MIT Bitcoin Expo 2021 be held fully online and be completely free to the public. Join on April 3rd and 4th for what will be another exciting round of talks and panels.
The theme last year was Building the Stack, with the focus on the state of the art of the emerging protocol stack. Since then, Bitcoin and Ethereum have reached all-time highs, marking the end of the crypto winter we’ve been in since 2018.
This year, the theme is The New Normal.
First, Guggenheim Partners, Micro Strategy, MassMutual and Tesla have all bought Bitcoin. These are examples of institutional adoption that has changed the narrative around Bitcoin. Further institutional adoption is also coming from the likes of Visa, MasterCard and BNY Mellon.
Second, the explosion of DeFi last year and Robinhood’s trading stoppage of GameStop and other stocks has changed the narrative around Ethereum and DeFi.
Finally, the United States’ Boston Federal reserve partnering with the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative to research central bank digital currencies (CBDC), the Ukrainian government hiring the Stellar Development Foundation to develop their CBDC, and China air-dropping digital yuan to its citizens to test their CBDC has changed the narrative around governmental adoption of cryptocurrencies.
All of this doesn’t even touch the technological advancements made in the field. Taproot has officially been merged into Bitcoin Core, Ethereum 2.0’s Beacon Chain has launched, and many more things have happened this past year that are worth looking into and discussing.
Whether you are new to the space or have been a part of it since the beginning, MIT Bitcoin Expo 2021 welcome everyone around the world to join online.
Speakers include:
- Dan Held, Growth Lead, Kraken
- Jameson Lopp, Founder, Mensa’s Bitcoin Special Interest Group
- Peter McCormack, Creator, What Bitcoin Did Podcast
- John Newbery, Director, Brink
- Rene Pickhardt, Researcher at Norwegian University of Science and Technology
- Michael Saylor, CEO, MicroStrategy
- Jimmy Song, Bitcoin Developer
- Danny Ryan, Research at Ethereum Foundation
- David Vorick, Co-Founder and CEO, Sia
- Pieter Wuille, Engineer, Chaincode Labs
- Gloria Zhao, Bitcoin Core Developer
- Kimberly Grauer, Head of Research, Chainalysis Inc.
- Max Hillebrand, Developer
- Tadge Dryja, Founder & Developer, Lightning Labs
- Bryan Bishop, CTO at Avanti Bank & Trust