Cryptocurrency Conference: Welcome to the Church of Bitcoin - Rolling Stone

It’s morning in Miami, and a restless crowd, many thousands strong, has assembled outside the gates of the Mana Wynwood conference center. It’s early June, and they’re here to attend Bitcoin 2021, a two-day conference in Miami’s swiftly gentrifying Wynwood neighborhood that’s attracted 12,000 attendees in what is being advertised as not only the largest Bitcoin conference in history, but one of the biggest public gatherings in the U.S. since the Covid-19 pandemic began.

But now, due to a comically inefficient check-in process, attendees are suspended in a mile-long line snaking through a corridor of industrial warehouses painted in brightly colored murals. Their T-shirts announce QR codes, Bitcoin catchphrases like “HODL” (“hold” — as in, “Hold on for dear life,” or “Hold onto your Bitcoin!” frantically mistyped), and, in one case, the phrase “Have fun staying poor!” wrapped around a Bitcoin symbol in fat, bubbly cursive.

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