So – it’s been a while huh?
My only excuse for the lack of action round these parts in recent months is the same one that’s recycled by bloggers around the world. Namely life off-blog (believe it’s known as ‘real’ life) got crazy-busy over the summer months.
Can’t share all of the activities on here yet but here’s a quick roundup of some of the cool things (well I think so anyway) that have been taking up some of my time recently:
1. Paul Puey, CEO of my favourite Bitcoin wallet company Airbitz popped across from San Diego to chat at the Scottish Bitcoin Meetup a couple of weeks back, delivering a great talk on keeping Bitcoin decentralised.
2. We followed that up with the good news from The Royal Dick at Summerhall that it was to be the first bar in Edinburgh to accept bitcoin. And I’m glad to say that the meetup group took it upon itself to, er, thoroughly stress-test the new technology to the fullest. Let’s just say, we ensured that future customers wouldnt be at any risk of having a fractured experience in the future with staff who had no experience of dishing out drinks in return for bitcoin. Happy to report that everything held up beautifully under the strain.
3. I gave a talk on Bitcoin at the 360D Conference at the SECC in Glasgow earlier this month. Getting out of a sick bed to deliver it, it unfortunately wasn’t my finest performance but still seemed to provoke quite a bit of conversation afterwards.
4. I helped organise the Blockchain Workshop at this year’s Turing Festival and watched with disproportionate pleasure as 25 or so developers – all but a couple of whom had never had any exposure to blockchain tech beforehand – learn how to mine, send money and create simple smart contracts in little under 6 hours, all under the watchful eye of Konstantin and Ken from Ethereum. A fantastic example of the potential that this technology is providing for everyone.
5. Nine major banks announced they’d agreed to work together under the talented eye of new CTO Richard Gendal Brown at R3CEV in an ongoing investigation around how blockchain technologies can be incorporated into their current businesses. BIG news when you consider where we were 12 – even 6 – months ago. In case you’re wondering, the banks are: JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, State Street, UBS, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, BBVA, Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland.
6. A few weeks ago, I took part in a British Interactive Media Association (BIMA) panel on ‘Can FinTech Make Banking More Human’ in Edinburgh, exploring disruption across the sector.
7. I gave another talk on Bitcoin and the promise of Blockchain technology at The Ivy of all places in London as part of an event put together by the Tayburn Agency and Engine. Thanks to Nadine and the rest of the team for inviting me down. I tell you – for all the furore about this so-called ‘geek money’, it doesn’t half get you into some interesting places 😉
8. I went along to a fascinating event run by the Swiss Embassy in London on, yup, you guessed it (no prizes) the B thing. Fantastic panel (Mike Hearn, Christian Decker, Richard Gendal Brown, Vitalik Buterin, Robleh Ali from the Bank of England and Oliver Bussman of UBS). Held under Chatham House rules (hmm, hate that concept – really, in a world of permanent mobile and social network connection, are we really going to still hang onto the pretension that we can restrict such conversations and attribution spreading?), I can’t really say too much of value about the discussion – other than it was a fantastic event, with loads of old and new faces from the scene in attendance. Interesting to note Switzerland’s drive to become a base for crypto-based businesses in the future as well.
And yeah, there’s been a lot more. But this is turning more into a diary entry now so I’ll wrap it up.
So we might still be no clearer to finding out where this roller coaster will finally stop and what the scenery will look like if it finally does. But to me, the outlook’s never been so positive. As a great man once sung – keep on keeping’ on…