Arai Ezzra, CTO & Co-Founder of DinarDirham, presenting at the North American Bitcoin Conference

Introduction:

As you may have heard, The North American Bitcoin Conference (TNABC) just happened in Miami, Florida. The conference was held between the 17th and 18th of this January 2017. At it, some of the top speakers and business leaders gathered to share up-to-date & exciting information which the audience could implement right away. If you’ve been following our blog or one of our social media channels, then you probably also know that our CTO & Co-Founder, Arai Ezzra, was one of the main speakers at the event, and that DinarDirham was one of the event’s sponsors, and was also able to hold a company booth to showcase our products to all of the attendees.

But we know that not everyone could make it to Miami, so, here’s a short summary of the event to read for your pleasure. You can view the full list of speakers by visiting our previous blog here.

Bruce Fenton, Managing Director at Atlantic Financial, presenting at the North American Bitcoin Conference

Summary:

Accoding to news.bitcoin.com which provided much of the material for this article:

“The Miami Bitcoin event had no shortage of speakers as the entire day was filled with executives, developers, and innovators within the Bitcoin space. Early morning talks included Riccardo Spagni developer of Monero, Jonathan Chester from Bitwage, and Breadwallet’s Aaron Voisine. Big news came from Abra that morning as the company announcedthe launch of its global bitcoin network.”

The first day consisted of 16 speaker spotlights, with an additional 6 stuffed into the investment panel just before lunch. The speakers spoke in the Ashe Auditorium on the 3rd floor, at the James L. Knight Center. The air was full of excitement as the day began. Attendees of the conference came early in the morning and were greeted by a plethora of exhibitors and speakers along the hallways of the facility. The exhibits at the TNABC included companies such as: General Bytes, Ledger, Airbitz, Unsung, DinarDirham, & many others. ‘Trump Style’ red hats were available for sale with the words “make bitcoin great again”, as guests perused the many products on display. A virtual reality station and digital gold fintech products were among the many various goods to see.

Some of the highlights of the event were of course the news of Abra announcing it’s global Bitcoin network (as mentioned in the above quote), as well as the investment panel, which was hosted by Michael Terpin, of Bitangels. Discussions of the panel included the potential of Bitcoin acting as a new asset class, and other subjects, including private blockchains… which multiple members agreed, and got the crowd laughing, that private blockains were a joke. The investment panel included: Sean Walsh, of Redwood City Ventures – Pamir Gelenbe, of Libertus Capital – Michael Terpin, of Bitangels – Chandler Guo, an Angel Investor – Matthew Roszak, of Bloq – and Brian Donegan, Isle of Man Department of Economic Development.

Roger Ver, CEO of Bitcoin.com was next after the investment panel, and discussed how Bitcoin can help strengthen the world’s economy. Marco Streng, Founder of Genesis Mining, was another speaker, who talked about if it was still profitable to mine Bitcoin, and also gave the crowd a rundown on how to research shady looking cloud mining companies, and how to tell the difference between them and a real mining firm.

Later in the day, attendees were able to view more exhibitions & products, including Ledger hardware wallets, as well as a vending machine from Dash. As the speakers came back to the stage, Brian Hoffman, Founder of OpenBazaar, announced the company’s release of the platform’s 2.0. Hoffman was also interviewed by the Bitcoin Uncensored podcast team, which was located in the men’s restroom during the period of the conference, which was an interesting location for an interview to say the least.

Jeffrey Tucker was next, a well known author & economist. He spoke about how Bitcoin was different from any other money that people have ever seen, that’s it changed the way we think about money, and how it will help to revolutionize the failures of central banking.

Jason King, founder of Unsung, was one of the highlights of the evening. Essentially, he presented how his startup is feeding the hungry, by connecting volunteers with restaurants via an app. The volunteers collect otherwise wasted, good food, and give it to the homeless. Unsung volunteers in the US have already fed over 16,000 homeless people. He also talked about how a company called Soylent was supplying meal replacement drinks for deliveries.

Other notable speakers from day one, included Gabriel Abed, Founder of Bitt, a Caribbean fintech company. And also from Jeremy Gardner, Founder of Augur, who discussed decentralized prediction markets.

The first day ended with networking and drinks.

The second day consisted of another 16 speaker spotlights, including a keynote session with cyber security expert, computer programmer, former U.S. presidential candidate, and antivirus tycoon, John McAfee, of MGT Capital, about Bitcoin security. Attendees of the early morning talks also got to hear from Steven Sprague, Founder of Rivetz, Arai Ezzra, CTO and Co-Founder of DinarDirham, and also from Marshall Long, CTO of Finalhash.

In the exhibits, guests saw products, booths, and demonstrations from companies such as Airbitz (a wallet company), from Prescott Regency, which is a new Bitcoin exchange, from Bitt, from Ledger, who displayed their new NanoS hardware wallet, and a Bitcoin ATM machine from General Bytes, who also previewed their NFC card models to the public. Athena Bitcoin was also present, another Bitcoin ATM company, who also maintains Bitquick, an exchange company. DinarDirham had it’s booth set up in the exhibit hall, displaying our DinarDirham physical gold, and of course sharing information about our other crypto based assets, such as the DinarCoin, Gold Smart Contracts, the Universal Bitcoin Wallet (The DinarDirham Wallet), and our DinarDirham Debit Card.

Two broadcasts: Otika.tv and the World Crypto Network attended virtually, and the host of The Crypto Show was present at the event.

DinarDirham’s Booth At The North American Bitcoin Conference

During the keynote session mentioned above, by John McAfee, at the end of the morning sessions, news.bitcoin.com reports:

“McAfee detailed how easy it is to compromise mobile phones and how bitcoin users should take better precautions than using their phones to store cryptocurrencies. McAfee explained how he would purposely interact with shady pop-ups affecting his mobile browser just to see what malicious hackers were doing. The MGT Capital founder said he had lost thousands of dollars between four wallets just by interacting with these pop-ups. Hackers are using multiple types of keylogging techniques, and screen captures to compromise mobile phones explained McAfee. The Bitcoin community needs to get serious and put security at the forefront, said McAfee, before hackers clean sweep thousands of people’s phones.”

In the afternoon sessions, Dean Masley discussed how the Blockchain Education Network is educating college students on Bitcoin all around the world. A notable event of the afternoon was Unsung prepping meals and then with the help of The Crypto Show’s host delivered those meals to Miami’s inner city district. Feeding the homeless, with the help of blockchain technology.

Later in the conference, Andrew Filipowski, Chairman at Tally Capital, spoke about technological disrupters, while Charlie Shrem shared his new venture, and about how the environment around ICO’s was changing positively. You can view the rest of the speakers who spoke that evening by seeing our speaker line up here.

The North American Bitcoin Conference was a huge success, and many attendees expressed their happiness of having attended the event. The event was meant to help shape the future of, and smooth the road ahead for Bitcoin, and it appears that that goal was accomplished.

A huge thank you to everyone that attended the event! And to everyone that took the time to visit us at the conference. If you attended and would like to share your experience, please comment below.

Have a great day,

The DinarDirham team

MORE PHOTOS!

DinarDirham’s Booth at The North American Bitcoin Conference:

