Behind it was Matyáš Kuchař, a then a hospitality business entrepreneur from the Czech Republic with no technical background, no developer credentials, and no history in financial services. What he did have was experience running large teams, building service businesses, and understanding how physical environments shape behaviour.
That background matters more than it first appears. Because what Matyáš has built is not simply a conference. It is a live observation point into how Bitcoin adoption actually spreads through power structures, particularly inside institutions. And what he sees is not what most people assume.
Matyáš and his brother did not begin with grand ambitions to run Europe’s flagship Bitcoin gathering. They were entrepreneurs looking for their angle inside Bitcoin. Not developers. Not protocol engineers. Operators. After attending conferences abroad, including one in Singapore that he describes as both chaotic and revealing, he recognised something simple: there was demand, but there was no serious Bitcoin-only event in the Czech Republic.
They launched a Czech-language conference in 2020, during COVID restrictions, and filled it. The following year they doubled attendance. Then doubled it again. By 2022 they had sold out the largest venue in Ostrava with 2,000 attendees. That growth was not marketing-led hype. It reflected something deeper about the Czech environment.
Bitcoin had been present there since 2009. Trezor was born in Prague. Slush Pool began there. Paralelní Polis had embedded cypherpunk culture into the city for a decade. There were ATMs, meetups, peer-to-peer traders. Cultural distrust of central authority, shaped by lived experience under a regime, meant the conceptual barrier to understanding Bitcoin was lower than in much of Western Europe.
By 2023, BTC Prague launched in English and immediately attracted over 6,000 attendees, 180 speakers, and dozens of Bitcoin-native companies. It positioned itself deliberately as Europe’s large-scale, accessible, Bitcoin-only gathering. Not as a technical developer summit, and not as a crypto expo.
The timing was not accidental. Bitcoin companies were maturing. Founders who once stood at booths in T-shirts were beginning to build teams, hire marketers, refine positioning, and think beyond early adopters. The ecosystem was evolving from technical experimentation to commercial infrastructure. But the most interesting shift was still to come.