Bricks and Bitcoin
Twelve thousand of the Bitcoin brethren gathered a couple weeks ago to enjoy hot, sticky Miami to rub post-covid shoulders with fellow hodlrs. Erin Griffith reported for the New York Times, “thousands upon thousands of people gather[ed] to worship at the altar of cryptocurrencies.” Mr. Griffith’s assessment may have been a broad: there were plenty there who would be described as ‘BTC Maxxies” as a friend describes, those who believe in one crypto god and one only--Bitcoin-- with all other crypto creations described dismissively as “shitcoins.’
This was not a weekend for the thrifty. Tickets went for $900 worth of BTC or 1,500 US dollars. For those wanting full access to this cryptopalooza, “whale passes” set one back $19,795. A mere pittance for those who were early converts, and who put their dollars where their belief was and stayed for the full ride. Besides that, my friend described Miami as an “expensive city.” While the Times reports half the crowd was local, the other 6,000 flew or drove in.
The Real Vision duo of Ed Harrison and Ash Bennington were on site, presumably mixing with the Wall Street crowd who stuck out like uncover cops in their golf shirt/sport jacket wardrobes. Harrison pointed to, “I would say that with the institutional investors, in terms of the regulatory overhang of crypto, there was a lingering debate about DeFi versus CFi. There were a lot of people who were thinking about centralized finance moving over in a regulated way to a digital atmosphere, as opposed to the existing crypto world, which is decentralized finance and which is relatively unregulated.”
When I asked my source if he saw this debate brewing during the conference he said he didn’t. And there was no talk of Bitcoin’s price action, he said, which has been poor after hitting a high in US dollars in April.
This is not a currency or a financial asset, but a revolution. Bennington gushed, “It was this really cool, hip place where there were people who didn't look like they were institutional investors. They didn't look like coders. They were these cool artist people. And it's interesting to me that the space now is starting to bring into the fold some of those people. It's become a full-fledged cultural moment, in addition to a technology story, in addition to an investing story.”
My friend echoed those comments, talking about how cool the scene was. Playboy had a booth, there were ladies walking about dressed only in paint. To someone who has attended plenty of stodgy gold and natural resource conferences, not to mention Austrian economics confabs, the Miami happening sounds like a Grateful Dead concert by comparison.
One of the headliners, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey said reverently, "For me, bitcoin changes absolutely everything. What I'm drawn to most about it is the ethos, what it represents. The conditions that created it are so rare and so special and so precious and I don't think there's anything more important in my lifetime to work on. I don't think there's anything more enabling for people around the world."
Another evangelist in the space Michael Saylor added, "We say bitcoin is hope. Bitcoin fixes everything…that certainly was the case with our stock….it imbued life into the company…morale was dramatically boosted. We just had the best first quarter we've had in a decade."
Saylor, head man at Microstrategy, left the conference and floated $500 million in debt to buy more Bitcoin. Almost Daily Grant’s weighed in. “Tripling down on the brave new world, mobile software firm MicroStrategy, Inc. announced it will upsize its sale of senior secured notes to $500 million from the $400 million offering announced yesterday. Strong demand underpinned that enhanced deal, as the issue priced at 6.125% compared to price talk of 6.25% to 6.5%, with the order book reaching about $1.6 billion per Bloomberg.”
At the same time, the company “disclosed a $285 million impairment charge stemming from mark-to-market losses on bitcoins acquired at higher prices, showed net debt of $1.68 billion as of March 31, equivalent to 17 times the consensus estimate for 2022 adjusted Ebitda.”
Moving from Miami’s Hodlrs to hod carriers in less than crypto-hip Las Vegas, David Chavez won the World of Concrete’s Spec Mix Bricklayer 500 competition this week, laying 678 bricks in an hour. This was Chavez’s second win and earned him the modest prize of 5,000 US dollars and the keys (and presumably the title) to a new Ford F-250 truck.
I know from personal experience, cement is tricky to work with in the heat, something Bitcoiners are not likely to be familiar with. “It was different because this is summer,” third place winner Marty Marrs, of Terre Haute, Indiana, told the Las Vegas Review Journal. “This is always in January. It was different for everybody. We use mortar and mortar is affected by the heat. So, it was a bigger challenge.”
Nobody was raving about the cool vibe in sultry Las Vegas. However, local politicians and the Governor crowed about conventions returning. “Today, what I’ll tell you is: Vegas is back,” Clark County Commission Chair Marilyn Kirkpatrick said to a round of applause. “We’re open for business.”
Reportedly, 30,000 folks came in to ogle equipment employed in the construction trades. But, the local unions were not impressed. The Nevada Current reported, “Around 400 members of Teamsters Local 631 were called to work at World of Concrete, union chief Tommy Blitsch said, far below the 1,500 members who would work the show in a normal year.”
Union convention workers have been hit especially hard by the pandemic. “To spend half my life in this work and to see it gone was utterly devastating,” IATSE member and audio-visual technician Matt Kimball said. His last day of work in the industry was March 6, 2020.
On and off Bitcoin Hodlr Elon Musk’s Boring Company began moving people during the World of Concrete show. The $52.5 million underground people mover is not what you would call public transportation. As Curbed.com pointed out in 2020, “Although the project is being publicly dubbed as the ‘first underground people mover,’ what’s being built appears to be more of a mechanism for giving one-minute test rides in Teslas.”
Last year Musk tweeted, “Really, just an underground road, but limited to EVs (from all auto companies).”
Reviews are not in for Musk’s tunnel from World of Concrete attendees.
However, in Miami, CNBC reported, “Max Keiser, a high profile bitcoin holder, cursed Musk’s name, shouting ‘We’re not selling! F--- Elon’ on stage and later ripped up a $10 bill. Keiser was seemingly reacting to the cryptic tweet Musk posted on Thursday which insinuated that he had broken up with bitcoin.”
Bricklayers have built walls that have stood for centuries. Will Bitcoin’s structure be as durable?
