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Mati Greenspan’s boss bribed him with 1 BTC to join Twitter: Hall of Flame

Name: Mati Greenspan
Anonymous: No
Twitter followers: 48,000
Known for: The face of eToro for years, Greenspan is a rare moderate voice on Crypto Twitter.

Who is this guy anyway?

The friendly but cynical Mati Greenspan became a well-known crypto market commentator in publications such as Forbes, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal as a senior market analyst for eToro until he set off on his own by founding research and advisory firm Quantum Economics in 2019. Hes been on Cointelegraphs Top 100 Notable People in Blockchain for the last two years.

Unlike the talking croissants and anime whales on Twitter, Greenspan is personally accountable for his views, which may explain why hes a lot less bolshie and provocative than some. With 48,000 followers, Greenspan doesnt have the biggest account but does offer informed market insights and alpha. 

His slightly obsessive attitude toward crypto stems from working as a market analyst in the 2000s and watching the financial crisis from an insider perspective.

He believes we have the power to completely displace the traditional finance industry in the next five to 10 years.

Mati Greenspan
Greenspan enjoys long drives in space.

How did he get popular on Twitter?

Greenspan joined Twitter in 2012, the same year he started as a market analyst at eToro. His former boss pushed everyone at the company to start up an account and offered them 1 BTC for their trouble.

Greenspan was one of the few to take up the free Bitcoin offer, and he credits this as the start of his journey down the crypto rabbit hole. His following grew through interviews with major media outlets, which sometimes embedded or quoted his tweets.

He set out to accumulate 10,000 followers, and it was only after high-profile figures such as Crypto Banter host Ran Neuner endorsed him on Twitter that his profile started to rise dramatically, and his followers jumped from 3,000 to 10,000.

Greenspan figured if it worked once, it would work again, and he recalls contacting close friends and saying, Hey, can you give me an endorsement?

What to expect?

Dont expect laser eyes til $100K content from Greenspan. He describes his takes as cynical and sarcastic but says his skepticism has protected him from ever being rugged or scammed and isnt afraid to call out bullshit when he sees it.

If I put out information that I later find out is false information, Ill always disclose it.

Twitter beefs

As a more moderate voice, Greenspan gets into fairly moderate fights, mainly with hardcore fans of various currencies who dont think Greenspan is hardcore enough about their various currencies.

Mild Beef: Saifedean Ammous, author of The Bitcoin Standard.

Saifedean Ammous tweeted asking for one good reason why Bitcoins rigidity and reluctance to change werent totally awesome. Greenspan gave him several and got blocked.

But if you havent been blocked by Ammous, youre not trying. Were not even going to embed the tweet because no one would see it.

Mild Beef: Pete Rizzo, editor of Bitcoin Magazine

Greenspan replied to a tweet by Bitcoin Magazines Pete Rizzo about the Bitcoin 2021 conference by enthusing it was the Biggest crypto conference ever!

Rizzo corrected him saying *Bitcoin* and instructed him in the correct terminology: Its a Bitcoin conference, about Bitcoin. Bitcoin is subjective and hence why it is used as an adjective.

In the replies, various acolytes said they were blocking Greenspan for having a low IQ or being a scammer, while one anon account threatened him, saying, Watch your back bro.

Medium Rare Beef: The LINK Marines (Chainlinks frog army)

Greenspan issued a public service announcement that anyone that has been holding LINK since the early days, now the price is at $19, you should take some profits.

This started a firestorm of reaction from LINKs frog army. Not a single one of them knew a single thing about finance and trading, he says, adding this type of crypto fan seems to want to hold the asset forever and never realize any profits.

Chainlinks price has fallen 74% since Greenspans PSA.

Top Quality Beef: Hexicans

Hex fans were upset that he called the project a scam and predicted founder Richard Heart Win would go to jail.

Greenspan spent days arguing with the Hexicans over the alleged inherent scamminess or otherwise of Hex amid frequent claims that Greenspan himself is a scammer who shilled FTX, which he says is a complete lie.

So, two opposing sides calling each other scammers its the perfect Crypto Twitter fight.

If nothing else, it shows that Greenspan is unlikely to have any skeletons in his closet, because exposing them is how @RichardHeartWin took down the now disgraced Australian influencer @AlexSaundersAU when he leveled similar charges against Hex. 

Twitter likes

Greenspan takes a fairly dim view of most of Crypto Twitter and says its disgusting how many accounts are run by scam artists and manipulators.

But hes now a big fan of Coffeezilla (334,000 Twitter followers) after watching his interview with Sam Bankman-Fried. Until he watched the interview, he said, It was easy to give SBF the benefit of the doubt or fall for his spin that it was all a mistake. But Coffezillas interview showed a side to the SBF story that major publications, such as The New York Times, didnt uncover.

Sample tweets

Looking ahead

Greenspan thinks Twitter was headed in the wrong direction even before Elon Musk took over. 

Its become too easy for bad actors to game the system. Personal information, influencing options or just controlling the conversation are all up for the highest bidder in Web2.

However, he says he was recently able to use Twitter and his newsletter to raise double the amount of funding targeted for his Bitcoin mining facility in Texas, something hes proud of during a bear market and without any venture capital funding.

This was achieved within a few hours by Greenspan tweeting to his followers on May 24: If anyone has balls of steel and $50K to invest, I have a deal of a lifetime for you.

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Socios boss’ goal? To knock crypto out of the park

What is a sports fans dream come true? To be the announcer at an AC Milan home game, in front of 75,000 roaring Rossoneri fans?

To play a football match on the hallowed turf of your beloved FC Barcelona?

To tour the garage of an F1 team pre-race, then watch the Monza Grand Prix from a VIP box?

These are some of the biggest rewards handed out as incentives to join Chiliz, or CHZ-based, fan token schemes on Socios.com. There are also lesser, but still desirable prizes, like meeting your sports idols, choosing the music to be played when your team scores a goal, or voting on the design of next years team strip.

Socios.com has now partnered with over 170 sporting clubs across 25 countries and 10 sports, including American football, soccer, basketball, cricket, esports, ice hockey, mixed martial arts, motorsports, tennis and rugby. Eighty of these organizations have already launched their official fan tokens on the Socios.com app, and it has high-profile deals with giants, such as Manchester City, Barcelona and the Aston Martin F1 Team. 

Alex Dreyfus
Alex Dreyfus chats with Magazine from his office. Source: Julian Jackson

The team captain behind this is Socios CEO Alex Dreyfus. Im French, 45 years old right now. And Ive been an internet entrepreneur for the last 25 years. I left school before [I was] 18 years old. I created my first company in 1995 at the beginning of the internet. Im the generation of the Web 1.0. So, for the last 25 years, my journey always has been to try to use the technology to create something that does not exist and try to embrace it before the others.

He started by developing a French city guide that first covered Paris, then 36 other French cities. A serial entrepreneur, he moved on to an online gaming project, with sports betting and online poker. While there are fewer regulations in France, unlike in the United Kingdom, there arent betting shops everywhere. He moved to Malta 17 years ago and, 10 years ago, cashed out his betting ventures to raise capital for his next project.

Amusingly, he started out as a Bitcoin skeptic. Coming from the highly regulated world of online gambling, he had difficulty wrapping his thoughts around a decentralized system with no supervisory body.

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Bitcoin skeptic at first

In Iceland for his honeymoon, Dreyfus came across a shop that took Bitcoin, which sparked something in the back of his mind. When he came home, he found the gaming space was full of crypto enthusiasts making money. I saw my Twitter feeds all of my friends trading crypto, talking about it.

And so, in 2017, I spent a lot of time to educate myself. He followed Andreas Antonopoulos and some other crypto influencers.

As an entrepreneur, I always try to find new opportunities not as an investment but to develop. At the end of 2017, I started to look at crypto from a sports angle.

An idea was percolating in his mind. Sports are global an international language. This means many, if not most, supporters dont live in the originating country. According to one survey, there are 253 million Manchester United soccer fans in China or nearly four times the entire population of the United Kingdom! 

Alex Dreyfus
Alex Dreyfus dreamed up fan tokens as a way to engage with a teams global fanbase.

To be sure, sports like F1 travel the world with races in different countries, but to attend sports like American Football, soccer or the National Basketball Association, you usually need to be in the host country.

Yet these worldwide fans are devoted to their teams, too, which is a huge base for a business.

Dreyfus notes that sports was ripe for disruption.

The industry hasnt been disrupted for the last 30 or 40 years, unlike most of any other industry in the world. Travel booking, dating, of course, taxis, banking they have all been more or less disrupted. Sports is still the same pretty much it was years ago. Management of these global brands can be quite risk-averse.

Fan tokens are a way to create a new revenue stream for the many supporters who live abroad.

On Jan. 6, 2018, I decided to come back to the office after Christmas and say, Lets do it. We are launching our business in that space. And at that time, we are 10, maybe 12, employees. It was a leap of faith, he says.

Fast forward to today, we are 300 employees in nine offices in the world. We are the biggest company in the blockchain/sports sector, but we are also one of the biggest mainstream blockchain products that is not an exchange or wallet. We created the concept of fan tokens.

Essentially Chiliz (CHZ) is the entry point, allowing fans to go onto socios.com and buy tokens for their favorite National Basketball League, Formula 1, rugby or other sports team. It is just like trading on any ordinary crypto exchange, except the tokens main utility is theoretically, at least to allow fans to have deeper engagement with their favorite club. The utility tokens are primarily a social investment, not a financial one.

Meet and greet
Fans meet international soccer stars Rafa Mrquez and Javier Zanetti. Source: Socios

Leveling up the fan experience

Fan tokens enable fans to vote or participate in decisions to do with their team e.g., to choose the music played when a goal is scored, scarf designs or the number a player will wear.

There is a certain similarity to DAOs: where everyone with the token has input into governance for decisions that matter to them. Dreyfus describes this as a share of governance, not ownership a kind of sports influencer. Its making fans more a participant than a passive spectator. Their top prize for soccer/football fans is Living the Dream, where fan tokenholders get to play soccer in their teams colors on the home stadium with a star player, photographers and commentator the full works.

If I had to define this experience in one word, it would be: spectacular. Barcelona soccer BAR fan tokenholder on playing on her teams pitch with fellow fans and Spanish La Ligas top player, Samuel Etoo.

Just as Chiliz and Socios were starting to take off, COVID-19 hit, and clubs had to ponder what their businesses were going to do when the stadiums were empty. So, fan tokens made a lot more sense at that point.

Strangely, first COVID-19 and the current crypto winter have worked to the advantage of Socios. Dreyfus feels that the contraction of the crypto sector is removing some of the more impractical projects, but fan tokens, with their global base in sports lovers, will be able to continue to develop without distractions.

However, the World Cup has not worked in its favor so far as many expected, and the token actually fell in the first week.

More of a marathon than a sprint

Dreyfus feels that Socios real goal (haha) at the moment is to engage the non-crypto-native fans, to convince them that fan tokens have real value to them, as they are likely to be a bit skeptical at first. Currently an Ethereum token, he says there are plans to launch its own blockchain for the sports industry.

The company is in the process of developing a sports club-based blockchain Chili Chain 2.0, which is to be based in the sports industry, with them as nodes and validators, he says. 

The first iteration of this is planned for late this year, or early next. The idea is that there would be a whole ecosystem of sports clubs and fans (and Socios.com) interacting and trading with each other, and generating revenue and rewards.

Lets give a fan the last word: To live what your idols experience is priceless there is no possible comparison.

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Wall Street disaster expert Bill Noble: Crypto spring is inevitable

“It’s 10% up or 10% down each day. I don’t have to wait five years in between crises. As a matter of fact, I only have to wait about 45 minutes.”

In another reality, Bill Noble would be just another guy in a suit behind a big desk at the Fed or the SEC, probably murmuring negative incantations like crypto is bad.

Hes certainly got the track record for it: JP Morgan, UBS, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs. But thats Noble in an evil mirror dimension. In our world, he is a true crypto guy, talking to me in a t-shirt with bicycles in the back of the room. He turned from the Dark Side and joined the rebels.

He is known for his popular YouTube podcasts and TV appearances. Currently, he is a senior market analyst at Token Metrics.

Wall Street career

While studying economics (19871991) at Rutgers University in New Jersey, he managed to wangle one of only two sought-after internships at the time at JP Morgans forex desk on Wall Street. Noble started off when trading technology was primitive and lots of analysis was done by hand on paper. In August 1990, he was put in charge of the desk, while everyone went on holiday, Cos nothing happens in August, let the kid fill in. Then Iraq invaded Kuwait, and all sorts of craziness broke out in the markets.

Charting Made Easy
John J. Murphys Charting Made Easy.

The price volatility seemed so extreme to me. I had no idea how anyone kept track of this. So, I went to the technical analyst who was attached to the currency unit. I said, I bet everybody comes to you looking for help trying to figure this out.

He goes, Actually, no one does. So, he gave me John Murphys chart book [Charting Made Easy] and took me out for sushi. And I was off to the races from there using charts.

During his years of progression through the conventional Wall Street milieu, he became an expert technical analyst, which he combined with writing reports on different markets. During crashes and Black Swan events like the 1998 implosion of Long Term Capital Management, which nearly cratered the western financial world Noble was the go-to guy. Im like a firefighter: When everybodys running out of the burning building, Im running in, he jokes.

From stocks and bonds to crypto analysis

In 2017, he became intrigued by crypto. He went to an Austin, Texas Bitcoin conference and started doing charts for Ether by hand, which eventually became a gigantic scroll as the price went up and down. Then he met Bitcoin early adopter Charlie Schrem walking through an airport (who has had a crypto career with spectacular ups and downs, even doing jail time connected to the Silk Road marketplace implosion). They got together in crypto.IQ, a consultancy service aiming to improve cryptocurrency analysis with stocks, bonds, interest rates and other mainstream data, which no one else was doing at the time.

 

 

Bill on stage
Bill Noble on stage at DCentral Miami. Source: Twitter

 

 

In September 2019, Noble joined Token Metrics as a senior market analyst. Led by CEO Ian Balina, the subscription service provides retail traders with AI-driven insights, combined with the work of analysts researching the volatile cryptocurrency markets to assist in making beneficial trades, whatever the overall conditions.

He explains it puts an artificial intelligence system together with my charting. You effectively have a quantitative research product, an institutional quantitative research product that we can deliver to retail, which, you know, is not, is not really around. I mean, there are data and service providers, but, you know, we can provide you with tools you can use yourself. Plus, we have top analysts that look at everything from charts macro to NFTs.

 

 

 

 

Noble has 17,600 Twitter followers, a popular YouTube channel and is a sought-after guest analyst on crypto TV, with his Tony Soprano-esque, no-nonsense New Jersey accent.

He thrives on cryptos volatility, Its 10% up or 10% down each day, he says. I dont have to wait five years in between crises. As a matter of fact, I only have to wait about 45 minutes.

Noble stresses that you need to be very flexible in crypto technical analysis and not tied to one methodology. Surprisingly, he looks to the distant past for his basic systems, Gann works very well [William Gann, an influential early charting pioneer]. I find that the systems Wyckoff is another anything that worked in the early 20th century when stocks were the wild west, and there were 50 publicly traded car companies [work well]. I find Fibonacci is also helpful; Tom DeMarks work is excellent.

 

 

The current state of the market

Taking something of a contrarian position, he sees the current crypto winter as having a long-term benefit: clearing out the market and liquidating terrible projects.

The previous run-up was driven by a massive liquidity push by central banks. Then when central banks had to pull the liquidity, you had the 2008 crash of crypto. Speculative assets that never should have gone up, to begin with, went back to zero.

Noble forecasts that for the crypto economy, we can see the beginning of spring, a resumption of growth, after the crash, much like the many crises he weathered in the conventional financial markets, such as 2008 or 1987. He points out that various gurus like Warren Buffett wrote off the internet and Amazon after the 2002 crash. Buffett told CNBC in 2019 that hed been an idiot for not buying shares in Amazon in the past.

 

 

Bill Noble
Noble is attracted by cryptos volatility and ever-changing nature.

 

 

Bear markets are good times to do your homework because Mr. Market is now sorting out whos gonna win and whos gonna lose. He is bullish on Ethereum as a Web3 backbone. Web3 is the next internet, connected by Ethereum and Polkadot.

Noble is also bullish on privacy coins and approving quotes from United States National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden: One day, your wealth could be held against you. The central banks push toward centralized digital currencies, which will mean that all transactions will be watched by Big Brother, will create momentum for privacy coins like Zcash. Privacy coins are going to go from being for pirates to being for regular people.

 

 

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Psychology of trading

Psychology plays a big part in trading. Noble explains that many of the best traders use physical exercise early in the morning to prepare themselves for the stresses of trading.

Its really about emotional management, he says. They also set up a research framework and stick to it. You have to have a method or a style, and you have to study to get there.

He explains that the legendary trader Bill Williams (who invented numerous indicators, including Awesome Oscillator, the Alligator Indicator and the Market Facilitation Index) made his students do three pages of stream of consciousness writing before he would let them trade, to empty their heads of emotional and intellectual blocks to trading. Noble encourages people to read Williams book, Trading Chaos.

 

 

Bill Noble and Julian Jackson
Bill Noble and Julian Jackson prove that not everyone in crypto is 23 years old.

 


Noble recommends that more emotional investors should adopt a long-term approach rather than the intense ups and downs of day trading. Hold a portfolio for a significant time and only make a few trades per month or year. With yield farming, you would still be getting a return on your investment.

And of course, if you can hold on, then Noble says that long term, the future is bright.

During a tightening cycle, crypto is going to get hurt, like anything else, but as the tightening cycle comes to a close, crypto is the future of money.

 

 

Crypto City Guide to Prague: Bitcoin in the heart of Europe

Prague is the birthplace of the worlds first hardware wallet, the first Bitcoin mining pool, and, reportedly, even the first Bitcoin cafe. It is among the most affluent cities in Central Europe, visited by millions of tourists each year.

Ranked as one of Europes most charming and beautiful cities, Prague is a burgeoning tech hub with a new generation of crypto-saavy individuals populating its streets.

 

Fast facts

City: Prague
Country: Czechia
Population: 2.7 million (Metropolitan Area)
Established: 8th Century
Languages: Czech, Slovak, English, Ukrainian, German, Vietnamese, Russian

 

Crypto City Guide to Prague
Prague was a leading metropolis in the adoption of Bitcoin.

 

 

Understand

Known for its bridges, majestic fortifications and Bohemian architecture, Prague was voted the most beautiful city in the world last year by Time Out Magazine. At the crossroads of Europe, its visited by over 8 million tourists annually and has become a popular choice among filmmakers as a backdrop, including the makers of Mission: Impossible and Casino Royale.

More than 1,000 years ago, the migration of the Czech people a Western Slavic tribe founded the City of Prague on the banks of the Vltava river. Prague quickly developed into a major metropolitan center in medieval times and was the seat of many Bohemian kings who would also reign as the emperors of the Holy Roman Empire.

Ruled over variously by the Austrian Empire, a short era of independence, and then by Nazi Germany, Prague managed to escape destruction at the hands of Nazis or Allied bombers. But after just three years of independence after the war, communists backed by the Soviet Union staged a coup and toppled the countrys democratic government in 1948. Development stalled during communist times, and despite a flicker of hope for liberalism in the Prague Spring of 1968, it wasnt until the Velvet Revolution protests that the ruling communist party resigned on Nov. 28, 1989, putting the local people once again in charge of their own destinies.

 

 

The Powder Tower during the Habsburg Era | Photo Source: Old-Prague.com
The Powder Tower during the Habsburg era. Source: Old-Prague.com

 

 

Crypto culture

Today, Prague is a leading tech hub in Central Europe. Having changed currencies once a generation due to their various rulers and independence, the Czech people are known for monetary skepticism and have enthusiastically adopted digital currencies. This interest has been compounded by the growing inflationary pressure on the Czech koruna (CZK), which stood at 18.0% per annum in June 2022.

 

 

 

 

Firms such as SatoshiLabs, Alza, Trezor, Braiins and many others have ramped up education about digital assets in the country. However, the Czech National Bank has largely remained on the sidelines with regard to regulating the industry. While interest in crypto remains strong among the Czech people (especially those in Prague), recent industry blowups and bear market sell-offs have hampered confidence somewhat.

But that does not take away from the fact that it was here where the worlds first hardware wallet, first Bitcoin mining pools and first Bitcoin coffee shop all came into action within the past decade. In recent years, Prague has also become a hotspot for digital nomads, being voted as the top destination in the world for remote work, along with Krakow, Poland in 2021. Thanks to the effort of early adopters, the city is rife with crypto meetups, hackathons, venues and seminars that make it distinct from its neighbors in Central Europe.

 

 

Pragues Old Town Square
Pragues Old Town Square. Source: Zhiyuan Sun

 

 

Notable Projects

Nowadays, cryptocurrency hardware wallets are renowned for their ability to safeguard investors assets in a self-custodied manner, but just who invented them? The idea all started in 2011 after a Bitcoin conference in Prague.

Two crypto enthusiasts, Pavol Stick Rusnk and Marek Slush Palatinus envisioned a small, single-purpose computer that would securely store users Bitcoin private keys. In 2013, the two founded SatoshiLabs. The following year, the first-ever Trezor wallet Trezor One launched. Then came the Trezor Model T, which added a touchscreen to the device. Both devices have sold over 1 million units since inception, with their firmware patched monthly or so. It has become the standard for hardware crypto storage worldwide.

 

 

 

 

SatoshiLabs comprises a basket of companies (Trezor, Invity and Tropic Square) forming the forefront of crypto and tech development in Czechia.

Trezor model T
The famed Trezor Model T

Apart from its flagship product, it is also responsible for creating over 20 industry standards, such as the recovery seed and passphrase used in all cryptocurrency hardware wallets today.

Like many in the crypto industry, they were incensed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine this year and wanted to help. Vojtch ern, head of commerce at Trezor, and Bach Nguyen, head of business development at Invity, drove nearly 900 kilometers to the SlovakUkrainian border town of Vel’k Slemence, delivering humanitarian supplies and bringing back four women and two children refugees to safety in Czechia.

SatoshiLabs also donated 1 million euros worth of Bitcoin to charities helping Ukraine shortly after the war started, citing the effects of occupation and destruction of individual freedom during five decades of Communist rule over Czechoslovakia as the inspiration.

Invity is another branch of SatoshiLabs.

The firm is a price aggregator that scrutinizes every crypto exchange and other platforms to find the best rates for purchasing cryptocurrency. It combines everything in one place with a straightforward interface designed for users just getting into crypto. Invity also has a wide range of resources about education for novel crypto enthusiasts.

Lastly, during the development of Trezor at SatoshiLabs, it became clear that the firm needed an auditable integrated circuit with better security solutions than market alternatives. Thus, Tropic Square was born with an ambitious plan to make an open-source, auditable custom chip to transform low entropy code into high entropy data for cryptographic operations. Led by tech-savvy developers such as CEO Even Englberth and chief technology officer Jan Pleska, chips developed by Tropic Square are now found in each and every one of Trezors hardware wallets.

 

 

Tropic Square staff at SatoshiLabs headquarters | Photo Credits: Tropic Square
Tropic Square staff at SatoshiLabs headquarters. Source: Tropic Square

 

 

Before he created Trezor, Palatinus founded the first Bitcoin mining project in Prague in 2010, which was simply called Bitcoin.cz. After he moved on, Braiins, a company doing embedded Linux development and research, took over the mining pool and renamed it accordingly (until recently rebranding it back to Slush Pool), with 1.3 million BTC mined since inception.

Fast forward to now, Braiins/Slush Pool has grown to become one of the biggest Bitcoin mining pools. There are currently over 15,000 users of the firms mining optimization software in the space, with its total hash rate accounting for 5%8% of the overall Bitcoin network. The company derives 100% of its income via BTC and charges a 2%2.5% commission from its mining firmware.

Kristian Csepcsar, chief marketing officer of Braiins, explains that mining and Bitcoin is a way of life not just a way to make money:

Bitcoin miners are one of the most hardcore Bitcoiners, and their commitment to secure networks can be seen in the global hash rate numbers. Bitcoins price fell more than 70% recently, but the hash rate has only dropped about 20% from all-time highs. Bitcoins relative price to fiat can change, but Bitcoin will be forever one Bitcoin, and miners deeply understand this point.

 

 

Braiins core team at Bitcoin Mining Conference 2022 in Prague | Photo Credits: Braiins
Braiins core team at Bitcoin Mining Conference 2022 in Prague. Source: Braiins

 

 

General Bytes is the worlds second-largest Bitcoin and ATM manufacturer, with offices in Prague and Bradenton, Florida. Since its inception in 2013, the company has sold over 13,000 machines across 142 countries, most of which are located in the United States.

A General Bytes ATM
A General Bytes ATM. Source: General Bytes

More than 180 fiat currencies can be used to purchase 60+ types of digital assets at its cash machines. Over 22.5 million crypto transactions have been performed worldwide on its network of Bitcoin ATMs.

Backed by the $2.5-billion Rockaway Capital, the Rockaway Blockchain Fund is a venture capital firm backing leading Web3 founders. Founded in 2020, the Prague-based firm has now invested in 36 projects and 26 funds. In addition to investing capital and boosting liquidity, Rockaway backs its projects through community networking, a staking team that runs its validator nodes, and an in-house development team known as RBF Labs. It was one of the early backers of Solana, along with several investments in the Cosmos ecosystem, including Agoric.

Rockaway raised $123 million in its first VC fund, which is now nearly 75% deployed with a portfolio value of approximately $300 million as of June 30. In addition to that, RBF also has a separate lending fund that provides loans to market makers and liquidity to DeFi protocols, with an asset under management of approximately $35 million at the end of June.

Where can I spend my crypto?

Located near the heart of Pragues Old Town is Bar No. 7, a laid-back venue with multilingual staff thats extremely popular among expats and locals alike. Its also a great place to go for value on ones crypto: One can get delicious cocktails for around 150 CZK each ($6.24) and a pint of beer for just 25 CZK ($1.04) all paid for with crypto. Theres also a Bitcoin ATM located right inside the venue. But beware it gets packed quickly in the evenings almost every day of the week.

 

 

Bar No. 7 Praha. Source: Zhiyuan Sun

 

 

For scenic, short-term rentals or long-ish stays, you can book and pay for lodging with Prague Siesta Apartments using Bitcoin. Apartments are located at the heart of Prague, a minutes walk away from attractions such as the Old Town Square and the Astronomical Clock. Prices vary by season and typically fluctuate above or below 2,000 CZK per night ($83.08) with discounts for longer stays.

Paraleln Polis is the first coffee shop to accept cryptocurrencies in Central Europe and has been active since 2014. Though it has now largely evolved to become a co-working space and club venue, hosting various events, projects and refreshments for its members. But one can still purchase the venues original Bitcoin Coffee at its doorstep. Bitcoin, Litecoin or Lightning Network are accepted. Its named after Czech activist Vclav Bendas 1973 concept of Paraleln Polis (Parallel Polis) an independent society not oppressed by laws and decisions of representatives of central authorities. The idea became a rallying call for political dissidents and sounds very much like Libertarian Bitcoiner politics.

 

 

 

 

Alza is a leading e-commerce platform in Central Europe with close to $1.2 billion in annual sales. It has a catalog of crypto-related hardware devices that customers can pay for with Bitcoin (Ether and Litecoin payments are expected in the future). It also accepts Bitcoin on its local e-commerce subsidiaries operating in Slovakia, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom and on Alzashop.com.

For crypto tourists who dont have an address in Prague to deliver to, you can get products shipped to the unique Alza Boxes package lockers for pickup. And thanks to General Bytes, it is also possible to buy cryptocurrencies at some of Alzas retail locations via in-store ATMs.

Finally, A Maze in Tchaiovna is a solid venue for tea and craft beer lovers alike. It is an all-in-one stop that combines elements of a teahouse, theater, gallery and bar. Cryptocurrency can be tendered for beverages and snacks. Live music is available periodically.

 

 

 

 

Education

Braiins, the company behind Slush Pool, runs a regular blog about how to get started on ones Bitcoin mining rig, along with the economics of such an operation. Similarly, Alza has its own blog series dedicated to educating readers and shoppers about Bitcoin. But Braiins takes it one step further by also publishing a series of books about the nature of Bitcoin decentralization and the future. They are free to read and are available in both hard copies and as complete pdfs on its site.

Currently, the University of New York in Prague is issuing digital diplomas using blockchain technology for all degrees accredited by the Czechias Ministry of Education. Students are provided a hyperlink to such accreditation with a QR code attached to verify its authenticity and can be freely shared among social networks.

 

 

Bitcoin: Odluka penz od sttu (Bitcoin: The Separation of Money From the State) by Josef Ttek and published by Braiins (in Czech) | Photo Credits: Josef Ttek
Bitcoin: Odluka penz od sttu (Bitcoin: The Separation of Money From the State) by Josef Ttek and published by Braiins. Source: Josef Ttek

 

 

Controversies

Being a closely-knit crypto community, Prague is not known for crypto scams or digital asset-related crime. The majority of misconduct happened in the previous decade, such as the collapse of the Bitcash.cz crypto exchange in 2013 and the theft of approximately 485 BTC. Another instance involved Czech national Tom Jikovsk and his alleged role in laundering $40 million worth of BTC in stolen funds from a securities fraud case in 2015. Earlier this year, an incident occurred with Trezor where the firms customer data was breached on third-party data vendor Mailchimp. It subsequently evolved into a phishing scam before it was quickly addressed.

That said, a much more serious incident occurred on August 18. Via a zero-day bug, hackers made themselves the default administrators of General Bytes’ ATMs and modified settings so that all deposits were transferred to their wallet address. A central client access server hosting the entirety of the company’s operation was compromised. General Bytes has urged customers to refrain from using its servers until its owners patches the exploit in an update.

 

 

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Notable People

Pavol Stick Rusnk, co-founder of SatoshiLabs; Mark Slush Palatinus, co-founder of SatoshiLabs; Pavel Moravec, co-CEO of Braiins; Jan Capek, co-CEO of Braiins; Bach Nguyen, head of business development at Invity; Vojtch Frgl, CEO of General Bytes; Even Englberth CEO of Tropic Square; Jan Pleska, chief technology officer of Tropic Square; Josef Ttek, economist and SatoshiLabs brand ambassador; Kristian Csepscar, chief marketing officer of Braiins; Vojtch ern, head of commerce at Trezor; Tommy Poole, owner of Bar No. 7 Praha.

Cointelegraph members based in Prague:

Ever wonder whose creative mind is behind that of Cointelegraphs signature artistic style? Well, Cointelegraphs talented art team is led none-other by lead artist and art editor Anastasia Zhdanova, who is based in Prague. With an art career spanning 13+ years, Zhdanova is also the creator behind the (Magic Routine) comic series. She graduated from the prestigious Stieglitz Academy of Art and Design in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

 

 

Europe and Crypto as portrayed by the Cointelegraph Art Team
Europe and crypto as portrayed by the Cointelegraph art team

 

 

If you have any suggestions for additions to this guide, please get in touch with zhiyuan.sun@cointelegraph.com

 

 

 

 

6 Questions for Tongtong Bee of Panony

We ask the buidlers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for their thoughts on the industry… and throw in a few random zingers to keep them on their toes!

 

This week, our 6 Questions go to Tongtong Bee, co-founder of Panony an incubator, investor and adviser for blockchain and Web3 business.

Im Tongtong Bee, the co-founder of Panony and founder and editor-in-chief of PANews. I started my professional journey as a journalist at Chinas traditional news outlets, including China News Service, Jiemian and Cailian Media Group. Since 2015, Ive been covering blockchain and fintech news as one of the few journalists in China to focus on these sectors at the time.

My focus on economic issues and emerging technologies led to me being selected to report on the Two Sessions (NPC and CPPCC) in 2018. And thats the year my business partner Alyssa and I started PANews. Weve published over 20,000 articles with an average of over 5 million page views per month, became a frequently cited source in crypto and blockchain journalism, including Forbes, Caixin, CCN, and were an official news source of Tencent News.

1 Looking at the top 100 projects in crypto by market cap, which ones stand out to you and for what reason?

I have to say Bitcoin. Being a journalist keen on economic research, I got blown away when knowing about its concept for the first time.

Bitcoin is designed to be a substantial step forward in making money more secure, as well as a significant deterrent to many types of financial crime. It is the first decentralized peer-to-peer payment network driven by its users with no central authority. Bitcoin now has changed the world and will continue revolutionizing the financial systems in many countries. It remains the creative outcome in all of its present and limitless future uses.

 

2 What is the single most innovative use case for blockchain youve ever seen? It may not be the one likeliest to succeed!

Being part of Panony and PANews, we always feel excited to meet and work with hundreds of brilliant, innovative projects worldwide. For example, Im personally intrigued with what theyre doing at Cudos, a decentralized cloud computing platform. We know that the cloud is pricey and centralized. In addition, up to 50% of the time, the hardware is inactive or switched off, resulting in low return on investment for enterprises and an enormous carbon footprint. Thus, the current development trajectory is unsustainable for the planet.

The Cudos network, using its cloud-based distributed computing approach that includes blockchain support, allows organizations to save up to 10 times more than centralized hyper-scale cloud platforms and hardware owners to offset (and potentially profit from) the cost of their hardware by renting out their computational power to the network.

The blockchain industry can be exuberant. Im glad there are plenty of talents out there building a better future together.

 

3 What does decentralization mean to you, and why is it important?

Good question. The decentralized web is the unstoppable future of the internet.

In the current version of the web, also known as Web2, people cant overlook the results of big corporations controlling what happens online: personal data being tracked and sold without our permission, loss of power for our contents, being dominated by ads Most of the web is centralized. Web3, which seeks to drastically reimagine how we design and interact with apps from the ground up, will fix many of these issues. There are a few fundamental differences between Web2 and Web3, but decentralization is at the heart.

The Ethereum network is currently the largest decentralized network, with access to thousands of decentralized applications. With a focus on digital ownership, the earning potential for content creators and the inventions of new ways to invest has increased. And in a decentralized web, individuals can control their data, not some mega corporate or anybody else.

 

4 List your favorite sports teams, and choose the single most memorable moment from watching them. If you arent a sports fan, choose a few movies and a moment!

As a winter game enthusiast myself, my memories of the Beijing 2022 Olympics are still fresh! Eileen Gu winning two gold medals and one silver at a single game is surely a free ski sensation. Not just watching her beautiful moves is jaw-dropping; I also admire her constant efforts to inspire girls. Im also honored to have made the Forbes China 30 Under 30 in 2020 with her (different list)!

As a female entrepreneur, I admire her spirit of sticking to goals, challenging the status quo, pursuing dreams with passion and constant hard work. It gave me strength when my business partner Alyssa and I started our business together.

 

5 If you didnt need sleep, what would you do with the extra time?

I really wish I dont need to sleep so I can do more things that interest me. I would probably read more books because I always find it fascinating to get to know something new. During the two-month lockdown in Shanghai, I grew out of a habit of indoor badminton exercise and will keep on doing that, doing it properly outdoors.

Im super grateful that my husband and I share many hobbies, and one of them is to write a book together on advertising in Shanghai. Were also quite interested in making documentaries for Chinese folk artists and hope the world could see them one day.

 

6 Whats the future of social media?

We envision the future of social media is owned by content creators, communities not certain platforms that control the narratives. This is what Web3 brings us. Decentralization could be the blueprint for the future of social media: Users could have direct access to the decentralized platform; no centralized authority can dictate the rules of engagement and monetization; social media will become a freer space while also granting content creators full ownership of their assets.

Decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) are a novel way for online social organization that will have far-reaching implications. Properties of DAOs are likely to have an enormous impact on the business of social media. Blockchain tokens have the potential to change that arrangement by allowing creators to monetize their fans using many of the same methods that DAOs use to reward their members for contributions.

We have seen pleas from users that Twitter could have the potential to shift the power balance and to be transformed into a Web3 platform. Were also grateful to see some of the projects, including Only 1 and Rally, are committed to reshaping social platforms and rebuilding the social and creator economy.

 

A wish for the young, ambitious blockchain community:

Our community needs more builders who have a warm heart and a cool brain. Less FOMO, more patience. And confusion is good: It makes people think of themselves.

6 Questions for Kim Hamilton Duffy of Centre

We ask the buidlers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for their thoughts on the industry… and throw in a few random zingers to keep them on their toes!

 

This week, our 6 Questions go to Kim Hamilton Duffy, director of identity and standards at Centre Consortium an open-source technology project designed to create a more inclusive global economy.

Kim is a leader in the emerging decentralized identity field and has architected successful open-source projects such as Verite, Blockcerts and the Digital Credential Consortium toolkit.

1 Which countries are doing the most to support blockchain, and which ones will be left behind?

Rather than assessing this through the narrow lens of whether certain crypto transactions are taxed, I think about whether countries are supporting innovation in blockchain and, more broadly, decentralized architectures in a collaborative, responsible, sustainable way that can benefit individuals and businesses.

A repeated theme: Regulatory clarity is key for individuals and businesses to build and innovate confidently. But this must be based on nuanced, balanced approaches that pull in a range of stakeholders technologists, regulators and privacy experts and must be sufficiently future-proofed to accommodate emerging technology. Anti-patterns that is, examples of approaches that are uneven, overly restrictive or reactive include banning specific implementations or types of mining.

 

2 What is the main hurdle in the way of mass adoption of blockchain technology?

Its split among interoperability, usability and trust.

Fortunately, were moving beyond the discussion of which blockchain will win, understanding that different blockchain characteristics may be best suited to different use cases. But this underscores the importance of interoperability and for this, open standards and protocols are key.

The other aspect is the need for improved usability and trust, which are interwoven. Despite the transparency enabled by blockchain-based technologies, the technical barriers to entry and overwhelming amount of information to absorb make those benefits unrealizable to many. Determining how to prioritize the user experience to convey trust (as an analogy, you can think of the browser lock icon signifying a secure connection) will be critical to success.

 

3 Have you ever bought a nonfungible token? What was it? And if not, what do you think will be your first?

Yes! The first NFT I minted/bought was a Crypto Coven and then I ended up minting and buying a few more. I fell in love with the aesthetics and thoughtfulness of the project. It was clearly a labor of love so much care went into generating the design elements, attributes and mythology that formed each individual witch. Even the contract code was beautifully written.

Also, its Discord is an incredibly positive, supportive place, with some of the best Web3/Ethereum technical discussions as well.

 

4 Whats the unlikeliest-to-happen thing on your bucket list?

Being swarmed and tackled by a grumble of 100-plus pugs is probably near the top. A more modest goal is getting a pie in the face, a la 1970s slapstick comedy. Yet somehow, this hasnt happened yet.

 

5 If you didnt need sleep, what would you do with the extra time?

Id spend extra time writing. Decentralized identity standards and technologies are new, and its hard for people to get access to information through an objective, not commercial or vendor, lens. While the technical specifications are available, these are not accessible to broader audiences. More critically, these dont provide context and tribal knowledge from the many years of deliberations that went into design decisions.

The risk in rolling out transformative technologies understood by a select few is that they cannot be adapted and refined with other experts (privacy, regulatory, etc.) whose input is essential to adoption. Ive spent a lot of time thinking about the boundary between technical solutions and whats required for real-world adoption, and Id like to make more time to write about this.

On a more personal side, Id spend at least four hours a day practicing the Bach Cello Suites.

 

6 Whats the future of social media?

I feel confident that were on a path toward more decentralized underpinnings of social media networks, where your data, connections, reputation and experience are increasingly under your control not under the control of a company thats incentivized to treat you as the product.

Christine Lemmer-Webber, a leader in decentralized identity (especially integrating capability-based approaches), has also been a pioneer of decentralized social media efforts, including Mastodon and ActivityPub. This work is continuing and thriving through efforts like BlueSky.

The challenge, of course, will be identifying sustainable models to support such networks. This introduces an exciting opportunity to develop new approaches that do not rely on aggregating huge data silos instead, ones that respect privacy and informed consent.

6 Questions for Pat Duffy of The Giving Block

We ask the buidlers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for their thoughts on the industry… and throw in a few random zingers to keep them on their toes!

 

This week, our 6 Questions go to Pat Duffy, co-founder of The Giving Block a crypto donation solution that provides an ecosystem for nonprofits and charities to fundraise Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

 

Pat is co-founder of The Giving Block, and has raised over $100,000,000 in crypto for nonprofits in the last year. From 2020 to 2022, Pat and his co-founder Alex Wilson grew The Giving Block from a four-person team into one of the fastest growing companies in the nonprofit sector, with thousands of nonprofit clients and the worlds largest crypto donor community.

1 What is the main hurdle to mass adoption of blockchain technology?

People say education, and I think thats wrong. When people say education, I think that leads to people getting up on stages and explaining blockchain to people who dont even understand how their microwaves work. It feels very puritanical to me and its been stunting progress on adoption. I think people are too addicted to decentralizing everything, including crypto adoption, which leads to a lot of people creating educational content instead of building intermediary companies and encouraging beginner-level crypto ownership that doesnt require staking yams. Id love to see people stop trying to explain how the pistons fire in the engine block so we can focus more energy on creating a level of crypto access that requires zero technical understanding.

 

2 What has been the toughest challenge youve faced in our industry so far?

Teaching young crypto owners about the tax incentive to donate crypto. Its so hard to explain to a group of people who hodl at all costs that they actually end up with larger crypto positions when they donate crypto versus donating cash (they donate the crypto, then use the dollars they would have donated to buy crypto at todays cost-basis. Voila they owe no tax on the appreciated crypto they gave to a charity, and the new crypto they bought today resets their tax liability). Thats been a real uphill battle, since these folks havent been educated on this like older folks who donate stocks every year for the same reason.

 

3 Does it matter if we ever figure out who Satoshi really is or was? Why, or why not?

I couldnt care less, but a lot of people seem hell-bent on figuring it out. I dont see the utility of it, and think it just opens folks up to getting tricked into investing or not investing based on the moral pros and cons of the individual. The ideas arent any more true or false regardless of who developed them. I would fear the same thing will happen that we see in politics, where people support ideas based on the person whos saying it rather than the merit of the idea itself.

 

4 What do the people closest to you tell you off for? Feel free to offer more than one answer.

This is a wild question, but I dig it. Id say the main thing I hear is Thats not funny when I take a risk with a crazy joke. Which of course makes it more funny. Ive never done heroin, but I imagine that the closest Ive come to experiencing an opiate high would be telling jokes that make my mom a little mad while everyone else laughs.

 

5 What makes you angry, and what happens when you get mad?

Id say the main driver of seething rage these days would be seeing people I care about having heated discussions about things they arent actively working on (and never will actively work on). Seeing friends and family get upset about political situations or cultural changes that theyre not trying to impact personally is a bizarre self-harming obsession that every now and then gets me to blow up at the dinner table. Anytime someone is complaining about something, I like to ask them What are you going to do about it? If the answer is that theres nothing they can or will do about it, I think we all have an obligation to beg them to stop reading about it.

There is much less time in the day than people think there is. All the time people spend staying informed directly takes away from time theyre spending bettering their life or the lives of the people they care about. Would love to see more people obsessively learning about subjects that they actually leverage to make things work better.

 

6 Whats the silliest conspiracy theory out there, and which one makes you pause for a moment?

The Flat Earth theory is the funniest one right now. Right at that perfect intersection where just enough people are bought in to make you think the end of the world is near. Birds Arent Real would be my favorite if there were some NBA players who were pumped on that. Ones that make me pause arent all that outside the box generally its suicides or assassinations where theres a great deal at stake. When there are obvious reasons certain folks might want you dead, then it doesn’t take a leap of faith for you to start thinking there might be more to the story.

 

A wish for the young, ambitious blockchain community:

I hope you all leverage what youre learning to improve the lives of the people you care about. That can be by making transformative money, by solving important problems, building important companies or making important connections. Whatever it might be, youre in a position to do something important, so make the opportunity count.

6 Questions for Lisa Fridman of Quadrata

We ask the buidlers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for their thoughts on the industry… and throw in a few random zingers to keep them on their toes!

 

This week, our 6 Questions go to Lisa Fridman, the president and co-founder of Quadrata, a network that brings an identity and compliance layer to DeFi across existing public blockchains.

 

Lisa Fridman was previously the head of blockchain strategy at Springcoin (Spring Labs). Prior to joining Spring Labs, Lisa served as a co-head of strategy at Martlet Asset Management, CEO of PAAMCO Europe and the global head of research at PAAMCO. Lisa is an experienced investor and a business builder. Throughout her career, she has worked closely with institutions, delivering bespoke solutions. She received her Master of Business Administration and graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles.

1 What does decentralization mean to you, and why is it important?

Decentralization, to me, means not having to depend on a single entity to continue operations. For example, creating a network where different parties can validate the data necessary for various use cases mitigates the potential risk of a single point of failure. We embrace this philosophy at Quadrata in the context of our passport ecosystem.

 

2 What is the main hurdle to gaining mass adoption of blockchain technology?

The main hurdle to mass adoption of blockchain technology is limited data availability on-chain and a lack of compliance-aware solutions. By understanding the need for identity, reputation and compliance on- and off-chain and creating products to address this gap in the market, we can help onboard more individuals and institutions to DeFi and Web3 overall. Its still technologically challenging, so for further retail adoption, more streamlined, easy-to-access solutions need to exist.

 

3 What do you think will be the biggest trend in blockchain for the next 12 months?

I think the biggest trend in blockchain for the next 12 months will be a reassessment of which products are solving a need that exists in the market today vs. the solutions which were lifted by the rising tide of the bull markets in crypto and cannot stand on their own during a downturn. At Quadrata, we believe that identity needs have not yet been addressed on-chain, and we expect to see more peers competing in this space.

 

4 Whats a problem you think blockchain has a chance to solve but hasnt been attempted yet?

Blockchain has the potential to improve a number of areas of day-to-day life. Its not that it hasnt been attempted yet, but theres a lot to cover. Being at the beginning of this journey is really exciting, and I look forward to contributing to future innovation.

 

5 Do you think governments will try and kill crypto?

No, I dont think governments will try to kill crypto. I do believe that for the digital asset markets to attract broader participation of institutions and individuals, a constructive regulatory framework would be necessary. For example, if a larger percentage of the population relies on DeFi for their financial needs, the governments would want to put protections in place to make sure people understand risks associated with these opportunities. The challenge is to put such a framework in place which creates the safeguards while still promoting innovation.

 

6 When you tell people youre in the blockchain industry, how do they react?

Anyone I tell that I am in the blockchain industry usually has a strong reaction. My friends who paved the way in transitioning to crypto years ago are welcoming me to the club of believers in the power of blockchain technology to transform our world. Many others are curious about what blockchain means in practice and what could be different ways to participate in the opportunities it creates. Almost uniformly, people are excited to talk about blockchain across settings, sharing perspectives on the value it brings and the hurdles to its adoption.

Crypto City: The ultimate guide to Miami

Miami is fast becoming one of the major hubs in the crypto world with more and more blockchain companies moving to the city each year.

Miami famously plays host to the Bitcoin Conference each year, and digital assets have been embraced by the mayor and the wider population. Heres your ultimate guide to the crypto city of Miami.

 

 

Crypto City Miami
This is your ultimate guide to crypto in Miami.

 

 

Fast facts

City: Miami
Country: United States
Population: 6.17 million (Metropolitan Area)
Established: 1896
Languages: English (official), Spanish (~60% of residents), Haitian Creole (widespread)

 

Party in the city where the heat is on,

all night, on the beach till the break of dawn.

Welcome to Miami,

bienvenido a Miami! Will Smith

 

Understand

Just over a century ago, Julia Tuttle, an American businesswoman and wealthy widow from Ohio, purchased a 640-acre estate located on the Miami River that would set the foundation for the modern-day city. In 18941895, Florida was hit by a blizzard that devastated the crops and vegetation within the state, but miraculously, Tuttles estate was left unscathed from the freeze. Immediately recognizing the areas economic value, Tuttle asked American industrialist Henry Flagler to construct a railway that would pass through what was then the Village of Miami. Flagler agreed. Within one year, economic development, primarily in real-estate interest, encouraged local residents to incorporate the City of Miami.

 

 

Miami
People come to Miami for the nightlife and stay for the low taxes.

 

 

The first wave of immigration into the area started as part of the Florida Real Estate boom in the 1920s, and Miami quickly became one of the states premier tourist destinations. During the 1950s to the 1970s, a combination of the Cuban Revolution, the civil war in Nicaragua, and the oppressive policies of Haitian dictator Franois Duvalier saw many emigrate to Miami in search of a better life.

 Known for its all-year tropical climate, low taxes, sound infrastructure, entertainment venues and diverse population, Florida is one of only nine states that does not levy a state tax on ordinary personal income.

The Sunshine State has also become a premier destination for an exodus of Americans from high-tax states such as New York and California, attracted by low goods and services tax and property taxes. The city also serves as a major transportation gateway to access many of the Caribbean Islands offshore banking services nearby.

The recent wave of tech migrs has seen it become one of the most blockchain-friendly cities in the United States, leading the advancement of the crypto and Web3 realm.

 

 

 

 

Crypto culture and cityscape

Thanks in part to the leadership of Mayor Francis Suarez, Miami is leading the way in municipal crypto adoption. Suarez has personally set an example of taking his salary and portion of his 401(k) retirement savings account in Bitcoin. In August 2021, the City of Miami partnered with CityCoins to launch a municipal digital currency, dubbed (unsurprisingly) MiamiCoin, to fund local projects by generating yield. The project initially raised $23 million, but like everything, it was hit hard by the crypto bear market, and the token has lost nearly 90% of its value, while Bitcoins price has fallen around 70% since Mayor Suarez first announced he was taking his paycheck in Bitcoin.

 

 

 

 

Nevertheless, Miami is unique insofar as it has the Miami-Dade County Cryptocurrency Task Force, comprising municipal stakeholders, designed to research and enact crypto legislation to benefit local residents. Elijah Bowdre, chairman of the Cryptocurrency Task Force, says:

Crypto is on fire. And Miami-Dade County is poised to pierce the veil for municipalities and crypto. And Im leading that charge. Its an honor. I am very humbled by it. But its also very exciting.

A plan is also in motion to enable residents in all of Miami-Dade county to officially pay with crypto for things such as drivers license renewals, registration fees, water bills, and county bills, among many others. In addition, municipal employees will be able to receive a portion of all of their paychecks in crypto. Moreover, they can have a percentage of their salary put away toward a crypto retirement fund.

Each year, the North American Bitcoin Conference takes place in Miami. It was here in 2014 that a young Russian-Canadian called Vitalik Buterin first unveiled his idea for a decentralized, programmable smart contract blockchain dubbed Ethereum.

 

 

Cryptocurrency journalist and former Cointelegraph Reporter Ornella Hernandez at The North American Bitcoin Conference | Source: Ornella Hernandez
Cryptocurrency journalist and former Cointelegraph Reporter Ornella Hernndez at The North American Bitcoin Conference. Source: Ornella Hernndez

 

 

This years event was held from Jan. 17 to 19 and attracted over 4,000 participants, including notable attendees such as billionaire investor Mark Cuban. He returned in the first week of April for Miami NFT Week, an event that saw 250+ speakers and sponsors showcasing the latest innovations in the NFT space. Miami Tech Week also took place around the same time, consisting of prominent venture capitalists, tech executives and co-founders, such as Blockchain.com CEO Peter Smith, MoonPay CEO Ivan Soto-Wrightand Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.

 

 

The Miami Bull | Source: Ornella Hernandez
The Miami Bull. Source: Ornella Hernndez

 

 

Projects and companies

When it comes to Miamis presence in Web3, the No. 1 position undoubtedly goes to Yuga Labs. The firm currently owns two of the worlds most popular NFT collections: Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks. Together, they have surpassed close to 1.6 million ETH in cumulative trading volume on NFT marketplace OpenSea. In Q1, Yuga Labs attracted $450 million out of $1 billion in venture investments in tech firms within Miami-Dade county via its Andreessen Horowitz seed round.

Perhaps the most notable physical presence of any crypto company is that of centralized digital assets exchange FTX. Last April, FTX paid $135 million to rename the Miami Heat NBA Arena located on Biscayne Boulevard to FTX Arena for the next 19 years. Three-time NBA Champion and Miami Heat legend Udonis Haslem currently serves as an ambassador for the exchanges You In, Miami? campaign. The two plan to work together in the future to promote crypto within Miami-Dade county, where FTX also has a corporate office in the city.

MoonPay, a cryptocurrency fintech firm that allows users to buy crypto and NFTs with a debit or credit card, is also based in Miami. Last year, the firm raised $555 million in funding for a valuation of $3.4 billion. Recently, it launched an NFT platform with Universal Pictures and Fox Corporation called HyperMint that would enable firms behind popular consumer brands to potentially mint hundreds of millions of NFTs per day.

 

 

 

 

Institutional credit protocol Maple Finance can also trace its roots back to Miami and has issued more than $1.5 billion in loans since its inception. Unfortunately, the company has become caught up in the ongoing digital assets credit crisis.

In the realm of crypto philanthropy, Miami is also the home of The Giving Block, the worlds leading digital assets on-boarding platform for donations to more than 1,000 nonprofits. Last year, the platform facilitated more than $69.6 million in crypto donations volume, a staggering increase of 1,558% from 2020. The top five most popular cryptocurrencies used for donations were Ether, Bitcoin, USD Coin, Dai and Flow. The firm has also launched a crypto fundraising campaign for Ukraine in the wake of the invasion.

 

 

The Choice is Yours - Crypto Donations Campaign | Source: The Giving Block
The choice is yours Crypto Donations Campaign. Source: The Giving Block

 

 

As for emerging projects, in 2021, Algorand launched a bilingual 10-week accelerator program in Miami focusing on projects either built on the namesake blockchain or wishing to develop on the Algorand platform. Each of the 10 selected companies will receive $17,500 in cash from the Algorand Foundation and $17,500 in cash from Borderless Capital for a total of 3% or less of tokens and/or equity. Applications have just closed, and it is currently in the review stage.

Ibex, a Bitcoin Lightning infrastructure services company, also has an office in the city. The firm connects point-of-sale systems of businesses and merchants with Bitcoin, allowing them to accept the digital currency with very low transaction fees on the Lightning Network.

Located at the heart of the trendy community of Wynwood is BitBasel, a crypto-art and NFT tech hub for local artists and developers. Co-founded by Scarlett Arana and Jorge Cortes, BitBasel hosts everything from panel talks to workshops to hackathons for nearby crypto enthusiasts. In addition, it is also the creator of Miami DAO, an organization focused on expanding crypto education programs for residents across Miami-Dade county.

 

 

BitBasel Community | Source: BitBasel
BitBasel community. Source: BitBasel

 

This February, Blockchain.com leased a 22,000-square-foot building in Wynwood for its employees, having stayed at a temporary office space in Brickell after moving its headquarters from New York. The firm was last valued at $5.2 billion in its recent fundraising round. Since its inception, it has processed more than $1 trillion in digital asset transactions on its exchange.

There is also the local folk hero of Miamis Little Haiti community, Nandy Martin. He created the Little Haiti Coin, a socio-economic cryptocurrency initiative. With each token purchase, Martin and his partners will volunteer to clear one square foot of his local Little Haiti community. Eligible residents will also receive one free token, which can be tendered as payment at local businesses as well as receive discounts on Haitian imports coming to the area. Though as of late, Martin says businesses that once accepted the Little Haiti Coin as a means of payment closed down due to gentrification in the area.

 

 

Blockchain folk hero Capitan Haiti | Source: Nandy Martin
Blockchain folk hero Capitan Haiti. Source: Nandy Martin

 

 

Martin is currently building a blockchain game called Captain Haiti with its token built on BNB Chain. The game seeks to educate users on concepts such as play-to-earn, tokenization and nonfungible tokens and already has over 10,000 downloads. Martin is also attempting to take back control of his community from housing speculators via a $14-million real estate NFT sale and use the funds to halt ongoing foreclosures.

 

 

 

 

Flying under the radar is QuickNode, a key player behind Twitters recent integration of NFT profile pictures for its Blue users. The blockchain infrastructure company checks NFT profile pictures on Twitter for authenticity to verify who actually owns their NFT avatar and who is simply using a downloaded image. The firm has raised $35 million in a Series A funding round led by venture capital firm Tiger Global.

Speaking of venture investments, a new blockchain firm in Miami is Security Token Group, the operator of STOmarket.com, a repository of security token trading data and news, with a live-trading data feed for over 200 security tokens currently while also tracking over 500 primary offerings. The firm closed a $3-million Series A round in May.

 

 

 

 

Where can I spend my crypto?

Thesis Hotel, a four-star resort on South Dixie Highway, claims it was the first hotel in Miami-Dade county to accept crypto as payment via BitPay. Users can book rooms and amenities with Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ether, Dogecoin or any of the popular and regulated stablecoins, including Binance USD. It is also possible to dine at restaurants within the hotel on crypto.

Another venue taking crypto payments is Shelborne South Beach Hotel on Miami Beach, known for hosting weddings and upscale catering services. One can pay with BitPay at checkout. The hotel is owned by Menin Hospitality, where cryptocurrencies are accepted at all of its restaurants and hotels under its collection.

For catering, consider paying with crypto at Chotto Matte, a fusion of Japanese and Peruvian cuisine. In April, Chotto Matte debuted a $1-million NFT collectible whose owner is entitled to perks such as VIP invitations to all future restaurant openings. For those staying at Thesis hotel, Mamey Miami contains a mix of Asian and Polynesian influences, and one can again pay with crypto for meals thanks to BitPay. The menu is designed by award-winning chef Niven Patel, who also cooks at the Orno Miami restaurant (located in Thesis, too) this time with a New American-style menu. And again, crypto is accepted.

As it turns out, there is an entire suburb in the Miami Metropolitan area, called Miami-Lakes, where residents can use crypto to pay all municipal fees. Implemented via PayPal last March, users can tender digital assets for items such as permits, business licenses and facility rentals.

And if you want to party into the early hours while spending all your BTC, there is a popular nightclub located just six blocks from FTX Arena in the heart of downtown Miami that accepts digital currency. Dubbed E11EVEN, one can book a table at the venue, order bottle service and more with Bitcoin. The venue has hosted celebrities such as Cardi B, Wyclef Jean, Post Malone, Nicki Minaj and Drake.

 

 

Drake performing at E11EVEN | Source: E11EVEN
Drake performing at E11EVEN. Source: E11EVEN

 

 

Per Coin ATM Radar, there are over 850 ATMs in and around the Miami area acting as a gateway between fiat and digital currencies. Aside from being found on the street, they are also common among many of the citys gas stations and vape shops.

Education and community

In 2018, digital assets instructor George Levy founded the Blockchain Institute of Technology, or BIT, in the Wynwood district. BIT offers reasonably priced courses about cryptocurrencies and NFTs. On top of that, the institute provides the Certified Blockchain Professional Curriculum with a unique blockchain-verified, credentialed third-party proof of expertise to add to ones resume. The Institute has provided cryptocurrency training programs to entities such as the Mexican Ministry of Economy, the Central Bank of Curaao and Sint Maarten, as well as accounting firm Ernst & Young. Of course, you can pay tuition fees with crypto.

There is a less formal initiative dubbed Bitcoin Brunch. Every week, members of the tight-knit blockchain community in Miami gather in the palm tree glades of Naomis Garden Restaurant and Lounge for hearty Haitian food (deep-fried turkey, beans and rice, collard greens) and talk about emerging crypto technologies over glasses of rum punch. According to Prem Lee Barbosa, a crypto Miami native and the events host:

Bitcoin Brunch attempts as an aspiration of helping reshape this world with the creative potential unleashed by the digital currency. It enables the masses to organize themselves deterministically, free of the influence of centralized administrators.

Barbosa elaborated that our get-rich-as-quickly-as-possible-and-at-all-costs mentality enslaves us to the dollar and makes us complicit in all of its pitfalls. He then praised Bitcoins decentralized nature as a means of restoring dignity to the exchange of value. If you are a fan of the groups blockchain philosophy, Bitcoin Brunch takes place every Sunday from 10 am to 3 pm at Haitian-inspired Naomis Garden Restaurant and Lounge at 650 NW 71st St., Miami.

 

 

Bitcoin Brunch at Naomis Garden & Restaurant | Source: Jorge Cortez
Bitcoin Brunch at Naomis Garden and Restaurant. Source: Jorge Cortes

 

 

Controversies and collapses

Being one of the more affluent states in the U.S., Florida has attracted its fair share of genuine crypto projects and con artists alike. Recently, Luiz Capuci, CEO of Mining Capital Coin and resident of Port St. Lucie, Florida, was indicted for his role in an alleged $62-million cryptocurrency fraud scheme. A few months prior, Florida resident David Pike pled guilty over his role in defrauding investors of OneCoin, one of the most notorious Ponzi schemes in cryptocurrency history, where victims lost anywhere between $4.4 billion and $19.4 billion.

Many early investors of now defunct Bitconnect were Florida residents, and they have just seen their class-action lawsuit against the perpetrators of the Ponzi scheme proceed after nearly five years.

 

 

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Notable Figures

Like the namesake song from Will Smith, I only came for two days of playing. But every time I come, I always wind up staying. People come and go to Miami for business and holidays as they please, blurring the line between full-time residents and visitors.

Suarez; Bowdre; Smith; Arana; Cortes; Barbosa; Levy; Soto-Wright; Martin;Peter Thiel, billionaire entrepreneur;Sydney Powell, co-founder and CEO of Maple Finance; Alex Wilson, CEO of The Giving Block; Anthony Elia, co-founder of TokenBot; Nic Carter, founding partner of Castle Island Ventures;Auston Bunsen, co-founder of Quick Node;Ornella Hernndez, cryptocurrency journalist and former Cointelegraph reporter, now at BlockWorks;andTatiana Moroz, American folk singer and blockchain personality.

If you have any suggestions for additions to this guide, please get in touch with zhiyuan.sun@cointelegraph.com

 

 

 

 

6 Questions for Rene Reinsberg of Celo

We ask the buidlers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for their thoughts on the industry… and throw in a few random zingers to keep them on their toes!

 

This week, our 6 Questions go to Rene Reinsberg, a co-founder of Celo, an open platform that makes financial tools accessible to anyone with a mobile phone.

Rene Reinsberg is a co-founder of Celo and president of The Celo Foundation, a grant-giving organization supporting the carbon-negative Celo blockchain. He has been working at the intersection of finance, technology and development for the past 15 years, including at Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, General Catalyst Partners, the World Bank and TechnoServe. His previous company, Locu, was acquired by GoDaddy where he served as vice president of Emerging Products post-acquisition.

1 What is the main hurdle to mass adoption of blockchain technology?

For blockchain to achieve mainstream adoption, there must be a broader understanding of the technology, which requires better awareness and education for everyone from crypto novices to crypto natives and beyond. This responsibility falls largely on crypto to do the work when thinking about last-mile solutions and go-to market approaches.

We can build a protocol, but were also responsible for explaining our infrastructure and championing inclusivity. By presenting onboarding as a solution, dedicating resources to developing a simple or fun gamified user experience, and building quality ramps between crypto and fiat currencies, we make the industry more approachable and easier to navigate. Accessibility, which has always informed Celos mobile-first approach, is also key. With 6 billion smartphone users globally, easily accessible, decentralized financial building blocks are necessary for building long-term, real-world adoption.

Lastly, we should shift mainstream conversations around Web3 toward real-world applications and use cases that serve everyday people around the world. As Web3 can be used as a transformative tool to help uplift historically disenfranchised communities, such as the un- and under-banked, sharing how blockchain has benefited farmers in Kenya to at-risk environments like the Amazon rainforest will further illustrate its impact.

 

2 What do you think will be the biggest trend in blockchain for the next 12 months?

As early DeFi protocols mature, we are seeing a big push toward ReFi (regenerative finance) models, which align with the Celo Foundations values of recognizing individuals as unique and connected. Whereas classical economic models defined success by unfettered, exponential growth, they didnt consider the extractive nature of the industry, viewing our environment as an empty world with unlimited resources.

ReFi, however, acknowledges that we live in a full world, to quote economist Herman Daly, with planetary boundaries, carrying capacities and tipping points. ReFi aims to course-correct this exploitation, better intertwining our economic and ecological systems. By using money as a tool to ascribe value to natural capital-backed assets, ReFi places a price on externalities, charging those who create negative externalities and rewarding those who create positive externalities.

Projects such as ReSource, a bankless infrastructure for circular trade and mutual credit networks that benefit small businesses, and Flow Carbon or Toucan Protocol, which are tokenizing carbon offsets, are indicative of these efforts, among other ReFi leaders within the Celo ecosystem.

 

3 Whats a problem you think blockchain has a chance to solve, but a solution hasnt been attempted yet?

Blockchain has the potential to help solve the worlds wicked problems, from environmental degradation to deep poverty. Combining blockchain technology with Web3s ability to accelerate action is what inspired the creation of both Celos Climate Collective and the Alliance for Prosperity, designed to raise awareness for issues impacting individuals and communities throughout the world. We invite founders and builders to align with our shared purpose, leveraging Web3s mass-coordination tools to tackle these mass-coordination problems.

 

4 What would you like to see tokenized? When, if ever would you expect this to happen?

Bringing land and property on-chain would open up many interesting opportunities in creating use cases for DeFi beyond payments. Moss is a great example of restorative land-tokenization NFTs of the Amazon rainforest happening now, where one NFT represents one hectare of forest. Not only are owners bestowed with real estate rights, they are compelled to participate in the conservation process by digitally monitoring their biodiverse land via satellite.

 

5 What has been the toughest challenge youve faced in our industry so far?

While market downturns, like the one were currently experiencing, come with significant challenges, they also present significant opportunities. Celo was built during a bear market, launching its mainnet on Earth Day 2020. Despite this, our community has continuously demonstrated its resilience and commitment to innovation. Navigating todays market conditions is no exception for Celos ecosystem partners. Theres a palpable, new energy and optimism that has surfaced around Buidling our way out and returning back to the core mission: creating prosperity for all.

 

6 What is the single most innovative use-case for blockchain youve ever seen? It doesnt have to be the one likeliest to succeed!

Jonathan Ledgards Interspecies Money proposes the establishment of the Bank of Other Species to issue a CBDC that disburses billions of dollars annually to nonhuman life-forms (or their digital twins) and correctly pricing natural capital, called L-Marks. This would help finance ecological conservation by paying local communities for services that improve species life outcomes. Since many of the poorest countries have the richest biodiversity, financial incentives for these countries to benefit their surrounding ecosystems can reduce extreme poverty while protecting the environment and its inhabitants. Ledgards proposal aligns with the primary principles of ReFi, highlighting the potential to solve the worlds cascading crises.