While the hunt for Satoshi Nakamoto morphed into a media circus last week, a community of cryptocurrency experts from which the bitcoin founder likely sprang was tucked away in sunny Barbados discussing the present and future of his remarkable invention.

It was the 18th annual conference of the International Financial Cryptography Association, but it was the first one to occur while a real-life cryptocurrency, the idea they’d championed for decades, was actually showing traction in wider society.