Bitcoin conferences are a dime a dozen nowadays. There’s all the things from the large-scale Vegas-type events with 30,000 attendees that BTC Inc. (the proprietor of Bitcoin Journal) places on, to the small, intimate gatherings of dozens or a whole lot of devoted Bitcoiners — or the ten,000 attendees that BTC Prague gathered within the Czech capital this 12 months. All of them serve a goal and cater to a particular area of interest, they usually’re necessary to completely different folks at completely different levels of their Bitcoin journeys, wherever they’re.
Remu Karhulahti joins me, from an enviable and impeccably pristine Finnish panorama — pine tree and birch timber, sun-glimmering lake, blue skies… and sure, there was an outside sauna within the background — to speak in regards to the latest Bitcoin convention child on the block: BTCHel, the primary large-scale Bitcoin convention within the Nordics. Going down on August 15-16 in Helsinki, Finland, the crew is bringing names like Jeff Booth, Peter Todd, Giacomo Zucco, Knut Svanholm and Adam Back to the Finnish capital. Lower than a month earlier than the occasion kicks off, we speak Bitcoin adoption, the panorama within the Nordic nations and the necessity for yet one more Bitcoin convention.
JB: Remu, you’re the CEO of BTCHel, a brand new Bitcoin convention and the primary of its sort within the Nordics — why one other European occasion?
Remu: Properly, I had been to all the foremost European ones — Baltic Honey Badger, BTC Amsterdam, BTC Prague, Bitcoin Atlantis, Oslo Freedom Forum and many others. — and felt that I had a lot of expertise as an attendee. I had labored the cubicles at a number of of them and I’ve additionally organized occasions previously. I had studied Bitcoin since 2020, and labored with the European e-book writer Konsensus, and I felt that we had an untapped potential right here within the Nordic nations.
We run this group hub in downtown Helsinki all 12 months spherical, the place everybody from hardcore Bitcoiners to random plebs off the road hang around. Some simply come for the bitcoin ATM we have now, others are interested in Bitcoin, and a few simply present up. (The massive orange home windows additionally draw some consideration.)
There had been month-to-month meetup occasions in Helsinki since 2014 with 30-40 folks frequently attending, and we needed to make one thing greater — give again to the group. When our crew of 5 acquired collectively in August final 12 months, we realized that we have now all these unconnected initiatives in Finland: the miners, numerous Bitcoin corporations, the energetic area people, the Finnish Bitcoin Association, and loads of tech-savvy folks (eds. observe: Finland is at quantity 5 on Bitnodes’ list of reachable nodes, in a rustic with fewer folks than Minnesota).
JB: What’s the supposed viewers? Don’t you suppose yet one more Bitcoin occasion would cannibalize attendees from a few of the established ones?
Remu: No, probably not. The Nordic panorama is an unexplored area of interest, and it was only a matter of time earlier than any person would manage an occasion like this. Many Bitcoin conferences and corporations are specializing in massive markets just like the U.S. or continental Europe, however it’s best to actually go the place others aren’t going.
I don’t really suppose that BTCHel competes with the bigger European conferences. We positively have an area aggressive edge right here in that we’d draw people who find themselves sufficient to attend a two-day occasion in Helsinki, however wouldn’t journey to, say, Riga, Prague, or Amsterdam for it. The hardcore Bitcoiners such as you and me clearly wish to go to all of them, however there’s at all times a big, native viewers that received’t — people who find themselves not a part of the clique. Thus far, we’ve had a lot of tickets offered to Germans, so I feel we’ll have a big worldwide presence as nicely. For BTCHel 2025, we expect we’ll get about 1,000-1,200 attendees.
JB: Do you even have Finnish-language content material, or is it English-only?
Remu: Principally English and worldwide. We do have a small side stage for Finnish displays however that’s about it.
JB: You talked about that some Finnish Bitcoiners had crowdfunded 200 copies of Nik Bhatia’s book “Layered Money” to ship to Finnish members of Parliament. What has the response been, and the way’s the Bitcoin speak going amongst Finnish legislators?
Remu: Sure, it was a enjoyable initiative in 2023, and we adopted up with some suggestions however didn’t actually hear an excessive amount of again. I don’t suppose most Finnish politicians are hostile to bitcoin, however bitcoin is nothing to them. The one factor that comes up is the mining trade, the place a proposal to tax miners extra was launched final 12 months however didn’t move.
JB: Why do you suppose Bitcoin hasn’t taken off within the Nordics? It’s an in any other case fairly tech-savvy area, with high-speed web entry in all places and cell funds and many others., so what’s stopping bitcoin adoption over right here?
Remu: I’ve a concept about this. Such as you say, Nordics had been early to tech and the web, and particularly in Finland with Linux and the open supply motion, we have now a lot of people who find themselves desirous about these matters. However Finland is a high-trust society — peaceable, with a lot of safety for personal property and belief in establishments. And that’s what bitcoin solves, so there isn’t any acute want for the answer that’s bitcoin. For common folks, it simply doesn’t make sense.
JB: What’s the concept with BTCHel? Are you going to run this convention yearly like a lot of the others, or, say, each 4 years like Bitcoin Atlantis?
Remu: We’re planning to do that long run, and we’ll put up BTCHel subsequent 12 months once more. The ethos for the crew and the core worth of BTCHel is that it’s community-driven and grassroots. My imaginative and prescient for what we’re doing right here is that we’re constructing a really welcoming place, open for everybody who desires to take part and study. I’ve already made plans to scale subsequent 12 months even greater, so we will make it extra accessible to plebs and bootstrapped start-ups.
All the opposite main conferences often have a mom firm or a big sponsor behind them, so in the event that they don’t make a revenue they will nonetheless maintain going… with the draw back that they’re beholden to that firm. We don’t have that. We’re plebs, community-driven, and we bootstrapped from the bottom up — and it’s fairly doubtless that we received’t handle to make a revenue both. We’re doing this for the love of the sport.
JB: So, how are you going to run the convention subsequent 12 months, then, if you happen to’re not making a revenue?
Remu: Ah, we’ll determine it out. Possibly bitcoin’s worth retains going up, and our firm treasury will increase in worth.
Disclaimer: BTC Inc., the guardian firm of Bitcoin Journal, additionally places on Bitcoin conferences all over the world: Bitcoin Asia in Hong Kong, Aug 28-29; Bitcoin Amsterdam, Nov 13-14; Bitcoin MENA in Abu Dhabi, Dec 8-9; and the flagship occasion Bitcoin 2026 in Las Vegas, April 27-29, 2026.
