Among all those suffering from the chaos in crypto...we can't forget about Miami nightclubs.
Yes, apparently the South Beach hotspots are starting to miss the business young awkward crypto millionaires and billionaires, according to a new report from FT. The clubs had formerly been "inundated with phone calls from cryptocurrency entrepreneurs that no one had heard of," the report says.
Those days are long gone.
When bitcoin was at $60,000, however, there seemed to be an endless supply of crypto geniuses who were eager to "reserve lots of tables — or rent an entire venue for a whole evening at a cost of half a million dollars or more," the report says.
Andrea Vimercati, director of food and beverage at Moxy Hotel group, told the Financial Times: “Out of the blue, all these kids from crypto started coming down and spending a lot of money — like, an insane amount of money.”
“They were booking tables for $50,000, and it was like, who the hell are these people,” he continued, stating they were “95 per cent men, young . . . with a kind of nerdy style. You couldn’t tell they had a lot of money if they were just walking around.”
He continued, talking about the excess which has now been washed back out to sea: “They
wanted to show that they didn’t have any limits. They were ordering 12
or 24 bottles of the most expensive champagne and just showering
themselves without even drinking.”
One group, who claimed to have sold their crypto company, even paid a more than million dollar tab at a 50 Cent show in crypto, Gino LoPinto, operating partner at the club, recalled. His club transacted more than $6 million in crypto in the last year, he said.
“They had bathtubs of champagne brought out, and gave 50 Cent a bunch of cash to throw," she said. “You wouldn’t normally show your bank account, but people do show their crypto wallets/ I’ve seen more crypto wallets in a year than I’ve seen bank accounts in a lifetime.”
Now, the crypto club-goers have “completely disappeared”, Vimercati says. LoPinto noted that his club has only processed $10,000 in crypto transactions in the last 3 months.
Alan Roth, owner of Rosa Sky rooftop lounge, added: “On the bigger crypto weekends, the groups coming in for private buyouts were these young tech guys. A buyout costs anywhere from 20 per cent to 50 per cent more than we would make on a normal night.”
Brett Harris executive director of luxury sales at real estate firm Douglas Elliman characterized the boom: “It was revenge of the nerds.”
