It was the 5th edition of Paradigme Bitcoin, a conference centered around Bitcoin in Neuchatel, Switzerland mostly in French. I found the atmosphere family-like and the people benevolent.

It began on Thursday evening with a screening of the video "Gilgamesh On-chain," followed by a Q&A session to discover how Bitcoin is present in humanity's very first text! During dinner, I found myself facing Florent from Blobb.io, who shared his juicy anecdotes about mining.

Elodie, wearing an appropriate orange dress, presented the macro and microeconomic aspects, offering key economic insights to understand Bitcoin and secure one's wealth. With inflation in Europe publicly announced at 2-3%, the reality is quite different, as currency debasement hovers around 8%. Therefore, if you find an investment yielding 3%, you are actually losing 5%. Saving for 45 years at 0%, leaving your money dormant in a bank account with 2% inflation, erodes your purchasing power by 60%.

Renaud did an excellent job synthesizing the differences in Nostr client implementations regarding compatibility and the handling of various NIPs (Nostr Implementation Possibilities). On another slide, he explained the different NIPs that enable private end-to-end encryption from one person to another and encryption for multiple contacts. This is why if you write a private message to a contact using a different client that hasn't implemented the same encryption NIP, your message will not reach them, and you won't even know it. For this reason, he recommends using WhiteNoise for one or several contacts to ensure end-to-end encryption is working. For me, the best Nostr client on Android remains Amethyst, which I use primarily to follow others on Nostr. I just discovered that a Linux version has been released: https://amethyst.social/
With my contacts, I use other messaging apps to exchange securely.
Nostr is also used for blogging, event organization, audio and video streaming, and podcasts. It also allows you to set up an online store. Since Nostr stands for "Node & other stuff transmitted over relays," it is simply a protocol for transmitting cryptographically signed data without touching the content.

Taz led a hands-on workshop on Penlock, a paper tool that secures a seed phrase by fragmenting it into three parts. Noé gave us the paper kit to experiment with. On the website, you will find materials to print and assemble the Penlock cryptographic wheel, then follow the steps to divide your starting phrase into a 2-of-3 backup, which provides better security than simply writing down your 12 or 24 words on paper. This adds an interesting layer of complexity. Everyone should practice securing their funds and decide if this is something to implement.
https://penlock.io/

Lucas presented the new tax and accounting rules following a ruling by the Federal Tribunal on the topic of cryptocurrency in Switzerland. I invite you to watch the video if this topic interests you.

Captain Remington took us on his boat journey. He left his engineering job to set sail. He bought a small vessel and was at many different Bitcoin conferences. His navigation plan was not clearly defined; he just had a guiding thread: to study Bitcoin.
One year passed. Then a second. Then a third. He carried out boat repairs when necessary. He used his sail, featuring a large orange Bitcoin logo, to tack back and forth in front of ports during Bitcoin events to attract attention. Thanks to the time spent at sea, he learned enormously on all levels: technical, administrative, and personal. His story was captivating. Now, the captain wishes to take us aboard and share his experience of living on a sailboat with many books, and running a node and a solo mining rig. His project is to sail around the world for the next 8 years, and anyone can join him for several days or weeks. The goal is to have a place at sea to create encounters so that interested people can discover and learn about Bitcoin. I invite you to discover his extraordinary project and perhaps participate before the end of 2026.
https://satoboat.io/

I was able to visit the premises of Be-BOP and Nym, located at Coffice. It is a coworking space with a café area that accepts Bitcoin payments.
Speaking with Alexis Roussel, co-founder of the Nym mixnet, he shared various technical advancements. If you previously had connection issues using Nym, several bugs have now been fixed, and it works much better. You can install the Nym VPN and even use it on android to block ads in all your apps.

I saw a demo of the advanced features of Be-BOP, an open-source payment system that I could configure for your physical or online store.

Arnaud told us how he uses AI agents. He created his digital double named Mr. K (https://supercharged.works) using an AI agent and gave it a Bitcoin budget, as it is very simple for an AI to pay in Bitcoin. He established a resurrection protocol: if there is a server failure and the AI agent dies, the encrypted backup is stored on IPFS, where no one can delete it. An automated heartbeat system checks that the AI agent is alive every 4 hours. This is the K-Life protocol: https://klife.supercharged.works
This gives them a means to ensure eternal life, and this is what all AI agents will do to guarantee their survival, without being explicitly told; it is implicit. Arnaud warned us that we are not ready for what might happen with AI by the end of 2026. You can read Mr. K's journal, where he plays on Polymarket to ensure his survival.

With Darko and Polto's workshop on BIP-85, we understood how it works. After a theoretical section on derivation, backup, and child seeds loaded onto other devices, we had a live demo of BIP-85 to derive a child seed and load it onto a device.

Bastian and Adrian interactively questioned us on what we would do to backup our seed phrase, what could happen if the paper on which we wrote our 12 or 24 words becomes unreadable, and who we trust to keep a duplicate safe, etc. They illustrated all this brilliantly using characters from Scrooge McDuck. They very well presented their solution, which consists of permuting the 2048 words of BIP-39 with a token generated based on the email address when registering for their inheritance management service. The process is open source, and their site will soon be translated into English. They do not know the 24 words, only the token, and for you, this avoids storing the 24 words of the BIP-39 dictionary. Upon the death of the Bitcoin holder, their heirs can provide a death certificate to Fortego; Fortego will then give them the tokens allowing the reconstruction of the 24 words via permutation.
https://fortego.ch/

The legendary Florent from Blobb used an AI agent to generate his slides. So, live in front of us, he discovered them for the first time to present the profitability of Bitcoin mining versus AI. He knows what he is talking about. It is always a pleasure to listen to him.

Alexandre detailed the inner workings of crypto news publishers. It is a complicated profession due to market cycles, and most must get by by adding advertising. He presented his offer: https://koffy.finance
Essential crypto news, in the time it takes to drink a coffee. His app has existed for over 6 years, and the subscription helps finance the infrastructure.

To end the second day, I had the pleasure of listening to Caroline Zorn, a lawyer at the Strasbourg Bar. Thanks to her, the Bitcoin Strasbourg edition took place in January 2026. She explained that law and justice are two different things.
Faced with all the lies propagated by the French media in recent years, organizing the Bitcoin conference in Strasbourg was a challenge against various objections: Bitcoin consumes too much energy, it is not ecological, it is used by terrorists and criminals. Bitcoiners can get discouraged and almost feel they need to apologize to defend themselves. But no, as Bitcoiners, we must assert our legitimacy because Bitcoin is a silent means of making a revolution to protect human rights.

It was a very good edition, and in this heat, Lake Neuchâtel was less than 10 minutes away.