On the last day of the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami Beach, comedian Donnell Rawlings starts his routine by noting there are a lot of white people in the audience and then asks if we were involved in storming the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
After a few more repetitions of the word “crypto,” several people in the crowd begin yelling “Bitcoin.” Crypto, after all, is the blanket term for all digital, blockchain-based assets.
To mainstream Bitcoin, the libertarian and anti-state politics associated with it may get shaved off — much as Eternal September changed the culture of the web itself.
Economists have stuff like “consumer confidence indices,” which are not necessary for the study of real things.
Bitcoin is a pure distillation of what John Maynard Keynes called finance’s “animal spirits.” Anyone who’s transacting in Bitcoin has joined a chosen community of fellow believers — Bitcoin is backed by, in practical terms, nothing.
Another booth sells a T-shirt depicting a group of men sitting at a table with a pile of money in the middle, which is held up by human bodies; behind them, the pyramid found on the back of the dollar bill, with its Eye of Providence, looms. No one appears concerned.
Tom Shea, crypto tax leader at accounting firm EY, tells me he saw one such hat, and it made him nervous.
Cryptocurrency entered mainstream consciousness in a big way during the pandemic, when people were bored, frightened, and lonely.
Bitcoin is superior to other coins because it is leaderless — its founder Satoshi Nakamoto, who wrote the famous whitepaper on which all cryptocurrency is based, has vanished — and its governance owes nothing to venture capitalists.
Nayib Bukele, president of El Salvador, may have adopted Bitcoin as a currency, but he dropped out of his speaking slot at the conference.
Besides an outcropping of NFT parties — NFTs are popular with normal people, despised by maxis — there are planes pulling banners that seem designed to piss maxis off.
Bitcoin’s concerns are narrower: it was born in response to the financial crisis as a way of disengaging from the traditional financial system.
When Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year, cryptocurrency donations — both of Ethereum and Bitcoin — were funneled to the Ukrainian government.
So the panel “Wartime Bitcoin” appeals to me — it suggests a discussion of these issues.
“I’m into Bitcoin to take revenge on the government,” says Francis Pouliot, founder of Bull Bitcoin.
“The bigger the communities get, the more we get infiltrated with fucking retards,” says Aleksandar Svetski, a co-founder of Amber, a Bitcoin exchange, and a writer for Bitcoin Magazine, the publication that is also organizing the conference.
Peterson, who wears a pinstriped three-piece suit, does not seem excited despite receiving a standing ovation as he walks out on stage.
Peterson says several things that are unpopular with the crowd, like that leaving the gold standard wasn’t a financial disaster or that the broadscale adoption of Bitcoin over the dollar may have unforeseen consequences.
His speech opens with a video of him from 1999, where he discusses moving from “physical dollars” to “electronic dollars” and that he thinks the platform for this will be the cell phone.
In Thiel’s view, Bitcoin is akin to gold, whereas Ethereum is more of a “high velocity, fast-moving thing.” He then loads a slide that shows two photographs: one is a beefy man in a red hat and bulletproof vest, pointing a gun at the camera.
Cash, stocks, and bonds are effectively government-linked entities because of inflation and regulation, Thiel says.
Thiel then throws some red meat to the audience: an enemies list.
ESGs are a set of non-financial standards that some investors use to screen companies — to make sure they’re eco-friendly, good to employees and customers, and avoiding conflicts of interest, for instance.
A friend tells me he passed by Fox News personality Tucker Carlson in the conference hallway, talking with Nic Carter, a general partner at Castle Island Ventures.
Besides, asks Stephen Barbour, what’s wrong with energy consumption? Barbour is the owner of Upstream Data, a company that lets natural gas and oil facilities mine Bitcoin using energy that might otherwise be vented or burned in a flare.
According to Barbour, there’s nothing we can do that doesn’t emit carbon, and so carbon emissions just indicate that humans are being productive.
Judging Bitcoin on its energy use is “a crazy concept,” according to Amanda Fabiano, the head of mining at Galaxy Digital.
The party, which is mostly for Paxos investors and friends of the company, is meant to emphasize that “Paxos is a classy company,” according to Mike Coscetta, the company’s chief revenue officer.
Behind Coscetta, in a pool lit by rainbow-colored lights, several synchronized swimmers are performing.
Later in the week, I go to LIV nightclub, where personal finance company SoFi is sponsoring a party featuring celebrity host Rick Ross.
One holds the bottle over her head; another holds a sign with lettering such as “LIV Loves Bitcoin.” The rest of them wave what look like mini-lightsabers in the air.
At the eToro NFT party at the Bass, Miami Beach’s contemporary art museum, there are flatscreens on the walls showing digital art.
When I arrive, a DJ is spinning, and there is an NFT of Surfing Jesus, drawn by Rachel Van Der Nacht.
This isn’t the first time that Bitcoin appeared to be outpaced by other blockchains and coins — in 2017, there was an “initial coin offering” craze that ended badly for a lot of people.
But the tension between crypto writ large and Bitcoin itself wasn’t the only thing that made Bitcoin 2022 so strange.
If Mallers’ gambit succeeds, it might make a lot of Bitcoiners wealthy — but it will also radically change their online community.
“Who got the most money in here right now?” Hannibal Buress asks on the last day of Bitcoin 2022.
The price of Bitcoin began falling on April 6th, the first day of the conference.
Get that shit out of here!” As if to express his disgust — after all, $279,000 is a lot closer to zero than it is to one billion — Buress throws the phone off the stage.