The World’s biggest gathering for Bitcoin fanatics, the Bitcoin Miami Conference 2023, is going lackluster this year, but why? Every year one of the biggest gatherings takes place for the enthusiasts of the darling cryptocurrency. It was the conference where Virtalik Buterin pitched the idea of Ethereum, and the rest is history. Currently underway between May 18 and 20, 2023, at Miami Beach, it is supposed to host 15,000 guests vs. 35,000 in 2022.
Bitcoin Miami is Lackluster this Year
The likely cause of such a downturn is crypto winter. This phenomenon occurred in 2022 and caused a drop in pieces of almost every digital asset for a considerable time. Even though 2023 has been a relatively good year, with BTC almost touching $31,000. But the supposed attendees at the event hint that the aftereffects of crypto winter still lurk around.
BTC Inc., a magazine from BTC Media LLC, a Bitcoin-focused media group, organizes the event. Organizers claim it to be the World’s biggest congregation for Bitcoin proponents. The event started on May 18 and would end after an exclusive party on May 20, 2023.
General admission tickets are priced at $999, while Industrial Pass providing access to the “Official Networking App” costs $2,299. The event would feature over 180 talks; some sessions are aptly named “Boom to Bust: Wall Street & FTX Aftermath,” The Great Ordinal Debate,” and “Bitcoin-Powered Nuclear Energy.”
The list of notable speakers in the event would include the Democrat Presidential Candidate for 2024 and a prime Bitcoin proponent, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., well-known financial journalist and author Michael Lewis, U.S. Representative for North Carolina, and House of Financial Services Committee chair Patrick McHenry, former representative for Hawaii, and ex-presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, and Eric Weinstein a financial commentator and hedge fund director in the U.S.
For a congregation where once there was a waiting list to get into, this year, only 15,000 people registered to participate. This number is lower than 50% of the previous iteration, which was attended by nearly 35,000 Bitcoin fanatics from around the World.
Crypto conferences are crucial meeting points like watering holes in Jungle during scorching heat. As the most crypto industry works remotely, such events become even more critical, reconnecting and networking with like-minded people. But the harsh crypto winter and significant events like FTX-saga, Terra Ecosystem collapse, etc., caused prices of crypto entities to break the floor.
This scenario caused many investors to remain in red despite the market slowly recovering in 2023. Also, many firms and individual investors curtailed travel and marketing budgets to save whatever was left, supposedly causing a downfall in Bitcoin2023 attendees. Similarly, another crypto gathering last month, Consensus 2023, also suffered a drop from 20,000 attendees in 2022 to around 15,000 in 2023.
Nancy J. Allen is a crypto enthusiast and believes that cryptocurrencies inspire people to be their own banks and step aside from traditional monetary exchange systems. She is also intrigued by blockchain technology and its functioning.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2023/05/19/bitcoin2023-miami-attendance-less-than-50-crypto-winter-blamed/