After returning home from the conference, some attendees from the 2021 Bitcoin conference in Miami over the last weekend have tested positive for the COVID-19 virus, which generated a negative media spread and speculation from the public that the event might spread the virus massively.
The Bloomberg channel referred to the event as a “COVID hotspot,” while the Gizmodo tagged it as “the latest event spreading COVID-19.”
The CIO of Arcane Research, Eric Wall, was captured among the number of those that tested positive after tweeting that he had chest pains and high fever earlier which made him undergo a CT-Scan where the medical staff suspected a blood clot in his lungs. However, Wall was discharged from the hospital after no blood clot was found.
The automated trading software developer of Coinist, Luke Martin, also admitted that he tested positive for the COVID virus.
Twelve thousand people, at the very least, were at the conference, according to CNBC – which were not forced to wear a mask or asked for proof of vaccination. The event ran for three days at the Mana Wynwood Conference Center in Miami, fully loaded with people without enforced to observe social distancing.
The conference was the first major conference in Miami since the start of the global pandemic. Based on the report from the New York Times, the lines that lead to the conference building are “stretched more than a mile.”
Francis Suarez, a crypto enthusiast and the Mayor of Miami, spoke at the conference and was introduced to the stage as “maybe the most unserious politician in the United States, and the governor of freedom hub.”
Reports from social media create an estimate that the number of the total attendees and the aggregate positive tests recorded is higher than what the mainstream reported. “Mr. Whale,” an influencer posted to his nearly 235,000 followers on Twitter that about twelve of the conference attendees have tested positive since the event, and he went further to estimate the total number would have been around 50,000.
The Miami conference is not the first crypto event tagged as a COVID-19 hotspot as the co-founder of TorusLabs, Zhen Yo Yong urged the participant of the ETH community conference in France and the ETHLondon hackathon at the beginning of 2020 to test their COVID status when he tested positive after the event.
