'It Feels Like Family': Bitcoiners Gather for Security Conference in Amsterdam

A swift breeze swept across the canal and into a small Amsterdam pub, where about 30 bitcoiners sat drinking beers and registering for Breaking Bitcoin 2019.

From a British mom who works from home as a "Bitcoin hobbyist," to a ripped Kiwi technologist with a thick beard, people who work with bitcoin gathered to joke about Crypto Twitter and nodes.

Instead, the panels and presentations at Breaking Bitcoin 2019 explored the premier cryptocurrency's vulnerabilities, from political attack vectors to security holes.

On a panel exploring the topic, vagabond bitcoin consultant Felix Weis said if the majority of bitcoin users continue to trust custodians and exchanges to hold the private keys to their assets, then such companies could gain disproportionate sway over the technology's evolution.

Although building a sustainable-yet-decentralized form of money is still an ambitious goal, at best, nothing excites bitcoiners quite like a seemingly insurmountable challenge.

Despite how few people spend bitcoin today, with Chainalysis estimating merchant activity represents only 1.3 percent of bitcoin activity, many developers at the conference in Amsterdam use bitcoin for freelance work on open source projects.

From Osuntokun's perspective, regulation presents a larger barrier to bitcoin adoption than the small pool of users.

"The biggest risk likely comes from state-level actors attempting to stifle the development of software related to bitcoin," Osuntokun told CoinDesk.

During the social risks panel with Weis, Bitcoin Magazine editor Aaron van Wirdum concurred that new regulations like the upcoming requirement by the Financial Action Task Force - which could force companies to share customer data across jurisdictions any time users send money from one exchange or custodian to another - presents a salient risk to bitcoin users' privacy and the ability of companies to uphold a cypherpunk ethos.

Along those lines, several conference attendees were independent researchers presenting prospective solutions to small, specific problems with using bitcoin.