From Austin to Taipei
The reason why the bitcoin++ series of conferences enjoys a high reputation within the developer community lies in its unique location philosophy. Unlike those commercial summits that pursue luxury hotels and media exposure, every stop of bitcoin++ is meticulously planned to resonate with specific technical themes or geopolitical contexts. Looking back at its global tour roadmap for 2025, we can clearly see a trajectory of technological evolution:
Austin (May): Focus on mining pools and mempool, exploring the decentralization of the 'production end' of Bitcoin.
Riga (August): In this fertile land of privacy technology in the Baltic Sea, focusing on 'Privacy', discussing mixing techniques and on-chain anonymity.
Istanbul (September): Located at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, discussing 'Scaling', studying how BitVM and ZK Rollups can allow Bitcoin to accommodate more users.
Berlin (October): In the center of hacker culture, specializing in 'Lightning++', the advanced applications of the Lightning Network.
And the final chapter of this all lands in Taipei in December 2025, with the theme set as 'Sovereignty'.
The geographical metaphor of Taipei's 'sovereignty'
Choosing Taipei as the carrier of the theme 'sovereignty' undoubtedly carries strong symbolic significance. In the current international situation, Taiwan is at the forefront of geopolitical tensions and has a deeper understanding of 'autonomy', 'defense', and 'resilience' than any other region.
In the context of Bitcoin, 'sovereignty' means:
1. Censorship Resistance: The ability to continue value transfer under any external interference (whether government freezes or internet blocks).
2. Self-Custody: Thoroughly mastering private keys, without relying on banks or exchanges as intermediaries. 'Not your keys, not your coins.'
3. Right to Verify: Every user can run a full node, personally verifying the legality of each transaction instead of trusting third-party data sources.
The official bitcoin++ website clearly states: 'Bitcoin is the cutting-edge tool for transaction freedom. Join us to explore the forefront of sovereignty and peer-to-peer transactions in Taipei, whether on-chain or off-chain.' This statement perfectly links Taipei's physical defense needs with Bitcoin's digital defense properties. Here, participants will not only discuss code but also think about how to build a financial system that can survive in extreme environments.
The attractiveness of Taiwan's technical community
Besides symbolic significance, Taiwan's strength in hardware manufacturing and open-source communities is also a key factor attracting bitcoin++. Taiwan is an important place for hardware wallets, and Bitcoin's 'sovereignty' must ultimately be realized in the physical storage of private keys. Additionally, Taiwan has an active open-source community (like COSCUP) and core developers like Evan Lin acting as bridges, making Taipei an ideal node connecting East and West Bitcoin technology communities.
This bitcoin++ Taipei exhibition is located at POPOP Taipei, No. 13, Section 2, Nangang Road, Nangang District, Taipei City, and its transportation accessibility is extremely friendly for international participants.
Agenda Deep Dive: Three days of hardcore technology immersion
This bitcoin++ Taipei conference has a tight schedule, covering all dimensions from the underlying protocol to the application layer. We will conduct in-depth analyses day by day and session by session, dissecting the technical implications and strategic values behind each issue.
Day One (December 15): Infrastructure of Sovereignty
The agenda on the first day focuses on the infrastructure construction of Bitcoin as 'sovereign currency', including payment protocols, open-source AI, and decentralized contracts.
10:45 am – 11:15 am | Parallel Tracks
Talks Stage: Nicolas Dorier (TBD)
- Speaker Background: Nicolas Dorier is a legendary figure among Bitcoin developers and the founder of BTCPay Server. His strong rebuttal to BitPay during the 2017 blockchain size war ('My trust in you is broken...') led to the birth of BTCPay Server.
- Topic Predictions and Insights: Although specific topics are TBD, it can be expected that he will share the latest developments regarding BTCPay Server 2.0 or decentralized payment protocols. BTCPay allows merchants to fully control their funds without paying fees to intermediaries, which is the ultimate embodiment of 'financial sovereignty' at the commercial level. He may explore how to enable BTCPay to support more Layer 2 protocols or further lower the barriers for merchants to deploy full nodes.
Main Stage: Anant Tapadia – “Bitcoin IS the Innovation”
- Topic Analysis: This talk is expected to set the tone for the conference, refuting the view that 'Bitcoin technology is stagnant', and reaffirming that Bitcoin's insistence on robustness and decentralization is itself the greatest innovation.
11:15 am – 12:15 pm | Sovereignty and Stability
Main Stage: Tony Klausing – “Sovereign Stability: Hands-On with Stable Channels”
Technical Depth: Stable Channels are a holy grail on the Lightning Network. Bitcoin's high volatility hinders its adoption as a daily payment tool. Tony will demonstrate how to synthesize stable fiat value within Lightning channels using derivatives contracts (like DLCs) without relying on centralized stablecoins (like USDT, USDC). This means users can hold Bitcoin but lock in fiat value when making payments, completely decentralized with no counterparty risk. This is revolutionary for merchants looking to escape the banking system while needing price stability.
11:30 am – 12:00 pm | Open Source and AI
Main Stage: Alex Gleason – “Really Open AI: The Future of Open Source”Trend Analysis: In today's world where AI models are increasingly monopolized by large companies, Alex Gleason will explore the resonance between open-source AI and the spirit of Bitcoin. This may involve how to use Bitcoin (especially the Lightning Network) to pay for AI computing resources (like the L402 protocol), or how to build uncensorable AI agents.
1:00 pm – 3:00 pm | Practical Workshops
Main Stage: Nick Farrow – “Workshop: Let’s make a FROST key for comfy self-custody!”Technical Depth: FROST (Flexible Round-Optimized Schnorr Threshold) is a major breakthrough in Bitcoin threshold signature technology. Compared to traditional multisignature methods, FROST is more private (appearing as simple single-signature on-chain) and flexible. Nick Farrow will lead participants in implementing FROST key generation, which is the standard configuration for the next generation of Bitcoin wallets.
Main Stage: Matt Black – “Build a DLC wallet and bet on the presidential election”
Technical Depth: DLCs (Discreet Log Contracts) allow both parties to gamble on-chain based on oracle data (such as election results) without having to trust funds to a third party. This workshop will directly demonstrate how to write a DLC wallet, which is not only a technical demonstration but also a real application case of decentralized finance (DeFi) on Bitcoin.
3:45 pm – 5:15 pm | Wallets and Protocols
Kevin Loaec – “Preventing xpub reuse across wallets”: Kevin is the founder of Revault, and he will explore the privacy disaster of extended public key (xpub) reuse, which can lead to all transaction histories being linked.
Dana Wallet – “Building a pure silent payment mobile wallet: challenges and hindsight”: This is a practical sharing about BIP-352 Silent Payments. The Dana team will reveal the challenges of implementing silent payments on mobile, especially how to efficiently scan on-chain data to discover transactions belonging to users under resource-constrained conditions.
Ava Chow – “You Should Write A BIP”: As a Bitcoin Core Maintainer, Ava Chow will encourage more developers to participate in protocol standard setting. For Taiwanese developers, this is an excellent entry point to understand how to contribute their ideas to the Bitcoin Core protocol.
Day Two (December 16): Defense of Privacy & Nodes
The second day will feature the highly anticipated speaker of this conference, Peter Todd, and hardcore technology related to running full nodes.
10:00 am – 10:30 am | Keynote
Main Stage: Peter Todd – “Public/Private Partnerships Potentially Prohibiting Privacy Probing”
Speaker Deep Background: Peter Todd is an early core developer of Bitcoin who once communicated with Satoshi, and he has recently become a focal point due to HBO documentary allegations of him being Satoshi (although he strongly denies this). He has long been dedicated to privacy technology (like Dark Wallet) and security research.
Topic Analysis: His topics are filled with criticism of the status quo. In the current regulatory environment, governments (Public) and exchanges/analytics companies (Private) form alliances (Partnerships) to monitor users through on-chain analysis tools (Privacy Probing). Peter Todd is expected to analyze the operational mechanisms of this 'panoptic prison' in depth and propose technical countermeasures, such as more advanced CoinJoin schemes or privacy upgrades at the protocol level. This will be a highly thought-provoking speech.
10:00 am – 11:00 am | Node Technology
Talks Stage: Abubakar Sadiq Ismail – “Building a Bitcoin Full Node with libbitcoinkernel”Technical Depth: libbitcoinkernel is a project that decouples the consensus logic of Bitcoin Core into an independent library. This means developers can build custom Bitcoin node software while still using consensus rules identical to Bitcoin Core, avoiding the risk of forks caused by re-implementing consensus logic. This is crucial for the diversity of the Bitcoin software ecosystem.
10:30 am – 11:00 am | Local Power
Main Stage: Evan Lin – TBDSpeaker Background: Evan Lin (林志宇) is a local Bitcoin developer in Taiwan, a contributor to BDK (Bitcoin Dev Kit), and a mentor for this hackathon. His speech will showcase the contributions of Taiwanese developers in the international Bitcoin ecosystem, possibly involving the application of BDK in building modern Bitcoin wallets.
Day Three (December 17): Future Scaling & Applications
The last day's agenda covers hardware wallet standards, zero-knowledge proofs, and Nostr applications.
10:00 am – 11:30 am | Hardware and Payments
Main Stage: Edouard Paris – “HWI reloaded: Current state of hardware wallets…”
Industry Relevance: Edouard will discuss the standardization of hardware wallet interfaces (HWI). This has direct commercial and technical reference value for Taiwan's hardware wallet manufacturers (such as CoolWallet, Ledger OEM factories, etc.).
Talks Stage: Chris Guida – “Every Merchant A Noderunner”
Vision: Explore how to lower the threshold for merchants to run full nodes, making 'verification' a business standard.
Main Stage: Dan Gould – “Privacy is Censorship Resistance: Why Payjoin Matters for Sovereignty”
Technical Depth: Payjoin is a technique that breaks common on-chain analysis heuristics. It allows senders and receivers to jointly construct a transaction so that outside observers cannot determine which output is change and which is payment. Dan Gould will explain how Payjoin becomes a key tool for resisting censorship.
Talks Stage: Pyth – “Try to build ‘covenants’ with miniscript”
Cutting-edge Technology: Covenants are mechanisms that restrict how Bitcoin can be spent in the future. Currently, the Bitcoin protocol has limited support for this. Pyth will demonstrate how to use the Miniscript language to simulate a certain degree of covenant functionality, which is crucial for inheritance planning and vault management.
1:00 pm – 3:15 pm | ZK and Nostr
Main Stage: Oskar Thorén – “How ZK Enables Sovereignty”
Technical Depth: Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZK Proofs) are often associated with Ethereum scaling, but on Bitcoin, ZK can be used to prove reserves without revealing balances or to enhance the privacy of lightweight clients.
Main Stage: calvadev – “Free Commerce Frees All; Building the Free Market on Nostr”
Cross-Disciplinary Fusion: Nostr is a decentralized social protocol. calvadev will demonstrate how to integrate Bitcoin payments (Lightning Network) into Nostr, creating a global free market that cannot be censored, which may be the legalization and decentralized continuation of the Silk Road spirit. Main Stage: GG – “Sovereign by Design: How BULL Wallet Embodies Bitcoin’s Original Ethos”
Talks Stage: Stark – “Coinswap Live Demo”
- Technical Demonstration: Coinswap is another advanced privacy technique that allows users to exchange Bitcoin without leaving traces on the chain.
Hackathon: The Glory Arena of 5 Million Satoshis
Alongside the conference, there will be a high-intensity hackathon competition. This is a tradition of bitcoin++ and the essence of its soul.
Competition Rules and Rewards
Total Prize Pool: 5,000,000 sats (satoshis). Although it may seem small in fiat terms, winning a bitcoin++ award is considered a high honor (Proof of Work) in the Bitcoin developer community, often serving as a stepping stone to receive renowned Bitcoin Grants (such as Spiral, Brink, HRF) funding.
Theme: Must revolve around 'sovereignty'. Contest entries are encouraged to focus on privacy protection, censorship-resistant communication, self-custody tools, or P2P market mechanisms.
Participation Format: Open-ended competition; any project related to Bitcoin can enter, but additional points will be given for privacy-related projects.
Mentors and Judges
Evan Lin and other speakers will serve as mentors. This is an invaluable resource for participants; you can directly ask Nicolas Dorier about BTCPay's API issues or have Peter Todd review your privacy architecture. This kind of 'mentorship' is the most unique value of the bitcoin++ hackathon.
Speaker Deep Background File
Speaker Name Core Identity Representative Work/Project Industry Impact Analysis Peter Todd Core Developer / Cryptographer OpenTimestamps, Dark Wallet Early Bitcoin code contributor, promoter of RBF (Replace-by-Fee) mechanism. Recently, due to the controversy surrounding the HBO documentary, his views on privacy and identity have become more realistically ironic and referential. He is a representative of extreme securityism. Nicolas Dorier BTCPay Server Founder BTCPay Server, NBitcoin Hero of the 2017 hard fork war. The BTCPay Server he created destroyed the monopoly of centralized payment processors, allowing thousands of merchants to achieve 'payment sovereignty'. Ava Chow Bitcoin Core Maintainer Bitcoin Core, HWI Holds 'Commit Access' to the Bitcoin Core codebase, one of the few who can decide which code can enter the Bitcoin mainnet. Specializes in wallet architecture and hardware compatibility. Evan Lin (林志宇) BDK Contributor Bitcoin Dev Kit, Fedimint A leading figure in Taiwan's Bitcoin development community. He has participated in the development of BDK and Fedimint (Federated Mint) and is committed to lowering the barriers for developers to build Bitcoin applications. Nick Farrow Developer / Cryptographer FROST, SatSale Focuses on threshold signature technology, which will determine the security standards for institutional-grade Bitcoin custody in the future.
Why is this event crucial for Taiwan?
Taiwan has long been a global electronic manufacturing center, and this advantage is reflected in the manufacturing of cold wallets (CoolWallet, SecuX, etc.) in the cryptocurrency field. However, hardware is just a carrier; protocols are the soul. bitcoin++ brings the world's most cutting-edge wallet protocols (like Silent Payments, FROST) to Taipei, providing excellent opportunities for Taiwanese hardware manufacturers for technical upgrades. If Taiwanese manufacturers can be the first to support these new protocols at the hardware level, it will significantly enhance their products' competitiveness in the global market.
The geopolitical threats faced by Taiwan make 'digital sovereignty' no longer an empty slogan. Learning how to build anti-censorship payment networks (for example, transmitting Bitcoin through radio or mesh networks) is of reference value for national-level financial resilience. bitcoin++ explores how to maintain the operation of the financial system in extreme environments, which aligns with Taiwan's defense needs on some level.
Finally, Taiwan's blockchain talent has long been concentrated in the Ethereum application layer (DeFi/NFT). bitcoin++ helps balance the ecosystem and inspire more developers to engage in underlying development in Rust and C++. Such talents are extremely scarce and highly paid in the global market, which can inject new vitality into Taiwan's software industry.
Join you in participating in bitcoin++
Time: December 15 to 17, 2025
Location: Taipei Nangang Bottle Cap Factory POPOP Taipei
Ticketing and more information: https://btcpp.dev/conf/taipei
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