In a world where fiat trembles and the mempool never sleeps, one signal cuts through the noise.
Welcome to Pleb Chain Radio, Layer 2, your premium passage to the hidden rifts of Bitcoin
culture. Buckle up and feel the voltage.
Welcome gentle plebs to Pleb Chain Radio Layer 2 as we continue our India series.
Today, we swap gavels for hardware wallets with Shreyan Joshi, law school grad turned Bitshala events maestro and former GetBit evangelist.
will trace his leap from dusty courtrooms to orange-pilled classrooms,
decode the lightning-speed rise of Bitcoin across India,
and unpack the hurdles, hype, and hope of building on-chain in the world's largest democracy.
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Right, let's dive in.
Shreyan, welcome to Plep Chain Radio Layer 2.
Hey, Avi. Honored to be here.
And I hope the audio is not getting disturbed by the wind.
I'm in Pondicherry.
I'm super excited to speak to you.
Love it.
Pondicherry is certainly a lovely place.
And it's a pleasure to have you on the show.
So Shreyan, tell us a little bit about yourself.
I did mention that you have a law background.
But just talk a little bit about that, your journey, and how you got where you are today.
Right.
so yeah the long story short is i graduated from nlu patna in 2021 and law was something that also
happened to me naturally i was always interested in language like that was the reason i decided to
pursue law and interestingly i might have heard of bitcoin never took it seriously in college at all
like there is no conversations happening in indian law colleges about bitcoin so i might have come
across it in some debates but I never quite had any introduction to it and I have been an internet
nerd but it was actually after college that I discovered Antus Antonopoulos and I was working
at a law firm at the time, an IPR law firm. Interestingly IPR is interesting to me, it is
still interesting to me and I was working there for just six months when I discovered Andreas and
this was the hype of the 2021 cycle by the way, this is the peak of the bull market, Bitcoin was
ripping at 65 i discovered anderson danopolis out of nowhere just a random uvc and i ended up
just being curious that this guy clearly is onto something i can sense it in his voice i can see it
in his eyes and i wanted to understand what bitcoin is all about and the price was helping
everyone around me was talking about it and i was also into ethereum at the time because andreas
was a proponent of ethereum he wrote the mastering ethereum book and yeah the long story short is
that made me question my entire life decisions that why did the monetary system affect us
so deeply and why are not enough people talking about it.
And I ended up taking a break.
I approached my law firm to encourage them to look into smart contracts at the time I
was into Ethereum, as I said.
And yeah, they never took me seriously for better or worse.
Maybe it's good that I never took smart contracts seriously because I was lucky enough to meet
Bitcoiners and Bitcoin maximalists soon enough.
and I quitted my job. It took me less than like four months to realize that I don't want to be
doing what I'm doing and if it's not because of Bitcoin, I at least need to consider what Bitcoin
is and need to dig deeper into what it is because I know the price was all the rage on mainstream
media on Twitter as well but I had the tenacity to look deeper into things. I have been an internet
nerd so I was diving into the Antus Intranopolis rabbit hole for the longest time at least for the
first few months i was not on twitter that i was not active on twitter i was mostly just consuming
his content and uh reading his uh like some some of his content on his website yeah that's the long
story short i made a quick transition this is actually a leap of faith i took and i couldn't
be more faithful yeah love it and andreas of course was an invaluable teacher to so many of us
uh the way he explains things the clarity with which he speaks it's it is unfortunate uh about
his Ethereum affinity, but it is what it is.
He's still grateful for his teachings.
So Shreyan, you mentioned smart contracts, and you see this happening, especially for
folks in law or in related fields, in language as well, right?
When they first get into this world, there is an allure of smart contracts.
Wouldn't it be great if there was a way in which contracts, real-world contracts that govern real-world assets and rights and obligations of individuals engaged in commerce, if those could somehow incontrovertibly be represented on a database or, in this case, a blockchain?
but what was it about it that you realized with smart contracts that you know what this
doesn't work and i'd rather just focus on bitcoin or did you ever have that realization
with smart contracts right that's a good question yeah that's a good question like i have not uh
like nobles asked me this this uh this way i think how i will put it is that uh as a lawyer i have
I've been studying contracts my entire training at the law school.
So I was naturally curious to understand how the blockchain works,
how these internet technologies work,
and how we can use that to increase efficiency,
optimize contracts, and reduce corruption.
That was the promise of Bitcoin through the talks of Andreas.
And just to touch upon that, I know it's unfortunate,
but it's also just one of those Bitcoin things, right?
That you have to slay your heroes.
You have to do your own work.
you can't rely on some hero to teach you about bitcoin you have to put in the hours to understand
and integrate the learnings of bitcoin and the mantra is don't trust verify right so from that
to actually start running a node for me and to realize how powerful this technology is that i
don't need to rely when i'm using bitcoin on any third party whatsoever and i can verify transactions
i can check my own uh i can run my own node i can check the blockchain from the genesis block
so for that experience i think i'm also grateful that i ended up diving deeper because smart
contracts are not working out but i think smart contracts is a loosely used term right because
even bitcoin has contracts you can call spending conditions of bitcoin transactions a simple smart
contract right because these spending conditions are enforced by the blockchain the bitcoin
blockchain which is a decentralized emergent consensus network right which every 10 minutes
reinforces what has been recorded in the ledger so it is a smart contract it's too simple for
ethereum folks i guess i don't understand they have been pushing all sorts of narratives for the
last four years and i've started following that for at least for the last two to three years i've
i've like been uh enough vigilant about what their narratives are and i don't see any
utility or significant movement there and bitcoin has all kinds of innovations happening right with
R protocol with CTV with even lightning and taproot like there's all sorts of expressibility
that's possible on bitcoin what my current focus is to see bitcoin being used as payments and that
itself is something that needs to be addressed right because currently there's not enough vendors
at least in India and merchants and even individuals who are using bitcoin day to day
and that's a problem that I don't think currently requires smart contracts it just requires more
plebs it requires more businesses to start accepting bitcoin and like i am not a developer
but i know having been closely working with developers for the last one and a half years
that there are ample room of opportunities for bitcoin to express more complex contracts and
enable more spending conditions like lending protocols the entire financial system could be
recreated on top of bitcoin and yeah that's exciting that's exciting because i think eventually
all the like this is the base layer financial uh innovation for the world right this is not
just money like how the simple metaphor is that bitcoin is internet of money not money on the
money of the internet so i think eventually we'll see all sorts of applications we're already seeing
that with stalker.io uh with lightning ventures they're building all sorts of applications on
layer twos um yes it's a it's a it's a good practice i think it's a pre-market weeding
everything out so i'm not against uh like people spinning up their own projects i'm against people
being disingenuous and that's what i sensed with uh especially with ethereum solana and all the
currencies that i had to become a toxic bitcoin maximalist that i'm not the kind of person if you
meet me in person i'm probably the sweetest person in the room but i had to be very vigilant and be
very opinionated about who i engage with how i talk about bitcoin because uh yeah there's another
There's always a scammer near your shoulder.
No, for sure.
I want to stay on the topic of smart contracts for a bit, Shreyan,
because you are a lawyer and this topic always fascinates me.
So just for some context, I do have a shitcoin and blockchain past.
In fact, I entered the space in 2016 into that early stage ICO mania
that was beginning around then.
And I worked at an enterprise blockchain company between 2016 and early 2017 and 2019.
And that company had developed its own smart contracting language that was a Turing and complete language.
It basically had some really nice computational abstractions for rights and obligations.
those were first-class citizens in that language.
It was a domain-specific language built on Haskell,
built custom for these types of contracts So as a computer science experiment it was very interesting to me to think how you reduce legal language
into computational abstractions.
Having said that,
one of the slow realizations
I had over the course of this,
and I wish this had been a faster realization
and I'd become a toxic becker
in 2017 itself, but I did not,
was
that when you're dealing
with real world conditions, especially, you know, even back then, tokenization was all the rage,
right? People were trying to tokenize real estate, they were trying to tokenize stocks. I know it's
had a resurgence, again, now the real world assets, they were trying to tokenize supply
chain stuff and healthcare claims, so on and so forth. I think the one issue I have, and I'd love
to hear your opinion on this is, if you're dealing with real world assets, and you're representing
it on a blockchain. Let's say it's even Bitcoin somehow, you figure out a way of representing
these assets. I know people are doing it on liquid, maybe there's some L2 way of doing it.
But isn't the issue that at the end of the day, if you're dealing with a real world contract
involving physical meatspace things, those ultimately fall under the jurisdiction of whatever
the law of the land is.
So, yes, it's recorded on the blockchain.
Yes, there's code that's executing,
that's moving assets around.
But those can always be disputed.
Like a housing title does not exist on the blockchain.
It exists in the real world, right?
And that housing title is governed by the law
of whichever land that house is in,
that piece of property is in.
So it doesn't matter whether you represent it
on the blockchain or not.
If it goes into litigation, you have to abide by whatever happens there.
So, you know, that was a fundamental disconnect.
And I'd love to hear your take on that.
Right. Yeah, I think you answered it for the most part,
that anything which is physical, which exists in the meat space outside of the blockchain,
will ultimately require an enforcement authority, right?
Because when there is a dispute for property rights over a certain real estate,
whether that's a legal contract or deed or the physical object itself which is the land or
the commercial property there eventually there will be eventually some authority which will
need to enforce the ownership rights of the individual who has either been compromised of
their property or has the claim to own that property and needs to prove that ownership
right so for bitcoin it it is easy to solve right because bitcoin it exists as a digital asset it
It exists as a record of transactions.
For real world applications, I know that there are multiple protocols.
Like you mentioned, Liquid, there's Arc, there's Taro assets using capital protocol.
So there is a lot of experimentation.
And like I said before, I'm not against experimentation or even spinning up your own networks.
And I think this is where Bitshala comes in, where we are able to break down components of how these technologies work.
so that anybody who is genuinely curious to solve these problems can actually go down that rabbit
hole of understanding how bitcoin works how the blockchain works how hashing algorithms work
how digital signatures work how you enforce consensus in decentralized networks what is the
byzantine general problem so when you understand these concepts you you realize that there is
ultimately requirement of a physical authority and it enters legal territory right and that's a
separate separate domain of expertise and there are enough reasons to work on that like i think
uk only last year recognized bitcoin as a digital property and they have started
using it for alimony for collateral and for all sorts of financial instruments and i think same
goes for us i think us was was of course the leader in the space so in india we're eventually
going to see that we already have made some progress bitcoin is currently recognized as a
virtual digital asset whether that's a good thing or not coming from an austrian economics lens
is a separate question i think it's inevitable that we will have legal frameworks
with respect to bitcoin and the work that all bitcoiners need to do is to engage with
policymakers is to engage with your local representatives is to speak to your lawyers
speak to your chartered accountants and help more people enter into the conversation bitcoin is
ultimately a new paradigm in finance but it requires humans it requires humans from all
domains of expertise or at least that's my bias that's where i come from that's where my work has
been for the last few years and yeah i think to just to come back to the original question of
how i see smart contracts evolving i think bitcoin will eventually see legal contracts of
all kinds i think the first obvious one is inheritance and time locks i think more and more
serious investors plebs bitcoiners hodlers will start to realize that when you have a significant
amount of wealth single signature becomes a little too risky if someone still wants to do
that more power to them i have nobody to tell them to how how to custody their wealth but what
i'm realizing just from market research and experience is that more and more people want
to use multi-sig and a lot of them don't want to do multi-sig by themselves they want a service
like Unchained or Thea or Keeper who are providing these services and there are consultants like
BTC Sessions like Bitcoin Search in India who are experts in handling custody solutions which
sometimes could be too much to ask for someone who has a lot of wealth might or might not have
the time to study Bitcoin so I think there are more than enough reasons for legal contracts to
emerge and these will be escrow services these will be inheritance planning services and this
is already a hustling bustling market right this is something we've already seen in us i'm sure
there are services like this in europe and there's a new service in india which literally just started
a few months ago at bitflex in march called bitcoin series this is where we launched it
it's being headed by uh sara who's the co-founder of bichala and there's a lot of finance professionals
in our network who have started engaging across domains like ca cfas tax consultants who have
realized the opportunity and the potential of bitcoin to transform india and i think it's
inevitable that india will have legal contracts with regards to bitcoin and that is the territory
that i think requires conversations i i i might receive a lot of backlash for saying this but i
think inevitably governments are entering bitcoin and the better approach to deal with that situation
is to engage with them not to not to shy away from that conversation
yeah agreed and it does and then you know on the topic of contracts just to close that out
it makes complete sense if you're talking about a digitally native asset contained within the system
in which the contracts are being generated so in the case of bitcoin inheritance bitcoin custody
time locks what have you makes complete sense right it's it's fully self-consistent i think
where the major question marks and red flags
is if you are representing an external,
an exogenous asset or property
through a token on a ledger,
on a digital ledger.
And that, yes, maybe there are happy parts scenarios
in which it works,
but there are several unhappy parts
where there will be a lot of pain there.
So, Sreyan, you'd mentioned Bitshala.
And for our non-Indian listeners,
of which there are plenty,
can you explain what Bitshala is because it seems to be the focal point in India sort of
the center of gravity for everything Bitcoin related yes yep yep yep I think you took that
out of my mouth I was about to say something on the lines of how Bitshala has become a community
of Bitcoiners coming together and providing education across domains so Bitshala is an
organization focused on technical education. We onboard builders and developers to work into
Bitcoin force. And we have a very targeted focus towards India and Southeast Asia. We have students
and fellows from across the world. We encourage everyone to join the conversation, participate in
our cohorts, contribute to projects that a lot of our maintainers are already working on.
Our focus has been India because it's mostly an organic collection of Bitcoiners who have come
together and realize that there is a need for india to contribute to bitcoin force because the
regulation space will take its own sweet time right there are enough companies in india who
are solving that problem currently thankfully touch wood india has not faced severe backlash
from the state uh this happened in 2018 and thankfully like some people from our network who
are uh who are the pioneers of shaping those regulations to the benefit of bitcoin uh they
have been closely working with bichala as well and so bichala is a grassroots initiative you can
check out check us out at bichal.org our main action is on discord this is where we hang out
and it has more than i don't know the exact numbers but more than i think uh around about
500 000 people who are on the discord server and we are organizing educational activities across
domains we do weekly club sessions so on mondays we have latest in off-tech session which is headed
by bala and this is where we cover the optic newsletter this is a weekly newsletter which is
released by bitcoin mailing list and delving bitcoin and this covers all the technical
advancements that have happened in the last one week and bala is an expert who is able to help us
understand those topics in depth and he covers that every monday so whoever is a developer or someone
like me who's understanding bitcoin conceptually and wants to understand what are the new developments
happening you can join in interact it's a very fun interactive session uh you don't have to be an
expert you just have to ask the right questions and just listen in i think the power of the lurker
is something i talk about a lot they don't underestimate the lurker the lurker is very
powerful so if you're very new you're shy please just feel free to drop in and just listen into the
conversation of the questions you can participate through chat as well so we organize weekly sessions
monday is the biggest highlight but we also have other sessions like tuesday trad fan bitcoin this
is where Diganth and Saurav come in. So if you're not technical at all, if you're not interested in
what's happening in Bitcoin FOSS and you're interested in Bitcoin financials, you can join
Tuesday sessions. Diganth is the hero there. Diganth has been leading this for the past few months
and he has been a superhero when it comes to that. He's going to Lugano in September with Plan B. He
was one of the top five students in their business course. And on Wednesday, I'm leading Wednesday
reading club this is where i i think i i the way i put it is that i communicate this indian bitcoin
story uh like my focus on india i look at myself as someone who can make and make a deep tent for
bitcoin ecosystem in india specifically so i focus on collecting resources across domain from bitcoin
and contextualizing it for india as much as i can of course bitcoin is a global network it does not
discriminate on basis of your uh workplace so that not the criteria and yeah thursday we have PR review club if you a serious developer and you want to understand how Bitcoin core contributions work Fridays are the cohorts So cohorts are separate from clubs
So Monday to Thursday, we have clubs.
On Fridays, we have what we call cohorts.
These are more structured learning material.
So whoever is serious about working in Bitcoin
as a professional can join one of the four cohorts.
And these are like we take you from zero to hero.
So mastering Bitcoin, that's like the Bible of Bitcoin.
If you're new to Bitcoin,
Anderson Ternopoulos,
Mastering Bitcoin
or Grokking Bitcoin
by Kale Ross and Brom,
this is where you start.
And you can go through the book
at your own time.
Every week,
we collect together
and discuss questions
and help each other out
answer questions.
There is no examination.
This is not a test.
This is supposed to help you out
wherever you are
on your learning course.
And we have more advanced courses
like Learning Bitcoin
from the Command Lines,
Bitcoin Protocol Development
and Programming Bitcoin,
which is starting 8th August.
So if any of the listeners
are aspiring builders
or developers in Bitcoin,
I would highly encourage
to sign up for the cohort on 8th August.
You'll get to interact with the rest of the BitChala team.
You'll get to interact with all the TAs.
TAs are teaching assistants who have been contributing
to multiple Bitcoin projects,
and they are there for assisting your learning.
So this is the overall summary of BitChala.
Other than that, we are also doing physical events.
This started only last year.
We started doing a lot of events in Bangalore with BitDevs,
and that's because Bangalore has a lot of Bitcoin developers
who are already living there.
We've also done events in Chennai, in Goa,
That's where the most gravity is.
And we have done some one-off events in Delhi, some in Mumbai as well because of Satoshi Circle, which is a community Amol is leading in Mumbai.
And we're looking to scale.
This year is going to be about doing much more, doing outreach programs, doing courses with colleges.
We're already speaking to a few colleges in Chennai, a few colleges in Goa, some in Bangalore as well.
And very early days, but we're designing the structure for college students because I know for college students, it could be too intimidating to enter Bitcoin.
Bitcoin requires so many levels of exposure and thinking, right?
So it's not always easy for a 19-year-old, 20-year-old to understand Bitcoin.
But that's what we have taken on.
We want to reduce the entry to barrier.
And if somebody is already keen, they can drop onto our Discord and get on straight away.
Is there one physical hub for Bitshala or is it spread across the country?
Yes, yes, that's the natural follow-up question. This is an update from Bitspace. So we started
Bitspace last year in, I think it's been one year now. I think it started last year in June.
Yeah, I think in June. So Bitspace is where the mecca of Indian Bitcoin ecosystem is. Bitspace
is a co-working space based in HSR. HSR is one of the hustling centers of startups in India,
in bangalore at the heart of the city and that's where we've been doing our meetups our bit devs
and our impromptu sessions as well whenever a bitcoiners are dropping down in bangalore who
is part of the networks we have a have a meeting with them we go play badminton with them we
organize lunches and dinners with them and we've been doing bit devs religiously every month so
someone who is a technical speaker we ensure that the rest of the bangalore gets to know about it
and whoever is new to Bitcoin, we create an event where they can engage with material on a beginner level.
And if you are someone who is serious about development, we cover hands-on workshop with the expert as well.
So Bitspace, that's the place where I know Bitcoiners can get too lonely in working in their own domains at their homes.
That's why we highly encourage people to go to meetups and go to events.
And that's where I come in. This is the new challenge that I have taken on with events.
and yeah BitSpace is the place where we collect in Bangalore
but we've all also started doing events in Chennai
Bala is leading that in Goa we have a lot of BitCoiners in Goa
who are closely working with BitChalla
Flabs to get a strong Bitcoin Beach and with BitFlebs
I think it's the culmination of all of that that
all the BitCoiners of India collected one place
and yeah celebrated
And how is BitChalla funded?
Is it through donations or do you have a membership fee?
right so we we are operating on uh what are called grants and these grants come from funding
agencies who are donating bitcoin force education and development so these organized organizations
are hrf open sats btrust spiral brink so chain code labs is uh an education partner they were
the ones who started doing these study material cohorts and they were the ones we were inspired by
They started doing this, I think, in 2019 or 2020.
And they were doing this as a residency program in New York, I believe.
And after COVID hit, they started doing online sessions.
And that's where Raj and Saurabh were part of some of their activities.
And they started doing their own activities in 2022 in India.
So Chaincode Lab was actually the first material that we started to cover as cohort material.
And over time, we have created our own exercises, our own methods of teaching and engagement.
and yeah we are relying currently on open source grants there is no way to monetize open source
but i think the simplest way i can put it is that open source software is poetry you can't monetize
poetry you write poetry for the love of it and i might not be the right person to understand the
nuances of open source but what i know is that there is freedom to use that software there is
freedom to fork that software there is mit creative commons license so you can't close source it
That's the ingenuity and significance of open source.
And we ensure that our practices with education, with our cohorts are free and open source.
So we never charge for any of our cohorts or activities.
We only ask for people to be sincere in their efforts and be genuine in approaching us.
And we help people find full-time opportunities once they are serious and they have shown their proof of work.
So this is, again, where HRF OpenSAT's Petrust entered.
So I can perhaps share some experiences from our fellows.
But that's the long story short.
This is how Bitshala is funding its operations.
It's interesting that it's the usual list of suspects, OpenSAT, Spiral, HRF, and others.
and if you sort of trace it back,
it all always goes back to two or three individuals,
Jack Dorsey being one of them
and their couple of others, right?
Benefactors like that.
Is India at a point yet
where there can be an equivalent of Jack Dorsey,
meaning the funding would come
from an Indian philanthropic organization?
Right.
Yeah, that's a pressing question
that we have been thinking about currently the answer is no like unfortunately we don't have
enough leverage in india to be able to incentivize people to donate into bitcoin force that's an
active research area problem i'm sure someone will be able to figure it out currently i don't think
we have made any progress in that direction honestly that's also not the blocker i think
bitcoin force is an exemplification of bitcoin the economy that bitcoin is a global marketplace
If you are talented, if you are serious about your work, we don't ask for your name.
We don't ask for your nationality.
When we say we are focused on Indian builders, it does not mean that we discriminate anyone
because we end up meeting most of our builders.
That's what the experience has been.
But we don't care about that, right?
You can just be a Discord bot.
You can just contribute being a bot.
We never have to ask your name.
And currently, we have not faced challenges with resources.
anybody who has been seriously working on bitcoin with our cohorts has been able to find opportunities
but yeah this is a pressing problem we eventually want to have indian companies indian businesses
indian toddlers give back to the ecosystem i think it's a matter of time bitcoin is still 17 years
old i think five years from now 10 years from now we will see a lot of indian companies a lot of
indian entrepreneurs being able to build businesses in india when the regulations start to open up as
well there's a lot of activity in business that will require open source software open source
software is not just like charity right it's serious engineering so it requires a group of
dedicated businesses to also understand the significance of maintaining their software
for their own business requirements it's not just that they are giving back to the bitcoin ecosystem
as a token of appreciation it's required for businesses to be able to use that software
customize according to their own needs and you need a group of developers who understand that
domain so eventually i think it's going to be the case but like you rightly like you rightly put
It's the usual suspects that are currently supporting the ecosystem worldwide.
Not just with Shala.
This is true for, at least to the best of my awareness,
all the education initiatives across the world.
Across the world, most of Nostra development as well,
a lot of Bitcoin core funding.
Yeah, we need a little bit.
It'll be nice if there was more diversification from that core group of funders.
so Shreyan this is the second episode of our India series
Plep Chain Radio Layer 2 India series
in the first episode I spoke with Basanta Goswami and Paper Psych
and they had mentioned a conference in India in November of 2022
which to them was a seminal moment in Bitcoin adoption in India
was that when
well first of all are you familiar with
which conference they were mentioning the one in
November 22
2022 and was that when
Bitshala and all of these other efforts
took off
yes yes
yes yes and yes like that's where
I met Basinthian PaperSec as well
that's where I met Raj as well
that's where I met Saurav as well that's where I met Abhilash
and most
of the Bitcoiners from Indian ecosystem
that's where the momentum started
like huge shout out to Abhilash, B4I, Anand.
They put on the conference in 2022.
I think this was actually bear market.
If I remember correctly, I might be wrong,
but this was when Bitcoin was, I think, 30K, 35K.
The price had like dropped significantly.
I was...
Shreyan, it was the absolute bottom of the bear.
That was when the Sandbankman-free stuff was going down.
Oh shit, right.
Yes.
Oh my God.
I actually have a story. I actually have a story related to this.
But sorry, go ahead. Sorry for interrupting you.
No, no. And I'd mentioned this when Basanta and PaperSec mentioned on the episode that it's remarkable that that happened at the absolute bottom of the bear market.
I mean, interestingly enough, I was at Pacific Bitcoin in L.A. when that was happening.
And we had the biggest party because it was, you know, all the trash was getting washed out.
But sorry, carry on.
Right. Right, right, right.
Yeah beautiful I actually remember now I tell you a quick story This was the first conference in India to the best of my knowledge because before that if there were any conferences they were mostly just my shitcoiners
and I did not even bother to come join them.
So this conference was like a huge shout-out to Abhilash, Anand, and the B4i team.
This conference was probably the first conference
where all the builders, developers of India gathered at one place.
And from across the country, I think I remember meeting people from Assam,
like Basantai from Assam, people from Kolkata, Rajasthan, Haryana, Chennai, where not, right?
And to go through that experience, and I think I was sharing this experience of after the conference ended,
I was so overwhelmed just spending time with Bitcoiners.
I decided to just take some time off, like we just go to Ajkras and meet people in the normie world.
And the Sam Bank Freedman news came in, like that's where I lost my mind that how is this happening?
how is this thing happening literally just one day after the conference ended
and Bitcoin is crashing left and right.
Normies are anyway criticizing us for doing what we're doing
and it does not help that a major exchange is crashing
right at the time that India is organizing its first Bitcoin conference.
But yeah, beautiful experience that has literally changed my life.
I've been lucky enough to meet people that I'm currently working with,
that I currently call my friends,
that are building their own projects
and spreading Bitcoin across the nation.
Did BitShala come out of that conference
or did it exist before then?
No, BitShala did not exist before that.
BitShala did come out of that conference.
So it was Raj and Saurabh.
Raj and Saurabh knew each other from before
and Raj was heading the tech stage at the conference.
And this was most of the speakers
was Summer of Bitcoin graduates.
Summer of Bitcoin was a project that I already started, I think, one year before.
And it's a beautiful project.
Go check it out, summerofbitcoin.org.
It's a project for Indian college students, global college students, my bad.
This is a program for college students looking to intern in Bitcoin Force projects.
And that's where a lot of Indian builders, developers have come in.
And the conference itself was a gathering of all the developers for a separate tech stage.
we had like a two-day session with a lot of talks,
a lot of demos, a lot of walkthroughs.
And that's where Raj and Richala spawned up.
Like that's where we started an online service on Zulip first.
We were not on Discord.
We started with Zulip and we started doing cohorts,
I think in 2023, I think early to mid 2023,
I think February, March, like after conference,
maybe three months after conference,
two to three months after the conference.
And we eventually moved to Discord
because that's where most of the Bitcoin education communities are.
And since then, Bitshala has been proactive in finding more BitConners in India and worldwide and doing more education activities.
Are there any other hubs in India other than Bitshala?
So currently, there are no physical hubs.
There is John Gatti, which is being led by Anurag and Pallabh.
And they are doing grassroots education in Assam.
and they have a place in Tita Bur where they organize monthly meetups
and they also have a full node being run and maintained by Anurag and Palla
and that's where they are conducting a lot of their classes, a lot of their educational activities.
Plebs Together Strong is another one.
Aaron has been doing classes and education with school students,
with educating local communities as well, like sports persons, bars, cafes, barbers
and spreading Bitcoin in Goa through his initiative.
In terms of physical basis, BitSpace is the only one.
We have plans to do more events across other cities
with Bitcoiners renting out spaces and doing more classes.
But BitSpace currently is the only place where Bitcoiners gather.
That's what I call the Maccalf Indian Bitcoin ecosystem right now.
Got it.
You know, in India, there seems to be, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Shreyan, there seems to be a lot of shitcoinery.
A lot of the shitcoin founders are Indian.
I mean, the one example that comes to mind immediately is Polygon or Matic or Matic or whatever they call themselves now.
They've probably rebranded the Ethereum layer too.
But there are others as well.
So is this true that there is far more crypto and shitcoin activity in India than there's Bitcoin activity?
Right. I think it's true worldwide.
I am not sure on the exact numbers, but it is definitely true in India.
It's a very concerning thing that a lot of our attention as a country is going towards that.
Because a lot of developers I meet across events are working in Solana, Avalon, whatnot.
not like some some shitcoin project spins up every every week and like i intentionally call
them shitcoin like i'm pro experimentation i have nothing against any of them personally this is not
a personal judgment this is just so that people understand the significance of what bitcoin is
solving and so that more people can put in their energies where they are actually gaining value
even for themselves like most of the projects that i've seen people work on after three years
they anyway start to work on bitcoin like this is countless experiences of people that i've spoken
to who work on these ecosystems they realize that there's nothing happening there they make some
money this is where they get the early college students it's very easy to like find a college
student who is 19 year old pay him money for just writing solidity which is nothing but just
uh like basic python and javascript which nobody really even needs to learn they are mostly just
marketing-based exercises.
And it's unfortunate that there's a lot of talent
being going in that direction.
But I think the only way that Bitcoin has solved problems
is by solving problems.
We have solved that problem with Chala.
We're solving that problem with grassroots education,
with putting out content.
Like Indian voices,
I think this is where Indian voices become incredibly important.
Because for me, it was the Bitschala team, right?
For me, it was Andres Intranopoulos,
Durjiji, and then the Bitschala team.
That took me to make Bitcoin real for me.
Like make it more like sweaty.
It's like I want Bitcoin to be real.
I want Bitcoin to feel like I am part of something bigger.
It's not just an internet online phenomena, right?
So for that to happen, I needed Indian voices.
I was very lucky to find the Bichara team.
I'm lucky to speak to you right now.
I'm lucky to speak to Santosh, Anuja.
And this is where in the importance of voices from diverse backgrounds,
diverse cultures, diverse walks of life become so significant.
People expressing Bitcoin in their vernacular languages,
people expressing bitcoin as art i think it's incredibly important that people understand that
bitcoin does not take itself too seriously because we have enough serious suits talking about money
who are scamming you left and right we don't have enough people who can express
beauty and bitcoin enables you to do that because bitcoin is a commissionless network
if you're able to educate people using beautiful artifacts content music you name it you are able
to spread awareness of the most important technology that we're living through currently right so
So, yeah, I think just to like come down to the original question again,
India has a lot of projects which are solving for problems which do not exist.
And whether that's for bad or good, I don't know.
Like some people argue that they are doing the top of the funnel work
because it's difficult to incentivize Bitcoin education, right?
Because Bitcoin is scarce.
Like anybody who is going out of their way to educate another human being
is doing that because they find Bitcoin important and interesting
and worthy of talking about.
So crypto scams come and go every two to four years.
We have new projects coming up.
But Bitcoin fundamentals protocol remains solid and resilient.
And it's only growing over time.
The volatility is going down.
More and more builders, entrepreneurs, policymakers are entering the space.
And I'm already noticing this, by the way.
Only in the last four months, I have noticed that more and more students are approaching us organically.
More colleges have started approaching us out of their own accord.
we did not even reach out to a lot of the programs and because they're realizing that we've been doing
this for the last two and a half years now and uh like proof of work speaks for itself right we
don't need to market when something is working and bitcoin is working bitcoin the protocol remains
true regardless of whether there's a new crypto project coming in and that's where our strength
is our strength is in fundamentals in educating people on how bitcoin works and over time the
right allies founders and nothing against polygon matic but like i said earlier ethereum spins up
its own marketing uh campaigns every couple of years and they fade away and i think the free
market is now uh like crushing them it's uh it's becoming more and more apparent that they're not
solving any problem and yeah bitcoin has enough interesting projects that nobody needs to
uh go outside that domain but yeah i won't like i i aspire to spend as much time in bitcoin and not
to think about other projects.
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