So at the end of the consensus conference in Miami earlier this month, the industry's biggest annual gathering, the one where TradFi suits come to take crypto seriously , the official afterparty was held at E11EVEN.
For those unfamiliar E11EVEN is a strip club. Has been since 2018 when a Bitcoin conference did the exact same thing and publicly called it a misstep 8 years ago.
This time around, attendees paid up to $6,000 to get in,there were scantily clad dancers onstage with the CoinDesk logo projected behind them. CoinDesk ,the organizer of consensus hasn't commented. OKX has said its reconsidering its sponsorship. Consensys (MetaMask's parent company) scrambled to say they had no role after their logo turned up at the event.
Now here's the part that really got me the organizer's defense was essentially it's a legal venue, 7,000 people signed up, top executives were there which... is not the defense they think it is.
The crypto industry is in the middle of the most important regulatory moment in its history, the clarity act just cleared Senate committee and stripe and meta are integrating stablecoins. And the response to maybe don't hold the official conference party at a strip club is adults make adult choices?
The critics aren't wrong about the culture if the culture keeps proving them right every two years at the same venue in the same city.
What's more damaging to crypto's long term legitimacy the bear market, or this?
