The third edition of The Bitcoin Masterclasses series, led by Dr. Craig Wright, took place at the Marriot Zurich March 22-23 and was an absolute delight to attend.
This in-person immersive learning experience included local nChain staff and a handful of Zurich-based professionals who work closely with nChain, an intimate setting by design. Every Masterclass is livestreamed and recorded, so anyone interested in unlocking Bitcoin’s true potential is encouraged to participate remotely in real time or after the fact, free of charge.
Accounting and mapping transactions on-chain was the focus of this Masterclass, during which Dr. Wright graciously dove into topics such as double-entry accounting, triple-entry accounting, NFTs, tokenizing, swaps, smart contracts and more.
“It’s Craig from 2005. What Craig is at heart is an educator and a mentor,” confirmed Stephan Matthews, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of nChain Group—also a close personal friend of Dr. Wright—after participating in the first day’s morning sessions.
“You understand that Craig’s not just a technologist, he’s not just a guy that created blockchain and Bitcoin. He’s a guy that has an extraordinary range of knowledge around economics and business and accounting and finance and manufacturing and law and all those areas,” he said.
“And I think what our people are getting from these sessions is invaluable,” Matthews added.
Zurich-based Nicolas Wellinger, Managing Director and Founder of Aliigon, consults with tech startups and attended the workshop to educate himself and stay “ahead of the curve” for his clients.
“I think the format is very good. There are parts of it that reminded me a little bit of university lectures, but way more hands on,” Wellinger said of the Masterclass.
“I was a bit hesitant coming in here today because I thought if it’s too technical, I might not be able to catch up with things. But [Dr. Wright] really kept it on the business and the use case level and that was very interesting to leave the tech stuff to the tech people and the business stuff to the business people,” he said.
Dr. Daniel Diemers, Co-Founder and Partner of SNGLR Group, a local professional in the investment space, shared the stage with Dr. Wright during CoinGeek Zurich a few years back. He describes Dr. Wright as “a true scholar” and “true visionary.”
“I enjoyed the lecture he’s giving here today, the workshops. And I think today it’s more about how that data layer that blockchain creates trust. And this is going to be critical for the future,” Dr. Diemers said.
Patrick Prinz, long time Bitcoin advocate and Managing Partner of fintech company Monetix, is local to Zurich and found his time at the Masterclasses to be most valuable.
“First of all, I would like to highlight that what Craig is sharing here. Most of the markets, most people you talk to about Bitcoin wouldn’t really link to the topic. We have two full days here talking about accounting methods, processes and how Bitcoin is extremely relevant for it,” Prinz pointed out.
“It unlocked for me a lot of ideas, I have like two pages of notes, of business opportunities, but those existing industries it could immensely profit,” he said.
CFO Torje Vingen Sunde attended the Masterclasses on behalf of UNISOT, blockchain-powered technology for supply chain sustainability.
“My background is from auditing, and I came here with ideas on how to actually make auditing more efficient by using Bitcoin technology and having a set of ideas. And coming here and it’s like, oh, there’s like ten times more things you can actually do with this,” Vingen Sunde said.
“And that’s just in a short time to learn so many things that we can do…having to actually be able to talk with Craig and talk about, ‘okay, what did you really mean here’? It’s amazing,” he added.
One of the themes Dr. Wright circled back to again and again throughout the Masterclass was how automated processes using blockchain tech could help eliminate the infamous “garbage in, garbage out” problem when it comes to data processing.
“So what we first need to do is make sure that all the entry is done correctly. But then once we’ve checked that and we’ve validated what we’re handed, then we want to make sure that we don’t ever have the right or ability to change and alter that, but rather to hand across information, just machine to machine with, hashes, checks so that nothing ever alters,” he explained.
“So one of the problems right now is that every time you hand something to someone and they re-enter it in a computer rather than automatically entering that data, people need to type in numbers and they can mistype and they have the wrong values, etc.,” he said.
Dr. Wright’s lessons during The Bitcoin Masterclasses series are so powerful because how he shares personal experiences with the students, creating a clearer picture of where some of his ideas about Bitcoin came from and how they fit into a master plan.
“It makes us understand where his thinking came from when he created Bitcoin. And it allows us to understand how many of these different concepts come together and form Bitcoin as a whole approach, a process,” shared Prinz.
“I think there are a lot of tech disruptors out there who really have interesting solutions that just look at a part of a problem and try to disrupt a part of it. Whereas when you go in a Masterclass like this and talk to people like Dr. Craig Wright, he’s almost like a holistic practitioner who looks at it really end to end. And then you see how it really makes sense,” added Wellinger.
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