10-28-2025 
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Opening: A city that eats its own history
- Introducing London
- Kurt’s London Bitcoin Adventure
- Karl Wuckert and Kurt’s team work
- Day 2 now at the London Blockchain Conference
- Behind the scenes of a blockchain conference
- We’ll see you again!
London greets you with soot, grit, and grandeur in equal measure. It’s a city that eats its own history and builds on the bones. The Thames rolls on under bridges that remember Roman footsteps; tide lines mark the rise and fall of fortunes. Dock cranes long since rusted point at glass towers where billions move at the click of a mouse. If you lean close, you can smell diesel and deep time. You sense money and power like electricity in the damp air.
Two days of ghosts and ledgers
Karl and I landed with cameras and curiosity. Our producer’s checklist told us where to be; our hearts told us to wander. We started with breakfast in the looming shadow of Battersea Power Station, awaiting the start of the London Bitcoin Adventure! We shook hands with some old friends and a bunch of people who soon would be. We all awaited the arrival of Elle Liberté, our host, and something of a force of nature, to kick off the romp around the city. At the Tower of London, walking on cobbles polished by centuries of boots, guides whispered the sanctioned stories about beefeaters, ravens, and royals, and then leaned close and murmured rumors about ghosts, traitors, and the blood-soaked history of the property.
It was outside the tower gate that a tragedy struck. Popular voice of the big blockers, SirToshi, slipped on said cobbles, and he landed just right (or wrong) to fracture his femur, abruptly ending his time with us on the tour. We spent the rest of the trip sharing notes and video clips of well-wishes as he underwent surgery and began his road to recovery.
Later on, I gave an unscripted speech at the Royal Exchange to explain the fundamentals of commodities vs securities before moving on to the Bank of England (BoE).
The Bank’s cold corridors smelled of old paper and polished brass. In a back room, an archivist slid ledger books bound in calfskin across the table; the pages crackled like leaves, and I was honored to speak at the impromptu stage of a back hallway on the power of gold and the allure of the first Ponzi scheme: The South Sea Bubble, and her disturbing parallels to the Strategy and Tether bubble.
We all took turns lifting a bar of pure gold to see how much it weighed, while calculating its value at over a million and a half U.S. dollars.
From there, we traded the City of London for Greenwich, where sea winds carry the briny tang of the Thames. The Cutty Sark’s decks creaked, reminding me that global trade once moved at the pace of wind. Brendan Lee and I waxed on about the “sea change” from monolithic Bitcoin nodes to the era of Teranode and how the world saw a similar transition from wooden ships, to hybrid to the metal monoliths of today’s global sea trade!
At the Old Royal Naval College, baroque facades hid secret tunnels and passageways. We asked the tour guide to clarify the motifs of Apollo, compasses, and squares in the context of 18th-century Freemasonry, and she was kind enough to let us know she wasn’t sure what we were talking about…
Guides argued quietly about the Great Fire of London: was it truly a bakery? Or something darker? And how the British Civil War scarred the city. At the Prime Meridian, we straddled zero degrees, laughing like kids at how arbitrary lines can govern lives, but properly measured, the world becomes exponentially more productive and also easy to control.
We ended each day tired, hands cold from rain, sipping drinks in odd pubs and cafes while jotting notes, falling down rabbit holes, and exchanging knowledge about how money and empire weave through the centuries.
Karl
You don’t see Karl on screen, which is precisely how he likes it. He was everywhere and nowhere all week: behind a camera, under an umbrella, carrying gear cases, fixing sound with numb fingers, struggling with international roaming, and pushing my instant content up onto social media for your consumption.
If you like my coverage, he deserves a lot of praise for helping make it possible.
My little brother built the look and sound of our work by instinct. When the rain came sideways off the Thames, he wrapped a towel around a microphone and kept recording. He was the first one awake, loading battery packs, and the last to sleep, labeling clips and uploading to social or the cloud drive. During my on-camera stand-ups, he would catch my eye and nod slightly if I hit the rhythm, or raise an eyebrow if I drifted. Between takes, he pressed hot tea, water, or whatever was needed into my hand; his way of saying, “You’ve got this,” while keeping me grounded and on topic.
Lights Up: Day three
After the tour of a lifetime, the London Blockchain Conference kicked off, and the show opened with the flip of a switch. Suddenly the studio hummed: producers barking cues, directors counting down in my ear, comms crackling like static in a storm. Becky, Jon, and Claire lit up our screens with ease and charm, and we all shared in post-presentation interviews with the Who’s Who of the event.
Behind us all, an army of names you’ll never know made it happen. The writers who wrestled jargon into stories, helped us with scripts, and led us to the next bits we needed to shoot. The camera operators who tracked speakers across stages. The editors who stayed up all night cutting highlight reels. CoinGeek’s unsung heroes fed us information, coffee, and occasional jokes. It takes more than talking heads to make a conference breathe; it takes a village.
Hallway economics
Between broadcasts, I mingled around or lived at the CoinGeek desk, a makeshift hearth in the conference hall. People came and went, some nervous, some loud, all carrying opinions. Every handshake was a story, and it was my job to capture the energy: stay tuned for the “Sights and Sounds” of the event, which was my job to chronicle.
Every smile hinted at late nights debugging code, debating economics, or just trying to get the videos up online. In hallways and over paper cups of coffee and plastic cups of wine, we debated scaling, taxes, block sizes, and ethics. In the post-event night out, we debated communism vs capitalism, carnivore vs veganism, and a dozen things in between.
We argued, we laughed, and we promised to stay in touch.
Why we keep coming back
Conferences are a strange mix of ritual and discovery. The panels and slides matter, and yet the real work happens over lukewarm coffee in a corner. We come for the code, the keynote, or the commerce, but we stay for the camaraderie. I keep showing up because of the moments when a technical argument melts into a shared memory about a child’s first steps, or a partner’s support, or a mutual friend’s passing. These weeks remind me that behind every node and token is a human being. The ledger may be immutable, but our relationships are what give it purpose. Bitcoin is a social contract as much as a protocol. It’s built by people willing to argue fiercely, fail publicly, and keep tinkering until it works.
See you next time
Next year we’ll convene again. The lighting rigs will rise, the cameras will whir, and the coffee will still be bad. I’ll be there, notebook in hand, ready to hear about your latest experiment or your toughest bug. If you see me in a hallway, say hello.
Tell me what you’re building, what keeps you up at night, and what inspires you. I’ll tell you about the smell of brine in Greenwich, the echo of footsteps in the Bank of England, and the warmth of a crew who has your back.
We’re all just travelers in the space between ledgers and legends. God-willing, I’ll see you next year at the London Blockchain Conference 2026!
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