Ask HN: What city is the center of crypto innovation?

[aaronwalker]

As a young person looking to get immersed in the crypto ecosystem, what’s the best place to live for this?

[Grimburger]

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.

[mccorrinall]

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...

[ffhhj]

Could you spare more information on Costa Rica?

[gopye]

Any resources to follow developments in BKK?

[chrisco255]

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.

[keiferski]

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.

[aaronwalker]

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?

[sph]

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.

[briandoesdev]

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...

[tromp]

You're far from the only one. You have your choice of privacy preserving blockchains, including Beam, Firo, Grin, Monero, and Zcash.

[dotcoma]

What interests you about the cryptocurrency field ?

[aaronwalker]

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.

[atoav]

The question is now if you mean cryptography or cryptocurrency, although I am afraid you definitly might mean the latter..

[sushid]

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.

[aaronwalker]

Definitely cryptocurrencies…

[f0e4c2f7]

Probably Miami or Libson

[robga]

Las Vegas