During summer, after my freshman year at university as a Computer Science student, I was accepted to participate in a Cybersecurity competition in The Hague.

This was organized by several important international institutions: Nato, Europol, EY…

Each of these institutions was supposed to participate in this competition with a team. 

I was selected to compete as part of the Europol team. 

Each team had been assigned a particular challenge, and the one with the better result in their challenge would be the winner. 

In our case, the challenge consisted of researching different ways of inserting data into the Bitcoin Blockchain and how this can be abused by criminals. We took it a step further and developed an application using this technology, as I’ll explain later in this post. 

Our team consisted of 6 people from 5 different countries; Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands. 

I think the team was fantastic and worked in an extremely efficient way. Before starting the competition, we started researching different possibilities for inserting data in the Bitcoin Blockchain and tested some of them with actual Bitcoins from a wallet we made for the whole group. 

For that reason, we were already quite experienced before starting the challenge. Once the time arrived. We went to Europol’s headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands. 

We received a small lecture from our coach, an amiable Polish guy. One of the smartest persons I’ve met. 

After the lecture, we visited the facilities. Working at Europol had always been a dream of mine. So I was feeling like a small kid in a candy store.

We left Europol’s headquarters and took the bus heading downtown. 

We went to a Five Guys restaurant to have lunch and brainstorm for a little bit. 

It was there when one of us came up with the idea of developing an application that used this blockchain insertion technology. It was such a great idea, we all agreed. 

We started working on it. Only two of us had a strong Computer Science background. Me and Maxime, from France. He was a PhD in Intrusion Detection—a great guy. The two of us made lots of progress in the technical development of this idea. 

The competition wouldn’t last long, so we had to work past midnight in the Hotel with a small library in there and ordered some nice pizzas. 

For the final presentations, all the teams had to go to a village in the Netherlands called Zoetermeer. 

We were quite confident because, honestly, our work had been amazing. Moreover, we had prepared a great presentation. And after our pitch, the jury was fascinated by our idea and especially how we stepped out of our challenge's boundaries. 

We won the competition. 

So it was time to celebrate. There are always parties in The Hague, but fortunately, it was late August, and the Opening Week for the University of The Hague was happening during that time, so there was this huge introduction party that night, so it felt like the perfect occasion. 

That party was one of a kind… Great music, good company... 

Unrepeatable experience… As I said earlier, I was as happy as one can be. I was like a kid in a candy store.