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My Accelerating Bitcoin experience started with disconcert and disappointment. I was in Brazil, planning to return to Argentina, when I received confirmation that the Accelerating Bitcoin production team accepted my talk “Bitcoin Fiction: The New Orange Pill.” I had to go to Paraguay. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. Since my Airbnb was about to expire, I just bought a bus ticket to Asunción, and the adventure began.
A few days after I arrived, they told me my talk didn’t fit on the Accelerating Bitcoin schedule after all.
It wasn’t a total surprise, to be honest. Bitcoin fiction is at the cutting edge of Bitcoin culture. It’s still not widely recognized in the community, and even less so among newcomers. Bitcoin fiction’s time will come, though. Mark my words.
I stopped working on the slides and refocused my energies on negotiating with the conference’s production team. To their credit, they were communicative and acknowledged my relocation. The days were long and the nights cold, though. The situation was less than ideal, and it took a few days to resolve. In the end, the Accelerating Bitcoin team assigned me a panel on Latin America’s Bitcoin business ecosystem.
An interesting topic, even though it wasn’t my forte.
My Accelerating Bitcoin experience was about to kick into high gear.
Don’t believe Radiohead, meeting people is NOT easy. When I arrived at the initial meet and greet, I knew the Bitcoin Paraguay team from my previous visit, and that was it. Everybody else was a new challenge. Of course, we all had Bitcoin in common and our belief in it smoothed things over, but still. It was awkward. At least for me. Networking is not my strong suit.
In a traditional chronicle, I would tell you exactly who I met and our topics of conversation, but that’s not what Bitcoin is about. Doxxing people is easy, and I won’t make that mistake. However, I can tell you this: I spoke mostly about Bitcoin with the panelists and staff of Accelerating Bitcoin. And we all ate meat.
Reality turned corporate while entering Paseo La Galeria’s business tower—carpeted floors, air conditioning, blazer-wearing people. Outside the Event Center, a couple of portable studios from Asunción’s media waited for speakers and VIPs to interview.
The Nakamoto Stage felt gigantic, as it could accommodate around 200 people and had a soundproof cabin for the live interpreter. The Cypherpunk Stage had a capacity of 25 to 30 people and an unusual characteristic: it was a silent stage. To listen to the presentations, the public had to wear headphones. This great idea and implementation guaranteed that the sound from both stages wouldn’t interfere with each other.
Accelerating Bitcoin’s showroom was relatively small, 10 booths total. My favorites were Bitronics, with a wide variety of open-source miners, and Fundación Guadalupe with its new generation of Bitcoin educators. My least favorite was X4T, apparently the first licensed crypto exchange in Paraguay. The reason is simple: believe it or not, X4T doesn’t buy or sell Bitcoin.
Besides that, there was a VIP area that connected to both stages, and that was it.
All in all, it was a small conference, but all areas were packed most of the time. The production team did it the Bitcoin way, administering their resources properly. Nothing was wasted. This was Accelerating Bitcoin’s first edition and, considering the success, there’s nowhere to go but up.
There were over 70 speakers, but the conference’s biggest draws were Jan3’s Samson Mow and Lunaticoin, host of the biggest Bitcoin podcast in Spanish. They both participated in a few panels and delivered well-attended solo talks. Mow’s thesis was that Paraguay is in the perfect position to issue Bitcoin bonds, and Luna’s was that Bitcoin already won. This thread by fellow speaker Arata summarizes and translates Lunaticoin’s talk.
Another unusual characteristic of Accelerating Bitcoin was that there were talks and panels in Spanish, English, and Portuguese. Brazil is right next door, and there’s a sizable community of Brazilian Bitcoiners already living in Paraguay. Among the Portuguese-speaking panelists were Isabela Coser, Fabio Silva, Lucas Ferreira, Eduardo Jatahy, the already mentioned Seiiti Arata, and Blink’s own Eduarda Lobato AKA Madu.
The Bitcoin Paraguay organization was strongly represented by organizers Bruno Vaccotti and Lorena Almada, educator Nelson Cardozo, rising star Viviana Van Cayzeele, and founder Jan Kotas. In a recent tweet, Kotas reflected on the experience: “With the success of the Accelerating Bitcoin conference and the rapid growth of the Bitcoin Paraguay community, Paraguay is emerging as a leading Bitcoin hub in South America.”
Also worth highlighting, Accelerating Bitcoin hosted the first-ever presentation of Nostr-based Fanfares, a direct-to-consumer service to sell all kinds of content for Bitcoin.
Last but not least, yours truly hosted a panel titled “Bitcoin Business Innovation in Latin America; with BitDriver’s Napoleón Osorio and Bull Bitcoin’s Micael Margiotta.
Throughout the conference, powerful themes dominated the discourse. Considering Paraguay produces excess hydroelectricity at the Itaipú and Yacyretá dams, it’s no surprise that Bitcoin mining and power generation were among them. The president of ANDE, Paraguay's national electricity grid operator, visited Accelerating Bitcoin and spoke on this topic.
In that regard, Bruno Vaccotti told Cointelegraph:
“Paraguay hosts 3.5% of the Bitcoin network hashrate, the largest share in Latin America, and the potential to double that. Paraguay is an energy exporter, and for us, that is like wasting value because energy is exported at ridiculous prices, at very cheap prices to neighboring countries. They have industrialized with our energy, and Paraguay has been left behind, but today, thanks to the infrastructure we have, Paraguay can consume that energy immediately and continue to sell abroad.”
Now, Paraguay is also becoming a refuge for liberty-seeking expats from all over the world. A recurrent theme on Accelerating Bitcoin was sovereignty, second passports, and the country as a fiscal residency. Among the speakers on this topic was Alex Recouso, CitizenX’s CEO, a specialist in citizenship programs and second passports.
Other Accelerating Bitcoin’s dominant topics were global Bitcoin adoption and education, the ethics behind Bitcoin, and Strategic Bitcoin Reserves.
We can’t close this chronicle without paying homage to the city that hosted Accelerating Bitcoin. Asunción is small for a capital, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in heart. There’s a good vibe current flowing through its streets, a feeling that’s hard to define but easy to pick up. A lot of the special guests discussed this with me or around me at one time or another.
Also, there are portents and signs everywhere. Go no further than this picture Lunaticoin detected in a nearby building:
Personally, I had seen the tweet, and when I left the conference on the second day, I saw the “Luna 21” shining on top of a random building. It was surreal, too good to be true, but there it was. Later on that evening, at the closing party, I asked Lunaticoin about it, and he told me, “It’s too much, right? It could have been any other number, Luna 7, and it wouldn’t have meant anything.” But 21 it was. Satoshi works in mysterious ways.
The Paraguayan Bitcoin community also deserves a special shout-out. They treated the guest as they deserved, and it showed. El Salvador’s Bitcoin Beach team, Mike Peterson and Roman Martínez, felt it and tweeted:
“Accelerating Bitcoin was an amazing first time event. Shout out to the organizers who did such an amazing job focusing on real BTC use and Bitcoin Circular Economies. Paraguay is an amazing place with an exciting Bitcoin community.”
This blog has been covering Bitcoin Paraguay’s evolution, first from a distance and later in person. It’s hard to believe that in just a year and change, the community and their production partners managed to spin up a conference the size of Accelerating Bitcoin, with panelists from all over the world and high signal emanating from every corner. They did it, though, and Blink was there to witness the action.
On a personal note, and this is important, I noticed this: in my first visit, I participated in a My First Bitcoin workshop for Bitcoin educators. This is how I described the experience:
“The group was extremely varied, both in age and in Bitcoin knowledge. There were university students and senior citizens. There were experts and complete novices. We all had a blast, every single one of us was engaged from start to finish.”
Well, I’m happy to report that eight or nine of the assistant to that workshop were in the Accelerating Bitcoin conference, all living the Bitcoin experience in their own way. Each one focusing on their innate abilities and relating to Bitcoin through them. This speaks to the power of that particular workshop, of the Bitcoin community in Paraguay, and, of course, of Bitcoin itself. It was beautiful to see.
Keep an eye on Accelerating Bitcoin; this conference will probably grow into something special in the following years.
