Builders on Wall Street: Bitcoin Devs Host Lightning Hack Day

It was described as “not a normal conference.”

Sure, speakers took to the podium to present their futuristic ideas – a staple at the cryptocurrency space’s many, many conferences. But the Lightning Hackday, which took place in the heart of Wall Street on October 27th and 28th, was all-in-all more of a community-led endeavor with a heavy coding twist.

Throughout the two-day event, a hackathon whirred in the background. Tiny computers called Raspberry Pis dotted the tables and developers murmured amongst themselves about how to tweak the rules of the system while also not disrupting the incentive schemes.

This eclectic setup is maybe to be expected from a group of hackers building what they hope is the future of money.

Bitcoin’s lightning network is still in its early stages, but many hope it will fix bitcoin’s biggest underlying problems – that it’s simply too slow and clunky, and so doesn’t scale well for a future of mass adoption – at least, that is, without the help of a…