🎉 Bitcoin Block Party Recap

The Plebs at Pleb Lab Show That Mental Energy May Be More Scarce Than Time.

Written by @BTCRetriever

Austin, Texas is home to Pleb Lab. The reason why Austin, Texas is the place for the plebs is because Bitcoiners simply love it. It is that special place that seems to shine a Bitcoin Signal in the sky 24/7. Nobody can coerce a pleb to move to the Bitcoin Mecca and start building a bitcoin centered start up. The incentives have to be such that a Bitcoiner will have more to loose by not making the pilgrimage. And that is exactly why Austin has garnered its reputation among the bitcoin community.

From the outside looking in, the success that was the Bitcoin Block Party was clearly the culmination of months of brain storming, networking, and planning. But the Plebs at Pleb Lab coordinated the first of its kind Bitcoin Adoption kick off event in roughly 3 weeks.  In an article about the event featured in Bitcoin Magazine, we saw how the experience of using bitcoin and the lightning network to transact with local business using the Oshi app was seamless and intuitive for both the businesses and the patrons. This article takes a behind the scenes look at the how efforts by Pleb Lab made it all possible.

We often hear that time is money, and there is nothing more valuable than time. Pleb Lab might argue that Mental Energy may in fact be more valuable than time. Pleb Lab demonstrated this notion by spending 3 weeks, from the conceptualization of a Bitcoin adoption kick off event to what we know today as the Bitcoin Block Party Genesis Event. With time working against them, they tapped into their reserves of mental energy to turn the dream into reality.

While the event was powered by Oshi, it could not have been made possible without the flawless platform of Zaprite. Zaprite is a web app that allows anyone to create beautiful, customized invoices that can be paid with Bitcoin and Lightning. You can think of Zaprite as the Pleb built version of Square, as it offers an all in one e-commerce payment platform that enables business owners to easily integrate bitcoin layer 1 and 2 payments into their existing online store. Their role in bringing the Bitcoin Block Party to life was in facilitating the payments received by the various sponsors of the event.

The achievements of Zaprite and Oshi are a testament to the mental energy that is being concentrated and channeled into the status quo killer companies being built over at Pleb Lab. We are laser focused on providing the tools and resources necessary to building the bitcoin centered companies that will change the world.

Of course the efforts by the army of plebs in attendance cannot be understated. Had the army of plebs not showed up at Rainey St. on genesis day, ready to spend some sats, it would have been a non-event. Pleb Lab, and the 16 local businesses that participated in the block party extend their sincerest gratitude to about 500 bitcoiners that showed up and supported them. A total of 4.3 million Sats were rewarded that evening for a total of just over 400 unique purchases through the Oshi app. Since then an additional 3 more businesses on Rainey St not participating in the event has reached out looking to get onboarded into Oshi.  I would bet that none of them predicted the night to be such a success. The coordination by us at Pleb Lab and the Austin Bitcoin community was supercharged by each and every pleb that attended. It is the empowered individuals such as yourselves that that drive the spear into the heart of the fiat system. It is also the tremendous amount of support we had from all of the Bitcoin community in and around the world to make this happen. It's everyone and including the Plebs that passionately remind you that you don't change Bitcoin, Bitcoin changes you.