The Polish Bitcoin Embassy organised a meetup which took place in Warsaw, Poland on October 2, 2014. About twenty Bitcoin enthusiasts, mostly entrepreneurs and programmers, listened to presentations and shared experience.
Four topics were taken up for a panel discussion: Open Bazaar, Ethereum, Namecoin and the concept of decentralized cloud file storage using storj.io.
The participants discussed the issue with the .bit domains purchased with Namecoin – staying visible for the end-user’s DNS, yet avoiding a potential governmental censorship. While a protocol requires a special patch for the domain names resolving units on a client side, it remains unsettled. However, Maciej Ziółkowski, the founder of the Polish Embassy, supposed that the leading developers would include it into the next versions of their browsers within a year or two.
The decentralized cloud file storage problems are yet to be solved.
The Ethereum concept was explained as an application helping to decentralize monopolized by the government issues. One of the debaters gave an example of contracts that may be programmed and put into Ethereum so that the program itself contains the full contract rules (including the rules of arbitrage for the non-computer solvable issues, like estimating the damage and compensation adequate to the particular road accident) while the Ethereum itself guarantees that the contract will be unchangeable and unremovable.
Maciej Ziółkowski has also presented the first episode of the Bitcoin Embassy TV.
The presenters shared news on PayPal starting to accept Bitcoins. So there are over 41 million of Bitcoin users worldwide, and the number is still increasing. All the while, the value of the Bitcoin-buyable goods market doubled within the last year. Another news came from the Isle of Man where taxes can be paid in Bitcoin.
Maciej has also interviewed Rafał Pindral, the President of WeMine4You which is the first Polish company that enabled buying Bitcoins via SMS in Poland.
Swedish Bitcoin enthusiast was a special meetup guest. She was telling about the current Bitcoin situation in Sweden and South Africa.
In Sweden, there are some Bitcoin enthusiasts; even the Bitcoin Party managed to achieve some small successes in the last election. However, the concept behind the Bitcoin is not convincing for many Swedes because they like the state, the government, the banks, and the centralization of the most important issues, including the currency.
The situation is different in the South Africa where people do not like centralizing and governmental control as much as in Sweden. However, the huge expenses of the Internet in the South Africa are still the impassable barrier for many people. Therefore, the Bitcoin is not very popular there yet.
The meetups are back after a holiday break and will occur every other Thursday in the Embassy on Krucza Street in Warsaw. Everybody is welcome – there are no entry fees.
By Wojciech Pietrzak for CEX.IO