'Fiat is Immoral, Evil Money': 3 Days in Miami with the BTC Faithful
12 min readRon Paul takes the stage to a raucous standing ovation from the maskless Miami crowd. Outside the air conditioned Mana Wynwood Convention Center, thousands of BTC worshipers still stand in line in the sweltering morning heat.Â
âWe have a shortage of liberty,â the 85-year-old Libertarian and former Texas congressman declares, âand I do know the people here are very much in tune about the principles of liberty!âÂ
The people here might be in tune with liberty, sure. But itâs hard to know how many of them came for the politics, and how many came to revere the newest of new money. BTC in 2021 is more mainstream than itâs ever been, and its fervent fans have evolved from Paul-style Libertarians and prototypical cypherpunks to pretty much anyone who can find a moral or financial motivation to embrace non-government-backed currency. After the global pandemic prompted the Federal Reserve to pump out more U.S. dollars, and more institutional investors bought in to the narrative, and Elon Musk tweeted a bunch of memes, BTC soared to all-time-highs above $63,000 in April.
Since then, BTC has lost half its value. That drop might make a normie a little nervous to invest. It might, god forbid, create a little FUD (thatâs fear, uncertainty, and doubt).
But not to these believers, who greet BTC crashes as a welcome chance to BTFD (buy the fucking dip). More than 12,000 of them paid for tickets to the two-day conference ($1,500 for standard tickets, $19,795 for âWhale Passesâ that come with an extra day of networking and a few VIP parties), and an estimated 50,000 people descended on the city for the weekend, with or without tickets to the conference. Itâs the biggest in-person event Miami has hosted since before COVID-19 lockdown, and the biggest BTC conference ever.
Iâm here to figure out why theyâre here. Itâs one thing to buy and hold digital money, and praise and pump it on Twitter and Reddit; to fly to Miami amid a pandemic to spread your fervor in person is a wholly different proposition. Is it just pent-up demand to socialize with fellow HODLers? Investors hoping the event will help boost the price further? Bros looking for an excuse to party by the beach?Â
As I look at the faces of the BTC faithful while Ron Paul rants about liberty, an answer is emerging: BTC has become a sort of religion. Its followers can include anyone from your unassuming neighbor to A-list celebrities. And Bitcoiners were frantic to come pray.Â
While the variety of personality types in attendance this weekend is striking, so is the wealth. Iâve never shared a space with so many billionaires (from crypto or otherwise), or seen so many Lambos in hotel parking lots, or been invited to so many yacht parties.Â
In addition to the wealthy and wannabe-wealthy, BTC 2021 has lured the rest of the crypto ecosystem too. ETH and DeFi developers circle the conference like planets orbiting the sun. Theyâre not here to attend the BTC conference, but to host their own satellite parties and come together with decentralized coding comrades. And while many of the âDeFi degeneratesâ still frame crypto as BTC vs ETH, the subtext is clear: It was a BTC event that brought them here, and BTC still sits at the center of the crypto universe.
Hoping to become âhilariously richâ
Ron Paul rambles for 40 minutes, touching on everything from marijuana (he wants to legalize it, but cautions, âIâve never smoked the stuffâ) to the Federal Reserve (âthey donât have any idea what theyâre doing!â) to political correctness (âit has epidemic proportions right nowâ) to President Franklin Roosevelt stealing Americansâ gold back in the 1930s. Paul calls the COVID-19 pandemic âthat thing they created for entertainment purposes.â The crowd roars. (Unsurprisingly, a number of people would get home after their BTC bender in Miami to discover they had caught Covid.)
He hardly says anything about BTC.Â
After his oration, Paul post-games with Bailey on the grounds of the convention center. The massive set-up includes several outdoor domes for smaller talks and vendors, cornhole boards, a basketball court, a skate ramp, three food truck areas, and a âWhales Onlyâ section marked by two towering, orange octopus tentacles. (Days after the conference, TRON founder Justin Sun coughed up $450,000 in BTC to buy a âGoldenâ NFT version of his Whale Pass.)
Bailey wonât say how much revenue the conference will rack up, but between the $1,500 regular tickets, Whale Passes, and sponsorships, the figure must be in the tens of millions of dollars. Brand sponsors could pay for booths, or pay to put their name on everything from signage to tents to hand sanitizer stations. (âThey told me we could have our name on the urinal cakes for $100,000,â says one crypto company sales exec who did not want to be named; organizer BTC Inc. denies this.)Â
The conference is enormously oversubscribed, a fact that is constantly visually emphasized by the massive crowds inside the convention center, lengthy food truck wait times, and long snaking lines for the menâs bathroomsâno lines for the womenâs.
Thatâs not to say there are no women at the conference. I eyeball it at 85% men, and still far more women than BTCâs hyper-male image would have you believe.
âI started investing in BTC two and a half years ago, as a mature person who didn’t have a retirement in place,â says 75-year-old Hattie Parker from Florida. âI thought I was gonna have to work till I croak.â Now, Parker evangelizes BTC in her own way: as a crypto astrologer. She offers Tarot-inspired card readings and says her mission is to dispel the FUD that keeps people from buying BTC.Â
On a panel earlier in the day, Olaf Carlson-Wee, an early Coinbase employee and founder of crypto VC firm Polychain Capital, predicted the price of one BTC would hit $1 million in âthree to four years.â Parker heard this with delight; if Carlson-Weeâs prediction bears out, sheâs set to become a millionaire.
Thatâs the dream for so many here: become BTC rich, if they arenât already. Bailey estimates around 50 ânon-cryptoâ billionaires attended the conference. And if you count the crypto billionaires, âwell over 100â billionaires are strolling the convention center.
âThe more casual they look, the higher the likelihood is that they’re balling,â Bailey says. Heâs wearing a t-shirt and shorts, and says âno commentâ when I ask if heâs one of the billionaires.
The well-worn crypto meme is on naked display here: âEveryone Is Getting Hilariously Rich and Youâre Not.â In fact, Jeremy Gardner, the man who was featured and mocked in that infamous 2018 New York Times article, is here to interview Tony Hawk.Â
At the time the article ran, Gardner was lord of the Crypto Castle, a San Francisco house hosting the newly crypto-rich, and was helping companies do ICOs (initial coin offerings). The article âwas one of the lowest points of my career,â Gardner, now 29, recalls. âIt felt like a really gross misrepresentation of who I was.â Â
The story captured the first big BTC frenzy and created a meme that has persisted: coin bros flaunting their hilarious wealth. BTC tanked 50% in the month following the article, turning the headline from meme to punch line.
But it led Gardner to Hawk, who invested in his fund in 2018 after reading the Times article. The original San Francisco Crypto Castle is no more, and neither is the short-lived Miami incarnation. Gardner lives in L.A. and has an ownership stake in the Miami mega-club Space, which he purchased with BTC. Ownership in the nightclub will give Gardner regular dividends. âThat’s great,â he explains, âbecause I have not had a reliable source of income my entire adult life. I go broke every once in a while and have to sell crypto.â
The sudden wealth of the BTC crowd, and the convergence of Bitcoiners with mainstream finance, is on full display at a party hosted by brokerage app eToro at Miami Beach club Jazid. Downstairs, a neon sign outside the bathroom begs, âPlease donât do coke in the bathroom.â Upstairs, beautiful women line the bar, which sits next to a stripper pole. Fire dancers walk up and down the stairs, followed by men holding fire extinguishers. An eToro employee muses that this is his âoffice party.â
David Zervos, an analyst at Jefferies frequently seen on financial television, is at the bar. So is Gregory Wojciechowski, CEO of the Bermuda Stock Exchange, in a hat with a glowing green rim. He tells me he came to the Miami BTC conference to see how the space has developed, and how it might âintersect with traditional capital market infrastructure.â (Jazid is surely the place to find out.)
Wojciechowski says he holds âa coupleâ BTC, but still advises extreme caution to investors. âI will say to you, and say to youââhe addresses my recorderââthat we need to be careful, really careful, and make sure the folks that want to get involved with this understand the risk.âÂ
Then his comms guy walks over looking very concerned, and the interview comes to a halt.
âShy ETH boysâ and âa bunch of nerdsâ on a DeFi boat
Like at any conference, the best action often happens outside the official event, on the fringe. Thatâs where the ETH and DeFi people stay throughout the weekend, skirting around BTC 2021. (Just donât ask the Bitcoiners about DeFi; an email sent by the conference to attendees ahead of the event expressly forbade it: âBTC Only! This is a BTC-only conference. Please stay focused and on topic at the event. Save conversations about other protocols and cryptocurrencies for outside the conference.”)
One such party, hosted on a three-story yacht by DeFi lending protocol Aave, was billed as the boat party not to miss. The AAVE token, built on the ETH network, is up 700% since it launched in October 2020, making the people behind it very rich, and very eager to party.Â
Perhaps too eager. Men in their twenties wearing colorful tank tops and Hawaiian shirts jostle their way toward the gangplank, holding up their VIP wristbands. But before they can board the boat, the crew members announce that itâs too full. The handful of hopefuls still in line canât take this lying down. They crowd onto the gangplank, despite repeated pleas from the crew to step aside for their own safety. Pushing and shoving ensues. One young man tries to bum rush his way past boat security, and a couple others attempt to scuttle onto the back of the boat, before security spots them and shouts that they wonât be responsible for the bodies. The S.S. Aave edges away from the dock, leaving some 20 people behind, wristbands be damned.
One of the men who looked most desperate to get on the boat, Alexander Choriaty, 29, canât quite explain his motives for entry. âA bunch of nerds,â he says, watching the yacht depart. Still, he lingers by the dock for a while, looking forlorn.
The Aave boat-boarding scene is a little at odds with the image of âshy ETH boysâ that Kiara Skye, Allie Eve Knox, and Belle Creed, all sex workers who accept crypto as payment, paint for me at an Airbnb they rented in South Beach. If three girls are together, shy ETH boys âwonât speak to you,â Creed explains. âWhen you split up, theyâll sayââshe makes her voice quiet and meekâââHi, what project are you working on?ââ
Itâs not the same with Bitcoiners, Knox says. âTheyâre just radicals and anarchists, and see who can scream the loudest. Itâs not super welcoming.â
Knox is an advisor to the adult webcam platform SpankChain, which operates on ETH. At a party hosted by SpankChain CEO Ameen Soleimani at his Airbnb in Brickell, guests include a mix of ETH investors, token project CEOs, developers using the smart contract coding language Solidity, and at least one crypto blogger. In a lounge chair on AstroTurf, porn performer Brenna Sparks talks about wanting to get more into NFTs (sheâs minted some tweets). A group of devs meet in real life for the first time, having worked together exclusively online. On the roof, sudden rainfall breaks up a topless hot tub session.
The ETH people have a different vibe from the BTC crowd, and theyâre proud of it. One ETH investor whom I meet by the kitchen says his image of a Bitcoiner is a libertarian living in a cabin in the woods with guns and prepper supplies.
With BTC mainstream enough to attract 50,000 people to Miami during a global pandemic, the gun-toting Libertarian Bitcoiner is an increasingly outdated caricature. Yes, that ethos remains alive and well among those whoâve swallowed the âorange pill,â but their world is merging with the broader finance world, as Wall Street types, hedge fund founders, and publicly traded companies all pour in. Crypto is also blurring with hot emerging industries like esports, sports betting, and cannabis.
Paris Hilton and fluffypony walk into a club
The conferenceâs satellite events make it clear how tied ETH projects still are to the BTC crowd, whether DeFi diehards care to admit it or not.Â
On Saturday night, Miamiâs Story nightclub hosts Questlove as DJ for a party sponsored by Grow.House, which describes itself as âa decentralized cannabis NFT game that educates users about cannabis and cryptocurrencies.â (NFTs are the digital ownership deeds that became red hot earlier this year, and most NFTs are built on ETH.) The other sponsors are Maxim and Yat, a company that lets you choose a unique âuniversal emoji username.â (To what end, I canât imagine.)
A woman in a cannabis leaf bikini sits on the bar offering, âJoint or blunt?â I ask her if this is ârealâ weed or CBD weed, considering recreational marijuana still isnât legal in Florida. She just nods and smiles, and hands me a shiny purple Ziploc of green bud.
Fetty Wap, whoâs working with Grow.House, joins Questlove in the DJ booth. High stakes poker player Tom Dwan, who holds some crypto, parties next to the booth occupied by Paris Hilton, whoâs wearing a dress covered in emojis, a nod to Yat.
The heiress, who has minted multiple NFTs, looks happy and somehow even approachable behind her large bodyguard, who isnât letting anyone into the booth with her except VIPs. She happily dances, chats, and poses for photos with Yat cofounder Naveen Jain, long-time Monero maintainer Riccardo Spagni (aka âfluffyponyâ online), and BTC Twitter influencer Dan Held. She keeps her sunglasses on the whole time.Â
More than anything else I witness in my three-day crypto sojourn, the Christian BTC Prayer Breakfast on the first morning of the conference, just before Ron Paulâs talk, is the best paean to the intersection of faith and BTC. The breakfast is hosted by Jimmy Song, clad in his signature wide-brimmed cowboy hat and boots.
Nick Smith, a 24-year-old attendee from Nashville, tells me it was Songâs book âThank God for BTCâ that taught him about the âcorrupt nature of central banking.â BTC, it turns out, offers a Christianity-compatible solution to the worldâs money problems.Â
Song is the ultimate BTC maximalistâhe believes there is only one crypto god, and that god is BTC. But for Song and the others at the prayer breakfast, thereâs also Jesus. Song calls Christians an âemerging subgroupâ in their ecosystem.Â
Itâs one of many emerging subgroups, and all of them present and accounted for at BTC 2021. There are pro athletes, like skater Tony Hawk, NFL player Russell Okung, boxer Floyd Mayweather (speaking at the conference two days before his fight against YouTuber Logan Paul) and NBA player Kevin Love (he declines an interview but says he holds BTCâand only BTC). There are Black Bitcoiners, like Lamar Wilson, cofounder of the Black BTC Billionaires group on Clubhouse, who tweeted that BTC 2021 boasted âthe most Black folk Iâve seen at a BTC conf outside of The Black Blockchain Summit!!â There are families visiting from middle-America, celebrities and their stans, crypto-friendly politicians, and even aspiring politicians. At the Christian BTC Prayer Breakfast, I meet a man who plans to run for governor of Illinois and aims to turn Chicago into the next âBTC city,â inspired by Miami. Song proudly informs his guests that Cynthia Lummis, the U.S. Senator from Wyoming, might show up. (If she does, sheâll be only the third woman in the room, including me.)
Song, holding court and making enthusiastic hand gestures throughout the breakfast, is BTC incarnate, a shepherd for fellow believers who couch their BTC-pumping in moral terms. He reminds me why heâs come to Miami: âFiat is immoral, evil money.â
—
I had hoped to start my BTC weekend with prayer and end it with guns, but on Sunday morning I find out âBTC 2021 Range Day,â an event for Bitcoiners who like guns (3D-printed guns welcome!), is canceled. âI was not able to get the ammo ordered in time,â the organizer tells me. He promises to get everything planned earlier next year.Â
The conference organizers are already selling early-bird tickets to BTC 2022, so the faithful can make a return pilgrimage to the temple of BTC. Dates TBA, location TBA. Next year’s gathering couldnât possibly be bigger and crazier than this one⊠right?