At the end of October, the first conference event Bitcoin Collective was held in Edinburgh, which aimed to raise awareness and adoption of Bitcoin and change the perception of finance and money.
Bitcoin Collective CEO and Co-Founder Jordan Walker told in a recent podcast for Payment Expert how they moved from podcast to the conference and how Bitcoin can help solve people’s concerns about inflation, rising electricity prices, and more.
Two years ago Walker with his co-host started a podcast called the Crypto Standard and began a journey through cryptocurrency. However, as they got deeper into it they found that Bitcoin was the most important one. They changed the name of the podcast to the Bitcoin Collective and then had the “crazy idea” of putting on a conference.
Walker emphasized that the atmosphere and the feeling of hope made this conference really special.
“If you look at the news at the moment it is a lot of doom and gloom, it’s the cost of living inflation, people can’t pay their electricity bills, and this is because of the money. So we are trying to raise awareness of a different form of money. And now Bitcoin is a form of money.
“There was a lot of hope in the air, the atmosphere was amazing and to have some of the best speakers in Bitcoin traveling from around the world to come and help the UK and globally learn more about Bitcoin was a phenomenal feeling and something very special over those two days.”
Education and teaching people about Bitcoin at a fundamental level is the key, he added. On the one hand, people do not know what Bitcoin is, and therefore they are scared of it, but they also know little about how money and the economy work or what inflation is.
“Two weeks ago the bank of England just printed 65 billion pounds to prop up the economy and by adding more money to the supply it devalues your and my money that we have in a savings account. The beauty of Bitcoin is that it cannot be tampered with and you cannot just add more to the supply because there is 21 million Bitcoin and there will never be any more.
“It’s not with fiat, it is the problem that there’s a small group of people that can control the supply and they make the decisions. We didn’t get a decision on whether we could add 65 billion to the supply of our currency, it just got put upon us, which then increases inflation, and inflation is hidden taxation, so we are actually getting taxed on top of that.”
Walker continues that it hits the lower and middle classes the most. Knowledgeable people invest in assets to maintain their wealth – houses, properties, gold, and now a lot of them in Bitcoin – but most people do not have this option. However, Bitcoin can change the rules of the game, you just need to understand how it works.
“It can be complicated, it can be scary, but we had a conference where a lot of people were shown how Bitcoin transactions work: just download an app, scan a QR code, and you can send satoshis, which is the smallest denomination of Bitcoin, to each other. People are amazed at how fast it happens and there’s no bank in the middle.”
At the end of the conversation, Walker added that there are two sides to Bitcoin: there are people that want to just buy it and hold it as an asset, but it also is a payment network.
There are more and more outlets, shops, and coffee shops in the world that, in addition to the usual Visa, Mastercard, Amex, are starting to accept Bitcoin as well. Bitcoin can be transferred much faster to anywhere in the world, while through the banking system it will take much more time, operations, and several currency exchanges.
“So having one currency that people can use globally is a technology that’s going to transform the world as a whole.”
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