To Toronto
A Recap of My Time at Consensus 2025
First, I want to say that I love the city of Toronto. It was my first time in Canada, but it will not be my last; my family and I are already planning a trip for this year. Second, I was invited by the Stacks Foundation to help educate people about the power of building on Bitcoin at Consensus 2025, one of the world’s biggest conferences around crypto, which took place in Toronto. The entire trip was sponsored by the Stacks Foundation, and I wanted to take the time to say thank you to Shannon and everyone who made this possible. I documented my journey and wanted to make sure that people were able to see it in real time with daily video posts on my Instagram and TikTok, which you can click to watch via your preferred social media platform. Third, Consensus 2025 was packed, and it’s a great time to be in the industry. If you’ve never been to a crypto conference, it’s a whirlwind full of meetings, deals being done, networking, sessions with big as well as emerging figures within the industry, parties, a slew of side events, private dinners, activations, hackathons, pitching, investing, sourcing, and people trying to sell you on why you need them. Overwhelming? At times. But if you go with a set mission in mind, it helps. My mission was education and content creation; anything that deviated from that was not in my scope or peripheral.
So, why Stacks? I am a “Bitcoin-preferred” person. I realized there is a group of people who identify as Bitcoin Maxis, meaning they do nothing but focus on Bitcoin. A Bitcoin-preferred person understands that it’s a multi-chain world where tons of blockchains exist and can serve a good purpose for niche utility, but before we look outside of Bitcoin, let’s explore Bitcoin and Bitcoin layers, such as Stacks. Bitcoin is known as the most decentralized and most secure blockchain on the planet. True. But is it scalable? False. Can you program complex, expressive logic on Bitcoin? DLCs, Bitscript, and Miniscript are limited in how complex they can get. Stacks is a Bitcoin L2, as in Layer 2 that allows people to interact with Bitcoin, the L1, also known as Layer 1, in very expressive ways through smart contracts. You can build nearly anything on Stacks, and it will always have a unique relationship with Bitcoin. Rare.
Most people are unaware that you can build on Bitcoin on the L1 and that Bitcoin even has L2s! This is where I come in. If something can help Bitcoin without changing Bitcoin, I’m interested in it. I’ve been in Bitcoin for 10 years and in Stacks for nearly 5. Due to this, I am knowledgeable regarding the ecosystem, which made the Toronto trip possible. I encourage you all to learn more about Bitcoin and Bitcoin L2s. You can do deep dives via a site called Bitcoin Layers. Lastly, in all my time ripping and running the streets of Toronto, I did not run into Drake. Perhaps I can get Drake to slide me Bitcoin for a consult since he’s so active in Bitcoin via crypto gambling. In 2022, he did give away $1M in Bitcoin. He’s a well-known holder of Bitcoin that people may not know about. Drake, if you or your team is reading this, you can do more with Bitcoin other than gamble it; you can build on it. Happy to consult and educate you in Toronto!
— Christopher Perceptions, TwentyOneSociety
Awesome!!!! Thank you for sharing the great experience, CMP!