Despite the conspiracy theorists concerns, there were no evil plans discussed. Quite the opposite actually. For those who don’t know, organizer Bruce Fenton took some undeserved criticism for hosting the meeting. Coindesk called it “a secretive, closed-door gathering of elite bitcoin CEOs and luminaries this weekend.”

This was a group of about 60 people who are all dedicated to making the world a better place.

That makes sense when you consider many (but certainly not all) of the attendees hold libertarian and voluntaryist philosophies. Never heard of a voluntaryist?

C’mon, does this look like a group of evildoers?

More secrets

Feeding the homeless, giving people discounts on Amazon purchases, providing financial services to the developing world, reducing fraud in worldwide aid, stopping financial crisis, and introducing people bitcoin.

Lucky Me

I was fortunate to attend last weekend’s Satoshi Roundtable.

Bruce did a great job of putting on a high end event.

It is awesome getting to hang out with smart, modest, interesting people. The meeting was an off the record-meeting so I won’t disclose any non-public information, but here are some of the people I met.

Ira Miller, CEO, Coinapult and Justin Blincoe, COO Coinapult - it was awesome hanging out with these guys and hearing how they want to help the people of countries being ravaged by hyperinflation.

Michael Perklin, co-founder Bitcoinsultants Inc. - is working to eliminate security incidents and hacks (aka. getting Goxxed). Check out the draft standard he helped create.

Elizabeth Rossiello, CEO BitPesa - speaks 5 languages, has 2 kids, lives and works in Kenya. Elizabeth is working to put more money in customer’s pockets when they send money to Africa.

Peter Todd, Bitcoin Core Developer - it was awesome being able to pick Peter’s brain. He cleared up some of my confusions around mining and shared new (to me) scalability ideas, and his proof chains project.

Josh Rushing, Host of Fault Lines – an engaging speaker with a unique perspective on events that shaped history.

Erik Voorhees, Entrepreneur - brought a historical perspective to some of the bitcoin discussions.

I also got to further connect with colleagues like:

Bruce Fenton, Atlantic Financial / Bitcoin Association - a fantastic host. Bruce was a fantastic host. I appreciate him organizing this conference and I appreciate the sense of humor he had regarding the criticisms of his conference.

Domus Tower

Craig Sellars, Co-Founder & CTO at Tether - leading the development of one of the most practical bitcoin 2.0 technologies, Tether. Craig is one of the rare people who can talk to an audience but also dive deep on the technology. I’ll never forget he become involved with Mastercoin because he while reading raw bitcoin transactions (channel the Matrix scene where they are reading green text) he saw Mastercoin data.

Lot's of excitement about Tether at the Satoshi Roundtable on the weekend. #craigsellars #bitcoin pic.twitter.com/VxKuoodhFA — Tether (@Tether_to) February 9, 2015

Want more?

Unfortunately the event wasn’t public or open to reporters, but here are some Twitter highlights:

Tweets about satoshi roundtable

What do you think?

Was this a secretive meeting that unfairly excluded people? Share your thoughts in the comments!