Roger Ver to Hold 'Free Speech Party' for Scaling Bitcoin Attendees

The Scaling Bitcoin workshop is coming to Milan from October 8-9. Hosted in the Politecnico di Milano Piazza Leonardo da Vinci in Milano, Italy, the workshop will showcase technical proposals for Bitcoin scalability solutions. On Saturday afternoon, Bitcoin investor Roger Ver and associates will host a “free speech party” for attendees — covering topics not approved by the official conference.

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Though timed and located to coincide with Scaling Bitcoin, the party itself is not associated with the conference. Like a fringe arts festival, it’s a sideline event for conference-goers in their after hours.

How Bitcoin Can Grow

The workshop’s website says attendees will see presentations on various topics dealing with Bitcoin scalability. The website provides the following list:

Improving Bitcoin throughput

Layer 2 ideas (i.e. payment channels, etc.)

Security and privacy

Incentives and fee structures

Testing, simulation, and modeling

Network resilience

Anti-spam measures

Block size proposals

Mining concerns

Community coordination

The Milan workshop has several sponsors from the Bitcoin and blockchain industry. These include Deloitte, Blockstream and Bitcoin.com. Additionally, the conference website states some sponsor funds will subsidize travel for developers and researchers “who otherwise would not be able to attend the conference.”

Starting in 2015, the Scaling Bitcoin events have taken place in various locations around the world. They bring developers and enthusiasts together in hopes of finding a workable solution to increasing Bitcoin’s transaction throughput.

Roger Ver’s ‘Free Speech and Free Beer’ Party

On the evening of October 8, at 7 PM CET, Roger Ver, Jerry Chan and Jake Smith will host an after-party for conference attendees. The party, at the Hotel Lombardia Milano, will provide free food and drinks. They will also hand out “Hard Fork Cafe” t-shirts on a first-come, first-served basis.

With Bitcoin.com and Bitcoin Unlimited as sponsors, the party will be in a meeting room that holds 100 people — plus an overflow area, in the event the crowd exceeds room capacity.

Co-host Jerry Chan told Bitcoin.com the after-party will feature talks not accepted at the official Scaling Bitcoin workshop. As an example, these topics include Xthin blocks, freedom of choice through emergent consensus, and scaling the Bitcoin network beyond 100 transactions per second.

As mentioned above, the party’s theme is free speech — an important ideal to Ver, who has previously criticized Bitcoin developers and community leaders for allegedly attempting to censor discussions regarding the Bitcoin block size and various scalability solutions.

Most recently, Ver-owned Bitcoin.com launched a bitcoin mining pool, which uses the Bitcoin Unlimited protocol. According to its website, the Bitcoin Unlimited project aims to put block size decisions into the hands of miners and node operators. “By modifying their client,” the website says, miners and node operators can choose their own block size limits.

Will you attend the free speech party at Scaling Bitcoin Milan? Let us know in the comments below.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Roger Ver.

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