Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town: A Crossroads

Adopting Bitcoin Cape Town has reached a crossroads. For three years running, 2024, 2025 and 2026, we hosted three successful conferences, run entirely by unpaid volunteers, without massive sponsorship. Pulling that off three times in a row is, on its own, a significant milestone.

We also achieved something we set out to do before the first conference ever happened, which was to reach large civil society organisations and, through them, reach their members.

We didn't know at the start who those organisations would be, but they showed up. At the 2024 conference, John Endres of the Institute for Race Relations spoke, and so did Russell Lamberti, representing Sakeliga. In 2025, David Ansara of the Free Market Foundation spoke. These aren't fringe groups. They're among South Africa's largest and longest-standing advocates for free market policy, organisations that have fought an uphill battle for the kind of direction this country needs.

Our goal was to get them speaking to their audiences about Bitcoin, and that's happened. The Free Market Foundation has since published papers, videos, podcasts and interviews on Bitcoin adoption, with David Ansara speaking again at the 2026 conference. After the 2026 conference, the Institute for Race Relations followed suit, with John Endres publicly speaking and writing on Bitcoin adoption. Neither organisation was talking publicly about Bitcoin before 2024\. Both are now doing so.

I'm not claiming we caused that single handedly, but we definitely contributed to it, even if only in a small way. And even if it were pure coincidence, it was still the objective, and the objective was met.

Why We're at a Crossroads

In 2026, the Treasury and the South African Reserve Bank dropped regulatory bombshells that were, to put it mildly, insane. The direction they want to take is a walled garden: you can hold Bitcoin, you can use Bitcoin, but only through a regulated intermediary they control, one that can force you to sell at a price and a time of their choosing.

Calling that a watered down version of Bitcoin is an understatement. It isn't a watered down version of Bitcoin. It's entirely fake.

So we have to decide where this conference goes next, and the answer is right there in the name. Adopting Bitcoin.

What “Adopting Bitcoin” Really Means

Adopting Bitcoin implies exiting fiat. You are not adopting Bitcoin if you are not exiting fiat. If you claim to adopt Bitcoin while weaseling your way further into the fiat world, you are not adopting Bitcoin. It’s quite simple. But easy to lose sight of.

I have no interest left in conversations with people who say they’ll adopt Bitcoin, but the fiat world is what it is, we have to play by their rules, we have to work with them, and we have to accommodate them. This may all be true. But it invariably turns into an excuse to not exit fiat. That's not a position I'm willing to keep entertaining. If you don't get that, what are we doing here?

To be clear, this isn't about refusing to talk to anyone. It's about being unambiguous about the goal. Adopting Bitcoin means actively, continuously looking for every opportunity to move away from fiat, not settling into it more comfortably.

Why We Drifted, and Why We're Going Back

This isn't a rebrand. It's a re-alignment, a return to where we were always meant to go, and were slowly pulled away from by the realities of running a conference.

The companies that make real money are the ones that find ways to weave themselves back into the fiat system. It's brutally hard for a genuinely Bitcoin-only fiat-exiting company to turn a profit. The massively profitable players in this space are crypto casinos and pseudo-banks selling you the idea that gambling is good. That's just the world as it is.

Funding a conference like this is genuinely difficult. When you're the one staring at a venue invoice, and you know half your speaker list won't show up unless you cover their flights, you end up working with people you'd rather not. Not because you sold out, but because there was no other way to pay for it.

So yes, we drifted. Not on purpose, but pushed there by the economics of putting this thing on. But we never drifted so far that we've lost sight of where we're supposed to be.

Where We're Going

Bitcoin is a silent revolution. If you're not willing to be part of that, peacefully, but without compromise, then you're not adopting Bitcoin, because you're not exiting fiat.

Bitcoin is a paradigm shift. Paradigm shifts are not easy, gentle, comfortable, or profitable. They are, by definition, disruptive, unfamiliar and unsettling for almost everyone.

I don't know if this will work. I have no idea if we can even fund a conference like this going forward. If we take this stance, most of the sponsors who might have thrown us scraps will walk away. This becomes a genuinely grassroots conference, funded by ticket sales or not funded at all. The sponsors left willing to stand with will be few. And none of them are the biggest players in this space.

But I'd rather attempt this and fail, than keep drifting toward a place where the conference does not make it absolutely clear: Adopting Bitcoin is all about exiting fiat.