MIAMI – Crypto jargon and alcohol flowed free when thousands of Bitcoin enthusiasts came to South Florida this weekend.

At Bitcoin 2021, considered the biggest Bitcoin event in history, legions of loyal fans braved 90-degree days to talk about everything to do with crypto. Many of the conference attendees were bitcoin maximalists, a term used to describe people who believe that bitcoin, and not necessarily other cryptocurrencies, is the future of finance. Most plan on BTD (buy the dip) and HODL (hold on for my life).

The energy was electric. A maskless, sold-out crowd of 12,000 attendees spent two days cheering, hugging, sending crypto from wallet to wallet, and closing deals between panels and speeches. The novelty of participating in a largely indoor event with no Covid restrictions added to the atmosphere.

A standard pass to the event is $ 1,499. Some guests paid for a coveted orange bracelet known as a “whale pass,” which takes its name from a term used to describe people who own large sums of bitcoin. The pass granted access to an extra day of speakers, exclusive parties, and a private area in the convention hall with a free bar. On the first day of the conference, it was sold on Eventbrite for $ 21,000 plus a transaction fee of $ 529.

The crowd’s eyes were mixed. Imagine conference merch like neon belt bags, Bitcoin 2021 sunglasses, and t-shirts with crypto puns and hashtags. Some seemed ready for a summer rave, wearing bikinis in the media room.

However, there was also a strong contingent in Wall Street’s standard business, another sign of the mainstream’s growing interest in the world’s most popular cryptocurrency. “Whether they were attending or just going to the Miami events, there is more institutional involvement than I’ve ever seen at a Bitcoin conference,” Nic Carter, founding partner at Castle Island Ventures, told CNBC.

Miami lights up for crypto

For the thousands who couldn’t get an official ticket to the event, the parties and tangential get-togethers were the real draw. There were yacht parties with a DeFi (decentralized finance) theme, sumo wrestling matches, NFT art gallery openings, and cocktail hours devoted to talking about Bitclout, a social network based on the blockchain technology that most Is based on cryptocurrencies.

The after parties hit rooftops across town, with at least one with fire dancers. One of Miami’s biggest nightclubs, The Oasis has been crypto non-stop.

“There’s no way to quantify the extent to which an event like this will boost business,” said Mati Greenspan, portfolio manager and founder of Quantum Economics, who flew in from Israel for the event Wednesday night. “What could take an hour for a home meeting can be done in five or ten minutes at a conference. So every hour is worth five or ten meetings. “

Fire dancers entertain crypto enthusiasts at a rooftop party in Miami.

Dead verdigris

Much of the conversation revolved around moving to Miami. Start-ups, venture companies and crypto exchanges are moving en masse to the city – or at least opening additional offices.

Mayor Francis Suarez has portrayed himself as Bitcoin-friendly – Suarez announced in February that Miami plans to accept tax payments in Bitcoin and let employees get their salaries in the cryptocurrency, although the timing of the introduction is unclear. The city is also considering keeping Bitcoin on its balance sheet.

Now the whole city seems to be doing it. “From waiters to Uber drivers, a bouncer in the nightclub and even a lady selling chotchkes in the mall, most of the locals I met on-site seemed familiar with cryptocurrencies, and many of them are HODLing,” said Greenspan of the few days he spent in Miami.

Carter himself is considering moving. “Pretty much everyone I’ve spoken to is super bullish about Texas and Florida and pretty pessimistic about New York, San Francisco and Boston,” he said. “I left thinking that I would make this transition myself.”

“Bitcoin repairs everything”

A common refrain from some of the biggest names on the scene was that “Bitcoin will fix it all” which sums up the general mood at the conference pretty well.

“We say Bitcoin is hope; Bitcoin fixes everything, ”said Saylor. “That was definitely the case with our stock.”

Dorsey also doubled his exposure to the cryptocurrency. “If I wasn’t on Square or Twitter, I would be working on Bitcoin. If it needed more help than Square and Twitter, I would leave them for Bitcoin,” Dorsey said.

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The undertone of widespread support for Bitcoin was accompanied by a spirit of rebellion against the existing financial system.

“We don’t need the banks anymore,” continued Dorsey. “We don’t need the financial institutions that we have today.”

Cameron Winklevoss wore a T-shirt with a picture of the Federal Reserve building titled “Rage Against the Machine,” an indication that Bitcoin is not controlled by a central bank.

As one panel MC put it, “We are going to put the Fed out of business,” suggesting how people at Bitcoin 2021 viewed the monetary system and fiat money in general, with Bitcoin seen as the solution.

Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss (LR), creators of the Gemini Trust Co. crypto exchange, on stage at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention, a cryptocurrency conference held at the Mana Convention Center in Wynwood, Miami, Florida on June 4, 2021.

Joe Raedle | Getty Images

But lifting the status quo does not mean anarchy. In many of my conversations with participants, the narrative was far from advocating the collapse or dissolution of society.

“The whole point of Bitcoin is that it’s a … peaceful protest against a monetary system that people don’t want to be a part of,” Carter said. “I don’t think the Fed has much to fear from Bitcoin. You don’t have to take to the streets to promote Bitcoin.”

The conference was attended by participants from countries with high inflation or other currency issues – places like Venezuela, Cuba, Turkey, Nigeria, Lebanon, and Iran – who perhaps best understand the use case for a cryptocurrency like Bitcoin.

“There are hundreds of people in these places and you don’t have to explain Bitcoin to them; they understand it intuitively,” Carter said. “That was one of the best parts of the conference for me: meeting people who have felt the real impact of the currency collapse and seeing how they use Bitcoin.”

A common theme of the conference was the maturity of the Lightning Network, a Bitcoin-based payment platform that enables instant transactions.

Virtually every booth at the conference accepted Lightning transactions. Even Square and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey closed one during his keynote talk with Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation.

“This is a real success story,” said Carter. “It took Lightning four or five years to build on Bitcoin, but now it works.”

The shadow of Elon

Elon Musk wasn’t physically in Miami, but his presence was definitely felt. Right at the start of the conference, Bitcoin price fell after a tweet from the Tesla CEO suggesting he was getting rid of the currency.

Max Keizer, a high profile Bitcoin holder, started his fireside chat by cursing Musk’s name and shouting, “F — Elon!” multiple times.

On the main stage, Dorsey took a seemingly veiled shot at Musk’s criticism of the environmental impact of Bitcoin mining, saying that he is actually “stimulating more renewable energies”.

“You just look at the economics and ultimately the miners need to make a profit and buying cheap renewable energy will maximize their profit potential. It really is that simple,” continued Dorsey. “I thought I had an arrangement with some notable people out there and that seemed to change in weeks and now it’s in a strange place.”

Michael Saylor, a high-profile crypto advocate and CEO of MicroStrategy – a company that bought Bitcoin for its balance sheet last year before Square and Tesla – went a step further with Dorsey’s comments.

“It’s the ultimate use of intermittent energy. It is the highest quality use of renewable energy. It is the most valuable use of wasted or lost energy. And it’s just the highest quality use of energy, period, ”said Saylor.

NFL player and Bitcoin fan Russell Okung launched a poster campaign on Friday with the slogan “Stick to space, Elon,” an indication that Musk should stay on his track and leave opinion on crypto to industry representatives.

Most of the conference attendees said they would ignore his comments anyway. Many have said they don’t believe that Musk or anyone else – not even governments – can stop Bitcoin. A person in the bathroom row called him a clown and was referring to his weekend advert for a new, pornographic-named cryptocurrency.

Graduates attend a job fair at Shandong University of Science and Technology on March 20, 2021 in Qingdao, China.

Zhang Jingang | Visual China Group | Getty Images

BEIJJNG – Despite China’s rapid recovery from the pandemic, many local graduates are opting for government-sponsored jobs or postponing their careers.

China was the only major economy to grow in 2020. But more than a year since the pandemic began, the 2021 class is still under pressure from high housing costs, international travel restrictions and an intense competitive environment.

Last month, CNBC spoke to more than ten local and international students from higher education programs in mainland China. Many of the sources asked for anonymity so that their names would not be associated with a foreign news organization. While these anecdotes are not to be equated with qualitative research, they reflect general employment trends for the record 9.09 million graduates in China this year.

A 24-year-old, who asked for anonymity, said she had accepted an offer from a major bank in Beijing to secure jobs. After the pandemic, companies that were too small or privately owned didn’t seem as stable as state-owned ones, she said.

Many women in her senior year also preferred jobs in state-owned companies, she said, noting that male classmates tended to take jobs in tech companies where the pay was higher but the hours were much longer.

The trend is nationwide. Chinese recruitment website Zhaopin found that 42.5% of graduates named state-owned companies as their first choice for a job – up from 36% last year.

In contrast, the percentage that opted for the private sector decreased from 25.1% to 19%. Overall, students were less inclined to enter the labor market – the study found an 18.9 percentage point decrease in graduates who took up traditional jobs. Instead, they opted for freelance work, a gap year, or an advanced degree.

“When I started thinking about work, the pandemic was already very severe,” said a master’s student at Beijing Communication University of China, who asked for anonymity. That comes from a CNBC translation of the interview in Mandarin.

The 28-year-old spent the pandemic studying at his home in northern Heilongjiang Province and then taking a doctoral examination. “It’s not that easy to get a job this year,” he said, although he is confident that there will be solutions to any problems he may face.

With the increased interest in university programs, competition among exam candidates is increasing. According to state media, a record 3.77 million people took the master’s examination in December.

The number of public service exam candidates also rose last year to 1.57 million people. They competed for 25,700 jobs.

Another communications college student, Qu Zhiyuan, 25, said her high and middle school classmates at home in eastern Shandong Province are having a harder time getting a job. Even for low-level jobs in government, there have been complaints about competition from Chinese returning from studying abroad.

“I feel like I’m the most diverse,” Qu said, according to a CNBC translation in Mandarin. While most of her classmates are taking exams for public service, state-owned corporations, or entering finance, she takes a job with a film producer and distributor in Beijing.

Instead of worrying about her own future – whether it leads to France or the US – she worries about how capital can manipulate people. “Big data can calculate when (the audience) will cry,” she said.

When graduates are in employment, the pay is generally lower than in 2019, according to Zhaopin. More than 40% of students expect to be paid between 4,000 and 6,000 yuan ($ 625 to $ 937.50) a month, the report said.

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A 26-year-old musicologist who applied for anonymity, grew up in Gansu Province in the Midwest and is looking for a tech job in the coastal metropolis of Shanghai – which he is paying well enough to pursue his plans for to support a study abroad.

He is open to a long-term stay abroad and hopes to get married when his work situation has stabilized. His longtime girlfriend plans to go to Europe later this year, he said.

Many Chinese mainland students have put their study abroad plans on hold due to the pandemic and geopolitical tensions, if not indefinitely.

Covid and visa restrictions are bigger challenges for going abroad than being rejected by schools, said Xie Hangjian, 22. He said about half of his friends intend to do masters abroad.

Xie graduated from NYU’s joint venture in Shanghai and has a job with a major US investment bank in the city.

“Despite Covid and the worsening geopolitical climate, some of the largest multinationals are still hiring a lot of new graduates, especially in mainland China,” he said, citing the economic recovery.

Opportunities for foreign students

International students remained interested in China, with a record more than 16,000 foreign applicants for NYU Shanghai’s 500 places this fall. A one-year masters program in Beijing, launched by Blackstone founder Steve Schwarzman, received 3,600 applicants in the fall, up from 4,700 the previous year.

Despite being unable to enter China due to virus-related visa restrictions, Schwarzman Scholar and 23-year-old New Zealander Nina Jeffs said she was able to do a remote internship at a start-up last year where she learned about Chinese workplace culture and sustainable aviation fuels .

“It’s easy to forget that China is a huge, very diverse country, and I think that’s something I’ve gotten a lot more insight into this year,” she said.

Upon graduation, Jeffs will work with a think tank to explore climate change policies that support greater gender equality. She hopes to visit China for some of this research.

For overseas students who can enter and stay in China, many continue to enjoy the local growth.

Despite being paid less than the US or Europe, John Dopp, 22, plans to stay in China, where he got a job on the overseas marketing team of a Chinese video game company. Dopp, an American, graduated from NYU Shanghai with a degree in finance.

“I’m very excited to start my career here just because it feels like there are so many options,” he said, noting that many Chinese companies are looking for foreigners to help their businesses expand overseas to help.