Bitcoin Magazine multi-part series: Bitcoin At Porcfest

[Keith and stuff]

Bitcoin Magazine is did a multi-part series (parts 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) on Bitcoin at the 2013 Porcupine Freedom Festival in Lancaster, New Hampshire. Vitalik Buterin started writing the series on June 15, 2013. He attened Porcfest and released new articles about Bitcoin at Porcfest during the event. Here is the first part of the series. The full article is posted but none of the photos are shown, nor are the links active. Click on the link to the article for that info.

Bitcoin At Porcfest, Part 0: Exploring Boston and New Hampshire
Vitalik Buterin | On 15, Jun 2013
http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-at-porcfest-part-0-exploring-boston-and-new-hampshire/

In 2012, Josh Harvey made a post on the Bitcointalk forum with the following title: “Porcfest 2012: Biggest Bitcoin Event Ever.” Porcfest is one of two annual summits hosted by the Free State Project, a libertarian movement in New Hampshire with over 1,000 active participants, most of whom moved to the state to take part. The event is a week-long gathering on a campsite in northern New Hampshire, and every day is filled with a collection of liberty-themed panel discussions, music and games, and throughout the week there is a marketplace called Agora Valley, where merchants typically accept silver and gold as payment in addition to US dollars (or, as the locals prefer to call them, “federal reserve notes”). In 2012, however, silver and gold were for the first time joined by their new upstart digital companion, with over 80% of merchants accepting Bitcoin as payment. “I talked to some of the ones that didn’t,” Harvey added, “and even they knew exactly what I was talking about. They were interested in doing it, but just hadn’t gotten set up yet.” This year, Bitcoin is expected to take on an even larger role at Porcfest. The Free State Project’s keystone charities, including Antiwar and the medical group Fr33Aid, have started taking Bitcoin donations, and the latter has even converted to being a purely Bitcoin-based organization.

But what is this Free State Project that has let Bitcoin consume it to such a great extent? The underlying objective is simple. In 2001, a number of libertarian activists, disappointed with their failures to get anyone elected inside the United States’ Republican and Democrat-dominated federal government, decided to try a different strategy: find a state that is (i) already very free in both personal and economic matters, and (ii) has a low population, allowing for smaller groups to achieve significant change, and convince 20,000 people to move to that state to actively influence local politics in a libertarian direction. New Hampshire proved to be the perfect candidate; its current population is only 1.3 million, allowing 20,000 movers to have significant control over state politics simply by playing the dominant and evenly matched Republicans and Democrats against each other, and as far as freedom is concerned one must only look as far as the state’s motto: “Live Free or Die”.

The libertarian appeal of New Hampshire can be seen from the moment one drives in; on one highway leading into the state, on the border there is a sign stating that wearing seatbelts is mandatory for those under 18 – that is, unlike every other state, only for those under 18, with the “Live Free or Die” motto written below. The state is quiet and secluded; although the large southern towns like Manchester, Portsmouth and Concord do have bus routes, huge swaths of the state are completely inaccessible by public transportation, making them ideal for those who simply want to live undisturbed and peaceful lives with their families or in small communities far away from the rest of civilization; this sort of idyllic, “down-to-earth”, ideology is especially popular in Graphton, which attracts libertarians with its lack of a building code. For those who enjoy the benefits of civilization, from Manchester Boston is only two hours away by bus. State politics is highly accessible, with 400 representatives in the New Hampshire State House of Representatives (of which about 20 are libertarians) making it easy for anyone to make their voice heard in government. There is no state income and sales tax, although the state makes up the difference via high property taxes – a highly successful partial implementation of a left-libertarian political philosophy known as Georgism.

In my own travels through the state, one common sentiment I have heard is that people here tend to view the local government very favorably; it would be a truly ideal place to live “if only the feds would get out of the way”. And this has a strong ring of truth; from this author’s Canadian point of view, the federal government of the United States, with its bans on drinking alcohol or even entering many bars below age 21, requirements to show identification to board a bus, and constant DHS-funded reminders on TV telling people “if you see something, say something”, feels like a downright police state compared to the “True North Strong and Free”. Incidentally, the high age restriction on alcohol and bars has even led to me personally getting kicked out of a Bitcoin meetup here, although the meetup group was nice (and righteously angry) enough to relocate to a different location. Outside of libertarianism, the other main jarring thing about the United States to a Canadian is the sheer number of advertisements for various private and semi-private health care services.

The Free State Project movement in New Hampshire is essentially centered around two cities: Manchester and Keene. Manchester is important because of its (relatively) large population of 110,000, and by libertarian standards it has its credibility; CNNMoney ranks Manchester as the 13th best city to live and launch a business, and Yahoo ranks it the first in its list of tax-friendly cities. There are no Bitcoin-accepting restaurants yet in Manchester, although Lamassu‘s Josh and Zach Harvey are (at least currently) located in the city and organize a weekly meetup with about seven to ten participants.

Keene is the undisputed “liberty media capital of the world“, with Free Talk Live, LRN.FM (“Liberty Radio Network”) and ten other libertarian shows located there, but is also the home of a much more activist, and controversial, part of the local libertarian movement that focuses heavily on civil disobedience. Marijuana is sometimes involved, and at other times the target is local rules prohibiting filming in courts or distributing pamphlets on school property. A particularly popular (and, in this case, entirely legal) activity is “Robin Hooding”, a deliberate strategy to deprive the Keene government of revenue from parking tickets by following parking inspectors around and filling expired parking meters right before the inspectors come to check any particular spot. Other Free Staters often disagree with the “Keeniacs”‘ actions, seeing them as needlessly provoking the local government even when some of the rules the activists are targeting are downright reasonable. “I think some of the civil disobedience has been constructive and useful—and much of it has not been,” Free State Project founder Jason Sorens has said. If you wish to evaluate the merits of this side of the movement for yourself, consider watching their latest video Derrick J’s Victimless Crime Spree and making your own conclusions.

The one Bitcoin-accepting restaurant currently in New Hampshire is the Pao Cafe in Newmarket, close to Portsmouth. The owner, Matt Corano, is himself part of the Free State Project, and is actively interested in Bitcoin for the ideological reasons. More will soon come; the Free Stater-owned Murphy’s Diner in Manchester may accept it if at least one of its suppliers can be convinced to, and a number of restaurants on Manchester’s Elm Street are potentially interested (although the Harveys are too busy with their Bitcoin ATM to spend too much time promoting Bitcoin adoption locally). But this is not to say that Bitcoin adoption is sparse; in fact, a very large number of people both in the Free State Project and elsewhere accept Bitcoin as payment for various kinds of services. The landlord I personally am staying with during my stay in New Hampshire, Alec Muller, accepts bitcoins for rent at a 20% discount, and Josh and Zach Harvey have managed to get a number of their graphic designers and suppliers to take them.

The other attraction of southern New Hampshire, and Manchester in particular, is its proximity to Boston, a city which has a strong Bitcoin community itself. The main character in Boston is Jay Best, an MIT research affiliate who has put together a weekly Bitcoin meetup group with, just like in Manchester, about seven to ten participants. However, in other ways Best has been more successful. There are now two restaurants accepting Bitcoin, Thelonious Monkfish and Veggie Galaxy.

See a few more pictures of Thelonious Monkfish and Veggie Galaxy here

Thelonious Monkfish appears to be simply an ordinary Asian fusion restaurant, albeit a highly rated one that is fully seated within half an hour of opening its doors at 11:30 on Sunday. Veggie Galaxy is a vegetarian restaurant, featuring veggie burgers, “steaks”, salads, coconut-based cocktails and various kinds of vegan desserts. Both restaurants have plenty of high-quality options on the menu at a reasonable price, although it is possible to get unlucky. More Bitcoin-accepting places are soon to come; first in line are a café and a beer store, and both Best and other Bitcoin users are actively recruiting more. The ideological feel of the Bitcoin community is still largely libertarian, although a significant number are political moderates who like Bitcoin purely for its aspects of reducing transactional friction. The intent of the group is to simply focus on spreading Bitcoin adoption, as well as acting as a hotspot for Bitcoin activity; at the Bitcoin meetup last Friday, two people came to buy bitcoins from Best.

Next week Bitcoin activity in Manchester and Boston will die down somewhat, as all the Bitcoiners will be heading over to Porcfest. The event will be taking place near Lancaster, NH, and tickets will be sold at the door for $75. Accomodations are heavily booked, so if you are not yet prepared to go your best bet may be either renting a room in a hotel 15km away or getting a tent and renting an RV spot. The local hotels and RV spots, unfortunately, do not accept Bitcoin. The first day of the fest will be tomorrow, although the more interesting events will take place later in the week.

See you at Porcfest!

BTW, there are numerous errors in this article. The writer is an expert on Bitcoins, not the New Hampshire liberty movement. He was born in Russia and lives in Canada. That said, he did try to write an accurate article so when he spelled Grafton as Graphton or said that there are about 20 are libertarian state reps in NH, while he was wrong, I'm sure it wasn't intentional.

 

[Keith and stuff]

Here is the 2nd part in the Bitcoin Magazine series on Porcfest. It is titled Part 1 because it is the first part of the series punish at Porcfest.

Bitcoin At Porcfest, Part 1: A Social Experiment
Vitalik Buterin | On 20, Jun 2013
http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-at-porcfest-part-1-a-social-experiment/

Today marks the third official day of Porcfest, and already hundreds of people have showed up. In the nine Porcfests before this one, attendance has always trickled up slowly, with only a few people present on Monday and the event ramping up to full force on Friday and Saturday. This year, those who have attended previous Porcfests are saying that as many people have come to this Porcfest already as came to the previous one by Friday, and the number of attendees is expected to continue growing as the week continues to progress. Over 1100 people preregistered for the event by the online registration deadline of June 1, roughly as many as the number of people attending the Bitcoin conference in San Jose. Between the recent leaks regarding NSA wiretaps, the Free State Project breaking 14,000 participants and the continuing economic crisis in general, the Free State Project appears to be rapidly entering the mainstream.

Last year, Bitcoin made a very strong appearance at Porcfest 2012, with what Josh Harvey described as 80% of merchants at the fest accepting it. This year, Bitcoin is taking on an even more central presence than before. Erik Voorhees’ SatoshiDice is the event’s largest sponsor, the main tent used for presentations is called the “BitTent”, and aside from the three presentations that are discussing Bitcoin (the first of which attracted a full tent of listeners today) many other speakers, like Jeff Bush, are actively promoting it as a key part of their larger philosophies of personal and economic liberty.

And, last but not least, there is Agora Valley. Agora Valley is a marketplace located fairly close to the presentation tents where merchants are free to set up stores to sell food and merchandise. This is the main destination where Porcfest attendees can go to get food between the various presentations and events. Just like last year, a majority of merchants accept Bitcoin, although a few (including, unfortunately, two of the only three vegetarian/vegan-friendly restaurants) still do not. On the customer side, those merchants who do accept Bitcoin are reporting that between a quarter and a half of their sales are done with it. In this regard, Porcfest is a true Bitcoin event in a way that even the Bitcoin conference in San Jose was not; here, hundreds of largely non-technical, ordinary, people were actually using Bitcoin to buy and sell food and merchandise in real life, and learning along the way.

In the campground in the forests of northern New Hampshire where this year’s PorcFest is taking place, the main impediment to Bitcoin usage is obvious: internet connectivity. The campground itself provides an internet hotspot for $15 for a week, but the only way to pay for it is by credit card; even buying in person with cash is not possible. And even that connection is shaky; Porcfest veterans report that last year by Wednesday there were so many people that the internet was barely usable, and this year the connection is somewhat better but not by much. To alleviate this, two Porcfest attendees have come up with solutions. Lamassu‘s Matt Whitlock has set up a “Bitcoin-only wifi” hotspot which is free for anyone to connect to, but which only offers access to a few publicly known Bitcoin nodes and Electrum servers and blockchain.info. This internet is accessible throughout the entire campground, and nearly all Bitcoin users at Porcfest are relying on it to make and receive transactions. Another attendee has set up a paid internet hotspot of his own, offering access for the duration of Porcfest for 0.047 BTC or $6 USD. The other major impediment to Bitcoin usage – namely, obtaining bitcoins in the first palce, was solved by Lamassu’s Bitcoin ATM, with which anyone can trade cash for bitcoins at a 1% fee. Lamassu’s Matt Whitlock reports that the ATM has sold over $1600 worth of bitcoin at Porcfest so far.

For those interested in using Bitcoin at farmer’s markets, a Bitcoin-only wifi hotspot seems like the perfect solution; between it and the Lamassu machine, the infrastructural problems with using Bitcoin at Porcfest are largely solved. But the event does show a larger problem with accepting Bitcoin in person: usability. Although Bitcoin does, in theory, allow a customer to pay a merchant in two seconds by simply scanning a QR code and hitting send, in practice there are very many technical glitches that can increase the time it takes to make a payment to over a minute. Sometimes some glitch on the merchant side, whether relating to internet connectivity or simple software lag, causes the merchant to spend an extra few seconds getting the QR code up for the customer to scan. On the customer’s side, sometimes the customer’s application takes a long time to load or send the transaction, and sometimes simply scanning the QR code takes ten seconds longer than usual. Finally, even after the customer scans the transaction it can take as long as fifteen seconds for the merchant to see it on their own device.

For Bitcoin wallet developers, events like Porcfest are essentially mandatory. Seeing real people use Bitcoin in real-life scenarios, often for the first time, shows that there are many steps that Bitcoin wallet developers can take to make the user experience faster and more convenient. At this point, the slighest optimizations can help; even a one-second speedup in an average interaction will go a long way toward making Bitcoin a more pleasant currency to use in person. From my own viewpoint, here are some basic improvements that mobile Bitcoin wallets could make:

1. Make the “Scan QR code” button when sending bitcoins four times larger. One should not have to spend a full second aiming with one’s finger and another two seconds making multiple attemps in order to successfully click it. In fact, all interface elements that need to be clicked on should be twice as large, filling up all available whitespace as much as possible.

2. ...

See the photos, the links and the 2nd half of the article here --> http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-at-porcfest-part-1-a-social-experiment/ <--

 

[Keith and stuff]

The last 2 big event at Porcfest happen today. The popular bacon buffet runs from 2:30PM to 4:30PM today. Campground clean up runs from 1PM to 5PM. If you are there, you very likely are having an amazing time. This is the 8th day of food, fun, freedom and friendship. If not, there is always next year.

Bitcoin At Porcfest, Part 2: The Porcfest Ideology
Vitalik Buterin | On 20, Jun 2013
http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-at-porcfest-part-2-the-porcfest-ideology/

In the past three days, we have seen Porcfest attendees successfully applying Bitcoin in real-world usage, with between a quarter and a half of all transactions taking place using the currency. In a practical sense, Bitcoin and Porcfest go extremely well together; Porcfest needs merchants to feed its attendees, merchants need a currency, and Bitcoin is a currency that desperately needs real-world merchants to test it.

But what is just as interesting is how well Bitcoin fits in to the core Porcfest ideology. Initially, libertarianism (and its more extreme strand, anarcho-capitalism) was a political movement just like social democracy or conservatism, seeking to secure progressively greater freedom for everyone through political advocacy and elections. More recently, however, many in the libertarian movement have become discouraged by its failures in the political sphere, and over the past ten years the primary focus of many libertarians, and anarcho-capitalists especially, has shifted massively. Now, the Free State Project mode of thinking starts by asking a simple question: if we had a society where governments were much weaker than they are today, or even outright nonexistent, what alternative institutions would we need to ensure that such a society can thrive? Then, given the answer, the solution is to start implementing these institutions today.

The result is a holistic anti-authoritarian philosophy that rejects governmental, corporate and even parental authority alike, and seeks to rebuild what it sees as a more peaceful, and ethical, world from the ground up. The contract I had signed with my own temporary landlord in Manchester made clear that it would be enforced by ostracism and public shame, not courts backed by the physical force of law. Because the libertarian and Bitcoin communities are both so tightly linked, even not taking into account basic morality I would not dare ransacking my landlord’s home and running away with as much property as I could even if there was no law enforcing it, simply because I would not risk being publicly shamed and ostracized by both communities at the same time. A political movement which many detractors decry for its extreme individualism proves to be surprisingly communitarian.

In a community featuring such a strong presence of alternative, government-free “law”, government-free (and corporation-free) education, government-free private charity healthcare and government-free common defense in the form of an active gun community, what role can Bitcoin take? The answer is, as the basis of an alternative, government-free economy. Gold and silver had been taking on this role before 2012, but now that Bitcoin has appeared there is a very subtle, but growing, feeling that gold and silver are in some sense impure. The security of gold and silver possession is backed by legal property rights, using gold on the internet requires centralized parties that must constantly, and sometimes unsuccessfully, take steps to placate government authorities. Bitcoin, on the other hand, bases its security on nothing but math.

Sure, Bitcoin is imperfect, and is vastly inferior to currencies based on gold and silver as a stable store of guaranteed value, but as far as internet currencies go it has one advantage that its potential alteratives do not: Bitcoin is here, now. And it doesn’t stop there. The Bitcoin protocol allows for the mathematically secure execution of complex legal relationships such as assurance contracts, and on top of Bitcoin one can potentially build constructs like smart property, which uses Bitcoin to independently enforce property rights on physical objects like cars, houses and smartphones.

All this is not to say that Bitcoin is explicitly a libertarian technology; the fact that Bitcoin would fit well into a libertarian world by no means implies that it benefits nobody else. European Bitcoin activists, for example, often follow what we would term a much more “left-wing” philosophy, although the underlying dislike of some sort of government or corporate establishment often still remains. Liberals, in the American sense of the word, can see a cosmopolitan appeal in Bitcoin from its unrestricted internationality. And, last but not least, ordinary people without any particular ideology at all can benefit from Bitcoin because of its lower transaction fees, near-instant transactions and lack of a chargeback mechanism. For now, Bitcoin can simply be seen as a great social experiment, simultaneously testing the mathematical viability of a decentralized currency, the willingness of the public to adopt an amalgamation of old and new patterns of behavior, and the mainstream financial system’s response to something which has never existed before. The libertarians at Porcfest, having already embarked on a social experiment of their own, are jumping in en masse. Regardless of whether you are a libertarian or not, the time may be just right for you to do the same.

The whole article was posted here, minus a photo and the links. To see them, click here --> http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-at-porcfest-part-2-the-porcfest-ideology/ <--

 

[Keith and stuff]

Here is part 4 in the 6 part Bitcoin Magazine series on Porcfest. Like the series so far? Consider learning more about the Free State Project and joining by signing the FSP statement of intent.

Bitcoin at Porcfest Part 3: Interview with Doug French
Vitalik Buterin | On 20, Jun 2013
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...n-Magazine-interview-with-Doug-French-6-20-13

Since the long interview of Doug French has nothing to do with the Free State Project or Porcfest, other than the location of the interview, the interview is featured in a different thread. Read it here. http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...n-Magazine-interview-with-Doug-French-6-20-13

 

[Keith and stuff]

Josh Harvey is involved with several New Hampshire based bitcoin companies and is easily 1 of the most known people in the Northeast in Bitcoin circles. He's been involved with dozens of Bitcoin meetups in NH, MA, NY, PA, Washington DC and perhaps other places. He's also attended various Students for Liberty events and explained to pro-liberty students all about Bitcoin. Josh doesn't just talk the talk, but as his work with several companies has demonstrated, he walks the walk. Since the article is several days old and not long, I posted the whole thing.

Bitcoin at Porcfest, Part 4: Interview with Lamassu’s Josh Harvey
Vitalik Buterin | On 21, Jun 2013
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...ench-6-20-13&p=5093958&viewfull=1#post5093958

Lamassu’s Bitcoin ATM has proven to be a critical piece of Porcfest infrastructure this year. The machine, which allows anyone to insert bills, scan their receiving address and immediately receive bitcoins at a 1% fee, has sold over 16 BTC in the first three days of the event, and its popularity is only growing as the number of participants ramps up. But the aim of the machine is much larger than just one annual libertarian event; Lamassu’s founders Josh and Zach Harvey intend to make many more machines and sell them to merchants interested in operating one in many countries around the world. Here, Lamassu’s Josh Harvey answers our questions.

Vitalik Buterin: What first gave you the idea to create a Bitcoin ATM?

Josh Harvey: It stemmed from our frustration in obtaining Bitcoin quickly and seamlessly. The infrastructure of Bitcoin is improving every day, yet at this point it can still be frustrating exchanging fiat into Bitcoin. Especially for first time Bitcoin users. The Bitcoin machine idea was to simplify it all. No signing up, no thirty day wait, just cash to bitcoins. The Bitcoin Machine takes the banks out of the picture for the end user, and that can really streamline the process.

Vitalik Buterin: What was the main difficulty in the project?

Josh Harvey: The last few days before the prototype debut in Washington, DC (The ISFL Conference). There were a few last bugs that took three straight sleepless nights to fix. We had a déjà vu experience and another three sleepless nights leading up to the Bitcoin 2013 convention in San Jose, to get our second prototype working perfectly. At least this time we weren’t still working on it from our hotel room.

Vitalik Buterin: It seems like security might be a particular risk, from both a hardware and software standpoint. What steps have you taken to ensure that thieves can’t quickly steal the machine or break it apart or attempt to access its wallet with software-based attacks?

Josh Harvey: The production Bitcoin Machines will have a thick steel chassis and will be bolted to a counter, a wall or a permanent stand. These machines are intended to be installed inside, in storefronts, cafes, and other retail locations. The operator can be alerted every time there is more than say $5,000 in the machine, and it’s expected that he will deposit the cash every night. Much of the design work for the production version is focused around both physical and network security. We have very capable people thinking through every part, so we’re confident that the machine will be over-engineered for its intended use. Another thing to remember is that our first design will only be fiat to BTC, so we don’t have to plan for as much cash as a legacy ATM machine.

On the software side, we’ll be providing the software for the machine itself, as well as software for a remote server. The remote server will be run by the operator, not by us, but it will be very easy to deploy, for example as a pre-built Amazon EC2 image. We have a lot of experience with network security and we’ll have the design audited by top people in the Bitcoin security field. Part of the design process is working on good policies for software updating and private key management.

Vitalik Buterin: how hard would it be to adapt the machine to other currencies (eg. CAD, EUR) so it can be used internationally?

Josh Harvey: Actually, we are only looking at components that will accept all of the major currencies of the world. Even the first production models will be available for 80-100 different currencies. We have already tested our current prototype with Canadian dollars.

Vitalik Buterin: I saw that you’re planning on creating more of these machines and selling them to merchants. Have you made any deals yet? If so, what cities will your first few merchants be in? What’s the timetable for the machines to be created, delivered and turned on?

Josh Harvey: Yes, we are indeed putting these into production. We’ve received an incredible amount of interest from every corner of the world. Some examples are Pakistan, Libya, Macau, and Australia. We’ve been getting a lot of emails from Canada, in particular. We haven’t begun taking pre-orders yet but we expect to start doing that in about a month. We’re planning to ship our first production run end of summer 2013.

Vitalik Buterin: Are you at all worried about legal risks (money laundering, etc)?

Josh Harvey: It is something we are constantly looking into. We believe that hardware manufacturing of a vending machine (it is not legally considered an ATM) is less of a legal problem than money transmitting services but researching these issues is definitely part of the production process. We are definitely making sure that our prospective customers are aware of the regulations they might be subject to.

Vitalik Buterin: Do you have any plans for a machine that could convert between fiat and BTC both ways? It seems like the other direction would be even more useful for tourists, for example.

Josh Harvey: The first design will be cash in, Bitcoin out. A dual exchange machine would be more expensive to produce, larger, and more difficult to secure (both physically and developing solutions for double spends). Such a machine would likely pose more regulatory challenges in some jurisdictions. Yes, we do have plans to design one in the future!

 

[Keith and stuff]

Bitcoin at Porcfest, Part 5: Conclusion
Vitalik Buterin | On 23, Jun 2013
http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-at-porcfest-part-5-conclusion/

This is the last part in the 6 part series (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) by Bitcoin Magazine on Porcfest. Here is the 1st half of the article.

By the end of the Porcfest, it has become clear that Bitcoin has become a standard tool in the libertarian’s toolbox. Over the course of six days and dozens of presentations, Bitcoin has been mentioned more often than even old stalwarts like gold, silver, cryptography, jury nullification and the second amendment. The majority of stores have come to accept it, and the efficiency of Bitcoin transactions has been steadily improving over the course of the week as merchants and consumers alike have gotten better at using Bitcoin wallets. With the exception of about twelve hours of partial downtime on Friday, Lamassu’s Bitcoin-only wifi worked successfully all throughout the week, although sometimes more slowly than expected. The Bitcoin price itself has been remarkably stable throughout the event, arguably breaking out of a medium-term downtrend and holding steady at $100-$113.

One of the greatest problems that Bitcoin adoption has been facing to date is that adoption was simply too sparse for any kind of Bitcoin economy to be practical. Some merchants could be convinced to accept it, but by and large Bitcoin has only been able to grow through a small number of disparate online retailers accepting it on the internet. Furthermore, many of these retailers were only willing to accept Bitcoin because BitPay allowed them to immediately, and cheaply, convert any bitcoins that they receive to cash, so Bitcoin’s key advantage, its ability to bypass the inefficiencies of the traditional banking system, never existed in practice. It has always been a commonly held position that in order for Bitcoin to truly grow it would need to form a closed-loop, or at least multi-step, economy; that is, instead of a customer buying BTC from Coinbase, sending it to the merchant and the merchant having the bitcoins converted back through BitPay, there should be at least one step in between of someone earning bitcoins in order to spend them.

Over the past two years, such a thing has started to happen all on its own. BitPay’s Tony Gallippi reported that merchants tend to initially take the “safe” option of immediately converting all bitcoins that they receive, but eventually moving over to keeping a growing part of their earnings. Lamassu’s Josh and Zach Harvey are among the many Bitcoin fans that have convinced some of their own suppliers and contractors to take BTC, and almost certainly at least one of them is using some of the bitcoins to shop at Bitcoin-accepting stores.

What has just taken place at Porcfest, however, shows a completely different path that Bitcoin can take to success: take over an entire community. Communities are defined as groups of people that interact with each other much more often than with the general population; local towns and villages, schools, large workplaces and internet forums all to some extent constitute communities. If people in a community interact by buying and selling goods and services, as opposed to just talking (as happens with many internet communities, for example), then introducing Bitcoin to that community is a very efficient way of generating that multi-step, or possibly even closed-loop, economy all at once.

Now, consider what has been happening in the libertarian movement in the past few years alone. First, the Free State Project has grown from a few thousand members to over fourteen thousand, just six thousand away from “triggering the move” – the point where, once the project has gathered twenty thousand members, everyone who signed up is expected to move to New Hampshire at the same time, potentially exerting an entire 2% influence over the vote of the entire state.

Read the rest of the article. http://bitcoinmagazine.com/bitcoin-at-porcfest-part-5-conclusion/