[Bitcoin Munich] January Event Review

A week ago we held our monthly workshop and presentations event. As always, we started with pizza and drinks.

Due to the lack of sponsoring we had to pass around the hat this time. Thanks everyone again for contributing!

Also we had no official speakers this time, so it was planned that we'd just relax ("streamin' and chill") and watch relevant talks of the recent 33rd Chaos Communication Congress, as some of the Munich community were there, and it was quite a blast, as every year! And although the Chaos Computer Club is very aligned with non-commercial (or even anti-commercial) values of Hacker Ethic, and thus crypto-currencies and blockchains are usually not given much room, many people from the space nevertheless were hanging out there, and besides a lot of self-organized sessions there were three very good major talks about the subject.

As we had quite knowledgeable people present this time, eager to interact, we extended our opening news section to more than an hour, making it practically the main part of this time's event. We were covering and discussing the following news articles:

• Bitcoin breaks $1,000 level, highest in more than 3 years, followed by price discussions, as it dropped again after that peak. Also speculating as to the reasons. It's always China, of course!

• A Proof of Stake Design Philosophy -- Ethereum explaining their Proof-of-Stake strategy, and their points against Proof-of-Work.

• Almost as an antithesis: Why 2017 Will Prove 'Blockchain' Was a Bad Idea (also referring last month's covered article Goldman Sachs Leaves R3 Blockchain Consortium) -- Maybe the Bitcoin core developers got some things right after all, in contrast to other crypto-currencies, and maybe the Blockchain hype will fade, or the distinctions will become clearer this year (open censorship-resistant crypto-currencies vs "Blockchain" as a purely inspirational term for banks and corporations to update their legacy infrastructure, still as a closed black box for outsiders and not using an actual "blockchain" data-structure at all in the end, i.e. an entirely different category altogether).

• The very controversial alternative "Trust-your-Intel" approach to payment channels: The Teechan Solution: Scaling Bitcoin With Trusted Hardware -- The gut feeling among crypto enthusiasts says "just no", and that you can never trust hardware, but admittedly, none of us has really deep enough knowledge about the subject.

It was nice that we could also include newcomers in the discussions to explain some basic concepts "along the way", making it clear that people should stay away from those cloud mining scams that are unfortunately popping up more and more also in the "real world", trying to convey our long-standing philosophy of "If you don't hold it, you don't own it".

With some snacks we were watching 2 of the 3 originally proposed talks from the congress, while some conversations were still going on during the streaming, and after.

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Introduction to Blockchains

This is a very good introduction talk about how (real, actual, proof-of-work-based) blockchains work on a technical level.

Target audience: Intended for hackers and developers, but should also be understandable for an audience with a financial background and just some technological affinity.

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A world without Blockchains

In our community we've become used to the promises and wonders of the blockchain. But "how does national and international money transfer work in the world of banks?" How do those legacy systems work they use until today? Let's find out.

Target audience: Newcomers and everyone

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All in all, a rather informal evening this time, still we got good resonance. We still see a lot of need for clarifications, and we'll continue on our mission.