Bitcoin 2022 - World's largest bitcoin gathering marks growing adoption

This month we travelled to the US to be at the largest bitcoin conference the world has ever seen. We didn't expect the sheer magnitude of the event we witnessed.

You have to understand that we've been around for quite a while in the crypto space and in the past, a bitcoin gathering, meant catching up with a few highly intelligent, slightly eccentric, passionate men that hadn't been out in public for quite some time. That might not be entirely fair, but you certainly wouldn't see the sexes equally represented.

Bitcoin 2022 was held at the enormous Miami Convention Centre, a 130,000m2 space, almost double the size of the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition centre. The 3 level area with multiple stages, an exhibition hall, meeting areas, lounges and events including an outdoor festival area were all buzzing with delegates rushing from stage to stage. To see this jungle of bitcoiners was spectacular and a far cry from Melbourne meetups. There were real "normies" mixing with bitcoin OG's. There was a full festival on the last day featuring the worlds best DJ's. There was a multitude of side events completely swamping Miami beach. Everywhere we went, bitcoiners were already there. If all that doesn't tell you that bitcoin adoption is ramping up I don't know what will. 

Key Takeouts:

1. Adoption is here

We've already discussed above that the conference turnout alone shows growing adoption as regular people invest and learn about bitcoin. But it's not just individuals joining the revolution. Multiple politicians attended the conference including Wyomings Cynthia Lumis and Miami governor Ron DeSantis. Unfortunately El Salvador's president Bukele was unable to attend due to pressing issues back home. What I heard was that one after the other politicians across the political spectrum and both state and federal were being "orange pilled" (shown the way) towards bitcoin advocacy. Cynthia specifically, has done a brilliant job in her home state via legislation but also helping win over opinion in Washington on how to handle crypto regulation. Internationally, more countries are adopting bitcoin and we have more on that in the news section.

In Banking, we heard that even more banks are opening up services for their clients to store and trade cryptocurrency. Some are also setting up funds and managed investments for crypto. In 2017 Banks were yet to get onboard but in 2022 every single bank is forced to have a strategy in place.

2. Future of Payments

While Bitcoin has already proven itself as a store of value in my mind, it is yet to become a primary payment method. While we paid for our conference tickets in Bitcoin and tipped in Bitcoin in Miami its still not the accepted payment method. Jack Mallers made a splash on the Natamoto stage by announcing Strike has partnered with shopify and signed major retail partnerships allowing for the strike payments app to be used in over 30% of US shops. His app is easy to use and smashes the competition on price because it uses bitcoin in the backend to transfer money instantly and cheaply. This will revolutionise payments as people will be able to use whatever currency they want to pay and the merchant will be able to receive whatever currency he wants all while saving money and doing it at the speed of light. There are already competitors out there and the incumbent payment processors must adapt or die. All this is possible through the lightning network. 
 

3. Lightning Network is here and it's going to be big. 

A key takeout was that every major crypto native company is considering using lightning in one way or another. We have discussed lightning network in our education section before but as a recap lightning network is a second layer network built on top of bitcoin. Without going into detail it allows for super cheap, lightning quick transactions significantly improving the range of functions bitcoin can serve. We recommend having a play with lightning through Muun wallet to see just how easy it is. 
 

4. Mortgages 

If you have Bitcoin but you don't have AUD you might soon be able to borrow 100% with no money down to buy a house. Now that's absolutely massive. This already exists in financial markets and margin lending but not for houses due to regulation. There are multiple startups in the US on the verge of solving the regulatory hurdles. This year people will start buying property with the ability to borrow 100% of the cost while using the property and some Bitcoin as collateral. The main reason that this is possible is that Bitcoin is "pristine collateral". More on that in the education section below.

Let's get into the news and events:

Markets

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