Iconic Bitcoin Hackerspace Closes Downtown Location After 12 Years Due To

DCTRL, a Bitcoin hub and hacker space out of Vancouver, the fair-weather Canadian city, has announced the sunset of its downtown basement location, iconic among early adopters for its tinkerer mindset and hardware hacker culture. The community will be migrating to a new location in the coming weeks, and updates to the vision of the hub. The Vancouver Bitcoin community is renowned for having set up the first Bitcoin ATM in History, with DCTRL specifically having hosted a variety of renowned characters that, over the years, gave this industry much of its cultural and innovative flair. 

Visited by some of the most influential people in the Bitcoin and broader Crypto industry in its 12 year run, DCTRL is far from done being a hub of the Canadian Bitcoin and Crypto scene. Preparing to move due to a change in zoning laws, plans to relaunch in a new location are in the works, as active members consolidate the historical moments, relationships, and lessons learnt during perhaps the longest-running Bitcoin hackspace experiment in the young industry’s history.

It all started at Waves cafe on Howe Street, in Vancouver. The Bitcoiniacs, a group of four OGs that operated a Bitcoin brokerage at the time — still active to this day — decided it was time to get the robots involved. So they rigged up an ATM to sell bitcoin to the public, rallied the local Vancouver tech, finance, and burgeoning crypto scene, and hosted a historical launch party. 

“The first Bitcoin ATM in the world was a massive event,” said Freddie Heartline, a Bitcoin enthusiast and co-founding member of the DCTRL hacker space. In an exclusive interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Heartline went on to recall the event, saying, “Oh man, the vibes were incredible. It literally felt like a really good rave. But it was smarter. Way smarter. That’s how it all came about, actually.” referring to the founding of DCTRL.  

The timing for the Bitcoin ATM event was perfect; it was October 2013, and Bitcoin had just gone from a few dollars to almost 150, consolidated for a few weeks around 100, and was getting ready to take a shot at 1,000 a coin. The energy across the Bitcoin community as electric, this was the end of the longest bear market in Bitcoin history, in a way this rise in price was proof that Bitcoin was here to stay.

The launch of the first Bitcoin ATM, as a result, made national and international news. The idea of a Bitcoin ATM being operational was considered a historical milestone in the adoption of Bitcoin as money. 

Tens of thousands of Canadian dollars worth of bitcoin were sold that day and over the coming weeks, likely creating a few millionaires over the years, spawning copycat ATM projects and even a handful of Bitcoin ATM manufacturing companies to boot. It also inspired the creation of the DCTRL hacker space, called “Decentral Vancouver” at the time. 

Cameron Gray, another Bitcoin enthusiast who was volunteering with the Bitcoiniacs event and a friend of…