Bitcoin & Blockchain in Irkutsk: how did the Chronobank CEO and other answers to the questions turned out to be here

It just so happens that I often write to Habr, but not here. But today, or rather, on April 20 of this year , an excellent information guide appeared to close this gap.



A well-known expert in the blockchain community, an enthusiast and the head of Hronobank, Sergey Sergienko, arrived in Irkutsk (I’ll answer right away, here he was on purely personal matters, because his wife’s parents live in Shelehov , but this did not prevent him from participating in the mitap ).



In less than a week, the B & B community in Irkutsk opened up to me from new, totally unexpected angles. About this and I want to tell people from Habr and Gigtimes.

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Meetup, or what needs to be done



First, the uniqueness of the event is that they were able to organize it for some 1.5 days (starting from the idea, landing and ending with the sale of tickets, which, by the way, went well, through pokupo and the meeting itself), that is, interest in blockchain technologies, as we say, are "among the people."



Secondly, Sergey Sergienko does not happen every day in Siberia, so the news on the local MCM radio quickly spread out useful hearing around the city. And yet, according to public polls at the entrance, the majority was not familiar with Sergei or the blockchain names at all, that is, there is interest, but so far it is only interest and turning it into something productive is not a matter of one day , and, rather all, not even one year.



Thirdly, the event itself showed that there are now many questions and not all of them are technical. For example:

1. Why is blockch so useful?
2. Where exactly and how to store funds in crypto?
3. How safe is all this?
4. What are cryptocurrencies?
5. What is done on the blockchain besides the cryptocurrency itself?
6. What areas can be considered promising?
7. And a dozen more questions in the same vein.

Mining, trading, crypto-commerce, or what has already been done



The second part of the visitors represented the part that is called the miners. Let me explain, to immediately remove unnecessary questions: the cost of electricity in Irkutsk is extremely small . There were even times when our region was the first in the world on this indicator (that is, the rates were the lowest). That is why even among the "official" (read - those that are sacred IP) Bitcoin nodes are from our region .



True, as I understand it, not all miners love this kind of “noise” aka meetings under any sauce and name: the reasons are pretty commonplace - the desire to do everything “quietly” and “without undue attention”. True, how it fits with the open ideology of the blockchain is not clear to me. However, everyone has the right to personal opinion. Go ahead.



One of the key mining figures in the region is Yuri Dromashko , who jokingly calls himself "the official representative of Satoshi Nakamoto in the Siberian Federal District". After the seminar, he was visiting him and was surprised how different people now buy asiki: I was particularly struck by the mother of two children, who had already acquired a second device from Yuri and more than four months devoted to mining. Besides her, there were various kinds of businessmen, the reasons for “entering the miners” were different for each of them: someone started to wither away the main business due to excessive pressure from above, someone wanted to “try their hand at something new”, and Someone is just interested and this is seen as "another opportunity to earn income."



By the way, Yuri himself introduced an interesting marketing tool called Equivalent, which already receives a number of establishments in Irkutsk: that is, private “money” is alive not only online, but also offline.







By the way, in my travels after the mitap (there were 18 of them altogether) I learned that “Bitcoin accepted here” became relatively popular in the city. The color is not only a classic orange, but also blue (as I found out, these stickers are distributed by Yuri).







The next big group, which should be called, are, of course, traders. I had a heated discussion with them, because In my opinion, speculation is a relic of past systems, which makes it possible to centralize any p2p structure.



And yet we are united in the fact that Bitcoin & Co-brothers are not just “currencies”, but money of the future.



True, this still has to invest quite a bit of work.



For example, the next day after the blockchain community meeting, 04/21/17, I was in the IT section of Biblionoch - an annual event that gathers more than 3,000 people under one roof (mostly students and children, but there are also categories that are much older) .







And there he ran into a lack of understanding of what the blockchain is and who needs it. Speaking quite accurately and truthfully, it was not even a misunderstanding, but a direct desire not to "reckon with this technology."



And it was there, in the hot controversy with the ardent opponents of the blockchain, came to the conclusions that have already visited me more than once (and not only me ):

1. Blockchain is a technology, but not only . And first of all, this is an ideology, new and not popular, but very attractive. Secondly, this is a community: young and different, but its principles have already formed in it. For example, S. Sergienko said bluntly that "we (i.e., the community) are not acceptable to scams, and we are trying to fight them." Why? Because fake systems are not beneficial to anyone: neither investors, nor developers, nor traders, nor other participants in principle.
2. Techies, in many cases, having dealt only with the tip of the iceberg blockchain , are very condescending towards those who did not. And this is the strongest brake on the way of understanding the first aspect (ideological) and the development of the second (community). And at the meeting, and especially at the Library Night, this was seen too well. At the same time, there are not so many blockchain developers themselves (but they exist), and inviting them to some meeting is generally a titanic work that has yet to be.
3. At the same time, representatives of large blokchain associations (whether Buterin or Sergienko) are just the opposite trying to convey as widely as possible what the technology is and to whom, why and why it may be needed. This is a kind of dialectic, but for the time being it is a little similar to what is called the buzzword "synergy".

And the conclusions above are universal. Not only about Irkutsk: I was this year in different cities of Russia (from ours to St. Petersburg, through Kazan, etc.). The most interesting thing is that the enthusiasm is fading away very quickly, even among the brightest representatives. But on the other hand, this is a pattern of any development.



The conclusions for Irkutsk are as follows:

1. The community began to form and its facets are quite tangible;
2. Already have their own mini-economy (miners, traders, exchangers and even sellers and buyers) based on p2p;
3. The most important thing is that popularization attracts even those people who have never heard of the blockchain and cryptocurrencies: certainly, not all of them go headlong into study and, most importantly, the practice of implementation, but judging by the mitap it is more than 10%;
4. There is a huge reservoir of people who need to explain a lot: from the simplest to the intricacies of protocols, for example. And for this you need to form a community of experts, which is now busy.
5. Finally, it is general meetings that give rise to the right questions and new ideas (now I know two joint projects are being discussed - let's see what happens). And even non-constructive criticism leads to positive results.

Thanks for reading. Questions and wishes are welcome.