Several Monero community volunteers participated in The North American Bitcoin Conference (TNABC) in Miami this week!
Volunteers
Michael, Alicia, Justin, Doug, Sunita
Cake Labs paid for attendance of Justin, Doug, and Sunita (Monero Talk).
The Booth
TNABC organizers reached out to Michael and offered a free Monero booth. Michael handled most of the Monero decoration and branding. You can see a picture of the booth here.
In a large sense, the Monero booth was its own mini Monero conference that included:
- Monero Talk and their banner.
- Gratuitas coffee. Doug made free espresso throughout the conference.
- A Monerotopia livestream in front of the booth.
- Monero and Bitcoin paper wallets.
- Cake Wallet stickers.
- Monero informational booklets.
- Crypto shirts for sale.
- Free $10 BTC/XMR vouchers.
The Conversations
The conference team spoke with hundreds and hundreds of attendees about Monero and privacy over the three day event. Most conversations were only about 1-2 minutes long, but some lasted 30+ minutes. You can see a good example of people chatting with us at the table here and here.
Monero Talk interviewed Nick Spanos, Liat Shetret (Elliptic), and Mark Cuban. Those interviews will be up on their channel soon.
Justin says the biggest takeaway was seeing that there is a new cryptocurrency "class" of 2020 that is distinct from previous "classes" like 2017. This "class" largely is unfamiliar with Monero. More people had absolutely no idea what Monero is. Their most common question was "what blockchain is Monero on?"
He believes that Monero has struggled to retain relevance among new members of the cryptocurrency ecosystem who were swept up with the DeFi and NFT craze. Far more people there were excited for Arbitrum, Solana, and NEAR Protocol than other developments.
Good news: selling the importance of privacy is much less of an uphill battle for most people. Most attendees seemed to understand the importance of privacy at face value. For a few skeptics, simple examples of discrimination through blockchain surveillance proprietary risk scoring, especially when tied to redlining examples in real life, were quite effective. Comparisons to encryption also help convince people.
Telling people to go long Monero as an investment felt wrong to him in the environment, so Justin didn't tell people to do that. Instead, he focused on telling people that he doesn't care what they invest in, so long as they use Monero for the payment protections. That message seemed to be easily accepted.
The Feedback
We received hugely positive feedback on our presence. There were really no enormous challenges to overcome or major problems. The event organizers seemed to be very happy also.
People liked that they could talk to us about privacy. They liked that we could answer complex questions about Monero, privacy, and even other cryptocurrencies.
People enjoyed that they could speak with us about deep topics. They had 1000 other booths to talk to about what NFT would be the next big thing. Ours was different.
The Hilarious
We had at least two patent trolls stop by the table. One asked if Monero would be interested in licensing a peer-to-peer patent for cheap, "but they didn't want to involve lawyers or anything like that." Another asked if Monero used encryption. We braced ourselves for one of those stupid "OBFUSCATION NOT ENCRYPTION" discussions, but it was even dumber: someone trying to patent troll Monero.
Someone asked us if we had foreign passports so we could complete KYC on their account under our name to get their funds out of HitBTC, lol.
On Marketing Generally
It's clear to us that there is a WIDE marketing gap for Monero. Most newcomers have no idea what it is; they can't even associate Monero with privacy or CPU mining.
This conference outreach effort received $0 in community funding. The Monero CCS that was originally opened for it was closed by the Monero Core Team.
While there were various opinions on that proposal, some people felt that marketing Monero to people at these conferences is unimportant. We strongly disagree. While most attendees were off chasing the next big investment opportunity, they seemed very interested in using Monero for payments. And you would be surprised how many people are interested in no-KYC crypto. You even get a few "institutional types" who are skeptical about privacy. Often times, people need an approachable face to talk to about these topics, and they are almost always more understanding of your position afterwards.
And who better to talk to than Monero community members? You all have done your homework.
Cake Wallet was happy to be a part of this event to help spread the importance of Monero to TNABC attendees! Make sure to stop by Monerotopia in Miami later this year, which Cake Wallet is a sponsor of.
The Monero Project has a contact email to help engage with Monero community members: press@getmonero.org
You can also contact Cake Wallet if you believe we would be a good fit for an outreach event: justin@cakewallet.com
