Iconic Bitcoin Hackerspace Closes Downtown Store for First Time in 12 Years Due to Zoning Changes

DCTRL Vancouver: Iconic Bitcoin Hackerspace Closes Downtown Store for First Time in 12 Years Due to Zoning Changes

DCTRL, a Bitcoin hub and hackerspace located in the sunny Canadian city of Vancouver, has announced the closure of its downtown basement storefront, an iconic location among its tinkerer mindset and early adopters of hardware hacker culture. The community will move to the new location in the coming weeks and the vision for the hub will be updated. Vancouver’s Bitcoin community is famous for installing the first-ever Bitcoin ATM, and DCTRL in particular has hosted a variety of famous characters who have given the industry a cultural and innovative flair over the years.

Visited by some of the most influential people in Bitcoin and the broader crypto industry during its 12 years of operation, DCTRL is far from done serving as a hub for Canada’s Bitcoin and crypto scene. The company is preparing to relocate due to changes in zoning laws, and plans are underway to restart in a new location. Active members are synthesizing historical moments, relationships, and lessons learned from perhaps the longest-running Bitcoin hackspace experiment in the history of this young industry.

It all started at Waves Cafe on Howe Street in Vancouver. Bitcoiniacs, a group of four OGs who ran Bitcoin intermediaries at the time (and are still active today), decided it was time to get robots involved. There, they set up an ATM to sell Bitcoin to the public and hosted a historic launch party, bringing together local Vancouver technology, finance, and burgeoning crypto scenes.

“The world’s first Bitcoin ATM was a massive event,” said Freddie Hartline, Bitcoin enthusiast and co-founding member of the DCTRL hackerspace. In an exclusive interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Hartline further reflected on the event, saying, “Man, the atmosphere was amazing. It literally felt like a really good rave. But it was smarter. Much smarter. That’s actually what started it all.” Mentioned the establishment of DCTRL.

The timing of the Bitcoin ATM event was perfect. It was October 2013, and Bitcoin had gone from a few dollars to nearly $150, consolidated around $100 in a few weeks, and was poised to challenge $1,000 per coin. The entire Bitcoin community was energized, this was the end of the longest bear market in Bitcoin history, and in a way, this price increase was proof that Bitcoin was here to stay.

As a result, the launch of the first Bitcoin ATM made national and international news. The idea of ​​a Bitcoin ATM going live was considered a historic milestone in the adoption of Bitcoin as a currency.

Tens of thousands of Canadian dollars worth of Bitcoin were sold in the weeks that followed that day, likely creating several millionaires over the years, copycat ATM projects, and even several Bitcoin ATM manufacturing companies. It also inspired the creation of the DCTRL hackerspace, then called “Decentral Vancouver.”

The idea came from Cameron Gray, another Bitcoin enthusiast and friend of Heartline who was volunteering at Bitcoiniacs events. “Cam was absolutely essential to the creation of Decentral,” Hartline recalled. “One day, after I complained about the lighting in the coffee shop, he literally turned to me and said, ‘You should make some space,’ as we were operating the Bitcoin ATM at Waves.” That was it. ”

Soon they secured a dirty, damp but cozy basement in downtown Vancouver. Over the years, this spot has become home to Bitcoin engineers, founders, crypto enthusiasts, and eventually legends. The interior has been improved, leaks have been repaired, and the walls are decorated with Bitcoin art. The empty spaces were filled with all sorts of hardware, modified to manipulate or somehow manipulate the orange coins.

Mr. Hartline and Mr. Gray were starting a lifestyle project of sorts, and while Bitcoin may have had a good run above $1,000, it quickly dropped back down to $300, creating another bear market and having important implications for the industry. In the meantime, DCTRL’s rent had to be paid somehow, so Heartline moved to the roof instead of the basement. He literally pitched a tent to keep the lights on during that bear market. If you look at it, the setup isn’t bad either.

DCTRL started hosting meetups, the Vancouver Startup Weekend community took notice, and a gentleman known as Greg started visiting the hub. Soon, Startup Weekend events were also held at DCTRL, bringing together the local tech startup scene. Eventually, even Ethereum founder and former Bitcoin Magazine writer Vitalik Buterin showed up.

Greg made another important contribution to DCTRL. He made a donation and created a symbol for the local community. He made a conditional donation of $500 for the space. “You have to use it for something creative…” Hartline recalled, “So I found a Pepsi machine on Craigslist. Greg helped me move it in a pickup. Him, me, Cam, and Mike Olaf moved that damn heavy, unwieldy thing up the stairs – Lol, I almost killed Cam.” The Pepsi machine would soon be backward engineered, hacked, and rebranded to Vepsi, apparently for Bitcoin reasons.

In the video above, you can see Greg make an on-chain transaction to the pop machine and drop a soda onto Q a few milliseconds later. The satisfying sound of Bitcoin being used as money for life’s little pleasures became a DCTRL staple. Eventually, a digital version of Bepsi was created, which fans around the world used to make donations. The underlying software went through many iterations over time, and was built into Cold War-era pop machines through the Raspberry Pi and the ingenuity of hackers. Ten years later, Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim also stopped by to pay homage to this staple of Vancouver’s hacker culture, this time by purchasing a Bepsi soda for lightning-quick payment.

Bepsi currently supports virtually all Bitcoin protocols and is a testing ground for cutting-edge Bitcoin technology, including protocols such as Taproot Assets, Spark, and Arcade OS. “We also launched our own Bepsi token. One Bepsi is equivalent to one soda in a Bepsi machine. It’s like a stable coin. It’s pegged to the price of a can of pop,” Hartline said. Bepsi was inspired in some ways by Bitcoin ATMs, but it also inspired copycats such as the 21up vending machine, which is hosted in a nearby blockchain lab known as Mintgreen. To this day, the funds raised by the Bepsi machine are used to support the operations of the hackerspace, cover costs, and serve as the foundation of the community. Control Bepsi’s underlying wallet and technology stack and rank the most active members and hosts.

Legend visits

Over the years, some of the biggest names in the industry have visited or engaged with DCTRL in some capacity. Vitalik Buterin personally visited this space in the very early days of Ethereum and used to hang out there. This is evidenced by this photo on the wall of Gray, Hartline, Vitalik, and another active member called Kyle.

The founders of CaVirtex, Canada’s first Bitcoin exchange, were also photographed there. The brand is now largely unknown as it was acquired by Kraken a few years later, but it had a deep impact on the Canadian Bitcoin scene, selling Bitcoin to Canadians even before the first bull market began, peaking at $30 per coin. Without this exchange, many of Canada’s largest Bitcoiners may not have been able to enter.

Virtually all the big names in Bitcoin have also attended DCTRL events over the years, answering questions from the local crowd, including pre-folk war Roger Ver, Andreas Antonopoulos, and Willy Wu. In this video, Eric Voorhees, who rose to Bitcoin fame for creating the first major instant swap, an exchange between cryptocurrencies called ShapeShift, is seen chatting by the fireplace at DCTRL during a local meetup.

Famous scammers were also participating in the hub. That man is Gerald Cotton of QuadrigaCX, a fixture on the Canadian Bitcoin scene back in 2014 and one of the unsolved mysteries of crypto crime to this day. Cotton, whom I personally met several times in Toronto at the time, was a charming, smooth-talking entrepreneur on the scene at the time, until his checkered professional career came to light, the exchange went bankrupt, and millions of dollars in user funds were unpaid. Cotton is believed to have taken the encryption keys with him and suddenly and mysteriously died in India just before the exchange went bankrupt, but many people personally affected by the centralized exchange’s collapse are skeptical of that story.

Further evidence of DCTRL as a microcosm of the industry as a whole was seen a few years later during the Folk Wars. A heated debate ensued, as Gray, the hub’s other main co-founder, took the “big block” side of the debate, ultimately leading to clashes with the local community and the broader Bitcoin scene. Nevertheless, Gray is highly respected and highly regarded by current members of DCTRL for his contributions to the DCTRL social scene, which will inevitably experience the same forks and tensions that the Bitcoin protocol experienced at the time.

During these difficult times, DCTRL acts as a forum and discussion place for these topics, and also hosted Peter Rizun of Alternative Implementation Bitcoin Unlimited, a big blocker, who discussed Taylor, who can be seen on the right in the photo below.

Overall, DCTRL boasts over 12 years of continuous operation, has hosted hundreds of events, boasts over 1,500 registered community members, 69 recorded talks published on YouTube, and has influenced many elements of the Bitcoin and crypto industry. Throughout this time, the hub has been run entirely by volunteers and sustained by public donations and, of course, Bepsi.

As DCTRL’s location was rezoned by the city government and a new building to be erected in its place, DCTRL’s active members and organizers began to organize the transition to the new location in parallel with the branding and branding update.

One current member, DJ, who requested anonymity, said the hub has seen record attendance in recent months. The location may change, but its future is brighter than ever. If you would like to be a part of DCTRL’s future, please visit www.DCTRL.wtf for more information.

The post DCTRL Vancouver: Zoning changes close downtown store for the first time in 12 years: Iconic Bitcoin hackerspace first appeared in Bitcoin Magazine and was written by Juan Galt.