In the season finale of the television show The Office, Andrew Bernard remarks, “I wish there was a way to know you’re in the good ole days before you’ve actually left them.”
I have a feeling I’m in the good ole days right now. And I’m cherishing every minute.
Leaving Bitcoin Miami 2022 was simultaneously sad and satisfying. Sad that the conference was coming to an end, knowing it would be another 365 days or more until the next large-scale Bitcoin party. It’s not every day that you can stroll with Jack Mallers for four or five minutes talking about great parties at Mizzou while on camera with Vice (by the way Jack, if that clip doesn’t make the cut, I’d love it as a personal keepsake. HMU.).
The satisfying part is like the saying “don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.” I will remember these celebrations revolving around Bitcoin for my entire life. This is a revolution, but only a few thousand or million people know it.
Connecting with the people building out this new monetary network doesn’t happen every day, either. It’s great to share your passions with people that are wearing the same wide-eyed smile as you.
To many, it’s just another conference – Bitcoin or basketball or boats, who cares. But to Bitcoiners – to the people that really understand what’s happening money and the implications Bitcoin will have – it’s so much more than a conference. It’s surreal.
Miami feels like a tech conference that would’ve taken place in the 1990s where Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Marc Andreessen are speaking on panels, only the panel speakers are celebrities in the Bitcoin space. I was more excited to shake Preston Pysh’s hand in Miami than I was to high-five Anthony Davis in a Whataburger a couple years ago.
I believe we are in an especially rare moment in Bitcoin’s time for these get-togethers. Bitcoin’s fiat price is hovering in the low $40,000s. Early adopters have certainly amassed a fortune to many people’s standards. But that fortune isn’t massive enough to prevent them from walking around freely among thousands and thousands of strangers quite yet. But that won’t always be the case.
Once Bitcoin really starts to take off past $100k and $200k per coin, I think many of these prominent speakers will need to take more serious security measures. Which ultimately means only being at the conference to do their panel and then leaving, or just not showing up altogether. Gone will be the days of eating lunch with them or running up to shake their hands.
I spoke with Jeff Booth about my hypothesis while he was relaxing with his lunch. That’s the cool thing about these conferences – you can bother people like Jeff and he won’t shoo you away. He told me that as these celebrations progress and Bitcoin’s price continues to appreciate, less and less focus will be on the tech itself. More people will understand and use the tech, which requires less focus from the panel speakers. But as the tech begins to become “boring” due to being further engrained in everyday life, the product lines are going to explode in popularity and excitement. More panels will be focused on new product capabilities and new companies building, which will keep these conferences chugging along, albeit with new faces as the stars.
To me, a fair comparison of the Bitcoin conferences is like going to a courthouse in the 1770s in Philadelphia while Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and dozens of others were deciding how to shape the Declaration of Independence, because Satoshi’s whitepaper could have the same sort of worldwide ramifications as the document our Founding Fathers signed more than 250 years ago.
Central banks across the world have stolen the time and effort of millions of people and have been doing so for decades. This is done through monetary debasement. When the money is debased and loses its value, so does your time and effort that went into acquiring that money. Central bankers’ intentions might be good, and debasement may just be an unfortunate side effect, but this is how it is in the world today. Good intentioned or not.
It’s time that ends. It’s time for the power of money to be taken out of the hands of the few and returned to the many. It’s time that regular people from Missouri to Mongolia have their time and effort respected again. It’s time to have money that works properly. Money works properly when it can be transferred across both time and space. Bitcoin far exceeds the dollar’s ability to transfer value across time and exceeds gold’s and other past monies ability to transfer value across space.
Bitcoin is money but 95% of the world doesn’t know it yet. The attendees in Miami and I are in on one of the most profound secrets in all of human history.
I am counting down the days to celebrate with them again!
