It has a certain effect to be back on intercontinental flights after a couple of years. And it makes a certain effect to go back to South Beach that survives tornadoes, survives the increasingly devastating Spring Break of American students, survives Ultra, one of the best electronic music festivals in the world, hosts tennis greats in the best possible way and makes you find in great shape for Bitcoin 2022, the largest conference ever related to the mother of all crypto.
More than 25 thousand people registered for the event and they gather for 4 days at the brand new, huge Convention center, wanted by the municipal administration to boost business tourism in the city: those who are not happy to come here are some day, with the excuse of a good conference? Would you rather that maybe organized, say, in Minnesota?
The ticket for Bitcoin 2022 costs around a thousand dollars, 20% less if you pay in Bitcoin, but the bitcoiner tends to pay in dollars, a currency that devalues, and Bitcoins, which fight inflation, are kept. Then there are the $ 17,000 bills, reserved for the “Whales”, the whales, as holders of large quantities of bitcoins are called. For that money you have free food and drinks and a series of confidential meetings with the cream of the crypto industry.
It was almost a miracle to find a room in a hotel in South Beach a month ago. And find it for less than $ 250 a night, that decent hotels cost at least twice as much and good ones at least a thousand, breakfast not included. On the other hand, an American coffee and a muffii are $ 9 and a half and a poke 34, plus the tip. This is to say that inflation gallops, therefore cryptocurrencies are increasingly seen as the antidote to it. If many in Europe are wondering what exactly is the role of bitcoins in Putin’s war against Ukraine, here is inflation dominating, in the sense of how to fight it. None of the 25,000 present, thinks that governments and classic finance have the tools to make it harmless to the saver, and that only a prudent approach to crypto can protect the citizen from it.
In the meantime, Bitcoin, and crypto in general, have become a territorial marketing tool, the thing that until a few years ago cities all over the world were doing by presenting large urban redevelopment projects with great fanfare, or applying for the organization of Olympics or others. major sporting events.
If twenty years ago many cities competed with each other to become “Startup cities”, today many are trying to present themselves as ideal ecosystems to attract and develop the crypto industry which, therefore, has also become a tool for rethinking by numerous city administrations , of its development and attraction strategy. In this, Miami wants to be a leading city. But let’s also think of New York, Lisbon, Lugano: who in one way, who another, all try to become the ideal city to attract companies, employees, investors of this industry destined to grow exponentially in the next two decades.
But there’s a problem. Among the countless thousands of people I met today at Bitcoin 2022 Industry Day, women were a tiny minority, I would say no more than 10% of the total. And people of color, or at least non-Caucasians, even fewer, no more than one in twenty. In short, Bitcoin and crypto were born to change the world, but for now they remain firmly in the hands of white men.
The capitalization of Bitcoin today is roughly $ 800 billion. That of all cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, is more or less than 2.1 trillion dollars. The capitalization of Amazon is 1.6 trillion, double that of Bitcoin, that of Apple slightly higher than that of crypto as a whole. I doubt that these companies are overwhelmingly populated by male whites. So even in this the digital assets industry has a long way to go.
In the meantime Bitcoin, in this very day, has exceeded 19 million: only 2 million remain to be mined. It is very easy to predict that, in fact, they are all already purchased, perhaps by people and companies that today do not even dream of it.