Bitcoin on wheels: how we participated in a bitcoin tour of Europe
Strictly speaking, we only morally and financially supported it - the expedition itself, which was held from February 26 to March 8, 2016, consisted of journalists from the TV company “Tells and Shows” and the BitNovosti website, who used only cryptocurrency to pay for all their travel expenses.
Having passed Lithuania, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, the team began and ended its journey in Moscow, and the furthest point of the tour was the Dutch capital - Amsterdam. The task of the project was to record the current state of development of the bitcoin infrastructure, and to make a presentation at the Bitcoin conference Bitcoin Wednesday in Amsterdam, in order to later integrate their travel observations into a new documentary.
')
Recall that at the end of last year, the first Russian documentary film about Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency: The Gold of the Digital Age, was premiered. The film was prepared by the TV company "Speaks and Shows", with the support of the cloud mining service HashFlare . The performance of the film authors at the conference in Amsterdam was devoted to this premiere.
The idea of ​​travel for bitcoins is not new. For example, Felix Weiss has already visited more than 22 countries , paying everywhere exclusively with cryptocurrency. However, the European experiment of the film crew and journalistic group also became the first of its kind, since the events of the completed tour will form the basis of the new film, and people in the cryptocurrency world who met the film crew on the road will become its main characters.
If we were lucky a little more, we could even boast that they would drink from such mugs all the way:
But fate did not want it: we worked very quickly on a souvenir, because, as is usually the case, we set to work at the last moment. We sat for a long time with the designer, until we found the option that everyone arranged. We persuaded the printing house to print us all this in 24 hours, and sent a package with mugs, flash shirts and T-shirts. However, at the last moment she was detained at the customs, so she did not have time to get to the BitNews before the start of the journey - they left without a chance to intercept the package on the way. And now we are suspiciously waiting for the package to be returned to us - it still has not reached us, despite the fact that they have already returned from a tour of Europe. So, like you, we see our circles only in the picture: '- (
We contacted the producer of the TV company “Tells and Shows” Alexander Bezzubtsev, who was directly involved in the organization and implementation of Bitcoin Tour, and questioned him about his impressions and conclusions.
The journey for Bitcoins began in Moscow, at the planning stage
After a lot of fees, the minivan stuffed with equipment and bitcoin-discoverers set off, for a start - to Belarus and Lithuania. In Minsk, the Bitcoin team managed to meet with the founder and CEO of SoftSwiss (www.softswiss.com) Ivan Montik. His company was the first in the world to create a platform for Bitcoin casinos and brought classic games (slots, roulettes, cards) to the world of Bitcoin.
In search of accommodation options for Bitcoins in Belarus, journalists and members of the film crew were able to find only one single advertisement, the author of which ventured to rent an apartment for Bitcoins. In addition to several Bitcoin companies, among which SoftSwiss, which operate on the foreign market, there is no longer any country, practically, there is no Bitcoin movement, so the film crew soon headed towards the Belarusian-Lithuanian border.
As members of the Bitcoin expedition later reported, Lithuanian border guards met them with great suspicion, since by law everyone who enters the European Union should have 40 euro in cash for each day of stay, and the reasons of the journalists that they have electronic wallets with bitcoins, border guards seemed unconvincing. After a long wait, they were escorted for questioning to the shift supervisor, who for half an hour listened attentively to stories about the purpose of the trip, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Wednesday in Amsterdam, which, apparently, convinced her.
In Lithuania, unlike Belarus, Bitcoins are no longer news, they are known and spoken about. Employees of some establishments with whom the participants of a bitcoin expedition met, know that they can accept payment for cryptocurrency and, theoretically, are ready to make a deal.
The owner of a cozy youth hostel , as it turned out, is ready to accept even a lightcoin from his clients. Judging by the observations of members of the expedition, all the places working with Bitcoin, differed special creativity. In the process of planning a trip and as a method of orienteering on the terrain, the Bitcoin travelers team used a map of Bitcoin sites , which, according to their impressions, turned out to be reliable by about 70%. In Vilnius, the Bitcoin team visited the Barzdaskuciai barber shop, whose owner loves Bitcoins, and if you decide to shave a beard for cryptocurrency, no one will be surprised.
The next country in the Bitcoin tour was Germany. During a trip to Germany, the Bitcoin team first visited Hanover, where it met with Ricardo Ferre Rivero, the founder of Pey , which creates terminals for Bitcoin payments and distributes them among the city’s shops and cafes. This year, Pey plans to launch more than 150 terminals throughout Hanover. At the same time, as the participants of the trip report, now in the city quite often you can see the stickers “Bitcoin is accepted here”: in hairdressing salons, cafes and small shops.
Then the Bitcoin expedition went to Berlin, where she was fortunate enough to visit the legendary Burger Room 77, which hosts regular meetings of the Bitcoin community from around the world.
By the way, the wifi password in this place is Allyourcoinsisbelongtous! .. In this place people gather who cannot imagine their life without Bitcoin. This is the only place in Berlin where plastic cards are purposefully not accepted. The owner of the institution claims that in order to be aware of the situation about Bitcoin, you do not need to follow the course at all - just look at the activity of visitors to her institution.
In Prague, expedition members visited the Parallel Polis Bitcoin Platform, where, among other things, they saw the real Bitcoin cash register and met Bitcoin cyborg — geeks who implanted NFC tags under their skin and could pay for it in checkout counter.
The most remote point of travel was Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, as it turned out, there is no longer any Bitcoin-ATM: they all disappeared under obscure circumstances over the course of one weekend, and this happened about four months ago. Attempts to pay Bitcoins in coffee shops, souvenir shops and grocery stores were not crowned with particular success: everyone knows about Bitcoin, but very few people accept it. However, time was not wasted - in Amsterdam, a Bitcoin expedition managed to visit a Bitcoin embassy, ​​organized by Marek Skachinski, and successfully deliver a report at the Bitcoin Wednesday conference.
According to Bezzubtsev, the main conclusion reached by the participants of a bitcoin expedition: traveling around Europe for bitcoins is a feasible task, but not an easy one - besides, it will be impossible to do without fiat yet.
Today, the practical use of the blockchain without intermediaries remains exotic, highly localized and specific, which, however, does not prevent it from developing and remaining promising.
These days, the preparation of the first two episodes of the Internet format about Bitcoin Tour is coming to an end, and the release of further parts is scheduled for next month.
Any questions? Ask in the comments. We will try to answer them together with the project participants.
Having passed Lithuania, Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, the team began and ended its journey in Moscow, and the furthest point of the tour was the Dutch capital - Amsterdam. The task of the project was to record the current state of development of the bitcoin infrastructure, and to make a presentation at the Bitcoin conference Bitcoin Wednesday in Amsterdam, in order to later integrate their travel observations into a new documentary.
')
Recall that at the end of last year, the first Russian documentary film about Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency: The Gold of the Digital Age, was premiered. The film was prepared by the TV company "Speaks and Shows", with the support of the cloud mining service HashFlare . The performance of the film authors at the conference in Amsterdam was devoted to this premiere.
The idea of ​​travel for bitcoins is not new. For example, Felix Weiss has already visited more than 22 countries , paying everywhere exclusively with cryptocurrency. However, the European experiment of the film crew and journalistic group also became the first of its kind, since the events of the completed tour will form the basis of the new film, and people in the cryptocurrency world who met the film crew on the road will become its main characters.
If we were lucky a little more, we could even boast that they would drink from such mugs all the way:
But fate did not want it: we worked very quickly on a souvenir, because, as is usually the case, we set to work at the last moment. We sat for a long time with the designer, until we found the option that everyone arranged. We persuaded the printing house to print us all this in 24 hours, and sent a package with mugs, flash shirts and T-shirts. However, at the last moment she was detained at the customs, so she did not have time to get to the BitNews before the start of the journey - they left without a chance to intercept the package on the way. And now we are suspiciously waiting for the package to be returned to us - it still has not reached us, despite the fact that they have already returned from a tour of Europe. So, like you, we see our circles only in the picture: '- (
Travel notes
We contacted the producer of the TV company “Tells and Shows” Alexander Bezzubtsev, who was directly involved in the organization and implementation of Bitcoin Tour, and questioned him about his impressions and conclusions.
The journey for Bitcoins began in Moscow, at the planning stage
After a lot of fees, the minivan stuffed with equipment and bitcoin-discoverers set off, for a start - to Belarus and Lithuania. In Minsk, the Bitcoin team managed to meet with the founder and CEO of SoftSwiss (www.softswiss.com) Ivan Montik. His company was the first in the world to create a platform for Bitcoin casinos and brought classic games (slots, roulettes, cards) to the world of Bitcoin.
In search of accommodation options for Bitcoins in Belarus, journalists and members of the film crew were able to find only one single advertisement, the author of which ventured to rent an apartment for Bitcoins. In addition to several Bitcoin companies, among which SoftSwiss, which operate on the foreign market, there is no longer any country, practically, there is no Bitcoin movement, so the film crew soon headed towards the Belarusian-Lithuanian border.
As members of the Bitcoin expedition later reported, Lithuanian border guards met them with great suspicion, since by law everyone who enters the European Union should have 40 euro in cash for each day of stay, and the reasons of the journalists that they have electronic wallets with bitcoins, border guards seemed unconvincing. After a long wait, they were escorted for questioning to the shift supervisor, who for half an hour listened attentively to stories about the purpose of the trip, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Wednesday in Amsterdam, which, apparently, convinced her.
In Lithuania, unlike Belarus, Bitcoins are no longer news, they are known and spoken about. Employees of some establishments with whom the participants of a bitcoin expedition met, know that they can accept payment for cryptocurrency and, theoretically, are ready to make a deal.
The owner of a cozy youth hostel , as it turned out, is ready to accept even a lightcoin from his clients. Judging by the observations of members of the expedition, all the places working with Bitcoin, differed special creativity. In the process of planning a trip and as a method of orienteering on the terrain, the Bitcoin travelers team used a map of Bitcoin sites , which, according to their impressions, turned out to be reliable by about 70%. In Vilnius, the Bitcoin team visited the Barzdaskuciai barber shop, whose owner loves Bitcoins, and if you decide to shave a beard for cryptocurrency, no one will be surprised.
The next country in the Bitcoin tour was Germany. During a trip to Germany, the Bitcoin team first visited Hanover, where it met with Ricardo Ferre Rivero, the founder of Pey , which creates terminals for Bitcoin payments and distributes them among the city’s shops and cafes. This year, Pey plans to launch more than 150 terminals throughout Hanover. At the same time, as the participants of the trip report, now in the city quite often you can see the stickers “Bitcoin is accepted here”: in hairdressing salons, cafes and small shops.
Then the Bitcoin expedition went to Berlin, where she was fortunate enough to visit the legendary Burger Room 77, which hosts regular meetings of the Bitcoin community from around the world.
By the way, the wifi password in this place is Allyourcoinsisbelongtous! .. In this place people gather who cannot imagine their life without Bitcoin. This is the only place in Berlin where plastic cards are purposefully not accepted. The owner of the institution claims that in order to be aware of the situation about Bitcoin, you do not need to follow the course at all - just look at the activity of visitors to her institution.
In Prague, expedition members visited the Parallel Polis Bitcoin Platform, where, among other things, they saw the real Bitcoin cash register and met Bitcoin cyborg — geeks who implanted NFC tags under their skin and could pay for it in checkout counter.
The most remote point of travel was Amsterdam. In Amsterdam, as it turned out, there is no longer any Bitcoin-ATM: they all disappeared under obscure circumstances over the course of one weekend, and this happened about four months ago. Attempts to pay Bitcoins in coffee shops, souvenir shops and grocery stores were not crowned with particular success: everyone knows about Bitcoin, but very few people accept it. However, time was not wasted - in Amsterdam, a Bitcoin expedition managed to visit a Bitcoin embassy, ​​organized by Marek Skachinski, and successfully deliver a report at the Bitcoin Wednesday conference.
According to Bezzubtsev, the main conclusion reached by the participants of a bitcoin expedition: traveling around Europe for bitcoins is a feasible task, but not an easy one - besides, it will be impossible to do without fiat yet.
In general, we were somewhat disappointed by the modern bitcoin infrastructure in Europe. We represented her another, more developed. As we understood, all that is indicated on the maps on the Internet are some applications for the desire to use Bitcoin, which arose in the burst of fashion a couple of years ago, but at the same time, this does not mean some kind of impasse. Bitcoin just began to be taken more seriously. He went in the direction of smart technologies, not just household means of payment, and will return to retail with the development of infrastructure
Today, the practical use of the blockchain without intermediaries remains exotic, highly localized and specific, which, however, does not prevent it from developing and remaining promising.
These days, the preparation of the first two episodes of the Internet format about Bitcoin Tour is coming to an end, and the release of further parts is scheduled for next month.
We managed to do a fundamental job. We looked at or inspected the current state of Bitcoin in different countries. Usually something is written or told about certain aspects, and we have traced the system. Now there was an idea, after a series of road films, to make another serious documentary.
- producer Alexander Bezzubtsev.
Any questions? Ask in the comments. We will try to answer them together with the project participants.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/391969/
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