A year after crypto's crash, Philly Bitcoin believers hold on to hope
Apr. 17—At age 73,
While many were still in grade school, Zohar learned about the booms and busts of new technology during the dot-com explosion of the early 2000s.
So when it comes to crypto — digital money that isn't tied to a central bank — Zohar won't hold more than
"I don't want to invest in it, because I think my money's more important than doing experiments," laughed Zohar at DeFi Philly, a meeting for decentralized finance enthusiasts in Northern Liberties.
If 2022 was any indicator, his prudence paid off.
It was a particularly brutal year for Bitcoin, which swelled in valuation last spring before plummeting in May. What would follow was blow after blow for the highly volatile industry.
Bitcoin's price fell by over 60%, and around
Crypto's fall has particularly affected Black and brown Americans who, feeling shut out of traditional financial markets, were more likely to invest — and ultimately lose.
Zohar read the headlines. So he comes to DeFi mainly for the pizza, drinks, and passionate talk about what was perhaps prematurely crowned the future of finance.
Among the 15 or so other attendees, this conservative outlook was rare. While some agreed that Bitcoin has had its day — for now — there was the sense that something bigger and better was on the horizon.
"PolyDoge, that's the one that popped off for me," said a member who asked to go by Tom "T-Bytes" so employers don't know about his investments.
He's talking about an altcoin — there are thousands of cryptocurrencies besides Bitcoin — that's worth
T-Bytes claimed he turned a profit on the risky investment and is now looking to other coins. But not all of his investments have pumped.
Wearing a tie-dye purple shirt, T-Bytes is not the only member to admit facing losses after last year's downturn (they're reluctant to call it a crash).
Dodson also likes that crypto has, so far, been resistant to government regulation. But that feature has led a myriad of hucksters to take advantage of rosy-eyed investors with little knowledge of how crypto functions.
This month alone, the
And in
Those are the scams. Other initiatives, while aboveboard, have yet to fully transform Philly into a crypto-forward hot spot like
Soon after announcing a plan to incorporate crypto into city funding,
None of this fazes 30-year-old
"It's buyer beware," Ghen said.
Minimizing the public's risk is a Herculean task, exemplified by the nearly 100 Bitcoin ATMs scattered throughout
Ghen said foreign hackers give crypto a bad name. Still, the industry is grappling with the recklessness of its former darlings like Bankman-Fried, who was arrested and faces multiple charges for mismanaging customer funds after his
One group had an idea, printing the disgraced 31-year-old's face across toilet paper at a recent crypto conference.
How larger financial institutions — including
Like the statue of
It's also near where the tech entrepreneur
Whether the neo-Luddite cousins of the Amish are invested in Bitcoin was never mentioned. Instead, Rush lauded their ability to stay tight-knit and quickly raise a barn, a metaphor for how decentralized finance can weather the future.
"All communities come together," Rush said with all the optimism of a Crypto.com
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