Miami Bitcoin Conference Flags Attendance Down by Half as ‘Crypto Winter’ Drags On

Bitcoin faithful are making the annual pilgrimage to Miami Beach by the thousands for the third year in a row, for an industry conference set to feature speakers including the U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and the author Michael Lewis.

Organizers of the conference, Bitcoin 2023, call it the “world’s largest Bitcoin gathering,” starting Thursday and ending with an exclusive afterparty on Saturday night. A general admission ticket costs $999 and an “Industry Pass” with exclusive access to the “Official Networking App” goes for $2,299.

More than 35,000 people attended last year, according to the conference website. Speakers included tennis legend Serena Williams, controversial psychologist Jordan Peterson and MicroStrategy (MSTR) co-founder Michael Saylor.

This year, the website says approximately 15,000 devotees of the dominant cryptocurrency – fewer than half as many as last year, likely a symptom of crypto winter –  will descend on the Miami Beach Convention Center to listen to the U.S. presidential candidates Kennedy  and Vivek Ramaswamy, along with Lewis and U.S. Representative Patrick McHenry, the North Carolina Republican who heads the House Financial Services Committee.

The conference, organized by BTC Inc. and BTC Media, LLC (owner of Bitcoin Magazine), will feature over 180 talks, with session names including “Boom to Bust: Wall Street & the FTX Aftermath,” “The Great Ordinal Debate” and “Bitcoin-Powered Nuclear Energy.”