'One currency change every generation,' how monetary skepticism spearheaded cryptocurrency adoption in Czechia
Czechia, a country of 10.7 million people in Central Europe, is known for its beautiful capital (Prague), rich history, and good beer. Within the last decade, however, one can now add cryptocurrency adoption to that list. In fact, the Trezor wallet, the first cryptocurrency hardware wallet in the world, was invented here in 2014, and is still going strong. Its parent company, SatoshiLabs, has expanded into creating secure chips for electronic hardware via Tropic Square and advancing cryptocurrency education via Invity.
What's more, the country also gave birth to the world's first Bitcoin (BTC) mining pool — Braiins (Slush Pool), with close to 1.3 million BTC mined since 2010. Then there's General Bytes, one of the world's largest crypto ATM chains with close to 8,000 machines installed. Furthermore, the country's biggest e-commerce retailer, Alza, accepts BTC purchases and has been writing deep-dive articles on Bitcoin and technology in the past years.
But what drove this small nation of 10.7 million people, out of all places, to create a disproportionally large presence in the crypto sphere? In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, Josef Tětek, SatoshiLabs' in-house economist, explains the phenomena in detail. Tětek also happens to be Trezor wallet's brand ambassador, writes for Bitcoin Magazine, and holds a Master's Degree (equivalent) in economic policy from the Prague University of Economics and Business. Here's what he had to say:
During the interwar era, Czechoslovakia was an industrial powerhouse led by Škoda Works, one of the largest European industrial conglomerates making everything from cars to tramways to aircraft to military equipment. It was also stood as the only Central European country with a
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