By Ben Wilkinson
MORE than 25,000 believers from across the world descended on Miami Beach last month for what was billed as a ‘four-day pilgrimage’. Yet the sweltering US city, with its neon lights and palm trees, was not hosting a typical religious gathering, but a celebration for the church of cryptocurrency.
The most famous digital money, bitcoin, as I found out, is all about belief.
That’s what gives it value, and its evangelical believers have little time for doubters.
It’s a relatively new religion, one that has blown up in recent years, and has now become a global phenomenon that is luring wide-eyed investors – and worrying regulators. It’s also a religion that comes with lavish parties, T-shirts slogans, scantily-clad promo girls, and lots of swearing.
As a self-confessed crypto cynic and ‘doubting Thomas’, I went along to see if I could be converted . . .
WHAT IS BITCOIN?
IN THE lobby of the Miami Beach Convention Center, a huge screen shows the live price of bitcoin.
Pilgrims stop to have their photo taken with it and others clap and cheer it on as they pass by. Unfortunately, for the ‘bitcoiners’ here the price fell by more than 8 pc the previous week.
But believers are used to the rocky ride.
Put as simply as I can, bitcoin is digital money created and secured by computer processes. Despite existing only in the ether, bitcoin is hugely popular and has given rise to thousands of other cryptocurrencies since it was created by an unknown person or group in 2009.
The price of bitcoin has soared by more than 3,500pc over the past five years – crashing badly along the way. In the past year, it’s fallen 27 pc.
Yet volatility is just a test of faith to those here in Miami who believe bitcoin will one day empower the poor to spend and store their money outside of the grip of governments and corporations.
But to many economic experts, bitcoin’s value is hugely overstated. It is a wobbly bubble waiting to burst.
Critics also point out that processing bitcoin consumes a huge amount of energy, and its lack or control or oversight makes it a gift to criminals and warlords.
The phenomenon has also been fuelled by the ‘fear of missing out’ (Fomo) as stories spread of those who have effortlessly made a fortune.
In Ireland, more than 120,000 people own cryptocurrency. Pandemic
lockdown restrictions helped many to save – and gave them money to burn. It’s got the financial watchdogs worried and the Central Bank has warned investors they could lose everything.
Gambling charities tell me they’ve seen a rise in calls from investors who have lost huge amounts of money to cryptocurrency – including those who staked house deposits.
And, as I found out at the conference, there’s a schism within the bitcoin movement.
Followers cannot seem to decide whether it is a currency to be spent, or an investment to hold on tight to.
THE FAITHFUL
BELIEVERS start arriving en masse on a Thursday morning. It’s 32C outside and many are wearing T-shirts displaying their loyalty to the bitcoin cause. One reads ‘Fix money, fix the world’, there’s ‘buy the dip, sell the tip’ and another is a more brazen ‘commit tax fraud’.
A man holds a home-made brown cardboard sign with the words ‘money is the root of all evil’ scrawled in black marker pen.
The main stage is in a huge 15,000capacity arena complete with show lighting, thumping music and a smoke machine. A man with a microphone, striding across the stage, tells the excited crowd that they are what gives their currency value. He says: ‘Bitcoin doesn’t exist without you. These are your people.’
Bitcoin is today being sold as the answer to rocketing inflation which has hit a 40-year high in the US.
David Bailey, the chief executive of the firm behind the Bitcoin 2022 conference, tells his eager audience they are at ‘the biggest party on the planet’.
Dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, he declares: ‘Bitcoin is money for the people, money for all people.’ This crowd is hungry for a soundbite or statement that they can applaud.
THE CRYPTO CITY
MIAMI Beach is a flash, pristine paradise. Tall, white buildings line the blocks and open-top sports cars and 4x4s roar down a matrix of straight roads.
Much of the city is said to have been built on drug money in the 1980s when Pablo Escobar’s cocaine gangs apparently made so much cash they were spending thousands of dollars on elastic bands to hold it together.
Now, the mayor wants the city to be the crypto capital of the world, and on day one of the conference he unveils a statue (he hopes) will rival the iconic Wall Street bull.
The Miami Herald writes that the garish metallic figure symbolised all that was wrong with mayor Francis Suarez’s ‘all flash and little action’ leadership.
Attendance at the Miami conference is now twice what it was in 2021, and visitors tell me there are more big businesses here this year.
Cryptocurrency exchange FTX even sponsors the Miami Heat basketball arena.
I’m reminded of how Enron had its name on a baseball stadium in Texas before the energy trading firm was ruined by an accounting scandal.
Miami’s mayor takes his salary in bitcoin and wants to be able to pay government workers with it too. But his critics doubt it will truly help his people.
Close to the conference. I see a homeless man sleeping in a bus shelter beneath an advert promoting crypto lending, mortgages and investing.
And from the beachfront I spot a plane pulling a banner reading ‘Free Bitcoin’ flying overhead, while a boat with a huge cryptocurrency advert chugs along the shore.
One Miami Beach local tells me he knows he needs to learn more about bitcoin because it’s the future and there’s money to be made.
But of course, if it was that simple, we would all be rich.
BOUTIQUE BASH
A GIGANTIC exhibition centre hosts 200 cryptocurrency companies that are dishing out free T-shirts and hats. At one stand there’s even a bar.
Glamorous girls are promoting the