I had mixed feelings about the Orange Pill App at first, I have to admit that. I mean, an app for connecting with bitcoiners sounds great, right?
Then I thought about opsec issues, and how many non-influencer bitcoiners wouldn’t even want to go near it.
And it’s also a paid app, which is good for keeping the spam out, but there’s not even a free trial. Though you can just signup for a month through the app and pay with fiat, it’s just 1.99 euro.
Even so I decided to give it a try. Being located in Athens, I didn’t expect much, but to my surprise, a few bitcoiners showed up. I already knew 3 of them personally and 2 of those are event organizers, so it seems this app is quite good for networking.
What I didn’t expect was to see bitcoiners travelling to Greece. I connected with some of them, just sent out a “hi” or something. Chatted some more with people a few more kilometres out of range, in surrounding countries.
It’s been fun.
So it depends on where you live.
But, where Orange Pill App truly shined was during BTCPrague.
I flew to Prague, lied down in my hotel room and started scrolling. And wow, were there bitcoiners to be found there!
I hadn’t felt so excited since Pokemon Go.
True, many of them are the known names you see everywhere on Bitcoin twitter or the podcast sphere. To my surprise there were plenty of anons reaching out, and naturally I had no way of recognizing them so I just told them, “Come up and talk to me, I’ll be at the convention all day.”
We did manage to meet with a couple of them so OPA did work great.
One trick you should consider is to put the conference’s name in your bio, because OPA shows these on search. So, for BTCPrague I had written, “Will be going to BTCPrague.” Now for Baltic Honeybadger I’ve added, “Will be going to Baltic Honeybadger in Riga.” So anyone that searches for “Riga” or “Baltic Honeybadger” can find me and reach out.
You can book your tickets to both these events plus more with the coupon code LOVEISBITCOIN by the way for a discount. Find all the conferences at https://loveisbitcoin.com/coupons
I did reach out to some famous people like Saifedean.
I also demonstrated my masterful texting skills by chatting up Miss El Salvador herself.
What a nice person.
As for OPA itself, it’s a rather simple texting app with some added features. You can search for local events around you, and add one if you’re up to it.
I booked my ticket to Satoshi Rockamoto in BTCPrague for example with lightning right through the app.
Is it a dating app?
It’s not exactly a dating app but meeting people who have the same interests as you can obviously lead to romantic entanglements, and we love that.
If you want to hear more from the people behind the app, here’s Natalie Brunell talking about OPA with Brian De Mint.
What’s coming to OPA?
Well, we already have zaps, which is quite cool. There’s a text field for your nostr npub too. And during BTCPrague there was an event groupchat. It didn’t get a lot of action, we mostly coordinated in tighter circles through telegram and twitter DMs, but it’s good that it’s there.
As for the security concerns, I think it depends. If you’re anon, okay sure, don’t go on OPA. You shouldn’t be attending bitcoin conferences anyway. Some of my friends are anon but they’re still on OPA.
If you’re eponymous, then go ahead. Be vigilant, especially when meeting people for the first time. Don’t give out too much information, meet in a public space, trust your gut if something is wrong and bail out immediately. But the danger can happen in any other social networking app as well. You’re not safer because you’re meeting someone through a facebook group that has nothing to do with bitcoin, people might have stalked you or you might have used the same username.
- Be careful, act broke, or better yet be actually broke so you don’t need to act.
- Don’t tell anyone how much bitcoin you have or your exact self-custody setup.
- Meet in a public space and bail out immediately if you feel something’s wrong.
I’ve written another article on this matter.
But, and this is a huge but, the rewards from meeting other bitcoiners in person are immense. First of all, you can finally see that you’re not the only crazy one. Second of all, even if you’re not actively networking like I am, you’ll make plenty of worthwhile friends.
Bitcoiners truly are amazing, and you’re missing out.
