Miami Bitcoin Hackathon 2019
The 5th Annual Miami Bitcoin Hackathon was a journey full of food, fun and bitcoin. Fifteen teams and 60 developers battled it out this year for Bitcoin, prizes and swag. The goal is to inspire and educate South Florida developers about the importance of bitcoin.
Why Miami?
We started the Miami Bitcoin Hackathon because Bitcoin is too important for Miami to ignore.
Miami is THE most unbanked & underbanked city in the United States. At the same time, Miami is considered the “Wall Street of the South” with 50+ domestic and international banks calling Miami home. This is the typical irony that plagues this beautiful paradise. Miami is also considered a sanctuary city where Central and South American ex-pats can preserve their wealth and protect their savings from high inflation and corrupt governments.
If you haven’t caught on yet, Miami is a tinderbox which has been waiting for something like Bitcoin to strike a match.
So what is the Miami Bitcoin Hackathon?
The Miami Bitcoin Hackathon is an annual event where coders and hackers meet to engage in developing minimum viable bitcoin applications over a period of 26 hours. No tokens, ICO’s or other non-sense. The participants code through day and night at The LAB Miami in Wynwood and compete to win bitcoin. The only requirement is that teams build their application using Bitcoin.
Our Mission
Our mission is to inspire and educate developers in Miami about the importance of Bitcoin.
Our hope is that once developers learn enough about Bitcoin and how it works under the hood, they will be able to secure themselves, their family and then eventually this wonderful South Florida community.
Ok, so tell me more about this Hackathon.
First off, the Miami Bitcoin Hackathon is 100% free to participate in thanks to our amazing sponsors.
Yes, 100% FREE to participate and attend. Our bitcoin-friendly sponsors make this entire event happen.
Where was the venue?
The venue was at The LAB Miami located in the popular Wynwood Art District.
What were the prizes this year?
Miami Bitcoin Hackathon wouldn’t be a proper Bitcoin hackathon if it didn’t give away Bitcoin. Almost 4 bitcoin was given away to winners including Bitcoin Trezor Hardware Wallets. Winners also received Bitcoin hardware Opendime packs and Coldcards donated by Coinkite.
First Place — 2 BTC, 4 Trezor hardware wallets, 2 Opendime packs, 2 Coldcards
Second Place — 1 BTC, 3 Trezor hardware wallets, 3 Opendime packs
Third Place — 0.5 BTC, 2 Trezor hardware wallets, 2 Opendime packs
Fourth Place — 0.3 BTC, 1 Trezor hardware wallet, 1 Opendime pack
Fifth Place — 0.1 BTC, 1 Trezor hardware wallet, 1 Opendime pack
Sixth Place — 0.05 BTC, 1 Trezor hardware wallet, 1 Opendime pack
What was the schedule?
Justin Moon’s Buidl Workshop: January 14th-15th
First, we kicked-off this years hackathon with something new. We convinced Justin Moon, a well-respected Bitcoin developer to come down to Miami to teach his first ever in-person Buidl Workshop.
Justin’s Buidl Workshop is a condensed version of his popular Buidl Bootcamp online course where students will learn how to:
- Build a hardware wallet
- Write a Bitcoin network crawler that discovers and visits every node in the network
- Implement native initial block download
The goal of this Buidl Workshop was to give developers an opportunity to sharpen or refresh their bitcoin development skills before the hackathon.
The Buidl Workshop was a ton of fun and very helpful. It was a huge success for the first Buidl Workshop ever. The workshop venue was hosted at Bitstop headquarters, a local Miami-based Bitcoin ATM software company.
Social Mixer: Friday January 18th 7pm-9pm
Next, the Miami Bitcoin Hackathon kicked off with a social mixer Friday night from 7pm to 9pm. There was free local Concrete Beach Brewery beer on keg and Papa Johns Pizza. The purpose of the social event is to provide a casual setting for the participants to meet each other, form teams and discuss ideas. The venue was at The LAB Miami located in the Wynwood Art district.
After the social event, everyone goes home to get a good night’s rest for tomorrow’s main event.
Miami Bitcoin Hackathon Main Event: January 19th 9:00am
We begin setting up as early as 7am. When contestants began to arrive, they were welcomed with a typical Miami desayuno[breakfast]: Croquetas, Pastelitos, Tequenos and Cafecito from Ricky’s Bakery.
It definitely wouldn’t be a Miami Bitcoin Hackathon without free bitcoin swag. Both contestants and observers got free t-shirts, coffee mugs and stickers.
After downing some breakfast and changing shirts, teams quickly claimed their seats and tables. Around 9am, I gave a brief speech to kick off the hackathon.
What were the resources and guides?
With the growth of the Bitcoin network over the last year, teams had even more resources to work with such as the Lightning Network, a “Layer 2” payment protocol that operates on top of Bitcoin. It enables fast transactions between participating nodes and has been touted as a solution to the Bitcoin scalability problem.
We put out a list of different resources and suggested guides for teams to work with.
Teams code all day and all night rushing to finish their bitcoin applications. Luckily, they don’t go hungry. We provide lunch from Pollo Tropical (Cuban food) and dinner from Papa Johns. Teams must finish their project by 11:00am the next day. Once hacking is over, we get set-up for pitches. Teams post a link to their github repo on their team page and get prepared for pitching.
What was the judging criteria?
Who were the Judges?
DocBtc — Miami native and Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer at Bitstop, a Miami-based Bitcoin ATM software platform & Hodl Wallet, an open-source, simple, fast bitcoin wallet.
Rhunbre— Ryan is a Miami software developer focused on creating decentralized web applications (dwapps) built using Bitcoin and web technologies. He is the originator of the PEERD software project, a framework for implementing dwapps.
Junseth — South Florida founder of Merkle Report and host of bitcoin podcast Junseth’s World and owner of Alarm Grid.
What about the sponsors?
A Big Thank you to our wonderful sponsors for making this event happen! The Miami Bitcoin Hackathon has always been free for developers to participate and it will always be free thanks to our wonderful Bitcoin sponsors.
Bitstop — Hodl Wallet — Merkle Report —Biscayne Bitcoin — Carlton Fields —
Cold Card— Alarm Grid — Open Dime — Blockchain Beach
Who were the teams?
In order of pitching:
Which teams won?
First Place Winner : Wiinode
Last year’s Miami Bitcoin Hackathon 2018 first place winner Evan Martinez came back to defend his title. This time he joined forces with Miami Bitcoin Hackathon veteran Bernardo Garciarivas. The dynamic duo put it all on the line this year. Together they created Wiinode, a GUI for your Bitcoin Core & LND Nodes. Excellent UI/UX that tracks your Bitcoin node stats, displays the bitcoin price, and pulls in external data feeds like r/Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency news sites. The app also monitors lightning node displaying channels, balance, and other general status.
Second Place: Notasithlord
Former Miami Bitcoin Hackathon contestant, CoinDesk writer and Ironhack alumni Ariel Deschapell decided to give it another go and compete.
Ariel created WebSat Messenger, where he utilized Blockstream’s satellite API to broadcast an encrypted message that was received by Grubles [his twitter friend] via satellite dish who then decrypted the message and posted it on twitter. All of this was funded for only 700 Satoshis over the lighting network!
Third Place: Esperanto Mcgibbly
The name is quirky. But that didn’t matter because the McGibbly’s threw down this year. They built an A/R application which would display the realtime BTC value just by pointing your mobile phone camera at a U.S. Treasury note.
Fourth Place: Fundingsecured
The Coconut Grove crew came to represent GE Digital Tech Center. They threw down some serious Bitcoin coding skills for first timers. Their Bitworker application allows companies to pay freelancers working abroad through a smooth easy to use interface.
5th: Bushido Labs
This Wynwood-based dev team is known locally for their sharp skills. They put together an escrow onramp using Bitcoin ATMs for decentralized exchange Bisq. Users could load their DEX account through a Bitcoin ATM. Their creativity really impressed the judges.
6th: One[Man]Show
He is forever alone. He is only one man. That’s ok because this one man show took home a very solid sixth place. He built an accounting system for those who want to keep better track of their bitcoin investment. Users can track their bitcoin investment and get insightful data in a nice UI.
That’s all folks!
When the winners were announced, they received their bitcoin on their Hodl Wallet. Even though it was a Sunday, it didn’t matter because Bitcoin works 24/7 without fail!
Cheers to the Miami Bitcoin Hackathon 2019!
Doug, Dan and I really enjoy throwing this hackathon every year. It’s a bunch of fun and we all learn a lot every time. Thanks for participating and we hope that you join us again next year.
Special thanks to:
Our sponsors
The Bitstop & Hodl Wallet team for helping with the coordination and organization of the event. I know it takes a toll on you guys, but we all know it’s worth it!
My wife for helping me out a ton with planning this Hackathon. Her support and help make this event happen.
Doug for helping me articulate technical things more clearly.
Anthony for the kegs. It’s a mission.
