Opening Remarks
If you've ever felt powerless watching your savings erode, your voice silenced and your privacy infringed, this session shows you there's an exit - and how to take it.
Stafford Masie
Blockchain Surveillance & Privacy
Ark is a Bitcoin-native transaction batching technique that enables scalable, near-instant payments without sacrificing self-custody or Bitcoin finality. It uses a shared UTXO model coordinated by an always-on operator, where most payments are executed offchain and periodically anchored to Bitcoin via onchain settlement.
This workshop introduces the core concepts behind Ark, including Virtual UTXOs (VTXOs), commitment transactions, transaction trees, and unilateral exits. Participants gain an intuitive understanding of Ark’s trust model, how atomicity between batches is enforced without covenants, and where Ark fits into the broader Bitcoin scaling landscape alongside the Lightning Network.
Finance is a word many Bitcoiners instinctively avoid. Yet personal finance — and finance in general — shapes our daily lives, decisions, our stress levels, and our long-term freedom. In this talk, I aim to redeem the word “finance” and show why Bitcoin education is incomplete without it. We’ll start with the basics that every Bitcoiner, beginner or advanced, should understand: budgeting, saving, debt management, estate planning and building financial resilience. Then we zoom out to the macro picture, where a historic shift is underway. Wall Street is adopting Bitcoin — whether us Bitcoiners like it or not, and whether Wall Street likes it or not. From ETFs to corporate treasuries, Bitcoin is moving from the edges of finance into its center. By connecting personal financial literacy with global macro trends, this talk equips educators and community leaders to teach Bitcoin more holistically and empower people not just to hold bitcoin, but to build stable financial lives around it.
David Ansara will share insights from a report by the Free Market Foundation launched this week entitled 'State-Proof Money: The Case for Bitcoin Adoption in South Africa'
Bitcoin adoption faces a critical bottleneck: the confusing first encounter most newcomers have with our ecosystem. Too often, people's introduction to Bitcoin comes through trading platforms that present it as speculative investment rather than revolutionary money. This talk explores the typical newbie journey—from initial skepticism about "Bitcoin as a scam" to the overwhelming complexity of existing platforms—and presents actionable strategies for creating frictionless onboarding experiences.
Drawing from real-world experience building user-centric Bitcoin infrastructure, The session covers practical approaches to orange-pilling skeptical audiences, designing intuitive experiences, and building platforms that connect people directly to Bitcoin without unnecessary complexity. Through lessons learned from Bitika's approach to simplified Bitcoin access, attendees will gain concrete strategies for improving adoption in their communities and projects.
Trezor Academy: bitcoin education for the Global Majority. Highlights, challenges, 2026 plans.
Bitcoin offers us financial freedom, but true sovereign entrepreneurs requires understanding the deeper principles governing all value of exchanges. This talk explores how natural law, together with ethical and honorable commerce create businesses that transcend mere profitability to build instead multigenerational value for private sovereign communities and genuine freedom to be and operate at our best. NO matter of jurisdiction, or nations, learn to navigate commercial systems above the powers "they" claim to have, creating proper contractual relationships, leveraging private entities or asset protection.
Volatility is a holding risk, not a settlement risk. Mavapay’s talk covers the shift from speculative Bitcoin to functional Bitcoin infrastructure.
We must develop strategies for thriving when the state fails, but also when the state does not fail - when it deploys malicious power effectively.
Meet Eve. 22 months ago, she walked into our program as a participating mother, looking for support for her newborn. Today, she runs the show. This isn't a tech talk; it's a story about the ultimate low time preference: raising a child. Eve shares how we combine Bitcoin education with essential life skills—from infant nutrition to budgeting—to help mothers retain value in their work and build a future for the next generation.
The session reframes Bitcoin mining not as speculation, but as productive digital infrastructure — particularly relevant to Southern Africa’s energy challenges and opportunities.
Using real-world examples and Braiins’ experience supporting miners globally, the talk will explore how Bitcoin mining can help monetize surplus and renewable energy, support private power generation, stabilize grids, and create skilled jobs — with specific reference to South Africa, Zambia, and the broader SADC region.
Artists' Panel
A beginner workshop that does more than the average "Here's how you can make $10k a month working for yourself" scam. It's an interactive workshop, backed by my Proof-of-Work, that aims to help bridge the gap between where the audience is & where they can be. Not unrealistic, not a get-rich-quick shitcoin scam, just step-by-step activities that make a self-sovereign career a bit less scary.
It takes the audience from how the pillars of freelancing aligns with the pillars of Bitcoin - decentralised, immutable, scalable, Proof-of-Work, structured by incentive, peer-to-peer - to action steps on identifying a freelancing niche, how to get started, and more practical things like how to set up a Lightning wallet and send invoices, how to secure themselves as freelancers, etc.
Examining the differences in what "merchant adoption" means around the world.
Every successful adoption story is built on community, trust, education and simple tools. Education for Bitcoin adoption happens when a trusted community leader, bitcoiner or educator talks to a friend, colleague, or family member and gets them to also install a Bitcoin wallet to make their first Bitcoin transaction. True adoption occurs when that friend independently and consistently starts utilizing Bitcoin, on their own. At Minmo we build tools that empower community leaders, educators and human agents to professionalize their services in providing access to Bitcoin in communities.
Bitcoin Self Custody Fireside
As bitcoin adoption accelerates, accounting for payments is creating a lot of friction. This workshop will be an open mic session lead by an experienced Bitcoin accountant to discuss the solutions other projects and companies have found. Bring your own personal challenges and we will talk about ways to solve them.
We live in unsettling times. The global order is being reshaped at breakneck speed. Old certainties are being thrown overboard and many cherished and comforting delusions are not surviving contact with hard reality. Where is this journey taking us? And what's the role of Bitcoin in all this?
Soweto, a historic centre of resistance with 1.7 million residents, continues to face severe socio-economic challenges in 2025, including systemic unemployment and financial exclusion.
This presentation introduces SowetoBTC, a non-profit initiative that leverages Bitcoin education to drive economic sovereignty.
The session will analyse how Bitcoin financial literacy and practical training empower local youth to access the global digital economy and enable small businesses (SMEs) to bypass traditional banking barriers. By examining current Bitcoin adoption trends within Soweto's informal sectors, this presentation argues that Bitcoin is a modern form of resistance against economic inequality.
Attendees will gain actionable insights into building sustainable circular economies within marginalized communities.
Turning Stranded Power into Extra Revenue: Report of a Proof of Concept on a South African Farm
Blockhunters is a bitcoin-themed board game designed to make learning about bitcoin fun, interactive, and memorable. In this workshop, participants will play through a full game of Blockhunters, and they’ll be learning key bitcoin concepts along the way: scarcity, mining, privacy, use cases for bitcoin around the world, and more. Blockhunters is a simple, fast-paced game that ultimately lowers barriers to entry and creates an inclusive and dynamic environment for both newcomers and seasoned bitcoiners, kids and adults. It's especially helpful for tactile and visual learners.
Consensus Under Attack: When the World Forks and the Screens Agree
If media can simulate war, the real battleground is what we collectively finalize as truth.
Bitcoin Sisonke(we're together in Isizulu) is pioneering a grassroot bitcoin circular economy through innovative model that combines education, gamification and real world utility, we gonna share a our journey of creating a closed loop bitcoin ecosystem where community members ear Satoshis through educational courses and meet up attendance and spend it at local merchants.
As bitcoin adoption accelerates, accounting for payments is the next hurdle for serious builders and users. Most early adopters rely on spreadsheets for tracking and reporting which is time consuming, and limits their ability to generate proper financial reporting. I share real-world lessons of circular economies who have benefited in fundamental ways as they have adopted bitcoin accounting, integrated with their payment layers to really use and see bitcoin as a unit of account.
This talk shares the key lessons I’ve learned from actively spending Bitcoin across South Africa after launching BitcoinFriendlySA, a platform that helps people spend and accept Bitcoin with confidence. By documenting merchants, writing Bitcoin spending guides, meeting industry players like MoneyBadger, and using Bitcoin myself, I shifted from seeing it mainly as digital gold to understanding it also as real money for everyday spending and saving.
After briefly covering how Bitcoin payments work in South Africa, the talk explores what actually happens at the till: why Bitcoin spending is still early, how invisible QR-code payments slow adoption, and why many Bitcoiners hesitate to spend due to volatility concerns, HODL culture, and tax friction. The talk concludes with practical ideas for advancing adoption.
What is Fedimint and how can it be useful for circular economies.
We were told 2025 would be the year of the 'Mega-Moon,' but the charts stayed stubbornly horizontal. Why was that 'failure' Bitcoin’s greatest success? We’re moving beyond the bull run to look at the real-world plumbing being built right now."
A talk to underscore the importance of running a Bitcoin full node.
P2P in South Africa Fireside Chat with Hodl Hodl
It’s been 15 years since Bitcoin came in to existence, but the world is still completely unprepared for it. That includes Bitcoiners.
Stratum V2 Mining Workshop
Use Orange Announcement.
Bitcoin is a public ledger. That transparency enables self-custody and auditability, but it also creates real privacy pitfalls once you reuse addresses, merge coins, or interact with custodians.
In this talk I’ll explain what “blockchain analytics” can and cannot infer from on-chain data, why common heuristics produce false positives, and what practical habits reduce unnecessary data leakage. I’ll also explain how Sixpence structures full-node data into accounting-grade reporting.
Goal: help Bitcoiners protect themselves, and help businesses/regulators avoid decisions based on bad data.
Machankura
Building Bitcoin Circular Economies in Africa.
Carel van Wyk | MoneyBadger
Financial freedom is a cornerstone of human rights. But today, financial systems are being weaponized to surveil, censor, and silence. For people living under authoritarian regimes or facing financial repression, Bitcoin offers a lifeline. This session explores how activists and everyday people are using it to survive, access global funds, and reclaim control over their financial lives.
Bitcoin is often described as “money that just works.” Blocks keep coming, transactions confirm, and value moves across borders with no central authority. But beneath this seamless experience is an invisible infrastructure powered by real humans: developers reviewing pull requests at midnight, debating edge cases, maintaining critical code, and sustaining the network’s resilience.
This talk explores the often-overlooked human layer of Bitcoin open-source development and why decentralizing that layer is essential for Bitcoin’s long-term survival. Drawing from Btrust’s work across the Global South, we'll explore what it takes to build sustainable developer pipelines beyond funding.
Because adoption without resilient infrastructure is just marketing, and decentralized money requires decentralized builders.
This informal yet dynamic session allows participants to pitch their Bitcoin-related projects in just 5 minutes, sharing their innovations, ideas, and contributions to the Bitcoin ecosystem.
It's an exciting opportunity for attendees to showcase their work and engage with the broader Bitcoin community.
Whether you're curious about the latest Bitcoin innovations or interested in getting involved, this session is a must-watch for anyone looking to discover new projects and network with like-minded individuals.
Each speaker has 5-minutes and a maximum of 5-slides to present something they are working on in the Bitcoin space.
It's easier than previously imagined. Let's demonstrate a revolutionary approach to Lightning Network adoption through a suite of nostr-native tools: CLINKme.dev (a Nostr-based payment protocol), Lightning.Pub (sub-60-second Lightning node installation and account system), and ShockWallet.app (Nostr-integrated wallet designed for both non-technical guests and node administrators).
Bring your device and follow a step-by-step guide on how to launch a shared Lightning node in minutes for you and your community. Share a nostr nprofile to allow others to easily connect to it without the need to install any application. Simply use ShockWallet.app from your mobile browser.
Stay tuned, follow @ShockBTC
The world is changing, but should we?
Bitcoin Circular Economies in South Africa
In this talk, Gareth Grobler, co-founder of Layerz Wallet, builds on effective onboarding strategies like those shared by Santosh Vadivelu - using relatable, everyday analogies to introduce Bitcoin's core properties (scarcity, unbreakable ownership, and lasting value) without buzzwords or immediately framing it as 'money.'
Cole's famous self-custody beginner's workshop
Bitcoin stands out as a lifeline for millions of unbanked and underbanked communities lacking secure savings, Bitcoin offers resilience. This talk highlights Bitsavers Eduhub, an initiative empowering youth and campus students to take charge of their financial futures. Through education in self‑custody, dollar‑cost averaging, and a community‑driven circular economy, students learn to “be their own bank.” With 62 graduates, 278 applicants across 20+ countries, and campus events averaging 150 participants, we show how grassroots Bitcoin education transforms vulnerable groups into empowered networks of self‑reliance. Attendees will gain insights into replicable adoption models, explore how a circular economy can foster sustainable prosperity, and share lessons on what works and what can be improved. By equipping this generation with tools for sovereignty, Bitcoin becomes a foundation for sustainable, community‑driven prosperity.
This is a conversation I believe would add depth to the program. I’d like to explore how real Bitcoin adoption in Africa depends on tools that are not only technically sound, but culturally and economically local. Drawing from my experience building Tando, I will speak about designing UX that feels familiar to people by integrating with systems they already trust, like M-PESA and other mobile money rails. When Bitcoin tools mirror existing flows people know, they lower friction and build confidence.
VEXL Demo | Josef and Okin
Africa’s economic history has been shaped by externally imposed currencies, capital controls, and monetary systems that weakened sovereignty and trust. These dynamics continue to limit mobility, cross-border trade, and long-term planning across the continent.
This session explores Bitcoin as parallel monetary infrastructure relevant to Africa’s lived realities. Drawing on experience working with diaspora investors, entrepreneurs, and relocating families, it examines how Bitcoin’s neutrality and borderless design can reduce friction created by fragmented currencies, unstable trust environments, and constrained access to financial rails.
The conversation focuses on political economy and adoption pathways, including grassroots communities and diaspora capital flows. Bitcoin’s future in Africa will be shaped by people choosing resilience, coordination, and monetary self-determination.
This talk will be exploring why Bitcoin adoption hinges just not on access or education but on incentives and if we want to see Bitcoin in every hand we should consider how people think, feel and act.
How do you help developers move from hearing about Bitcoin projects to actually building with them? This workshop shares our experiences working with the Fedimint Web SDK across African developer communities, starting with partnerships like Africa Free Routing and Dada Devs, then expanding to BitDevs meetups across the continent.
We'll share what we've learned about bridging the gap between Bitcoin discussions and hands-on development. We'll explore the "build in 30 minutes" approach using the Fedimint Web SDK, an attempt to make contribution more accessible, and discuss partnership models we've been experimenting with across Nigerian, Kenyan, and other African communities.
This is an open conversation about making Bitcoin development more approachable, with practical examples from our work.
Cross border payments have dramatically changed over the past decade. The incumbent SWIFT system is being challenged by Bitcoin, stablecoins and alternative settlement networks. Which system will win?
Cryptosquid
Bitcoin Circular Economies in Africa
A 14 year old's perspective on the state of education and what it is missing
Learn to use Bitcoin in everyday life with this hands-on Fedi workshop. Participants will master chat for direct messaging and payments, explore mini-apps for real-world transactions, and discover how Fedi Communities and Federations organize essential tools while maintaining strong privacy. Sats prizes to be won!
In this talk, I'll share my multi-year journey exposing the Karatbars and GSB scams in South Africa, where unfulfilled gold-backed crypto promises caused investor losses and triggered regulatory warnings. As a whistleblower facing intimidation and SLAPP-style lawsuits, I've seen how centralized MLM schemes exploit hype—contrasting with Bitcoin's transparent decentralisation. Amid SA's challenges like high inflation and unbanked populations, I'll offer lessons on self-sovereignty via bitcoin education and non-custodial wallets. Noting 2025 multi-jurisdictional settlements for refunds, this session highlights bitcoin's role in parallel financial institutions where authorities lag. Attendees get tips to spot scams, build community resilience, and boost grassroots adoption in Africa. As a Bitcoin advocate with experience in savings experiments and security, I aim to empower all levels for a sovereign future.
Bitcoin’s base layer prioritizes security and decentralization, but this comes with strict limits on throughput and latency. As Bitcoin adoption grows, second-layer solutions are becoming essential to scale usage without compromising core properties.
This panel explores the current landscape of Bitcoin scaling approaches, including the Lightning Network, transaction batching techniques, and emerging Layer 2 designs. Panelists will discuss architectural tradeoffs around custody, trust assumptions, liquidity, finality, and user experience, highlighting where different solutions excel, where they fall short, and what open questions remain for scaling Bitcoin sustainably.
Trade across Africa is hampered by $5 billion in annual losses to Foreign Exchange costs and trade friction. Robert Allen, founder of COINCUBE, proposes Bitcoin as the essential pan-African trade currency. Bitcoin offers a borderless, fast, and neutral settlement rail, empowering direct, low-cost cross-border transactions, eliminating delays and gatekeepers. The continent's mobile-first, tech-savvy population is primed for adoption. This talk will outline actionable steps to build Bitcoin trade corridors and foster a truly financially independent African market.
Bitcoin adoption in Africa is often framed around cities like Lagos and Nairobi. But the real story is unfolding in overlooked regions where financial exclusion is deepest. Drawing from our work at African Bitcoiners and Africa Free Routing, this talk shares how seminars, mentorships, lightning bootcamps, and community tools are helping ordinary people truly ‘get’ Bitcoin — not just as an idea, but as something they can use in daily life.
We have published a book about the first five Bitcoin circular economies around the world, and I will talk about the process and everything we’ve learned. I also want to announce the production of our second book, dedicated exclusively to Africa’s Bitcoin circular economies.
Closing Remarks, Important Announcements, Group Photo