Bitcoin Magazine is the proud host of the Bitcoin 2020 conference being held in San Francisco on March 27th and 28th, 2020.

Welcome to Bitcoin 2020, a one-of-a-kind festival celebrating the dawn of a new technological paradigm and the counterculture behind it.

Bitcoin is about more than just money; it is a movement rooted in the controversial idea of freedom. Its first adopters were champions of liberty, privacy, sound money and cryptography, and its these very principles that have united a diverse and global community of cypherpunks, entrepreneurs, YouTube streamers, billionaires, mommy bloggers, athletes, pirates, mathematicians, makers, skateboarders and so many more This group of misfits, rebels and pioneers represents a community spread across all ages, continents and identities.

Ive described our vision for Bitcoin 2020before: an annual gathering place for Bitcoiners to network, discover and inspire each other. Weve replaced stuffy hotel lobbies with half pipes and beer gardens this event is for the community, not Wall Street. When we meet in San Francisco, it will be to celebrate the technology that has given us so much hope for the future.

We at BTC Media andBitcoin Magazineare honored to play our part in this grand experiment, and we take the responsibility of hosting this annual pilgrimage seriously (but not too seriously,clearly). We ask our attendees, speakers and sponsors to respect the ethos of the event, tomaintain decorum(when applicable) and to treat each other kindly.

Our goal is to deliver the best Bitcoin-focused content in the most Bitcoin-friendly fashion there are plenty of platforms for other topics. Each of our speakers has agreed to focus on non-forked, Nakamoto Consensus Bitcoin (BTC).

We know that you may have some questions about Bitcoin 2020, so weve preemptively answered a few of them below.

We are closely monitoring the situation as it evolves, and we are following all CDC guidance to make sure that we employ best practices. With that said, we are full-steam ahead to host Bitcoin 2020 on March 27 and 28 and are still on pace to sell out the event.

Here is a sample list of preventive measures that we will be taking to ensure the health and safety of attendees, in no particular order:

Yesterday,The Wall Street Journalpublished a comprehensive articlewith thoughtful tips to keep in mind when traveling. It references the CDCthree-level warning system.

It is in my nature to make a few jokes and lighten up any situation, but we are taking this very seriously and will provide updates should things change significantly. On to the fun stuff

Bitcoin 2019 was the beta version of our biggest-ever Bitcoin conference. Bitcoin 2020 is 1.0.

Last year, we wanted to see whether this idea would even work. This year, were putting out a product that will blow you away. Bitcoin 2020 is on pace to sell out, with over 3,000 attendees.

Last year, we found that people had an appetite for more of a festival-style event, so this year were adding a block party, an SF Bitcoin week chock-full of activities and events, Whale Night (with a little poker fun), an official afterparty and a rooftop halfpipe that the one and only Tony Hawk will be demoing on with his friends. This year, we will be utilizing the entire venue, not just parts of it.

We also wanted to build on some of the successes of last year, so weve revamped the art gallery and given it some dedicated space, maxed out the swag store so that you can leave B20 as the ultimate Bitcoiner and expanded the Lightning Arcade so that you can play games and compete with friends (and maybe win some sats). Weve even found some ways to gift you free sats so that your bitcoin wallets can leave the conference a little fatter than when they entered.

If youre a creative type, weve pushed outsome challengesyou should think about taking on as well: Design your Bitcoin citadel, create a Bitcoin campaign ad, build a Bitcoin application or memeify a Bitcoin t-shirt. We want to unlock those golden ideas that are sitting in the heads of Bitcoin enthusiasts, and weve got some amazing prizes to help sweeten the deal (in case winning, itself, isnt sweet enough).

Thats a stupid question. Bitcoin is the single most interesting thing happening in the world today of course it needs a conference! With so many brilliant people from all around the world working to turn their visions into realities, its important to find a time and place to come together and celebrate our progress. We created Bitcoin 2020 to serve as a platform for the community; a place where Bitcoiners can meet and exchange ideas with people not found on Twitter, make new friends, pitch investors, land jobs and spark ideas theres nothing else like it.

Finally, the rest of the world needs to know what Bitcoin isreallyabout, as told by Bitcoiners (not experts). Bitcoin 2020 is a beachhead to broadcastourideas and values to the wider world. There will be major announcements, cultural icons, cutting-edge activations and provocative ideas that are impossible to ignore.

Hard no. Bitcoin 2020 is about the ideas, products, technology, culture and people behind Bitcoin, and only Bitcoin. This is not the place to talk about how scalable your next-gen perpetual motion protocol is compared to Bitcoin, how smart your permissioned database is or how Bitcoin is merely blockchain 1.0. The entire point of this conference is to showcase what can be built on Bitcoin and how vast its potential is.

Smart contracts are cool. DeFi is compelling. Stablecoins meh. Pepe Cash and CryptoKitties are hilarious. Proof of existence is neat. Sidechains, CoinJoin, Layer 2, Layer 3, Layer 99, the list goes on. There are so many cool concepts that can be built on Bitcoin, and all are on topic as long as theyre being built on the Bitcoin (BTC) protocol and do not require a hard fork to become reality.

Love Ethereum? No Problem! Save it for Devcon. @Vitalik @FluffyPony @CharlesHoskinson @DanLarimer and @RogerVer are all invited and welcome to Bitcoin 2020, but they should come prepared to discuss BTC, and only BTC.

Sadly, no. As much as wed love to turn your near-worthless coin into sweet, sweet sats, this event is only for projects with a product or service that utilizes Bitcoin or makes Bitcoin more useful. Were not here to judge your token side hustle were capitalists, after all but we only care about what youre doing for/with Bitcoin anything else is off topic. Jealous and sobbing because we turned away your sponsorship inquiry this year? The fix is easy: Use that ICO money to do something great for Bitcoin, then tell us about thatnextyear.

This conference is about non-forked, Nakamoto Consensus Bitcoin (BTC). We can appreciate differences of opinion about Bitcoin forks, but there is only one Bitcoin. Thats what were here to discuss. BIPs that require hard forks are considered off topic. Bitcoin is BTC. Love it or hate it, but no point in debating it. /shrug

This is not Stalinist Russia. There will be no forced apologies, public lashings or reparations. While at Bitcoin 2020, if only for a moment, let the past be in the past; your savage attacks will pack just as much zing on Crypto Twitter after the fact. Very few people attending the conference will agree on 100 percent of things. After all, unified thought doesnt make for a great marketplace of ideas. There are a handful of speakers and sponsors who Im sure will be controversial but all of them have committed to following our ethos, and were convinced they have something valuable to contribute to the conversation.

Maybe it will be while youre listening to a thought-provoking panel, maybe while youre battling it out in the Lightning Arcade, or maybe while youre kicking it in the beer garden with some of your new Bitcoin friends, but at some point, if we do our job right and you come to the event ready to work collaboratively instead of hauling old baggage, you might just catch a fleeting glimpse of the magical world to come.

See you in San Francisco!

David Bailey

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

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Welcome to Bitcoin 2020! - Nasdaq

Billionaire investor Chamath Palihapitiya disagrees with Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett on the value of bitcoin, as Buffett declared earlier this week that cryptocurrencies have "no value."

"He is completely wrong and outdated on this point of view," Palihapitiya said on CNBC's "Squawk Box" on Wednesday.

Buffett thinks that cryptocurrencies "don't produce anything" and have zero value, declaring that he never will own anything like bitcoin. He's long been a critic of bitcoin and has described the digital currency as "rat poison squared," a "mirage," and "not a currency."

Although Palihapitiya disagrees with Buffett on the potential for cyrptocurrencies, the Silicon Valley investor said he still greatly respects Buffett on the whole.

"I think he's an exceptional person. I've learned an enormous amount, both from afar and the few interactions I've had with him," Palihapitiya said.

Palihapitiya has long been a supporter of the digital coin, saying "everybody should have 1% of their assets in bitcoin specifically."

"I don't think when you wake up and see a coronavirus scare and the Dow down 2,000, you should not be going in and buying bitcoin. That is an idiotic strategy," Palihapitiya said. "I think a reasonable strategy is to say 1% of my net worth should be in something completely uncorrelated to the world and how the world works. You quietly over some period of time accumulate a position and then just never look at it again and hope that that insurance under the mattress never has to come due. But, if it does, it will protect you."

CNBC's Kevin Stankiewicz contributed to this report

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Warren Buffett is 'completely wrong and outdated' on bitcoin, Chamath Palihapitiya says - CNBC

Global Economic Disruptions

Globalization, automation, and inequalityoh my!

Whats up? Well, not much. Traders are selling anything they think is risky as Covid-19, the disease caused by a novel coronavirus, spreads. There are too many unknowns to calculate how much the virus will knock off corporate profits and economic growth, which means investors are looking for safety.

The US stock market was gaining earlier this year even as concerns about the epidemic intensified. That went into reverse on February 20, when the S&P 500 began five-straight days of declines, according to FactSet data. Since then things like oil and copper, which tend to be linked to economic growth, have tumbled. Other risky assets like junk bonds and, well, bitcoin have also taken a spill. Gold and top-shelf government bonds are among the few assets that are rallying.

To put the stock markets drop into context, its worth noting that US equities were trading at record highs this year.

The crisis is hitting growth expectations particularly in Asia and Germany, fears of a pandemic spreading, a supply chain leading to disruption and some inflation at a time when some equity markets were very expensive, Sebastien Galy, senior macro strategist at Nordea Asset Management, wrote in an email. Fears of a pandemic are likely overblown in Europe and the US, but it is leading business to re-adjust.

High grade government bond yields, which move inversely to prices, have steadily dropped. Ten-year US Treasuries yield about 1.3%, a record low, compared with about 2.7% a year ago. Investors are agreeing to lose money by owning similar-maturity German and Swiss government bonds, which yield -0.5% and -0.8% respectively, according to FactSet data.

Traders are increasing their bets that the US Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in the coming months to keep the economy from stalling. The problem is that the central bank doesnt have much ammunition to fight a coronavirus-induced slowdown. Policy makers are targeting a rate of 1.50% to 1.75%, leaving little leeway before rates hit zero. The ability of the Fed and other central banks to stimulate the economy when interest rates are already so low is debated among economists.

Perhaps one of the biggest worries for investors and regulators is a massive build up of corporate debt. Regulators in the US and Europe have beensounding the alarm about $3 trillion in leveraged loansa loose term that refers to junk bonds and loans that have a higher risk of default.

If coronavirus concerns stall economic growth, it could set off a series of defaults among these companies, driving up unemployment and further weakening the economy. Investors yanked $1.6 billion from a popular exchange-traded fund for junk bondsthe iShares iBoxx USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETFduring the week that ended Feb. 25, according to ETF.com.

In a super-low rate world, the threat will not be that great for highly-rated, well-capitalised borrowers, but there are plenty of others who have increased leverage in recent years, Kit Juckes of Societe Generale wrote in an email. As the virus spreads to more countries and more companies report supply chain problems, more companies are going to struggle.

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How bond, stock, bitcoin, and copper markets are reacting to coronavirus - Quartz

There is a lot of antipathy and mistrust over bitcoin from the current baby boomer generation which largely doesnt understand the technology. Millennials on the other hand have been brought up with tech and theyre about to inherit trillions.

According to statistics an estimated $60 trillion in wealth will be passed down from boomers to millennials over the next 30 years. Boomers are defined as being born between 1946 and 1964 so an estimated 10,000 of them turn 65 every day.

Ikigai Fund manager Travis Kling posed the obvious question:

Boomers are generally old school investors that prefer traditional assets such as blue chip stocks and commodities, they are risk averse.

This can be evidenced by some of the repetitive commentary from some of the boomer characters on crypto twitter that revel in bashing bitcoin at every opportunity.

They do not understand the technology and do not want to; most of them have already made their millions, some have made billions. A generational paradigm shift is about to occur.

The global economy is in dire straits, that much was true even before the Coronavirus (Corvid-19) outbreak put the world on red alert. Booms and busts are cyclical and the last big one was in 2008.

Back then housing markets started to fall and banks were over lending, allowing people to take out loans at over 100% the value of their property.

Banks were also engaging in trading profitable mortgage-backed securities, backed by home loans as collateral, that they sold to investors. Financial institutions around the world owned these mortgage-backed securities, but they were also into mutual funds, corporate assets, and pension funds.

The banks demanded more mortgages, often lending to non-credit worthy people, to prop up their profits from the sale of these derivatives. The bubble eventually burst so to say that banks caused the last financial crisis is an understatement.

Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996 according to the Pew Research Center so many have vivid memories and experiences from this global economic crisis. Most of them came of age and entered the workforce facing the height of this recession and many are now laden with debt.

Therefore a massive distrust of the banking system which caused this collapse is prevalent among this demographic. This was highlighted by Satoshi Nakamoto in his now famous whitepaper;

The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve.

It stands to reason then that a large portion of this wealth will not go into the banking system or old school assets, but into a technology that is immutable, finite, and can be trusted bitcoin.

Will millennials drive the next bitcoin boom? Add your comments below.

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How Millennials Will Inherit Trillions And Buy Bitcoin - Bitcoinist

In "LUSH," now showing in Lane Community Colleges Roger Hall Gallery, Lillian Almeida, Milla Oliveira and Sal Strom collectively engage rich material and intense processes to communicate our shared humanity through texture, colors, weight and form. Their pieces are meant to anchor observers in the physical world, expressing the corporality of their existence.

CAFE 541 recently sat down with Strom, a Newport native and multi-decade local artist who has continually used creation and destruction in her work. Below is an edited version of that conversation.

Have you ever taken part in a group kind of presentation like this before?

I've actually done quite a few of those. I used to show at a bunch, but after my brain tumors, I took a break and started doing video for six years. I've made three-minute videos, where when youre at international film festivals and you're onstage, if someone goes to the bathroom or blinks, they miss your work.

In San Francisco, that one was really cool. It was called 20 by 120 and it was 20 different artists and you have 90 seconds to present. Thats really fun because it's just like bam, bam, bam and they have to make their point in 90 seconds. You get that elevator pitch down.

I did video for six years because after my first brain tumor, I was cognitively kind of dead. I just learned video right before it, but after my brain tumor, I didn't remember any of it. So, it's really good for me to have to use that cognitive part of my brain and it's hard. It took me two days to do 10 seconds (of film) because my video is collage and totally experimental. In one, I interviewed over 100 World War II veterans and then I cut down their audio to three minutes. That's the core to me making sure my work involves other people.

And why is that?

I don't just stand in the world alone. I think that art should have a meaning. Before my first brain tumor, I worked in my studio alone all the time with the music on super, super loud and just having a great time, but after, I just felt that it wasn't meaningful. I didn't even want to do art anymore. It seemed like a narcissistic thing to do. Then I got (a Master of Fine Arts) and they teach to you to deal in far more socio-political work and that you can't make money with. So, I'm trying to get back into the selling stuff.

My next show is at a Bitcoin conference at the end of March. And that will be totally different because everything is for sale in Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is prominent in ("LUSH"). What prompted that? Can you explain that a little bit more?

Whenever I do a show, I usually do it in a big series. The World War II one was really about my dad and connecting with him. At that time I was not so excited about living and so I wanted to know how other veterans that were in that situation what they thought the next thing that comes after this life. My favorite one was this one guy who said, Do you remember being born? And I said, No. And he goes, What makes you think you remember dying? and I thought that that summed it up.

The night of my opening, the end of 2017, my girlfriend from New Zealand that I met in like, 1981, came down to see it. We went to dinner afterwards and she was talking about her son doing this thing called Bitcoin and she didn't know what it was.

I researched it and ended up loving working with it. You're working with like cyberpunk people and you're working with all this young energy and technology. I love working with young people.

At your show, you used your dress from your daughter's wedding inside a piece. It seems like a lot of your work is about breaking stuff down, deconstructing it and creating something new. Could you tell me a little bit more about what motivates that?

I'm totally a minimalist. I do a lot of art residencies, so I got rid of my apartment and I wasn't really living anywhere. And when you're a minimalist, you don't have a lot of room to store things and I just don't like having stuff. I'm not an obsessive person at all. If I do a show, it's so much about the process. Once its done, I literally tear it up. I love to tear things up. I like (my work) best once it's torn and then it makes all these shadows on the wall and they have a life of their own. It's kind of like its breathing without me.

Why do you think people are so hesitant to interact tactically with art, to touch stuff?

It's what we've always been told not to do. You go to museums and galleries and their signs saying, "Don't touch the art." And so I want people at my shows to actually put their hands on my art and they have a really hard time doing it. I literally have to put their hands on the art to get them to touch it.

To view videos of Strom's work and hear audio of her chatting with CAFE 541, go online to registerguard.com. Follow Matthew on Instagram @CAFE_541. Email him mdenis@registerguard.com.

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CAFE 541: Eugene artist Sal Strom talks about bitcoin, minimalism and living with brain tumors - The Register-Guard

Bitcoin has hit a three-week low and fears of a global recession are rising as a result of the continued spread of coronavirus

Fears over the prospect of a coronavirus pandemic are impacting the financial services sector and hampering global economic growth.

Today it was reported that stock prices had slumped due to investors' panic over the continued spread of the virus, which has infected more than 82,000 people and killed more than 2,800.

As of this morning, it was reported that European equities had slumped - the FTSE 100 was down by 1.9%, the Euro SYoxx 50 down by 2.3% and Germany's DAX down by 2.3%.

Concerns around coronavirus are also reportedly behind fluctuatingBitcoin prices, too. As of the morning of 27 February, Bitcoin was down 10.08% for the week, sinking below $8,700, representing a drop of nearly $2,000 in two weeks.

Discussing Bitcoin's market fluctuation, CEO and co-founder of crypto social trading platform HedgeTrade, David Walsen, said that "during the first weeks of the coronavirus, Bitcoin acted as the uncorrelated asset that it has often been during economic and political upheaval, showing strong growth."

However, he explained, the last few days "took their toll on crypto's most important digital asset".

This week, investors have warned that coronavirus could push the world to the brink of a global recession. It was reported by Bloomberg that former Federal Reserve Chair, Janet Yellen, Told the assembled audience at a Brookings Institution event in Michigan that "we could see a significant impact on Europe, which has been weak to start with, and it's just conceivable that it could throw the United States into a recession."

Similarly, Nigel Greene, founder and CEO of deVere Group, has warned that investors must take action sooner rather than later to build strength and safeguard their wealth.

Greene said that "coronavirus has struck at a time when major economies, including Japan, Germany, India and Hong Kong are are already facing a serious downturn." He added that "investors have largely been caught off guard by the serious and far-reaching economic consequence of the coronavirus.

"Clearly, this will hit global supply chains, economies across the world and ultimately government coffers too. Until such time as governments pump liquidity into the markets and coronavirus cases peak, markets will be jittery, triggering sell-offs."

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Coronavirus: impact on bitcoin price and possible recession - FinTech Magazine - The FinTech & InsurTech Platform