Miami (EFE).- The world of bitcoin gathered in Miami Beach to celebrate its annual conference, but this year without the festive spirit, the popular figures and the massive attendance of 2022, as a reflection of the fluctuations in the market of cryptocurrencies.
The organization of the Bitcoin 2023 conference, which is held at the Miami Beach Convention Center, in South Florida (USA), estimates that over the three days of the event some 13,000 people will attend, that is, half of the 26,000 who attended last year’s edition.
David Bailey, president of BTC, organizers of the event, told EFE that this year’s edition can be seen as a reflection of the fall in cryptocurrencies and, specifically, in the price of bitcoin in relation to previous years, especially towards the end of the year. from 2021, when it reached about 69,000 dollars (about 64,000 euros).
financial uncertainty
Today, bitcoin stands at just over $26,000, an increase compared to $15,000 in November of last year, but not enough to calm investor fears, increased in turn by financial uncertainty after the fall. from US banks such as Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank.
“The people here this year are focused on building bitcoin and I like a conference like this, which sends the message that it’s not about the price of bitcoin, it’s about what bitcoin can make possible for humanity,” Bailey said. .
The executive highlighted the participation this year of political figures, among them the Democratic candidate for the 2024 elections Robert Kennedy Jr. and the businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, who is a contender in the Republican Party primaries to choose the candidate for the next presidential election. anus.
“Bitcoin is having a political moment” and “if you want to win the US Presidency you have to win the bitcoin community,” Bailey said, after highlighting that “the size, scale and resources” of the world of this cryptocurrency are generating a great transformation and will engender a “dominant political force”.
Art and market around bitcoin
Until Saturday, the conference will host some 180 presentations by experts and industry leaders, as well as non-regulatory advocates of this currency, including former US congresswoman and former Democratic Party member Tulsi Gabbard, who competed for the nomination. of this grouping in the 2020 presidential elections.
Bitcoin 2023 hosts a fair with more than 40 financial and technological companies that operate in the cryptocurrency environment, as well as a bazaar with various physical products that can be traded with digital currencies.
For its part, the Scare.city platform is responsible for the art gallery built at the event venue, where works are presented in different formats, many of them physical, and some of which are almost a manifesto against fiat currencies. and bitcoin as the key to equality.
Bitcoin car
One of the exponents is Martin Lukas Ostachowski, a German artist based in Canada, who has been working with NFT (Non-Fungible Token) and other variants of digital art since 2018, but has brought sculptures and oil paintings that revolve around clouds, for him a symbol of blockchain technology, because “they are constantly evolving.”
In the exhibition area, the so-called “Bitcoin car” stands out, a Toyota Prius that gained prominence when it was purchased in 2013 for the equivalent of 1,000 bitcoins (when each amounted to just over $20) and has been put up for auction with an entry price of 0.2 bitcoin.
Art, the name with which one of its current three owners was identified, expects to obtain “a seven-digit number” for this vehicle with more than 170,000 miles, covered with signatures of the most representative names in the world of cryptocurrencies.
The Monetary Declaration of Independence (DoMI), a replica of the US declaration of independence measuring 2.7 by 3.6 meters, is on display as it was last year at the headquarters of the conference.
