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Why London is the Next Crypto Hub
Recorded: Oct. 12, 2023 Duration: 0:31:39Space Recording
Full Transcription
Good day, everybody. Welcome, welcome, welcome to this week's Crypto Internet Show Special Edition.
We're talking about London and why London may be the next crypto hub and also going to be talking a little bit about some upcoming events, everything from a major, major hackathon that is taking place and also the big upcoming conference next week, Bitcoin Unleashed.
If you haven't done so already, definitely make sure you go to BitcoinUnleashed.org to sign up and to get your tickets.
If you would like to be a speaker, feel free to register and try to get one of the last few very minimal remaining spots on stage.
And it'll be taking place October 19th and 20th next week in London.
I'm your host, Kyle Ellicott.
And today, again, welcome, everyone.
We're going to talk about what is going on in London when it comes to Web3 and the potential crypto hub that has begun to turn into.
But if this is your first time joining, welcome, welcome to this week's Crypto Internet Show.
This is our regular series talking about everything stacks, the broader ecosystem and building on Bitcoin layers.
That said, we've got a lot of great speakers to share insights on all of this stuff I just mentioned.
So let's jump right in.
I want to pull.
Let's see.
Do we have I think we might be missing one or two speakers.
Let me just get one or two more up here on stage.
Phil, how are you doing?
Well, we'll start with you, Phil.
A quick introduction since we're waiting for everyone to jump up here.
Yeah, doing amazing.
Thanks, Kyle, very much for having us on.
I'm Phil.
Hey, everyone.
Co-founder of EZA.
We are so excited to be hosting the Stacks EZA Bitcoin Hackathon here in London next weekend.
Been putting a ton of work towards it.
It's going to be the culmination of 60 days of Stacks.
We've got a ton of builders, almost a thousand builders who've been completing those challenges.
And we're going to have the best of you all join us next weekend.
So thrilled to be on sharing a little bit more about it.
And thanks again, Kyle, for hosting.
Of course.
And Phil, I'm going to go one little bit deeper as well.
Those who may not be familiar with EZA.
You're the co-founder of EZA.
We're going to have Dom up here in just a moment as well.
Talk to us a little bit about what EZA is, why this is such an awesome initiative.
Doing a little research.
I saw what you and your team have put together.
You've got over 750,000, almost a million devs worldwide, it looks like, in your network.
What is EZA?
Why is this something that's so important to Web3?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Well, we co-founded EZA just over three and a half years ago.
And the vision for EZA is to be the one-stop shop for builders to come in.
So if anybody's familiar with Codecademy about how they brought literally 50 million developers into Web2, that's exactly what we're doing for Web3.
We're making it super simple for anybody just to get started right from their mobile phone in a similar way to how Duolingo made learning languages so easy right from your phone.
And that's exactly what we're doing for blockchain and Web3.
So as part of the 60 days of Stacks, what we have is we have these full-on modules which walk users through a gamified journey all the way through from learning right about Bitcoin, some of the philosophy behind it, through to how Stacks, through proof of transfer, through things like SBTC, which is coming up, as well as the Nakamoto release, are going to actually bring, finally, some of these amazing opportunities to Bitcoin.
And really just presenting these opportunities that are available in the ecosystem and solving that awareness problem amongst developers.
So that's EZA in a nutshell.
Think of us sort of like Duolingo or Codecademy for blockchain.
Right on.
And can you talk to us a little bit about what you're seeing pre the run-up to London?
I mean, we're about a week out from the event.
As I mentioned, over 750,000 devs in your network.
Shout out to Adam from the Stacks Foundation in the audience.
He tweeted out yesterday that we had seen, as a community, over 700 applications in less than a week on EZA in preparation for this event.
Can you talk to us a little bit about what might be to come, what you're seeing, projects, et cetera, as well?
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, it's been such a pleasure working with the team, you know, Shannon, Adam, Chris, as well, who are on the spaces.
Yeah, we've seen a huge, huge amount of excitement around it.
I think for many people, this is the first time that they're even seeing the idea that you can build on Bitcoin.
And so we've had a lot of people from the community who are like, wait, what?
Building on Bitcoin?
Is that even possible?
And we show them, yes, right, this is possible for the first time ever through Stacks and in a unique way as well.
So really walking developers through, we've had a tremendous amount of excitement.
So it's going to be tricky to have to choose between the final people who are able to come.
So that's what we're doing through the EZA app.
We're getting everybody to build their own little mini-dap within the app, deploy it onto Testnet as well.
And so by, I guess, this time of next week, we'll have whittled it down to the final people in the hackathon.
And really, I think what we're seeing as well is we've seen a lot of community-oriented events happening in London.
We've got some awesome community teams who are actually hosting mini-workshops amongst themselves to get to know, to prepare for the hackathon as well.
So just a tremendous amount of excitement.
And I think that's just because of the opportunity that we've got, you know, obviously sharing it via the EZA app, but also just in general through what is possible right now.
That's huge.
And in terms of some of those side events, can you share a little bit more of what they are about?
Are they more on the technical side?
Are they more just sharing the enthusiasm about building on Bitcoin?
What are some of those events leading up?
Yeah, some are just community, some are just, you know, small meetups.
We actually have a really cool one.
If anybody here is listening from Imperial or is based in London, we have some cool student building meetups happening.
So that will be on Thursday next week at 6 p.m.
That's going to be more of like a technical workshop, but very much community-oriented, very open as well.
So definitely check that out.
And I think, you know, the announcement will be coming out about that soon.
And, yeah, just generally community-oriented events.
People just wanting to connect before the hackathon, I think.
We're obviously going to have a team-building session that's going to happen on Saturday morning.
But, you know, people getting pre-hackathon nerves just want to meet up, discuss a couple of ideas, and overall figure out what they want to build.
Because a lot of these teams, they want to build a hackathon, but they want to build a startup.
So this is like a core part of our ethos, like at EZA, we have people who have been funded by A16Z out of our hackathons, been funded by YC, by loads of different accelerators, and, of course, got grants as well afterwards.
And I think this is a tremendous opportunity for them, and that's something that we've been encouraging them to do.
Think about it as the launch pad for their next big thing, the next startup that they're going to launch.
So those pre-hackathon nerves are real.
You are excited.
You are ready to build something.
You're about to either create a team or have a team.
It is definitely a real thing.
So I feel you there, Phil, as well.
And one last thing about the hackathon.
So you talked about the final groups will be put together next week.
So kind of explain that to us.
So we've got over 700 apps currently and rising right now.
In about a week, how many does that get down to?
And then what are the final selection over the weekend, next weekend?
Yeah, great question.
We technically have 200 spots available at the hackathon.
So this is going to be a, basically, our team is going to have a look at everybody's contributions so far in terms of the GitHub, who's been completing the course.
So right now, we've released modules one through four.
Next week, five and six will be through.
So we'll see which of you are able to complete the final ones.
Don't worry if you apply yourself.
It won't be, won't, you know, make your brain melt.
But we're just going to be seeing, you know, who's super dedicated and who wants to continue building right at the hackathon and also afterwards as well.
So that's what it's going to look like.
To be honest, I think it'll make people more nervous than they should be.
I'm just thinking about it.
You know, essentially, if you are a builder who is excited about building on Bitcoin and you've applied yourself and, you know, you've really just immersed yourself as much as you can beforehand, then, you know, you'll be coming to the hackathon and we'll be seeing you next weekend.
That's awesome.
I mean, hats off to you, Dom, and the entire EZA team.
And, of course, the foundation, again, a shout out to Adam, Chris, and others in the audience that I know have put a lot of work into this.
This is going to be super exciting.
Let those nerves be that inspiration to build something exciting on Bitcoin or otherwise as well, because it sounds like you guys got something pretty exciting coming next week.
That said, let's talk a little bit about London.
Marcus, you're up on stage.
You are a part of the Crypto Mondays team.
And break down what you are seeing happening in London and why now is London being talked about as a next Crypto Hub?
Cool.
Well, I feel like crypto has been around a long time in London, but I haven't really had the spark or the, or the, or I would say like the interest in like a sense of like, a sense of like having like a lot of people,
like interested in crypto, but like I've seen over the couple of years, cause I've been going, like first I started to go Crypto Mondays is by like 2018, 2017, when Crypto Mondays London first started.
And then obviously it was like, um, there was like lots of interest and a lot of like different interest in crypto, but there wasn't like really like, really, there wasn't really like interest within a sense of like investment or like, um, or, or, or like events more, more so.
But like now I'm seeing a lot of people more interested in London becoming like the central hub for crypto within a sense of the last few years has picked up a really a lot.
And like, even with like governments coming into play, I feel like, uh, London has like a, or the UK itself has like a big opportunity to be like a, uh, a central hub for crypto as well.
And like be a safe space for crypto is just depending on how governments and how, uh, uh, politicians actually regulate crypto within a sense of like how, how, how to like, um, get everybody here.
I see a lot of people go to Dubai for crypto or like for all these other foreign countries, but I feel like if there's like more big companies, more, more, more, more friendly regulation, regulation, then I feel like it will help crypto grow within the sense of London and, and throughout the world as well.
Cause you see with things like fintech and like, um, and like fintech being like a few years ago, I heard someone say fintech was a, um, central hub for, for crypto, no, for, for, for, for, for, uh, London was a central hub for, for, for, for fintech.
And like now I'm seeing like cryptos being like the main cool for, for, for London right now as well.
That's a great point.
I mean, you got, uh, one side of it, you've got New York, uh, New York city.
Where we've seen a ton of activity and that entire area go from finance into the new world of web three as well.
And then as you mentioned on Dubai, on the other side, you've got this rising crypto hub.
So with London sits in this unique middle position to really thrive from all that activity and has a outstanding entrepreneurial growing venture scene and credit back to Phil and, um,
and a, a massive developer community as well.
So Marcus, you're calling all the right things out.
This is, this is exciting.
And I know we've got someone hiding a little bit in stealth and next to you on stage.
That's Nat, uh, on the stacks, London handle, Nat, similar question.
Why London?
Why now?
What has, what has been happening on the ground in the area?
Uh, furthering Marcus's comments.
Um, some of what Marcus was saying, I'd definitely go along with, um, is that London has always had very, very strong kind of crypto roots.
Um, but I, I would say from my angle, I've been, you know, I've been in the space for a very long time.
So I would say that for me, I kind of grew up with London having more of a Bitcoin focused route.
Um, you know, uh, one of the other entities that I manage at the moment is CoinScrum, which, uh, started all the way back in 2012.
It was started by a guy called, uh, Paul Gordon, who's very much well-known in the UK and, and, and the kind of like worldwide crypto space.
But, um, but yeah, that has been running since 2012 and literally started off the kind of wave of, uh, crypto communities.
Um, I think the first time I attended was like in 2015.
And at that point it was still really the only major crypto community that was running in London.
Um, so London has a very kind of rich Bitcoin history, but what I would say is that post, let's say, maybe the ICO era of the 2017, 2018, 2019, there's been a lot of change in, in, let's say, where different communities are focused.
And that is simply because obviously crypto has expanded, right?
So, uh, with crypto Mondays coming through and, and, and big up to Caitlin as well from crypto Mondays for starting that whole movement, they really winded the net for everybody, I would say, in terms of, um, being a centrally focused kind of crypto meetup, you know, not being about any particular currency or cryptocurrency in particular or any blockchain, but like opening more to the wider kind of crypto space.
Um, and then since, let's say after the pandemic, what we've seen, obviously during the bull one was this explosion of like everyone, everywhere kind of talking about crypto.
And now like London's like a very, very active crypto scene.
Um, but I, what I would say is that what is happening, obviously coming up is like this, this, this feeling of bringing, and, and, and I've been gratefully like instrumental in part of that with coins from, and with other entities who are kind of bringing back a lot more of the, the kind of Bitcoin ethos into the space.
And kind of reminding people what this is all about really, you know, so that's, that's what I would say, but London is always burgeoning, like constant events going on in London, like every single day.
Right.
So, um, so yeah.
And I'd also echo the comments about the UAE being one of the other places, but we'll get into a bit more of it.
I'll say a bit later on.
Yeah.
Well, we're going to talk a lot about it on stage as well, Nat.
So we'll, we won't give too much content away as we want everyone, uh, to make sure that they do attend the conference.
But that said, big question for you.
You're under the handle STX London.
You're a part of the London stacks chapter.
What is that chapter?
What do you do?
How are you promoting the message of web three and the development of new projects, et cetera, in London?
Okay.
Right.
There's a bit of a two-tier question here, but I'd, I'd probably go back to like where the idea for kind of doing STX London came about was more of, as I said, kind of like seeing people drifting away from Bitcoin and not really like, you know, like we're kind of seeing like the whole ICO era happen all over again, but with NFTs.
Right.
And I think that's where the kind of sentiment from my side kind of came to be like, well, I need to continue what I've always done in the space, which is teach people about Bitcoin, like teach people the real fundamentals of the space.
So they don't come into this space, like, and just, you know, so starting from there, it started off as kind of like teaching people about Bitcoin.
And then it was like starting the project, the NFT clothing club, which was bringing NFTs physical fashion together with NFTs and then using the messaging of Bitcoin on those pieces of clothing to try and promote more the use of Bitcoin or the understanding or the education of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin. So that's what brought me around to finding STX.
Now I had, I had already known about STX since the block stack days.
I just didn't get involved with the ICO.
So for me, it was like, wow, like this has really come a long way.
And what is going on over here?
Like people really, really need to know about this because with what STX is doing,
you can really teach people about the fundamentals of the space by teaching them about Bitcoin first and then moving them on to, you know,
the other exciting developments that we've seen in the space, such as NFTs, such as DeFi.
And because STX enables all of that with Bitcoin, it was just like a no brainer to me that this is what I should be doing.
So that's kind of like the origins of STX London.
And since then, what we've been doing is holding a lot of in-person events and Twitter spaces to try and just kind of give people that education and give them that kind of like,
I really want to say secure kind of fundamental when they come into the space that they can actually learn about Bitcoin.
It's not just like, you know, this boring asset of sitting over there, right?
You know, we just wait till the candle goes green and then we just buy loads of other altcoins, right?
Like, because that's like the general mood of the space.
But just to give people the ethos and the security of, okay, if I start with Bitcoin, I can actually use Bitcoin and do these exciting things.
I can build, develop NFTs.
I can, you know, do some DeFi applications.
I can build gaming.
I can do all of these things.
But I can have that finality and that security of Bitcoin.
So that's what our main mission is.
And that's what we've been doing for the last year and a bit.
Love it.
And thank you so much as well, Nat, to you and to the entire chapter for all the work that you've done and also all the work that I know you're doing behind the scenes, building up to the event next week and all the efforts on the ground in London as well.
And speaking of the event next week, Bitcoin Unleashed, October 19th and 20th, we have someone on to tell us a little bit about what's going on behind the scenes.
Shannon, big shout out, big fan, been excited to have you on stage.
This is an awesome moment for me personally.
That said, why London for the next Bitcoin Unleashed event?
We've gone virtual.
We've gone to Austin.
We've gone all over the place.
We've gone to Miami.
Why London?
Yeah.
Hey, Kyle.
So it was definitely an easy decision for us.
We have so many incredible builders and creators and artists within the London community.
We did spend a lot of time, several months, whenever we review what location we should be in.
But we were seeing so many obvious choices from just newsletters that are being sent out, naming London as the next crypto hub.
I think Digital Asset Summit has an event coming up there.
They usually have an annual summit.
And then also there's the COGX events.
But it is a crypto hub.
I think it's almost like it's not next.
It is it now with people from the EZA team, like Phil and Dom to the Stacks London crew that have been just trucking away at doing such incredible work.
We've seen the momentum there.
We've seen so many incredible people out of the space and they're amazing projects.
So it was really just an inethical next step for us to do our conference there.
We've done many meetups.
We've been part of a Decentralizing the World tour several years back before COVID.
But found it as like, OK, here's just an extension of what our incredible community is doing.
So we just felt like it was coming to our backyard, highlighting the incredible speakers here.
And when we did, it was easy to partner up with incredible people at Sovereign and IOV Labs and Babylon and so many incredible artists.
So, yeah, this was an easy one for us.
And we've been really happy with it.
We decided to hold the event at Protein Studios in Shoreditch, a really great location that's going to be incredibly versatile.
We've got an amazing NFT gallery there.
And we also have stages that are not meant to be sort of like a talking down approach.
We were really trying to highlight networking.
We've had so many people that are just looking to connect and meet up with fellow builders, layer two technologists, fellow creators in the space.
We thought, how can we do that?
So we've really spent a lot of time building out programming to make sure that people feel like it's as collaborative as possible, that they can ask the questions that are on their mind, be there to really get the answers that they need from the speakers that are involved.
So it's different than what we've done in the past, but are excited to have people from, obviously, Muneeb Ali, who's in the audience here, I think I just saw a few minutes ago.
We've got Daniel Fogg from IOV Labs, Jameson Lopp, huge fans of him, Pete Rizzo from Forbes, Ray Youssef is always entertaining at CivKit, Anjali Young is fantastic from Collabland, local artists like Mark McKenzie from Apollo and Megapon that's doing such incredible work, John Light from Sovereign.
So many, the list goes on, check out the website for all those speakers there.
Also want to add to, on the EZA hackathon front, that if you are part of the hackathon, we are promoting a code as part of that.
It is a free code as a hackathon registrant.
We want to see all those devs, all those builders there, and are making the effort to make sure that it is an easy fit so that they can hear these amazing talks at the conference and be part of the hackathon.
We're also so happy to, you can tell this is such an event perspective here, but happy to align with even local caterers to highlight a lot of the incredible breweries locally and some amazing food locally, being very resourceful on that front.
So we've thought of everything here truly and are excited to be there next week and to meet a lot of our community in person.
It's incredible. I mean, the localized integration that you and the team have put so much effort in, along with EZA as well, to make this event feel so incredibly localized and not something that regionally just came in for this time, but it's something that could be there for a long time.
You mentioned Andreessen Horowitz, A16Z, for those who don't know, A16Z, crypto expanded out to London.
They're also hosting their next crypto school, I believe it is, in London here in a few months, maybe in a couple weeks as well.
So a lot of activity furthering on your point, Shannon, and also Phil's as well.
Shannon, I want to circle back. One last question about the event.
What type of sessions can attendees expect from Bitcoin Unleashed?
In the past, we've had kind of a full circle type event, everything from technical to keynotes, panels, the like.
What can people expect from next week's event?
Yeah, we're definitely hitting it all.
There's definitely a strong emphasis on people wanting to hear regulatory talks in London.
We've made sure to include that.
We have some really incredible people representing the DeFi space from Chente and Philips.
So we have Alex and Arcadeco and Desk Protocol with Tyco, a lot of other DeFi projects locally that we'll be talking on on that subject.
We've got a lot of incredible ordinals talks.
We will be touching on runes, which is hot at the moment.
A lot of different NFT projects that are going to be commenting on just the latest and greatest in the space.
We've had a lot of people that have mentioned they want to hear a little bit more about community building efforts.
How do we do that? What works? What doesn't?
That's definitely involved in a lot of the programming.
People are also curious.
Can I can I just hear what's going on?
What's the latest? Where are things going?
Miniboys does an excellent job of giving everyone a temperature check of where we're at in terms of the current Bitcoin ecosystem and how to get involved.
We will be touching on a lot of exciting announcements with a lot of the other Layer 2 projects.
So stay tuned for a lot of that information.
What else? What else?
I feel like the list could go on.
You might have to stop me or mute me because I can keep going down the programming list.
But also what we've seen recently, too, there's been a surge in people wanting a little bit more of a deep dive on technical content.
So we have a dedicated we have a main stage and a dedicated developer den stage.
So we will be diving deep into a lot of really great technical workshops.
We have a silent disco format.
So we've got we've got headphones.
People are going to be completely plugged into that programming on the developer den stage.
We saw this as kind of a surge with the Bitcoin plus plus events that happened in Austin.
And then I think they won't come up in Belgium.
But people showed up. They wanted to hear the nitty gritty of a lot of these topics and sitting there and plugging away.
We have the space to make sure that it's easy to set up your laptop and just learn right there.
A lot of the talks, too, are going to be helpful for the hackathon that weekend, getting people set up in the right way.
So, yeah, we're truly touching on it all.
That's incredible.
And again, for those who haven't done so already, Bitcoin Unleashed dot org, make sure to go there, sign up, get a ticket.
If you would like to be a speaker as well, there's maybe one or two small spots left and we would be happy to have you.
And Shannon did mention we are going to give out a promo code.
Happy to hook anybody up with one of those.
Shoot me a DM as well.
Adam.
You're on stage, finally.
Been trying to get you up here for this entire conversation because you have so much knowledge.
Again, you're the one that tweeted out into the world that we had over 700 applications on the EZA app in less than a week.
You have been talking about this hackathon, but also previous hackathons around stacks and Bitcoin layers in the past.
What are you excited about?
Give us all the hits as we are less than a week out from the event.
Man, less than a week already.
I'm excited about so much.
I've been in London for the majority of this month and really kind of just getting established with the locals like Nat and Resh from the London chapter.
And then also Phil and Dom and the EZA team, also based in London.
And there's still just so many more people that I met at Zebu Live conference happening in London last week.
We had a happy hour after that event where we sponsored with Coinscrum as the partner that Nat was mentioning.
And just meeting so many people there who are so excited for what's going on.
You know, it's contagious.
And that is ultimately what makes me very excited.
But aside from aside from actually like being here, the work that's been going into the overall ecosystem with the things that have been being built and the things that are coming up and the releases that we have on deck.
All of this kind of happening and coming together all around the same time is really a beautiful picture to see.
So I think I'm most excited about that and the reconnecting with people that I've met throughout the ecosystem, throughout the Stacks ecosystem, you know, for the past several months.
Meeting new people, because as we've all already expressed, the London scene is really raging right now.
And we're going to be able to meet new people, bring new people into the Stacks ecosystem.
And that's really exciting.
And then after Bitcoin Unleashed, you know, we have this amazing hackathon that we have been working with the EZA team for the past several weeks and months.
And, you know, putting together this beautiful content and their incredible app and onboarding new developers, getting them excited, getting them believing and building on Bitcoin and getting them looking forward to using this new novel technology like SBTC.
And so a lot of that is going to come to life.
I can't wait.
And it happens very, very soon.
Absolutely.
So, so soon.
And again, very excited.
Thank you very much, Adam.
Phil, coming back to you as we come to close here, quick shout out.
Where can everyone go to sign up for EZA, sign up for the hackathon and to get tuned in into those 700 plus that have already signed up?
Yeah, definitely.
If you haven't yet, make sure you get started now ASAP.
You can find EZA on the App Store, on iOS devices or on the Play Store on Android.
So just head over there, download the app, and you'll find everything you need to know from building on Stacks through to even signing up for the event.
So you'll be able to go in right there, tap on the events tab, and you can go right into the Stacks hackathon and sign up right then and there through the app.
So make sure if you want to come along to the hackathon, sign up ASAP while we still have a few spots left.
And otherwise, I'm looking forward to seeing everybody next weekend.
Awesome.
Same, same.
And again, a big shout out to the Stacks London chapter for all the work that you and the entire chapter have put into making this event possible.
Adam, to you and the foundation, as well as Shannon, for producing this event end-to-end.
And it's going to be an exciting, localized, very integrated event for the entire London community next week.
So again, BitcoinUnleashed.org, October 19th and 20th, hackathon to follow.
Make sure that you do sign up, get your ticket.
We have some promo codes.
Shoot me a DM.
We'll hook you up with one of those as well.
And with that said, thank you very much, everyone, for tuning in to this week's Crypto Internet Show.
If you would like to tune in live, ask questions, or join the conversation, be sure to follow Stacks on Twitter and tune in every week at our regular time, 5 p.m. Eastern on Wednesdays.
Until next time, I'm your host, Kyle Ellicott.
Big shout out again to everyone who has put in effort to make this great event happen.
See you at Bitcoin Unleashed London.
Shout out to EZA.
Everyone have a wonderful day.
Take care.
