Baltic HoneyBadger, the iconic Bitcoin-only conference, is returning to Riga, Latvia this September for its fourth edition, and the first such event since 2019.
First held in 2017, the Baltic HoneyBadger was taking place for next two years and was planning for a new 2020 event when the international borders got closed due to the Corona pandemic lockdowns.
Unlike many other events that opted to continue in online format, the Baltic HoneyBadger organizers made clear that the next conference will be happening only in-person, and they finally delivered on that promise this year, bringing the much-anticipated event back.
In the build-up to the conference, CryptoEvents sat down with Max Kei, the CEO of Hodl Hodl and the organizer of the Baltic HoneyBadger conference, to hear what this year’s edition is going to be like and what the attendees can expect.
Cheers Max, how are the preparations for the Baltic HoneyBadger 2022 conference going? How excited are you to see the event coming back?
We are pretty much excited! We’ve been preparing for the event for five or six months now, and we started pretty early compared to previous events.
We still have some speakers to announce, which is going to happen this week, and we all hope that this year’s event will be better than the previous ones.
What we are quite sure of is that Baltic HoneyBadger 2022 will be — as usual — at the highest level.
Baltic HoneyBadger is switching to a new format this year. What will it be like and what can attendees expect?
This year’s event will be the first one when we will have two stages, each situated at different levels so that people will be able to go upstairs or downstairs to catch different stuff.
There will be the Bitcoin stage, and there will also be the Sat (Satoshi) stage, each featuring different types of content along with exhibition spaces, a chill out zone, and more.
The Bitcoin stage will be mostly dedicated to less technical talks, there will be panels, fireside chats, and Q&A interview type of things. I’d say that it will be mainly about easier to grasp talks.
The Sat stage, on the contrary, will have a bit of more technical talks and presentations.
The key thing about any event is the speaker lineup. What’s coming this year for Baltic HoneyBadger?
It’s been three years since our last event, so, of course, the community has somewhat changed. We have new heroes, we have new villains, but the core lineup of the speakers is largely the same.
These people play an important role in the Bitcoin ecosystem and continuously deliver on a high scale.
You will see some usual suspects as Dr. Adam Back, for whom it’ll be the fourth appearance in our conference in a row, as well as the likes of Peter McCormack, Marty Bent, and Stephan Livera among many others.
All of them have already visited Baltic HoneyBadger before, but we will also welcome many other people well known within the community, but it’ll be their first appearance at the conference.
These also include the likes of Michael Saylor, the CEO of MicroStrategy and a prominent Bitcoin supporter, as well as Jack Mallers, the creator of Strike app, bothe of whom will speak remotely.
This is, actually, the best part about Honeybadger. We’d like to mix up, I’d say, the old school with the new school, to mix the folks who are already well known within the community with the lesser known crop.
There will be some startups that are just making their first steps within the space and getting traction, which I’m pretty excited about!
As for the attendees, we do hope that this will not be just another mob traveling from conference to conference. We really want to see some new faces to help facilitate Bitcoin adoption.
Tell us more about the venue for this year’s edition of Baltic HoneyBadger. It is supposed to be a new one, right?
Correct, the venue will be new, it’s called Fantadroms. The name itself derives from the famous Lavian children’s cartoon that was filmed back in Soviet times, I think back in the 1980s.
It was pretty innovative at that time and it was something unusual, and progressive different for the Soviet Union at that time. It was kind of neo classics, which, I think, aligns pretty well with the spirit of cypherpunks and the broader digital movement of Bitcoin.
Thss Fantadroms event venue was built and actually opened just a few months before the COVID kicked in 2020, and it also has a touch of an industrial spirit. The place is surrounded by business district skyscrapers and a residential area, so I think it’s going to be pretty cool.
Also, similar to what those who visited the previous editions of our conference loved so much, there will be a street food zone where people can just go out to hang out and exchange ideas, share the news, or whatever else.
The Baltic HoneyBadger event will be a part of a bigger Riga Bitcoin Week. What will that be about?
The Riga Bitcoin Week will be happening for the second time already, with the first edition taking place back in 2019. There will be events before the conference and events after the conference.
We will kick off on September 1 with Noob Day, which will be an event for people less familiar with Bitcoin, with entry level educational lectures on the topic of Bitcoin.
On September 2, we’ll have the Layer 2 Day at Fantadroms that will be dedicated to the, well, layer two solutions built on top of Bitcoin, such as Lightning Network and Liquid, among many others.
Finally, after the two days of the main conference, we will close the Riga Bitcoin week on the 5th of September with the BTCPay Server Day, which is also happening for the second time in Riga, and I’m very happy about that. I’m happy to support the guys from BTCPay Server, because I think they do an amazing job! And they’re just amazing people and great developers.
So yes, people can basically arrive in Riga on August 31 or September 1 and have five days full of different types of gatherings offering genuinely exciting educational information on all things Bitcoin.
What about Bitcoin options for the conference tickets and onsite purchases?
People can always buy a ticket to Baltic HoneyBadger with either Bitcoin or fiat, and it’s been like this since day one.
Unfortunately, buying something on the premises with Bitcoin is still very hard, specifically in Latvia, because of our regulations, so I’m afraid you will have to spend dirty fiat and hold your Bitcoin.
It’s not our fault. We would love to introduce an opportunity to pay for food and all other stuff with Bitcoin, but unfortunately, there are some rules we have to comply with.
Alright, so what would be your final message to those still weighing up whether to attend Baltic Honeybadger 2022? What do you personally expect from the event? Will it probably kickstart a new stage of Bitcoin adoption?
Of course, I’ve heard a lot of stories of people making connections during the previous Baltic HoneyBadger events and starting new ventures and projects, but every conference is different and unique.
Each time we have different stories to share, we have different people to come, and we have different vibes. Therefore I just hope that people will enjoy it, learn new things and educate themselves more about Bitcoin.
My hope is that everyone will find something interesting and new during, and that it will not be another “typical” type of the conference, but rather more like a tribe gathering for the Bitcoin community to share ideas, express concerns, and discuss things.
I just hope that everyone will enjoy it and people will have fun.
