JTwo weeks ago, I walked into an upscale restaurant for a networking dinner. I was brand new to Miami, a city whose residents pride themselves on two-story strip clubs, overly orange tans, and rental Ferraris.

I didn’t want to be here – not at this dinner or in Miami – but since I was supposed to be stuck in this town for six months getting medical attention for a weird vertigo problem I was dealing with, I thought to myself that I’d do my best to befriend all the not-so-awful Miamians I could find.

Cue networking dinner.

“Sir,” the butler told me, “you can’t come in in shorts and sandals.”

I ran to a TJ Maxx and, knowing nothing about clothes, put on the first thing in my size, threw my shorts and sandals in a plastic shopping bag and headed back to the restaurant.

Upstairs in the dining room, Eric, the dinner host, approached. He’s a brother. I had a phone call with him a week before through a friend of a friend, and he kept using the word “sick”.

Eric punched me then showed me to my seat next to a tall man in a blazer, who looked both nerdy and nice. Maybe this man could be my new friend.

I caught Blazerman mid-sentence: “…and I hit two NFT bananas last week and then sold them 5 times the next day,” he said.

Oh no. I don’t do crypto, I thought.

I turned to the pretty woman on the other side of the table. She appeared to be in her late thirties, had dark brown hair pulled back into a bun, and wore an expensive-looking suit. Her name was Jane.

“I haven’t touched NFTs yet,” Janine told Blazerman. “But I could finally get out of Ethereum and discover Solana.”

“Solana is fashionable. I’m only touching Avax at the moment,” another man chimed in next to me, trying his best to show he was wearing a nice watch.

From all sides, trapped.

Over the past few years, there has been an explosion in crypto. In the United States, 86% of us have heard of it and 16% have bought it. It seems logical. In these uncertain political times, the case for crypto seems increasingly well-founded: “Stock markets are riskier than ever! Keep your assets safe! Don’t let big scary governments block access to your hard earned money!

All around me, myopic cult sheep seem to be yelling at me, ordering me to buy digital Jpegs of monkeys or sell my kids for two Ethereum.

Here in Miami, where the municipality itself has already earned $7 million from “MiamiCoin”, the sheep are crying louder.

Although I wanted to leave dinner right away, I wanted to make friends even more. I soon realized that my role as a misinformed cynic who thinks all crypto-humans are incels who sit in dark basements using semi-clean spoons to eat out of ice cream cartons wouldn’t hold up. that so long.

I looked at Janine and thought I would try to hire her again. I noticed her perfect red fingernails and good posture. She was probably powerful and important, I thought. Like a prosecutor, or some kind of big shot who runs gigantic factories where children make shoes.

“What do you do for work?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, sipping a glass of dark red wine. “My company helps organizations get Fiat off their balance sheets and convert it to crypto.”

Good God.

“And you, Alex?” she asked as everyone turned to me. “Are you into crypto?”

I hesitated.

“Well…I bought a little on Coinbase last year, but most of my money is in stocks. Is that safer?”

The cold faces around the table urged me to continue: “…But I will definitely be trading a lot more crypto soon.”

Janine didn’t like it. “You are very late to the game,” she said in a voice that sounded like I had told her I had just learned about the camera phone.

“Yeah. I know. I don’t want too much of my money in this. It could go down anytime.

Blazerman intervened. “At your age, it’s better to have more of your portfolio allocated to riskier bets, obviously.”

“Mmhmm. Of course,” I said, wondering how old he thought I was, while realizing that I still hadn’t found a Miami derm for Botox.

I turned back to Blazerman. “You trade crypto, then? Like, is this your job? I asked.

“Ha,” he chuckled flatly. “I used to daytrade on Eth,” he said. “But now the fees are too high. Recently I just purchased and held L2s.

I watched.

“L2s are layer two,” he said, delighted to share the gospel. He used words like protocol, settlement and reconciliation. Words that almost seemed to mean something, but not to me.

“Oh, I got it,” I said.

Janine tried to help – she jumped in to offer an analogy her son had come up with – about how lazy teachers give their classrooms group projects so there are fewer grades per student, which which is the same as L2s and L1s and reduces something called gas charges.

“Your son made that up?” Blazerman asked. “How old is he already?” »

“Fourteen,” she said.

Impressive, I thought. Maybe I should divert the conversation to find out who did her botox.

“He’s part of a new generation of degenerates,” Blazerman said, using the slang word for “degenerate,” a term adopted by the crypto community for someone who throws money at transactions without find out what is going on. It is a proudly worn label.

Jane smiles.

The appetizer has arrived. It looked like some kind of dairy dish, which I tend to avoid because dairy gives me acne, but I didn’t want to be the anti-crypto newcomer dressed in TJ Maxx who also had dietary restrictions.

“So. OK, I still don’t understand what the problem is,” I said. is as safe as money, so why does it matter? Like, it’s not better than Venmo or Zelle or any of them. And nobody really uses it to pay for things.. .”

“I mean, not yet,” Janine said. “But the market is growing, and outside of the United States, many people are use it to pay for things. In Switzerland and Turkey, 11% of people own crypto, and in Nigeria it’s 32%.

“Crypto will change everything,” Blazerman insisted. “Especially with decentralized exchanges.”

“Oh, like Coinbase?” I asked.

“Ha. No.” They laughed at the idiot.

“Coinbase is a centralized exchange,” Janine said. “This means Coinbase knows every person buying and selling. They push the transaction through and they get in trouble when things go wrong, which is the opposite of something like a decentralized exchange, where traders can be anonymized,” did he declare.

“I mean. Sounds scary,” I said. “What if I gave my money to a drug dealer? Or a sex dealer, or maybe even an armed lobbyist?”

The joke at the end didn’t land. I was still in Florida.

“The Wild West of Fintech,” Blazerman said.

The waiter arrived with a steak and cheese pasta. I had worked up the courage to say something about dairy, but the host, Eric, was walking my way and I wanted to impress. I bit my tongue and accepted my pimply fate.

“Alex! said Eric. “You get the crypto land setup?”

“Ha! I guess. I don’t really understand, but it seems like a lot of people are making money, so…”

Eric smiles. “Yeah man. It’s about being ahead of these things. Most project cash these days comes from traditional institutions that are starting to come in,” he said, not really responding. to my comment: “Let’s face it, the financial systems are collapsing and we are building the lifeboats.”

I looked around to see if this seemed crazy to anyone else.

“In time you will come back,” he said, sounding like a Scientologist.

“Yeah,” Blazerman said, “Alex will be a degenerate in no time.”

“OK. So…” I started. has been potentially interested in this. I don’t want the world to fall apart or anything, but if I can make money…I mean…I’m not a developer.

“Oh, you’re fine. You don’t need to learn Solidity or anything. It would be overkill. Just put some money into things and join some Discords. You will be up all night. That’s what happened to EthMaxiPad here, he says looking at Janine.

“Dude, no,” Janine said, giving him a look for revealing her tasteless Discord name.

Discord is like Slack, but for unemployed people.

“Eth maxi pad?” I asked Janine.

“I changed it,” she said, “I was getting too much hate.”

“She’s an ethic maximalist. Think Ethereum is the best,” Blazerman said. “Which, I don’t know if she’s wrong, but Alex, if you really want to make money, it’s all about L2s. More risky, but more upside.

I took out my phone and texted myself: Everything revolves around the L2s.

“Go start placing small bets on things that seem like fun. Follow crypto accounts on Twitter,” Eric said.

“Go to Telegram. Look at guys with no bank,” Janine said.

I texted myself again: Look at the guys without a bank.

“And then I just got rich?” I asked half-jokingly.

“Haha sure, man,” Eric said as he turned around and sailed his lifeboat back across the room.

The dinner went on like this for another hour or so. I took notes on things that I don’t think anyone really understands, like yield farming, cold storage, and stable treasuries. And then I came home and fell into a pit of radicalization, learning how our financial system was to be replaced by what I still think was a well-marketed Ponzi with a very loyal tribe.

But that was two weeks ago.

Now I’m sitting at my desk in the dark with a half-clean scoop and a carton of non-dairy ice cream, while I learn a programming language called Solidity.

For the next few months, I’ll be stuck here, giddy in Miami, where people brag about two-story strip clubs, overly orange tans, and rented Ferraris.

Tomorrow I’ll be going to karaoke with a bunch of degenerates, who are only mildly terrible and will no doubt continue to do their best to convince me of an impending financial crisis that I don’t know will ever happen.

But hey, if I’m wrong, I’ll be grateful to them for giving me a lifeboat.