Bitcoin 2024 Conference: Day One Highlights

The Bitcoin 2024 conference began on July 25 in Nashville, Tennessee, with a focus on industry developments. Over 35,000 attendees participated as speakers addressed the future of Bitcoin.

The Bitcoin 2024 conference kicked off on July 25 in Nashville, Tennessee, with a focus on industry developments. Over 35,000 attendees participated as speakers addressed the future of Bitcoin.

Tennessee’s Commissioner Stuart McWhorter delivered the opening remarks, outlining the event's schedule. However, the start of the conference faced technical issues, particularly with the live broadcast. Viewers on YouTube and X experienced ongoing audio problems during the inaugural ceremony, which persisted for over 30 minutes despite the organizers’ attempts to resolve them.

As day one drew to a close, MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor joined the event livestream ahead of his keynote speech scheduled at 7:00 pm on July 26. The Bitcoin advocate said that 2024 will go down as “year one of mainstream institutional adoption of Bitcoin.”

Saylor's business intelligence firm, Microstrategy, has owned over 200,000 Bitcoin since it announced Bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset in August 2020. Saylor intimated that the presence of two United States presidential candidates and other prominent senators could be a positive boon for Bitcoin:

“I think there’s a fair wind blowing for Bitcoin regardless. I really can’t see any administration in the future not embracing Bitcoin.”

Bitcoin developer Jimmy Song took a firm stance during a panel discussion with Ben Askren, “Make Bitcoin in America Great Again.” The song criticized traditional finance institutions like BlackRock and the focus on banking, trading, and ETFs.

“What makes Bitcoin great is liberty, freedom, self-sovereignty. Those are the things that this country was founded on. Unfortunately, because of the money and power of the money printing press, what we’ve gotten is an administrative state that rules over us and thinks that they’re better than us,” Song said.

Panelist Luke Rudkowski supported this view, stressing that Bitcoin should tackle issues created by government systems and champion self-reliance. BlackRock's head of digital assets, Michael Mitchnick, discussed their move into cryptocurrencies. He spoke about spot Bitcoin and Ether ETFs in 2024 with Bloomberg's James Seyffart.

“I would say that in our client phase today, their interest overwhelmingly is in Bitcoin first,” the BlackRock executive said, adding that institutional interest tended to simmer down after going beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Interestingly, not all asset managers share BlackRock's outlook. Franklin Templeton, which also issues BTC and ETH ETFs, is optimistic about expanding its crypto ETF offerings, including a product for Solana (SOL).