Bitcoin Amsterdam was an interesting conference last week. First time I've attended a "bitcoin only" conference. Thoughts:

- Less Bitcoin maxis than I expected, but enough to go deep into *just* the Bitcoin ecosystem
- DeFi layers are in development but largely following the lead of DeFi on ETH...two cycles behind (but maybe one of the next things?). Also there are a lot of them so it's unclear which platforms will be important

Genart collector. Tinkerer. Investor. Crypto maximalist. Nomadic traveler w/ my wife and 3 kids. Temporarily settled-ish in Spain

- Institutions and bigger tradfi groups are into the "crypto space", but so far they fall into group think vis a vis the consensus "macro narratives" (which lately seems to drive the narrative that ETH isn't worth much in the last few months)
- Europeans are actually bearish about MICA laws...think much isn't happening so far; regulators are helping the bigger firms get ready for Jan 1 regulations

- Asian markets may be more developed and supported by the legal institutions - the West is behind the Asian narratives, but it's unclear if token price reflects that yet
- "Conference circuit luminaries" exist in Bitcoin land. But personally I don't know many of these luminaries. This reflects other industries where the conference circuit is a thing and becomes self fulfilling. It really means that the alpha information is reading between the lines, not going to the lectures...
- 90% male vs 10% female in the audience. Quite a lot of Dutch accents, but also quite a lot of "international English" spoken

- Rare ordinals = rare currency (like, say, a 1953 D quarter being more rare than other 1953 mints). I expect hoarding just like people finding silver-based coins in the US). Artists will use the rare sats to mint NFTs, so rare sat NFTs are interesting on
- L2s on Bitcoin are developing, but it's a cycle behind ETH. Watch this space and see who "wins" for "BTC native yield" narrative in medium term. Also dozens of them so it's hard to pick a winner in this cycle...wait after the next crash to invest in native L2s
- Still lots of new curious people entering space - motivations are all over the place, but it's attracting young, smart talent