Bitcoin supporters from around the world will flock to the Metro Toronto Convention centre next month, April 11-13, for the first annual Bitcoin Expo 2014, an event that has already generated serious buzz.
A few things readers should know about Bitcoin Expo 2014:
1. One of the world’s most active Bitcoin entrepreneurs and supporters, Toronto’s Anthony Di Iorio, is organizing the event.
2. The Bitcoin Expo will feature “probably the top speaker list that’s been put together in the Bitcoin space”.
3. Canada’s “amazing” Bitcoin community currently being built up is among the stronger/ mature ones in the world.
As Di Iorio explained to us, the Expo will feature speakers like MC Andreas Antonopoulos, “probably the most recognized person in the bitcoin space right now,” a Bitcoin entrepreneur and founder of RootEleven, a technology incubator working with digital crypto-currencies. Cody Wilson is also a featured speaker, a Texan crypto-anarchist and founder of Defense Distributed, the non-profit digital publisher behind the infamous 3D printed gun (which I’m not sure should be celebrated or criticized). Finally Stefan Molyneux will also speak, the host of Freedomain Radio, the largest and most popular philosophy show in the world. In total there’s over 50 speakers coming, including Di Orio himself.
Bitcoin Expo 2014 is being put on by the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada, which is a national non-profit organization for Bitcoin in Canada, that Di Orio helped found and is a board member. (He’s also involved at the international level too, with the Global Bitcoin Alliance, centred in Berlin.)
The Expo has been planned for nearly eight months now and will feature speakers, a hackathon, an art show and more. It already has strong sponsors in etherium, a “revolutionary new platform” for distributed applications, CAVirtex, Canada’s Bitcoin exchange platform, QuickBT, a Canadian site that faciliates Bitcoin purchase through Interac, and Shopify.
For Di Orio, he’s been to at least a dozen Bitcoin conferences around the world over the past 12 months, and Bitcoin Expo 2014 will importantly be focused on Bitcoin community-building, rather than business. He said some of the events this year that were more criticized than others had too much of a business-focus.
“My favourite one was in Argentina and it was such an amazing community of people, the most passionate I’ve ever seen,” he told BetaKit. “We want to tackle the societal aspects of bitcoin, the financial aspects, the technological aspects, and the legal/regulatory aspects.”
He’s most excited about the speaker list coming to Toronto, the best crew of experts thus far in any Bitcoin-focused conference. “I think we’re very early in the Bitcoin space, but anything that we can do to make it grow faster, that’s what I’m passionate about,” said Di Orio. “The main purpose is to have events that can show people how we can speed the growth of Bitcoin communities.”
Judging by some of Di Orio’s comments, it’s looking like Bitcoin Expo 2014 might turn out to be the world’s de facto Bitcoin event. We hope so too.
