Introducing bitcoin++ News Edition
All things bitcoin++
Welcome to the inaugural bitcoin++ news edition, a bi-weekly newsletter from the bitcoin++ universe.
If you’ve ever attended one of our events and listened to a speaker you wanted to know more about, or later found yourself wondering about the progress of some obscure project you stumbled across, this is the newsletter to subscribe to. We’ll be providing updates on projects previously announced at bitcoin++, previewing content from upcoming events, and keeping you connected to the goings-on of the Bitcoin developer open source ecosystem.
Keep an eye out for new updates every other Thursday.
In this edition, we explore ecash by spotlighting one of our upcoming speakers – Chaumian ecash researcher and Fedimint pioneer, Eric Sirion.
But first, let’s hear how this all came about from Nifty herself:
A word from Nifty
bitcoin++ started in June, 2022 at the Hotel Indigo in Austin Texas. Since then, we've run six events in four countries and connected over 1,000 Bitcoin devs to new open source projects and ideas. We've done events in Austin, Berlin, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires. We've featured some of the best and brightest minds in the open source world of Bitcoin, and are proud of having sparked new connections and ideas at our events.
At least one startup got its start at bitcoin++, one protocol had its first workshop, and one BIP had its world premiere. I've made countless new friends and had the opportunity to watch new bridges of understanding being made and shared by devs across the ecosystem.
bitcoin++ is special because it's built by developers for developers. As a conference series, we focus on different aspects of the ecosystem: layer-twos, payments, ecash, bitcoin script. Every event features both old and new members of the growing Bitcoin builder ecosystem. We're focused on highlighting the wide range of projects and people that are bringing Bitcoin into the future, keeping the network running, and proposing new ways to fix it.
If you haven't joined us at an event because of scheduling or travel costs or maybe you just haven't had the spark to jump in yet, I'm very excited to announce the launch of the bitcoin++ "news edition," where we'll be keeping you connected to the world of builders and projects in Bitcoin every other week.
You can expect to hear updates on new speakers, new event announcements, as well as follow-ups on projects that were launched or featured at prior or upcoming bitcoin++ events.
We're also hoping to provide more and better explainers on some of the topics. Follow along with us as we continue to explore the vast reaches of what is happening in the open source world of bitcoin++.
~nifty
Upcoming bitcoin++ events:
ecash edition in Berlin, October 11-13 at w3 hub. Note: This is a date change (we moved back one day). Grab your ticket before we sell out. Prices are set to hike tomorrow, Sept 6th!
hack + beach edition in Florianopolis, Feb 19 - 22, 2025. Venue coming soon. Ticket prices also go up tomorrow, Sept 6th. Get yours here!
mempools edition in Austin, Texas May 7 - 9, 2025 at the Palmer Event Center. Super early bird tickets are on sale now.
Affiliated events:
Future of Bitcoin Conference on October 5 at the Handelsbeurs in Antwerp, Belgium.
Thirty speakers – including the likes of Jameson Lopp and Tuur Demester – will answer the question “Does Bitcoin have a bright future?” Get your tickets here.
Announcing New Sponsors!
We’re absolutely thrilled to announce that Wolf, the premiere Bitcoin startup accelerator based in NYC is our Satoshi level sponsor for the ecash edition of bitcoin++. You can find out more about their highly competitive, in-person 8-week program here.
Joining them is Fulmo, a local Berlin organization that has been instrumental in building the Lightning Network and Bitcoin community; Fedi the all-in-one freedom tool for making ecash accessible to all; and the Bitcoin Layers project, an independent research and reporting body bringing you the best insights into the explosion of layer-two projects built on Bitcoin.
Eric Sirion talks up Chaumian ecash
In the spring of 1982, 27-year-old computer science student David Chaum submitted his doctoral dissertation to the Graduate Division of UC Berkeley.
His paper, “Computer Systems Established, Maintained, and Trusted by Mutually Suspicious Groups,” laid the foundations for many of the concepts that would later morph into the world’s first peer-to-peer electronic cash system – Bitcoin.
A few months later, Chaum published another paper, "Blind Signatures for Untraceable Payments," which eventually led to eCash, an early form of electronic money that Chaum commercialized in the late 90s through his company DigiCash.
Both DigiCash and eCash eventually went kaput in 1998, but the concept of an electronic cash system with blind signatures persisted.
Forty-two years later, researcher Eric Sirion still finds Chaum’s ideas intriguing. His first contact with Chaumian ecash came in 2017 as part of a university assignment.
“I was already a Bitcoiner,” Eric said. “And I wanted to write a paper about Bitcoin.”
His professor convinced him to not only research Bitcoin, but also, to dig up all the prior iterations of electronic cash that had come before.
That assignment eventually led to an internship at Blockstream and raised an interesting question – why was there no federated ecash yet? The answer came at the Hackers Congress Paralelní Polis (HCPP) in Prague.
“Someone gave a talk about federated ecash,” Eric explained. That someone was a pseudonymous hacker by the name of “Smuggler.”
After the talk, Eric and Smuggler connected and suddenly found themselves on a journey to build a federated blind signature ecash protocol.
“We solved the problem in January 2021,” Eric said. And he named the new protocol MiniMint, which was later rebranded to Fedimint – an abbreviation of “federated” and “mint.”
Today, Fedimint is widely considered the flagship ecash protocol, although other ecash implementations like Cashu are also popular.
Eric is also a co-founder at Fedi, a tech startup that recently launched a Bitcoin “super app” built on the Fedimint protocol. Fedi integrates open source finance, chat, and social media.
He’ll be speaking at bitcoin++ in Berlin, Germany next month. Grab your tickets before they sell out. Prices are set to hike tomorrow, Sept 6th.
Rapid fire questions
Q: What’s “ecash?”
Eric: Ecash is a private bearer instrument issued by a bank or “mint.” Think of it as an IOU representing deposited funds.
Q: What’s a Chaumian mint?
Eric: An entity that issues ecash IOUs.
Q: What’s the difference between Fedimint and Cashu?
Eric: Cashu features a single mint entity while Fedimint has a federated mint entity. A federation is essentially a trusted collection of issuers. In simple terms, as long as the majority of issuers are honest, funds in the system remain safe and accessible.
Q: What advice would you give to other Bitcoin devs?
Eric: Build something you want to see in the world, even if it seems nobody cares. That’s what I did. I wanted to see it exist. Keep building, keep struggling.
Who else is coming…
We’re anticipating a full schedule of talks and workshops at our upcoming event in Berlin this October 11-13. Here’s a full list of who’s currently confirmed to attend.
· Bob Scully – Boardwalk
· Brad Stachurski – Fedimint
· Calle – Cashu
· Calvadev – Shopstr
· Egge – npub.cash
· Eric Sirion – Fedimint
· Gudnuf – Boardwalk
· IroncladDev – Fedi
· Joschisan – Fedimint
· Justin Moeller – Fedimint
· Lefteris & Tacio – Fedi
· Leito – Nutmix
· Max Hillebrand – Cypherpunk
· Niftynei – Base58
· Nothingmuch – Spiral
· Orkun Mahir Kılıç – Citrea
· Oscar Lafarga – Fedi
· PABLOF7z – Sanity Island
· Rachel Rybarczyk – Stratum Reference Implementation, John Street
· Shaurya Arora – Fedi
· Super Testnet – Independent
· thesimplekid – Cashu Dev Kit
· Vnprc – Triangle BitDevs
