For years our Bitcoin meetups looked the same. A table at Bitcoin House Bali, a few laptops, a hardware wallet or two, and mostly people who were already into Bitcoin. Good nights, but you end up talking to the same crowd.
Then we started running AI workshops. And something changed: we get about three times more people at AI + Bitcoin meetups than at Bitcoin-only ones. Most of them are tech people who would never come to a "Bitcoin meetup". They come because they want to build things with AI.
This is what we've learned from a year of doing it.
It started with vibe coding
Back in July 2025 we built a small website on Nostr in under ten minutes, just by describing it to an AI tool (Soapbox's MKStack, and later their Shakespeare). That felt like a cheat code. So we started a monthly Vibe Coding on Nostr workshop for bitcoiners who don't code.
It grew from there. People built sites for a breath-work teacher, for our reading club, for a community member's kittens. One cohort member built a site that teaches how Bitcoin validates a transaction. In early 2026 we added OpenClaw sessions: setting up your own AI assistant, ideally running on your own node.
The turnout told us something. These sessions were full of people who'd never been to one of our Bitcoin workshops.
The trick: slide Bitcoin into an AI workshop
In May we tried something new. We ran an AI workshop and, halfway through, showed people the Nunchuk CLI and agent skills. Suddenly an AI agent has its own Bitcoin wallet.
People couldn't believe it. We showed a Nostr bot that posts memes and gets paid in zaps, running with Alby Hub on an Umbrel node. Nobody had to be convinced that Bitcoin matters. They just watched an agent get paid without a bank, a card or a Stripe account, and the questions started.
A month later, at a local AI meetup (not even ours), about 21 more people saw the same thing: an agent that can make money on Nostr, create content or games, and get paid through Lightning paywalls.
What people actually build
These are not slide decks. People build things on the call, and some of it works surprisingly well. A few things we've seen at recent sessions:
- Sat Runner, a little game we vibe coded with Lightning payments built in through Alby. It now runs as a mini app inside Fedi. No Stripe, no banks, just magic internet money.
- A snake game wired up with Alby agent skills to send and receive payments.
- BDK Dojo, a learning tool built by a community member, inspired by Bitcoin Dojo.
- A Polymarket bot that had already made about $400 by the time it was shown.
- A betting site where AI agents bet against each other on the Bitcoin price, paying with Ark (Second's Keel wallet) and Lightning L402, shown by our guest clearmined.
- Private, personal AI with Maple, and experiments with Buzz and Berd from Block and Wavelength from Lightning Labs.
In October we ran an Agentic Engineering workshop with no slides at all. Bitcoiners just vibe coded real projects on the call. You can read the recap and watch the recording.
Why it works
I think there are three reasons.
People come for something they already want. Everyone wants to get better with AI right now. Bitcoin rides along. You don't have to sell it.
Agents need money that works for machines. An AI agent can't open a bank account. It can hold a Lightning wallet, pay for an API call and get zapped on Nostr. When people see that live, Bitcoin stops being "number go up" and starts being useful.
It leads straight to the good habits. Once your agent has a wallet, the next questions are the ones we care about most: where are the keys, who runs the node, what about privacy? That's how a vibe coder ends up at our self-custody workshop or setting up a node on Umbrel.
It's also a nice way to keep the room full when the market is quiet. Bear markets empty Bitcoin-only meetups. AI meetups don't care what the price did this week.
What they leave with
Someone walks in wanting to build a website with AI. A couple of hours later they've usually touched:
- a Lightning wallet and agent skills (Alby Hub, Nunchuk)
- a node on Umbrel, which can run their AI assistant too
- private AI instead of handing everything to a big tech company
- Nostr, zaps and the idea of an app nobody can shut down
Not everyone becomes a bitcoiner that night. But a lot of them come back.
Come build with us
You don't need to be a developer. You don't even need to own any Bitcoin yet. Bring a laptop and an idea.
Our AI + Bitcoin sessions run online on Discord and in person at Bitcoin House Bali. Check the calendar for the next one, and say hi on Discord. If you want to go deeper after that, have a look at where to start.
They come for vibe coding. They stay for Bitcoin.
This article started as a few posts on our X account. The originals: 28 Jul 2026 · 27 May 2026 · 25 Jun 2026 · 16 Jul 2026 · 17 Sep 2026 · 22 Oct 2026.