Three Days in Prague, a Full Battery

There are events you come home from tired. And there are events you come home from fuller than when you left. BTC Prague was clearly the second kind for me – even though I worked the whole three days.

From the 11th to the 13th of June, the PVA Expo Praha turned into one big meeting point. Several thousand people came, from all over Europe and beyond. It’s the fourth edition of the conference and is now considered the largest of its kind on the continent. I wasn’t there as a visitor – I was standing at a booth myself, right in the middle of it, with a view of all the people walking past. But numbers only tell half the story. What stays with you are the people.

The first thing I noticed was the atmosphere. Right in the morning, between the booths and the big stages, there was something in the air that’s hard to put into words. A mix of curiosity, good spirits and real interest in one another. Nobody seemed rushed, nobody stand-offish. Whoever stopped at our booth was deep in conversation a moment later – as if we’d known each other for ages.

And those conversations – they were positive all the way through. It sounds almost too good, but that’s how I experienced it, all day long, from one visitor to the next. They were about ideas, about projects, about the questions that keep you up at night. Nobody wanted to convince me or lecture me. The people here think for themselves, form their own opinions – and that’s exactly why they can let other opinions stand. That’s what struck me most: whoever saw things differently wasn’t judged for it. People listened. People asked. That’s become rarer than you’d think.

I only caught bits and pieces of the talks – when you’re working, you can’t be everywhere. But even in the moments I did catch, that same openness was there. The speakers were brilliant, the panels lively. Sharp minds who explained difficult subjects in a way you could follow without feeling stupid. There was debate, sometimes heated – but always with respect. Nobody had to make someone else small to look big themselves.

Something else that made me happy: the women. Year by year you see more of them here – on the stages, at the microphones, at the booths. It feels like something is shifting, slowly, but visibly. Women who stand up for their topics, who ask the questions, who help shape things. It gives the whole thing a breadth it didn’t used to have.

But maybe the best part was that unspoken sense that helping one another is simply normal. People just help each other here. It was the same among those of us working the booths – you lend something, pass on a tip, introduce one person to another because you think the two of them could benefit. There was none of that competitiveness that sucks the air out of a room. Instead, the feeling that everyone’s in the same boat and nobody has to row alone.

Networking is, of course, the big word at a conference like this. But from behind a booth it doesn’t feel like networking, not like that cool exchange of business cards you know from some industry events. It feels like real encounters. All day long people come up to you, you get talking, you swap contacts – and at the end you don’t just have a list of names, but people you actually remember. And not a single one of them was judged, no matter where they came from, what they did, or what they believed.

It was my first time in Prague. Maybe that amplified everything – a strange city, unfamiliar surroundings, and yet this feeling of belonging straight away. I didn’t see much of the city, and nowhere near every talk I’d have liked to hear. When you’re standing at a booth, there’s simply no time for that. But that was fine. The input that piles up over a day like that needs to settle first anyway. Sometimes you take away more by pausing for a moment than by trying to soak up everything.

I’ll be honest: I went in with certain expectations, and they weren’t disappointed – they were exceeded. For three days the mood was good – mine and that of the people around me. Not put-on good, not the forced everyone-smile-now kind, but real. You could see it on people that they were glad to be there. And that’s despite the fact that a day on the expo floor really takes it out of your legs.

It’s easy to turn cynical in times like ours. Everywhere you read about conflict, about camps, about people who no longer talk to each other but only about each other. And then you go to Prague and live through three days where the opposite is normal. Where difference isn’t a problem, but the very reason it gets interesting in the first place. You don’t forget that in a hurry.

I don’t know if I could convince everyone who’s never been to a conference like this. You probably have to experience it yourself. But I can tell you what I took away: no business cards, no goodie bags, but the feeling that there are still spaces where people meet each other with openness.

I’ll think back on these three days for a long time. And when the days turn grey, the battery runs flat and my spirits sink, I’ll pull out the memory. Some people come home from a conference with a full notebook. I came home with a full battery.

But I took away more than that. These days coincided with a decision I’m standing by: I quit my old job – in the Bitcoin world they call it your “fiat job,” meaning a job tied to the traditional money system. To mark the start of my new life, I’m letting Hairtoshi, the Bitcoin barber, shave off part of my hair in Lugano. And the hair that falls? I’m not keeping it – I’m donating it, for someone who can put it to better use. A small cut, a big step.