While the Bitcoin Foundation announcing last week that next year’s conference will be in Asia, the area is becoming increasingly popular for significant gatherings in the community.
The Bitcoin scene in Asia is one being eyed by many as a melting pot of frantic innovation and expansion against a backdrop of wildly varying government legislation. This year, however, prominent Bitcoin events are hardly in short supply in the Far East, with the Inside Bitcoins Conference due to take place next month in Hong Kong.
Documenting the changes
Set to be the largest Bitcoin conference in Asia, the event will take place on 24 and 25 June and gather over 45 speakers for more than 20 seminar sessions.
Bobby Lee of BTC China is a confirmed keynote speaker, who will give a speech on “Bitcoin in China: sustained generation of products and services.”
Other prominent events include ANXBTC CEO Ken Lo leading a panel on “Bitcoin, remittances and the developing world” and Ron Cao of Lightspeed China Partners giving advice on Bitcoin investment.
The conference will be attended by a plethora of significant figures in the Bitcoin community, including Brock Pierce of the Bitcoin Foundation and Zhang Weiwu, an entrepreneur whose recent article on Chinese policy towards Bitcoin shed valuable light on the changing climate in the country.
Previous installments of the Inside Bitcoins series have been met with considerable success and satisfaction, and Hong Kong lies at the start of an international tour of conferences, which will include Singapore and Seoul in Decmber this year.
For the Asian Bitcoin community, anything could happen in the gap between the Hong Kong and later conferences, and it will be interesting indeed to observe what form the speeches will take as 2014 draws to a close.
Adam M Meckler, CEO of Mediabistro Inc, the organization behind the conferences, told The Asset, “Remember the gold rush of the 19th century? Asia is going through a similar period, except this time it’s not around gold, but bitcoins,” adding that “The feverish passion for cryptocurrency exuded by the people in Asia makes the region a very interesting market.”