MMO Developer Pixelmatic Builds Bitcoin VR Conference

The Magical Crypto Friends have joined forces with MMO game development company Pixelmatic to host a Bitcoin conference with a virtual reality (VR) twist.

The coronavirus pandemic has curbed nearly every Bitcoin conference in 2020. Government restrictions, lockdowns, and travel bans led to a host of events being canceled and postponed during the peak of the crypto conference season earlier this year. But, some adapted.

Many conferences circumvented restrictions by migrating to cyberspace, leaning on video conferencing platforms such as Zoom to keep events viable. Still, virtual seminars via video conferences have yet to experience their popularity breakthrough within the Bitcoin space.

Pixelmatic aims to change this with the upcoming Magical Crypto Conference, MCCVR 2020.

Building upon a forked and re-architected version of Mozilla Hubs, an open-source VR chatroom, Pixelmatic has reimagined the conventional Bitcoin conference, adding functionality to real-time mirror VR avatars across hundreds of rooms. The team also added basic conference features such as speaker and audience management, hot-swapping displayed content, world navigation with portals, avatar access based on category, room access based on category, and intelligent routing of users across replicated rooms. 

According to Pixelmatic, conference attendees can further look forward to hundreds of custom avatars, with speakers entering the conference using VR versions of themselves.

"We wanted to do something different from the standard group Zoom calls that you see for most conferences," said WhalePanda, one of the four Magical Crypto Friends. "This is crypto after all, and we wanted to do something quirky and fun, just like with MCC2019 in New York. So, in the spirit of Magical Crypto Friends, we decided to do a VR conference with a completely customized cartoony world."

MCCVR 2020 kicks off this Friday, September 25th, and will await attendees with a two-day program. Some of the speakers include Blockstream CEO Dr. Adam Back, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor, and Bitfinex CTO Paolo Ardoino.

Who knows, if it goes well, VR could become the new normal for Bitcoin conferences.