Crypto City Guides

Helsinki played host to the first Bitcoin for fiat transaction in 2009 — 5050 Bitcoin for $5 — 6 months before Pizza Day. Crypto City Guide.

This Crypto City guide looks at Finlands crypto culture: The most notable projects and people, its financial infrastructure, which retailers accept crypto, and where you can find blockchain education courses.

City: Helsinki
Country: Finland
Population: 1.55 million 
Established: 1550
Languages: Finnish and Swedish, with English widely spoken

Jump to: Crypto culture, Where to spend crypto in Helsinki, Crypto projects and companies, Local crypto controversies, Crypto education and community, Notable crypto figures from Helsinki

Situated on the Gulf of Finland, Helsinki is the capital of Finland and is arguably the worlds most northern metropolis, with 1.5 million people 30% of the countrys population calling the metro area home. Its inhabitants spend winter in a cold, still darkness but enjoy 11:00 pm sunsets in summertime.

Major population centers are nearby, with both Tampere and Turku reachable in two hours via road or rail. There are regular ferry services across the Baltic including to Estonias capital of Tallinn, which can be reached in two hours by sea, and there are also plans to link the cities via an undersea tunnel. The nearby Helsinki-Vantaa airport is the countrys main international gateway and serves as a transfer hub for Asia.

Finland has been ranked the happiest country in the world for six consecutive years by the World Happiness Report. Its income tax rate tops out at 56% one of the highest in the world and the tax data of every resident is public. Helsinki played host to the 1952 Summer Olympics. The country joined the European Union in 1995 and adopted the euro as its currency in 1999. In 2023, Finland became a member of NATO.

As the capital, Helsinkis crypto events draw participants from across the country, making it the natural meeting place for the industry. For that reason, projects and companies from nearby cities like Tampere and Turku are also included here.

The area was first settled around 5000 BC as the ice age retreated. Vikings raided the established settlements, as did Swedish crusaders in the 10th and 13th centuries. The city was formally established in 1550 as a Swedish trading post, defended by Suomenlinna (Finlands fortress), the largest sea fort in Europe. Later, under Russian control as the Grand Duchy of Finland, the emperor moved the capital from Turku to Helsinki, which was closer to St. Petersburg. Finland became independent in 1917, after which it resisted Soviet occupation in the 1940 Winter War.

Crypto culture

Helsinkis claim to crypto fame rests with Martti Malmi, a software developer who in 2009 sold 5,050 BTC for a $5.02 PayPal transfer, marking the first time that Bitcoin was exchanged for fiat currency. It occurred before the much better-known May 22, 2010, Pizza Day, when Bitcoin was first used to purchase a physical good. Eventually, Malmi used most of his Bitcoin to purchase a studio in the metro area. If hed hung on to it, itd be worth $171 million today. The Bitcoin was used to seed an exchange called New Liberty Standard, which established the first BTC price of 1,309.03 BTC for $1.

Found the first known bitcoin to USD transaction from my email backups. I sold 5,050 BTC for $5,02 on 2009-10-12. https://t.co/8XcBmzJljf

Martti Malmi (@marttimalmi) January 15, 2014

Malmi was, in some ways, a product of his environment, with Helsinki recognized as a bed of technical innovation since Nokia began to dominate the cellphone market. In 1991, Linus Torvalds began working on what became Linux at the University of Helsinki. It is also home to many video game companies, with local firm Rovios Angry Birds achieving global fame in 2009. Helsinki is also the home of Aave founder Stani Kulechov, though he has moved abroad with the company.

In 2019, a then-staunchly Bitcoin maximalist group called Konsensus organized the translation of Saifedean Ammous 2018 book The Bitcoin Standard into Finnish, and later also translated The Little Bitcoin Book by The Bitcoin Collective. According to one member, the organization has since become more accepting of other cryptocurrencies and blockchain use cases.

The crypto community in Helsinki and Finland is somewhat disorganized and divided, with many enthusiasts being interested in one facet be it Bitcoin, NFTs or Web3 without embracing the whole, and thus having few common threads. Still, a certain grassroots energy is evident.

Where can I spend crypto in Helsinki?

Paying with Bitcoin is not common in Finland, where card and app payments dominate. One notable exception is the restaurant Faro, at which a few people are likely to buy a burger and beers with sats at the monthly Bitcoin meetup.

On the bar side, Taudo Baari and Time Bar also accept crypto. There is also the Osuva shooting range.

Samuel Harjunp, CEO and co-founder of hardware startup Xellox and regular at the Faro Bitcoin meetup, tells Magazine about the state of Bitcoin acceptance:

A few restaurants and bars have already been orange-pilled the biggest obstacles are the payment infrastructure and bookkeeping.

Crypto projects and companies in Helsinki

Today, Helsinki has a vibrant tech and startup scene with many coworking spaces. The city is also host to the annual Slush startup conference, which draws 25,000 participants.

Web3 Helsinki is a student-run organization that organized its first event on April 20, 2020, with about 150 people in attendance, making it perhaps the largest single crypto event of the year.

2023s events have included the Web3 Bash in late April, followed by the Aurora Nordic Web3 Conference in June. On June 6, the BRIDG3 Blockchain summit was held at Tamperes Nokia Arena, focusing on Web3, the metaverse and decentralized autonomous organizations.

The Finnish Bitcoin Association was established on May 6, in an event attended by Magazine, with membership fees paid primarily with Bitcoin via the Lightning Network. Upon the conclusion of formalities, the saunas of the hosting coworking space were fired up.

For those interested in NFTs, Fungi is a platform advertising a no-code solution that lets organizations build NFT-based communities. One of these was a metaverse island called Cornerstone for VR studio ZOAN, where 100 plots could be purchased as NFTs.

HABBO NFT, operated by the local creators of the 23-year-old online chat room game HABBO Hotel, has dropped an 11,600-piece avatar collection on OpenSea and is currently developing an NFT-based game. A group called The Future of Art has also dedicated itself to promoting digital art and runs an NFT gallery.

An aspiring LinkedIn competitor, Kleoverse, is a proof-of-talent Web3 platform for recruiters and jobseekers that displays skills such as knowledge in programming languages through badges instead of text on a resume.

Phaver is building a Web3 social media app powered by Lens Protocol, which bills itself as the social layer of Web3. Phaver is one of many local projects that have worked with tech design studio STRGL, which specializes in protocol-level Web3 solutions. STRGLs managing director, Kasper Karimaa, sees Helsinki as a haven for developers:

Finlands role in blockchain innovation through its agile engineering community makes Helsinki the perfect place to assemble a skilled team in research, design and development.

One of the most widely known crypto companies in the country was the P2P exchange LocalBitcoins, which employed about 50 people before closing its doors in February 2023. CEO Nikolaus Kangas told Cointelegraph that this was due to a failure to turn our trade volumes and declining market share back to growth.

This is it! Here is your last chance to score a Denarium physical #bitcoin before we close shop forever. Don't miss out on this unique opportunity to grab a piece of crypto history! pic.twitter.com/5oYKqMuGki

— Denarium Bitcoin (@DenariumBitcoin) July 18, 2020

Bittiraha, which translates to bit money in Finnish, is another old local crypto company. It was founded circa 2012 and installed the countrys first Bitcoin ATM at the Helsinki railway station in December 2013.

The company was also a distributor of Casascius physical Bitcoin and eventually made its own line of Denarium wallets. The parent company, Coinmotion based a few hours north in Jyvskyl now operates a cryptocurrency exchange.

Another major Finnish exchange called Northcrypto can be found in Turku.

A euro stablecoin has also been developed in the city. Membrane Finances EUROe was launched in February 2023 and is designed to be an EU-regulated full-reserve stablecoin that is compliant with recent legislation. While this is notable considering the relatively few operational euro stablecoins, volume remains low at approximately $20,000 per day.

Membrane Finance is excited to announce the launch of EUROe on Ethereum!

Read more at https://t.co/nV8dYKkBmK, and read the thread below to see how you can get started with $EUROe from today!

— EUROe (@EUROemoney) February 2, 2023

Helsinki native Anita Krypto Granny Kalergis spends most of her time in Dubai, where she organizes blockchain conferences. She feels that Finnish entrepreneurs and decision-makers lack bravery, preferring to wait for someone else to take the lead and for regulatory certainty both from the national and EU levels. Most activity is not advertised, with especially older business people afraid to rock the boat or make major moves, she observes.

Companies here will build something to 95% completion before opening their mouth, whereas projects in other countries will raise money and build partnerships based on a white paper while testing in production.

Helsinkis crypto controversies

In 2018, the Finnish customs service planned to auction 1,666 BTC that it had seized in a drug case, but decided not to proceed due to concerns that the virtual money would return to the hands of criminals, displaying a rather negative official view of cryptocurrency. In July 2022, the state eventually auctioned nearly 2,000 BTC for $47 million, with proceeds being donated to Ukraine. 

The Finnish Government decided on significant additional aid to #Ukraine. Finland will donate tens of millions of euros from the sale of #bitcoin seized by Finnish Customs to Ukraine. This historic decision was taken by the Ministry and Finance and Ministry for Foreign Affairs. pic.twitter.com/RNDenhsBWH

— Valtiovarainministeri | Finansministeriet (@VMuutiset) April 28, 2022

In December 2021, local media reported a trend of investment scams involving the faces of prominent people, including industrialist Heikki Herlin and then-Prime Minister Sanna Marin. 

Earlier in 2018, the police also made warnings regarding a trend of Bitcoin blackmail relating to bogus claims that hackers had webcam material of users visiting pornographic websites. In 2022, a Helsinki watch dealer fell victim to a common crypto scam, handing over Rolex watches worth $400,000 after mistakenly believing that he had received a Bitcoin transaction.

Cryptocurrency, often adjacent to scams in the news, has come to be viewed with a relatively high degree of suspicion across most of society. Commenting on the decision to halt the 2018 customs seizure sale, Pekka Pylkknen, head of finance at the Finnish Customs Service, highlighted concerns about money laundering, telling national broadcaster YLE that the buyers of cyber currency rarely use them for normal endeavors.

National media regularly interview outspoken cryptocurrency critic Aleksi Grym, head of fintech for the Finnish Central Bank, as an authoritative expert without seeking alternative pro-cryptocurrency views, though coverage has been improving.

As one may notice from this article, the term Web3 is preferred, presumably due to its distancing from the negative stereotypes of cryptocurrency.

Neither the countrys political establishment nor any major party or other large grouping of the population could be described outright as being pro-crypto.

One reason for this could be Finlands stable, highly functional, and high-trust society, in which most people do not see the need to disrupt or fix something with cryptocurrency. Bank transfers are free and near-instantaneous across the EU, with cash use increasingly rare. Virtually nobody is unbanked, and the most trusted institution is the police, with 95% public support. Harjunp, whose startup is working on solutions to protect private keys, explains the disconnect:

Many people dont understand Bitcoin and think its something between criminal money and a pyramid scheme.

It is also notable that the moon mentality and dreams of quick wealth found in many cryptocurrency investors are generally seen in a particularly negative light, with Malmi noting that he never set out to make money with Bitcoin, perhaps owing to Finnish culture and his idealistic mentality.

In the same vein, cryptocurrencies are seen by some as drivers of inequality in a country where large differences in wealth are often considered taboo.

Crypto education and community

The Finnish Innovation Fund, or Sitra, has stated it as a priority to accelerate the local development of Web3 services, saying that its in Finlands interest to play an active role in ensuring that the metaverse is created in line with European values.

The fund has also worked with the Finnish National Gallery to create The Finnish Metagallery, an art gallery in the Decentraland metaverse whose building is modeled from the Finnish Pavilion as it appeared at the 1900 Paris World Fair.

In the old capital of Turku, The University of Turku hosts the Critical Inquiry Into DAOs (CIDS) research group, of which the author is part.

Notable crypto figures from Helsinki

Martti Malmi, the first person to sell Bitcoin for fiat; Henri Brade, board member of Coinmotion; Aleksi Lytynoja, CEO and co-founder of Kleoverse; Niko Laamanen, founder of Konsensus.

Martin Wichmann, chairman of Konsensus; Antti Innanen, founder of Fungi; Sointu Karjalainen, founder of The Good Cartel; Juha Viitala, CEO and co-founder of Membrane Finance; Mika Timonen, founder of Habbo NFT; Olli Tianinen, CEO of Equilibrium Labs; Kasper Karimaa, managing director at STRGL; Jarmo Suoranta, CEO of TX – Tomorrow Explored.

Keir Finlow-Bates, CEO of Chainfrog; Ville Runola, CEO and founder of Northcrypto; Samuel Harjunp, CEO and co-founder of Xellox; Joonatan Lintala, CEO and co-founder of Phaver.

Cointelegraph team members often found in Helsinki: Elias Ahonen.

If you have any suggestions for additions to this guide, please contact eliasahonen@cointelegraph.com.

A “full-on” crypto scene and “heaps” of Web3 projects in Australia’s largest city show Sydney has more to offer than beaches and a bridge.

This Crypto City guide looks at Sydneys crypto culture, the citys most notable projects and people, its financial infrastructure, what retailers accept crypto and where you can find blockchain education courses along with a history of its crypto controversies.

Jump to: Crypto culture, Projects and companies, Financial infrastructure, Where can I spend crypto? Controversies and collapses, Education, Notable figures.

Fast facts

City: Sydney
Country: Australia
Population: 5.2 million
Established: 1788

Sydney is Australias first, oldest and second-most populous city (just), world-famous for its harbor views and iconic landmarks, such as the Opera House and Harbor Bridge affectionately nicknamed The Coathanger by locals. The Harbor Citys second-most notable feature is 100 beaches across the metropolitan area with Bondi Beach the best known.

Located on Australias east coast, Sydney was established as a penal colony for the British Empire, which needed somewhere to transport criminals after losing control of its colonies in the American Revolution. Its probably no surprise then it earned the moniker Sin City in the second half of the 20th century due to rampant organized crime that corrupted judges, the top brass of the police and, maybe less surprisingly, politicians.

On a global scale, Sydney is fairly young and architecturally contemporary, which saw it play backdrop to The Matrix, as a major location in Mission Impossible 2 and a starring role in the plot of Finding Nemo (no, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney doesnt exist). Sydney is Australias financial hub, has the third largest immigrant population globally, and boasts the second most unaffordable housing in the world behind Hong Kong.

Sydney’s crypto culture

Sydney saw an early interest in cryptocurrencies that still carries on today. Blockchain Sydney has been consistently getting together since 2013, and it currently meets twice a month at various pubs around the city. Blockchain Professionals, formed in 2014, also still meets up about once a month.

The Australian DeFi Association, while only launching in early 2022, has become a highly attended and consistent monthly hangout for local crypto industry players and enthusiasts.

Co-founder Mark Monfort originally created it for online discussions but says it soon morphed into an IRL meetup held between the larger one-off blockchain events, such as those by Blockchain Australia.

We wanted to be the gap filler between other meetups because what we saw was that there wasnt really a place for direct conversation apart from Crypto Twitter.

Monfort maintains a calendar of Web3 events and meetups going on around Sydney and Australia. Other popular meetups include Bitcoin Sydney, Hyperledger Sydney and Sydney AI Web3 (which added artificial intelligence in line with the recent AI boom), while NFT Sydney and Metaverse Sydney typically dont meet as often.

As the countrys financial hub, Sydney boasts a thriving startup culture. Many crypto-related events are held in the various co-working offices around the city that also serve as a base for numerous crypto and fintech startups. One provider, Stone & Chalk, runs a Web3 Innovation Centre within the government-supported Sydney Startup Hub, and local exchange Independent Reserve has run a blockchain business accelerator since 2018.

Blockchain Week, the flagship event of Blockchain Australia, invariably holds at least one day of the program in Sydney, typically at the Exchange Centre the home of the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX).

Sydney’s crypto projects and companies 

Sydneys crypto players are diverse, and theres likely a company involved in every niche of the market. Theres a lot of innovation thats coming out of this town much more than you see on a global stage, says Monfort, who also is a co-founder of the Web3 advisory firm NotCentralised.

NFT horse racing and betting game Zed Run was created here by Virtually Human Studios (before it moved to Melbourne) and so was Find Satoshi Labs move-to-earn app StepN. Fellow NFT gaming companies Illuvium and Immutable are also in Sydney (as much as a decentralized organization can be). Sigma Prime, is behind Lighthouse, the widely adopted Ethereum client.

Compared to Melbourne, there arent as many exchanges or trading platforms based in the city. Sydney plays host to significant parts of the Ethereum-based token trading platform Synthetix, the DeFi-backed fintech Block Earner is based here along with the centralized exchanges Independent Reserve and CryptoSpend.

The Redbelly Network operates the blockchain of the same name, which was originally birthed at Sydney University alongside government researchers. Smart Token Labs, creator of the open-source wallet AlphaWallet and crypto wallet creator Verida, both have their HQs in Sydney.

The city also hosts Block8, which helps develop blockchain products, Soulbound token development and advisory business Soulbis, Filecoin-powered data storage provider Holon, along with the Tide Foundation, which offers a cybersecurity solution thats based on blockchain.

Comparison site Finder operates a crypto exchange, and its founder, Fred Schebesta, dabbles with his blockchain investment fund Hive Empire, also Finders holding company. Schebesta owns the Crypto Castle in Coogee, which he bought for $11.5 million (17 million AUD) in May 2021 its rented out for photoshoots and events and listed on Airbnb for an exorbitant nightly price.

Exchange-traded fund manager Global X ETFs AU has a local entity providing funds investing in Bitcoin and Ether and has another one for publicly traded crypto and fintech companies. Bitcoin mining firms Iris Energy and Arkon Energy are Sydney-based, although they have no local operations with their mines in Canada, Texas and Norway.

Haymarket HQ and BlockathonDAO have created incubator pathways in Sydney for crypto start ups, often running events and meet ups. The former also helps accelerate crypto companies into Australia.

Venture firm Airtree VC has partnered with its share of Web3 firms and is based in the inner-city suburb of Surry Hills, while the Web3 recruitment business CryptoRecruit is out in Bondi. Web3 data platform Itheum made a home in Sydney. Stirling & Rose and Piper Alderman both have specialist crypto lawyers.

Sydney’s financial infrastructure

Sydney was home to Australias first-ever Bitcoin ATM, which went live inside a mall in the city center on April 15, 2014. The ATM was purchased from RoboCoin, the firm responsible for setting up the worlds first Bitcoin ATM in Canada around six months earlier. Sydneys ATM was the 11th from RoboCoin to launch worldwide.

Today, over 100 Bitcoin ATMs, nearly a fourth of the roughly 500 in Australia, are dotted around the central business district and outer suburbs of Sydney according to Coin ATM Radar and are operated by a handful of companies. Users can only sell crypto at 14 of them, however, and those are predominantly based in the city center.

Sydneysiders, like all Australians, have access to multiple local exchanges as well as international ones with local entities in the country. A handful namely CoinJar, Crypto.com, CoinSpot, Wirex and CryptoSpend provide debit cards, offering crypto cashback or allowing crypto to be spent directly.

Crypto isnt widely used for payments or sending funds. Sending smaller monetary amounts through TradFi rails in Australia is typically instant and free, operates 24/7, and only needs a phone number or email thanks to the New Payments Platform, which everyone just calls PayID. The Australian central bank governor Philip Lowe has even said in the past hes skeptical on the need to issue a retail central bank digital currency: How could we offer digital tokens which would be better than that?

The relationship between crypto companies and banking or payment providers is still tenuous. In May 2023, Binance Australias payments provider Zepto was forced to offboard the exchange by its payments enablement partner Cuscal.

Westpac, one of the countrys Big Four banks, also began blocking payments to crypto exchanges on the same day Binance was debanked. Shortly after, the Sydney-based Commonwealth Bank (Australias largest bank) said it would begin declining or temporarily holding payments to crypto exchanges and impose a $10,000 monthly cap on the amount of money its customers could send to exchanges.

The banks vaguely cited issues with scams when asked to explain their respective actions.

Where can I spend crypto?

There are only a handful of places in Sydney left where you can spend crypto. Coinmap claims there are roughly 25 venues that take digital currency payments near the city, which get even more sparse when traveling to the outer suburbs (in total there are about 40).

The majority of venues appearing on Coinmap have shut down, and of those still standing, many no longer take crypto payments. A lack of uptake by customers was the consensus for getting rid of crypto payments as explained by multiple venue owners.

Of those still around that accept crypto, you can grab a brew at Cat and Cow Coffee in Clovelly. The aptly named Bitcoin Rocket Cafe in Redfern takes Bitcoin over the Lightning Network for its coffees and Bnh ms. The cafes owner, Samantha Ho, said she charges a higher fee for those spending under $13 (20 AUD) when paying by Lightning and estimated around five in 100 customers actually pay using Bitcoin.

There are a variety of stores that accept crypto when ordering online. You can order a new skateboard from Boardworld, which has shops in the inner west suburbs of Newtown and St Peters. Retro Girl will accept Bitcoin for their vintage wares, or you can grab some (very expensive) lingerie at Babylikestopony, which also has a shop in Paddington.

Under the bridge is Bar Lulu, which operates CryptoLulu, an NFT-gated membership club that claims to offer private lounges, networking events and other benefits at the venue for NFT holders. While you can of course pay for the NFT membership using crypto, the bar itself doesnt take crypto payments right, now but thats apparently coming soon.

Controversies and collapses

For many years, there was much excitement about the ASX implementing a blockchain-backed solution for its clearing and settlements system. It first announced the plans in 2017, but it suffered multiple delays. Five years on and $170 million later, the ASX canned the project in late 2022 to much scorn from the central bank and the securities regulator.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has undertaken its share of enforcement actions in the crypto space against Sydney businesses. It sued Block Earner in November 2022, claiming the latter offered crypto-based yield products without a license. ASIC hit comparison website Finder with a similar suit a month later, and the regulator claims Finder shut down its crypto-yielding products a month earlier because of its concerns.

In April 2022 after a targeted review, ASIC canceled the financial license of Binance Australia Derivatives (Oztures Trading), the futures business of the exchange. ASIC also claims it was sniffing out the Sydney-headquartered Australian entity for FTX months before the global company collapsed in November 2022. FTX Australia was able to gain a local financial license by taking over a company that already had one, a loophole that ASIC chair Joe Longo wants to close.

Holon was similarly whacked by ASIC in October 2022, which put a stop to crypto ETFs investing in Bitcoin, Ether and Filecoin. Holon later bailed on the idea altogether.

In late 2020, ASIC also unleashed a raft of charges against John Biggaton, a promotor of the infamous BitConnect Ponzi scheme. Conspiracy theories about Biggaton have been spun up after his wife, Madeline Bigatton, mysteriously disappeared in March 2018. She was suspected to have committed suicide at The Gap, a location infamous for such acts, but its a narrative that her family doubts.

Sydneysider Kathryn Nguyen is widely believed to be the first person charged with the theft of crypto assets in Australia. She was sentenced to two years in jail after stealing around 100,000 XRP in January 2018. The alleged Sydney-based Ponzi scheme Metafi Yielders is said to have stolen $135 million, but after it collapsed, the chief executive of the business, Michael Daher, claimed he was just a fall guy, and the real schemers were in Nigeria.

The Commonwealth Bank has seemingly done a 180 on its crypto stance in a relatively short time. In November 2021, it was gearing up to ship crypto trading within its banking app. At the time, its CEO, Matt Comyn, said the bank saw bigger risks in not participating in crypto and, in May 2022, was still seemingly trying to squeeze the product past regulators. But just over a year and a half later, the bank began censoring payments to crypto exchanges.

The controversial Satoshi claimant Craig Wright used to live in Sydney, and his house was notoriously raided by federal police in 2015 due to a warrant issued by the tax authorities, but he now lives in the United Kingdom.

Crypto education in Sydney

A few higher-ed institutions offer courses or units of study on blockchain and Web3. Sydneys first university, the University of Sydney, offers a unit on Cryptocurrency Markets and Investments. It also does a course on blockchains and cryptography as part of its Master of Cybersecurity. 

Sydney Uni along with the CSIRO (a federal government scientific research agency) developed the Redbelly blockchain, which aimed to create a fork-proof network. The project was spun out of the uni into its own commercial entity in December 2021.

The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) offers a free two-hour online course on the basics of blockchain tech, while the University of New South Wales (UNSW) offers postgraduate and undergraduate courses on Web3 and Blockchain Applications. UNSWs course on cryptocurrency and DeFi is a core course as part of its postgraduate major in fintech.

For those willing to pay $235 (350 AUD) to sit in a classroom for nine hours to learn the basics of crypto, blockchain and how to trade, then the Sydney Community College has a course aimed at introducing you to crypto and blockchain although this carries no accreditations like the others.

UNSW and Sydney Uni have a student-led society that semi-regularly hosts events and meetups called the University Network for Cryptocurrency and Blockchain.

In May 2022, UNSW received $4 million worth of USDC from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin for the development of a pandemic-detection tool.

Notable figures

Synthetix founder Kain Warwick; Illuvium co-founders (and Kains brothers) Aaron and Kieran Warwick; Finder co-founder and Crypto Castle owner Fred Schebesta; Block Earner co-founder Charlie Karaboga; Australian DeFi Association co-founders Mark Monfort and Arturo Rodriguez; Kraken Australia managing director Jonathon Miller; Web3 blogger Joan Westenberg; KPMG director of metaverse Alyse Sue; StepN creator Jerry Huang; Algorand Foundation governance manager Adriana Belotti; Haymarket HQ CEO Duco Van Breeman; Immutable co-founders Robbie and James Ferguson, Independent Reserve co-founder Adrian Przelozny ; Virtually Human co-founder and Zed Run creator Chris Laurent; Global X ETFs AU CEO Evan Metcalf; Block8 co-founders Kim Bartlett, Alan Burt and Tim Bass; CryptoRecruit founder Neil Dundon; Koinly head of tax Danny Talwar; Coinbase APAC managing director John OLoghlen; Arkon Energy co-founder and CEO Joshua Payne; Smart Token Labs co-founder and CEO Victor Zhang; Holon co-founder Heath Behncke; Crypto lawyers Nick Abrahams and Michael Bacina (the latter is also the Blockchain Australia chairperson), Ethereum Smart Contract developer and community educator Bokky Poobah.

Cointelegraph team members and contributors based in Sydney: Felix Ng, Brayden Lindrea, Ciaran Lyons and Jesse Coghlan.

If you have suggestions for additions to this guide, please email: jesse.coghlan@cointelegraph.com.

Toronto embraced digital assets sooner than most and is home to more crypto projects than anywhere else in Canada.

Contents

Overview
Crypto culture in Toronto
Where can I spend crypto in Toronto?
Crypto projects and companies in Toronto
Torontos crypto controversies
Toronto crypto education and community
Notable crypto figures from Toronto

Overview

The city lies at the center of the so-called Golden Horseshoe, a large urban area around the shore of Lake Erie that 9.76 million people about a quarter of all Canadians call home. Consistently rated among the worlds most livable cities, Toronto, much like Vancouver on the west coast, is notable for its ethno-cultural diversity brought on by waves of immigration. Its within a short flight of the capital Ottawa, as well as Montreal to the north and New York to the south. Toronto is seen as the countrys financial and cultural capital.

Playing home to notable battles between indigenous peoples in the late 1600s, French traders from the mid-1700s and the British later that century, Toronto has seen a lot. In 1834, around the time of a failed rebellion against the British, it was incorporated as Toronto, which was a First Nations name, and the city became a destination for slaves escaping the American South. In the late 1800s, the city became a railway hub. Today, it is served by Pearson International Airport.

As a global hub of business and culture, Toronto resembles a northern version of New York, to the extent that many movies set in New York are filmed in the city due to their similar appearance. Winter weather can be formidable, with freezing rain in 1999 requiring the army to be called in for road clearing. The city is well-known as the birthplace of Ethereum and today hosts a majority of Canadas blockchain companies.

T.G.I.F! Great day to relax, spend some quality time with the family and buy more crypto. We have over 50 ATMs across the GTA! Find an ATM near you now: https://t.co/e61tWMgWRh #Toronto #Crypto #Ethereum #Bitcoin #Litecoin #bitcoinATM #EthereumATM #LitecoinATM #CashtoBTC #Canada pic.twitter.com/8KFRAaPg8H

— Localcoin Bitcoin ATM (@LocalcoinATM) April 6, 2018

Crypto culture in Toronto

Vitalik Buterin, an elongated Toronto young man who looked brainy in a very literal way, had attended Anthonys first meetup and later brought to him an idea for a blockchain platform he called Ethereum.

So writes author Ethan Lou in his memoir, Once A Bitcoin Miner, much of which takes place in Toronto. Anthony Di Iorio, an early Bitcoin investor, started a crypto meetup named after his software company Decentral in a redbrick house in Torontos historical fashion district this is where the young Buterin walked in with his idea for Ethereum, which is, of course, another story entirely.

With the founding of Ethereum, Toronto cemented its position in the crypto canon. By 2018, Canadian startup blog BetaKit wrote there was a divide in Canada between the areas that embraced the cultural aspects of crypto on one side, and the financial aspects on the other.

While Toronto and Waterloo are understood to be lively crypto hubs, Vancouver is known for companies that privilege crypto-collectibles over currency, and blockchain art over tokens. 

This makes sense, considering Toronto is a city oriented primarily toward finance, while Waterloo, the birthplace of BlackBerry, is a tech hub an hours drive away. Thats where Buterin attended university briefly and was the home of the author of this article for nearly 20 years.

In 2014, Decentral opened a physical location on the prominent Spadina Avenue, making it and its large Bitcoin sign something of an institution and a way in which Bitcoin touched the lives of average Torontonians. Featuring a Bitcoin ATM, the spot became almost a Bitcoin embassy in the city, hosting meetups and other events. 

As a financial hub, Toronto regularly plays host to blockchain conferences including the annual Blockchain Futurist Conference, the largest in the country. In 2022, the event coincided with ETH Toronto. The year also saw the Web3 & Blockchain World summit, AIBC Toronto and the Cardano Summit 2022. A quick browse of Meetup.com will reveal that there are dozens of cryptocurrency-, blockchain- and NFT-themed meetups in the city and surrounding area. 

So excited to be in Toronto for The Blockchain Futurist Conference with The #bettertraders_
Podcast. Come say hi pic.twitter.com/xk6TRLw88Q

— Rune (@cryptorunes__) October 30, 2022

The corporate nature of the city means there is more funding available than in most other comparable destinations, explains Charlie Aikenhead, senior vice president of marketing at WonderFi. And unlike south of the border in the United States, there is a general sense of regulatory certainty, which encourages a willingness to bet on the industry.

Canadian investors and citizens seem to have a more favorable view of the industry and have less worries about customer protections than other countries.

Where can I spend crypto in Toronto?

According to Coinmaps, there are a number of businesses in the city and surrounding areas that happily accept cryptocurrency as payment. In addition to crypto ATMs and various shopping outlets specializing from sportswear to TV antennas, one can have their teeth repaired at Downtown Dental Hygiene Clinic, with the same service available for their homes at B & B Cleaning Service. Down the street from both, Grossmans Tavern is happy to exchange beer for bits, while Toronto Brewing will sell you all you need to make drinks at home. Even cryotherapy is available at Vital Cryotherapy Toronto.

It looks like there are plenty of places to spend crypto around Toronto Or you can search the whole world on Coinmap! pic.twitter.com/678AsIoU4h

— Coinmap (@thecoinmap) March 22, 2021

Coffee can be purchased at the nearby Snakes and Lattes board game cafe a few blocks away, while Urban Living Suites offers a good nights rest for crypto tourists roaming the streets without loonies or toonies what locals call $1 and $2 dollar coins, featuring a loon and two polar bears, respectively. Online services such as those offered by WebRocker Web Design are also available. 

While crypto acceptance is by no means the norm, it is notable to say that it appears very reasonable that one could go cashless and survive on cryptocurrency for the majority of their needs by seeking out crypto-friendly businesses in the region.

Crypto projects and companies in Toronto

Toronto has the largest concentration of blockchain startups in the country, to the extent that startupill.com published a list titled 82 Best Toronto Cryptocurrency Startups. Among the biggest ones include exchanges Coinsquare, CoinSmart, Tokens.com, Bitbuy, BitSwap, 3Commas, Coinberry and Coinlet among several others. Angel.co also lists 39 Top Blockchain / Cryptocurrency Startups in Toronto in 2022, many of which appear to be actively hiring.

On the mining side, Hut8 Mining is perhaps the most established player, being listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange with a market cap above $400 million. Bitfarms is also listed at a market cap of just under $200 million. DigiMax, Digihost and Cryptoster are also involved in mining. 

#HIVE Blockchain Technologies Ltd

First publicly traded crypto miner, listing on the Toronto Venture Exchange in 2017
HIVE uses 100% green energy to mine $BTC
In 2022, HIVE mined 2,368 BTC & 32,397 $ETH

— RR2Capital (@RR2Capital) November 1, 2022

Andrew Kiguel, CEO of Tokens.com and former CEO of Hut8 Mining, explains that the mix of crypto companies and several large universities is the secret sauce to the citys industry success, which, he says, has a young and sophisticated crypto population.

There are several large universities, and many crypto companies are headquartered here. As a result, theres a large, active crypto community, he says. There are regular meetups and businesses that have launched in the city. It has a young and sophisticated crypto population. 

The crypto environment is generally cooperative and friendly. There is a large talent pool in Toronto seeking employment in crypto. Many crypto companies were launched in Toronto, and others, such as Galaxy Digital and Hive, were financed out of Toronto.

In addition to exchanges and mining, Toronto also hosts many financial services and advisory companies specializing in cryptocurrency. These include Signal, a market intelligence firm, Bitcoinblack, which provides crypto-backed credit cards, and payment transfer company Biquiti.

Jaxx Wallet, which allows users to easily manage cryptocurrency holdings via smartphone, is also based in Toronto.

Torontos crypto controversies

Earlier in 2022, authorities seized a Lambo and $2 million from local 23-year-old Crypto King Aiden Pleterski, whose company AP Private Equity Limited was accused of being a $35-million fraud according to court documents. Pleterski was allegedly renting out a lakeside mansion for $45,000 per month even as some locals say they lost money earmarked for their grandchildrens education. 

In early 2020, a Los Angeles billionaire named Josh Jones became a victim of a so-called SIM-swap attack, according to Ryk Edelstein, founder of 5-L Technologies, in Montreal. The attacker took $45 million in Bitcoin but was eventually tracked down to nearby Hamilton via a PlayStation username and IP address, where authorities found a teenager who later pleaded guilty. A friend, who witnessed the arrest, later recounted the story to local news: 

He told me, after the SIM swap, that he thought he got only $1 million. But when he looked at the total amount and saw it was $45 million, he panicked.

Toronto also served as part of the stage for the infamous case of QuadrigaCX, whose late founder, Gerald Cotten, lived in the city while running the exchange. He reportedly died in India in 2018, seemingly taking the private keys to nearly $200 million with him to the grave which victims have later fought to exhume in a search for answers. In June 2020, the Ontario Securities Commission officially concluded that QuadrigaCX was a fraud and a Ponzi scheme.

Toronto crypto education and community

If you want to be a blockchain dev, at George Brown Universitys Casa Loma campus, you can participate in a one-year full-time Blockchain Development Program, which comes with a mandatory on-the-job training element. Tuition is only about $5,000 per year.

Toronto Metropolitan University offers a course called Blockchain for Business, which promises to help fill a knowledge gap for professionals seeking essential knowledge in the ways in which blockchain technology works and how it can be applied effectively to solve business problems. York University has a dedicated Blockchain Academy and offers a Certificate in Blockchain Development, which is more geared toward building than understanding, through its School of Continuing Studies. 

Torontos chapter of the International Institute of Business Analysis has provided its members with educational seminars on Blockchain Fundamentals, and Intellipaat provides a 27-hour IBM Blockchain Course. BlockGeeks also offers some free online courses.

There is also CryptoChicks, a nonprofit that has grown from Toronto to encompass chapters around the world helping thousands of women around the globe to learn and invest in blockchain, build new careers and businesses.

Notable crypto figures from Toronto

Vitalik Buterin (at least sometimes when he visits family, including father Dmitry Buterin), Ethereum co-founder Anthony Di Iorio; Author of Once A Bitcoin Miner and occasional Magazine contributor Ethan Lou; Tokens.com CEO Andrew Kiguel; Cannabanc founder Paresh Khatri; Bitbuy CEO Michael Arbus; Kylin Network co-founder Dylan Dewdney; Newton CEO Dustin Walper; CoinSmart CEO Justin Hartzman; Coinberry co-founder Andrei Poliakov.

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

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

We and @invity_io are safe & sound in Miami, ready to discuss sound money with you at @TheBitcoinConf.

Wallets?
Keys?
Booth AMAs, prizes, other activities? You bet!

We will be sharing the conference experience with you along the way. Let our crew tell you more details: pic.twitter.com/vNiEmZtggR

— Trezor (@Trezor) April 6, 2022

 

 

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

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

IT'S HERE.

…the handbook with everything you and your friends need to know about the basics of bitcoin mining.

We have 400 free copies to share this week at @MiningDisrupt in Miami, and it'll soon be available on Amazon (hardcopy) and on the Braiins website (free e-book). pic.twitter.com/vzTCUfXZmI

— Braiins | bitcoin mining tools (@braiins_systems) July 25, 2022

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

Miami is going to hack our way to the top in order to compete with the world.

What an honor to be joined by visionaries like @DavidSacks @shervin @jdanjohnson and @jefffluhr for Not Another Fireside Chat on the future of Miami Tech at Miami Hack Week! pic.twitter.com/WWJHsUmg6W

— Mayor Francis Suarez (@FrancisSuarez) April 20, 2022

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

Great time with Captain Haiti and the Mayor pic.twitter.com/bpBA65Evkm

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) June 2, 2021

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

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