Shift change at 21 Lectures, the Bitcoin Academy from Zug!

Shift change at 21 Lectures, the Bitcoin Academy from Zug!
Train, a small place in Switzerland, but a large place for the global economy. Image of Frozenbubble at de.Wikipedia. License: Creative Commons

21 Lectures gives the probably world-best courses for Bitcoin development, with prominent lecturers from the Bitcoin Community. Now Alain Imhof replaces the founder Lucas Betchart as head of the academy. We have had an interview with him.

Hello Alain! I start with a standard question: How did you get Bitcoin?

I bought my first Bitcoin in 2016 after studying as an industrial engineer, for under 1.000 francs.

Congratulations!

(laughs) don’t say that too loud. I then got him at 1.CHF 500, sold again and thought I was the smartest person in the world.

Oh woe ..

Yes, if I had dealt with Bitcoin deeper at the time, I wouldn’t have done that. Almost immediately after the sale, a creeping process of thinking, about money creation, paper money and so on, and this topic didn’t let go of me anymore. The deeper you dig, the more you want to know. So I was more and more concerned with Bitcoin in my free time, and from a certain point I realized that I wanted to make it a job.

Because the old job suddenly seemed boring and irrelevant to you?

So similar. I had a good job at Immoscout24, and I also liked to work there. But in January 2021 a decision was made. I had been in contact with Julian Liniger for a long time and had been traveling in his relay community early on. First part -time as a freelancer, but after Relai had received a finding, I got a full -time in product development at Relai.

And the complete switch to a Bitcoin startup was easy for you?

Not quite, I thoroughly considered it. My prospects at Immoscout24 were good, I asked myself whether passion or career: a lot of work for little income, or the convenient way. In the end it became the passion, despite the disadvantages. But I don’t regret anything!

How did you get 21 Lectures from there?

I haven’t been to Relai since the end of 2022. We continue to understand each other, but not everything went as I wanted it to be. I met Lucas Betchart about my old school friend Domink Spicher, the founder of 21 Lectures. But he was busy with his new startup 21 analytics to both ears. So one thing came to another, and with a beer I agreed to lead the academy.

What kind of seminars you offer you?

Personal courses around Bitcoin. Sounds a bit old school but for us personal contact is part of it, this is great added value because we also have a network with our partners, so that there is often something for the participants. You just don’t have such effects in webinars.

We currently offer two courses, the Bitcoin Essentials and the Bitcoin Masterclass. The two already existed before me, Lucas put them on his feet with his network. We have outstanding lecturers from the community, people who like Christian Decker have a lot of experience with Bitcoin.

In the future, of course, further courses will follow. Specifically, it is that we will carry out a new course from November and, together with Numarics and the Treuhandverband Switzerland, explain how to deal with Bitcoin in bookkeeping.

Please tell ‘more about the two standard courses!

The essentials are a kind of basic course. He is aimed at technically interested, but does not require any previous knowledge of Bitcoin. Let’s learn what you need to know to understand Bitcoin: wallets, addresses, blockchain, transactions, mempool, fees, nodes, p2p, privacy, cryptography and more. Everything in two days, so rather wide and superficial. But if you have gone through the essentials, Bitcoin will understand much better.

The Bitcoin Masterclass builds on the essentials, which goes 5 days. Here we go into the depths technically: signatures, timelocks, multisigs, segwit, taproot, mining, lightning and more. This is a tight program that theoretically goes very deep and exercises is practice -oriented. Christian Decker introduces, for example, to work with C-lightning.

You certainly have plans to change or expand the range of courses, or?

First of all, I would like to ensure that the existing great courses will be offered further. But as mentioned, of course, we continue to plan and want to gradually expand our offer. So far, the courses have been very technical, but we want to aim more at non-technicians, for example to accountants or compliance officer. With banks and insurance companies, there is still an astonishing ignorance, also in Switzerland in 2023, and we still have a lot of educational work in front of us. We also think about economic courses, but we can’t do everything at once.

She also plans courses on other cryptocurrencies, such as Ethereum?

We stay Bitcoin-Only. That is clear that this is our point of view. I am not a hardcore maximumist, and I don’t think that everything except Bitcoin is a flat rate of garbage. No other coin comes close to Bitcoin and our expertise is at Bitcoin, so we stay there too.

When will the next courses take place?

At the beginning of October we have a master class and the Essentials course in November. We are planning another master class for spring, since we already have some registrations in the essential, which also express interest in the master class.

We plan to offer the master class two to three times a year, and the other courses, the essentials and which we have in mind, more often because they are smaller and more general.

How much do the participants have to shell out?

The essentials cost 935 Swiss francs for individual and startups, for companies 2.400. For this you get the full service, including lunch. The master class, including meals, is a bit more expensive because it goes for 5 days. It costs 2.CHF 300 for individuals and startups or 4.935 for companies. The price reductions for individual and startups are possible thanks to our network and partners. Of course, the courses are not cheap, but our lecturers come to Zurich from far away, and the resulting network is almost priceless.

Sounds like the price is worthwhile. Alain, thank you very much for the conversation!

Click here for the online page of 21 Lectures. This is an affiliate link, your 10 percent discount and the Bitcoin blog will receive about him.de a bonus.