Photo by @scdaustin

Yesterday at #LeanCoffeeKL 96 we gathered to discuss cryptocurrencies. The meetup was really successful with a lot of new people coming out early in the morning to discuss and learn about bitcoin and other related topics. The spread of experience was pretty vast with long-time miners and evangelists to people who had only heard of bitcoin “5 days ago”. We also had some (non-tech) finance people around which lended an excellent balance. There were far too many topics to discuss in just an hour, and the discussion spilled out into the lounge area for about another hour. There will be a follow-up, and there is definitely enough interest to spin this off into its own group.

I look forward to seeing a monthly Okanagan bitcoin group. There are so many angles to learn and discuss centered on this topic, for example:

• how to open a wallet (would make for a great hacknight)
• securing your wallet
• paper wallets and ASIC wallets
• is BTC an asset, currency, money, or all of the above?
• investment and arbitrage
• altcoins and their applications
• the politics of bitcoin
• the technical aspect of the bitcoin protocol

I hope to see the group tackle each of these topics and more. If you are interested, please come out to #LeanCoffeeKL 97 – Cryptocurrencies Part 2 to register your interest and help shape the group that will grow out of this meeting.