Crypto brothers on the beach feel a cold wind in the neck

The irony to take part in a cryptocurrency conference via a casino was clearly lost to the organizers of Crypto Bahamas.

But if you pass the slot machine last week, among the blue glass crown candles in the Baha Mar Resort in Nassau, the bright yellow promenade down to the congress center, you have found an accumulation of crypto magazines that no longer looked after them with the gambling with the gambling.

At the meeting on the beach, the self -confidence of crypto was shown. The message of the event was that the disorder of the financial sector by crypto cannot be stopped, so it is time to continue with the program. "This happens whether you like it or not," said Anthony Scaramucci, briefly communication director of the White House in the early days of the Trump administration, whose event company Salt organized the conference together with the FTX stock exchange

The sheer Starpower that the two companies could bring on stage testifies to the growing acceptance of crypto. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried sat next to Gisele Bündchen, the model with whom he will appear in an advertising campaign by the Vogue magazine. Bündchen's husband, NFL Quarterback Tom Brady, joined the 30-year-old crypto billionaire for a session with the simple title "Winning".

That evening Bankman-Fried and Scaramucci received other crypto potatoes in a high, whitewashed pavilion, together with pop star Katy Perry and the actor Orlando Bloom, for a private dinner at candlelight.

The next day Bankman-Fried was on stage again, this time with former US President Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister. The audience-from a 14-year-old developer of decentralized finances to representatives from Wall Street investment banks and public pension funds-repeatedly heard sermons that the supervisory authorities have to catch up with the pace of crypto and that countries that do not do this will see the Light how digital asset innovations flee elsewhere.

These crypto hikers have certainly been warmly welcomed in places such as the Bahamas. A number of upright Bahama police officers, whose bright white uniforms did not match the flip-flops hackers, attested the presence of a government delegation, including the prime minister who opened the event.

"It is as if you were a pirate in the past. We have always ventured to the edge," said an experienced Bahama entrepreneur.

But the bravery of the event tilted slightly into the excess. The German billionaire Christian Angermayer participated with Scaramucci in an interview with the title "Elevating Crypto Consciousness", which turned out to be a discussion about how people could use hallucinogens so as not to worry and love crypto. (One Direction singer Liam Payne was booked to interview Angermayer, but he canceled on the morning of the event.)

Many of the visitors to the Bahamas, who had danced to DJ Steve Aoki until the early morning hours in the resort in the nightclub, could find themselves with a hangover after the cryptoandel and speculation last year.

The entire crypto market capitalization decreased by a further 5 percent during the four-day meeting, which corresponds to a decrease of 40 percent compared to its maximum last autumn.

and in private conversations on the edges of the lawns lined with palm trees, when Kool and the Gang's “Celebration” echoed from the speakers, the participants admitted that leaner times would come. A manager predicted that the vast majority of existing crypto projects would go down the stream. Among the guests who are old enough to remember, many echoes of the Dotcom boom saw.

"There will be a washing out," said a risk capital partner. He pointed out that most companies that have been performing funds in the past two years often took enough capital to assert themselves for 18 to 24 months. Soon you have to strive for new financing in a much more difficult environment, especially if you could not do justice to your ambitions. Even Scaramucci admitted that the markets headed for a "chaotic time".

"Everyone is a long -term investor until they have short -term losses," he said. But the crypto believers are convinced that, as after the Dotcom crash, the most durable projects will survive.

If the predictions of a suppress, market cleanup will nevertheless be a test for true believers. The risk that you take is that the enthusiasm for digital assets will survive any market slump or a longer phase of the lackluster trade.

As the delegates of the conference stroll past blackjack tables and slot machines to reach the symposium, millions of people have also entered the cryptowelt in the last 18 months of pandeme-related trade madness. The question now is: If the losses begin to rise, will the stock market speculators remain?

joshua.oliver@ft.com