Financial moguls and tech luminaries gathered to reflect on the highlights of bitcoin 2022 Miami

Financial moguls, tech celebrities Gather to reflect on the best moments of Miami Bitcoin 2022

Original author: Hei Mi, Bai Ze Research Institute

From April 6 to 9, 2022, the world's largest bitcoin conference "Bitcoin 2022" was held in Miami, the United States, attracting more than 35,000 attendees, including many global politicians, crypto companies, financial moguls, technology elites and tech industry celebrities. More than 400 financial companies and crypto companies are sponsoring the conference, including Visa, Mastercard, Galaxy Digital, Paxos and more.

The conference covered everything from a detailed exploration of how traditional financial systems, institutions, and infrastructure integrate with Bitcoin to mining, to introductions to regulatory pain points in the crypto industry, predictive policies, guidance on compliance costs for crypto companies, and a macro dialogue on how the crypto industry can develop in compliance.

At last year's Bitcoin 2021 conference, El Salvador's President Bukele broke the world's headlines when he announced plans to make Bitcoin legal tender in his country. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Tesla CEO Elon Musk also added to the buzz. There are signs that cryptocurrencies, once labeled heretics, are slowly gaining mainstream acceptance, or have attracted enough attention.

So what were some of the highlights of this year's Bitcoin conference?

Miami mayor unveils "Miami Bull" statue

To mark the opening of the Bitcoin 2022 conference, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez unveiled a statue of a bull, an 11-foot, 3,000-pound robotic bull that resembles the Wall Street bull and is intended to symbolize Miami as the "cryptocurrency capital of the world."

Cash App: Users can now invest their salaries in Bitcoin

Miles Suter, head of bitcoin products at Cash App, a mobile payment service run by Block (formerly Square), announced at the conference that U.S. customers will be able to automatically invest some (or all) of their savings in Bitcoin.

The feature is called < Pay with Bitcoin. , allowing Cash App customers to automatically convert a portion of their deposits into Bitcoin using Visa debit cards already connected to the service, which can be reconfigured at any time.

Earlier this year, Cash App announced the integration of the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which aims to enable users to use Bitcoin payment services or goods instantly and at low cost. In the near future, Cash App users in the United States (except New York State) will be able to officially use this feature.

Note: Lightning network is a layer 2 network built on top of bitcoin, which enables faster and cheaper transactions.

Michael Saylor laughs about getting into bitcoin

In a fireside chat with ARK CEO Cathie Wood, MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor said that Merrill Lynch, one of the world's largest securities retailers and investment banks, laughed him off when he first invested in Bitcoin two years ago:

"They said" not only are we not going to sell it to you, but if we talk about it, we'll get fired, "so I immediately wired $175 million to another bank."

However, MicroStrategy currently holds more than 125,000 bitcoins, with a total value of about $6 billion, and sometimes sees a Merrill Lynch cryptocurrency research report in his mailbox.

Saylor & Wood: The future of cryptocurrencies is bright because of regulation

Saylor and Wood both struck an optimistic tone about the future of cryptocurrencies. It's worth noting that Both Saylor and Wood have expressed support for the regulation surrounding cryptocurrencies in recent months, arguing that regulation could make the industry's future brighter.

Saylor specifically noted, "I think the U.S. government has done a 180 degree u-turn in the last year... The presidential executive order of a few weeks ago, I think the PRESIDENT of the United States gave bitcoin a green light."

Wood agrees, saying that political attitudes around bitcoin have shifted fundamentally since she first started investing in the currency, especially in the months following the Biden administration, when "politicians came to me and wanted me to assemble a group of bitcoin enthusiasts and learn from them."

She contrasted US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's initial statement on cryptocurrencies (describing them as money laundering tools used by bad actors) with the way they have been talked about more recently, and while Yellen remains cautious, she acknowledges the innovative merits of cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

'The father of smart contracts' : Bitcoin represents the culmination of cryptography and privacy research

Nick Szabo, a computer scientist and cryptographer who first came up with the idea of a "smart contract" in 1996, devised a decentralized digital currency called Bit Gold in 1998, though Bit Gold has never been implemented, But is widely referred to as a "direct precursor to bitcoin architecture."

Speaking at Bitcoin 2022, Szabo told attendees about the history of cryptography before the invention of bitcoin:

Most cryptography work before the 1970s was carried out in secret by the military or spy agencies. This changed in the 1980s when Dr David Chaum published papers on anonymous digital currencies and anonymous reputation systems.

The current cryptography movement, which grew out of Chaum, is led by the group known as the cryptpunks, who pioneered the field of applied cryptography. "The cryptpunks want to free cryptography from government control and bring it to the masses," Szabo said, adding that they represent private, non-governmental and non-political.

Cypherpunks were "ahead of their time" thinking about how to protect people's privacy, and how to move communication and payments from the physical to the digital world.

As a result, he called bitcoin "the culmination of decades of research into cryptography, freedom and privacy."

Mexico's third-richest man: 60% of my portfolio is bitcoin and bitcoin-related stocks

Ricardo Benjamn Salinas Pliego, founder and chairman of Grupo Salinas, is currently the third richest person in Mexico and the 158th richest person in the world as of April 8, according to Forbes, Net worth is about $12.7 billion.

During one panel discussion, Salinas expressed "resentment" at fiat currencies because of his personal experience with hyperinflation in Mexico, and warned that pernicious inflation could also spread to the United States.

In addition, Salinas explained why he hates bonds and referred to his liquid portfolio:

"I'm sure some of you are counting on your pension and investing in bonds, which is very dangerous because things change all the time. I have a liquid portfolio, I own 60% of bitcoin and Bitcoin-related stocks, and then 40% of hard assets like oil, gas and gold."

Salinas is understood to have first revealed on Twitter in November 2020 that he had 10 per cent of his liquid assets invested in bitcoin.

Strike announced a new partnership to allow U.S. merchants to accept bitcoin over the Lightning network

Jack Mallers, CEO of crypto payment provider Strike, announced a new partnership at the conference with e-commerce giant Shopify, which aims to allow U.S. e-commerce merchants to receive Bitcoin payments from users anywhere in the world. In addition, Strike has formed partnerships with NCR, the world's largest Pos machine provider, and Blackhawk, a payments company, to help Strike and Shopify integrate merchants smoothly.

值得一提的是，该服务将使用比特币的闪电网络，商家接收到的比特币将自动转换为法定货币。虽然从技术上来说，这项服务仍然以法定货币用于结算，但比特币的闪电网络可以让世界上任何地方的消费者使用该服务。

Robinhood's crypto wallet is officially launched, integrating with the Bitcoin Lightning network

Aparna Chennapragada, chief product officer of U.S. stock brokerage platform Robinhood, announced at the conference that more than 2 million customers who had previously been on a waiting list can now use the crypto wallet feature on the platform for sending and receiving cryptocurrencies. In addition, Robinhood plans to bring the Bitcoin Lightning Network to its platform to speed up bitcoin transactions.

"With wallets, customers will have full access to their cryptocurrencies and can use cryptocurrencies to participate in the crypto ecosystem -- for example by tipping on social media, buying NFT, etc. Unlike some other crypto trading platforms, withdrawing cryptocurrencies from Robinhood is free," Aparna said.  

Previously, Robinhood users could only trade cryptocurrencies and keep them in Robinhood's custody, with no way for users to transfer them out.

As for bitcoin, the most common asset bought by customers on the platform so far this year, Robinhood will soon support Lightning: "Because these transactions take place 'off-chain,' Lightning transactions can be reduced to a matter of seconds and cost only pennies, saving customers time and money."

Blockstream and Block will use Tesla equipment for solar mining

The environmental impact of bitcoin mining has been hotly debated until last May, when Elon Musk took to Twitter to cancel the purchase of Tesla cars with bitcoin, citing "high carbon emission levels from bitcoin mining."

A month later, Blockstream, the world's largest bitcoin infrastructure company, partnered with financial services firm Block (formerly Square) to see if it was possible to build a solar-powered bitcoin mining facility to prove that bitcoin mining could use "renewable energy & NBSP; .

At the conference, the two companies announced that they will use tesla solar Photovoltaic arrays and Tesla Megapack to power solar mining facilities. The Tesla Solar PV Array is Tesla's photovoltaic solar panel, and the Tesla Megapack is a large rechargeable lithium-ion battery.

Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, stressed that he sees the project as a way to prove to the world that Bitcoin solves the energy crisis rather than creating it.

It can actually make projects more profitable and bring larger power infrastructure to the world. Basically, bitcoin should be the financing model that drives the expansion of power infrastructure."

Distributed charging projects were demonstrated for the first time

Bitcoin's primary connection to energy is now expanding beyond the typical mining use case.

The Bitcoin 2022 showroom showcases Distributed Charge, a lightning networking project developed by hardware engineer Andy Schroder that aims to create hardware devices, open source software and protocols, Real-time energy pricing and instant payment between any device, anywhere in the world, making Bitcoin a local payment method for the peer-to-peer energy market.

The project is currently using Tesla electric vehicles to try out the concept. Schroder is using the Lightning network to build a streaming payment system between nodes integrated into tesla and nodes integrated into charging stations. With this system, Tesla owners can easily trade energy privately, without the need for third-party platforms.

All three countries are moving forward with bitcoin adoption

At Bitcoin 2022, Samson Mow, former chief strategy officer of Blockstream, led three guests on stage to give an update on their bitcoin adoption plans in each country.

1. While the Central bank of Honduras quashed the rumors a few weeks ago that the country had adopted Bitcoin as legal tender, Joel Bomgar, an official in Honduras's "Island Development Hub" region known as Prspera, announced that it had recognized Bitcoin as legal tender in the region. "Prospera's flexible regulatory framework enables residents, businesses and governments to innovate in cryptography and use Bitcoin.

2. 葡萄牙马德拉地区总统 Miguel Filipe Machado de Albuquerque 宣布，马德拉的投资者交易比特币无需缴纳所得税，并指出为企业提供低至 5% 的税率。「我相信未来，我相信比特币，」但他没有具体说明比特币是该地区的法定货币。

3. Finally, Mow invited Mexican Senator Indira Kempis on stage to give an update on the country's proposed cryptocurrency legislation. She noted that she will focus on developing a bill to make Bitcoin legal tender. "In two months, I will introduce a bill to amend fintech and currency laws. I look forward to sitting down with our president for coffee and discussing this plan -- Bitcoin as legal tender Mexico."

However, the Mexican government may not pass encryption legislation anytime soon. In October last year, Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador responded to a reporter's question about whether he would follow El Salvador's lead in making Bitcoin legal tender by saying that cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin are unlikely to follow El Salvador's lead because they still have problems with tax evasion.

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