Miami Beach is an interesting place. Its 1920s atmosphere, its Art Deco buildings, its wide streets and palm trees contrasting with the blue sky, make it attractive.
This is America, of course. Luxurious cars, extravagantly dressed people, elegant and trendy clubs. The cream of the crop, without a shadow of a doubt.
We spend the day getting organized. Buying the last things we need for the conference and making contact with our friends and colleagues, who are arriving here from the four corners of the world. The days are warm and sunny. We often forget how low Florida is on the world map. Cuba is just a stone’s throw away. We are in the tropics.
Around town there are bitcoiners everywhere. You can tell by the T-shirts, the caps and the conversations that are eavesdropped on from the table next door. The city seems to be under siege. The glance is galvanizing. It almost seems as if from here we can set out to conquer the world. As if we were a small army preparing for battle.
The Convention Center is gigantic and all decked out in orange. It will be difficult to find your way around in the chaos of people and companies. We’ll do our best.
The other thing that strikes us right away is the prices. The city is very expensive. Almost prohibitive.
In the evening we have a quick bite to eat in a nice pub near Ocean Drive. We make friends with a group of Americans sitting in the table next to ours. They are family. We realize it when we hear them talking about monetary sovereignty, stablecoin, KYC and other typical terms characteristic of our tribe. They’re originally from Miami and they tell us about how prices have skyrocketed in recent years. They talk about palpable inflation and uncontrolled increases, especially in the restaurant and lodging industries. They tell us how, paradoxically, the phenomenon has reached obvious proportions especially with the pandemic. As if the activities had reacted to the crisis triggered by the virus with a sharp increase in prices. They describe it as a widespread phenomenon, which is marginalizing a lot of people.
In fact, the city center is chock full of homeless people. Not that we should be surprised, we know very well how the American dream is just a facade and can turn into a nightmare worthy of the Brazilian favelas in no time at all. But it is always striking to see extreme luxury juxtaposed with the purest poverty. The Lamborghini parked next to the shantytown.
Our new friends tell us something else that strikes us. Despite Bitcoin2022, according to them, Miami is the capital of shitcoin. Shitcoin city, as they call it. And in fact, we notice, advertisements for NFTs, abstruse blockchains, DeFi services, trading and investment agencies are everywhere on the city streets. What an irony.
Could anything else have been expected? Lecture rhetoric aside, we are in one of the capitals of Western privilege and it makes perfect sense that humans behave exactly as they are programmed to do. The only way they know how.
The dances begin. Let’s see what happens.