Encode Club devotes an evening to the collision of artificial intelligence and crypto on September 15, 2026, at its own Encode Hub in Shoreditch, London. The session pairs a fireside chat with structured networking over drinks and pizza, wrapping by 9:30 pm. Speakers represent two operators living the theme daily: stablecoin payroll firm Zebec and global exchange Bitget. Attendance requires an approved registration.
An Evening at Encode Hub
The venue doubles as the organizer's home base: Encode Hub at 41 Pitfield Street sits in the heart of Shoreditch, the coworking space behind Encode Club's broader operation of hackathons, accelerators, and education programs. The listing touts a community of half a million professionals worldwide — scale that shows up locally as a reliable turnout for weekday events.
The evening format suits the topic. After-work timing pulls in employed engineers, product people, and founders who cannot spare conference-length days, while the fireside structure keeps the conversation discursive rather than slide-bound. Doors open at 6:30 pm for check-in, leaving ample runway for early arrivals to settle in before the talk begins at 7:15.
The Questions on the Table
The published discussion scope is unusually concrete for an AI event. It spans how machine learning is reshaping crypto products, user experiences, data analysis, customer support, security monitoring, and operational efficiency; how AI-enabled tools are changing the way people interact with wallets, decentralized applications, and market information; and where automation genuinely simplifies processes versus merely relocating complexity.
Two agenda items distinguish the evening from the usual hype cycle. Understanding tool capabilities and limits confronts what AI cannot do — a rarer conversation than what it can. Responsible adoption and oversight tackles judgment: building the financial literacy and critical-thinking habits needed to steer automated tools rather than defer to them. For an industry absorbing AI into trading and research workflows, both themes cut close to operational risk.
Voices From Zebec and Bitget
Simon Babakhani co-founded Zebec after more than a decade in senior private equity and advisory roles at Breyer Capital, Parthenon, and Oliver Wyman. Zebec itself processes over five hundred million dollars in stablecoin payroll volume across more than 280 enterprise clients, spanning payroll, payments, banking infrastructure, and Mastercard-backed cards. His vantage point: AI applied inside a real payments business, not a laboratory.
Lucia Camarillo brings nine years of global marketing experience, over three of them specialized in web3, and currently drives growth at Bitget — an exchange serving more than 125 million users, with over 200 digital assets available to UK spot traders and a stated commitment to user education. Between the two, the fireside covers both builder-side automation and platform-scale user protection, mirroring the event's innovation-versus-safety framing.
How the Night Runs
The schedule holds few surprises and benefits from that. Welcome and check-in at 6:30 pm, fireside chat at 7:15, networking drinks and pizzas from 7:45, doors close at 9:30. The hundred-minute post-talk window is where most attendees extract their real value — follow-up conversations with speakers are normal at this scale, and the pizza tables tend to do as much matchmaking as the stage.
Because registration requires host approval, submit early rather than same-day. Prepare one genuine question — the format favors depth over volume — and if the AI-safety thread matters to you professionally, arrive early enough to claim a seat near the front rather than networking your way in late.