Benson's Blog

Over 750 Indians are now a part of Bitcoin meetups across India. Spread across Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkatta, these groups are active and gather every month to explore new possibilities in Bitcoin.

The recent Bitcoin Bangalore Creativiy Crew meetup at the Microsoft Research center in Bangalore created an awareness of a new technology as people discussed alternative uses of the Blockchain and the uses of it for micro-finance and colored coins.

As the next logical step in several remote areas of India is a community currency, there were discussions around colored coins and how they could transfer value with a single satoshi. The group will focus on development of the Bitcoin ecosystem apart from other initiatives.

The Bangalore Bitcoin meetup group was started in 2012 and has over 450 members. Host to the Global Bitcoin Conference, a first for India, which was held in Bangalore. Starting from coffee shops, to open source labs, the meetups were creative and enabled several entrepreneurs to build up. The group meets once or twice a month and invites anyone to participate in a well organized discussion. The group was also responsible for organizing the well covered Global Bitcoin Conference at the Sheraton earlier this year.

Initiatives that have come out of this group include coimonk.com, unocoin.com, The Bitcoin card company, and several others who have added to the voice and Crypto Infrastructure that India now supports.

The Bombay Bitcoin meetup group enabled Kolonial’s to accept Bitcoin. Kolonial’s are the first bar in India which accepts Bitcoin. Nesteled in a cozy part of Mumbai’s bustling financial machine, this is a testament to the work conducted in enabling merchants by the meetup group.

What comes next for them would be more important as people add to this growing meetup which has over 175 members already. An active community that has several interests and initiatives in mind including bitterco.in which seems to be run by a focused individual who has shown tremendous commitment to the Bitcoin community.

The Bitcoin in Delhi meetup is a new group focused on working towards enabling Bitcoin and teaching more people about it. Led by a crypto expert and some very involved Bitcoiners, get prepared to meet with early adopters, miners, developers and a host of people getting ready to take Bitcoin to the capital of India.

The Chennai Bitcoin meetup group which was started recently has seen a nice group of people join in and they seem ready to go as well. Expect a similar crowd to gain force as the days pass. Over 20 members in the first few days since it began, will be great to see it grow.

The Hyderabad group and the Kolkatta groups have been started and intend to host meetups in their respective cities. These groups are still young and will grow large over the next few weeks.

The meetup scene is still in its infancy as India has a large geography. More cities need to participate in order for it to grow. A veritable library of information and opportunity, these meetups help build start-ups and enable entrepreneurship before all else.

The platform used popularly is meetup.com. This has enabled all the above meetups to start and grow.

aBitsocial.com is a social network created by a Bitcoiner from India in order to get like minded people together. A solid platform, aBitsocial enables events, blogs, chats and several other necessary tools in order to organize meetups as well. Still at an early stage release, hoping to see this grow in the future.