The Bitcoin scene in Switzerland has been strong since Mike Hearn, former Bitcoin developer and author of Bitcoinj, organized the first local Bitcoin meetup in February 2011. Over the years we have grown from a handful of people to over 5’500 Bitcoiners, making Switzerland home to one of the biggest Bitcoin communities in the world.
To foster this development the not-for-profit Bitcoin Association Switzerland (BAS) was founded. Since 2013 we serve as a vehicle to talk to regulators and organize educational and networking events, making us one of the oldest Bitcoin Associations of the world.
On May 16th 2018, the Bitcoin Association Switzerland held it’s 6th Annual General Assembly. At the general assembly the most engaged members of our community come together to discuss the past years and future activities.
The last year has been one of the most successful years for Bitcoin and the BAS. The number of Bitcoin Meetup Switzerland members grew more than 100% (2’000 to 5’500), the number of corporate members increased from 9 to 65 and the number of events we organize from 30 to 45. While we had constructive talks with Swiss regulators the Bitcoin price rose to 8’263 CHF ;)
The entire association and our endeavours is run on a volunteer-basis, by unpaid individuals driven by the idea behind Bitcoin.
The Swiss have a thing for voting, you say?
Giacomo Zucco Joins the Board
Myself and the entire BAS board would like to thank our former board member Mathieu Buffenoir Gonzalez for his work over the last years. Serving on the board since 2014, Mathieu represented the non-German speaking part of Switzerland and helped building up the Geneva Bitcoin community.
I’m very happy to welcome Giacomo Zucco on the BAS board. Giacomo is a perfect fit for the board of the Bitcoin Association because of his long-time involvement in the Bitcoin community and achievements in educating corporates as much as individuals. In 2015 Giacomo co-founded AssoB.it, the main Bitcoin Association in Italy as well as the Milan Bitcoin Meetup. In 2016 he founded the non-profit initiative BHB Network, aimed to help the development of Bitcoin open standards and R&D, as well as the consultancy company Blockchainlab Switzerland. He hosted the third Scaling Bitcoin Conference and participated as speaker in many major conference since 2017. With Giacomo's help we plan to grow the number of Bitcoiners in Ticino as well as strengthen our collaboration with Milan and other international Bitcoin communities.
Giacomo Talking to our Members
The General Assembly approved all board members. The new board for 2018 consist of Isabella Brom, Roger Darin, Luzius Meisser, Bernhard Müller Hug, Giacomo Zucco and myself. We are thankful for the trust our members have in the board and I’d like thank my colleagues for their work and their commitment to promote Bitcoin in Switzerland for another year.
If you’d like to support our activities please consider becoming a member https://www.bitcoinassociation.ch/individual-membership.
I’m looking forward to a successful 2018/2019 for Bitcoin and the Bitcoin Association Switzerland.
To the moon.
Lucas
President