Ask HN: What city is the center of crypto innovation?
As a young person looking to get immersed in the crypto ecosystem, what’s the best place to live for this? You probably won't find much love for the topic here but Zug, Switzerland is the archetype "crypto valley" now. Besides that, there's a lot of western cryptocurrency enthusiasts in South East Asia for many years now, at startup events there cryptocurrency is a painfully common topic that crowds out the scene a lot. So I'd also add Singapore and Bangkok to the list, locals seem to have embraced it quite a bit too, a surprisingly large amount of big dollar billboard advertising for exchanges, etc around. Costa Rica seems to be quite popular also. The same switzerland that requires proof of address ownership when using a non-custodial wallet? https://www.bitcoinsuisse.com/news/what-is-the-fatf-travel-r... I don't see how that is problem at all? They are actually taking what is an almost universal border law and updating it for common times while every other country on Earth puts their head in the sand and is 15 years behind. People can walk across national borders right now with a piece of paper that has 12 words scribbled on it carrying $50m in crypto and legally there's nothing anyone can do about it despite the clear restrictions placed on travelling with $10,000 or more. Then why can i travel with a credit card without restrictions? Shouldn't that be the same as carrying my crypto wallet? Your credit card provides you with credit, as the name implies. It's not an asset in itself. My bank credit card is indeed tied to real assets... am i supposed to declare all my assets? Your assets remain at home. If you start making $20,000 purchases or taking out that much from ATM's on holiday then yes it will be noted by the authorities in their system and treated just the same as money in a bag at the airport. Could you spare more information on Costa Rica? Any resources to follow developments in BKK? It's pretty decentralized in U.S. and abroad. It's not like Silicon Valley where everything is concentrated in one city. Crypto is very global and widespread. Most of the projects operate on Discord and Telegram, so I would start to join those communities, such as various DeFi products or chains (Aave, Optimism, Synthetix, Filecoin, etc) by looking them up on their respective websites. There's also the BuidlGuidl, if you're a coder (https://buidlguidl.com/), join up and do some projects with peeps. If you're looking to meet folks in person, conferences are great for that. I had a great time at ETHDenver earlier this year, although it was a bit overwhelming (15K+ attendees). As a result of ETHDenver, there is a fair amount of crypto people in Denver. Other good spots are Miami and New York. Any tech hub such as Seattle, Austin, Bay Area, are going to have meetups you can attend. I would check Meetup or Eventbrite in those cities and start connecting. Outside of the U.S. I'm a bit less familiar with. Miami seems to be the center of the industry stateside. You're also close to the Caribbean, where many of the big players are located. E.g. FTX is in The Bahamas. I know Miami hosts many crypto conferences, but I’m surprised you’d choose it over NYC or SF. Do you think that Miami is under appreciated compared to those cities or it really is more of a global center for crypto innovation? I don't work in the industry but have followed it off-and-on, so take my opinion with a grain of salt. My impression is that Miami is more positive about the tech in general and is trying to deliberately make itself a hub for it. I don't get the same feeling from SF and NYC is such a huge market for every industry (especially traditional finance) that it can be hard to stand out. I wouldn't know about any city, but from the little I know there is some interesting penetration in African markets. I reckon major economic centres such as Lagos, Nairobi, Johannesburg will have important players in that space. As a side statement to people liking cryptocurrency, am I the only one who doesn't want a public ledger where everyone can track how much cryptocurrency I possess, spend, etc... You're far from the only one. You have your choice of privacy preserving blockchains, including Beam, Firo, Grin, Monero, and Zcash. What interests you about the cryptocurrency field ? A lot of things… the technological innovation, the developer ecosystem, the potential to change how society is structured. To me the core innovation of Ethereum is having programmable money, which will enable an entirely new financial system to be built. The question is now if you mean cryptography or cryptocurrency, although I am afraid you definitly might mean the latter.. What's with HN's vitriol for almost anything that's at the crossroad between tech and growing mainstream enthusiasm? I swear the HN crowd would be anti-internet if it were just starting out. OP is also interested in the ecosystem. It's not like they're asking for the next pump and dump coin on Tiktok. Give them a break. It varies a lot by thread, but it's probably just aging of the tech cohort. When HN started, the industry was small and many engineers were young. Those engineers in their 20s are now in their 40s. Regular threads come up here these days about being digital Amish. Reminds me of Slashdot shortly before everyone started leaving (though I don't think it'll happen here as there's no viable competitor.) It's just the old Douglas Adams quote playing out here, tech from your childhood is great/ethical/useful and everything in your adulthood isn't. And many people thought the Net and the Web was going to be a fad. Who needs a web BBS when you have Usenet, why a forum when there are Fido distributions? Entire BBSes died because they couldn't fathom being on the net. HN's current demographic would probably think most of the Web was a hyped up ruse made to sell more modems. Meta: This is our version of the Eternal September. "Hacker" means a subset of tech people that are focused on invention and innovation for innovation sake. They are the minority nowadays, the rest is tech people, grown up on the modern Internet mindset that cynicism gives you more points and thus makes you feel smart. I blame the karma system. Definitely cryptocurrencies… Probably Miami or Libson Las Vegas