Prague, The Birthplace Of The First Hardware Wallet in The World, The First Mining Pool, Bitcoin, And Reportedly Even The First Café Bitcoin.

Also, this city is one of the prosperous cities of Central Europe, which is visited by millions of tourists every year.

Prague, also considered one of the most attractive cities in Europe, is a developing technology center where many fans of digital currencies live.

Earlier in a note entitled “Familiarity with crypto cities; Vancouver,” we had checked the city of Vancouver. In this note, taken from a report from the Coin Telegraph website, we’re trying to introduce you to another crypto town, Prague, So stay with us until the end.

Overview of the city of Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic

• City name: Prague
• Country: Czech Republic
• Population: 2.7 million people
• Year of establishment: 8th century AD
• Official languages: Czech, Slovak, English, Ukrainian, German, Vietnamese and Russian

Prague, famous for its magnificent bridges and buildings and Bohemian architecture, was chosen as the most beautiful city in the world last year by Time Out magazine. More than 8 million tourists visit the city annually, and it has become a popular choice among filmmakers, including the creators of Mission: Impossible and Casino Royale.

More than 1,000 years ago, the migration of the Czech people led to the formation of a tribe on the banks of the Vltava River. In the Middle Ages, Prague quickly became a major urban center and the seat of many Bohemian kings who also reigned as Roman emperors.

Prague was under the control of the Austrian Empire during history. For a short period, it gained independence and was once again under the control of Nazi Germany. Still, he was able to escape from the Nazis and Allied bombers.

However, after only three years of independence, Soviet-backed communists overthrew the country’s democratic government in a coup in 1948. This situation continued for years until after the protests of the Velvet Revolution, the ruling Communist Party resigned on November 28, 1989, and left the fate of the local people to themselves once again.

Crypto culture in Prague

Prague is one of the leading technology centers in Central Europe. Due to the different rulers, it has had and the independence it has gained over the years, Prague has changed its national currency almost once every generation. The people of this country are known for their skepticism towards fiat currency and enthusiasm for using digital currencies.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the people of this city are not prejudiced against fiat currencies and have accepted digital currencies with open arms.

Also, inflationary pressure on the country’s currency, the Czech Koruna (CZK), has increased people’s interest.

Companies such as SatoshiLabs, Alza, Trezor, Braiins, and many others have increased the necessary training in the field of digital assets in this country. Czech National Bank is also responsible for the control and legislation of this industry.

Although the interest in digital currencies is still high among the people of this country, especially in Prague, the substantial fluctuations, the drop in the price, and the massive sell-off have hit people’s confidence in this market.

Despite all this, we still know that the first wallet, The world’s hardware, the first Bitcoin mining pool, and the first Bitcoin coffee shop have been created in this country in the last decade. Also, Prague has become a hub for digital world enthusiasts in recent years. This city and Krakow will be one of the top destinations for remote work in 2021.

Another critical point is that the excitement of those who have just started using digital currencies has filled the city with meetings about digital currencies and holding conferences in this field. These activities in Prague distinguish it from its neighbors in Central Europe.

Crypto-related projects in Prague

So far, many vital projects in the field of digital currencies have been launched in Prague. In the following article, we will introduce you to some of them.

Treasure wallet

Cryptocurrency hardware wallets have earned their reputation for protecting investors’ assets; In this way, the investors are in charge of their assets. Their main idea came up in 2011 after a Bitcoin conference in Prague. Now the question arises, who created these wallets?

Pavol Stick Rusnak (Pavol Stick Rusnak) and Mark Slush Palatinus (Mark Slush Palatinus), who were very interested in the field of digital currency, came up with the idea of ​​a single-purpose computer to securely store users’ Bitcoin private keys. In 2013, these two people founded Satoshi Labs.

A year later (2014), the first Treasure wallet, that is, Trezor One (Trezor One) and then Trezor Model T (Trezor Model T), was launched, which added a touch screen to the device. These devices were tested monthly and eventually became the secure digital currency storage standard. Since the launch, more than one million units of these two wallets have been sold.

Satoshi Lips

Satoshi Labs includes several companies, including Trezor, Invity, and Tropic Square, and is at the forefront of digital currency and technology development in the Czech Republic. Like most people in the cryptocurrency industry, they were outraged by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and eager to help those affected.

Vojtěch Černý, Trezor’s head of business, and Bach Nguyen, director of business development at Inviti, traveled about 900 kilometers to reach the border town of Vel’ké Slemence on the Ukraine-Slovakia border and deliver humanitarian aid to the people. They also took four refugee women and two children to a shelter in the Czech Republic.

Additionally, Satoshi Labs donated 1 million Euros of Bitcoin to charities to help Ukraine shortly after the war broke out. They cited the “effects of occupation and the destruction of individual freedom” during the five decades of Czechoslovak communist rule as their inspiration.

Another subsidiary of Satoshi Labs, Inviti, is a price aggregator that checks all cryptocurrency exchanges and other platforms to find the best rate for buying cryptocurrency. Invite collects all this data in one place and makes it available to users. This section has a simple user interface, even for newcomers to digital currencies. The mentioned company has many educational resources for this group of people.

During the development of Trezor at Satoshi Labs, it became clear that the company needed an integrated circuit for security solutions that were different from the examples on the market. To this end, TropicSquare developed an exciting program to build a custom game text chip to convert low-entropy codes into high-entropy data for cryptographic operations.

Tech-savvy developers like Tropic Square CEO Evžen Englberth and Tropic Square CTO Jan Pleskač have developed these chips. Today, these chips are present in all Trezor hardware wallets.

Pool slush money

Before creating Trezor, Palatinus founded the first Bitcoin mining project in Prague called Bitcoin. Cz in 2010. After that, Bryan Innes, who was developing and researching embedded Linux systems, took over the management of this mining pool and changed its name.

It should be noted that the name of this pool has recently been changed to Slush Pool. Another critical point is that 1.3 million bitcoins have been mined since the start of the mentioned project.

Nowadays, the Brainz Pool or Slash Pool has become one of the biggest Bitcoin mining pools. More than 15 thousand people use this company’s mining optimization software. The hash rate(Hash Rate) is 5-8% of the entire Bitcoin network. Also, the company earns all of its revenue from Bitcoin and charges a 2-2.5% commission.

Kristian Csepcsar, chief marketing officer of Bryins, sees mining and Bitcoin as a way of life, not just a way to make money. He believes:

Bitcoin miners are fans of the Bitcoin blockchain, and their efforts to secure networks can be seen in the global hash rate. Bitcoin decreased by more than 70%, But the hash rate was only about 20% lower than its all-time high. The relative price of Bitcoin compared to common currencies may change, But a Bitcoin will be a Bitcoin forever, and miners understand this very well.

General Bytes

General Bytes is the second largest Bitcoin and ATM manufacturer, with offices in Prague and Bradenton, Florida. Since its inception in 2013, the company has sold more than 13,500 units in 142 countries, most in the United States.

The company’s ATMs receive a licensing fee of 0.25 to 0.50 percent of each transaction from their operators, and its users must pay a fee of 5 to 15 percent.

Vojt ě ch Frgál, CEO of General Bytes, said in an interview with Cointelegraph that these fees help the company keep the software high and release new versions twice a month.

In the ATMs of this company, 180 types of common currencies can be used to buy more than 60 types of digital assets. Don’t forget that more than 22.5 million digital currency transactions have been done in General Bytes Bitcoin ATM network worldwide.

Rockaway Blockchain Fund

Web 3.0supports. Rockaway Blockchain Fund, backed by $2.5 billion from Rockaway Capital, is a venture capital firm that invests in leading projects in the field—w Based in Prague and founded in 2020, the company has invested in 36 projects and 26 funds.

Rockaway Capital raised $123 million in its first venture capital fund, and as of June 30, 75% of its portfolio worth approximately $300 million is being used. In addition, the internal development team has a separate lending fund that lends to market makers and provides liquidity for the DeFi protocols. By the end of June, the assets under management of this fund were approximately 35 million dollars.

In addition to investing and raising liquidity, Rockaway Capital promotes its projects through networking forums and a betting team thatninetyIt runs its validations and is supported by an in-house development team (RBF Labs). Another critical point is that the mentioned company is one of the first supportersSolanaIt has made several investments in the Cosmas ecosystem, for example, in Agoric.

How to spend your digital currencies in Prague?

You can spend your digital currencies in different places in Prague. In the following, we mention some examples of them.

Cafe number seven

Bar No. 7, located near the old part of Prague, is a relaxed place with a multilingual staff loved by ex-pats and locals alike. Customers can buy cocktails for 150 CZK ($6.24) or a drink for 25 CZK ($1.04) and pay with digital cash. It should be noted that there is also a Bitcoin ATM in this place. This is a great place to evaluate digital currencies.

Sista Prague Apartments

If you are looking for a beautiful house for short-term rent or long-term accommodation, use Prague Siesta Apartments and pay with Bitcoin. These apartments are located in the center of Prague, and their distance to tourist attractions such as the Old Town Square and Astronomical Clock is only one minute on foot.

These apartments’ prices vary by season, and their daily rent is around 2,000 CZK ($83.08), which usually fluctuates. Of course, the discount will also include your stay if you plan to stay longer.

Police parallel coffee shop

Paralelní Polis is the first coffee shop in Central Europe to accept payment with digital currencies. This coffee shop started working in 2014, and now it has become a place for joint working space and holding events and has hosted many occasions and projects for its members’ leisure. You can use Bitcoin andLitecoin(Litecoin) or through Lightning Network (Lightning Network). Buy coffee from this center.

The name of this coffee shop is taken from the concept name that Václav Benda proposed in 1973. The concept of a “parallel city” (Parallel Polis); An independent society that is not pressured by the law or the decisions of the representatives of the central powers.

This concept has become a rallying cry for political opponents and is very similar to the policies of Bitcoin’s die-hard supporters.

Alza

Alza is one of the e-commerce platforms in Central Europe, whose annual sales are estimated at nearly 1.2 billion dollars. The platform has a catalog of cryptocurrency-related hardware devices that customers can purchase with Bitcoin. Of course, buying with Ether and Litecoin will be possible.

Also, using Bitcoin, you can receive services from Alza’s local subsidiaries, which are active in Slovakia, Germany, Austria, and England, or from the company’s website (Alzashop.com).

Tourists who do not have a specific address in Prague to receive ordered products can use one of the unique features of this company, Alza Boxes, to receive products. In addition, thanks to General Bytes, they can use ATMs located in Alza retail centers to purchase digital currencies.

This is our table

A Maze in Tchaiovna is also a good place for tea and drink lovers. This place has everything, including a tea house, theater, photo museum, and drink shop. Digital currencies can be used to buy drinks and snacks, and live music is held periodically.

Digital currency training in Prague

Slash Pool owner Brian Ines regularly blogs about how to get started with a Bitcoin mining pool and the economics of the operation. Alza also has its blog collection, which is unique for readers and buyers of Bitcoin.

However, Brian Innes has gone even further and published several books on the nature of Bitcoin and its decentralization and future. These books are free and can use electronic and paper versions through the website.

New York University in Prague issues all academic degrees digitally using blockchain technology. These documents are valid from the point of view of the Czech Ministry of Education.

Each student is given a link for accreditation with a QR code that can be used to check the validity of this degree. Students can freely share these documents on social networks.

Crypto-related scams in Prague

Although various digital currencies have a strong presence in Prague, fraud and crimes related to digital assets are not very popular in this city. Most such incidents in Prague date back to the last decade, the most obvious of which is probably the hacking of the digital currency exchange Bitcash—Cz in 2013 and the theft of 485 bitcoins.

PhishingLed. Another example involving Tomáš Jiříkovský of the Czech National Bank was the 2015 money laundering of $40 million using Bitcoin and securities. Earlier this year, there was an incident in Trezor in which the data of the company’s customers fell into the hands of one of the data sellers, Mainchimp, which quickly became a fraud.

Meanwhile, a more critical incident happened on August 18. In this incident, hackers used a zero-day bug to change the default settings of General Bytes ATMs and caused all deposits to be transferred to their wallet addresses.

In this attack, the server of the central employer, which hosted all the company’s operations, was attacked. For this reason, General Bytes told its customers not to use the company’s servers until the company identified the problem and updated the systems.

Famous crypto people in Prague

Among the famous people in the field of digital currencies in Prague, we can mention these people:

• Pavol Stick Rusnak: one of the founders of Satoshi Labs
• Mark Slush Palatinus (Mark Slush Palatinus): One of the founders of Satoshi Labs
• Pavel Moravec (Pavel Moravec): One of the managing directors of Bryins
• Jan Capek (Jan Capek): one of the managing directors of Bryins
• Bach Nguyen: Director of Business Development at Inviti
• Vojtěch Frgál: CEO of General Bytes
• Viktor Fischer: Managing Partner of Rockaway Blockchain Fund
• Evžen Englberth: CEO of Tropic Square
• Jan Pleskač: Chief Technology Officer of Tropic Square
• Josef Tetek: SatoshiLabs brand ambassador and Economist
• Kristian Csepscar: Chief Marketing Officer of Bryins
• Vojtěch Černý: Head of Business at Treasury
• Tommy Poole: Owner of Cafe Number Seven