Electric Bitcoin Conference 2021 Celebrates the Growth of the Young Cryptocurrency Industry
After over a year of COVID-19 lockdowns and a cryptocurrency bull market, we expected the first major cryptocurrency conference would be a popular event. But very few would have guessed how popular. Over 12,000 tickets were sold to Bitcoin Conference 2021, and over 20,000 people were estimated to come down to Miami to discuss the cryptocurrency industry.
Wow!
That's a lot of people, period. But those numbers are even more impressive for an industry previously seen as a band of merry financial rejects playing with fake internet money.
Previous cryptocurrency conferences were substantially smaller and had never broken above 10,000 attendees. Even ticket prices hitting as high as $19,000 for premium access didn’t dissuade attendees with deep enough pockets.
And there was an air of excess and excitement that permeated the event, likely boosted by the fact that this was the first mass maskless gathering for mostly everyone in attendance in over a year. Local clubs were bought out to host countless afterparties where conversation flowed as freely as the drinks.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez — who has been a vocal supporter of cryptocurrency adoption — kicked off the conference on Friday with the opening remarks … to a light crowd. Unsurprising, considering most attendees were stuck in a line that took as long as two and a half hours for some.
Friday’s talks were headlined by a fireside chat with Michael Saylor in the morning. Saylor has quickly become a Bitcoin evangelist and a hero amongst the Bitcoin community for his resilience and adherence to the “hold on for dear life” (HODL) strategy. In fact, many people attended the conference for that single talk, which was led by Max Keiser.
Anthony Pompliano, aka Pomp, and the Winklevoss brothers had perhaps the second most popular talk of the day at noon. Pomp has become an animated figure in the cryptocurrency landscape, known for his superhuman presence on Twitter, Inc. (NYSE: TWTR), and the Winklevoss twins have experienced a sort of career renaissance since joining Bitcoin and are claimed to each own more than $1 billion in the King of Crypto. They have started a crypto exchange, Gemini, and are currently leading an NFT platform.
On the other end of the conference warehouse from the panel rooms were the company booths. Firms from all over were in attendance, from crypto wallets, exchanges, custodians, analytic platforms and more. Each booth had multiple people to meet and greet attendees, answer questions and give out free merchandise to spread awareness of the different sectors of this industry and educate people on the different players in the space.
There was also a crypto art gallery on the far end of the warehouse displaying both physical art and non-fungible token (NFT) digital art. Most of the pieces were on auction for anybody willing to part with their Bitcoin (BTC, Tech/Adoption Grade “A-”) in exchange for some interesting art.
The rest of Friday consisted of a number of different talks scattered among the four separate stages, only one of which was adequately air-conditioned. If you’re familiar with South Florida heat in the summer, you understand just how enthusiastic attendees were to be there.
The main theme for Saturday was the macro perspective of Bitcoin from regulation to national adoption. Luckily, attendees did not have to deal with another two-hour wait in the heat on Saturday morning, although the conference organizers did apologize for the previous day by picking up the lunch tab for attendees.
The first talk of the day was a roundtable featuring Mark Yusko, Jeff Booth, Preston Pysh, Greg Foss and Trey Lockerbie. The main topic was the macro perspectives surrounding Bitcoin, notably (hyper)inflation and why Bitcoin is an asymmetrical bet at the moment.
Each speaker is a legendary macro investor in their own right — though, in my opinion, Greg Foss and Mark Yusko were the stars of the show. If you have the time, you should listen to what they had to say.
Tony Hawk was the second act. As people filed in to watch a fireside chat with the legendary skateboarder, he explained how he started his career and willed himself to work through the downtimes (bear markets) and push through until mainstream adoption of his sport.
He also went on to talk about how he first learned about Bitcoin in 2013/2014 and has been a HODLer ever since.
Sticking with the theme of the day, some of the other talks of the day had interesting topics: “Onboarding One Billion Bitcoiners,” “How Not to Lose Your Bitcoin,” “The Moral Case for Bitcoin” and “Bitcoin for Billions, Not Billionaires,” to name a few.
The secondary stage talks surrounded topics like mining, trading and market analytics, while the main stage centered closely around the macro theme.
Another one of the better talks of the conference, and likely my second favorite, was a conversation between Mike Novogratz, CEO of Galaxy Digital Holdings, Inc. (OTCPK: BRPHF), and Charles Cascarilla of Paxos titled “Making Bitcoin’s Infrastructure Ubiquitous.”
The talk was centered around the infrastructure of the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency ecosystem, namely future goals for the industry at large. Novogratz made sure to emphasize the benefit of these large conferences as a celebration of the work put in by everybody in the industry. Fitting, as that is exactly how Bitcoin Conference 2021 felt — a large celebration of the work done by an industry that had been downplayed for years and is on the cusp of mainstream adoption.
While the pat on the back is well deserved, the Saturday afternoon roundtable “Toxic Maximalism: A Feature, Not A Bug” was interesting, as well. The panel featured both YouTube and Twitter personalities of the space, all of whom are “Bitcoin maximalists” — people who exclusively support Bitcoin.
The talk was centered around the thought that Bitcoin maximalism is a way to protect the King of Crypto’s narrative and keep the focus on Bitcoin rather than other cryptocurrencies.
One of the panelists, YouTuber NicoZM, actually said: “Not only do I think Bitcoin toxicity is important, I think it’s absolutely necessary, and if you are against Bitcoin toxicity, you are against Bitcoin, and if you are against Bitcoin freedom. Period.”
Bold take. Suffice to say, not everyone shared the same sentiment on the topic of Bitcoin maximalism.
Erik Voorhees led the next talk centered around cryptocurrency exchanges and responded as soon as he walked out onto the stage.
“Before we begin, did I hear someone on that prior panel say ‘If you’re against toxic maximalism, you’re against Bitcoin and you’re against freedom?’ … Yeah, that’s some bull.”
However, perhaps the most important speech of the conference was saved for last.
Jack Mallers, CEO of Strike, a Bitcoin Lightning network payment company, walked on stage for an announcement titled “One Small Step for Bitcoin, One Giant Leap for Mankind.” In it, he detailed his journey to El Salvador, where he was able to meet with President Nayib Bukele and convince him to accept Bitcoin as legal tender.
Mallers then showed a pre-recorded message from President Bukele, which you can watch" here. We’ve already covered this exciting news, as well as the potential for and roadblocks to other countries following suit, but here is an excerpt directly from the bill:
Central banks are increasingly taking actions that may cause harm to the economic stability of El Salvador. In order to mitigate the negative impact from central banks, it becomes necessary to authorize the circulation of a digital currency with a supply that cannot be controlled by any central bank and is only altered in accord with objective and calculable criteria.
The energy in the conference was ecstatic at this point, and roars exploded as this line was read.
Since the announcement at the conference, the El Salvadorian congress has already approved the bill: Bitcoin is officially legal tender in the country.
This marked a massive milestone on the road to mainstream Bitcoin adoption.
Following the announcement was a live recording of the Tim Dillon podcast on the main stage featuring the Winklevoss twins and Jake Paul. They recapped the conference, talked about NFTs and discussed Jake’s brother Logan Paul’s boxing match scheduled for the following day.
At this point, the conference was unofficially over, and business talks faded as everyone switched into full-on celebration mode that culminated with a Lamborghini giveaway.
The highs and lows of the conference showcased that while this is still a very young — and at times immature — industry, much progress has been made and is worth celebrating.
But now, it's time for the industry to get back to work on the next big goal: mainstream adoption.
Best,
Alex
