Last Sunday, August 25, we held our second annual Bitcoin Block Party in Vancouver, BC. Like any other Block Party, we want to bring the community together for a fun afternoon, get to know each other and welcome new members. Unlike a Bitcoin conference, the talks and workshops are not the center of the event: Experiencing Bitcoin is.

Every vendor at the event must accept Bitcoin over the Lightning Network, but guests don't have to use it for payments. And it turned out to be a massive success:

About 200 people came. Most stayed there for multiple hours, listened to at least a talk, had some food and drinks and bought something from one of the vendors. Each vendor gets to decide and set up their own point of sale, and every single vendor also accepts Bitcoin outside of the event. There's a good mix of point of sale solutions: IBEX, Blink, BTCPay, CoinOS, LNbits and Wallet of Satoshi are what I encountered.

All vendors reported they saw over 50% of their sales through Bitcoin. For one it was 100%, another 90%, for most about 2/3rds.

The bar saw over 50 lightning transactions totalling ~611k satoshi plus ~98k satoshi in tips. The bar tender remarked how their Lightning point of sale turned out to be more reliable that day than the Square terminal.

The Lightning demo desk handed out 50 "Laisee" envelopes containing 210 sat each, of which 19 were redeemed during the event. The rest are valid for another month, so if you got one, don't leave it lying around!

The candy dispenser (21 sat for some jelly beans) was used 45 times!

Five people got a tattoo at the event, all paid with sats!

There was a coffee shop, a coffee roaster, a dessert shop, a food truck, a shop selling 3D printed and hand painted figurines, Aqua wallet had a booth, an onchain ATM from Bitcoin Well, a Lightning ATM, a vineyard/cidery, a streetware shop, a barber shop, a tattoo artist, a book store and the Lightning demo desk!

Hope to see you next year! Maybe this kind of format catches on elsewhere, it sure is a lot of fun!