The quietest place at Europe's biggest Bitcoin conference? Backstage.
Janusz Nowakowski · June 2026 · Prague, Czech Republic · Original post
Originally posted on LinkedIn on 15 June 2026.
Last week I spent BTC Prague behind the stage, as MC. There were 10,000 people out front.
Back here, it felt different: studio discipline, microphones, lights, timing, handovers.
Michael Saylor arrived in a black van. Short hello, interview, precise goodbye. Not one extra word.
The operations lead was on her feet for 21 hours. Her 10-person team spent a full year building those three days.
And the corridor conversations were not about price. They were about credit lines, custody setups and licences.
That is the interesting part: nobody there was trying to convince anybody anymore.
In 2021, this industry often felt like a carnival. In 2026, it felt much closer to a serious trade fair: decisions, directions, paperwork.
The three days are over. The conversations are not.
That is the story I'll unpack here over the coming weeks, one backstage conversation at a time. Same question to everyone: not whether, but how.
Huge thanks to the BTC Prague Podcast team for the trust, access and smooth collaboration, especially Mikulas Kren, Jan Klenik, Efrat Fenigson, Natalie Brunell, Brandon Keys and Martin Kuchar.
The series starts this week. If you ran a Swiss balance sheet, what is the one thing you'd want a CFO to take away from a room like that?
