Scaling Bitcoin Trip 2017

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the Scaling Bitcoin 2017 conference at Stanford, and thought I would share what I've seen there with friends to enjoy also. I took notes throughout the conference to help me pay more attention to what was being talked about, and have a reference for future purposes. I tried to be impartial and only write down what people were saying. You can check out these notes here.

The conference was interesting to me because I was able to get a closer look at the crypto community, the drama that happens within in, and get acquainted with technical concepts. There was a big focus on how to scale Bitcoin, with many talks on payment channels - which allow multiple payments to happen off-chain without committing every payment to blockchain - as a way of enabling more transactions.

Outside of technicalities (which are all in the Google doc, if you are curious), my thoughts about the crypto space haven't changed too much after the conference. The space is still very immature, with many of the talks heavily idea based without tangible results. The space still feels very scammy, with many people involved for the wrong reasons (i.e. greed). I am also more convinced than ever to be distrustful of anyone that tries to do an ICO.

A really interesting anecdote I heard at the conference was about how one of the co-founders of the lightning network decided to sell out and use his reputation to make money off of an ICO. It's common knowledge that the ICO space right now is saturated with people involved for the wrong intentions, and it is incredibly dissapointing to me that someone who was in a position of power and influence used it to pull off a get-rich-quick scheme.

Overall, I really enjoyed this trip and am extremely thankful that I had the opportunity to go.