Hey Jonathan.
Hey.
Great to have you here and for a Fiendish & Friends special.
It's the first special right?
It's the first special.
So you are special in that it's the first special.
So for those of you listening, this is recorded, this is a Fiendish and Friends special with Jonathan Silverblood,
software developer for General Protocols and organiser of the BCH Bliss conference,
joins to talk about the hottest UTXO conference in the world.
BCH Bliss is held in Libiana, the capital city of Slovenia, this May, to celebrate the BCH 2025 Velma upgrade
and to gather the brightest UTXO builders from around the world under one roof
to showcase what they are working on to make the world a better and freer place for everyone.
So Jonathan is here to let us know what to expect, what talks are being held, who is coming
and everything surrounding this future-oriented conference.
So yeah, Jonathan, thanks for joining us today.
Yeah, happy to be here.
So BCH Bliss tickets are live and from what I've seen, they're sounding like hotcakes.
I see close to 30% of the tickets have already been sold, but I'm sure that there are many out there
who are waiting for a little more information about Bliss 2025 conference before pulling the trigger.
So now is your chance to pitch BCH Bliss.
Alright, so why should you come to BCH Bliss?
Well, if you're a developer who likes the idea of free money for everyone,
then BCH Bliss is a place where you can meet people who are like-minded
and are working on the same goal as you are.
If you're not a developer, but you still like the idea of free money for everyone, you know,
peer-to-peer cash, then BCH Bliss is a chance to come together and celebrate the upgrade
together with other people who share your thoughts and ideas.
If you're not actively working on this, but you're just curious,
then this is a great place to be converted, to come over and join the dark side.
We have cookies.
Okay, come over and join the dark side.
The dark side being a world of liberty and freedom and separating money from the state.
Yes, fantastic.
So I'm really excited.
I'm really honored to be here on this listening.
I was the first BCH Bliss last year as an attendee, also a speaker.
And this is one of the most enjoyable conferences that I've been to.
It's full of really intelligent, really smart people.
And the very humble people coming together,
showcasing what they're doing in the ecosystem is really exciting.
I was thinking about who's going to be speaking.
So it's a three-day schedule, from what I understand.
So it's 50% longer than last year.
And there's going to be lots of time doing, you know, with speakers and also showcasing products.
But is it possible to have a bit of a rundown on who's speaking at the conference
and sort of an idea of the topics that they're going to be covering?
Yeah, sure.
So first, let me just correct you.
It's actually not 50% longer.
What happened here is that we extended to three days instead of two.
But we actually shortened the time for each day slightly.
This is one of the things we learned from last year that it's very difficult to keep attention
and engagement up during very long days.
And so we're trying to make a better balance between how much time,
like we keep pumping out new information to the users
and how much time we give them to interact, engage, and do other things.
But generally, yeah, it's longer.
It's just not 50% longer.
As for who's coming, it's generally a mix with favors, technical presentations.
The conference is mostly focused on celebrating the builders in the space.
And so it can get a bit deep.
If you like the deep technical side, you should absolutely come.
It might be that some of the presentations simply aren't deep enough for you.
But I can guarantee you, if that is the case,
then the people you meet there are going to be deep enough for you.
So yeah.
As for who will actually be speaking, we will have speakers from a wide range of projects.
And most of them will cover projects built on smart contracts in one way or another,
or that utilizes the Bitcoin Cash scripting engine.
For example, if you go to the website on bliss.cash,
you can see that there's a presentation on a fifth of gaming,
which is a platform for making gaming sessions more fun and engaging,
recurring and having competitions.
There's a talk on Cash Script and how to use it.
It might be focused on just debugging, because that's a pretty cool topic.
Or it might be slightly broader.
There's some new information coming out on the future of the Moria stablecoin
and potential for on-chain oracles, a different kind than those we have today.
There are some discussions going into depth on what the changes for this year,
the upgrades, are actually doing, how they will be meaningful and how one can use them.
So there'll be a broad range of topics, mostly covering development in one way or another.
And one of those speakers, I understand, is Peter Reisen from Bitcoin Unlimited.
And the topic he's discussing is beyond software.
Peter is someone that is very well known within the wider Bitcoin community.
Is it possible to have a teaser of what beyond software is about?
It's alluding to this is maybe somewhere in the hardware direction, this topic.
Yes. Peter Reisen, he's a guy who's been around for a very long time.
He was there back when BU was trying to raise the block sizes on Bitcoin Core, the BTC network.
And he's been holding presentations at places like BitPay and Coinbase.
He's a pretty well-read and researched guy.
And he's going to have a discussion or a presentation on how we can take the network we have today,
the consensus rules, and apply hardware to make sure that we can actually meet the scaling goals
of 10 transactions per person for 10 billion people per day.
Fantastic. Okay. So very much future-oriented.
Getting the technology lined up for that day when mass adoption is landing at our doorstep,
making sure we've got not just the software side, but the hardware to deal with that.
Great. So I've seen Jeremy has also joined.
Jeremy, I don't know if you want to chime in a little bit to what Jonathan's already said there.
Just thinking about who's going to be, you know, the three days, what's going to be offered.
I know that you've also got some extracurricular stuff and some stuff that's running afterwards or parallel.
Is there anything you'd like to mention about that today?
Yes. Well, I think in my mind, Bliss obviously does have a very strong technical focus in some of the talks.
But I guess the part that I'm always trying to bring to the table and advocate for in our little internal organizing committee
is that it can't be just that.
So we are going to have at least two panels this year have already been scheduled.
And then during the upgrade celebration, we might do a third panel kind of like we did last year.
Personally, I mean, I was biased because I was on the panel, but that was actually one of my favorite moments of the event.
And so I'm really looking forward to getting a few different people up on stage to talk a couple of different trending topics in the community.
And I think that can also help for people who may be honest, deep on the technical stuff.
I think they can sort of appreciate that discussion a bit.
So we're not leaving out anybody who isn't a programmer or a developer.
And as far as being kind of also part of my role, I think to try and help everyone understand that that's far more than just being programmers or software engineers.
It's actually anybody who's involved in promoting BCH, in spreading education, in finding other ways to engage people in the revolution.
Because the fact is we're not going to get 10 billion people transacting 10 times a day if the only audience that we're addressing is the developers, right?
The developers are critical segment of it, but everybody else finds different ways to relate to Bitcoin Cash, whether it's some kind of art.
And in that way, we can already see how impactful the Jessica's and then the Belmer's have been in just putting sort of a face or a bit of a more relatable spin or an engaging way of interacting with the kind of technical
details of the upgrade and promoting the conference itself.
So last year we did the builder events for people who had builder tickets.
There was various kind of social events that we did after hours.
And we're looking to expand that a little more this year.
I don't know if we'll be able to run a full schedule of events for absolutely everyone, but certainly for the builders who are going to be involved.
We'll be bringing back some of the favorites from last year, and we're also going to try and diversify out a little bit more.
I don't know how much more I want to say about that at this stage, but there's various things in the works.
I'm excited. I was part of this last year and it was wicked fun.
I haven't had that much fun in a long time. So for all of you builders out there and, you know, as Jeremy says, it's not just about developers.
It's, you know, all the kind of different things in the space and the entrepreneurs out there and people trying out new stuff.
The space has grown quite a bit. So I think Jonathan's already reached out to a lot of people.
But there's a lot of new wave people coming into the community who are building stuff.
So if you're listening to this and you think that what you're doing is interesting and you can see yourself a builder,
reach out to either Jonathan or Jeremy and speak to them about builders tickets for the conference.
So but just looking at the just really backing up a bit. How much did the tickets cost?
Where can I buy them?
The the tickets are currently on sale. There's a 10 percent discount for the first week so that we can get people to commit early.
Committing early is helpful to us because that means we can better plan our budget and know if we need to expand the event to more people than we have planned for the beginning.
The tickets can be bought on TapSwap.cash, but they can also be bought in other ways.
There are custom arrangements. So if you contact the organizers, we can try to meet you like what works for you.
There's links on the website. So it's quite easy to find a way. Let's go to blitz.cash.
Scroll down to the ticket and click yourself the TapSwap link.
And you should be good to go.
Yeah, so it's a 0.45 BCH for the first week to get a ticket. And that will be going up to 0.5 if you miss that early window and then tickets are sold right up until I guess the event starts on the 13th.
So sell tickets until the 12th.
But it's obviously easier if you get in one ahead of time because we're really hoping. I think we're already looking good so far with our initial sales traction to sell out.
Maybe we'll be able to raise the capacity of the event, but that remains to be seen.
So I think if you want to get a ticket, yeah, you've kind of got to get onto it earlier.
And then if you are going to be involved as a builder or as a sponsor in either of those two cases, there's separate arrangements.
So, yes, you can contact us if you are interested in discussing those details.
You've heard the man go and grab those tickets now. So there was a hundred tickets originally at the start available.
And as said, we've already got through almost 30 percent of them. And so I can highly recommend this conference for everyone that loves Bitcoin Cash.
You should absolutely be there if you can make it. But for anyone that sort of building like cryptocurrencies, likes freedom money, is interested by UTXO and its scalability.
This is exactly the conference for you.
So, yeah, three days. You can see there for the average for the normal ticket holder.
We've got the agenda. You can view that online. You can see the schedule. You can see the talks.
And we've got here also breaks and lunch. So just for everyone that's listening.
And obviously the tickets cover all of the discussion panels and everything's in the schedule.
Is it also covering the lunch?
Yes, it is.
As with last year, the food was quite a success. Everybody really enjoyed the food that we had there provided via the venue. And that was also something I even shouted out on stage to much amusement of various people.
But, yeah, that was a really big party of the event that everyone really enjoyed. And last year we had sort of lunches for everyone and dinners kind of just for the builders.
But because that was just so successful and for everybody who really wanted to be sitting together, eating after the day's events, talking through what was happening, you know, it was a huge bonding moment.
And so many people had so many good moments come out of that. So this year we have sort of changed or increased the food allocation, I guess, so that everybody who buys the ticket gets all the meals covered for lunch and at the end of the day kind of early dinner as well.
Yeah, I can definitely recommend, I'll put my hands up to attest to the fact that the food was really great. Really enjoyed it. There was plenty of it, lots of different variety.
And yeah, I saw a lot of happy faces when eating, so I cannot knock the hotel at all.
So yeah, really, and just breaking that down. So at the current price of Bitcoin Cash, the ticket price of just under half a BCH for the ticket, that's actually under 70 bucks a day over this conference to see the biggest and greatest people in the space to talk about really what they're doing, what they're up to and exciting topics.
Also with your lunch, your coffees, your drinks. That's pretty amazing value for a conference. I'm not even sure if there is a conference in this space that is anywhere close to that value.
So yeah, maybe we could just discuss about that. Like, why, what was the rationale here? You know, what was the driving force for making it so affordable? I guess this is intentional.
Yeah, it's definitely intentional. And I'm sure Jonathan will have some additional thoughts. But I think from my perspective, the idea is that we want to make the event as accessible as possible.
You know, the cryptocurrency calendar is, of course, full of all kinds of different events. And while Blitz is by far and away the best one, especially for the BCH community, it's still true that people have to travel to Slovenia, they need to take time out of their work schedules or other things that they're doing.
And, you know, so in that sense, we have to be sensitive to the costings and we really try and make it as affordable for as many people to come as possible because obviously the way you build trust year on year is you charge a reasonable price and you deliver way more value
than people sort of feel that they paid for and then that earns you loyalty and people will come back the next year, right? And we had such great feedback from the first year that I felt we really hit that mark.
And I think we're trying the same strategy again here today. I'm expecting to see a lot of the same faces and for people who come along a second time, I think they'll be really impressed with just how much value and how good of an experience they have for what is moderately priced on the ticket front.
Of course, yes, we do also have to pay, either you can get the hotel on site or nearby, there's other various places where you can pay in BCH as well, of course, and obviously, tickets in terms of flight tickets or other travel arrangements, some people drove, it does depend where you are.
In any case, several people last year took it as a bit of an all-in holiday, maybe they stayed a couple of extra days and they also explored some different places in Europe that they wanted to visit and so forth.
So in that sense, we really try and signpost it well ahead of time and keep the costs low so that people can find whatever is the optimal arrangement for them in terms of getting value for their sedation.
Yeah, it's definitely great value for money. You mentioned there about people can either stay at the hotel, so the hotel is the Four Points by Sheraton, really nice hotel, very modern, very clean, very attractive hotel for people to stay in, or they can have, of course, they can choose to stay in another hotel, a cheaper hotel potentially in the surrounding area as they choose.
Last year, when for the people that were attending the conference and staying at the Sheraton, they received a bonus, a discount for being part of the conference.
And from what I understand, that's also the case this year, is that right? And if so, when do we get more information about that?
Yeah, it should be the case this year. I'm hoping Jonathan can maybe say when the details are coming, but it should be in the next couple of days. I think we're just clearing up the final details to that and then the information will be on the website.
As far as I'm aware, yes, we are once again helping people get a discount, of course, paid in BCH on site for the hotel to stay directly at the venue, which I do recommend, by the way, it's absolutely amazing.
If you're right there, and then at the end of the day, if you want to have a quick little break or whatever, you don't have to kind of leave the venue or run around anywhere else. And there's always so much going on in terms of people that you just run into at the lobby and you can stay late at the bar in the evening, get some extra value for money there as well.
That's also some of the best bits of the event. So I highly recommend everyone, once it's available, to take advantage of that hotel offering. I will definitely be saying that so much easier.
Jonathan, your mic went off mute. I thought you wanted to say something.
Maybe you are speaking, I can't hear you. Jeremy, can you hear him?
No. Okay.
So Jonathan, if you are speaking, my advice is to close Twitter, and come back on again. Okay, let me get you back on.
Okay, maybe we've lost.
That's Jonathan. Okay, but yeah, sorry, you can still hear me, Jeremy.
Yep, yep.
Great. I can, again, only underscore that last point. So I stayed in the hotel last year, as did almost everyone that went to the conference. There was a few people that stayed in somewhere else just down in the city.
But the hotel was well worth every penny. So with the discounts, it was absolutely for what you got, really good value. And that also included breakfast there. And it was just really nice because in the evening, all of the Bitcoin, the BCHs gathered together at the local bar there.
And every night we were there drinking, you know, beer, cocktails, soft drinks, whatever, you know, people were choosing to drink, and it was all being paid for. Everyone was paying using Bitcoin.
So you didn't have a choice of wallets, unfortunately, so it was using the Elepay system. So you had to be using the Bitcoin.com wallet, as far as I understand that is the only mobile wallet that supports the system, but you can use your Bitcoin.com wallet, which is still non custodial, and pay for your drinks at the bar at the hotel with Bitcoin Cash, which was a wonderful experience.
And that really cemented the sort of like what this conference is about. This is about P2P Cash Bitcoin, the original philosophy. And the hotel is also you can pay for the hotel in Bitcoin Cash too, because the point of sale systems across the whole hotel support.
And I think, as I said, Elepay, so you can use your Bitcoin Cash there, which makes the whole experience really fantastic. So for those of you that are flying and staying at the hotel, you can have the entire journey, even the taxi ride, if organized beforehand, you can have the entire thing paid for entirely in Bitcoin Cash and never have to pull out your wallet, which is quite an amazing experience for anyone, you know, because there are people in the community that refuse to use.
Fear to refuse to use credit cards. And this is a conference that's possible. But there's other reasons why, you know, there's good reasons why Slovenia, Ljubljana was chosen, maybe you could go into that. So why Slovenia, why Ljubljana, of all the places in the world? Why have we settled on this destination?
Yeah, well, it's, it's partly what you're saying there, which is that when we first were conceiving of the events, Jonathan wanted to create in the tradition of BCH, right with Townsville conferences and the same kids conferences. I mean, that's the whole point of what we're doing here in Bitcoin Cash is to create an alternative economy that only runs on on Bitcoin Cash, right? So you should be able to go to a Bitcoin Cash
event, pay everything in Bitcoin Cash and never need to touch fiat currency. If we can't get that right, what are we even doing here really? And that's certainly a bit of a blight on the entire cryptocurrency industry that essentially not many other parts of the ecosystem will actually live up to that problem.
But Bitcoin Cash has a very strong tradition of delivering on that. And we had to set the bar at that level as well. In fact, we took a step further with the Jessica NFT tickets that you can only buy on chain and so forth. But your entire experience there at the venue, and even in the surrounding
city can be paid fully on Bitcoin Cash. Last year, Steve Thurman made a really good video that showed his experience where he was trying to only pay in BCH and he went to several of the local restaurants. Like you say, the Alipay system and Go Crypto do operate out of Slovenia and BCH payments are built into a lot of the terminals there.
So people can get lunch, or they can travel around or they can go to the supermarket and all pay in BCH. So that was one major factor in our decision to hosting Slovenia. But I would say also another aspect to it was that it's fairly centrally located for Europeans.
And there's quite a lot of Bitcoin Cash conferences that have been had in Australia, in Argentina, in South America. There's a lot of crypto events that go on in America. And there was the one in the Caribbean as well.
And we felt like Europe was being underserved in terms of that's where two out of three of the event organizers are located and also, you know, many other Bitcoin Cashes are of course in Europe. So we thought it would be good to give the Americans a chance to get on a plane instead for a change and to come hang out in the heart of
civilization in Europe. So in that respect, it does become a bit of a pilgrimage. Ryan famously said last year that it has now become his wife's favorite crypto events, because she gets to come along and see a bit of Europe as well as meeting all the BCH crowd and experiencing the
P2P cash revolution. So I think it's really a combination of those two events. Slovenia is a beautiful country. It's very safe and it's very well located in the middle of Europe. So you have that plus the existing P2P cash BCH adoption and just ended up being a no brainer for us.
Yeah, Slovenia is really beautiful country. So for me, it's very easy to think of everything that sort of Eastern Europe is being considerably poorer. And it may have been the case quite a while ago. But yes, Slovenia was it was quite it was basically like the
nicest part of Germany for me was almost like Austria or something. So really incredibly clean, as you say, very safe. But when you land in this beautiful mountains and all forest forested, the people they're incredibly friendly for all of my encounters. It was
really a welcoming place. But being able to spend Bitcoin cash in many places and many supermarkets in the hotel. This is this is the thing that is just fantastic. And of course, from someone that's coming from Europe, this is wonderful, not having to do sort of 40 hour flights to the Caribbean or, you
know, Australia, this is a great conference happening there later in the year. But again, it's just very, very challenging to get to. So for everyone within within Europe, this is nice and simple. But it's also new, it's relatively easy if you're flying from abroad, if you're
flying from America, for example, Ljubljana is the capital city of Slovenia, with direct connections to many major airports within Europe and around the world. So, you know, not not too bad at all to get to and definitely worth it. And as you say, Ryan's there with his wife and turns it into then a holiday
experiences. And it really is worth it. It's worthwhile. Just coming to Slovenia anyway without even the BCH conference. Jonathan, are you back? Can you speak now? Can we hear you?
It says I'm back.
We can hear you loud and clear. Fantastic. This is a regular occurrence with Twitter, that it just just randomly cuts out someone normally restarting the app and coming back in work so glad that's working. Jerry, I've seen you've you asked to speak, I'm not sure if you have a question or if you want to add in some points, but please, the floor is yours.
Oh, I didn't even realize I was a speaker. Sorry about that.
No worries. You asked to speak but I guess then was that an accident you haven't got anything you want to add or say.
No, no, I seriously I thought I was the listener.
Okay, I don't know how this happened.
No worries. Hey Jerry, well now you're on the mic, we might as well just ask you, are you coming to BCH please?
No, unfortunately, it's at the same time as a consensus conference in Toronto, and that's that's basically the same week as bliss so trying to hold down the fort here.
Fair enough. Okay, so you can give BCH presence there will let you off on this one you just make sure you take a picture of yourself at the conference wearing some sort of BCH logo or branding. We'll figure something out with purely pure. Hopefully, they'll be around as well.
They're also going to be a consensus.
Last time I checked. Yeah, hopefully.
Fantastic. Great stuff.
Yeah, then.
Yeah, one of the things so be interesting if I don't know if you've heard any more news about this Jeremy so a few months ago.
So, everyone I guess he knows Eric wall the famous Bitcoin wizard he wrote on Twitter, that he will be coming to bliss. He was supposed to come to bliss last year, actually bought a ticket even, but unfortunately due to unplanned circumstances had to had to cancel
but have we had any hint so far that he will be joining to see what's going on in team greens building community.
Well, it's funny you say that.
I don't know I don't have the inside lane on that I don't have any secret information to spoiler or anything but it is true that last year he said he was going to come along and he made sort of commitments, public commitments in that regard and there was much chatter at the
as to whether he would turn up or not it being kind of a historic moment propitious moment for him to do so.
If he did, because it really would signal not only that BCH has, you know, open the doors to any interested builders to come along and and be engaged but also to a more productive dialogue between certainly at least some parts of the BTC community and the BCH community
after many years of being across purposes and not being able to really communicate or even collaborate that effectively so it would signal a bit of a change in the entire crypto zeitgeist I guess, where he to make an appearance now.
He didn't actually end up making it like you said because of unplanned circumstances but I do truly believe that he felt not ashamed is probably not the right world but he sort of felt that he he'd let himself down.
In doing that he sent a very nice private message you know explaining what had happened and so forth and then when we announced the event again this year he was immediately making public comments to the effect that he would be there this year so nothing's really set in stone until I see him for real but
I would, I would be a little bit surprised if he fell through on his word a second time and if he did obviously that would only be a reflection on him but it is up to us for organizing bliss to make the event as attractive and interesting and it's much of a hip place to be
for him and for anybody else who's maybe looking into the BCH community again. Similarly, I talked to Ryan X Charles on the podcast recently who was quite enthusiastic about attending again subject to his other commitments and various other people around the cryptocurrency
industry that I've been trying to slowly work into coming along, because I'm sure they'll have an absolute blast and it would do both them and the BCH world a ton of good if we can get, especially a few different people kind of coming along it just adds to the credibility and
interest around the event and word gets around so yeah certainly we've got our fingers crossed to get as many of those kind of crypto alumni as possible in attendance.
I'll also say that I tagged Eric a bit earlier today, asking what his ticket number is. So we'll see if he responds to that. I also tagged some of the developers who are kind of on the edge or interested in more than one chain.
And I got to my surprise they got a response back that they seem to very much dislike the idea that our tickets are NFTs. I don't understand where that is like is coming from. It's a ticket.
It's something you own you have it in your wallet or pocket, you can send it to give it away. It's just a matter of ownership.
It might be that maybe they're disliking the idea that the ticket happens to have art on it. But I'll just want to assure everyone, the pricing of the tickets is for entrance to the event, and has nothing to do with the art.
The artist is just a fun gimmick to make sure that the ticket is a little bit more unique and engaging.
Yeah, it's
I don't really follow that. You know, when you have the possibility of NFTs, the idea of selling tickets open NFT, it's just like having a ticket stub. So this has to be delivered in some way, right?
And if you could deliver that by an email, but then okay, who wants to give out that email address, you could give this out by a post.
It's a no brainer. It allows you to earn the property after you've gone there. It just adds a bunch of good value. And on BCH, since tokens are a native part of our chain, it has like zero impact on the economics, and it just works really, really great.
So maybe, maybe this person just simply has a bad experience from other chains where NFTs actually have caused problems instead of being a beneficial net value.
Yeah, I think this is a great reminder, right, that, you know, these NFTs, they're not stored on the block. They're not, they're not taking up valuable data against transactions.
It's just, it's just a regular BCH transaction, very, very small amount of data that also is then linked to basically the pictures being stored somewhere, it could be stored on a server,
or wherever it is basically, but nothing to do with the blockchain. So it's a very, for me, it's the most valid use of an NFT. I can't think of today of actually a better use of an NFT than as a ticket stub and proof of ticket ownership to be able to go into a conference or event.
So I love the art. You can do proof of payment, right, receipts. But that means I can pay a ticket for you, because now I hold the receipt and you don't have the receipt. So tickets really are the best form, like in this case, sending them as tokens so you have complete ownership of them.
It's worth saying, maybe people are, you know, finding it, you know, surprising or unusual. Sometimes people have negative reactions to things just because they haven't seen it before. And it's quite ironic that BCH, which is not known to be in the rest of crypto industry as the most
DeFi innovative chain of all time, is actually the one who is pioneering both the technology and the culture of actually integrating this into our events. So it certainly doesn't surprise me that at least some people don't immediately kind of get it, which seems
ridiculous, because they should be involved in the crypto industry. It should be the first thing they should think to be on board with. But in any case, change takes time. So the fact that we are pioneering this stuff certainly is
central to catch people off guard who are used to feeling like they really understand how everything in crypto is operating. But maybe it's even getting ahead of their ability to keep pace with what's the latest.
Yeah, definitely. I think it's definitely the case it is. And when people try this out and see this, this is a pretty cool thing. So you can, you know, you buy your ticket, you can buy it in a decentralized way, you don't have to give any information out.
Jonathan said, you know, you could buy it for someone else. It also means then it's transferable. So you could buy a ticket, and then you realize you can't come for whatever reason, and then you could sell that on the open market. So you could set your price
and let someone else take that. And the other great thing is, is after you've used that ticket, you still own the ticket, it's still in your wallet, and you get to, you know, to enjoy that as a memory. And if you decide, hey, I don't want my wallet filled up with NFTs, that's also okay, because you can send that ticket to me.
Or anyone else would happily have it, or, you know, or send it to a burner address. That's also a possibility. I see there's a question in the chat here. So from Alma's Dust, will there be a live stream of BCHBlizz 2025?
Absolutely. So last year, obviously, we did the live stream, which I was quite pleased with in the sense that for our first attempt at doing a live event, certainly at that scale, we did manage to capture all the talks and a lot of what was happening.
We did also have quite a bit of downtime, obviously, between, you know, at lunch, and after the day's events and so forth. So this year, we are trying to improve on that. It is my hope that we'll be able to do a better job of having maybe some bonus content mixed in, being very clear about the schedule and the stream is live when it's not, and so forth.
But regardless, we will be doing a live stream so that if you're not able to make the event, you will be able to watch at least some segments of it live. And obviously, if you're in a different time zone, you're asleep or whatever, then the next day or the day after you can log in, then watch a lot of what was happening.
It doesn't really compare to being there. And I think we definitely saw that in our feedback. People who came physically to the event, rated at 9.5 out of 10 on average, and then people who watched the live stream rated at 7.5, which I think is understandable because so much of the excitement and interest in the value is being there in person and really meeting everyone and all the social events and so forth.
But nevertheless, people weren't able to make it, did still enjoy the live stream and we will be bringing that back. Yes.
I'm surprised the live stream was actually rated that high, to be honest, because the difference was that small because it really was so much better being there in person and most of the stuff that actually happened that was really interesting happened on the side of the conference and the conversations in between.
Yeah, so let's set expectations straight. If you're watching the live stream, this is what you get. You get to see all the actual presentations. You get to see the panel discussions, and you'll get to see some interviews here and there.
If you're coming live, you get to meet people, you get to share your own ideas, you get to take part in the open floor and go meet all of the builders and their projects, talk about them, try things, interact with them.
You get all the hallway conversations, you get all the conversations that happen during lunch.
It's like half of the value of the event, in my opinion, is only available if you're actually coming. And the other half, it's there for posterity, will keep the videos out, even if you missed the live stream, you'll get to see the videos after the fact and so on.
But you'll never get those conversations captured unless you actually get there.
It really is a very tight knit feel. So there was a lot of people at this conference, many of them had never met each other ever before.
But there was continuous breakups of groups of people just talking amongst each other, people that had never talked to each other before, going into very deep and very interesting conversations.
It was a very humbling experience, incredibly friendly, very, very relaxed. But at the same time, you could feel all the passion, the energy of everyone, what they had about Bitcoin Cash, of the community and the projects they were building.
So I think it's really even saying it's 50% is being there. I genuinely think that's completely understaling it. I would say it's an order of magnitude, the value of it is actually being there.
So of course, being able to watch it live or see the video afterwards, at least you get to see what's going on in the ecosystem.
But I don't think you can even compare that experience of watching that video to being there.
Yes, let me make one more point here. If you are someone who watched the live stream last time or considering watching the live stream this time, because you feel that going to the event might be a risk to your anonymity or your identity.
Just be aware that you can actually buy the tickets without interacting with any people or persons at all. And when you come here, we only validate that you have a ticket and that is not a ticket that someone else already registered with.
And we don't track any identity or any information. You can even call the hotel or book a different hotel and ask to have a pseudonymous identity for your stay.
You don't have to speak with people if you think your voice is something that would disclose who you are. You can actually come and enjoy most of all the content and all the presentations and be with everyone else, even if you're entirely anonymous.
The only thing you can't do is kind of join the builders event because those are only for people we know are builders and we can't know that if you happen to be entirely anonymous.
Yeah, we did a really good job of that actually last year. That was something that we made.
Not necessarily a focus on. We were cognizant of it and we asked people to respect that they weren't taking photos of anybody who didn't want to be in them or anything.
And we also helped to screen some of the stuff that was released afterwards, both in terms of obviously the content that we did on the live stream was all very clearly marked.
So you wouldn't have ended up on that if you didn't want to be on it and also in the people who made other videos about their experience of the event and so forth.
And so I don't think anybody who had any privacy concerns was at all negatively affected in that way. And I was really proud that we could actually do that because it meant we had some attendees who otherwise might not have been able to justify it or been concerned about it.
Same this year.
Yeah, that's really important. Going back earlier, just before you broke up, Jonathan, there was the question about the hotels. I believe that we didn't actually get an answer from you. If I remember correctly, that was when we couldn't hear you.
So last year there was a discount on the hotels for people that went to the conference, a discount for the Sheraton. Is that also going to be the case this year? And if so, have you got a sort of hint how long we have to wait until we get more information about that?
Yes, it's coming maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after, sometime this week, most likely. It's just one of the things that fell behind our schedule for things to do, but there will be a discounted room that you can book through the website. We'll update the website as soon as we have the link.
It will be not a very big discount, but it will have breakfast included and the breakfast can be quite expensive otherwise, so maybe it is a big discount. Yeah.
Link will be there in a day or two.
Okay, so for everyone that's already booked your tickets and wants to stay at the hotel, hold off booking a room until that discount code is available. And yeah, last year it was a modest discount that also includes breakfast. So if any of you that likes your breakfast, the breakfast there in the hotel is fantastic.
So definitely get that included rather than paying for it separately. So just hold off for a couple of days. There'll be more information coming out about that.
Even if you don't like breakfast, come down for a tea one or two hours before the conference starts and you'll see other people who are doing the same. You can have nice conversations.
Absolutely. Nice conversations with the best people in the entire crypto scene.
Great. So if there aren't any other further questions or points you guys want to make, I think we'll wrap that up.
So for all of you out there who are listening, if you're unsure, I can wholly recommend this conference. It's absolutely fantastic. Come and support Bitcoin Cash. Come and meet your heroes and the people that are sort of building this future of financial freedom.
And for all of those, all those of you who have already bought your tickets, this is my ask. Share it on Twitter. If you want to stay anonymous, fine, I can understand that. But for those of you that are willing, just share your ticket, put it on Twitter, make a bit of noise.
And if you see other people sharing their ticket or any information about this conference, retweet, quote, retweet, like it. Just get that noise out there.
So as we said, we've already sold almost 30% of the tickets that are available. And the goal is just to really sell 100%. We want as many people there from the community or people that are interested in freedom money and freedom tech to come and join us so that we can make this the biggest event possible and grow year on year as we snowball and encourage more people to choose Bitcoin Cash and Liberty and Freedom as the best shot that we've got for a brighter future.
So I look forward to seeing as many of you lovely people there as possible. And yeah, please go and check out tapspot.cash where you can go and buy your Velma today.
As a reminder, the next episode of Finnish and Friends is tomorrow, so you don't have to wait very long at all. One o'clock Central European time, and we've got Noel Levesse, founder and CEO of Code Valley to talk about their paradigm of shifting tech, emergent coding.
So please join for that. And hit a reminder so you don't forget. I hope you enjoyed the spaces and learn a little bit about BCH Bliss and are as excited as I am for this May. Great. Then this was Finnish and Friends. Take care.