My first two Bitcoin meetups

I got my very first bitcoins in early June and since then I’ve been really obsessed about it, about other cryptocurrencies, and about Blockchain technology in general. I've been reading articles and books (currently reading Nathaniel Popper’s fantastic chronicle ‘Digital Gold’ and Andreas Antonopoulos’ ‘The Internet of Money’, watching videos on YouTube and listening to podcasts. Last week I bought my first bitcoin miner (it’s still in transit, being shipped from Greece) and exchanged emails with Hive account@rogerkver about joining Bitcoin.com’s mining pool.

As I was doing my fellowship with an international microcredit platform Kiva.org this summer in Tajikistan, I introduced a few people to Bitcoin. One of them, a French volunteer working for a large European bank in France, got so excited, that he reached out to his friends back in France working in the world of finance and got them all hooked on Bitcoin in turn. Yay!

Me at Hisor Fortress in Tajikistan

Obviously, I still consider myself a noob, when it comes to this brave new world of blockchain. However, my enthusiasm was bubbling inside and becoming hard to contain within. So I went ahead and registered a new Bitcoin Meetup in my home town of Gävle. None of the local Bitcoin enthusiasts showed up for our first meetup, but fortunately Hive account@surudoi made a trip from Uppsala and we spent a few amazing hours talking Bitcoin, money, Monero, Ether, mining, trading, smart contracts, building our own mining rig. I helped him set up his first Bitcoin Wallet. It was my life’s first meetup and I loved every moment of it!

This picture of me and Hive account@surudoi is actually from Copenhagen earlier this year, not from our Bitcoin meetup in Gävle

I decided to try to organise the next meetup in a larger city. Uppsala, being a regional technology hub (and Hive account@surudoi’s current home), seemed like a great candidate. I registered a new meetup without huge expectations. In the worst case it would be Hive account@surudoi and me again – which in itself wouldn’t have been too bad. But actually five other people, besides myself, showed up on the day, including one of my best friends. It was a great mix of geeks, enthusiasts and simply curious folks. We talked for two hours over coffee and it was super interesting and enlightening.

Participants of the first Bitcoin Meetup in Uppsala

It was at that meeting that I heard about Steemit again, from one of the participants. He was very enthusiastic about it and did a great job “selling” it. I had tried to register on Steemit even before that, but my Reddit karma was too low to register a new account. When I got home after that meetup and tried again, I finally succeeded. The day after I told Hive account@surudoi about Steemit and he joined too.

So here I am, very happy to be on Steemit and connect with like-minded people. We are planning the next meetup in Uppsala as we speak. I hope it will turn out just as great as the first one. And I think we are going to make Steemit the main topic for our upcoming meetup. I'll keep you posted! :)

(All photos in this post are my own)