Joe was the first to feel it—said the air shimmered with light refracting through vape smoke and monetary enlightenment. Brandon was mumbling something about the "roadmap to 125K" as we floated past customs, backpacks heavy with Unbank gear, fistfuls of koruna, and the radiant optimism of true believers. This wasn’t a vacation. This was a pilgrimage.

BTCPrague—the promised land for Bitcoin maximalists, privacy punks, renegade coders, and idealists masquerading as fintech execs.

Monday

We checked in under assumed names, not because we had to—just because it felt right. Standard protocol when you're dancing on the edges of fiat and freedom.

Brandon vanished to some spa overlooking the Vltava River that claimed to “rebalance chakras and financial energy.” Joe disappeared into an Anonymous-themed café with walnut tables and velvet curtains, and graffiti’d walls saying something about “needing to harmonize his roast profile with his seed phrase.”

I stumbled until I saw the Prague Astronomical Clock in the Town they call Old.

By dinner, we were back together—sun-warmed, jetlag-smooth, fully alive, and ready for a pilsner. Prague glittered around us, all spires and shadows. The city didn’t sleep. Neither did we.

Tuesday

At 10am sharp, we entered Ambasada, the elegant digital dojo at Pod Kaštany 12. Once a Habsburg nerve center, now ground zero for permissionless finance.

Inside: free radicals in black hoodies, Lightning Network zealots, and dignified compliance officers wearing neon wallet pins. They fed the beasts and offered figurative fountains of coffee at every corner. Everything was orange like a safety cone.

The coffee? Blacker than a coal miner’s conscience. The croissants? Fresh enough to question your loyalty to powdered meal bars.

Lunch came fast and full of ideas—with the GB Support Team. Real professionals. The kind of people who know how to say “hash collision” and still make you feel welcome. We talked API latency and ATM UI quirks over sparkling water and grilled haloumi. Someone cracked a joke about Slovakian regulators. We laughed, earnestly.

After was another expedition into the unknown crags and crevices of the Czech jewel. We were led by our noses to a local “Cafe” where they sold fake pen carts, followed by loud, unscrupulous chatter billowing out of Fat Cats. A strange nostalgic place that sounded like home but looked like the early 1900s. A beer tower there challenged our manhood at the table, Brandon and I accepted the challenge.

The night faded after the towering glass of pilsner festering in my gullet to a secret speakeasy with employees made out of facemasks and graffiti about freedom. That's the last I remember.

Wednesday

The sun rose like a brick to the face. Cold water on the face. Hot coffee in the stomach.

GB greeted us to let us tour their office and meet their in-house team before joining everyone at Ambasada again. More nods, more notes, more of that delicious paranoia you get when privacy meets progress.

By lunch, we were passing stories like wine—tales of courier standoffs, firmware glitches, and cash vaults hidden under Carpathian stone. By 2:30, the Security Block started. A panel that felt more like a briefing for a digital Bond film. SIM swap attacks, deepfake KYC, vending machine backdoors. No hypotheticals—just reality, rugged and unfiltered.

The Army Museum. T-72 tanks, rusted relics, and an overwhelming sense of gratitude that we now wage wars in blockchains, not in blood. We whispered questions into the wind: Do any of these machines accept BTC?

That night, rooftop vibes at Café Vítkov. Wine and beer flowed. Someone from Breez started beatboxing. Joe breakdanced—bravely. I think someone was trading sats for Tarot readings. It was beautiful.

Felix and Jan found the only multi-colored, light up dance floor in the Eastern Bloc and danced like it was 1991.

Thursday

After another dose of cold water, a manufacturing tour that I can’t even recall. Cathedrals like cold wallets. Cobblestones that echoed like blocks confirming. Castles that looked like they held secret seed phrases. Our guide described the Defenestrations of Prague the way we talk about rug pulls and governance forks. It made sense. We added a few unbank stickers to a collection wall and kept moving.

By Prison Island, we were mad with riddles and goulash. A team puzzle turned into a full-blown crypto debate about QR formatting and timeout protocols. Team 1: Myself, Brandon, Felix and Connor. Team 2: Joe, Emilio, Kristy, and Audrey. We escaped, eventually.

We rumbled the streets to an Indian restaurant where I promptly ordered their finest Chinese dish with garlic naan bread. We ate with our hands, not to assimilate, but out of pure animalistic hunger. Once the plates were scraped and the dining room pillaged, we departed port directly into a pirate themed bar. It was buried in a basement with the accompanying smell of moisture that clings to wooden hulls.

The ship bar transported us through time into a robotic, futuristic hellscape of newly minted employees awkwardly shaking Sprite. Drinks were terrible. The constant droning of robotic arms drove us slightly insane.

Police cars chased our Lime scooters through the streets. No tickets, just a warning. A warning too late.

Friday

Sleep is for the weak. 2am is the new 9pm. 7am is the new 8am. Friday is for the speakers. Emilio got us exclusive VIP tickets to watch the titans of the industry pass on valuable knowledge to the next generation of innovators.

The dais was lined with comedians, billionaires, founders, and Real Estate execs. We met the owners and teams from Trezor, Primal, and Nostr. We told them about spreading their mission to our users. Michael Saylor echoed the loudspeakers like a word from God. We visited booths. We networked. We plotted our exit.

Enter: the Beer Tram. A rickety miracle of public transport and kegged libations. Free beer would be called communist by most, but we call it morale. By noon, we were pitching wallet integrations to retirees from Frankfurt and arguing over XRPs legitimacy with a podcaster from Oslo named Lars.

At 2:30: Infantry Fighting Vehicle Ride. Yes, that’s real. It rode like a rollercoaster through an obstacle course, and was a challenge to complete after a full tram ride with a belly of free beer.

Brandon drove. Jan screamed. I laughed until my lungs gave out. We crushed a car and a little bit of our collective doubt about the future directly after almost going over a cliff. It felt right.

Saturday

We flew. Literally. A sightseeing flight over Prague in a Cessna with propellers that hummed like a GPU farm. We felt like Orange Barons with bitaxes, birds with bitcoin-colored plumage. A thrill one would regret just watching.

I spent the rest of the day shopping. Things for the girlfriend, fun for the office. There was a little cafe I got a sandwich at before I started packing for the flight back.

We met at a Mexican restaurant. Salsa and chips. Jan’s margarita was half-frozen. I sent back my quesadilla. I don’t think they liked us, which is fine since they don't accept bitcoin payments. Fuck ‘em. They gave me a cream sauce.

That night: Hollywood Night. Someone came as Satoshi Nakamoto. We danced despite the eerie sounds coming from our ankles. The last I remember, I was arguing about lightning nodes with a Czech bouncer. The future is here. It wears a leather jacket.

Sunday

Bomb threat at the airport. A Czech man with cornrows and a Call of Duty inspired M4, with fast mags and a surly disposition told me I’m standing in the wrong place. He didn’t need to tell me, I knew.

The flight home was quiet. No words left. We'd seen too much. We walked too much. Learned more than we thought possible. Still intact. Still weird. Forever changed.

Epilogue:

Prague had baptized us in espresso, cryptography, and medieval energy. The Unbank team went looking for partners, strategy, insight...What we found was joy, fear and hodling. That and the undeniable truth:

The revolution won’t be centralized. But it might show up in a beer tram wearing a Lightning hoodie and facemask.