A bit more than a year ago, in the middle of a crypto winter, I learned about a new "blockchain / web3 / crypto" community forming up in Luxembourg, called Offchain. Luxembourg had already a "blockchain association", called "LetzBlock", of which I am a member. I knew LetzBlock as a rather serious association, dominated by lawyers. Offchain in turn seemed to use the "blockchain / web3 / crypto" topic more as an alibi to go for drinks, chat and light networking, quite at the opposite of LetzBlock's business-like approach.
A heron I photographed on the Alzette river ("rives de Clausen"), on the grey and wet afternoon of Monday 23rd October
So in 2022 I joined their second event, organized in a local restaurant. The event brought up a young dynamic crowd with very little overlap with the known local scene. It was marked by an interesting outcome at the end: since Offchain was an "unincorporated association" with no membership fee and no budget, participants were supposed to pay for their drinks. As not all knew, the last one to leave the restaurant was left to pick up the bill for those who had left without paying. I wrote a reflection about that here: "Organize off-chain events like a pro"
After another event in the Fall of 2022, OffChain Luxembourg chapter went silent, despite the fact that the WhatsApp group was still very much active.
On the other hand, as I didn't miss an opportunity to boast about, I finished a Master's degree in EU Law with a thesis on MiCA. So I thought it might be a good idea to propose to both OffChain and LetzBlock to animate an event where I would present the findings of my thesis and answer questions.
OffChain was quicker to embrace the idea and a member of the group offered a venue, a restaurant in a central zone of the city, called "Mousel's Cantine".
A restaurant is hardly the perfect place to do a presentation about a relatively involved topic such as the new MiCA regulation, so we had to improvise a bit, as is apparent from the pictures
As for the content itself, hereafter are a few slides providing highlights of the presentation
I had looked at MiCA from different angles and discovered that it has a complex profile and will likely have different impacts on different actors. The best analogy I could come up with was the '60-ies classic "Spaghetti Western" by Sergio Leone, "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"
Overall the response from the crowd was excelent, with many questions and a high level of engagement. Good beer definitely helped along.
The challenge in front of OffChain Luxembourg is now to "rekindle the fire of passion" and "weld" the community back together. Spring is not that far away anymore.