Day 2 - BTC Nashville 24 - Marketing, Mining, Accounting
Day 2 started out with larger crowds. The Festival Pass goers were allowed in the doors and the lines for them to enter the Nakamoto main stage where Trump, Kennedy and Michael Saylor are speaking were quite long. Wrapping around the building into the exhibit hall there were literally thousands waiting to get in. This was likely due to only a few metal detectors manned by a mix of Secret Service and general security personnel.
Located in the Exhibit hall was the Genesis Stage where I sat in on my days first session.
0900 - Founders on a Lightning Standard - Marketing
3 guests prodded by a moderator discussed a variety of topics that centered toward on-ramps for Bitcoin. Desiree Dickson from a gaming company spoke about embedding it in their gaming platform and the challenges to adoption they face with users using it for payment. Roy Sheinfeld, a developer, spoke about the Samurai mixer service trial in the United States and espoused the injustices of it. Evan Kaloudis chimed in to discuss some of the problems with the tax system in the United States tucking Crypto under capital gains making adoption even more challenging.
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10am - Mining and Power Grid
The Crypto Mining stage located in the Exhibit hall had a session titled Bitcoin Mining and the Grid. Knowing nothing about power companies or Crypto mining operations I sat in on the discussion with Austin Mitchel (Synota), Kent Draper (Tren), Kerri Langlais (Terawulf) and Mario Gutierrez (Giga Energy). The discussion brought up several interesting points I’d never considered about the positive and negative affects of bitcoin mining on power generation…..
Crypto mining power loads are treated differently than others by regulatory agencies. It was inferred they would be charged more than a company who might be performing technically similar functions with similar equipment such as a company doing AI.
British Columbia put in a moratorium on crypto connections to their grid because of reported power constraints it caused.
Bitcoin mining can foster the intersection of big tech with big energy and is doing so in Pennsylvania at Nautili’s crypto mine that is connected to a Nuclear power plant and employs 1600 employees operating the plant each day.
The panels consensus was the grid of tomorrow provides a generational opportunity for abundant energy through decentralization of power production.
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1030 - Enterprise Stage - Accounting
At 1030 the Enterprise stage hosted the Demystifying the World of Bitcoin by Markus Veith (Grant Thornton), Rob Logan (Gemini), Ed Reginelli (BitGo), Brian Carson (CleanSpark) and Aaron Jacob (TaxBit). This stage was located in the VIP section restricted to Industry and Whale pass holders. It’s because of this I suspect the crowds were much smaller. Some helpful points that came out of the discussion included….
Prior guidance by FASB didn’t reflect the true value of Bitcoin but Fair value regulation fixed this by simplifying the accounting, according to Brian Carson.
SAB121 legislation has an impact on custodians and was considered bad by the group because it requires any company touching customers funds to provide disclosure and reporting. It was further mentioned that the SEC came out with these rules after soliciting no feedback which is unusual. As a result this has seemingly unified much of the US Congress.
