GBLSE was performing very well and was at the peak of its major growth cycle, averaging millions of dollars in daily trading volume.
Our experience is that anonymous people raising money through equity doesn’t work.
James originally set it up as a hobby but didn’t take it too seriously, so I think the platform lacks the strong infrastructure necessary to succeed. James mentioned that someone set up a cannabis farm asset on the platform while he was away for the weekend and it started trading. When he came back, he had to shut it down due to fears of a regulatory crackdown. He mentioned that it would be great if there was a completely anonymous dark capital market where people could raise money for anything, which would excite the audience.
In my opinion, it goes without saying that most of the projects listed on the platform were scams or Ponzi schemes and many investors lost their money, so the platform eventually had to shut down.

Casascius Physical Bitcoin

There were a few booths outside the main lecture room, basically three or four tables with various items on them. I remember there was an experimental Avalon ASIC Bitcoin miner on display on one table. A giant device that looked to weigh 30 kg, the device was not yet available for sale and was in the mass production stage. It was later sold at the event auction.
By far the most popular table was that of Mike Caldwell. He was selling his Casascius physical Bitcoins. On the table were piles of Bitcoin coins of different denominations, including 1 BTC, 2 BTC, 10 BTC, 100 BTC, and even thousands of coins of larger denominations. From what I observed, Mike had a great year, selling many units of Bitcoin for cash.
in conclusion
My main takeaway from the event was that the attendees at that Bitcoin conference were very knowledgeable about Bitcoin, they were smart, excited, and optimistic. However, the attendees all seemed to be skeptical enough about Bitcoin to ask each other some very challenging and pertinent questions, which I found very impressive. There were real debates about politics, economics, mathematics, cryptography, finance, digital privacy, and computer science. Most people seemed curious and open-minded, and the place was far less cultish and delusional than I had imagined. At that point, no one seemed to think that Bitcoin's success was inevitable, on the contrary, most people were very curious and skeptical about it.

In general, delegates expressed great sympathy for the idea that the political-economic system is corrupt and that the most effective way forward is to help ensure the collapse of the system or to ensure the relevance of the established systems by reducing them and using alternative systems. Bitcoin, along with other technologies such as Tor, WikiLeaks, Bittorrent and other DNS systems, was seen as a tool that could help achieve this goal.
After the event, I remember thinking I should buy more Bitcoin. However, the price of 1BTC was really expensive at over $10 at the time. I thought it would be better to wait for the next better buying opportunity before investing more.
Article translated from Bitmex Research