Kurt's personal blog: Dalé Miami!

Kurt’s personal blog: Dalé Miami!

Bitcoin Association was wise to do a one day event in Miami this past week. Elegantly called the “BSV Blockchain Conference,” things got spicy at the SLS Brickell right from the get-go. Jimmy Nguyen was his usual “always on” self; full of vigor as he kicked off the morning by giving the 30,000-foot view of the BSV economy from the stage of an at capacity room.

The thing that stood out most was the intimacy of the setting that led to an incredible amount of networking opportunities. The presentations, while fantastic themselves, felt like teed up pitches for folks like myself to be able to knock out of the park during the break times with curious attendees. It couldn’t have been a better business development environment!

Amid the kick-off was Phil Runyan of Veridat, who had the stage presence of a seasoned, stand-up comedian. He somehow made “data integrity” the subject of what was a rousing presentation, and he was able to conjure more laughs than anyone would have expected while driving home a number of crucial points about the power of trustworthy data in business. His presentation style and the quality of the content were a great way to bring the largely newcomer crowd up to speed on just how BSV has grown in the last three years.

And that was just the beginning!

Heading into the middle of the day, I was honored to meet with local Miami entrepreneurs, CTOs, enthusiasts, and developers from other ecosystems who were visibly shaken by the things they were seeing. I lost count on how many times someone said some variation of “wait, did you say millions of transactions per day? I didn’t think a blockchain could do that!”

Bryan Daugherty, myself and a few others were extremely busy taking names and information of people who wanted to move their business to BSV, move their hash power to BSV or move their “too big to scale” apps from Ethereum to BSV. And it was so refreshing to be able to be to answer questions in an intimate setting and pass the ball to subject matter experts in the room. Xiaohui Liu from sCrypt, for example, was happy to answer smart contract questions. Or Joe DePinto from Haste on use of infrastructure like HandCash Connect. The excitement of the crowd was palpable.

In the afternoon, the gaming panel was what excited me the most. Fantastic presentations from Haste, FYX Gaming and an exciting newcomer: Built By Gamers. “BBG” let the crowd know that their professional Call of Duty, Fortnite and Valorant teams would be using BSV for their blockchain-fueled Twitch streams, merchandising and other influencer-led fan experiences. Their presentation was as exciting as it was professional, and Tyler Farnsworth was a standout even in a day filled with solid presenters. With numbers and budgets larger than the SuperBowl, I’m excited to see esports volume on the only blockchain that scales! And it seems they have bigger news to announce at CoinGeek Conference New York in October.

Moving onto the evening, the post-event dinner was a blast. I spent time with Zack Weiner from VXPASS and we all shared stories around the table with the fine people who helped with the event. A guest attendee from Miami thought it would be cool to bring a few people over to our table from the Coinbase sponsored “Miami Blockchain Builders” Meetup that met down the street. They might have been the best people to help close off the day!

Primarily focused on Ethereum, the first of them asked “why do we need another Bitcoin fork? Bitcoin can’t even do smart contracts?” When I responded that “BSV mints about 2 million NFTs per day from a single app,” everyone stopped and paid attention. Giving the elevator pitch from CryptoFights where every move is a transaction and all items and players are NFTs, they were full of questions. After spending about 20 minutes explaining all the ways that BSV is the answer to all of their problems, it was pretty clear that we had all become friends.

As I packed up to head to my room for the night, one of them grabbed my arm to ask “…Craig Wright isn’t Satoshi though, right?”

I merely responded, “We will save that story for our next meetup,” and headed out.

In closing, the event was a resounding success, and in my opinion, should serve as the template for many events to come with an intimate setting, laser focus and the goal of absorbing good people into the BSV blockchain economy.

Dalé, Miami!

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