This past weekend, the entire Bitcoin world descended upon Miami, Florida for a blockchain bonanza, the likes of which have never been seen before. After a long year without in-person events, you could feel the community's energy bursting at the seams, once again ready to celebrate Bitcoin outside of the virtual world! Conferences in the crypto space have always been milestone events by enabling valuable networking, providing exciting updates with captivating presentations, and giving technologists the opportunity to discuss and debate all components of our industry. Bitcoin2021 was the perfect event to kick off summer, and Stacks was thrilled to participate and spread the word about Stacks 2.0, Clarity, Proof-of-Transfer, and the multitude of projects spinning up on Stacks.

To commemorate the occasion, we produced a highlight reel capturing some of the best Stacker moments from throughout the weekend:

The expo area was thriving this year with hundreds of projects chatting with attendees about how they’re using blockchain to build powerful, censorship-resistant platforms. Stacks was especially excited to be represented, as this was the first in-person conference since the launch of Stacks 2.0 in January! Hordes of Bitcoiners streamed through the booth announcing their hype for DeFi on Bitcoin and talked about the $BTC they were earning through Stacking $STX. 

When thinking about what swag to bring to the conference, we wanted a show-stopping way to signal Bitcoin support, instill hope for the future of blockchain, bring people together, and maybe have a little fun in the process. What better way to achieve all those goals than to bring the Twitter Bitcoin Laser Eyes meme to life? We manufactured thousands of pairs of Bitcoin Laser Eyes sunglasses so that each and every Bitcoin 2021 attendee who stopped by could show their love for Bitcoin in style. The glasses were an absolute hit, with everyone stopping at the booth because they just had to get a pair. We're looking forward to seeing these shades pop up at future events!

It was also fantastic to have Dan Trevino of Boom Wallet at Bitcoin 2021 representing Stacks ecosystem projects. Dan has been a passionate community member for years, and his familiarity with Stacks from nonstop tinkering has given him the insight to launch a new Stacks wallet just when the ecosystem needs it most! The Boom wallet is the perfect solution for creating or managing NFTs, sending and receiving STX, and discovering interesting dapps to try out. The Boom team is also investigating some pretty innovative use cases for NFTs in DeFi applications like Stacking. Dan spent hours talking directly with users, gathering feedback on what functionality wallets should have, and giving out some pretty dope Boom magnetic phone holders. 

→ Learn more about Stacks

Last week, Patrick Stanley of Freehold made a huge splash on Twitter when he shared the news about CityCoins, cryptocurrencies that allow you to support your favorite cities while earning yield in Bitcoin. Each city that implements a CityCoin will have a dedicated treasury that is funded by a percentage of CityCoin mining profits. 

Miami Mayor, Francis Suarez has recently embraced the potential of blockchain and cryptocurrencies’ applications in political governance, and has championed the city as a technological hub for innovation. This made Miami the perfect flagship region to kick off the CityCoin project, and we were blown away by all the interest from conference attendees. 

On Saturday, Patrick was joined by Anthony Pompliano on the ASTRA rooftop to share some more details on the project to a captivated audience of crypto enthusiasts. Shielded from the sun by limited-edition $MIAMI hats, new CityCoiners mingled, munched, and dreamed of a world where citizens are empowered and incentivized to participate in local governance.

→ Check out the CityCoins Website

OKCoin is a global cryptocurrency exchange, and was one of the first to list STX, the native token of the Stacks network. They’ve consistently led the way on platform innovation and are on a mission to make crypto investing easily accessible to everyone around the world. They are building the next generation of tools and previously worked with Stacks to enable in-app Stacking functionality that users demanded. 

Stacks and OKCoin wanted to celebrate both our platforms and communities, so we once again took over the ASTRA rooftop for a party worthy of concluding day three of the conference. It was truly such a treat to meet some community members face-to-face for the first time! Everyone was hungry for the hot new OKCoin swag, which recently went through a brand redesign. 

In addition to our collaborative event, Freehold Founder, Patrick Stanley and OKCoin CMO, Haider Rafique took to the “End of Fiat” stage at the conference on Saturday. They dove deep into smart contracts on Bitcoin and how Bitcoin’s security can be extended and repurposed to unlock expressive applications of crypto like NFTs, DeFi, DAOs, and so much more. It was standing room only; the captivated audience only reinforced the prevailing narrative of the weekend: Bitcoin has never been more ripe for innovation. 

→ Trade STX on OKCoin

BTC.US, the brand new Bitcoin domain name system launched last week, was the talk of town around the venue. It’s time to say goodbye to .com, and hello to .btc. BTC.US enables decentralized domains secured by Bitcoin and brings a unique set of features. Users can send and receive STX using a familiar, recognizable wallet identifier instead of a long string of alphanumeric characters. In addition to crypto functionality, they can also function like traditional domain names. 

Using a web bridge via BTC.US, users can redirect to a business or personal site! There’s no better way to signal your support for Bitcoin, add some personalization to your Stacks wallet, and protect your self-sovereign identity with the security of Bitcoin. We’re loving seeing some Twitter accounts already changing their profile name to their BTC.US domain name!

→ Get your .BTC domain name today

After a year of virtual hackathons, virtual conferences, Zoom workshops, remote work, and digital communication, it was genuinely empowering to get the Stacks community together in Miami and celebrate the explosion of activity in our ecosystem. It’s been a huge year for Stacks since the launch of Mainnet in January and the future has never been brighter with the Stacks Accelerator currently mentoring 25 ecosystem projects. Bitcoin 2021 was a celebration of all things Satoshi, and we think he would be proud of how far blockchain has come since its humble beginnings in 2009. We’re proud to be building on Bitcoin and our mission was only reinforced by the excitement surrounding Stacks in Miami. We cannot wait to travel again and see more friendly Stacks faces at a future crypto conference near you!