Bitcoin Conference 2023 12-Point Summary: Ordinals, Mining Regulation, Payments Adoption

EDIT**|**Wu Said Blockchain

About 15,000 people attended the Bitcoin 2023 conference, held May 18-20 in Miami Beach, Florida, less than half of last year's 35,000. Organized by BTC Inc. and BTC Media, LLC, the conference featured speakers such as US Democratic presidential candidate Robert Kennedy and MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor, among others.

1. In an interview at Miami Bitcoin 2023, MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor said that Ordinals is being researched and evaluated for its potential in application development. He said bitcoin miners need to be able to

Benefiting from this, developing applications based on the functionality of Bitcoin can also promote the overall adoption of Bitcoin among individuals, companies, and governments. In addition, he believes that changing Bitcoin to censor certain uses is wrong and inconsistent with the values of the community.

2. At the Bitcoin 2023 event, Fred Pye, CEO of Canadian digital asset management company 3iQ, said in an interview that the FOMO of Bitcoin has passed, and now everyone has turned to artificial intelligence. So now institutions and portfolio managers are paying serious attention to Bitcoin. He believes that the use case of cryptocurrencies will be a growing trend for institutional investors in the coming years.

3. Robert Kennedy Jr. stated at the Bitcoin 2023 conference that he would become the first presidential candidate in U.S. history to accept Bitcoin campaign donations. During the event, he praised cryptocurrency as a "symbol of democracy and freedom." Kennedy Jr. is currently the Democratic presidential candidate of the United States and the nephew of John F. Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States. He has the support of about 14% of Democratic primary voters, below Biden's approval rating within the Democratic Party of about 50%.

4. Jan Van Eck, CEO of VanEck, said at the Bitcoin 2023 conference that it is difficult for U.S. investors to see the emergence of Bitcoin spot ETFs in the short term. Van Eck said that the encryption industry has long been looking forward to the recognition of a bitcoin ETF in the United States, but regulators have refused to approve it, citing market manipulation and other reasons. In 2021, the firm launched the VanEck Bitcoin Strategy ETF based on Bitcoin futures. But the SEC rejected VanEck's proposal to directly hold a Bitcoin ETF at the end of 2021.

5. Whatsminer launched three new mining machines at the Bitcoin2023 conference in Miami. The M53S++ can provide a computing power of 320 TH/s, and the energy efficiency ratio is 22J/T; the other two models are M50S++, which are designed for wind Cold design, with a computing power of 150 TH/s; and M56S++, designed for immersion cooling, which can provide a computing power of 230 TH/s. The energy efficiency ratio of both machines is 22 J/TH.

6. Strike CEO Jack Mallers said at Bitcoin 2023 that Strike is expanding its applications from the current United States and El Salvador to more than 65 countries or regions. The Strike app uses Bitcoin and the Lightning Network to provide global payments and cross-border remittance services, and users can hold funds in the form of BTC and USDT. Strike previously raised $90 million, led by Ten31.

7. Bitcoin-friendly Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis said at Bitcoin 2023 that the Biden administration's proposed 30% sales tax on Bitcoin miners is unlikely to pass the House of Representatives. "That's not going to happen," she said. "It's absolutely important that the development of this technology and bitcoin mining itself happen in the US". “Bitcoin is actually good for stabilizing the grid,” she added, “because you can mine Bitcoin hard when energy usage is low, and then scale back when energy usage is high.”

8. Marathon, a North American mining listed company, announced during the Bitcoin 2023 conference that it will cooperate with Brink to raise up to $1 million to support Bitcoin core developers. Marathon will match donations 2x, up to $500,000.

9. TBD, a subsidiary of Block owned by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, launched a new open source toolkit for its Web5 project at the Bitcoin 2023 conference, aiming to make it easier for developers to create decentralized Internet applications. These include DIDs; secure digital certificates called Verification Credentials (VCs), which provide legal proof of things like name, age, and asset ownership; and Decentralized Network Nodes (DWNs).

10. The former Congresswoman delivered a speech at Bitcoin 2023, criticizing the US Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). She said a CBDC would be able to record transactions on a public ledger, which increases the risk of ordinary Americans being surveilled. "Once we allow others to control our wallets, they control our freedom."

11. During the conference, IOVLabs shared an upcoming three-month hackathon and a funding program for early Rootstock developers. The funding program, totaling $2.5 million, is aimed at accelerating the adoption of the Bitcoin sidechain Rootstock.

12. Ridwan Kamil, Governor of West Java Province, Indonesia, stated at Bitcoin 2023 that Indonesia is exploring the transformative opportunities of Bitcoin mining, hoping to use geothermal and hydropower potential to convert renewable energy into economic energy. According to Ridwan Kamil, the country has more than 12 million cryptocurrency investors, 70% of whom have Bitcoin as their preferred crypto asset.