Crypto-currency and Blockchain Policy workshop

Hello everyone,

Got a very interesting meetup lined up. Robert O’Brien (@robertobrien (https://twitter.com/robertobrien)) who has previously presented (https://www.meetup.com/Auckland-Bitcoin-Meetup/events/121408692/) at the Auckland meetup, is (aside from many things) a software engineer who has worked on large scale distributed financial market systems and one of New Zealand's leading authorities on Blockchain technology.

He is facilitating workshops to canvas views on policy and regulation as it relates to financial technology, specifically Bitcoin and Blockchain tech. The focus is to kickstart the conversation and get people thinking about the implications and use of the technology from a policy perspective.

This is not to be missed!

The event is organised with the help Internet Party (https://internet.org.nz/) but is politically neutral and Robert O'Brien is volunteering his time for free.

Doors open at 3:30pm and the event will start at 4pm sharp.

Please read below for more details:

Workshop Summary

Crypto-currency and Blockchain Policy workshop is an ‘open to all’ community meeting. The motivation for the workshop is to kickstart the conversation about the implications and use of Bitcoin technology from a policy perspective. It is an opportunity for your ideas, experience and concerns to be heard. The community workshops are being sponsored by the Internet Party (https://internet.org.nz/) to help develop policy however they are not a political pitch and will be politically neutral.

Workshop Description

Crypto-currency and Blockchain Policy workshops are a series ‘open to all’ community meetings in Auckland, Christchurch and Wellington the last week of August 2014. Due in-part to the open, distributed and digitally-native implementations, Bitcoin and related technologies are seen as contributing to significant technical advances in financial systems - in use, access and efficiency. While advancing quickly the technical ecosystem is still embryonic yet the implications are significant if the promise can be realised. The motivation for these workshops is to kickstart the conversation and get people thinking about the implications and use of the technology from a policy perspective.

The workshops will be low-key community meet-ups that run for a duration of two hours each. The open-spaces format will proceed with a short introduction, entire group discussion to solicit themes, leading into two rounds of smaller focused group work. All collective discussion will be summarised and distributed to all participants. The results will feed into policy development work and how the technology can be used to enable policy outcomes.

An opportunity to be heard

The discussions will be broader than Bitcoin as money or as payment per-se. These workshops are an opportunity for your ideas, experience and concerns to be heard. They are not educational sessions, if you’re expecting to learn about ‘what Bitcoin or the Blockchain’ are this will be the wrong venue.

Our aim for the workshops are about soliciting ideas and concerns for policy development in financial technology. An area partly enabled by mobile phones and the internet but specifically Bitcoin and derivative systems. You should attend if you’ve had experience with Bitcoin businesses; trouble integrating with or using existing banking systems; interested in seeing alternative payment systems develop; had involvement with community or corporate barter and can shed light on implementation; dealt with existing banking, tax, or other social policy issues; have thoughts on how the technology can be used to advance social policy outcomes; how business and government can use the technology to be efficient. You should attend if you’d like to see New Zealand develop an intelligent and informed response in this emergent area.

Sponsorship Disclosure

The community workshops are sponsored by the Internet Party however they are not a political pitch and will remain politically neutral.