Something BIG is happening in Argentina…
From December 7 through 8, Bitcoin enthusiasts and those interested in learning about this digital, decentralized phenomena will gather in Buenos Aires, Argentina for the first Latin American Bitcoin Conference hosted by the Fundación Bitcoin Argentina.
Why Argentina? The Argentinian Bitcoin community is rapidly growing in reaction to national economic strain, but most importantly due to the opportunities Bitcoin represents as a disruptive technology and economic growth potential. With an inflating Argentinian Peso and limited access to additional fiat currencies such as the US Dollar, Bitcoin provides a credible solution and represents opportunity for Argentinians and those interested in doing business in Argentina.
Argentina’s citizenship has turned to Bitcoin just as citizens of Cyprus have to guard savings accounts and financial futures against inflation and excess government intervention. Argentinians are now keeping their savings in alternative currencies such as Bitcoin and assets. To date, Bitcoin has also had a high technological adoption rate in terms of broadband and mobile telephone and Internet within Argentina.
Aside from laBITconf 2013 the Fundación Bitcoin Argentina hosts over a dozen bitcoin related projects and activities with a varying degree of development such as the Meetups and µMeetups Organization, University Seminars, Press Management, Local Referrals Database, incuBITcoin, theBITclub, Bitcoin Training, Statistical Analysis of Bitcoin Adoption, Legal and Taxing Regulation Research, the Bitcoin Fair, Startup Seeding and Jobs Offerings Channeling. As a local foundation that started to take shape back on March 2013, Fundación Bitcoin Argentina (FBA) formed when the three founding members decided to give a proper framework to their ongoing efforts to promote and inform about bitcoin. Now the FBA has over 97 volunteer collaborators and has hosted over 14 meetups, some of them with over 150 attendees.
The laBITconf team released the following announcement:
laBITconf (Latin American Bitcoin Conference) is perhaps the last BIG conference of the year and will be the first one simultaneously translated for Hispanic audiences. Wisely hosted in Argentina, it attracted over 25 top notch speakers such as Jeff Garzik, Andreas Antonopoulos, Erik Voorhees, Tony Gallippi, Roger Veer, Marco Santori, Charlie Shrem and Tuur Demeester among others.
Why is Bitcoin blooming in Argentina?
Bitcoin is gaining strong local adoption and constant main media coverage given that we live at “the perfect storm” for Bitcoin to succeed: We have over 30 of yearly inflation (in the our 130 years of local currency we lost over 10 zeros); we suffer a hard restriction for buying foreign currencies, also for international money transfer, we even suffered a major “corralito” back in 2001 which blocked their holdings and diminished its value (similar to what Crete has recently suffered). So most people tend to prefer keep their savings in other currencies.
What can we expect from this conference?
We have two major objectives; the first one, as one of the last conferences of the year it will summarize the best practices, and up to date information in all major Bitcoin projects with most speakers adding a special approach to Latin America and the second one, to provide an excellent opportunity for locals and international attendees to network (we already have over 70 international attendees registered seeking for local opportunities). We might also have some new business/projects announcements.
This conference is divided into two days, the first one more general and the second one full of local and international case studies. We will have 6 lunch talks for specific topics including Trading, Altcoin, Mining or Security and a local study related to Satoshi’s Steps.
What is the Fundación Bitcoin Argentina?
It’s a local foundation founded on March 2013 by three members but today it has over 97 collaborators and hosted over 14 meetups with up to 150 attendees. Actually we have over 12 different projects such as laBITconf, Meetups, µMeetups, University Seminars, Press Management, Local Referrals Database, incuBITcoin, theBITclub, Teaching, Statistical Analysis, Legal Analysis, Bitcoin Fair, Seeding, Jobs Offers, and others.
Bitcoin Magazine is privileged to serve as a Media Sponsor for the Conference and looks forward to seeing you there!