Day TWO: Key Quotes And Ideas From The Bitcoin 2021 Conference In Miami

The Bitcoin 2021 conference is over. The lessons remain.

This time, they turned off the livestream’s chat. An elegant solution. A wasted opportunity, the virtual community couldn’t gather around the fire. But hey… much better than watching robots pushing low-quality projects non-stop. And it was easier to focus on the presenter’s words. Still, it felt like something was amiss.

The host for the first half of the day was John Vallis from the Bitcoin Rapid-Fire podcast. Later on, it was the infamous Charlie Shrem from the legendary and defunct BitInstant. A lot of great panels on the second day, as opposed to the solo or dual presentations of the first one. The common theme was this one: inflation is a hidden tax that is eroding everybody’s worth and stealing your time. And Bitcoin fixes this. 

They announced this at the end of the event, but we at Bitcoinist already revealed the big surprise of the day. “El Salvador Set to Accept Bitcoin as Legal Tender.”

Without further ado, let’s get to the quotes from selected presentations. 

The Bitcoin Macro Landscape

With: Preston Pysh, Jeff Booth, Mark Yusko, and Greg Foss. Host: Trey Lockerbie

• Preston Pysh: “The cost of capital is completely broke.” Sound money fixes this. Bitcoin brings back free and open markets.
• Jeff Booth: “Technology is supposed to free our time.” Yet, it doesn’t. Why? Because when technology brings the prices down, central banks make them go up to augment the GDP. This is unnatural. 
• Mark Yusko: To get to a trillion, “You’d have to sit here with us for 31.770 years” (…) “And you’d have to spend a Dollar a second.” Well, the US “just passed a bill to print six trillion.”
• Greg Foss: “Bitcoin is the best asymmetric trade oportunity I’ve seen in 30 years of trading risk.” Enough said. But he also presented the idea that, eventually,  energy will be priced in Bitcoin.

Related Reading | The “Bitcoin 2021” Conference In Miami: Big Stars And Latest Announcements

The Moral Case For Bitcoin

With: Robert Breedlove, Jimmy Song, and Guy Hirsch. Host: Guy Swann

• Robert Breedlove: “The most important game in the world, which is money, is corrupt. The rules of that game are twisted to favor a few and disfavor millions.” Fire. To complete the idea, he gave us, “Bitcoin being the first man-made incorruptible money and social institution we’ve ever had, is potentially the most important invention in human history.” Boom.
• Jimmy Song: “The current system is highly immoral. It’s a cesspool of theft, corruption, and cronyism.” The Dollar is the reserve currency of the world. Every time the Fed prints Dollars, they’re stealing from everyone that possesses them. The US is stealing from some of the most vulnerable people in the world. 
• Guy Hirsch: “There’s a presumption of guilt at the heart of fiat and the current system.” Bitcoin is money, but it’s also an ideological movement. 

Bitcoin For Billions, Not Billionaires

With Elizabeth Stark and Lyn Alden. This dual presentation contained some heavy ideas that are difficult to capture in just quotes. Look for it on YouTube. Highly recommended.

• Elizabeth Stark: “If bitcoin is merely digital gold we don’t tap in into the massive potential that it enables as a monetary network. It is not just a digital rock. The CEO of Lighting Labs talked about all of the amazing new and emerging projects that use the Lightning network. “We in the lightning community and at Lightning labs are really passionate about the concept of number of people go up, and bringing this technology to the next billion people.”
• Lyn Alden: “It’s been really important to basically monitor the network effect and see it continue to grow. And that’s, of course, separate from just the price fluctuations from whatever billionaire is tweeting any given day.” She talked about how the developments, the number of projects, everything that’s being built is more important than the price of the asset. 

Related Reading | Elon Musk Prefers Dogecoin Over Other Alts Because Of The Memes

How Bitcoin Can Stimulate the Green Energy Transition

With Steve Lee and Aaron van Wirdum. 

• Steve Lee: This man talked about the Lightning Development Kit and the Bitcoin Design Guide, and how they will be crucial in creating better Bitcoin products. He also echoed this sentiment about green mining, “Bitcoin mining is a for profit business and their number one cost is electricity. They want to maximaze their profit.” The way to do that is to move where the energy is cheap. The incentives for green mining are built into the system, “It will tend to 100% renewables before any other industry.”
• Aaron van Wirdum: “The critisisim is not abot energy usage, it’s about Bitcoin.” His thesis is that critics think that Bitcoin is not valuable, thus everything is a waste. In the end, the people will decide if it’s valuable. If people are willing to pay for it, it continues. If they aren’t, it stops. So the debate about energy usage is pointless.  

It’s worth noting that this dual presentation was interrupted by the funniest moment of the conference:

https://twitter.com/CryptoCobain/status/1401261909240864777

You have to give it to the Doge community, they’re all-in on this.

BTC price chart on Bittrex | Source: BTC/USDT on TradingView.com

This is it for now, but it’s not the end of our Bitcoin 2021 coverage. The presentations without superstar presenters contained some of the most useful ideas and the wildest revelations. Expect them.

Featured Image: Screengrab from the livestream | Charts by TradingView