According to sources speaking to the Bitcoin.com News team, the secretive event known as the 'Satoshi Roundtable' kicked off this morning following a welcome dinner last night. The two-day private affair, organized by 'Blockchain Economic Advisor' Bruce Fenton, brings together invited members of the Bitcoin community, shrouded in mystery.
Mysterious Origins and Chatham House Rules
Bruce Fenton, the Roundtable founder, tweeted after the 2015 event: “All bags with Satoshi Roundtable paperwork were rerouted and held in another city in America for 24 hours before release. Coincidence?” This suggestion that documents from the first annual Satoshi Roundtable were inspected by federal authorities has added an air of importance to a gathering that has attracted some of the biggest names in the Bitcoin industry.
According to the official website, past invitees include Tally Capital's Andrew Flipowski, Decentral founder Anthony Di Lorio, Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, Bitcoin.com CEO Roger Ver, and many others over the meeting's three-year history. Discussion adheres strictly to the 'Chatham House Rule,' whereby participants are free to use the information received, but the identity or affiliation of any speaker or participant may not be revealed.
Crashing and Internal Criticism
In 2016, Bitcoin Uncensored hosts Chris Derose and Joshua Unseth crashed the Satoshi Roundtable. Unseth noted that “through various channels, seven or so people told us where the event was and asked us to please come.” He attended wearing a sombrero and poncho and described the event as “not far from a parody of itself.” Unseth called it “contrived exclusivity” and reported a “strong contingent of those in attendance who were livid” at their appearance. Fenton tried to prevent them from conducting BU interviews and attempted to remove them.
Derose recalled to Bitcoin.com: “[Satoshi Roundtable 2016] was the Bruce Fenton experience, whereby Mr. Fenton attempted to create an air of access that he was facilitating that wasn’t accessible to others. He invites scammers, and people with nothing to contribute to Bitcoin, and many of whom are in some ways financially eviscerating digital currency newcomers.”
Diverse Perspectives from Executives and Developers
In a less critical review, Bitpay CEO Stephen Pair tweeted: “…the #SatoshiRoundtable was a very productive waste of time … @brucefenton deserves a lot of credit for organizing it.” On Medium, he thanked Fenton and noted that much of the 2016 discussion dealt with the Bitcoin block size debate. “The most important thing I learned at the event was that a lot of people care a lot about Bitcoin and these people are what make Bitcoin work, not lines of code or software.”
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong posted on the Coinbase Blog about his 2016 experience, stating that “a number of meetings took place between core developers, miners, and CEOs of Bitcoin companies.” He revealed a revelation: “...the systemic risk to Bitcoin if Bitcoin Core was the only team working on Bitcoin… The core team contains some very high IQ people, but there are some things which I find very concerning about them as a team after spending some time with them last weekend… Some of them show very poor communication skills or a lack of maturity — this has hurt Bitcoin’s ability to bring new protocol developers into the space… They prefer ‘perfect’ solutions to ‘good enough.’”
Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen shared his memories: “Everybody was asked if they supported the ‘Hong Kong compromise’ from the week before (segregated witness in April, then code for a 2MB hard fork in July of 2016 with a minimum of a year before 2MB blocks are allowed). ‘Everybody who support that, raise your hand’: a dozen or so people… ‘Everybody who does not support that, raise your hand’: everybody else (forty? fifty people?) raised their hands.” Jeff Garzik, Bitcoin developer and CEO of Bloq.com, who was invited to a previous edition but cancelled due to illness, believes such meetings can be productive: “Taking from the Linux days, private meetings can be productive, but participants need to commit to a culture of transparency. ‘Chatham house rules’ seem to be a good compromise.” He added, “Private meetings sometimes move specific issues forward, but ultimately it comes to a public forum for a decision.”
As the Satoshi Roundtable continues to compete with the self-proclaimed 'Bitcoin Illuminati' gathering on Richard Branson's Necker Island, the crypto community will watch closely whether such exclusivity ultimately benefits the Bitcoin economy.