Coin Agenda has been my favorite conference this year. It mixed education, elegance, investment opportunity, and great networking.

Michael Terpin did a knockout job putting together a high-end conference in a short amount of time.

Elegance

This conference targeted high net worth individuals and institutional investors. Michael made the conference stand out in these ways:

• Great venue the Palms Casino Resort (from real world Las Vegas fame)
• Kicked off with party at the Hugh Hefner suite. This two-floor suite has a large patio, pool, rotating bed, massage table, living room with 3 TVs.
• High-end breakfasts, lunches, and dinners.
• Party at the Mike Tyson mansion. This mansion made famous in the movie Hangover has fountains, boxing mosaics, a pool, grotto, basketball court, tiger art, a large balcony for parties, and an all glass bathroom.
• Closing party at Michael and Maxine Terpin elegant home. Their home has a deck big enough to host 60 people, a pool with a swim through, fire-pits, and a 20-person sauna.

Networking

It was great meeting new people like:

• Will O’Brien - Will is the CEO at BitGo, one of the companies pioneering multi-sig technologies.
• William Quigley - Early investor in PayPal, digital currency investor, and has a wide range of financial services industry experience.
• Carl Hilsz - With legal, telecom, mortgage experience, Mr. Hilsz is now focused on digital currencies at eSpend.
• Frank Grant - Senior counsel at Perkins Coie, nice, and helpful guy.
• Phil Maher - Phil is a miner and expert online marketer.
• Michael Lambert - Mike is another mining expert, father, and fun guy!
• Micah Winkelspecht - Micah, CEO & Founder of Gem is a security expert. His company Gem, enables developers to rapidly build bitcoin apps without being experts in cryptography and security.
• Elyse Petersen - Tea extraordinaire using bitcoin to reduce supply chain costs 10%.

Education

The sessions were great. In addition to my session, Bitcoin Bullishness, Especially in Slow Times, I saw talks from heavy hitters like:

• George Gilder - Mr. Gilder gave a great talk discussing the only resource that is truly scarce in our world, time. He explained that since bitcoin is tied to time through block times it will always be scarce.

• Steven Waterhouse - Steven Waterhouse discussed Pantera and the bitcoin investment opportunity.

• Brock Pierce - Brock discussed what he sees as the future of bitcoin. He still sees bitcoin as an asset with a 100x to 1000x potential return.

• Mathew Roszak and Harry Yeh - Along with other venture capitalist panelists discussed where they see bitcoin taking off. An impassioned discussion over privacy vs. convenience ensued. Fortunately bitcoin gives choice to consumers regarding convenience and privacy tradeoffs.

• Tone Vays - Mr. Vays discussed technical analysis and how to profit from bitcoin’s volatility.

• Jesse Powell - Mr. Powell was interviewed by Tina Hui

• William Quigley - Mr. Quigley gave his expert opinion on the bitcoin startup ecosystem. He feels bitcoin will first thrive in areas that are impossible with today’s financial system.

• Joel Dietz, Shawn Wilkinson, and Craig Sellars - These three experts in digital currency crowdfunding discussed the future of crowdsales.

• Brian Santos, Jeremy Kandah, and Ryan Singer - Mr. Singer discussed the early days of bitcoin and the implications of trust being too cheap to price. Digital currencies make trust essentially free in the way the internet made communications essentially free.

• Charles Allen - Mr. Allen, CEO of BitcoinShop (NASDAQ: BTCS), explained the difficulties of a reverse merger, the credibility having a publicly traded company brings to bitcoin, and the opportunities being publicly traded provides to BitcoinShop.

• Nick Sullivan - Mr. Sullivan explained how syndicated angel investing works. He did a great job explaining it so even people who knew nothing (like me) were able to understand.

• Jordan Kelley - Michael Terpin’s interview with Jordan Kelley closed out the conference. It was great to see Mr. Kelley’s enthusiasm for bitcoin and what it will do for the world’s unbanked and under banked people!

• George Samman - Mr. Samman explained bitcoin is a commodity not a currency. George is a former Wall Street Senior Portfolio Manager, Market Strategist and Technical Analyst. In addition to that he is a funny guy :)

Investment Opportunity

CoinAgenda also had opportunities for investors to learn about great investment opportunities. Unfortunately I missed most of the pitches but a few of the companies I heard about that I’m excited about are:

• Factom - Factom is a smaller, faster, cheaper way to extend the Bitcoin Blockchain.

• Bitwage - Bitwage enables employees and contractors to have salary and invoices paid in bitcoin. In contrast to payment processors making it easy for merchants to sell bitcoin, Bitwage will make it easy for people to acquire bitcoin.

• Hedgy - Hedgy enables customers to lock their bitcoins purchasing power or to speculate on the future price of bitcoin. This is a great service, enabling some people to eliminate volatility and others to profit from bitcoin’s volatility.

• RushWallet - RushWallet draws a contrast between the existing financial system and the bitcoin system. Under the existing system people can be denied access to financial services. RushWallet enables anyone using a web browser to create a bitcoin account. No documents needed, no application process, or any other fuss. I love how this project empowers people!

Oh Yeah the Conference was Fun Too!

Oh yeah the conference was fun too! I had a blast visiting the Palms Hugh Hefner Villa, Mike Tyson’s mansion, many great meals, and conversations. Here are a couple of snaps from Tyson’s mansion.

I’m Looking Forward to Next Year

It was an amazing conference put together on short notice to make an entire bitcoin week. I’m looking forward to attending next year and seeing what Michael puts together!