From Wild West to Wall Street – Crypto Is Now Mainstream

From Wild West to Wall Street – Crypto Is Now Mainstream

Houston Molnar

“I wanted to buy 100 bitcoin miners. But the company doesn’t deal in sizes that small anymore…”

Those were the words of despair I heard from a frustrated customer trying to purchase mining rigs at the expo hall of Nashville’s Music City Center.

They summed up the state of the industry perfectly.

Here’s what I mean by that…

Last month, I attended Bitcoin 2024 in Nashville. It’s the world’s largest bitcoin conference.

An estimated 35,000 people converged on Music City to attend the event, which had 1.5 million livestream viewers.

The conference had six stages featuring 444 speakers, including former President Trump. And there were more than 200 booths representing hundreds of crypto projects.

So when I say this is the biggest bitcoin conference in the world, I’m not kidding.

I attended my first bitcoin conference in June 2021. And in three short years, things have changed a lot. The atmosphere back then was much more like a carnival show.

The conference was held at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

Floyd Mayweather, one of the greatest boxers of all time, hawked his own token at the conference. And legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk performed on a half-pipe in the conference center parking lot.

Back then, you could also order fewer than 100 miners.

In retrospect, Bitcoin 2021 was near the height of the last bull cycle – when king crypto ran from a low of $4,000 the year prior to $65,000 just before the conference started.

It also signaled a changing of the guard. Gone are the Wild West days of the crypto bros and geek squads running the show.

For better or worse, Wall Street is now driving the train. And where Wall Street goes, billions of dollars follow.

From Wild West to Wall Street