IN-DEPTH Bitcoin Miami 2022 RECAP

Ty Smith0:04

What is up, guys? Welcome to another episode of the Crypto Marketing Show. I'm Ty Smith. With me is Jared. Today we are recapping our experience at the Bitcoin 2022 conference, as well as covering some of the best and our favorite examples of marketing at the conference. I mean, first of all, the conference was pretty amazing. It's the biggest conference that's put on in the world of crypto, as far as I know.

Ty Smith0:20

The CEO of BTC Media, which is the company that puts it on, was kind of doing like a thread on Twitter about the cost to produce it and just kind of like the behind the scenes of it. And it cost $30 million to put on. It's kind of insane. And it, I mean, it showed. It was a huge conference, amazing speakers, 30,000 people attended from the numbers that I've seen. Just overall a good time.

Ty Smith0:35

I mean, some of the speakers were like Michael Saylor, Cathie Woods, Kevin O'Leary was there doing a lot of media. Just overall like a good time. Jared, what did you think of the event?

Jared1:07

I think it was awesome. And also last year, it shows that they made such an improvement. I guess the budget also probably increased from their revenue from last year. So moving from Wynwood over to the Miami Convention was a big improvement. And plus, just everything being on South Beach really resembled like the crypto vibe. So, yeah, it was a lot to learn from and a lot of improvements from the previous year.

Ty Smith1:22

Yeah, no. So we went last year. It was at Wynwood, which is like not on South Beach. It's, you know, next to it, for those that are not familiar with the geography of Miami. South Beach, in my opinion, was way better. It was so much closer to, I mean, we were right by the beach. Our hotel was really close to the event. Just a better experience, in my opinion, than the previous year. Both were awesome conferences, but this year, I think, just kind of was a little bigger and better.

Ty Smith2:04

Why don't we touch on, I mean, and it was also close to all the nightlife in South Beach, which is like what you do in Miami. And it was like great networking opportunities to go out. We were hanging out with the guys from Terra, from Circle, from like tons of different blockchains and tons of different companies, just kind of linking up and just great networking opportunities, and also just like a good time because it's like Miami nightclubs. Like, it's pretty awesome time.

Jared2:20

Agreed. And also, the advertising took a step up from last year. Like, you saw it everywhere. Last year was the same thing, but now it was all over South Beach as well. So that just, it left like an imprint to anyone who visited this year way more than it did last year.

Ty Smith2:30

Yeah, exactly. So why don't we cover some of the best examples or our favorite examples of marketing that we experienced at the conference. I think your favorite was the Ride the Bull that Bullish put on. Bullish being that exchange that raised like hundreds of millions of dollars right off the right off the bat. It might have been billions of dollars. But that was one of the first times I've seen them advertise.

Ty Smith3:10

For those that weren't there or didn't know, it was like a, like a rodeo bull, like a mechanical bull where you get on it, ride it for as long as you can. And they gave the winner, whoever, there's a leaderboard, whoever rode it for the most amount of time during the conference won one Bitcoin. Jared, that was your first experience, I think, within 15 minutes you were on the bull, and then within 20 minutes you were in the medical tent.

Jared3:27

Should I tell that story a little bit? Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so Ty, being head honcho, was like, 'You have to ride the bull.' And I was like, 'Okay, I can't say no to that.' And his brother was number 10 on the leaderboard. So I asked him for some advice before I hopped on, which was stay low.

Jared4:05

So I hopped onto the bull, I got really low, and the operator even told me, 'You're a little too low. You might break your nose.' And I was like, 'Okay, okay.' Moved up a little bit. The bull turns on, swings me back and forth, and boom, my face goes right into the front of the bull. And the first thing I do is go up, 'No, I'm good. I'm good. I'll be great.' And then I wasn't good, and blood started coming out.

Jared4:21

And yeah, within 30 minutes of coming to Bitcoin Miami, I was at the medic center, just talking to them about the bull and how things have been going. Apparently, I wasn't the first one there. But it was definitely something I remembered, for sure. And I'm not going to forget that one. And everyone else kind of thought about it the same way. It was a challenge, and people always remembered that.

Jared4:33

And the resemblance with Bitcoin and being bullish and focusing on the bull, I feel like it's the first thing anyone did when they came to the convention. They saw that bull right there, and then they first thing they did, wanted to hop on it and see if they can ride it. So, yeah, definitely stood out, good advertisement. And I need round two, for sure.

Ty Smith5:08

Yeah, they'll have it again at the next one, I'm sure. I think, from what I saw in the media kit, I think they were offering as a sponsored option for like 100 grand or something, which sounds like a ton of money, but for the right sponsor, it could be worthwhile. They were also giving to everyone that did the bull, regardless of how long they stayed on, a sweatshirt or a t-shirt that said Bullish on it, which I thought was great because by the end of the conference, I don't know if you got one, I got one, they were all over the conference. It just said Bullish.

Ty Smith5:27

Which is cool because it's like the name of the name of the exchange, and then it's also like a crypto phrase. Yeah, you got a little too low, I think.

Jared5:33

That's the first thing I said was too low. Also, I didn't get a sweatshirt, so now I'm upset. I can't believe I almost broke my nose and didn't get a sweatshirt.

Ty Smith5:38

You should have just used it as like a rag for the blood, probably.

Jared5:40

True, true.

Ty Smith5:41

Another one that was cool was Nexo did a, it was like a photo opportunity. It was kind of like, how do you describe this thing? It was like like a tunnel, basically, made out of mirrors, and inside had Nexo branding. So like if you stand on one side of it and then someone takes your picture from the other side of it, it looks really cool. And then it's like a great way for Nexo to have like gotten out their name and branding. So it was a pretty perfect like Instagram installation.

Jared6:23

I want to touch upon that one because that one was pretty big. And the reason why is just because anyone who was an influencer wanted a picture there. Like, there was nowhere else really fantastic for them to go get a picture from. But there's people I knew just personally, not even from business, that I looked at Instagram and bam, they were there taking a picture at the Nexo booth.

Jared6:35

So I had no idea they were there until they posted. So it seemed like influencers were gravitated towards there because there was no other good photo opportunity. Right now with social media, that really blasted off.

Ty Smith6:40

Yeah, no. There actually was one other photo opportunity that I liked, which was put on by TradeStation, which was the big Miami Bull. So they basically copied like the Wall Street Bull. They made it kind of like a digital version of it. It was all black. It had like wires and stuff coming out of it, just made it look kind of like digital and crypto-like. And that was right outside the event. It was like the biggest thing like when you're walking in to see the Miami Bull.

Ty Smith7:19

And that was put on by TradeStation. And then right behind it was like, they said Bitcoin 2022 like on the conference center and presented by Cash App, which who I think was the title sponsor, who was everywhere at the event. Cash App did an awesome job of marketing there. They were on every like every piece of like of like every speaker had like Cash App above it. It was everywhere.

Jared7:36

Did you hear about Cash App's like advertisement through the Botanical Garden right nearby?

Ty Smith7:39

No, I didn't. What happened?

Jared7:39

They placed like random like almost like a scavenger hunt full of cards that just had QR codes on them. And if you went up to them and scanned them, you had a chance to get money. I didn't go through the Botanical Garden myself, but what people ended up doing was going by, taking a photo of it, and then sharing it with them with their friends at the convention.

Jared8:16

So I ended up meeting a couple of people who were like, 'Here, scan this off my phone, see if you get any money from it.' So Cash App had like these cards scattered throughout the Botanical Garden for people to find, and then you can get some Bitcoin sent to your Cash App.

Ty Smith8:25

Very cool. I know Nexo, sorry, not Nexo, TaxBit had a large booth there, which makes sense right ahead of, you always see this huge spike in advertising for crypto tax services right ahead of tax season. They had a large booth there. I've seen them a lot lately. TaxBit, as well as Coinly, doing a lot of brave ads, too. Even outside of the event, I know they've been doing a lot of brave ads, which is something that we've been doing a ton of lately as an agency.

Ty Smith8:42

Circle had a big presence, also. They didn't do so much as far as like actual like advertising, but they hosted that party at the Versace Mansion, which, I mean, was awesome. It got shut down by the police immediately, though. But still, kind of a cool event. We got to hang out with the team quite a bit there from Circle. That was fun. What else did we see?

Jared9:23

When I was on the beach walking by, I saw a lot of plane advertisements and boat advertisements. So those were all over the skies. I saw TaxBit on there. I saw Cash App on there. I even saw 11 with their new NFTs coming out on there. But there was a few different opportunities to just have like these physical placements. It wasn't just planes and boats. There were some buses as well.

Jared9:37

So the physical presence was huge apart from just the convention area, but also around the whole city. But physically seeing stuff there, and then also just the wristbands themselves that you had as like the tickets, they had advertisements on them. And it kind of, anyone else who wasn't there for crypto realized that there was a big crypto thing happening.

Jared9:45

Like, it was just basically a crypto takeover of Miami. And that physical presence just gets everyone else there who's not involved in the space also to realize like this is real, this is big, and this is here.

Ty Smith10:21

Yeah, no. I saw a ton of advertising on the airplanes like over South Beach. A lot for DAOs, actually, which is one of the first times I've really seen like a heavy push for marketing of DAOs out of home. Even in the airports. I mean, in the airports, I saw just like random coins being advertised, which was interesting to see. Crypto.com did a great job of taking over basically Miami Airport.

Ty Smith10:36

They have been really hard leaning into the Fortune Favors the Brave campaign. And they just took over like entire like sections of the airport, which was cool to see. I mean, because everyone was flying into that airport to go to the event. And even if you weren't, people, Crypto.com has such a universal message of just like buy crypto using us, that I thought that that was a pretty worthwhile spend for them.

Ty Smith11:17

What else? I mean, there was so much, there was so much going on. It's impossible to break down everything. There was, I mean, people were getting tattoos at this event. It was crazy. I was like, 'Oh, these must be fake tattoos. Like, who's getting a Bitcoin tattoo just like in the spur of the moment?' But no, people were getting like, people were going hard at this thing.

Jared11:29

They were. Let's touch upon the gift bags because the gift bags there, honestly, the only reason why I grabbed my gift bag this year is that when I returned and ended up having like dinner with my mom, she was upset I didn't bring her like a gift bag or something. So this year, when I showed up to the convention, I saw a gift bag. First thought of my mom was like, 'I don't want to carry that around.' Then I thought of my mom, grabbed it.

Jared11:44

And I guess mothers are right because you end up getting like really cool stuff. They ended up giving away a lot of hardware wallets, a lot of different items inside. And they weren't just cheap items. It was like a $150 hardware wallet and a lot of different advertisements, ways to make money. So just grabbing the bags themselves and looking into them, you can learn a lot.

Jared12:13

And also, the companies that decided to advertise through that type of outlet, like they got a lot of exposure, especially since I just kept asking for more bags after that.

Ty Smith12:25

Yeah, no. I think that company, Arculus, that's a good one, also, because they were doing, I think it was, it looked like a vending machine, but it was, I think, one of those like arcade games where you have to like, whatever, you win some way. And if you win, you get a hardware wallet, which I thought was cool because those things are not cheap. Those things are like 100 bucks. And everyone that has crypto needs a hardware wallet. So I thought that that was a cool one.

Ty Smith12:39

Yeah, I mean, I think that's basically everything regarding like the highlights of what we saw. We're definitely going to be attending next year. It was an awesome event. And they always hook us up with like a discount code to share with people. So ahead of the next event, we'll probably do it again where we can share the code and people can get, I think it's like a 10% or 20% off. And we'll put a link to that in the description.

Ty Smith13:17

But yeah, that's it for this one. Bitcoin 2022, awesome event. Definitely going to be at 2023. I think we're buying tickets like already. And we'll hopefully we'll catch you at the next one, at the next conference. See you, Jared.

Jared13:26

See you.