“There were a lot of true believers in the Miami crypto scene. They wanted to drink the Kool-Aid,” the fundraiser said. “The big boys like Peter Thiel all got out on top. The paupers just crumbled to nothing.”
In January, I sat with a former crypto executive at the bar in South Beach’s Eden Roc hotel. Miami was experiencing its normal winter rush of Wall Street conferences, and we were reading faces. The crypto exec wanted to see whether Wall Street’s rank and file had figured out what they had figured out months before — that the beach party was over. “It’s smoke and mirrors. There’s no real money here anymore,” the former crypto exec, a third-generation Wall Streeter, said. “It’s all gone to Dubai and Singapore.” There was fear on people’s faces where two years ago there had been greed.
“You know who’s rich in Miami?” the former crypto exec — now a naturalized Miami citizen — asked me. “The people who make windows for yachts.”
Source: Stock Market Crash, Crypto Collapse Hurts Miami, Florida Hotspots
