Justin Doochin on Bitcoin 2025, the world’s largest Bitcoin event

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from the Cryptocoin Show and today on Blockchain Interviews, we have Justin Duchin, head of events for BTC to talk about Bitcoin 2025 in Las Vegas, the world's largest Bitcoin event. Justin, welcome to the show and thanks for taking the time. Thanks for having me. You're very welcome. What a time to be alive. Bitcoin hitting new all-time highs today, practically

0:25110,000. And right around the corner comes the world's largest Bitcoin event that you and your team have been working on um and in in Las Vegas, which is super exciting. Uh I'd love for you to sort of kick us off with a highle overview of uh what is going to make Bitcoin Vegas so amazing and then we can dive into all the details. Yeah. Uh it's always it's always hard to stay focused

0:49when when we're at all-time highs. Um so uh so thanks for having me. So yes, uh the Bitcoin conference is uh it's the largest Bitcoin conference in the world, largest crypto conference in the world. We're bringing together over 30,000 people, investors, innovators, developers, uh you know, beginners, people that don't know anything about Bitcoin, people that have been in the

1:10space for over 10 years. Um you know, we're trying to build something for everyone. And uh you know, this is the place where deals happen. This is the place where, you know, big news gets announced. Um, we're we're trying to build a conference where this is the conference you can't afford to miss. Yeah. No, that's super exciting. And um the Yeah, know it's great to have the

1:36kitty there as well. Um 30 30,000 Bitcoiners is an insane amount. Um it's amazing to see that many people show up for a cause and I'm sure some of them are OGs that have been around. There's been many Bitcoin conferences in the past going back to 2019 or maybe even earlier. But now with the the approval and the engagement from the administration in the US, we're seeing

2:03some major uh government forces coming in and some of them are also speaking and headlining at the event, right? Yeah. No. Um over the past few years we've seen a lot more interest in the administration and politicians um and and we've leaned into that. Absolutely. Yeah. And what are some of the major topics do you think that the politician side will be covering at the event?

2:30It's a good question. Um, obviously they're going to be covering Bitcoin and policy, regulation, Bitcoin acceptance, um, you know, bringing, uh, you know, increasing the, uh, the Bitcoin treasury, uh, you know, making making Bitcoin, uh, great again in America. Um, so, you know, there's going to be lots of different topics. Um, but we have we have a lot of different people speaking.

2:55We have David Sachs, we got Bohe, we have the Lumis. like we have a ton of, you know, very knowledgeable people speaking um on the main stage. That's exciting. Yeah, I saw Bohines's recent talk about potentially selling some gold or moving some of that into Bitcoin. Uh they're, you know, Bitcoin uh is at new all-time highs and really they didn't buy any administration hasn't bought any

3:20Bitcoin yet. They just converted what Bitcoin they have and said now it's in, you know, the the strategic Bitcoin reserve. But I feel like I it would be great if there was an announcement at the event, but I feel like sometime in 2025 there's they're gonna want to be accumulating more Bitcoin. I agree. I hope you're right. Yeah, we we all hope so. And um and with you know the

3:45Bitcoin conference being such a big proponent of Bitcoin obviously um how do you guys stay involved in transacting in Bitcoin holding Bitcoin you know supporting it as much as you can and integrating it into the conference as as a payment and as a store of value. Yeah. So I mean at we've been doing these events since 2019 and at every single event we make sure that there's

4:10always you know light Bitcoin lightning enabled activations whether it's games, food, um art, whatever whatever it is if there's a transaction the store we want to make sure that Bitcoin can be accepted. Um and we've gone through great lengths to make this happen. A lot of times when you deal when you work with uh convention centers who aren't used to these types of requests, you got

4:31to, you know, convince them, hey, this is good. This you guys can, you know, people will be excited about this. So, but yeah, it's it's definitely going to be a lot of Bitcoin transactions at at the conference. That's amazing. And I feel like maybe in 2019 it would be harder to convince them, but you know, nowadays you you'd think, look, you know, the the US government's holding

4:51Bitcoin. They're trying to accumulate more. you guys would be smart at the conference uh you know for the convention to be like accepting Bitcoin and hopefully you know all the hotels in Vegas and everywhere starts accepting it as a payment method eventually here. Yeah. You know uh back in 2022 we had our event at the Miami Beach Convention Center and that was the first time we

5:13had to convince a big convention center hey please accept Bitcoin for all food and beverage which is a big deal for them. Um, and uh, they did and immediately they transferred it back to USD, but I'm guessing right about now they they really hope they didn't. Yeah, 2022 was like, you know, it's probably 10xed in price since then and that Yeah, they they realize now maybe they they

5:36should have held it in Bitcoin. Um, and the Bitcoiners were right all along. Um, and you mentioned trying to get as many transactions as possible. I saw something about trying to break the world record for payments or amount of transactions at a conference. Yeah. So, this year we're we're trying to break the world record. We're working with Square um and uh I believe the

6:00world record is currently 4,000 transactions um at a single place. And you know, with 30,000 attendees and all Bitcoiners, we're we're expecting to to blow that out of the water. Yeah, that's really cool. Uh, I I'll definitely, you know, I'm going to be attending and I'll definitely be loading up some little amounts in in lightning wallets and try to contribute to that world record. So,

6:24we'll see there. Um, I would love to see that. The more Bitcoin world records, the better. Honestly, I agree. And and with, you know, people that are newer to Bitcoin or maybe they've been holding it, but they haven't been to these conferences. This is huge. obviously the world's biggest with over 30,000 people. Um it seems a little daunting to some like you know

6:49I'm sure it's more organized than you think just 30,000 people in a room. Can you talk about someone's first time experience and how to sort of give them direction on where to start when you get there? Yeah, and this has always been a challenge with our marketing team. Uh how do we market to such a large range of people? You know, we have our Bitcoin

7:10curious people or the beginners that don't know anything about Bitcoin crypto. A lot of it can be scary. We have people that have been in the space for over 10 years um that just want to, you know, learn about or just like watch the watch the main stage and network and see their friends. Um so building the right experience for the right user, for the right attendee is is something that

7:32we have at very top of mind for us. Um, you know, if you're new to Bitcoin, which a lot of people are, especially, uh, you know, we're getting a lot of people from Vegas, from Nevada, from California, from the, you know, neighboring cities. Um, you know, we recommend just sitting at the main stage, just watching some content, watching some Bitcoin 101 content, um,

7:53talking to people, meeting some people. You're going to, you just have to be a sponge. Um, you're going to be thrown a thousand things at you. And if you can absorb just 1% of that, then you're ahead of the curve. Um, so, you know, we try and be as inviting as possible to all Bitcoin beginners. Um, and, uh, you know, we welcome them. Yeah, definitely.

8:15And maybe you could just reiterate because we didn't we didn't actually mention it in the beginning about like the location and the date. Oh, yeah. So, uh, it's May 27th, 28th, and 29th. May 27th is going to be uh coding country or industry day. Um you need an industry pass or a whale pass to get access to that day. And then the two GA days are the 28th and 29th and it'll be held at

8:38the Venetian the Venetian expo hall. That's great. And with the you mentioned on the main stage I saw that there's like five stages and I know there's so many different things you could be talking about whether it's policy or mining and DeFi, NFTs, all this stuff. So can you lay out sort of how it works with the different stages? Yeah. So we have our main stage um you

9:02know we have over 10,000 people that consider that stage. Um that's where a lot of the larger discussions high level discussions um are going to be happening and then we have four or five other stages too. We have our open source stage um for people who are more technical and interested in open source and dev. Um we have our enterprise stage which is uh more geared towards B2B

9:23institutional um you know if you have the industry pass uh you might be more uh interested in that stage. We have our mining stage for miners. Um we have uh we have our genesis stage which is kind of a secondary stage where we put a lot of other talks. Um so you know we really try and and tailor the content for the for the attendee. Definitely. And you know, being in Vegas, of course,

9:46there's so many events going on all the time. I'm sure there's a thousand side events as well and probably some partying as as you would expect in Vegas. Are there official afterparties or things outside of the conference where people can loosen up a bit? Yeah. So, we for the first time we're launching what's called a Bitcoin week pass. Um, you can buy individual

10:08afterparty passes or you can buy a Bitcoin week pass which will get you access to all the afterparties. Um, in previous years we were we just had one afterparty at the end of the event. Um, and it always sold out. People like to party, people like to network. So this year, uh, especially being in Vegas, we decided to do an afterparty every single night. So Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,

10:27and Thursday. Um, and, uh, you know, if you buy a ticket, it includes open bar. Um, and we have DJs lined up. I think Elenium is playing on on Tuesday night. We got a DJ lined up every single night. Um, so it'll it'll be a big party and uh, you know, it's a great place to to network and have fun, let loose. Definitely. No, that's super exciting. And, um, with the, you know, the amount

10:52of people that are getting involved in Bitcoin, you mentioned some of the people there, they've probably been there for 10 years or even longer, you know, 15 year history of Bitcoin. Do you guys, you know, pay homage to people who have actually contributed to Bitcoin or, you know, speakers that are, they actually help develop it and the core contributors? Oh, yeah. We gota we got

11:11to stay loyal to our core contributors. So, we we offer um free passes to anyone who's contributed to to Bitcoin. Um and we've been doing that for a couple years now. So, uh you know, we want everyone to show up. We want them to feel welcome. Um you know, they are the reason why all this exists. So we definitely want to to show our love for sure. And is it a good place for uh

11:34people who have startups or ideas that are in Bitcoin or blockchain related like exhibition floor uh networking potentially investment things like that? Yeah, I mean this is the place that you want to be. This where all the deals happen. Uh you know whether it's on the expo hall behind closed doors in meeting rooms at afterparties. um if you're in the space and you want to network, this

11:58is the event that you have to go to. Um you know, it really comes down to that in my opinion. Might be biased though. So I feel like, you know, there's already so many tens of thousands of people confirmed, but a lot of people they sort of make on the whim decisions like let's go to Vegas, you know, tomorrow. Um is there, you know, uh passes available if people are like, you

12:22know, making last minute decisions? Does it sell out or you know these halls are humongous but um you know do people have to get the ticket right now and are there still available? Yeah, so we we still have our uh festival pass which is our GA pass and we have our industry pass um available. We're sold out of whale passes uh you know we're trying to

12:42you know it's more of an exclusive uh pass and we've already gone over our allocated amount so uh we've we've turned whale passes off for now. Um but yeah, you can absolutely go to uh b.tc/2025 and uh get your passes um through there. Mhm. That's good to know. And I feel like it would be, you know, good to meet up with some whales um which I don't know what the exact

13:07threshold is, but you know, if they have over a thousand Bitcoin or something like that, it's considered to be a Bitcoin whale. So, if that's sold out, that's a good sign that there's probably some pretty heavy holders at the conference. Yeah, we don't we don't make our whales tell us how much Bitcoin they have, but I bet a good a good percent of them do

13:25hold over a thousand Bitcoin. So, for sure. Well, I do know that Michael Sailor is speaking and I know he has a lot of Bitcoin. So, maybe uh we do know how much Strategy is holding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's insane. Um so, that's really exciting, man. I'm looking forward to it and um and it's coming up here in in in you know in the next week or two. Um and uh we we'll see the how

13:51the price of Bitcoin moves now that we're breaking alltime high. It could be euphoric. There could be you know 120,000 Bitcoin party or something uh at at the event. So I would love to uh to to celebrate that. I would love to see that. I I would too. Uh historically the price always somehow drops during our event. So I'm hoping we break the cycle here and we we pump through. So yeah.

14:17No, I I remember um I've seen you know there's that I don't know if it's a unofficial curse of you know the price dropping a little bit during events uh back in 2017. There was a lot of events. It was like the week after the all-time high. Um but let's hope that we've broken the cycle with the amount of institutional adoption ETFs uh the policy coming in and the fact that uh

14:38you know the government is looking to buy more Bitcoin. Those are all good signs. I appreciate your insights into you know the world's biggest Bitcoin conference and I agree with you. It's not one to be missed and looking forward to to it. And um where did you say is the best place to learn more about the stages and the speakers and to get the tickets? Yeah, you can check out

14:59everything on uh our website which is b.tc202025. Um you can view all the experiences, the different stages, who's speaking, the afterparties, all that good stuff. Um and you can also buy tickets. So sounds great, Justin. Thank you so much. Um all the best at uh Bitcoin Vegas and I'll see you there. Thanks.