LAS VEGAS – Even as the liquor flowed at a late-night party in a plush Las Vegas suite, chatter about the business of Bitcoin never flagged.
Among the overwhelmingly male crowd gathered in Las Vegas for only the second Bitcoin convention in the cyber currency’s history, the passion for the unregulated, computer-generated money is clear.
Bitcoin already is the 75th most valuable currency on Earth, says David Johnston, CEO of Engine and executive director of BitAngels, an entrepreneur and angel investor group funding digital currency. Johnston expects Bitcoin to crack the top 10.
The enthusiasm is not unfounded. Since January, the value of one Bitcoin has soared from $13 to more than $1,000, creating instant millionaires among some of Bitcoin’s earliest investors.
The newfound wealth has freed many of the programmers, techies, financial analysts and rocket scientists from their day jobs, allowing them to focus full-time on creating the consumer applications, Bitcoin stores and security systems they hope will vault Bitcoin into the mainstream.
More than 600 people registered for the Inside Bitcoins convention, up from a few hundred at the first Bitcoin conference last summer, says Alan Meckler, CEO of MediaBistro, the conference organizer. The number of exhibitors has jumped from three in July to 22 last week.
“It’s the closest thing to the beginning of the Internet that I’ve ever seen,” Meckler said.
The conference still is tiny and without the glamorous trappings of powerhouse conventions like the Consumer Electronics Show, which attracts thousands of attendees with whiz-bang demonstrations and high-tech luminaries, including Bill Gates.
The motley collection of Bitcoiners hail from the well-heeled of Wall Street, including J.P. Morgan and Visa, and the flannel and Google Glass-wearing grunge set from the West Coast.
There are hipsters in bell-bottom jeans and corduroy jackets and former Washington, D.C., Mayor Adrian Fenty. There are libertarians whose philosophy craves a decentralized, limited currency.
“One of the first things that attracted me, is it’s a currency for the world. It’s not specific to any country and might be most useful in the developing world,” says Justus Ranvier, 33, a Bitcoin blogger and activist from Austin, Texas.
Ranvier wrote in Bitcoin Magazine that he “indefinitely suspended pursuit of an electrical engineering degree in order to promote Bitcoin adoption and work on various projects which help to develop the emerging Bitcoin economy.”
Many Bitcoin businesses have sprung from the mind of serial entrepreneurs, clever techies like George Burke who leveraged his Internet skills to create an e-book-swapping service that works with Nook and Kindle but now is moving on to a Bitcoin project.
There are seasoned investors who see potential in a cyber coin of the realm. Attorneys from the white-shoe law firm Pillsbury showed up to offer the intellectual property skills.
Jaron Lukasiewicz, CEO of Coinsetter, a foreign exchange trading platform for Bitcoin, and a former investment banker, says the market for Bitcoin is changing as the value increases. More traditional financial players on Wall Street and high net-worth investors are showing interest, said Lukasiewicz, who also co-founded Ticketometer, an online ticket sales business.
Bank of America and the Central Bank of China both weighed in on opposite sides on the viability of Bitcoin. Chinese Bitcoin investors have driven up to 70 percent of the trading, he said.
“People are taking it a lot more seriously now,” he said. “It’s really become a real currency to a lot of people.”
© 2013 USA TODAY. All rights reserved.
Some basics about Bitcoin
What is it? A Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency. Unlike the dollar or Euro, it is backed by nothing more than its own ability to hold value, in the same way gold has for most of its history.
How can I purchase it? The most popular way is from digital exchanges like Coinbase or Mt. Gox, though at least one Vancouver ATM now trades Bitcoins for cash and vice versa.
How did it originate? In 2008, Bitcoin was first devised and outlined by the mysterious and pseudonymous developer(s) Satoshi Nakamoto, who mined the first 50 Bitcoins from what was called The Genesis Block on Jan. 3, 2009. Bitcoin evolved as an open-source development project, where it grew from its own mining and trading, the most notorious swap being perhaps the first that occurred in “the real world” – 10,000 Bitcoins (now equivalent to $9 million) for two pizzas in May 2010.
