Keenevention's Bitcoin Panel in the Shire

From October 30, 2015 to November 1 in Keene, New Hampshire, the Keenevention 2015 will bust loose, bringing great libertarian minds together for a fun-filled event. The event is a New Hampshire liberty convention, “by activists for activists,” that started in 2013. The conference has limited pre-event tickets and will host a variety of libertarian speakers, panel discussions, and a taste of Keene in the fall.

Also read: SETL: The Private Network of Blockchains

Among the special guests attending Keenevention will be Chris Rietmann. The liberty activist serves as a selectman in Alstead, where he helped repeal all gun regulations.

Another key speaker will be Christopher David, the “illegal Uber driver,” who made headlines for committing civil disobedience in Portsmouth where bureaucrats have outlawed ride-sharing.

Darryl W Perry will also be in attendance to speak to the Keenevention crowd. The activist hosts multiple radio broadcasts including Peace, Love, Liberty Radio and the seven-day-a-week FPP Radio News. Perry has been an organizer for Keenevention since its inception and can be found on his blog Free Keene regularly.

The event will feature a lot of activism discussion, an open mic Q&A, and a list of speaking panels from various aspects of the liberty movement. Keenevention’s panels will include a Bitcoin panel, tech panel, copblock panel, secession panel and many more.

The Bitcoin forum will feature some special guests from the digital currency world. Among them is Dr. Darren Tapp, who will host this presentation on virtual money. Tapp can be found speaking about the digital currency realm and the Bitcoin environment on the Neocash Radio broadcast. The show, “where we discuss the future of money today,” can be found with archived podcasts and its co-host JJ Evans, who speaks on the nationally syndicated talk show, Free Talk Live. The host of the Bitcoin panel is also the creator of Dr. Tapp’s Mathematical Playgrounds, which offers online math videos and tutoring in his area that “sets ups a welcoming mindset to learning math at an early age.” Dr. Tapp feels bitcoin can provide individuals a lot of values. He told Bitcoin.com,

“With bitcoin comes the potential to provide value that extend the services of the banking system at a negligible cost.”

Another panelist speaking for the Bitcoin panel will be core developer Gavin Andresen, who will discuss technical expertise. The Amherst, Massachusetts-based chief scientist, will talk about the digital currency and the current state of its well-being. Andresen is one of the earliest known core developers to work with the code for the Bitcoin client, as well as talking with the inventor Satoshi Nakamoto in the early days. In 2011, Andresen was quoted in Forbes for saying “Bitcoin is designed to bring us back to a decentralized currency of the people.” As of late, Andresen has been pushing for discussions within the Bitcoin community to raise the block size and gain some consensus.

Matthew Ping, the owner of Ledgeview Commercial Partners, will be on the panel discussing daily use during the forum. Ping is a Free State Project advocate, manages several properties in the New Hampshire, and accepts Bitcoin for rent. In 2013, Ping told the press about his acceptance of the digital currency for rent. The free-stater told reporters in the featured article that based on their foundations of decentralization, alternative digital currencies looked promising for Free State Project members.

Jeremy Kauffman, CEO of LBRY.io, will speak on the Bitcoin panel as well, discussing his open source publishing project. LBRY allows anyone to publish content to a location with user added metadata that is then stored by miners and propagated through the LBRY blockchain. Publishers can receive micropayments by embedding their addresses within the stored data, and can also create assurance contracts for new content. LBRY’s website states that the current distribution method on the web is flawed. It says, “the fatal flaw of existing systems is their centralized, top-down design.”

Kauffman told Bitcoin.com,

“Perhaps the single biggest problem the world faces is the lack of experimentation and variation in societal structures and institutions. Even the luckiest of individuals, those born into western democracies, are virtually powerless to alter the structure of their society. Bitcoin and blockchain technology offer the ability to fundamentally alter this paradigm. Rather than be beholden to stagnant, archaic governments the blockchain allows us to build new structures outside their grasp. Not only does this increase the freedom available to individuals, but it also puts competitive pressures on existing structures to improve.”

Chris Pacia is the lead developer of the OpenBazaar project, and will be discussing the venture that will provide a decentralized market that only uses bitcoin. Pacia is a free-thinking Libertarian, who’s been studying economics and political philosophy for roughly ten years. The OpenBazaar developer is a staunch privacy advocate and writer, with published works appearing on Liberty.me, FreedomsPhoenix eZine, AntiWar.com, and his blog Escape Velocity. When Bitcoin.com spoke with Pacia about what Bitcoin and decentralized marketplaces can do to the central banking cartel and other sectors, he told us,

“When it comes to financial freedom what can tools like Bitcoin and platforms like openbazaar do to help individuals and society as whole? They not only provide options to people that they didn’t previously have, but the demonstrate to the world that markets and entrepreneurship are superior to government monopoly and central planning. Take the government taxi cartel. Everyone simply took it for granted that there must have been no better way of doing things. Ending the cartel wasn’t on anyone’s political radar. Then along comes Uber and it gives the lie to the whole thing. Now we see some cities not just deregulating Uber, but eliminating the taxi cartel altogether.”

The last member highlighted from the Keenevention Bitcoin panel is Derrick J Freeman. Freeman is a long-time activist who can be seen in the full-length feature documentary, “Derrick J’s Victimless Crime Spree.” The film chronicles the adventures of Freeman’s experience with his first year of activism in The Shire, 540 days in jail for dancing, smoking pot, and riding a bike. The activist was also photographed during the Ross Ulbricht trial holding signs saying, “No Victim, No Crime,” and other slogans that can be seen throughout various publications reporting on the trial. Derrick J has been invited to the Bitcoin panel to discuss the social and political ramifications of the digital currency. When asked by Bitcoin.com about his discussion subject he told us:

“Bitcoin empowers individuals to control their money in a way that has never before been possible. Until 2009, mafias and governments could steal your money because it was either physical (like gold) or controlled by banks that can be strong-armed into turning over the keys to their vaults. Bitcoin introduced a new paradigm: a decentralized, cryptographically secure approach to money. With the introduction of the blockchain, it suddenly became possible for a person or machine to not only send and receive units of value instantly anywhere in the world — but more importantly, to reliably protect that value as data stored on a hard drive or even inside one’s own head. Finally, humanity is free from its reliance on weak and sometimes malicious centralized institutions and fallible men and instead replace them with a system as reliable and consistent as mathematics itself. It is supplanting the age of gatekeepers by enabling anyone to participate regardless of age, sex, location, or political class. Not since the handgun, steam engine, or perhaps the wheel has a human invented a tool as liberating as Bitcoin. Even today, as the cryptocurrency revolution dawns, its potential applications are yet to be fully realized.”

The list of speakers discussing the Bitcoin protocol during the Keenevention conference believe that Bitcoin has a lot of potential with regards to freedom. The forum discussion will focus on various aspects of the emerging technology and importantly how it can help individual financial freedom affecting society as a whole. Keenevention will have a lot more than Bitcoin, focusing in on many aspects of the libertarian movement, and a Halloween costume dance party with a “green beam” laser. The Radio and podcasts Rebel Love Show, Black Sheep Rising and the Peace, Love and Liberty Radio, will also be in attendance at the event. Keenevention looks like it’s going to be a fun-filled time meeting and discussing political and philosophical solutions with like-minded libertarian thinkers.

What events will you be attending this year? Let us know in the comments below!

Images courtesy of Keenevention, Pixbay and Redmemes